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Showing posts from October, 2006

Islamic Radicals or Radical Islam?

A lot has happened in the last few months, and even now I don’t find myself particularly motivated to write on most of the events. Instead, I like to see patterns and comment on those large, inescapable patterns politicians and the public would rather ignore. Islamic radicals have been a “pattern” since the start of the religion. I don’t mean that every Islamic individual or even Islamic nation has been a problem, but I do mean that Islam seems to have a fair number of radical believers unwilling to enter the modern world. I’m tired of the excuse that Christianity was “just as bad” in some way. I’m not a Christian, and I’m not about to defend any religion or Colonialism, but I also don’t think we should be comparing a current problem to the sins of humanity over the last six thousand or more years. Yes, the Crusades were terrible — but the Muslim nations won! Yes, the Ottoman Empire fell and European powers sliced up the Middle East, but Arab leaders sided with Hitler; not exactly