A Post-Mortem On Discussion

10 January, 2007. 809 words.

There comes a time when “discussion” is no longer fruitful. I tried to challenge some of the beliefs of the SWAC Bloggers on In-Politically Correct today, but I guess I’m wasting my time. I tried to be polite on their blog but I don’t need to do that so much here. :)

Elle wrote in her post, “These are NOT peaceful people. They kill and torture in the name of Allah.”

That just screamed out Islamaphobia, so I had to comment, “Your last post on sharia in Canada was pretty good, if somewhat unenlightened, but this one is just silly. Do you honestly believe that every Muslim in the world is on a jihad against America? That everyone who follows Islam will cut your head off? Every single one of them? Is that really the SWAC position?”

Here are some of the responses I got.

“Granted, not every practicing Muslim in the world is not [sic] like this. The majority is.”

I didn’t respond to that, but it’s a ridiculous, paranoid delusion with no supporting evidence.

“I would think you probably realize that we don’t think ALL Muslims are going to blow up the world. But it only takes one.”

Truthfully, I’ve been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but just about every word out of their mouths offers further proof that they are quite deserving of the harsh labels “bigot,” “Islamophobic,” and/or “xenophobic.” It wouldn’t bother me so much, though, if they’d just admit it and stop pretending to be “politically correct” with their half-hearted disclaimers about peaceful Muslims.

“According to the estimates I’ve read, 10% of the Muslim population follows the radical teachings of killing the infidels. That would be 100 MILLION Muslims … and THAT is a striking number and not to be taken lightly.”

I did a little bit of Googling and I suppose this is a reference to a Michelle Malkin post reporting a defunct Yahoo story about an Indonesian poll showing 1 in 10 Indonesian Muslims supporting suicide attacks. (I know, it’s sad when I have to research the opposition’s position as well as my own.) I don’t know much about Indonesia so I won’t comment on it, but it certainly sounds alarming.

“By killing the discussion you are doing all Americans a big disservice which only contributes to the “head in the sand” syndrome.”

Bringing up the pesky subjects of “facts” and “logic” is not what I’d call “killing a discussion”-it’s actually prolonging the discussion. Anyway, I’m not the one running around shouting that Muslims are evil and ganging up on anyone who might offer reasonable evidence to the contrary. The very idea that the SWAC Bloggers are interested in discussion is laughable.

At this point I wrote what I thought was a pretty tame response: “I agree it’s important to make people aware of the danger of terrorism, but I don’t believe in sacrificing facts to get the message across. A casual review of the government’s 2005 Country Report on Terrorism shows that most of the terrorist organizations listed have strengths in the hundreds or thousands-nowhere near millions. Also, you haven’t provided any real evidence that Islam is the root cause of terrorism. Religion is just a hook used to recruit ~~people~~ thugs who would otherwise be common criminals.”

“Hey, buddy-the better statement is- Prove to me that it’s NOT.”

Dude, that’s just a pathetic argument. Besides, read what I wrote. You know, the part about the 2005 Country Report on Terrorism? Which clearly shows a very small number of Muslims in terrorist groups? Ring any bells?

“and besides … who caused the tragedy of 9/11? It wasn’t Christian pilots in those airplanes.”

They weren’t Buddhists either, or Wiccans, or Waco cultists. So what? Riddle me this-since all the hijackers were men, why aren’t we concluding that all men are terrorists?

Also, it wasn’t a “tragedy.” That makes it sound like an accident. It was an “attack.”

"… if you know anything about this subject you should know the facts point to radical Islam being a HUGE problem worldwide."

Is the problem Islam or radical Islam? Make up your minds. As my wife likes to say, “words are important.”

Also, “HUGE” in comparison to what? World hunger? Poverty? AIDS? This report shows that in 2004, over half a million people died in South Africa from AIDS. This report shows that over 18,000 people died from AIDS in the United States in 2004. That report also shows that between 2001-2004, a time period in which some 3,000 American civilians died from one big terrorist act, over 88,000 Americans died in the United States from AIDS.

And these people expect me to believe that radical Islam is our biggest problem in the U.S.?

Thomas Krehbiel writes The Krehbiel Strikes Back, a generally centrist commentary on news, media, politics, and culture.

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