I don't normally like to bring up politics here

[AHF]

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Mann, I don't know how you got all that from my comments. Perhaps you should read my comments again and maybe you will realize that I cannot respond to your questions for I am failing to see where you are coming from.

This thread was about the fear of Obama being a dangerous Muslim president based on a couple of recent comments. He is asking how your comments about radical Islamic terrorists have anything to do with Obama. (Answer: they don't - which is not a problem.)

[Eddielives]

Who on earth even has to question whether Obama is a muslim? To even suggest he would be a dangerous Muslim president is absurd and anyone needing their fears resolved of this is, well, lacking in any understanding.

The quoted comment by Obama simply states that if any individual muslim is being treated unfairly due to the actions of the nutjob sect, he will stand by them and defend them. That's all fine and good. I would support any truly peace-loving Muslim as well from being attacked unfairly by anyone.

A theme that is running through this thread however is the reaction of Americans to Muslims and the fairness/unfairness of those reactions. That is what I was addressing by pointing out that to many people, they can reasonably deduce that the Muslim religion is being hi-jacked by a radical sect and unfortunately there is, more often than not, silence from supposedly peace loving Muslims in the face of such violence.

[AnakinJoe]

Some would argue that the righteous don't need to justify their religion in relation to the counter culture. I'm not sure various religious denominations have had to do so here in the states. I don't recall "good" priests standing up a few years ago and declaring themselves innocent of child molestation. Nor have moderate Evangelicals had to separate themselves from those who bomb abortion clinics. And I certainly haven't seen Dollar, Jakes nor Long defend their brand of ministry in the wake of Rev. Wright (although their theology is very, very different). I'm guessing that the rest of the world already recognizes the difference between mainstream Muslims and radical Islamics. So there is no need for a PR campaign amongst those with a basic understanding of the religion.

[AnakinJoe]

Exactly.

[Lascar78]

I find this amusing/disturbing given the fact that you have so strongly discouraged political discussion here, usually threatening with banning when it comes up. And then you start a thread with a fear-mongering quote taken out of context telling us how "scary" a thought that is. We get it, you're a conservative. Something tells me that if someone had started a similar thread that was on the other end of the political spectrum there would have been a ban threat.

[Eddielives]

First of all, let me say that I am neither christian nor muslim. So I have no dog in the fight to personally defend either of their dogma. I look at both religions objectively for what they are as well as observe the actions of each religions followers. To try and put the mass bloodshed by the hands of pissed off muslims in the modern world on a level with what has gone wrong with a relative few child molesting catholic priests and robert rudolph like fundamentalist christians is crazy. For every act of violence or murder committed by the hands of a fundamentalist christian, you have thousands upon thousands of acts of violence or murder being committed by radical muslims. If you contest this, then there is no reaching you with facts.

I would therefore contest the assertion that the righteous among the muslim community don't need to stand up to the muslim counter culture. News flash, the muslim counter culture is at the center of basically every violent social unrest happening in the world. There really is no comparison to christian counter culture at all. In stead of getting pissed off over a mohammad cartoon, the peaceful muslims need to reclaim their religion.......if they really want to. It does say in the quran to either 1, convert the infidel, subjugate the infidel or kill the infidel. There's a whole lot more for me to not like about that religion because of it's total lack of intolerance. So again, the tolerant muslim community needs to speak up against the radicals instead of the cartoonists.

[AHF]

It is also a real source of frustration for me that those extremists are not rejected and cast out of mainstream Muslims communities. I guess you could analogize it to Irish people not turning over extremist IRA members 20 years ago but that doesn't do much for me either.

[Admin]

I have never threatened banning someone over political discussion as far as I can remember. I don't appreciate you claiming that either and FYI the ONLY people that I have banned are the jackasses that were abusing the website earlier this year.

As far as not allowing political talk here, that's Chillz rule, not mine and I probably shouldn't have posted it here. I'll try to keep my conservative views away from your liberal eyes next time.

[AHF]

I am still legitimately interested in your interpretation on the 57 state clip. I just don't get where you were coming from on that one.

[AnakinJoe]

There is so much wrong in my community, city, state and country that I guess I haven't spent too much time trying to figure out what Muslims need to do to perfect their world. You raise good points. But I am less interested in debating how to fix the Muslim world and more interested in discussing the mindless propaganda that continues to invade our election process and threatens our ability to choose the right candidate to lead our nation.

Not bumping for any specific candidate as much as suggesting that folk need to read, research and come to their own conclusions. And this crusade to create "fear" by associating Obama with Muslims and Muslims equal Islamic Radicals is something that I find sickening. What peaceful Muslims need to do to reclaim their religion has no bearing on the reports that continue to essentially suggest Barack Obama was holding a target in the window of the WTC. Or that he will commission a subway linking Pennsylvania Ave. to Afghanistan. Vote for a candidate because you believe in their values and plans, not because of the "fear factor" created by biased media. And yes, that fear is predicated on an assumption that if Muslim, then terrorist. We should not allow anyone to think that we're that gullible.

[Admin]

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"It is just wonderful to be back in Oregon. And over the last fifteen months we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I have now been in fifty...seven states...I think one left to go. One left to go because Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit my staff would not justify it."

What is more likely, that a guy who was raised and educated outside of the US as a Muslim misspoke and quoted the number of Muslim countries or he accidentally said 47 instead of 57 as you thought?

I just don't believe that a man as intelligent as he is would say that by mistake and yeah it scares me that with all the threats we get on a daily basis to our country from Muslims that our potential next President might be a little more Muslim than Christian as he claims. It worries me that a man as intelligent as he is listened to his hate monger of a pastor for so many years.

For the record I'm not excited about any candidate this year, I am VERY ready for Bush to be out of office, but mostly I am concerned about the possibilities that having a President with such strong ties to the Muslim community could lead to.

[Lascar78]

fair enough maybe it was chillz

[AHF]

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"It is just wonderful to be back in Oregon. And over the last fifteen months we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I have now been in fifty...seven states...I think one left to go. One left to go because Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit my staff would not justify it."

What is more likely, that a guy who was raised and educated outside of the US as a Muslim misspoke and quoted the number of Muslim countries or he accidentally said 47 instead of 57 as you thought?

It is obvious to me from the context that he was thinking of having visited 50 states minus the 3 he hadn't hit yet. I don't think it is likely at all that while he was talking about visiting the states in the union that he was secretely thinking about the number of Muslim countries and let that slip out during his remarks. That just seems like a desparate attempt to read negative "Muslim" comments into the statement of a professed Christian.

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I just don't believe that a man as intelligent as he is would say that by mistake and yeah it scares me that with all the threats we get on a daily basis to our country from Muslims that our potential next President might be a little more Muslim than Christian as he claims. It worries me that a man as intelligent as he is listened to his hate monger of a pastor for so many years.

So he is too much of a supporter of an Angry Black Christian Minister as a means of covering up for really being Muslim? Again, that doesn't resonate with me at all. I do appreciate people having a problem with being a member of Wright's church but the Muslim scare seems no more reasonable to me than worrying about Bush being Islamic just because he holds hands with Islamic friends of his family. While I have qualms about Bush, that isn't one of them. I have some issues with Obama but his being secretely Muslim isn't one of them.

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For the record I'm not excited about any candidate this year, I am VERY ready for Bush to be out of office, but mostly I am concerned about the possibilities that having a President with such strong ties to the Muslim community could lead to.

I don't see the "Muslim" fear but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

[Admin]

I didn't mean he was secretly thinking about the muslim countries, what I mean is that his muslim education is a larger part of him than he leads on and that it was more than likely a sub-conscious thing. We're not talking about Bush here, who you expect to make remarks that make you do a double take from time to time. How often do you hear Barack make a comment that makes him sound ignorant, especially about something as simple and common as the number of states in the country he wants to lead.

[AnakinJoe]

I've watched Jeremiah Wright on TV for years. His "self-help" messages are very consistent with conservative ideology. He is not a hate monger. Dude has probably preached 1,000 sermons (50 weeks times 20 years) and what we've seen are excerpts from 2-3 sermons. I'm not sure that is statistically valid to paint a broad stroke.

You can choose to equate Obama's exposure of the Islamic religion as being sympathetic to terrorists, but I personally think that is an illogical leap. Again, it assumes Muslims=Terrorists. Do Italian-Americans=Mobsters (Sopranos)? Do residents of England=people with bad teeth?

Going back to the original message of this post, when provided with the context of the quote, you still remain fearful, so apparently, context is irrelevant to you.

[Admin]

You are assuming that it was the original post in this thread that makes me fearful, it's not. I have had concerns about him from very early on when I started reading about him.

For the record, no I don't think it's a huge leap to equate being a muslim with being a terrorist. I have been around muslims in the middle east, I have been around italians in italy, english people in england, the irish in ireland, and NONE of them have come close to being as hateful as the muslims were and as someone else mentioned in this thread the majority of terrorism in the world today is by muslims. Is it fair to lump them all together? No, and I don't hate muslim people, but the only terrorism concerns I have are from muslim people so that certainly creates a feeling of being uneasy around them.

Like it or not until the time comes when the minority of muslims that are actually terrorists are cast out by the good muslims they will continue to be seen this way by the world.

[frosgrim]

The statement that 99.9% of the world's terrorism is caused by Islamic extremist is an over-estimate. However, the U.S. media certainly makes it seem that way. As a counter example, go to South America and you'll find that the drug industry is responsible for a vast majority of the terrorism, followed by the State sponsored acts of terror, then "communist" rebels, finally, you have the indigenous movements that just want equal rights but have to turn to violent demonstrations to get their points across. I have never encountered a Muslim in South America. I am sure they are there, but I just never have encounterd one.

Looking around the world:

I think the Chinese classify the issues that are occurring in Tibet as terrorist (I don't agree with the Chinese at all).

In Europe you have the IRA, the Basque, disgrunteled farmers, and the whole Balkin issue, as well as the Islamic terrorists

Russia has every ethnicity rebelling against them.

In the U.S. you have the seperatists (remember Ok. City?), the urban gangs, and organized crime, and then Al Qeda.

In north Africa, the Middle East and Southern Asia the majority comes from Islamic extremists.

In southern Africa its more inter-ethnic violence that has nothing to do with Islam and more to do with much more ancient religions and ethnic traditions.

My point is that terrorism is a fundamental problem through out the globe that is not joined with a given religion, faith, political bent, or nationality. Part of the problem comes from the definition of terrorism. To some, acts of terrorism are their way of gaining a political voice when they have none (indigenous peoples in the Amazon). For others, terrorism is way to wage war (Al Qeda) when they have no other means. And, I think for many of the terrorist leaders, terrorism is just a way for them to feel powerful and be a leader. I find a lot of these mulahs, drug lords, priests, etc to just be blow hards looking to increase their own ego. In fact, I would say that EGO is the #1 problem when its all boiled down, then followed by unequal access to resources.

I just think we have to be careful about our stereotypings as they lead us to really bad leaps of logic. Those leaps end us up in quagmires (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Columbia, etc) with no real way out.