Typical Western stereotypes

I used to think and say that one of the biggest failures of the Western civilization is its inability or unwillingness to understand and appreciate Islam. I wonder how did such a civilization so fond of knowledge and scientific (meaning, among other things, objective) research misunderstand this religion when the resources are this easily accessible. Of course there are too many honest westerners who didn't just listen to the bad press about Islam and they did their homework and declared their appreciation of the religion and the culture, and many even converted to Islam and accepted it as a universal truth, but this still seems to be the exception.

The reason I am mentioning this issue today is a recent online experience that I had with the very common accusations that Islam is so used to get in this culture. I was reading a post by Donald Trump in Trump University blog (it's really good, check it out), and in one of the comments, a reader says things about how Muslims are involved in wars and killing Christians, etc. Frankly, I was irritated and decided to comment on the comment, and I am copying here what I have said. I was somewhat overwhelmed and wasn't sure how to give a brief but good answer. I just wrote what came to my mind, without planning. You can see the post written by Trump and the comments, including mine and the one I was replying to, here.

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"how you explain the 1000 years of war in Middle East you*re part of?"

"So the question is who what envy as long that as far as Pakistan the christians are killed?"

I know this was not a post about religions. But reading the comment written by our friend Daniela and approved by the moderators of the blog made me think of commenting on her comment.

First, I did my best to understand the comment. English is not my first language and I cannot know if this is what caused the difficulty I had in understanding the comment. So hopefully I didn't misunderstand what Daniela exactly meant.

I am a Muslim and I know exactly why I have chosen to be Muslim (you can check out why in my blog dedicated to this subjject: http://whybemuslim.blogspot.com/).

Daniela is talking about the 1000 years of war in the Middle East Muslims have been part of. The question gives me the impression that our friend is implying that Muslims loves war. Then the second question is implying the same, it's talking about Christians being killed in Pakistan.

It can take a book to reply to these questions. I will try to use my "right to answer" as a Muslim in the most brief of ways.

I suggest that our friend be open minded to the truth and the truth only. We all have been raised up believing certain things about "the Others". We should read and learn and find out for ourselves how true is anything we believe in by listening to the media or whoever.

I suggest our friend read a translation of the Quran itself, the holy book of Muslims, which we have in the original language of the book, Arabic, and of which we have only ONE version, and see what it says about war and other values. The Quran states, for one example, that killing ONE SOUL is like killing all of humanity. We as Muslims are not allowed to go war UNLESS WE ARE BEING ATTACKED.

Now here is something else that can be a pleasant surprise. Muslims are ordered, if going to war, not to kill a woman, a child, an elderly, a person retired to worship God, no matter what religion they follow, and not even to destroy a tree or destroy a house. They are only allowed to kill those in direct war with them.

Muslims were killed, by thousands, in Bosnia and in Kosovo. Sometimes up to 8000 Muslims were killed at once by Christians. We, Muslims, never said that Christians killed us. We are ordered in the Quran never to accuse one person of what another person did, even if they belonged to the same group.

Muslims paved the way for the civilization that we are living today. All that is found in history books for whoever wants to read and learn. I will briefly mention that sciences like Algebra and Chemistry take their names from Arabic, they were born in the time of the Islamic civilization. The Islamic rule in Spain, which lasted 800 years, is known as the Golden Age for Jews and Christians. Arabs and Muslims were the first in history to invent hospitals, the first was established in Baghdad.

I can't really go on, it takes books. I would just like to remind Daniela and others who think that Muslims are the only terrorists that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone more than a quarter of a million CIVILIANS were killed. This was not done by Muslims. In the dark ages of Europe, scientists were BURNT alive if they said something that the priests didn't approve!!!!

I would love that everyone will consider carefully what they believe about whose who are different from them, especially what they believe about Islam. They are keeping themselves from knowing and understanding a treasure.

Mohamed Shedou