5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam
#4. Our Founding Fathers Would Never Have Tolerated This Muslim Nonsense!
It’s easy to stand on a soapbox and publicly bluster about what you think the Founding Fathers would think about the godless, multicultural United States today. After all, these were Christian, God-fearing men, damn it. They certainly wouldn’t put up with all this tolerance for these terrorist religions.
But actually…
Even if they were staunch Christians (or deists, whatever), plenty of the Founding Fathers had a healthy admiration for the Muslim faith. Thomas Jefferson, for example, taught himself Arabic using his own copy of the Quran and hosted the first White House Iftar during Ramadan. Jefferson believed in celebrating the deliciousness of all world religions. John Adams hailed the Islamic prophet Muhammad as one of the great “inquirers after truth.”….Benjamin Franklin once declared: “Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.” Even George Washington personally welcomed Muslims to come work for him at Mount Vernon.
So, why all this Founding Father/Muslim love? Probably because Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah of Morocco was the first world figure to recognize the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain in 1777. Another reason was that the Founding Fathers were smart enough to distinguish between terrorists and everybody else on the whole damn planet, as demonstrated in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797. It was in this agreement that the U.S. declared: “The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Mussulmen [Moslems].”
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Akbar Ahmed On Jon Stewart: Americans’ Perception Of Islam Is Way … <cite>www.huffingtonpost.com/…/akbar-ahmed-on-jon-stewar_n_673465.html</cite>
Akbar Ahmed On Jon Stewart: Americans’ Perception Of Islam Is Way Off Base (VIDEO)
Author and former ambassador of Pakistan to the UK Akbar Ahmed appeared on the Daily Show last night to discuss his new book “Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam.” Ahmed visited over 100 mosques over America, discovering that the religion often defied American preconceptions. While “Islam is often equated to Arab,” the author found a strong community of African American Muslims.
Unlike today’s attitudes of intolerance and suspicion, Ahmed observes that the founding fathers maintained a deep respect for Islam. He warns that there is a “danger of history being rewritten” by modern opponents who refuse to expand their understanding.
In order to ease the current difficulties, “Muslim leadership [has] to work much harder at explaining Islam to American colleagues and friends.” Ahmed claims that America and Islam are too deeply connected for the current state of affairs to continue: “we need to understand Islam very, very quickly, and as you said, bring the temperature down.”
Biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar_S._Ahmed
Author: Clarke M.