American Muslims Not In the News

In my few-months-back post, “Whacko Kills 13: The Real Tragedy Is That This Will Make People Dislike Muslims, Imams Say,” I said that Muslims who say killing people isn’t the real Islam don’t need to tell me that, but people like Major Hasan, the alledged suspect in the killings.

In the interest of keeping a fair and balanced blog, I’ll add now that a recent study indicates that American Muslims have been telling their own that, and it has been effective.  American Muslims are less likely to tweak out than are their European counterparts, and when Muslims become radicalized in America it’s not through the Mosque system.

You can read the report here.  (If that link breaks, search for: Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans; David Schanzer, Charles Kurzman, Ebrahim Moosa.)

It also says that government has done comparatively little to prevent radicalization, and needs to.  I interpret that to mean that American Muslims are less likely to become radical because of the efforts of the American Muslim community itself.

Way to go, guys.

(A Cambodian Mosque, near where I used to live.)

Whacko Kills 13: The Real Tragedy Is That This Will Make People Dislike Muslims, Imams Say

Yeah, okay; so the guy was under psychological pressure, and it’s a coincidence that he said, “Praise Allah!” just before he opened fire.  Isn’t a strong religious background supposed to help you cope with psychological pressure?

While the media wrings their hands about what a U.S. soldier killing other U.S. soldiers in the name of Allah will make the American public think about Islam, Muslims ideologues tell us how deeply hurt they are that people might think that Allah wants Muslims to murder.  It seems to me these folks are confused:  I’m fine with Allah not wanting Muslims to murder.  They don’t need to tell me; they need to tell people like Major Hasan.

A PowerPoint slide from Major Hasan’s presentation to the military.  This presentation raised eyebrows, but no red flags.  Officials explained they didn’t want to discriminate.

Rifqa Bary’s Interview

I have a strong suspicion that this kid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0P5IaIE_LI

is lying. And the way she hangs on that guy — who I’m guessing is Lorenz, the married conservative Christian church leader to whose household she fled and in which household she was secretly sequestered during a frantic search for her by officials and her parents — there’s something about the way she hangs on that guy I don’t like.

It is technically true that anyone who converts out of Islam (an apostate) is supposed to be killed, but it isn’t done much in the first world. I imagine that when it is done, in modern society, the motivations wouldn’t be purely theological, but it would be the culmination of a domestic dispute.

But, be that as it may, this kid is very close to being incoherent. Her hysteria looks put-on. While I think some of the social norms of Islam are a big problem for secular society — they may be actually incompatible with our version of civilization — it looks to me like she’s playing to mainstream bias against Muslims.

She may have good reason to want to get away from her parents; but it doesn’t look to me like she’s being straight about them.

Also she looks like a wingnut. I can see the parents might not be too pleased.

And, for what it’s worth, I’ve met a few people with profoundly deep faith in Christ. None of them behaved like that.