As far as your "moderate" Muslims go, are you so ignorant of Muslims that you don't realize that Islam is every bit as fragmented as Christianity? The Shi'a are in many ways like the Catholic church, and the Sunni are in many ways like the protestants...and there's many different Sunni sects, some larger, some smaller, and they have a wide range of differing beliefs. What's sad is that you hear about what the bad ones do, but you never, ever hear about what the good ones do...and so you - and millions of other conservative Americans - become convinced that there are no "moderate" Muslims, that they're all bad, that they all hate Christians and Jews and Israel, and so forth.
I do wish y'all would learn a bit more about those whom you hate...because if you did, you'd learn that most Muslims do not deserve your hate or even your suspicion, that it's only the relative very few who present any kind of danger.
(and no, I'm not a Muslim, I'm very much a strong Christian who has figured out that the more one knows of others, the harder it is to hate or be suspicious of those others)
Glen, this much I do know: Farrakhan isn't a Muslim. He's "artifically muslim flavored", he likes to play at being a Muslim, he can quote and cherry pick portions of the Qura'an, he makes and goes through the motions and makes noises that some Muslims or want to be Muslims would recognize as familiar.
And Fred Phelps did the same with his faux-Christianity.
Farrakhan had a real Muslim leader assassinated to curry favor with, and quite possibly on the orders of, his superior, Elijah Muhammed, and Elijah walked free, and so did Farrakhan. That leader was Malcolm X. In fact, almost the moment Malcolm X made his hajj to Mecca and realized that his former spiritual leaders were frauds, the two of them sprang into action and had him killed.
The fact that Ellison apparently has never recognized this, and the fact that Rouhani has made no mention of it, is troubling, at least to me anyway.
Farrakhan is a politically connected leader, and Rouhani is both a political and spiritual leader. Ellison is a Muslim American politician. I hold at least one of the latter two accountable in recognizing fraud and criminality when it is sitting across the table from them.
If they do not, it's troubling.
I understand that it is easy to accuse me of unfairly engaging in the "no true Scotsman" theory, but when you recognize the actual facts behind the assassination of Malcolm X AND you take into account the other despicable acts that were committed by both Farrakhan AND Elijah Muhammed, committed IN the NAME OF "Islam" and committed as part of their so called "spiritual duties and affairs", the "no true Scotsman" defense becomes unsustainable.
These are bad people, criminals, murderers, embezzlers, extortionists.
They have constructed nothing in their lives and they both spent their entire lives destroying...destroying people, careers, livelihoods, peace, harmony, and they make a mockery of both faith and forgiveness.
Playing devil's advocate, Rouhani might subscribe to some dislikable political views but on the whole he might be argued as something of a rational actor, but even his credibility in that regard is destroyed when he overlooks people like Farrakhan and associates with him for nothing more than reasons of perceived political expediency.
If it had just been Ellison and Rouhani, that would change everything.
The fact that they both had Farrakhan as a guest in their midst and thought nothing of it, is troubling.
I can't hold Rouhani to account because he's a foreign leader, but I can hold Ellison to account, and I do.
