[afchic]

Originally Posted by Warrior-Mentor

Re-reading your question, I realized I may not have fully addressed it.

I believe that people are inherently good. And we want to believe others are good as well.

Despite islamist claims of racism when someone exposes islams warts, there's no racism there. What race is a Muslim, anyway?

Just as there are Catholics and Protestants who pick and choose, so too do Muslims. It violates the dogma of their religion, but they do it anyway. Just as Catholics are required to attend mass every Sunday and Holy Day of obligation, yet regularly skip this requirement....so too do some Muslims skip parts of the requirements of their faith. This really isn't that complicated, is it?

Many Muslims don't know their own faith in the level of depth that we have already discussed in the numerous threads here. I never studied Catholic Canon or Jewish Law. Why would an average practicing Muslim study islamic law?

Yet, it is that level of understanding required before the full extent of the problem is exposed. Before studying the black and white of the letter of islamic law, I didn't get it. I never put any credibility in comparing the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. I thought they were endless, unwinnable debates. "My God is better than your God."

It wasn't until it was a case of studying our Constitution and islamic law, that it became apparent that there was an actual way to evaluate this situation. That there is a way to compare them.

David Yerushalmi said it better than I could in his letter to Suhail Khan:
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32710

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Before I forget, did you know the Koran is not arranged in chronological order?
Have you ever read it in chronological order? There are at least three different versions of the chronological order of the Koran (Jalalud-din, Rev. J.M. Rodwell, and Sir W. Muir). Yet all of them agree that Surah 9 is either 113 or the last surah chronologically. When you put that together with the idea of progressive revelation and abrogation, it means Surah 9 holds more "weight" than almost if not all of the other surahs.

Here's a quick guide that appears to be in accordance with Jalalud-din:
http://www.wikiislam.com/wiki/Chrono...r_of_the_Quran

Now when you read Surah 9:28, you can see that there's a reason that the "extremists" are cherry picking from the back of the book.

I appreciate the time you put into your post, but you really don't answer the question I posed. Do you believe there are such things as moderate Muslims that the US can deal with to reach our goals? Or are all those whose practice Islam inherently against what the US stands for, and thereby there are no means of dealing with them other than getting rid of them or marginalizing them to such a point that the religion becomes irrelevant?

Everything you have stated to this point leads me to believe that you see there may be moderate Muslims, but they may be worse than the fundamentalists in your eyes because they do not practice their religion to the letter of the Koran, and are thereby heretics. On the other hand, there are the fundamentalists who can never be dealt with other than through military might. That leads me to believe that your views would support the concept of eradicating Islam, or marginalizing it. If I am wrong, please feel free to correct me.