The Search for Moderate Islam

But often ignoredSuch as ForbiddenEnjoy

Predictable Faith No Faith it is not PC so you can't use that excuse - which you couldn't even if true. What makes it difficult for you to follow is the cognitive dissonance of having your personal beliefs challenged by facts.It is facts and a discussion of the reality posed by violent activity around the world, whether by lone wolf individuals, covert groups (which has to include CIA operations in various countries as well as outfits like Al Queda) or by nations (Israeli bombing of Palestine civilians, US drone attacks, Russian troops in Ukraine etc).What makes the actions of these people's action terrorism ...

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Three Right-Wing Extremists Charged With Domestic Terrorism And Fox Ignores It

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The media would also have you think that the only terrorists in the world are Muslims, especially Fox. Fox looooooves to tell its viewers that Muslims are our biggest threat.

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So why is the media ignoring the indictment of three men accused of domestic terrorism for plotting large scale attacks on police? Well, because these guys are not liberal or black or Muslim; they are right-wing, lily-white extremists who want to protect the Constitution.

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Terry Eugene Peace, Brian Edward Cannon, and Cory Robert Williamson pleaded not guilty to charges of domestic terrorism and conspiring to defraud the government. They may also be charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, a charge that carries a sentence of life in prison.

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The men who are members of a militia group in Georgia had online chats monitored by the FBI during January and February of last year. In the conversations, the men discussed using guerrilla war tactics and attacking government agencies, and the metro Atlanta police station.

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The men also attempted to recruit other extremists to carry out attacks on the recruits’ home states.

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Hmmmmm. . . sounds just like the scary jihadists that Fox is always warning us about, doesn’t it?

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The men were originally arrested in February, 2014, in Tennessee when they met with an undercover FBI source and took possession of the explosives necessary to carry out their plots. In March, 2014, they were charged with conspiracy to receive and possess a destructive device, but it’s now been amended to domestic terrorism.

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So we have three obvious white, right-wing extremists who wanted to kill massive amounts of police and government officials, but you’re not hearing about it. Interesting.

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And then there are people like this:

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Violent and Dangerous: America's Sovereign Citizens Movement

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The strange subculture of the sovereign citizens movement, whose adherents hold truly bizarre, complex antigovernment beliefs, has been growing at a fast pace since the late 2000s. Sovereigns believe that they not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don't think they should have to pay taxes.

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Sovereigns are clogging up the courts with indecipherable filings and when cornered, many of them lash out in rage, frustration and, in the most extreme cases, acts of deadly violence, usually directed against government officials. In May 2010, for example, a father-son team of sovereigns murdered two police officers with an assault rifle when they were pulled over on the interstate while traveling through West Memphis, Ark.

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The movement is rooted in racism and anti-Semitism, though most sovereigns, many of whom are African American, are unaware of their beliefs' origins. In the early 1980s, the sovereign citizens movement mostly attracted white supremacists and anti-Semites, mainly because sovereign theories originated in groups that saw Jews as working behind the scenes to manipulate financial institutions and control the government.

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iirc Timothy McVeigh was associated with them ... and the recent failed bomb outside an NAACP building in Colorado may have been involved.If you are truly worried about terrorist attack in the US killing Americans, then you are more likely to see it occur from people like this. The evidence is that there is a lack of certification as an "expert" in terrorism. There is no system that compares claims made by pundits on tv with actual facts. The evidence is that when such comparison is made, the claims made by self-proclaimed experts are largely incorrect. You don't want to believe that (cognitive dissonance), so you ignore the evidence. Wrong again Faith. Nobody was letting terrorist Muslim factions off the hook, they were fitting the hook to all parties involved in similar violence: some are Muslim, some are not.Who they were letting "off the hook" were the people not involved in violence: some are Muslim, some are not. Then what is your definition? How do you parse out particular groups and not include others ... I'm asking because I'm curious.Do these three guys, Terry Eugene Peace, Brian Edward Cannon, and Cory Robert Williamson, fit your definition: Are they terrorists?What about drone strikes? Bombing civilians?EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : added

What they show is that the argument that ALL muslims are terrorists is a false statement, by comparison with how christian terrorists are regarded. It is the logical fallacy of part for the whole.An argument championed by Faux Noise Nutwerk and people that want a simple definition of the terrorism of fundamental muslims (or christians or jews etc).Here is a french program mocking the FNN "expert" dispelling false information:Fox Newsand then there are the christians in africa slaughtering muslims in much the same way ISIS is killing christians ...

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Tens of thousands of Muslims flee Christian militias in Central African Republic

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BANGUI, Central African Republic — Tens of thousands of Muslims are fleeing to neighboring countries by plane and truck as Christian militias stage brutal attacks, shattering the social fabric of this war-ravaged nation.

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In towns and villages as well as here in the capital, Christian vigilantes wielding machetes have killed scores of Muslims, who are a minority here, and burned and looted their houses and mosques in recent days, according to witnesses, aid agencies and peacekeepers. Tens of thousands of Muslims have fled their homes.

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The point was to show Faith that there is no simplistic definition that can be applied to muslims in general without that definition applying to Christian and other terrorists, and without applying to drone strikes on civilians.If you are looking for moderates, then you need to remove extremists from the discussion and see what you have left.The word "terrorism" means "violence we don't like" in practice ... if you need a simple definition.The problems in the middle east are more complex than black and white labels EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : end

So are you saying only muslims are terrorists? Seems like this:

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Right-Wing Media's Worst Islamophobic Rhetoric

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Fox's Andrea Tantaros Suggested All Muslims Are Like ISIS, Said Problem Should Be Solved "With A Bullet To The Head." On the August 20 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered, co-host Andrea Tantaros suggested that all Muslims were like the terrorist group the Islamic State, and said the problem can only be solved "with a bullet to the head":

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Fox's Eric Bolling: "Every Terrorist On American Soil Has Been A Muslim." On the June 6, 2012, edition of Fox News' The Five, host Eric Bolling advocated for police surveillance of Muslims and falsely claimed that "every terrorist on American soil has been a Muslim." [Fox News, The Five, 6/6/12]

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Fox's Brian Kilmeade: "Not Every Muslim Is An Extremist, A Terrorist, But Every Terrorist Is A Muslim." On the October 15, 2010, edition of Fox News Radio's Kilmeade & Friends, host Kilmeade defended his Fox colleague Bill O'Reilly's statement that "all terrorists are Muslim," asserting that "Not every Muslim is an extremist, a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim. You can't avoid that fact." [Fox News Radio, Kilmeade & Friends, 10/15/10]

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More in article.We know that these people are not moderate christians, but fanatics promoting war on ALL muslims because of the action of a few.Note that Eric Bolling is demonstrably wrong as seen in some of my other posts.This is hyping fear rather than rational response to the violence.Looking at muslim rhetoric that is broadcast will not show you moderate muslims, but samplings similar to the Faux intolerant pro war machine.The media is at fault for predominantly reporting on fanatic muslims out of proportion to their representation in the populations.Enjoy

What about looking at individuals that have moved from radical to moderate?

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How Orwell's 'Animal Farm' Led A Radical Muslim To Moderation

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When Maajid Nawaz was growing up in Essex, England, in the 1990s, the son of Pakistani parents, he first found his voice of rebellion through American hip-hop.

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"It gave me a feeling that my identity could matter and did matter growing up as a British Pakistani who was facing racism from whiter society," Nawaz tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "but also confusion about where my family was from and not really fitting into either culture."

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At age 16, Nawaz was transformed from a disaffected British teenager to an Islamist recruiter when he joined the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Nawaz continued his college studies and spent a year abroad in Egypt, where he continued his recruiting. As a result, he was imprisoned for four years, starting in 2002.

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It was while in prison, surrounded by several prominent jihadist leaders, that Nawaz realized he wanted to take a different path. He was reading George Orwell's Animal Farm and came to a new understanding of "what happens when somebody tries to create a utopia."

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"I began to join the dots and think, 'My God, if these guys that I'm here with ever came to power, they would be the Islamist equivalent of Animal Farm," Nawaz says.

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or

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When Islamic Radicals Turn Moderate

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After last week's Paris shootings that targeted an irreverent political magazine and Jews in a kosher grocery store, there's been a flood of stories about the dangers of Muslim radicalization and how it happens.

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What about people who go the other way, from extremist to moderate? These people exist; the U-turn happens.

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In the 1990s, he went to jail in Saudi Arabia for his part in firebombing one of the most popular video shops in the capital, Riyadh, and a women's center in his home town of Buraidah.

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Changing His Views

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His transformation from jihadi to moderate came after he got out of jail and went through what he calls a long and painful spiritual journey. He began to question religious teachings, "the rote manner in which we Muslims are fed our religion."

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Now, he's a harsh critic of any interpretation of Islam, including Saudi Arabia's ultraconservative creed. He calls for an Islamic reformation, especially in Saudi Arabia, where he's been denounced as an infidel and he gets regular death threats by email and on his phone.

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"Muslims are too rigid in our adherence to old, literal interpretations of the Koran," he wrote in a 2007 article for The Washington Post. "It's time for many verses especially those having to do with relations between Islam and other religions to be reinterpreted in favor of a more modern Islam."

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So there are two that not only are moderate but who have rejected previous radical beliefs and that campaign against the radical interpretations.Enjoy

but there wasn't any. There was anti-idiot retoric, but she wasn't singled out as christian, just as a hate monger, and a lunatic.Enjoy

Indeed. I found this book review on a facebook link and thought it applies to this discussion: Our Founding Fathers included Islam

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Thomas Jefferson didn't just own a Quran -- he engaged with Islam and fought to ensure the rights of Muslims

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At a time when most Americans were uninformed, misinformed, or simply afraid of Islam, Thomas Jefferson imagined Muslims as future citizens of his new nation. His engagement with the faith began with the purchase of a Qur’an eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s Qur’an survives still in the Library of Congress, serving as a symbol of his and early America’s complex relationship with Islam and its adherents. That relationship remains of signal importance to this day.

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Amid the interdenominational Christian violence in Europe, some Christians, beginning in the sixteenth century, chose Muslims as the test case for the demarcation of the theoretical boundaries of their toleration for all believers. Because of these European precedents, Muslims also became a part of American debates about religion and the limits of citizenship. As they set about creating a new government in the United States, the American Founders, Protestants all, frequently referred to the adherents of Islam as they contemplated the proper scope of religious freedom and individual rights among the nation’s present and potential inhabitants. The founding generation debated whether the United States should be exclusively Protestant or a religiously plural polity. And if the latter, whether political equalitythe full rights of citizenship, including access to the highest officeshould extend to non-Protestants. The mention, then, of Muslims as potential citizens of the United States forced the Protestant majority to imagine the parameters of their new society beyond toleration. It obliged them to interrogate the nature of religious freedom: the issue of a religious test in the Constitution, like the ones that would exist at the state level into the nineteenth century; the question of an establishment of religion, potentially of Protestant Christianity; and the meaning and extent of a separation of religion from government.

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This book provides a new history of the founding era, one that explains how and why Thomas Jefferson and a handful of others adopted and then moved beyond European ideas about the toleration of Muslims. It should be said at the outset that these exceptional men were not motivated by any inherent appreciation for Islam as a religion. Muslims, for most American Protestants, remained beyond the outer limit of those possessing acceptable beliefs, but they nevertheless became emblems of two competing conceptions of the nation’s identity: one essentially preserving the Protestant status quo, and the other fully realizing the pluralism implied in the Revolutionary rhetoric of inalienable and universal rights. Thus while some fought to exclude a group whose inclusion they feared would ultimately portend the undoing of the nation’s Protestant character, a pivotal minority, also Protestant, perceiving the ultimate benefit and justice of a religiously plural America, set about defending the rights of future Muslim citizens.

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One year later, in 1784, Washington theoretically enfolded Muslims into his private world at Mount Vernon. In a letter to a friend seeking a carpenter and bricklayer to help at his Virginia home, he explained that the workers’ beliefsor lack thereofmattered not at all: If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews or Christian of an[y] Sect, or they may be Atheists. Clearly, Muslims were part of Washington’s understanding of religious pluralismat least in theory. But he would not have actually expected any Muslim applicants.

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In order to counter such fears, Jefferson and other supporters of non-Protestant citizenship drew upon a second, less popular but crucial stream of European thought, one that posited the toleration of Muslims as well as Jews and Catholics. Those few Europeans, both Catholic and Protestant, who first espoused such ideas in the sixteenth century often died for them. In the seventeenth century, those who advocated universal religious toleration frequently suffered death or imprisonment, banishment or exile, the elites and common folk alike. The ranks of these so-called heretics in Europe included Catholic and Protestant peasants, Protestant scholars of religion and political theory, and fervid Protestant dissenters, such as the first English Baptistsbut no people of political power or prominence. Despite not being organized, this minority consistently opposed their coreligionists by defending theoretical Muslims from persecution in Christian-majority states.

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What the supporters of Muslim rights were proposing was extraordinary even at a purely theoretical level in the eighteenth century. American citizenshipwhich had embraced only free, white, male Protestantswas in effect to be abstracted from religion. Race and gender would continue as barriers, but not so faith. Legislation in Virginia would be just the beginning, the First Amendment far from the end of the story; in fact, Jefferson, Washington, and James Madison would work toward this ideal of separation throughout their entire political lives, ultimately leaving it to others to carry on and finish the job. This book documents, for the first time, how Jefferson and others, despite their negative, often incorrect understandings of Islam, pursued that ideal by advocating the rights of Muslims and all non-Protestants

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For example, recent anti-Islamic slurs used to deny the legitimacy of a presidential candidacy contained eerie echoes of founding precedents. The legal possibility of a Muslim president was first discussed with vitriol during debates involving America’s Founders. Thomas Jefferson would be the first in the history of American politics to suffer the false charge of being a Muslim, an accusation considered the ultimate Protestant slur in the eighteenth century. That a presidential candidate in the twenty-first century should have been subject to much the same false attack, still presumed as politically damning to any real American Muslim candidate’s potential for elected office, demonstrates the importance of examining how the multiple images of Islam and Muslims first entered American consciousness and how the rights of Muslims first came to be accepted as national ideals. Ultimately, the status of Muslim citizenship in America today cannot be properly appreciated without establishing the historical context of its eighteenth-century origins.

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Imagined Muslims, along with real Jews and Catholics, were the consummate outsiders in much of America’s political discourse at the founding. Jews and Catholics would struggle into the twentieth century to gain in practice the equal rights assured them in theory, although even this process would not entirely eradicate prejudice against either group. Nevertheless, from among the original triad of religious outsiders in the United States, only Muslims remain the objects of a substantial civic discourse of derision and marginalization, still being perceived in many quarters as not fully American. This book writes Muslims back into our founding narrative in the hope of clarifying the importance of critical historical precedents at a time when the idea of the Muslim as citizen is, once more, hotly contested.

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Sounds like an interesting book. Again this reinforces the concept of separation of church and state, that state\country secular laws govern in the public context, with all beliefs treated equal, while religious rules govern in the private context for each individual, regardless of what those beliefs entail.Enjoy