Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just hink of our trip to Hawaii, sitting on a beach next to a muslim family. The husband and sons were enjoying the beach in their biard shorts. The wife and daughters were covered nearly head to toe in heavy black, long sleeves, heavy head scarf, sweltering in the July sun.

Sitting on a beach in the middle of paradise, those poor ladies looked sweaty and miserable. The guys looked like they were having a blast.

I'm not Muslim, but having traveled to a Muslim country where I dressed in hijab and abaya, I can say that I was actually cooler than I would have been with the sun on exposed skin.

Then why aren't the men dressed like that too, so that they too can be so comfortable?

Devout Muslim men typically are covered. I actually find it odd that the men in the family you saw were so exposed. My childhood Muslim guy friend and his Dad would never have been without a t-shirt on the beach.

Way to miss the point.

If it's so comfortable to be covered from heat to toe -- not in a t shirt -- why aren't Muslim men covered from head to toe, whether they are devout or not? Obviously no one would choose to dress that way.

WE, Muslim women make that choice, please STOP speaking for us. I made choice to wear the hijab at the age of 25, CHOICE!!!!!! I have lived my life both uncovered and covered .I was a highly educated, independent woman living alone, woke up one day and put a scarf on my head, by my own free will, my life, my choice, please allow me that freedom. Thank you!!!

There are some women who don't want to make that choice and they are threatened because of it....that is wrong. There are Christians who do not want to convert to Islam and they are threatened and that is wrong.

I find Americans very open and tolerant compared to other places in our world. Not perfect but most of us are trying. I think if you and other Muslims want to change the perception of islam, you need to take more risks and speak out about the oppression and injustices suffered by those who do not choose Islam. I know Isis is extreme but even before Isis was around, there were muslim women who sought a different life and were denied this.

We all want peace but you can't have peace without freedoms. I have no problem with your covering. Your cartoon ignores that some women who were raised muslim do not want to cover, but they are nervous not to bc of the consequences they suffer. Where is the virtue in that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Well I think it is unfair for you to blame the religion for what people choose to do. Muslim women have the right to choose to cover or not. I have lived in both Muslims and Non Muslim countries, I have never ever met a Muslim woman who was forced to cover her head, not one. Ironically, the only cases I know of are sensationalized stories from the media. Does it mean they don't exist? Of course not, but that's not the norm, just like women are battered, abused and killed daily in the US by men in their lives. Would it be fair to say that is the norm for all american women ? never said Muslim women are not oppressed. I think all women in the world are oppressed when living in a patriarchal society. My point was that people here in the U.S. generalize other cultures into very belittling and untrue stereotypes, while failing to acknowledge their own hypocrisy. I'm tired of being called a terrorist (jokingly except for one incidence, but it still hurts). This one dimensional view point, that Muslim women of all colors all suffer, and American/European women don't, is in itself oppressive to those Muslim women. They are denied their full humanity by being reduced to one aspect of their lives. And while everyone so self-righteously asserts that hijab & burqa are oppressive, many of those people are unaware that their tax money goes towards the murdering of those very same women that they claim to care so much about. My desire if not for the oppression and murdering of women in Islamic countries to go unnoticed, my desire is that we also shift the focus to ourselves, once in awhile......

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not anti-Islam.

I just want Muslims to stay in their own countries and not come here. Nothing good comes of it when they do.

Silly and misguided.

Most Muslims who live here were born here. So they likely will stay in their country. The US.

Up to a third of the slaves were Muslim. They built this country that you enjoy.

Do you have a site for this? I have never read that before. I have heard several hundred but not A third. Where did you read that statistic?

It's in multiple places. Some say 10-15%. Some say 25-30% of African slaves were Muslim.

http://www.tolerance.org/publication/american-muslims-united-states

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/islam-in-america/

http://islam.about.com/od/history/a/afammuslims.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-muslims-in-america/2011/03/30/AFePWOIC_story.html

http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=11900#.U-F0r_ldWLE

While we're on the subject of Islam and slavery, did you know that the Islamic slave trade was extremely brutal and genocidal, and enslaved even more Africans than the transatlantic slave trade? Millions died when they were forced to walk across the Sahara. THAT was the actual genocide and mass atrocity that occurred during medieval times, not anything the Catholic Church did.

And where does slavery still exist today? Yes, in Muslim countries!

But yaaaay, Islam is all enlightened or something.

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Some of the deadliest and most violent conflicts of our times have been the result of not religion, but secular based political ideologies. WW1, and WW2 were not based on religion, but competing political worldviews, with Nazism, Fascism, and Communism. After the end of the World War 2 the conflict was then fought between the two secular political ideologies of Communism, VS the Liberal Democratic-Capitalistic west, a conflict we all known as the Cold War which left millions of people dead and injured through proxy battles fought between the west and the Soviet Union.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not anti-Islam.

I just want Muslims to stay in their own countries and not come here. Nothing good comes of it when they do.

Silly and misguided.

Most Muslims who live here were born here. So they likely will stay in their country. The US.

Up to a third of the slaves were Muslim. They built this country that you enjoy.

Do you have a site for this? I have never read that before. I have heard several hundred but not A third. Where did you read that statistic?

It's in multiple places. Some say 10-15%. Some say 25-30% of African slaves were Muslim.

http://www.tolerance.org/publication/american-muslims-united-states

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/islam-in-america/

http://islam.about.com/od/history/a/afammuslims.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-muslims-in-america/2011/03/30/AFePWOIC_story.html

http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=11900#.U-F0r_ldWLE

While we're on the subject of Islam and slavery, did you know that the Islamic slave trade was extremely brutal and genocidal, and enslaved even more Africans than the transatlantic slave trade? Millions died when they were forced to walk across the Sahara. THAT was the actual genocide and mass atrocity that occurred during medieval times, not anything the Catholic Church did.

And where does slavery still exist today? Yes, in Muslim countries!

But yaaaay, Islam is all enlightened or something.

We have slavery right here. You don't have to look elsewhere.

Anonymous wrote:Muslima, the more defensive you are about Islam, the less sympathetic people will be.

I am an Orthodox Jew but I can acknowledge that there are parts of Judaism that are difficult - unfair to women, to non-jews, gays.

Religion is hard. Its difficult for believers to follow and incredibly difficult (if not impossible) for those without the same belief system to understand.

Instead of being so defensive and trying to explain why everything little law is not as bad as it seems, just acknowledge that you have a different belief system and that although some Muslims impose that on others, thats not your interpretation of the Quoran.

Anonymous wrote:I am anti-Islam because Muslim extremists tried to kill my uncle. I don't really have any better reasons than that. I understand all of the arguments, that not all practitioners of Islam are violent, that Islam had a golden age sometime in the Middle Ages, that Christians have persecuted millions, etc., etc. But I can't help but notice that so much evil in the world today revolves around Islam.

This does not mean that I am anti-Muslim. I have a lot of Muslim friends and basically keep my sentiments to myself, except for right now as I type this.