Found this comment on another forum posted by someone in the US from Saudi Arabia:
Very, very astute observation.
Quote:
As a Saudi Arabian I'd like to provide an interesting perspective.
The religious establishment here has taken a lot of heat, and rightly so. Seems that much of it is always so complacent in all matters concerning the extremist violent Islamic agenda. Some would even say complicit. In their rhetoric they are always very creative in signalling out the "bad guys" and stopping short at saying, "go get'em!" You'd be hard-pressed to find any reasonable person proposing that they have amply condemned that agenda as much as they ought.
In the US you have the exact same rhetoric, and the people with whom this rhetoric resonates adopt the same thought modalities as "terrorist sympathizers" here, i.e. their group "has been wronged repeatedly and is actually very misunderstood."
The only difference between the two is that globally almost everyone recognizes the nefariousness of the first group but not the second. Those who minimize it or pretend it doesn't exist only serve to exacerbate the problem. Take it from someone who's seen what this eventually develops into: it only gets worse. The longer you pretend as a society that this doesn't exist or that it's irrelevant/harmless or should be accommodated or whatever, the harder it will be to deal with it later.
Just my two cents.
The religious establishment here has taken a lot of heat, and rightly so. Seems that much of it is always so complacent in all matters concerning the extremist violent Islamic agenda. Some would even say complicit. In their rhetoric they are always very creative in signalling out the "bad guys" and stopping short at saying, "go get'em!" You'd be hard-pressed to find any reasonable person proposing that they have amply condemned that agenda as much as they ought.
In the US you have the exact same rhetoric, and the people with whom this rhetoric resonates adopt the same thought modalities as "terrorist sympathizers" here, i.e. their group "has been wronged repeatedly and is actually very misunderstood."
The only difference between the two is that globally almost everyone recognizes the nefariousness of the first group but not the second. Those who minimize it or pretend it doesn't exist only serve to exacerbate the problem. Take it from someone who's seen what this eventually develops into: it only gets worse. The longer you pretend as a society that this doesn't exist or that it's irrelevant/harmless or should be accommodated or whatever, the harder it will be to deal with it later.
Just my two cents.
Very, very astute observation.
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
-Sagan
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
-Sagan
