The Cloud of Ignorance Surrounding Islam

I listen to various political talk shows among which I especially enjoy Morning Joe.  Okay, so Mika is a bit tough to take.  But Joe Scarborough makes up for her nonsensical comments.  And, while I do not agree with many of his guests, they do represent a wide spectrum of opinion.

But, this morning, in speaking of Muslims, Joe went off the rails.  "We need Muslims in our fight against ISIS.  If we treat them poorly they will not join us in this fight," he said as he railed against Trump's suggestion that we suspend for the moment issuing visas to Muslims.

What Joe seems oblivious to are the many different kinds of Muslims.  First, let me mention some middle eastern people who need our help, but who are not Muslim.  They include the Christians who are abused in virtually every Islamic country.  Why can't we make a special place for them?

Then we have the Kurds.  Again, not a typical Muslim people.  But, they are our allies in the fight against ISIS.  Yet, we have been niggardly when it comes to offering them weapons, let along visas.

Next, we have the Yazidis, a people associated with the Kurds, who have long suffered abuse at the hands of Muslims.

There are other groups, the Circassians and the Druze, who also suffered persecution under the Muslims.  Why shouldn't we treat these people preferentially?  We can forget the Jews, they've already been mostly driven out of Muslim countries where they lived for generations.

The last group deserving mention are the Ahmadiyyas.  They are essentially Muslim, but they believe in an additional prophet who the mainstream Muslims do not acknowledge.  In America, we accept their self identification as Muslims, but in places like Pakistan they are not permitted to do so.  These people also deserve our special protection.

That brings us to the Sunnis and the Shiites.  The Sunnis are the majority in most Muslim counties except for Iran which has an overwhelming Shiite majority.   As to abusing the Sunni community -- that's already been done.  America did it with its woefully misguided policy of thinking all of Iraq should be ruled by Damascus, the capital, where Shiites hold a clear majority.  This incredibly stupid policy was fashioned by the recently deceased Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite taken under his wing by Donald Rumsfeld.   If you want Sunnis to ally themselves with America, treat them fairly and with respect in the places they call home.  General Petraeus understood this and capitalized on it.  Regrettably, the people above him never got the message.

Do Sunnis want to be admitted to America?  Sure, so do Mexicans, Somalis and most of the rest of the world.  But everyone's wishes can't be met.  And, Muslims do present us with a special problem.  They come from a culture quite different from our own, a culture of inequality for women and an intolerance for the gay community.

America can't do much more to screw the Sunnis than what's already been done to them in Iraq, and what we are apparently about to do to them in Syria.

On another talk show, I hear an American ex-counter intelligence officer explain to the TV audience that ISIS wasn't really Sunni.  He pointed out that an Imam from Saudi Arabia had called an Ulama of Muslim clerics and had pronounced ISIS the enemy of all Muslims, including the Sunnis.  Of course.  But this wasn't a theological debate even if it was described as such.  It was political.  ISIS is as Sunni as the Wahabi form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia even if it is a tad more bloody.

Politically, however, the ISIS people would love to take over Saudi land and Saudi oil.  It's all about money.  And, if the Saudi form of Islam is the one that prevails worldwide, we're in as much trouble as if the ISIS people prevail.  The U.S. has long provided a protective shield over Saudi Arabia.  Whether we give visas to Sunni Muslims, or not, our  relationship with the Sunnis will not change.  We allow the Saudis to build as many mosques in America as they wish.  They have little to complain about, other than that we have not yet accepted Sharia.
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