To the Muslims of the World

[chaoticidealism]

The other day I looked back over the diaries I kept when I first went to college, and I looked at the entries I made just after 9/11. Much of it was just my writing down what I learned from the news, as I learned it, and talking about how it affected our daily lives; but some of it was oddly prescient. Some excerpts:

September 16, 2001:
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Comments

[mosinging1986]

(Here via the LJ Home Page)

I saw the word "Christian" and I thought great! Finally, another Christ follower on LJ! Then I see this:

Here--in the land of religious freedom--we're persecuting Muslims? Shame on you, America!"

A few days after the slaughter of thousands of people on our soil by followers of this ideology and you're claiming WE are persecuting THEM?! And having the GALL to shame US?!

I am left speechless.

[chaoticidealism]

I think you are making a very common mistake here... Think about what you've said

[mosinging1986]

Some people who said they were Muslims killed several thousand Americans.

Why are you saying "said" they were Muslims? Show me the evidence that they were not Muslims.

(That's as far as I'm willing to at the moment. My experience has been that I take the time to think about and compose a thoughtful, detailed response (often with research involved) and it's just... ignored by the other person. I don't know you, so I am not saying you will do that. But I don't have any guarantee either way. So, we will see if you provide the evidence I am requesting to support your claim.

[chaoticidealism]

I don't think it matters if they were Muslims or not. They claimed to be; but when the vast majority of the Muslim world says, "That's not what Islam is about! These people aren't true Muslims!" I'd really rather call them "radical jihadist assholes".

In any event, it doesn't matter whether they were Muslims, because their actions shouldn't dictate how we treat completely unrelated people who also happen to be Muslims.

[anonymous]

It bothers me how autistic (asperger) people in almost every instance proclaims their intellectual superiority, and in many cases proves to be not only well-versed but also intelectually curious and highly competent, as you have in your blog, yet has a blind spot where the previously so strictly (compulsively) ascribed method of examination is completely discarded. Why is this? It doesn't disturb me that people who don't have the capacity for complex reasoning doesn't use them, but in your case I am annoyed, precisely because of this. Everything you wrote on these topics were wrong, uninformed and seems to have their base in propaganda swallowed completely un-critically, with lots of ketchup. Read about Hitler before you judge him.

[chaoticidealism]

"Read about Hitler before you judge him." You assume I haven't. I've actually read plenty--multiple biographies, a lot about World War 2 both in terms of tactics and sociology. As a German-American, it's part of my history. It's an important part. I feel like I would be trivializing the deaths of those millions killed in the Holocaust if I didn't learn as much as I could about it, learn why it happened and how to stop it from happening again. Hitler was a catalyst for a powderkeg. Without Germany being the way it was, he couldn't have killed as many as he did; without Hitler being the way he was, tensions might have dissipated without another world war, or else expressed themselves in numerous smaller wars. I know there are a lot of opinions about Hitler, a lot of armchair psychology, but I'm not spouting conspiracy theories or neo-nazi bullcrap here--lots of historians are saying exactly what I'm saying. The basics, at least--Hitler as a catalyst, the conditions in Germany as the perfect storm--are pretty much common consensus.