Conservative Views on Islam and Violence

Discussions in the blogosphere often tend to dwell largely on the horse race of politics or, when they discuss issues, on a limited number of issues where there is a distinct left versus right divide and no communication between the two. Therefore it is always enjoyable when other issues are being discussed (especially when the discussion doesn’t turn into an outright blog war).

Michael van der Galiën posted on Islamic Law and Violence last week, arguing that “Islamic law isn’t static” and that the Koran “doesn’t teach violence any more than the Bible or Torah.” Robert Spencer disagreed and Michael responded again today. The later post highlights the importance of this discussion with regards to encouraging reformers. Michael notes that a consequence of the view held by many conservatives that violence is intrinsic to Islamic belief leaves “moderate Muslims but two choices: to abandon their faith or to join the Jihadis.”

The discussion is worth reading in its entirety and therefore I’ll limit my summary to the brief tidbits above which will hopefully entice others to read the posts. The debate also highlights the difference between European conservatives and an unfortunate number of their American counterparts. Cernig shares an impression of Michael’s blog which I’ve also noticed:

As his blog has added American contributors, it has tracked consistently away from a European conservatism that would be best described as centrist in the US over towards the American Right.

But, unfortunately, Michael is finding that as long as he has any sense of proportion and reason he won’t be pure enough for hardline U.S. conservatives.

To a great degree this is true of both the right and left blogospheres. Increasingly there are ideas which are held by the majority of bloggers right or left and associations between bloggers lead to the acceptance of common views. I fear that the result is increased polarization as liberal and conservative blogs advocate entirely different belief systems. Even some of the “moderate” blogs often rely on having both conservative and liberal bloggers in order to provide an overall nonpartisan voice.

I’ve noticed that as his association with conservative bloggers increases Michael sometimes repeats conservative memes about American liberals. Fortunately there is a difference between European and American conservatives and his blog often does still maintain a “sense of proportion and reason” which keeps it from falling entirely into the U.S. conservative sphere. Hopefully this will continue.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Epat says:

    Here is a related article from my blog-

    Link

  2. 2
    am Khan says:

    A Different Perspective
    Just to give a broad idea why followers of Islam are being portrayed an enemy and at the same time rulers of those so called Islamic world (mostly dictators) are buddies to rulers of non-Islamic world. Why west like to see dictators and support dictators in Islamic world across the board.

    Islam is the final version of God’s message to the humanity. Quran is revealed to a Prophet who could not read or write. Quran confirms the messages of Bible & Tura. Messages of Prophet Adam to Moses, Chris were for last time revealed to the Humanity by the messenger Mohammad.

    All Prophets and followers of those prophets are Muslims. Meaning of Muslim is complete surrender in obedience of God. Men created their own version by calling themselves Jews, Christian or Muslim. In fact we all are same, but this uniformity of thinking/ideology does not bring bread and butter to the table of religion’s pundits and war corporations.

    Evil is in the nature of all human, community, group, its now an individual & collective responsibility of keep this evil controlled and respects others life’s and believes.

    In the history of human being the worst massacres are been done by White Groups who happened to be Christians. Thos massacres include Crusade, Holocaust, Bosnia etc.

    We did not and should not name followers of Prophet Jesus terrorist just because of those occurrences. Same philosophy and formula should be adopted for Muslims who are followers of all Prophets including Jesus, Moses and Ibrahim.

    In fact thousands times more Muslims are being killed by these war lords who control and round war industry based in western world. These producers of war gear including weapons of mass destructions are the one who are marketing and sponsoring these wars.

    Conflicts, unrest, strikes, agitation, killing, ambush, rebels are the key to these war lords. War is bread and butter to them. No War No Game No Earning No Business, simple is that.

    They need some enemy face to provoke their respective tax-payers in order to fuel hard earn tax payers money to these wars and make money for themselves.

    In 70’s 80’s they were successful in keeping US & Russia engage in cold war situation and kept pouring billions in production and selling of WPD.

    In search of new face of enemy to replace Russia and continue ware fare, they find new enemy in the name of Islamic Terrorism and this time these enemy-partners are the same who were financed, recruit, trained, called Jihadist and who were coalition partner against Russia.

    Then they are rewarded by Gulf War which in fact was not a war at all it was show of weapons and dumping of thousands tons of new and expired ammunition, missiles, etc. in order to clear the piles of inventory sitting with these weapons manufacturers. Big corporate media like CNN, Fox partnered with them by providing media coverage by showing accuracy of missiles or patriotic missiles.

    This hunger of producing and consuming at the cost of millions of innocent life’s and tax payers income took them again to current Iraq war. In a sense opposition like L-Quad and other terrorist organizations/individual are buddy to these war lords by providing fuel of hate-rage which leads to mind building for war.

    Realizing now that war like those can not be prevailed easily, now the stage for 2nd Cold War is staged via loyal partnership of Georgia.

    My brothers and sisters of all race, color, religion and believes, terrorism is a joint-venture of big corporations around the world whose faces are hidden behind different color, race and religions and they use sentiments of their respective societies to promote hate-rage which leads to war or unrest.

    We need to unite and be respectful to others believes and jointly defeat this enemy of defeat. This is the evil we are not able to recognize.

    Why there is not a spoon of food in Ethiopia, Rwanda whereas worth of thousands of dollars high tech. mortars,, AK 47, rocket launchers can be seen in the hands of those people who can not afford a piece of bread?

    Who is providing material, information, sources technology to produce IED, products of death, guns to kill innocent people and innocent solders who are acting in the name of their country with full honesty and courage?

    How come we don t have few billion dollars to subsidies health & medical benefits to millions of people at home but throwing in trillions of dollars to produce death machineries and death.

    Why don t held accountable these war contractors for billion of dollars disappeared without any accounts/proof.

    Why our soldiers are making less than 50K, putting their life’s for the country, their family helpless and parentless, without any assurity of job, welfare, medical care after they return. But at the same time at same place a contractor is making 100s of thousands dollars and being protected/shielded by these brave soldiers.

    These questions we need to ask us and our respective legislators without being white, black or brown, left or right.

    We are human; we must act like a human,

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