Mother was right but she never said anything about Muslims
My mother warned me not to take candy from a stranger. This might be the man she was talking about. But danger isn't always so obvious.
The greatest danger lies in assuming a thing safe because it looks like another thing.
It was January 1950, we were living in Riverside Drive in New York. I was exploring the apartment, checking under beds, poking my fingers into electric sockets, things that children do. Then I wormed my way under the kitchen sink and to my amazement I found a slice of bread slathered with butter and sprinkled with sparkling crystals of sugar. Just as I was about to bite into it, my mother screamed and slapped it out of my hand. It was buttered bread all right, but the sparkles were crystals of rat poison. My mother was trying to kill a mouse that she spotted in the apartment.
I still remember even today how tasty it looked. But it taught me a lesson: when my children were small, I kept all household cleaners, detergents, ammonia outside of the house in a locked cabinet far from wandering little explorers.
And so it is with Muslims. I had a close call assuming something safe when in fact it was deadly. There are still many Americans, even President Bush, who think that the enemy is Islamic Fundamentalism. What these poor shlubs do not realize is that all Islam is fundamentalist. There is no Reformed or Conservative Islam as there is in Judaism. Certainly Islam has not gone through a Reformation as Christianity has, and in light of the Muslim reaction to Fitna and the suggestion that they reconsider the barbarity and savagery of most of the Qur'an, it is unlikely they ever will. Hard to reform when every word in the Qur'an is immutable and indisputable.
Thinking Islam is like Christianity or Judaism is like mistaking rat poison for sugar. It will kill you.
