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Canadian Shia Muslim Group's Website Features Anti-Semitic David Duke Video

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CuriousLurker4/13/2011 9:41:00 pm PDT

re: #20 Bob Levin

Thanks, yes it does answer…the first part of my question. Here’s the second part.

Do you feel in any way captive to the…call them faux Muslims? Because I understand that if I were to visit Israel, I would automatically be a target of this same group.

So, what do we do? I’m not sure that exposing them is all that effective, since they take the exposure as a victory and source of pride. Violence certainly isn’t the answer. (I’ll tell you, I’ve had this discussion with quite a few observant Jews, and the conversation gets to this point and stops. We’re entering the vacant stare part of the program, followed by Act III, avoidance.)

But I can’t think of a more important religious question.

I guess I feel captive in the sense that the haters & extremists make life difficult for the rest of us with their repeated bad behavior. It doesn’t help that they have a lot of financial backing which allows them to disseminate their ideology.

When I first became Muslim back in ‘91, there weren’t many American imams or sheikhs* with extensive Islamic knowledge like there are today. This means that the imams in the mosques either didn’t speak English well, or of they did, they had grown up in a completely different culture and didn’t have much understanding of (or interest in learning about) our specifically American problems & concerns. It also meant that the bookshelves of many mosques were filled with books from Saudi Arabia. IWO, back then you kinda just had to wing it and hope you eventually figured things out. That led to some people taking a pretty hard-line path becuase they assumed that was the right way.

Now there are plenty of imams & sheikhs who were either born in America or have been here for decades and have married, raised families, worked, etc.—i.e. they are much more assimilated & open minded than the old school guys. So now we have access to people who speak our language & understand Arabic and understand our culture. We also have access to many non-Saudi funded books, speeches, events, etc. The hard line stuff is still present, there’s no denying that, it just isn’t as prevalent as it used to be, nor does it go unchallenged—if we learned one thing from 9/11, it was that extremism wasn’t something we could ignore.

As for exposing them, we really don’t have a choice, do we? If we say nothing, then we are accused of not speaking. Even though many people have spoken out, they often aren’t heard (see Gus’s link to The American Muslim’s web site—she has plenty of examples, starting on her home page). Not speaking out also leads people to believe that we tacitly approve of extremism and/or terrorism. (Even when we do speak out and are actually heard, we’re often accused of taqqiyah by the Gellers & Spencers of the world.)

So what do we do? I dunno, I’m still working on that, but I guess one thing we do is get out there and mix in more with other (non-Muslim) Americans, let them get to know us and see that we’re not all that different than they are. That’s one of the main reasons I’m here, apart from the learning about politics & excellent company. ;o)

Does that answer work?

*An imam leads the prayers, but a sheikh is a scholar who is learned in Islamic jurisprudence, Qur’anic Arabic, etc. An imam can also be a sheikh and vice versa, but being one doesn’t necessarily imply being the other. In everyday speech, calling someone “sheikh” can simply be a term of respect, usually reserved for an older person.