You might be surprised.

“'When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

~Leviticus 19:33-34, New International Version.

For all their claims of being Christians, and for all of their supposed love of the Old Testament, these people don't seem to know dick about what the Old Testament actually says. (Except, maybe, for the parts about killing homosexuals and treating women as property, funny thing but they're in the same Book as these verses.)

The Hijab is meant to show modesty. Does not the Bible command the same of Christians, men and women alike? In many countries, among them Ethiopia...Christian women wear veils too.

Islam is a great and wondrous religious tradition, which from its early days grew rapidly in power and the scope of its empire until the Muezzin's call could be heard from Morocco to Indonesia and from the icy cold of northern Russia to the deepest, darkest jungles of central Africa. Much of what we know of the Classical World was preserved by the Muslims, Astronomy, much of our Medicine, Philosophy and Science, the numerals which denote chapter and verse above, various games we play, and things we eat, or do, or things like silk that became known to us from the other side of the Eurasian landmass-and thus inspired our own exploration and growth when the Silk Road became difficult to traverse-come from the Muslims. The seeds of our own Renaissance were carried back to Europe by European Knights and Soldiers from the Crusades, or traded there by the merchants of the Crusader States who traded with the Arabs.

When the British colonized India, and the European empires encroached on the Middle East near the end of the Ottoman Empire...many Muslims traveled around the rest of the world to other lands held by those nations. Muslim soldiers fought for the British and the French in the World Wars with great valor and distinction. Our own first foreign wars were the Barbary Wars, Muslims are part of our history. They have served in the United States Armed Forces in the same way, in every war from the Civil War to the present day, as the story of Captain Humayun Khan demonstrates.



We owe these people.

I've been to Muslim countries, I have close friends who are Muslim. I personally owe these people for the fact that I am not an Atheist today, because a group of Muslims helped me deal with some major trauma that was going on in my life when I was in college. (I was going through a divorce, and most Christians treated me as if I were radioactive because of it.)



I started out as a conservative. I was a kid in the 1980's In the 1980's you couldn't go more than a day or two without hearing of the brave Mujahideen fighting the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan, facing down Soviet Mi-24 Hind Gunships and T-72 Tanks with nothing more than AK-47's, improvised explosives, our FIM-92 Stinger Missiles and their own guts, grit and determination: 

“The moment stretched into eternity as both men brought their weapons to bear. He saw the man's eyes. It was a young face there, immediately below the emergency light, but the eyes . . . the rage there, the hatred, nearly stopped the Colonel's heart. But Bondarenko was a soldier before all things. The Afghan's first shot missed. His did not.

The Archer felt shock, but not pain in his chest as he fell. His brain sent a message to his hands to bring the weapon to the left, but they ignored the command and dropped it. He fell in stages, first to his knees, then on his back, and at last he was staring up at a ceiling. It was finally over. Then the man stood by his side. It was not a cruel face, the Archer thought. It was the enemy, and it was an infidel, but he was a man, too, wasn't he? There was curiosity there. He wants to know who I am, the Archer told him with his last breath.

"Allahu akhbar!" God is great.

Yes, I suppose He is, Bondarenko told the corpse. He knew the phrase well enough. Is that why you came? He saw that the man had a radio. It started to make noise, and the Colonel bent down to grab it.

"Are you there?" the radio asked a moment later. The question was in Pashtu, but the answer was delivered in Russian. "It is all finished here,"

~Closing moments of the battle at the Soviet laser installation, from The Cardinal Of The Kremlin, by Tom Clancy, conservative author.

That war, or the nightly news reports of it anyway, right along with the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa this was something that marked and shaped my childhood and my view of the world, much as knowing Muslims as a young man shaped my views well into middle age. The Kuwaitis and the Saudis were our brothers in the Gulf War and in containing Saddam after this. Iraqis and Afghan Pashtuns alike have fought beside us in our own Global War on Terror...and American Muslims have shed blood in the service of this country, including friends of mine.

We are better than this, America, or some of us are anyway. We are better than this willful ignorance and we have to fight to make others be better than it too. We're better than this, and we damned well know it...or we should. We are a nation of immigrants, for fuck's sake!

“Tell me,” Jack said. “Isn't there a line in the Koran that goes something like, 'If a man shall enter your tent and eat your salt, even though he be an infidel, you will protect him'?”

“You quote poorly—and what do you care of the Koran?”

“You might be surprised.”

~Exchange between Ishmael Qati and Jack Ryan, from the Sum Of All Fears, by Tom Clancy, conservative author.

If a saber-rattling NeoConservative icon of an author like Tom Clancy could damned well treat the Islamic religion and the Muslim people with a measure of respect and humanity, so can you.

And don't you dare forget that.

Bismillah (In the Name of God.)