To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (121668 ) 9/23/2012 2:36:09 PM From: tejek Respond to of 149317 As Christians, writ large, have had a duty, imo, to both separate themselves from and to speak against the more militant among us (thinking abortion clinic bombers etc), Muslims in many countries need to separate in that way from the Islamists, not to appease anyone outside their country, but for their own good unless they actually want to live that way. What happened in Libya seems to have spurred such a reaction so far. In Egypt, this talk about letting girls as young as nine be married off is finally seeming to stir people up again. But Morsi speaks as if he speaks for all Arabs, which is not the first time an Egyptian has done that, but... countries and peoples are different. There is no singular Arab culture, or Arab World, which he claims to speak for and tell the U.S. how we need to deal with them, writ large. The Libyans have gone out of their way to show what happened to the embassy does not reflect the attitudes of most Libyans. More importantly, the Libyans have taken this opportunity to force the disbandment of their armed militias which were preventing the country from stabilizing:Libya orders 'illegitimate' militias to disband google.com And for the unrest in Pakistan, supposedly over this film... Sufis are under siege there. Baluchistan wants independence, etc. To me, many of those formenting the riots are the same ones who want rid of the Sufis, who after all are blasphemers by virtue of their beliefs, and want to keep control of Baluchistan and its resources, against the will of the people there. For America to get into a tither that is about us or that we should limit our speech or such, is beside the point. I think it's more about legitimizing control in their own countries over what people can and can not believe openly. I agree. I think a lot of the anti American fervor in some of these countries is actually misdirected rage at their own repressive gov'ts. Pakistan is a corrupt, overcrowded mess that plays a lot of games. We should never have gotten into bed with them.