Interesting and a Sad article about the Muslim Problem on AltMuslims. It talks about Europe's continued marginalization of its Muslim citizens, most intensely brought about by recent the murder of Dutch film-maker Van Gogh :
" Unlike America, which is an immigrant nation at its core, the European psyche is still obsessed with notions of purity. Muslims are seen as foreign bodies that are contaminating Europe. Abu Rishe Al-Mawali wrote, "Muslims are not the Borg. There is no central hive mind where all Muslims are controlled. I tire of Muslims always having to apologize for their very existence."
Statements about France being over-run by "sheep-slaughtering Muslims", calling Arabs "suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors."- Is is the face of the liberal, anti-Bush, anti-Iraq Europe we had been applauding all this time ?

"Why don't the Americans think like the French, who obviously see how wrong the Iraq war is?", I had thought. Now I say thank-goodness it hasn't come to that here in North America. I guess I'd always be against this need for liberals to be anti-religion. Being anti-State-sanctioned religion I understand, but not this vehement opposition of the idea of God in any form. But then the European nations do have their own baggage of being under the Ottomen empire and hence their fear of 'Turks and Muslims' is understandable. But that was centuries ago!
I wonder what the reaction of the non-Muslims be if the murder of someone similar had happened here in North America, Canada even. I'd like to think the people here won't jump to such absurd generalizations.

Okay, don't get me wrong, I agree that the Muslim scholars and people in power should re-examin the germ of extrimist idealogy thats sweeping the Muslim community of the world and find a way to solve it and not always blame the west. In some ways Islam has been undergoing its own revolution of re-interpreting the various decrees of the Quran (much of it in N.A), and this combined with the branching out of the communitiy into different sects have obviously threatened the 'Purists'- i.e. the ones who think all Muslims should follow exactly whats written in the Quran and what the Prophet did his life centuries ago. The West just got caught in the middle of it all.
But on the other hand what Mr Van Gogh had done with his film 'Submission' in the name of artistic liberty is pretty heavy-handed too. Showing an Muslim women in a semi transparent dress, with her face and head covered and body covered in Quranic writing- is more than artistic liberty; its crass and cruel. A muslim won't let his feet be at a higher ground than the Quran and he went and lecherously coverd the women's naked bosom with it. Its not only an insult to Islam but s_xed up, unhelpful to any abused muslim woman and done purely for shock value.
And all this for a woman who was forced into a marraige and raped by her uncle.
I'm honestly growing sick of this Taslima Nasreem type women and their stories of how the horrible events of their life was a direct result of some doctrine of the religion they happen to be born into. Do they not see its all about Power and how men of their lives had used Religion as a power to weild them in to submission? Ofcourse they are not the only ones this happen to and nor is it right. But can the religion in its divine form be really blamed for it? I personally know the example of one young girl who was s_xually mollested by her own Quran instructor at an wee age of 6 years for over two years. As far I know it didn't stop her for reading the Quran later nor did it turn her off Islam. Ofcourse there are degrees of 'submission' but in the end its the Men that are doing the subjugating- not God.

What I'm trying to say is that to me it seems of the anti-God ideology of European nations is just as extremist as the supposed 'terrorists' they are objecting against. None of it can be good.