Ok – Part of an article that while funny once again made me think. Had some things that I did not know myself and provided links to check them out. THIS IS NOT THE FULL ARTICLE. It is just the parts I really thought were interesting.
A conservative commentator recently made headlines by claiming 10 percent of all of the world's Muslims are terrorists. An amazing claim, considering that equals 150 million terrorists and if each were to pull off an attack killing just 40 people, they could exterminate all non-Muslim life on earth.
Either they're not all that dedicated to terrorism, or the claim is utter insanity.
If You're a Muslim Woman, You Have to Wear the Veil
For millions of people in the West, when you say "Islam," the first mental image that pops into mind is a woman covered head to toe in a burqa. The truth is, if you could suddenly gather all of the Muslim women on the planet into one giant room and had to throw a football to someone wearing a burqa, it'd be next to impossible to complete that pass.
But the whole hide-them-under-a-veil thing must be pretty big among Muslim communities, otherwise Europe wouldn't be all in in a dither over the things, pushing for bans and whatnot. Right?
After all, we all know that Islam hates women -- the fact that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that actually prohibits women from driving, or that only predominantly Muslim countries still use death by stoning as a punishment for adultery, proves it, right?
But Actually...
In France they have about 3 million Muslim women. How many do you think wear the veil? Because they did a study on it. When French police decided to figure out how many burqas and/or niqabs were being worn in their country, they found the number to be ... 367.
Not 367,000, but 367, a number so small that from a statistical point of view, it's barely enough to register as a margin of error. As for the rest of Europe, the numbers are even more disastrous for the burqa business (for instance, Belgium has 500,000 Muslims, a couple dozen wear the burqa).
Yes, there are Middle Eastern countries where the veils are required by law (namely Iran and Saudi Arabia) and combined those countries have less than 5 percent of the world's Muslims. There are actually more Muslim countries that outright ban the wearing of the veils than there are that require them. They can do that because wearing a veil is not required in Islam but is more of a custom, depending on where you live and who's in charge.
Hey, speaking of which, try this number on for size: Of the five most populous Muslim-majority nations, four of them have elected female heads of state.
So there's a fantastic chance that in 2012, Sarah Palin will be campaigning for an achievement that Muslim ladies have already accomplished.
Our Founding Fathers Would Never Have Tolerated This Muslim Nonsense!
It's easy to stand on a soapbox and publicly bluster about what you think the Founding Fathers would think about the godless, multicultural United States today. After all, these were Christian, God-fearing men, damn it. They certainly wouldn't put up with all this tolerance for these terrorist religions.
It's a good thing some Americans are standing up for good old-fashioned American values and passing laws to prohibit Islamic law from taking over the U.S., because that's totally around the corner! Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson is smiling in his grave!
But actually...
Even if they were staunch Christians, plenty of the Founding Fathers had a healthy admiration for the Muslim faith. Thomas Jefferson, for example, taught himself Arabic using his own copy of the Quran and hosted the first White House Iftar during Ramadan.
John Adams hailed the Islamic prophet Muhammad as one of the great "inquirers after truth." Benjamin Rush, who was so Christian he wanted a Bible in every school, also said he would rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mohammad "inculcated upon our youth" than see them grow deprived "of a system of religious principles." Benjamin Franklin once declared: "Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service." Even George Washington personally welcomed Muslims to come work for him at Mount Vernon.
So, why all this Founding Father/Muslim love? Probably because Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah of Morocco was the first world figure to recognize the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain in 1777. Another reason was that the Founding Fathers were smart enough to distinguish between terrorists and everybody else on the whole damn planet, as demonstrated in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797. It was in this agreement that the U.S. declared: "The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Mussulmen [Moslems]."
Islam Is Stuck in the Dark Ages
There are really three big negative stereotypes about Islam -- that it hates women, that it's violent and that it hates any kind of scientific progress. We've covered the first two already, but how can you argue against the third? Their governments are based on ancient religious texts! And what diseases has Iran cured?
But actually...
In the same way that not all Christians are Young Earth Creationists, plenty of modern Muslims see room for interpretation in the Quran. In fact, 45 percent of American Muslims in one poll said they see evolution as "the best explanation for the origin of human life on Earth," which isn't so shabby, considering only 24 percent of evangelical Christians believed the same. The percentage of Muslims embracing the scientific explanation for the origin of life was about the same as Americans as a whole (48 percent).
And historically, they have a hell of a track record. Science and math as we know it wouldn't even exist without Islam. The Islamic Golden Age caused a revolution in virtually every field of human thought, during which they flipping invented algebra -- and advanced everything from geography and exploration to the arts, architecture, philosophy, urban development, medicine and health.
All right. Now we look forward to a completely civil and logical group of article comments.
