{"id":82016,"date":"2015-12-11T15:48:20","date_gmt":"2015-12-11T23:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82016"},"modified":"2015-12-11T15:48:20","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T23:48:20","slug":"why-americans-dislike-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82016","title":{"rendered":"Why Americans Dislike Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

David French writes<\/a>: There will be no doubt some hand-wringing about \u201cIslamophobia\u201d and further calls to continue the American elite\u2019s fourteen-year track record of whitewashing Islamic beliefs and culture, but I wonder if the media is missing a powerful, largely-uncovered influence on America\u2019s hearts and minds \u2014 the experience and testimony of the more than two million Americans who\u2019ve served overseas since 9\/11 and have experienced Islamic cultures up-close. Yes, they were in the middle of a war \u2014 but speaking from my own experience \u2014 the war was conducted from within a culture that was shockingly broken. <\/p>\n

I expected the jihadists to be evil, but even I couldn\u2019t fathom the depths of their depravity. And it was all occurring against the backdrop of a brutally violent and intolerant culture. Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant. <\/p>\n

Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became. I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. <\/p>\n

I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he\u2019d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said \u2014 in perfect Army English \u2014 \u201cSir, this s**t is f**ked up.\u201d It is indeed. <\/p>\n

While it\u2019s certainly unfair to judge Indonesia or Malaysia by the standards of Iraq or Afghanistan, it\u2019s very hard to shake the power of lived experience, nor should we necessarily try. After all, when we hear stories from Syria, Yemen, Gaza, the Sinai, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Pakistan, and elsewhere they all fit the same depressing template of the American conflict zones. Nor is the dazzlingly wealthy veneer of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the other Gulf States all that impressive. Tens of thousands of soldiers have seen the veritable slave labor that toils within the oil empires and have witnessed first-hand their casual disregard for \u201clesser\u201d life. But this same experience has caused us to treasure the Muslim friends we do have \u2014 in part because we recognize the extreme risks of their loyalty and defiance of jihad. That\u2019s why American officers fiercely champion the immigration of local interpreters, even to the point of welcoming them into their own home. That\u2019s why there\u2019s often an intense connection with our Kurdish allies, the single-most effective ground fighting force against ISIS. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David French writes: There will be no doubt some hand-wringing about \u201cIslamophobia\u201d and further calls to continue the American elite\u2019s fourteen-year track record of whitewashing Islamic beliefs and culture, but I wonder if the media is missing a powerful, largely-uncovered … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82017,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82016\/revisions\/82017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}