Muslims do speak out!

Too often someone writes or says that Muslims should speak out against the violence committed in the name of Islam.

Are these complainers in a cocoon?  Muslims do speak out about the violence.  The complainers probably don’t read what is even in local dailies.

Maybe they spend too much time on Fox News.  Someone put on the Coffee Party site a snippet from Fox News of an interview with Reza Aslan, author of “Zealot: Jesus of Nazareth”.  The interviewer kept repeating “How can a Muslim write about Jesus?”  In another era, many would ask, “How can a black women be an interviewer on TV?”  Or today, “How can a non-Muslim write about Islam?”  or “How can a non-Muslim even ask questions about Islam?”

As to speaking out, many Muslims do.  A group of Muslim scholars in Britain condemned the violence and the cartoons both but counseled patience and restraint.

One writer who stands out from several that I have read recently is Ahmed Tharwat, a broadcaster and writer in the Twin Cities.  He wrote “I am Ahmed – non-terrorist”.  He wrote for many Muslims that he is tired of being held responsible for the actions of a few out of over a billion Muslims.

There is little original thought on the Internet

This blog is a good example of much of what is available on the Internet is derivative of somebody else's ideas.

My previous entry was "Fox News sells book on Jesus by a Muslim".

I got to that by an entry by the Coffee Party on Facebook.  It led me to an entry by Egberto Willies on his web site.  That led me to an interview on Fox News with an author of a book on Jesus.  The author answering questions about his book could still be considered derivative.  That led me to look up more info about his book. Finding the Huffington Post excerpt finally got me to the author's original thoughts.  Regardless of what you think about Reza Aslan's thoughts about Jesus, you must say that they are closer to unique thinking about a subject than all the other steps that got me to that excerpt.

Fox News sells book on Jesus by a Muslim

Well, it didn't intend to sell "Zealot: The Life And Times Of Jesus Of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan, but the inept interview of him by Lauren Green led lot of people to be interested in the book.   I could not finish watching the interview; it was unduly combative on Green's part.  Apparently this interview has gone viral and you can find it many places.  The commenters to the Egbertowillies page were mostly in favor the author.

A better contrary commentary on the book is "A (Somewhat) Muslim Perspective: Why Is Reza Aslan's Jesus So Small?" by Rob Asghar, Huffington Post, 2013-07-29.

You can judge for yourself by reading an excerpt from "Zealot" at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/zealot-reza-aslan-_n_3605667.html.