[FairfieldLife] What you are ignorant about will kill you

[emptyb...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]]

What I Have Learned Since 9-11 
  
 I was on my way back from a vacation when the first plane hit the World Trade 
Center. My wife and I were listening to music on a CD and enjoyed our ride 
home, and knew nothing about it. When we got home, we listened to our messages. 
The first two were from family members hysterically crying, "We've been 
attacked! America is at war!"
 
 My first thought, of course, was the ever-eloquent, "What the fuck!?!"
 
 We watched the news, and I was baffled. Why would anyone do such a thing? I 
was about as ignorant about this as someone can be. But I'm a learner. It's 
what I like to do. And since that day, I've learned a lot.
 
 I learned that this was not an isolated incident. Attacks had become more 
frequent and more deadly over the years. I just hadn't noticed.
 
 And I eventually learned that this is not just a problem of generic 
"terrorism," but a global movement based on Citizen Warrior: The Quran's Last 
Word on Non-Muslims 
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2010/09/qurans-last-word-on-non-muslims.html and 
the example of Muhammad. I learned that Islam is a unique religion because it's 
a political system and a system of law as well as being what most people would 
call a religion. Its goal is world domination, it has explicit permission for 
(and approval of) violence in its holy books, and it is intolerant of 
non-Muslims. Its laws even include legally-imposed discrimination against 
non-Muslims (and all women). (Read more about that here 
http://www.inquiryintoislam.com/2010/11/basic-elements-of-islam.html.)
 
 I learned that an almost-uninterrupted jihad has been waged against 
non-Muslims for 1400 years. The attacks are near constant. So far since 9-11, 
Jihadis have carried out 23,795 deadly attacks. Most of us don't see it as a 
war. We see isolated attacks. If you take in the whole global view, however, or 
listen to the point of view of a Jihadi, or read this, you will see it for what 
it is: A global war — orthodox Muslims against everybody else.
 
 The majority of the conflicts in the world today consist of Jihadis fighting 
non-Muslims or Muslims who are considered insufficiently Islamic. If you 
removed jihad from the world right now, it would be a fairly peaceful place.
 
 I also learned that one of the main reasons democracies have so much trouble 
dealing with Jihadis is because of an important conflict within democracies. 
Specifically, most people in the free world believe 1) everyone has a right to 
worship as they wish, and 2) discrimination of any kind is wrong. These are 
important foundational principles of liberal democracies around the world.
 
 Why is this a problem? Because the simplest way to deal with Islam would be to 
discriminate against it. In other words, to openly admit Islam is unique 
(because of its political aspirations and religious duty to overthrow all other 
forms of law and government), and stop all concessions to Islam and roll back 
any concessions already made.
 
 We "can't do that" because it violates important values of our societies. Or 
does it necessarily? This dialog needs to happen and solutions need to be 
created for it. But of course, that can't happen as long as the majority of 
people in free countries remain ignorant of the most elementary facets of 
Islam. And it's not just ignorance. Many people have a real resistance to 
hearing anything about it because even talking about it seems to violate the 
principles of decency and kindness!
 
 So the final thing I've learned is that the solution to this problem starts 
with a grassroots movement: Those who know something about Islam's dangers to 
the free world must talk to people who don't, and successfully educate them. 
Once enough people are educated, national conversations can happen that could 
result in new, carefully-crafted policies that retain our democratic freedoms 
while limiting the destructive and insidious encroachment of orthodox Islam.