I have noticed in the comments of many news articles that Muslims and Middle Eastern people are confused. To give you an example, an article about a man whose last name was "Hendi" (literally meaning Hindu, the man was an Indian) yet had a Muslim seeming first name and a Middle Eastern appearance received a few hate comments regarding Muslims. I have no problem with people hating Muslims or Islam and in some cases support it. What I do not support is falsely assuming that everyone from the Middle East is a Muslim, especially if they're not even from the Middle East.
I will make a few points. Please feel free to give me your thoughts.
-Arab culture is the root of Islamic backwardnessWhen one looks at Arab culture he will sees that Arab culture is at the root of Islam. Pedophilia, rape, murder of innocents and so on are all values which were supported by pre-Islamic Arabs and were infused into the Koran. The idea that some Westerners have that pre-Islamic Arabs were peace loving "noble savages" is nonsense. It was the intolerant and proto-Nazi culture of the Arabs that created Islam as it is known today.
-Islam and ArabsArab culture is defined by Islam, Arab identity is at its essence Islamic. For an Arab Christian to leave Arab culture he must adopt another culture or fit himself with something like the Coptic culture in Egypt which is different from the Arab-Muslim culture of Egypt. An Arab is defined by his religion, an Indonesian, Malaysian, Pakistani, etc... is not. Take Iranian culture for instance, Iranians have a cultural heritage separate from Islam which they can easily go to, if an Iranian wanted to he could declare himself a proud Zoroastrian with a deep hatred for the subverter's of his culture and civilization (many do), an Arab can't do this because Arab culture and civilization did not exist before Islam. Islamic "civilization" was stolen from surrounding non-Arab cultures and civilizations (take Cordoba, Spain for instance, the architecture of the grand Mosque is exclusively Byzantine Christian).
-Islam and the non-ArabsIslam spread itself throughout Asia through brutal conquest, rape, and pillage. To be a Muslim is to be an Arab, this is why non-Arab Muslims use Arab mannerisms, and go as far as learning Arabic (a primitive and coarse sounding language, but not coarse in the beautiful way German is coarse). Islam has never spread itself through peace to any non-Arabs yet the average non-Arab Muslim may use a typical Muslim argument along the lines of "before Islam we were ignorant and not in the light of Allah, Islam awakened us from our Paganism" which in reality translates to "Arabs raped and murdered millions of my ancestors and forced us to become Muslim" (see: Islamic conquests of India for an example). The average African Muslim for instance has not studied Islamic history, do you really think he would continue following Islam after learning about what Arab Muslim explorers said about Africans or Islamic racism against Africans? I doubt it. Has the average Turk studied Islamic history and what
Muhammad thought of Turks? Ignorance is a key factor of why the world has so many Muslims.
-Islam and IranAlthough Iran is often seen as the most Islamic of all nations, this notion of course coming from the 1979 Iranian revolution which compounded all stratas of Iranian society around a "charismatic" tyrant, Iranian society is far from being Islamic in the sense that a nation like Saudi Arabia is. Iran's most popular holiday is Nowruz, a Pagan/Zoroastrian holiday, this is one example of how deeply embedded pre-Islamic culture is in Iranian society. Iran being a multi-ethnic society hosts several Turkic, Indo-European, and Semitic ethnicities in its borders, however
a deep resentment towards Arabs is seen in many stratas of Iranian society. The average Iranian who may be Muslim will identify himself first as Iranian and last as Muslim.
-Islam and IndiaIndian Muslims are notorious for being one of the most "peaceful" (excluding the numerous terror attacks they've committed on Hindus) Muslims in the world. The reason being is not as a liberal would put it "because Islam is a religion of peace" (nonsense, it's not), but simply because Indian culture and societal norms overshadow the Muslim barbarism found in the foreign alien religion of Islam. Indian Muslims identify themselves firstly as Indian and lastly as Muslim, if they are loyal to Indian culture and the Indian nation, then they can be normal people. However if they see themselves as firstly Muslim and seek to establish a Muslim state (see: Kashmir) then they are obviously the enemies of India.
-The Middle EastOften made out to be a place of evil and hate (dehumanization is a key to winning wars and propaganda comes with that, you can't deny this), the Middle East is not the enemy, Islam is the enemy. Many Western Christians forgot the fact that it is the East which gave rise to many ideas in Christendom. It is often forgotten that the Near East is comprised of lands that hold the
deepest cultural histories in the world. Islam is the root of backwardness in the Middle East, Lebanon at one point was regarded as the Paris of the Middle East, the reason for this was not "moderate Islam" (which does not exist) but because of the fact that Lebanon was ruled by its Arab Christian minority at that time, thus allowing freedom, human rights, and Muslims and Christians to live in peace under a semi-Western style government. Compare that to Hezbollah of Lebanon today.
-Making progressThe Middle East today is seemingly more divided between a
secular oriented young population which some could call the new generation and an old generation still seeking Islamism and Islamic supremacism which subsequently
teaches its values to its children. One can seem optimistic that changes will come, but they will take time, and they will take a great defeat. It was only through mass bloodshed and defeat that Germans learned to become humble after WW2, likewise this will be the fate of Muslims some day.
Huge thanks to my e-friend GordonZ for helping me revise this post for grammatical/spelling errors, etc.. I could not without him!
