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Obama said

"The contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country," Obama said at the iftar, the dinner that breaks the holiday's daily fast.

The president joined Cabinet secretaries, members of the diplomatic corps and lawmakers to pay tribute to what he called "a great religion and its commitment to justice and progress."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1251804469920
Can people cite Islamic contributions to our society. The first ones which come to mind are 911 and the introduction of honor killings.

lol

JohnStuartMill wrote:lol

That's a typical substantive response.

First off, Obama spoke of the contribution of Muslims, not of the contribution of Islam. The only way you can disagree with what Obama said here is if you think there aren't any Muslim scientists, economists, medical professionals, social workers, etc. who are making America a better place through their work. But even as stupid as that thought is, I wouldn't put it past you.

It's worse than that JSM, though. When he mentions those contributions to America, what comes to mind is 9/11 and honor killings. Is the first contributions from Christians to America Richard thinks of the Oklahoma city bombing and slavery? In most other contexts, I'd assume he was just trolling.

Then if you're dismissive of him, he taunts you by implying that you're afraid to deal with his arguments. Like you see in a lot of cases like this, the reality is that he's so ridiculous that he's beneath serious reply.

JohnStuartMill wrote:First off, Obama spoke of the contribution of Muslims, not of the contribution of Islam. The only way you can disagree with what Obama said here is if you think there aren't any Muslim scientists, economists, medical professionals, social workers, etc. who are making America a better place through their work. But even as stupid as that thought is, I wouldn't put it past you.

OK, what have been the contributions of Muslims in any state or federal constitution. What have been their contributions to the space program. What have been their contributions world-wide to navigation in the last hundred years.

EAllusion wrote: Is the first contributions from Christians to America Richard thinks of the Oklahoma city bombing and slavery?

I guess you dismiss the third man theory about Oklahoma City. Since you bring up slavery, who in the whole world in the last three centuries is the Muslim equivalent of Wilberforce.

Okay, first off I got booted from the Free republic forum for defending the Islamic faith from some of the rabid attacks that were occuring there. I know a lot of people who are Muslim and one Iranian woman I recently encouraged to start the process of getting citizenship in the USA. I have also been told that I would make a good Muslim before.

That being said, from a historical basis Obama is really off. Islamic migration to the USA is a fairly recent phenomena. True, there have been Muslims who have lived in the USA for a long time but not in any significant numbers -- I do recall that a Syrian challenged the law decades ago and was able to get a ruling that Syrians were "white" but that is the only case I know of where someone made an impact (and for all I know he was a Syrian Christian).

The one thing we can say is that without Islam perhaps the USA would never have come about. In the late 15th. Century the Spanish finally liberated their country from the Moors. However, at the same time Constantinople fell to the Turks and the trade routes to the east were cut off to the west (which interrupted the flow of spices and drugs to the upper classes of Europe). This encouraged Isabella to grant Columbus the funding he needed to try to find a way to bypass the Medditeranian and find another route to the east.

So yeah, if the Turks had not conquered and exterminated the citizens of the Byzantine Empire (well, those who did not convert) and close off trade routes then perhaps the New World would have not been explored when it was and history would have changed dramatically.

Here's an apt comment by Mark Steyn

Noor Almaleki, whom I wrote about over the weekend, has died, the latest Western victim of a Muslim honor killing. If there were a Matthew Shepard murder every few months, Frank Rich et al would be going bananas about the "climate of hate" in our society, but you can run over your daughter, decapitate your wife, drown three teenage girls and a polygamous spouse, and progressive opinion and the press couldn't give a hoot. Indeed, as The Atlantic notes, it's merely an obsession of us right-wing kooks.

During the IRA's long campaign against Her Majesty's Government, British officials had a cynical phrase about containing Northern Ireland to "an acceptable level of violence." I wonder what the silent U.S. media will settle on as the "acceptable level of violence" against Muslim women. Ten honor killings a year? A couple dozen? A hundred?

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/? ... BhYjVjMWQ=

And Christians in Africa still murder "witches" and homosexuals. If your point is that religion is crappy, then I agree with it wholeheartedly. But Islam is not uniquely crappy, and there are many Muslims that interpret their faith liberally in the way that what we term "conservative" Christians do. And Islam, like virtually all other religions, sets up an incentive for people to become better that I'm sure works some of the time. There is much less of a distinction between Islam and your religion than you'd like to believe.