I have actually had a Jew tell me that we Muslims are the new Jews; we are at risk of widespread maltreatment and persecution if the government-supported pillorying of Islam does not stop.

Thank you for the link. Very well written article by Sheila Musaji.

As a child who grew up in Miami, Florida from 1972 -1976, life was relatively peaceful for a Muslim family like mine as the US then was very much into the Cold War era with the now defunct USSR and her preoccupation against anything resembling communism.

In turn, Islam and her followers during that period, were not really a cause for concern for anyone in the US.

With old enemies gone, we now appear to be that replacement bogeymen but InsyaAllah (God willing) through helpful forums such as Richard’s, that unkind and unfair labelling can be stopped.

I ran across a rather excellent essay the other day and would like to share it:

http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/anti_muslim_rhetoric_reaching_a_dangerous_level/0017729

In the historical frame, this is particularly true when it comes to Western European and American genocide against the indigenous inhabitants of the ‘New’ World, but one could point to many things past and present. As a former student of European history, I’ve dwelt long and hard on the myriad crimes and horrors perpetrated by ‘white gentile Christians’ (those last three identity tags being ones that I sadly fall under) over many centuries. It is very important to face up to this stuff, in fact, on a personal note, when I first studied the Holocaust, it actually really overwhelmed and weighed very (debilitatingly) heavily on me for quite awhile, and this as an American for something that happened on a whole other continent!

My point was really more specific about American foreign policy in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian issue (going back several decades and more, now), and how this plays out internally, domestically in the U.S. in terms of the molding of, and acquiescence, in said policies. Part of the broader popular American acquiescence in and silence on our absolutely brutal, devastating Israel policy and Mid-East policy isn’t just about $$, it’s about cultural framing and the predominant discourse and narrative in this country. When it comes to the Levant, the Jewish narrative is overwhelmingly powerful and dominant in the U.S. Part of this narrative very much plays on and manipulates a sense of white gentile Christian guilt over the Holocaust and centuries of European persecution of Jews to lock in unquestioning support for Israel. That’s just part of the cultural dynamic at play in America, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t stand up to it, or that it’s right. And yes, some Christian support for Israel is purely ideological, particularly among the higher-ups, conservative evangelicals and the right-wing nutjobs, but among the broader population, it’s more about the dominant cultural narrative of perpetual & intrinsic Jewish victimhood that courses through a lot of American media, and this is then turned around and used in a morally extortionary way when it comes to the subject of Israel.

If this cultural dynamic and discourse can be successfully countered, I think it could ultimately help turn the boat around on American policies that are so destructive toward Palestinians and other Arab peoples. If this domestic American issue is uninteresting and uncompelling to you, so be it, I certainly don’t ask for or expect you to be impressed by the rather pathetic, debilitated nature of American cultural discourse. But I think it’s important as it ultimately helps lead to bombs falling on the Palestinians and other Arab nations.

And of course ‘Western’ Christians should face up to their abysmal historical and present day interactions with Muslims and the religion of Islam, just as they should (and to a much larger degree have) with Jews. I’m already on record in this blog condemning prejudice and hostility against Islam and Muslims in my country, I think it’s abhorrent.

As for their not realizing how many Palestinian and Lebanese Christians there are (not to mention Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Irani, etc., etc., etc.), shall we talk also about the amount of non-European Christian blood European Christianity has shed in its history, as in “kill them all and let God sort them out”? So, you think they give a damn whether an Ayrab is a Christian or not? But then, European Christians have not exactly been easy on other European Christians, have they? In fact, white European Christians have mass murdered many times more Christians than anyone else.

Oh, no, I think it would do American white Christians a world of good to finally have to face up to their religion’s horrifically violent past – not to mention its horrifically violent present.

Part of the problem in religiously observant America is that the gentile Christian majority tends to get guilt-tripped a fair amount over precisely the history you’re talking about, in terms of Christians’ historic relationship with Jews, and the Israel lobby capitalizes on this in an extortive way to pressure support for Israel among American Christians. So, I’d argue that the issue of white gentile Christian guilt for all the woes of European and American history feeds into this debate in an unhealthy, counterproductive way.

What we need to do is show how these groups in fact have a lot of common ground, and work toward mutual understanding. A lot of Americans don’t even realize how many Palestinian and Lebanese Christians there are (not that American Christians should care about them more than Muslims, atheists or any other group…)

that accuracy is “doubtful.”

Nuts to that. When some say something is true and some say it is false that means the matter is in dispute. Not that the issue of the truthfulness of the thing is “doubtful.”

I can tell you there is ample archaeological evidence that supports the idea that the invasion never happened.

And I can tell you the moon is made of green cheese. That doesn’t mean it’s so nor does it mean that anything you say here is true unless you can support an as yet unsupported claim. If your claim is as dubious as your command or rhetoric and language represented above then your case will leave quite a bit to be desired.

I couldn’t tell you why the Bible represents a slow cultural change in Biblical Eretz Yisrael as an invasion, but I can tell you there is ample archaeological evidence that supports the idea that the invasion never happened.