Ahhh the lovely peaceful muslims!

You’re well over the line on this one.

How would you like it if all Christians were judged by the Westboro Baptist Church? Remember those people? The ones that said American soldiers deserved to die in Iraq because there are gays in this country. How about we judge Christians by Falwell’s absurd decree that 9/11 was caused by feminists? Or on Pat Robertson’s intonations that the hand of God may harm some obscure Pennsylvania school board?

Every religion has its crazies. Judging the whole of Christendom by the pronouncements of a cadre of uninformed or misguided members is offensive to the religion, it’s adherents, and humanity. So too is it offensive to judge Islam by it’s terrorists and anti-Western agitators.

If you feel the need to critique the protest of these misguided Sudanese, you’re free to do so. But to attempt to indict the whole Muslim world for the sins of a few protesters is insensitive, chauvinistic, and immoral.

David, your post makes about as much sense as this…

How would you like it if all Christians were judged by the Westboro Baptist Church?

David, here’s ONE difference… in the case of those losers @ the WBC, the Christian religion has largely denounced their behavior as an outlying radical belief and that the MAIN body of Christians DO NOT condone or endorse their message.

The Muslim extremist movement is in full swing and with the exception of a VERY small segment of mostly westernized Islamic folk, the MAIN religious body has yet to wholeheartedly denounce these folk as radicals that do not reflect the beliefs of the norm.

If these protests were a rare occurrence it would be one thing, the fact that they pop up ANY time someone questions or “insults” their religion calling for the offenders death without so much as a “hey now, calm down and lets THINK about this” from their leaders should send up red flags all over.

Casey, haha…?

James, my first question is how you know so much about Muslims around the world? Secondly, how do you know what the “MAIN body of Christians” believe?

You’re seemingly willing to allow for the fact that lay Christians are different than the most prominent and controversial of their leaders, yet for Muslims you seem to willfully ignore that fact. It just makes no sense.

The Christian community is a very diverse place; in both religion and politics that diversity is well known in America. Since the schism and the later Reformation it’s been absurd to claim all Christians are all the same in any meaningful way.

Though you (or I) don’t know the history nearly as well, there’s certainly a great deal of similar splits through Muslim history. The split between Shia and Sunni is well known, much less well-known (in the West) are the dozens of other important divisions that have occurred throughout history. Unless or until I can tell you the first thing about Wahabiism I’m going to avoid assuming that all Muslims are in any way alike.

It also important to realize that inherent in the structure of Islam is a lack of centralization; there are no popes or bishops who can stand up and say that they object to the protests in Sudan and get the world to listen. Rather, there are thousands of imams who the wider world ignores because they’re no more important than any other imams. That’s the problematic reality of the decentralized power structure that exists in Islam.

Finally, I think it’s pretty important to recognize the long history of antipathy between Sudan’s government in Khartoum and the West. Over the earlier crisis in south Sudan, and the better known one in Darfur, the UN/US and Sudan have butted heads regularly. Khartoum loathes Britain and sees this as some, albeit marginal, leverage to slow progress in Darfur. This story has been widely missing from discussions of the incident, but it’s crucial. Without it, it’s easy to see these protesting Sudanese as somehow average Muslims on the so-called “Arab street” when they clearly are not.