Valid comment -- but what's it got to do with Saladin?

Submitted by GK (United States), Jun 28, 2010 at 09:57

Jonathan -- all your points are credible but the reference to Saladin is peripheral, and never linked to what you state.

I'd like to add a few other observations/facts:

1. As the West and developed world have taken the path of reducing their population growth, the Muslim countries have raced in the other way, accelerating their population far faster than any other group in the world -- growing by 3% per year, or doubling every 24 years. This has come at a great cost to women by forcing women into early marriage (often in early teen years) throughout the Muslim world, and by forcing women to accept second class status in wide swaths of the Muslim world.

2. Education is also taking short shrift in the Muslim world, too. Parents of boys are encouraged to send sons to madrassahs where becoming a hafiz is all important, and often this all-important goal takes priority over obtaining a well-rounded education. And parents of girls are discouraged from allowing girls any education at all.

3. There is an entire theological branch to the terror movements, where terrorism is justified and even encouraged by sura, hadith and hymns. Then the antediluvian theology is disseminated widely by 21st C. technology!

4. The 6th and 7th pillars of the Faith are not widely publicized, but are defacto pillars of those who believe that the true believers must help "Defeat all and any Nation other than those obedient to the Quran". These are to proselytize and convert non-believers and to do jihad. And the purpose of jihad (in common application) is to influence the conversion of non-believers or to help facilitate the spread of the Faith.

An ethicist asks what the consequences of actions will be in the long run, and he asks "What if everyone acted the same way?" The consequences of allowing the extremists set the tone of the struggle against free people are obvious. Will there eventually be another Saladin to defeat the free world? I don't think so. In Saladin's day, his world was smaller in population, geographically constrained, and very advanced. In today's world, all of those characteristics are reversed.

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