reply to He Was Good to His Mother....
Reader comment on item: But he was good to his mother: Murdering for militant Islam

Submitted by ron thompson (United States), Dec 3, 2003 at 10:13

This is excellent and informative, but there is some ...total difference between Militant and "Moderate" Islam. ...Unlike other totalitarianisms, 'militant' Islam draws many of the Best and Brightest young people who are not only NOT seen as different from the Moslem mainstream, but are taken as role models for it.
It seems to me much more accurate to say that there may be many moderate followers of Islam, but that Islam itself is NOT moderate, but is inherently fundamentalist, militant and intolerant.
Are you aware of the book reviewed below, Why I Am Not a Muslim?
Are you aware that Max Weber, the intellectual colossus of sociology a hundred years ago, also came to this conclusion? ( See Max Weber and Islam, eds Toby E. Huff and Wolgang Schluchter [1999])
The only reason I can think of why this book - Why I Am Not a Muslim - hasn't become widely known, and isn't publicized is that most intellectuals... have the unfortunate and intellectually self-inhibiting idea that it is somehow "intolerant" to ever question the basic values or tenets of any religion.

In a situation where we may have, not a war between religions, but a war by one inherently aggressive and superintolerant religion and the rest of the world, this may be a serious mistake.
Here's another footnote - if you have a copy of the 1939 Edition of Mein Kampf, glance at the introduction by Dorothy Thompson (no relation to the undersgned) and read her comment about Islam in that year - looks remarkably prescient now.
Ron Thompson

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