Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Because only Right Wing nutjobs are scared of the Muslim Brotherhood

As usual in our hyper-divided, 'ideology as religion' society, any concerns about the possibility of a Muslim takeover of Egypt are dismissed as the lunatic ravings of Glenn Beck and his ilk.  Yes, I grant you, listening to Beck rave on is about as painful as listening to someone torture canaries.  But that doesn't mean that the only ones concerned are those who inexplicably hang on every word that proceedeth from the mouth of Beck.  As much as we continue to imagine that Islam is made up of two groups - terrorists who are bad because we made them hate us, and the rest of Islam that is truly the religion of peace - we often miss what those who live in the shadow of Islam have to say.  Oh, we listen to the ones who say there's no problem, all is right with the world, and an Islamic take over could never happen or wouldn't be bad if it did. And we should listen to those who hold such views.  But we should also pay attention to those who don't.  Unless we live in Egypt ourselves, we would do best to listen to both sides of the non-Muslim witness, and from there try to make an educated guess about what might happen.  We should not just dismiss one or the other because they dare to speak against what we in our middle class American minds have already concluded to be true.

1 comment:

  1. Good point. We need to look at what else is being said. There was actually a show about that on the news (I can't remember which one)early on in the egyptian crisis. It interviewed some Christian Eqyptians here in America. I thought that was a great way of giving more to the story and listening to more than one group.

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