I don't think Mr. Giuliani meant to excoriate all of Islam; logically however, his statement does just that. Obviously, his intention was to simply call democrats soft for refusing to point out the religion of those who attacked America – which, by the way, is a more idiotic and similarly insulting contention than the one that came out of his mouth. What he managed was to associate Islam, as a whole, with terrorism.
Few would argue that someone like Adolf Hitler could be characterized, by today’s standards, as a terrorist. It is also a well known fact that Hitler was a Christian. Would it be politically correct to call Hitler’s despicable actions "Christian terrorism"? No? Why not? Well anyone familiar with the peculiar ideologies that led Hitler to commit his horrific crimes against humanity had really nothing to do with the mainstream teachings of Christianity. I would say that his views bear just about as much resemblance as the beliefs al Qaeda presents to justify their horrendous acts do to the teachings of mainstream Islam. So please tell me, why is it okay to say "Islamic terrorism"? It is incredibly offensive and ignorant to present Islam as a synonym for terrorism.
In his RNC speech, Giuliani directly endorsed the most overlooked and accepted form of bigotry in mainstream America: the notion that Muslims are second-class, even evil people. Every major religion in the world has fundamentalist sects whose extreme views and often heinous acts result from skewed interpretations of religious teachings. Why is it that, in America at least, Islam seems to be the only religion generally identified with its most extreme followers?
These sentiments were evident in the various smear campaigns during the democratic primary designed to portray Obama as a Muslim. Though the accusations were completely false, they brought to light the amount of religious intolerance still present, not only in conservative America, but also amongst many self-proclaimed progressives. The smears revealed this tragic, unwritten rule that – no matter how smart, rational, compassionate, respectable, or experienced one may be – subscribing to the beliefs of Islam is enough to automatically disqualify anyone from running for President of the United States – something that couldn’t contradict the original concept of our nation more.
So Republicans – since it has become such a large issue in this presidential campaign – if you’re idea of good foreign policy is inviting clowns like Rudolph Giuliani to breed further anti-Americanism in a volatile region by boastfully insulting every member of the world’s second largest religion during a highly televised event just because a small fundamentalist, extremist faction of that creed attacked us, you are tragically mistaken.
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