re: #44 SanFranciscoZionist

What IS the problem, though? What’s ‘that’? A deep distrust that any Muslims are truly against terror?

It is entirely possible that there are Muslims who consider terrorism bad tactics and are therefore opposed to it. There is ample grounding in history and in current affairs for this military judgment—-that it won’t work. Islamic doctrine allows for retreat and patience, to a point, in the face of insuperable odds.

A Muslim who reads the texts that count as holy writ in his community will read of the sword, of conversion by the sword, of forcing captured women into marriage even though they be married already and are unwilling, of pillage and slavery. Of the death penalty for apostasy, for adultery. Of the obligation to pursue conversion, or failing that, conquest and in its wake, conversion, by all possible means at every opportunity.

If he has moral objections to any of that, he had best keep silent, for dissent is apostasy. There must be untold Muslims who are desperately unhappy with the fact that their texts demand such things. But this is private distress, not Islamic policy.

I don’t propose to rescind the right of a Muslim to teach his doctrine and invite others into it, but I find it regrettable that the doctrine has any appeal. Should it somehow catch on, my alternatives and yours would narrow down to forced conversion, death, or dhimmitude.