i care about cair

the council on american islamic relations, or cair, has a website here. they have been completely vilified by other bloggers, mostly by right-wing bloggers who are anti-islam. i am anti-islam too, but i would like to show that i am open to other points of view by this post where i link to their website. i also think we should not go around accusing them or anyone else of supporting terrorism without any evidence. innocent until proven guilty. i might not believe in god or allah, but we ought to be nice to people regardless of what they believe in, even if we think that they are totally wrong. i think i have been a little too outspoken and intolerant on this blog, and i would like to extend an olive branch of peace to the muslims, and to the christian fundamentalists, and to the republican party, and to hillary clinton, and to the scientologists, and to everyone else i have denounced. i do not hate anyone. i just disagree with lots of people and find their points of view to be completely wrongheaded. so i do not respect their ideas, but i can still respect them as people, for their humanity that they share in common with me. and so, despite the fact that i disagree with their religious beliefs, i support the efforts of cair to fight against the persecution of muslims. we do not need to be drawn into unnecessary conflicts, and although islam is completely abhorrent to me, i realize most muslims are born into the faith and taught it by their parents, the same way most other people get their religion, and i ought not criticize people too harshly for still believing what they were taught when they were young children. young children are impressionable and it is hard to change your worldview. i need to be more considerate of the views of others. and i am sorry that paul wolfowitz had to lose his job at the world bank, but he really never belonged there in the first place. he did not have the right qualifications, and the selection process was just not right. letting the president of the united states put whoever he wants in as world bank president is just not the right way to do it. but i even extend my olive branch of reconciliation to the bush administration, despite all my political partisanship. i am sorry if anything i have ever said in this blog has offended anyone or been too mean-spirited. i am usually just trying to express my views and say what is on my mind and give people critical commentary as well as some humor and sarcasm. so, while i do not have any respect for the religion of islam, i respect the people who believe in it, not because they are muslim, but in spite of it. they are people too, and every one of them we kill in iraq is a crime against humanity. iraq is not our country. the nation of iraq belongs to the people of iraq, not the united states government. we ought to leave. and i respect our soldiers despite the fact that i disagree with their decision to enlist and join the all-volunteer military, a decision which i regard as quite wrongheaded. but it is not their fault they are brainwashed. pro-military propaganda is everywhere, and it makes people want to be soldiers because soldiers are glorified and looked up to and treated like heroes. i do not believe in any of that, but i still respect the people who do, in spite of the fact that i think they are wrong. the only person who i really agree with on most things is me, and even i sometimes disagree with myself on certain issues. so it is hard to get complete approval from me, in fact downright impossible. that is why i must forgive all of those who have behaved poorly in my sight, because i have behaved poorly in my own sight as well. i do not think that islamic terrorists would ever want to bring about a nuclear war or armageddon, because they are mainly concerned with survival and fighting back against those who fight them. to them, it seems like their holy war, their jihad against so-called western imperialism, is a war of self-defense, even though to us it seems like they are the aggressive oppressive ones on the offensive. the real reason we are fighting them is that people on both sides are only human and are fallible and enough people on both sides have made enough mistakes to lead us into this conflict. but we were once the allies of the jihadists, when they fought against the soviet union. our current conflict against radical islam does not need to last forever. we can make peace with them if they make peace with us, and if neither side attacks the other, ever again. let us put an end to this war on terror and this jihad against the west. islam is not the real enemy. all humans must unite and be at peace with one another. our petty squabbles are currently confined to the surface region of the planet earth, but what if we were to expand our civilization to other worlds such as the moon or mars, or even worlds in other solar systems? we must learn not to fight each other anymore, or else we will destroy ourselves. i fear the true threat is from christian fundamentalists, not islamic fundamentalists. christian fundamentalists actually want to bring about the end of the world and the apocalypse, unlike their islamic brethren. it is true that shiites have a legend about how the hidden imam will reappear, a legend similar to our christian legend that jesus will return to rule for a thousand years, or to the jewish legend of how a messiah will come to save the world. but al qaeda is a sunni terrorist organization, not a shiite one, so they have no desire to bring about the end of the world. there might be some danger from the nation of iran, which is shiite, but i think the legend of the hidden imam does not really call for people to bring about the end of the world. i do find zionism troubling, however. the jewish people are mostly nonviolent, and have a low crime rate, but some of them are right-wing radicals who become settlers in palestine in illegal settlements, who want to steal all of the land away from the palestinian people, what little land the palestinians have left. i also find suicide bombers quite troubling as well, but i do believe that they are trying to die so that others might live. hopefully nobody wants everyone to die, or at least the people who want to kill all of humanity are confined to positions where they do not have the power to carry out their wishes. i like to think that the doctrine of mutual assured destruction is false, and that if one side nuked the other side, the side that got nuked would realize it had an interest in the survival of humanity, and out of the goodness of its collective heart, the victims of the nuclear bombing would not seek revenge in the form of nuking the perpetrators of this horrendous crime. the japanese have not nuked the united states, even though we nuked them twice. i think we can all learn a lot from the japanese. they are a very wise civilization of the east, and have acquired even more wisdom over the course of the last century, the one we call the 20th century despite all the years beginning with the digits “19”. let us all hope (or pray) that this 21st century is more peaceful than the 20th century was, and that we can put our differences behind us and end our petty squabbles. humanity must unite to survive. we must unite to fight problems like global warming and the ongoing genocide in darfur. our species may go extinct if we continue to have foolish hostilities towards one another. so i care about cair, because they want to bring people together and end stupid divisions, and i for one think that is a good thing.