[Vision2020] True Muslims and True Americans

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Hail to the Vision!

I'm disturbed by distorted views of Muslims and Americans that are coming up the hill from Lewiston. It has the same effect as the Potlatch mill when the wind is right, except that wind blows in all directions in cyberspace.

I would like to follow up on Sunil's comments about his Christian family growing up peacefully next door to a Muslim family in India.  Although they grap the headlines, radical Hindus and Muslims are a small minority in India.  

Out of 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide, 350 million live in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia.  These countries are good friends and allies with the U.S.  Only a small number of them would side with the jihadists.  This is true for many other Muslim countries.

I may have mentioned a paper that I did for a conference in Spokane in May.  It is entitled "From Mongols to Mughals: Religious Violence in India from the 9th-18th Centuries."  Contrary to widespread misconceptions (which I myself held), Islam was not spread by the sword in India and Indonesia.  In fact, those areas where Muslims tried to coerce conversion are now exactly those areas that have the fewest Muslims.
You can read the paper at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/mm.htm.

On December 8, 1992, I was invited by graduate students in Gandhian Studies at Panjab University to visit a Muslim village outside of Chandigarh.  Their project was to teach Muslim children Hindi or English.  Four students were Hindu and the other two were Sikhs.  The first thing they did upon arriving at the village was to pay their respects at the Hindu Goddess temple (the two Sikhs also).  (The mosque appeared to be in ruins.) The Hindu priests were busy preparing rice and curry for the entire village.  This is Gandhi's India where Indians of all faiths (six major ones) get along just fine, even celebraring many festivals (some of them religious) together.

When I returned to Chandigarh that night, I walked into the faculty hostel and was shocked to see radical Hindus tearing down the Barbri Mosque In Adyodhya with pick axes and their bare hands.  The world saw this rather than the peaceful Muslim town, which, as I was told, was the norm in hundreds of thousands of other Indian villages.

Blaming all of Islam for the jihadists is just about as bad as blaming all Christians for the Aryan Nations.

Respecting all religious beliefs?  It is a no brainer!!!

Nick Gier