That is not what has been said, and you are not exactly showing respect at this point.

Answer the questions you have been asked and participate in a discussion maturely without the hyperbole and exaggeration or go elsewhere to troll.

Frankly, you are coming across more as a petulant, immature teenager than a muslim.

Argue using the facts, not your emotions.

And be respectful of others and their opinions.

TR

Muslim Becoming Softer
 

I have to believe there are many that are not following the rules. This has been going on for decades and the recent uprisings in the last decade are examples of this.

Many Middle Eastern nations have been allowing more Western (can't say Christian) dress, play, work habits as a means to satisfy the people. This has been the younger generations, but think that this is now a generation plus in the making. Remember Iraq before our involvement? I recall Iraq had the highest percentage of population of women and men following Western dress and styles.

The Muslim Brotherhood and many of the related splinter groups have been trying to reel this in. AQ was one extreme group (in our eyes), but they see themselves as Conservatives- wanting to follow the written rules with devastating effect to non-believers. The battles going on are not an "Arab Uprising", as much as it is the people fighting against MB types that want to keep the population opprressed.

I guess Progressivism can have a positive effect, when true believers of Islam can not keep the masses from shifting away.

It is also another glaring example of where our National Leaders are on the wrong side of the battle. In plain sight, Dear Leader has been supporting the MB and conservative Islam. Our national interests should have us supporting more moderate thinking.

Egypt is an example where American and Western influence have done America well, until a few years ago. Our military training influenced the thinking of Officers within their Army, as well as their government. Attached to the FID mission were numerous State projects and other forms of economic partnering, but we also gained a trading partner that was one of the top consumers of US manufactured goods.

Hearts and minds.

No, I do not doubt there are many that want to kill us. I have fought in enough of those countries to know this first hand. What we do know is there are many people in those countires that want nothing more than to live a peaceful life and detest the elements within their country that cause the problems, many times under the guise of "true Islam".

Doc Illinois
 

My browser wasn't updated when I replied, so here is more.

Doc Illinois posts a very good point. Liberal Muslims.

I believe they are like Liberals in our society. A lot of voice but as the work (fight) becomes tougher, the numbers start to diminish.

The tough crowd of Islam happens to be the gang that is willing to fight and kill. I'm not too sure the moderates will ever be able to diminish their numbers or influence. There needs to be a major elimination of those hard liners, and trying to wait them out with pacification can never work.

The big hurdle we also face is we are not "from there" and are injecting ourselves into their society. That is their perspective.

We also have to convince our own people the dangers of allowing Islam to leak into our governments and society. This is a cancer.

Is there a way to influence more of the moderate Muslims to eliminate the hard liners? Right now, kinetic is the only thing to convince them.

How is that working out for the Ahmadi (Ahmadiya) Muslims in Pakistan and Indonesia?

Modern Western Histories of Islam
 

Here are some snips from an article in AT that brings some further to light to our own failing to correctly label this:

Rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe, it recently occurred to me how ignorant the modern West is of its own past. The historical narrative being disseminated today bears very little resemblance to reality.

Consider some facts for a moment:

A mere decade after the birth of Islam in the 7th century, the jihad burst out of Arabia. Leaving aside all the thousands of miles of ancient lands and civilizations that were permanently conquered, today casually called the "Islamic world" -- including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and parts of India and China -- much of Europe was also, at one time or another, conquered by the sword of Islam.

In 846 Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim Arab raiders; some 700 years later, in 1453, Christendom's other great basilica, Constantinople's Holy Wisdom (or Hagia Sophia) was conquered by Muslim Turks, permanently.

Nor did America escape. A few years after the formation of the United States, in 1800, American trading ships in the Mediterranean were plundered and their sailors enslaved by Muslim corsairs. The ambassador of Tripoli explained to Thomas Jefferson that it was a Muslim's "right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners."

Yet this may not even be necessary. Thanks to the West's ignorance of history, Muslims are flooding Europe under the guise of "immigration," refusing to assimilate, and forming enclaves which in modern parlance are called "enclaves" or "ghettoes" but in Islamic terminology are the ribat -- frontier posts where the jihad is waged on the infidel, one way or the other.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/..._of_islam.html

TJ,
Islam has not shown any major examples of evolving...on the contrary, some of the most stringent interpretations and mind sets (Wahabiism) as it relates to the Koran came about in the late 1700's early 1800's.
This form of Islam is 'pushed' by Saudi Arabia and the 'free Mosques' in the US come with a free Wahabi Imam.

Trapper John, GR does not have even a minimal understanding of his religion, I do not think we can use him as a microcosim of modern islam. Some day he may take to heart on what has been told to him on his religion and he will read up and either go one way or the other. Islam has been static for 14 centuries, it will remain that way, it is designed to be so. Maybe my opinion on this is harsh but it is from observation and living in their countries for the last 10 years. Historically speaking, this "war" has been going on a long time

GR, how can you accept Islam if you don't agree with its tenets?

The following is Islam, but is it acceptable?

Many things cannot be done without the Caliph’s permission, however:

http://www.amazon.com/Reliance-Trave.../dp/0915957728

If one is going to insist that a practitioner of a set of beliefs answer for the history of that set of beliefs, what is to stop others from holding us to the same level of accountability and suspicion?

For example, many Americans talk about states' rights. But how many could lay out the intellectual, political, social, military, and cultural history of that concept and its many twists and turns? Should today's advocates of states' rights be held accountable for how that belief system has impacted adversely not only this country's history, but the history of the world as well?

My point is that we take grave risks if we set standards of inquiry and conduct for other peoples without holding ourselves to a similar set of rules.

My $0.02.

IMO, Moral relativism isn't an excuse to dismiss immoral behavior...

In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is known as al-Insān al-Kāmil (the perfect human) and uswa hasana (an excellent model of conduct). -Sura 68:4/33:21, etc.-

It wouldn't be an issue if Muslims didn't truly believe that the Prophet Muhammad was the sacred model to emulate, not only by all Muslims, but entire mankind.

I can think of no other historical figures that have affected our modern world more negatively than those of Muhammad.

I agree that the tenets of Islam are a static belief system as PRB suggests (no evidence of its evolution) and that it is designed as such. Wouldn't that, therefore, be its fatal flaw? I contend that Islam was contrived by Muhammad merely as a method for controlling people for his own personal interests. That it has been expanded to what it is today is nothing more than a tool for control by oppression. Every system that has endeavored to control people by oppression has ultimately failed. Islam will also fail. We can either hasten that end or prolong it.

In my view we are at War with Islam and Islam is at War with us and every other non-Muslim, by definition. My question is, are we approaching this the right way? History would suggest not.

To continue the fight from the perspective that I am right you are wrong and justifying our position from a historical context leads to the problem Sig points out -

There's no advancing from that position - stalemate.

I think the battlefield is the human domain. The most striking lesson I learned in SF while working with indigenous peoples (although only briefly with Muslims) is that at the core they are just like me. We aspire to the same things. That's a common ground from which we can win. (FlagDayNCO, I am honored that you picked up on that point in your signature line.)

Hacksaw, GR may not represent a microcosm of the Muslim world, I need to defer to your and PRBs experience on that one. But, he does represent a start and a point for force multiplication.

De Oppresso Liber :lifter

In my mind, we prolong it by challenging it in a manner, as Sigaba pointed out, few of our own could effectively argue. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims, or 23% of the world’s population, making Islam the second-largest religion. So we can argue that they must all read more and then convert or be terrorists... or we can try and co-opt the moderate muslims to separate from the extremists as they keep their cultural identity. There are areas of differences. They seem a better starting point than getting 800 million people not only literate (the current estimate of non-literate muslims) but also well-read and versed in their religion. Statistically, not even the literate will be as well read in Islam as some members of this site. Here is an except from Pew Research.

http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/t...utive-summary/

Reading the full report, there seems to be logical places to start. Something I recall about divide and... ;) IMHO, it certainly points out (within the full report) a potential for a force multiplier strategy.

Along the lines of an exemption from Obamacare for Congress and the unions?