Ustwo, I googled the gharqad story after reading that and it is interesting.
Found a good article by a 'progressive muslim' and it highlighted to me a situation that we are not wholly familiar with for international muslims. As a western culture we like to think of good and bad democrats and republicans, but when it comes to Islam, it's ALL bad.
They have their own issues.
He leaves a nice finishing thought.
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Pa...orm&ID=SP84705
Quote:
"Can you imagine what the free world, headed by America, could do [to the Muslims if it wanted]. Some of our intellectual rabble … talk of the heroes of Fallujah and what they did to the greatest country in the world [i.e. America]. They do not think for one moment – [assuming] that they think [at all] – that America was capable, with one push of a little button, of permanently wiping Fallujah off the map of the world, particularly after 80% of the civilians had left it.
"But the concern for the rest of the civilians [who remained] within [the city] pushed America to fight from house to house, while it had weapons of destruction that could have preserved it so it wouldn't lose a single soldier.
"If these weapons of destruction were in our hands … wouldn't we – out of loyalty to our forefathers – act like Khaled bin Al-Walid [in the battle] against the Iraqi Bakr bin Wa'il tribes, and slaughter them as we pleased … or like Said bin Al-'Aas, who destroyed everyone in the city of Tamisa…
"This world that we fight against, covet, and hate [i.e. America and the West] has in the past sacrificed 40 million to defend its freedoms – [freedoms] that we do not understand – and is more zealous about them than we are about our Islam… We all know that they obtained their rights in the past and that they know how to obtain them [today], and are capable of doing so.
"Are there any wise [men] in the nation of the Bedouin? Is anyone listening? I call upon you … to awaken from the death throes of your legends, because every one of us has children whom we want to live in a different time and a different culture…"
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