I am Muslim and totally disagree with that practice...
Reader comment on item: Islamists Police the Classroom [at the University of South Florida]

Submitted by Marcia (United States), Dec 12, 2008 at 15:11

I hate it that it takes a few people to really ruin Islam in the eyes of other religions and people. I have been a Muslim for the past 10 years, I have traveled to Muslim countries, and I have never seen so much ignorance and foolish pride than what I see in my own country. I know why some of these people act like this. They feel they are under a microscope and everything they do is being watched.

Yes, there are cases and it is wrong where there is profiling like airports. And I am definitely a victim of that every time I go somewhere. BUT, the point here is that these people(I will not call them Muslims, because this is not good what they are doing), feel that they have to defend themselves with everything and I have to say that it isn't true.

My husband is a very good Muslim, and he is a VP at a bank. In his line of work as in so many others, in order to move up in his career he needs to socialize. This means he has to go for drinks. But here is the thing, he has still moved ahead in his career because he will NOT drink. He has told everyone who asks that he can not drink for it is against his religion. So, people will go to dinner instead. My point here is that he is respected for his WAY of life, that he lives it the way HE wants to. That people at his job admire him for how strong he is. He doesn't have to tell others that Islam is this, etc and that you need to follow it this way. No, never. It is much better for people to care for you when you just live your life. Not by how many times you correct others, or how many times you tell people that the Quran is the way to go or else you go to Hell. He has so many people interested in Islam because he is positive and he never critisizes anyone or tells them how to live. Yes, he will answer their questions, but he keeps it to the point and doesn't lecture.

I have to say that Islam is a wonderful religion, and if there wasn't all of these stupid whackjobs ruining the face of Islam for all of these years, Americans and everyone else would see that Islam is just like Judaism, Catholicsm, and Christianity. All of these religions tell us the path to goodness, to take care of each other, not to steal, not to hate, etc. And Jihad simply means to defend your rights against those that wish to harm you. Like with Moses, the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians. So Moses came and he made a Jihad by taking these slaves away from Egypt. It is nothing more than this...Defense doesn't have to be violent either. When Ghandi starved himself for his poeple to be free from the British, he was making Jihad. In other words, Jihad is to try and stop negative circumstances with as little fighting as possible...Those who are terrorists will always say Jihad is to kill all those who oppress them, but they are not Muslims, they are those who wish to keep everyone under their thumb like Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.

I hope this has helped you all and that we can all live in peace. Many of the Muslims who come here are very good. I pay attention, and I don't hear that a lot of them are in our prison system. They come here to have a better life than what they get in their own land...

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