Responsibility Hypocrisy

Six days after the destruction of the world trade center towers, President Bush visited the Islamic Center in Washington “to denounce incidents of prejudice against Muslim Americans.” He was attempting to defuse the national outrage against the attackers and prevent a violent backlash against Muslims living in America.

Since then, government leaders and the media have worked hard at establishing in our minds that most Muslims are peace-loving and the terrorists are fringe extremists.

But the line between the two remains very blurred. “Unfortunately, it is not so easy to find Muslim leaders who have genuinely renounced violent jihad and any intention, now or in the future, to impose Sharia (Muslim Law) on non-Muslim countries,” writes Robert Spencer, author of several books on Islam. (From some random post on Myspace.com)

The thing about this is that Muslims speak out against terrorism all the time but what more do we want them to do? It's like we expect them to form their own anti-terrorist terrorist group to terrorize the terrorists because after all Muslims are supposed to be violent so why can't the moderates be violent against the extremists...sounds ridiculous when you actually say it out loud but I believe this is what a lot of people are thinking.

Also on the other hand, when the shoe is on the other foot and Christians are fucking shit up no one expects the Christians to stand up against their extremist compatriots because when it comes to Christians we can draw a distinction between the two sides but with Muslims we tend to think of them as all one congruent group.

The facts are that a lot of moderate Christians actively detest extremist Christianity as do many Muslims detest extremist Islam (and even die for it) but the difference is that we as a society don't expect the Christians to be obligated to do so but feel that it is absolutely the Muslims responsibility to do so.