Can Secular West Understand?

I was raised in pretty much a secular home growing up. I never remember going to church until I moved to Texas at the age of twelve. My early years were spent in So Cal, from Torrance to Encino. Once in Texas, I was required to go to Baptist church weekly. Can’t say it helped much as some people may attest… Today whudda thunk I’d attend Catholic church every week (albeit as a “practicing non-Catholic” as my wife calls it) AND send my children to private Catholic school??? More on that in future posts!

My original point was going to be growing up in a secular home, I’ve always given the benefit of the doubt when it came to religion to the believer. I was one of those dope smokin’ slackers in college that took up every religion that I could came across. I read the Bhagavad-Gita, the Vedas, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Daozang and the Book of Mormon; I thought all these religions were all basically good at heart. At times, I thought the Christian church was the least worthy of all the major religions due to its bloody past.

I never really studied Islam during this time and thought it was just a step child of Judaism and Christianity and thought Mohammad was just another prophet. I don’t think I’ve EVER been so naïve.

During Islam’s Golden Years, I have no doubt it was a thriving social and cultural leader, but that was between 700 to 1200 years ago. Now they’ve, and yes that is a massive generalization to say this, but I’m speaking from North Africa to Indonesia, devolved into a series of societies with petroleum and terrorism as the primary export.

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I came across an article by Shlomo Engel today which I thought included several valid points.

The current war between Islam and the West is over the most fundamental cultural values of the two civilizations.

Followers of Western culture believe in the supreme value of human life, civilian rights, complete freedom of thought and human spirit, genuine pluralism of beliefs and views coexisting side by side, equal status of men and women, and a free economic and intellectual market that is constantly improving as a result of competition and the individual's right to advance.

Western culture also believes in the power of words and persuasion, the use of force as a last resort only, individualsism, limitless self-criticism and public criticism, and all other values of freedom and equality.

On the other hand, followers of the Islamic culture believe in one religion and one opinion meant to overtake the world through a Muslim crusade of blood and infidel bodies.

The well known duty of spreading Islam by the sword reflects the essence of this belligerent, murderous culture, which is willing to sacrifice millions of human beings (both Muslims and infidels) whose value is insignificant on the altar of the Muslim ideal of conquest and force.

In such a belligerent, violent society, there's of course no room for civil rights or any status for women, or any aspiration for education that is not zealously religious.

What is so amazing with today’s West is the lack of acknowledgement of Islam’s fundamental mistreatment of women.

It's difficult to point to a significant social movement by Muslims that espouses the values of education, freedom, equality, and peace. On the other hand, millions of Muslims are quick to avenge and destroy and kill and burn over any caricature or utterance they do not like.

Muslims are almost completely absent from the scientific and academic world, not to mention the Muslim woman.

This religious zealotry is unrelated to economic and social status, and is true for residents of luxurious palaces in Saudi Arabia as it is for residents of refugee camps in Gaza and Lebanon.

It is to be expected that merely presenting this war of civilizations will immediately elicit the regular derogatory insults of racism and fascism that are so much liked by Muslim fanatics and their innocent supporters in the West.

The Western world's great openness created a situation whereby the blatant, anti-democratic racism and inequality that is built into Muslim culture receives the same status and legitimacy as other Western cultural values.

Under this cover, the violent and fanatic aggressor allows itself to fight Western culture in its own home by demanding rights of equality and freedom that it doesn't believe in, but is glad to utilize in order to achieve its own destructive objectives.

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The realization that a democracy must defend itself against those threatening to ruin it, even at the price of undermining the rights of those fighting against it, is a required condition for a victory by the sons of light against the sons of darkness – a war faced by the entire world, and particularly in Israel.

This is not just Israel’s fight but all of ours. Until we recognize what radical Islam is bringing to the West, we’re in dire peril being blinded by our sense of fairness which these folks don’t seem to fathom.