an old American joke:

How do you tell a politician is lying?

His lips are moving.

They ALL lie, regardless of party affiliation. I would love to run on an honesty platform. But, truth be told, my opponent would not play the same game, he’d lie, tell people what they want to hear, get the media to tell them what they should want to hear, and then go back on his word and lie about that… just like Teflon Bill and Teflon Ted have been doing for years.

Mona,

I appreciated your comments and thank you for letting us know about this interesting show.

I wish I could share your optimism about the potential for reconciliation of US attitudes about Muslim-Americans. It is an urgent matter and one which we need to accelerate. I’m just afraid that these kinds of attitudes have half-lives measured in years if not decades.

My strongest case for modest expectations is the dark period of domestic US life during World War II. Within three months of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which created camps in which 120,000 Japanese-Americans were held for the duration of the war. The US Supreme Court eventually overturned this order but it took over two years. (Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)). I was recent shocked to learn from one of those Japanese-Americans that many of them welcomed the camps as being safer than staying in their California homes during the war.

My father was a young sailor at Pearl Harbor. He was a very loving man who for whom charity and service were important elements of his life. Yet I believe that he went to his grave unreconciled with the Japanese people and perhaps Japanese-Americans.

I don’t think that kind of story is so unusual. We have often seen how these feelings can fester in any culture. The sad saga of the post-Tito Balkans comes to mind.

With that background, I think it is a tall order to hope for an American electorate that is so enlightened that it can readily embrace a Presidential candidate who is surrounded by persistent rumors of sharing his faith with the 9/11 attackers. He is having enough trouble dealing with the black militancy of his Christian church in Chicago.

Please know that I am not saying that this is too hard nor am I saying that we should not bother trying. I think the kinds of dialogue you and others are having is instrumental. I also believe that we need to find ways to make Americans understand the diversity and geographic extent of today’s Islamic world, particularly those living in the United States.

I think that timing is everything, Mona. I would rather see candidate Barack Obama dodge the “what’s wrong with being a Muslim-American?” question in order first to get elected President. President Obama will then have plenty of time to use his White House pulpit to begin the kind of renaissance that I we all want.

Is there any chance of finding a strong segment of Muslim-Americans with solid Republican economic and national security ideals? I would love to see an American Muslims for McCain organization!

American muslims for Mccain, you gotta be kidding. They vote as far left as you can get. Politically correct, multicultural, moral relativism and cultural relativism are there benchmarks.

Have a look at india. Muslims commit terror attacks there, whine about everything, use the democratic system to get as much as they can, but when they get political control of an area within india, which they have got in few small places, they cut all services for non-muslims unless they convert to Islam, they make the non-muslim women veil, and make every one live under virtual sharia law. Then they proceed to use more terror acts to expand that terrortory. The whole country of Pakistan was created this way. Then the muslims in Pakistan couldn’t get on with each other…..different sects…..so the fighting and terror continued……hence….the creation of Bangladesh within Pakistan.

Muslims can not exist in peace with any other people at all, not even other muslims. And Mona…the woman who runs this blog……woudn’t last long at all in any Islamic country without changing her behaviour and appearance drastically in order to survive. She is just considered an apostate and traitor and evil slut by pios muslims, no better then us kaffir

thanks but no thanks for your A + B = C logic Stu. It is quite a reductionistic history of Pakistan you have a given us.

However, one must note that sectarian struggles and violence exists all around the world in under developed areas, in Asia, in in Africa, in South America, and the Middle East. It occurs within groups of all kinds of religions that are used and abused to mobilize tribal affiliation so as to get people to kill each other in what is actually a competition for resources. It is absurd to equate or blame these myriad struggles and conflicts with or on one religion. Islam more than Buddism may lend itself to the possibility of violence, but that is hardly the cause of most of the world’s conflicts.