This entry over at Malkin’s place got me thinking about this yesterday and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.

Our President has told us that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Yet, I have seen absolutely no evidence of that ever. I read a translation of the Koran some 15 years ago and I didn’t grok it then, but understand that even though I don’t like the Catholic Church as an institution, my spiritual base is in the Catholic Tradition with some Taoism thrown in strictly on a pragmatic basis. Taoist are very into, “The universe seems to work THIS way, we’ll go with that instead of making up stuff.” I like that. It works for me.

But back to my point. Can anyone out there point me to any evidence, anecdotes, human interest stories, slices of life that show that “Islam is a religion of peace?” Because I’m missing it. I’m not seeing it. I want to be wrong, I do not want to agree with Michael Graham or Michelle Malkin, and I’m having a very hard time with it. I don’t want to be one of those guys who simply writes off an entire culture but it’s becoming harder and harder with each bombing when there seems to be nothing to counteract it.

And then there’s this bit over at Dr Sanity’s, whom I’m long overdue an appointment with:

I must agree with the author. I DON’T CARE ABOUT ISLAM except insofar that people of that faith want to destroy me, my family, my country and my way of life. For more than 50 years of my life, Islam and I got along famously. I completely ignored it; and praise be to Allah, it completely ignored me.

I know that makes me selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed, but there’s a part of me that’s really pissed off that I now HAVE to care about Islam. I don’t want to care about Islam. I want to care about things relating to MY life and these asshole terrorists keep intruding with “BOOM!!! Hahahahaha, think about Islam you wankers!”

I asked one of the Saudis I knew during Desert Storm what “Islam” meant? What was the translation? He’d been to school in Great Britain and seemed to really enjoy the English Language reading a lot of our classics in English and he loved discussing Mark Twain, especially his short stories. He especially liked “The Mysterious Stranger” and thought that was a great description of Christianity as he understood it. I happen to love that story myself so we had a lot of fun with that one. So WHAT IS ISLAM? He said there was no real English parallel but the closest thing that he’d found was “Islam means submission. Complete, total, with absolutely nothing held back, submission.” Submission to what? To whom? He sort of smiled and replied, “The Mullahs, the Clerics, the doctors of the law. They are the ones who understand the true meaning of the words of the prophet.” Uh huh. I see why you like “The Mysterious Stranger.”

And then we went and ate curry cakes at the cantina.

Mark Twain and curry cakes…okay, so there’s some hope…but man…it’s getting harder to get those two together.