Moslems—as seen by an American who lived among them

In response to my argument that there is no such thing as moderate Islam, a reader wrote this eloquent e-mail:

I agree. I was engaged to a Muslim woman and was with her for a total of eight years. The kindest, most reasonable and most educated of her family seemed to feel absolutely no discomfort with the horrific and barbaric behavior and attitudes of their fellow Muslims. At the same time, the slightest anger or frustration expressed toward the Muslim world by the West was viewed as incontrovertible proof of the bias and discrimination of the West against Muslims. I also worked in Saudi Arabia. I don’t know all Muslim countries but in that country it’s very apparent that if you’re not a Muslim, then the Muslims feel they have no human obligation to you to be honest, fair or decent. We’ve allowed the Saudi royalty to fund the building of huge mosques here in America, we provide a free environment for Muslims and protect their right to worship here in America but in Saudi Arabia if they find a Bible in your luggage, they throw it away. And forget building a church or openly worshipping Christianity. If the police think that Saudis are frequenting Western compounds they’ll raid the compound and arrest the Saudis because they don’t want them “dirtied” by us. If you lived your life in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and died there, they wouldn’t allow you to be buried there because they don’t want their “holy” land being dirtied by your body. We’ve allowed the Muslims every freedom and right and they’ve returned none and yet they scream bias if we try to point it out. I still have Muslim friends and some who I even consider family but as a whole, I’m done with them. They are dishonest, unfair and completely self serving in any interaction we have with them, culture to culture.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 27, 2004 02:00 AM | Send