Reply to June

June posted a comment last night about the Bob’s blog controversy. Here’s an excerpt from what she wrote:

Bob never aimed the word "banned" at me, he did delete my posts and tell me that I didn't belong there. He did this essentially because I questioned the way that he talked about Islam, saying that my Muslim friends would find it offensive. He had claimed that he was specifically referring to "Islamists"--radical extremists such as those who have beheaded Westerners on video tape, but when I pointed out examples of his condemnation of the entire religion, he decided it was time to delete me.

This is my reply:

June, it seems to me that you’re right that many people hatefully condemn ALL of Islam and not just Islamist terrorism as barbaric and evil. And I’m not surprised that you were able to document this somewhere and were subsequently met with a less than favorable response by the “thought police” of that community.

I confess that I too harbor profound misgivings about Islam. While I acknowledge that only a tiny minority of the world’s Muslim population are engaged in the bloody acts of terroristic violence we roundly and justifiably condemn, I suspect that a far larger percentage condone or even practice the oppression, if not worse, of females, the enforcement of barbaric laws, and other exceedingly dubious things as consistent with their faith, and, sadly, these actions may very well be consistent with a faith rooted in an allegedly word perfect dictation by Allah through Gabriel to the final and greatest prophet Muhammed during an era rife with tribal warfare, and rigidified by built-in resistance to the kinds of self-examination and openness that have enabled other wisdom traditions to evolve in keeping with an ever-evolving world.

But what is the most wholesome and wisest attitude to take and express toward Islam and its people? Surely it isn’t the mocking derision and enmity we see on a certain blog and elsewhere. For surely this won’t help to foster the social and economic conditions that would no doubt progressively decrease the hate-fueled violence of Islamic extremism, nor is it consistent with any religion or spiritual practice that most of us would consider worthy of embrace.

This is not radical leftist “political correctness.” This is just plain human decency and perspicacity.