Death-Rattles be Damned!

A friend of mine brought this to my attention, and I had to comment on it.

From a cnn.com article:

Indonesia is the world's most-populous Muslim nation but the vast majority of its more than 180 million citizens practice a moderate, tolerant form of the religion.

Now, the fact that this even has to be said to the American public shows where we've found ourselves as a nation. Let us,for a moment, ignore the freak-o shouters on the extreme right and extreme left shouting charges of anti-semitism and anti-muslimism (did I just invent a word?) at each other, while practicing exactly what they accuse the other side of.

This is the very mainstream CNN. Imagine if the sentence read "Israel" instead of "Indonesia" or "Jewish" instead of "Muslim" and think of how pissed-off everybody would rightly be.

I'm just going to say this once.

Of course most of Indonesia's Muslims practice a moderate, tolerant form of Islam. That's because real Islam (and not the fanatical fundementalism practiced by the governements of many Middle East nations) is a moderate, tolerant religion, just like Judiasm and Christianity, the two religions Islam builds upon.

I've often found we practice a kind of selective sensitivity. For instance, a football team called the "New York Negros" or the "San Francisco Slant-Eyes" would have everyone up in arms, yet the "Washington Redskins" remain without too much complaint. This is just another example.

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to lay down on the couch and make my husband make me soup and tea.