"All I Need to Know About Islam..."

I don't claim to know a great deal about Islam. I've taken courses in college, I've read books, and (though this sounds as patronizing as "some of my best friends are black") I know a few personally.

What I don't know would fill a library. But I know enough to grasp that the actions of a few are the fruits of the same poison tree that nourishes fanatics of all stripes - from atheistic Bolsheviks who could only see Kulaks as obstacles in the way of the proletarian revolution, to Christians who blow up federal buildings and murder doctors providing abortions, to Muslims who allow girls to die horribly in a fire because they didn't have time to put on their "sacred" burkas, and the list of atrocities could go on and on and encompass every identifiable group of humans since recorded history began.

I was motivated to pen this blog because of two things I saw in the media recently. The first is this blog from the Alternet.org site, "When Stupid People don’t Know that They are Stupid: Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally and the Dunning-Kruger Effect", by Chauncey de Vega. What particularly caught my ear was the comment by one of the interviewed that supplied the title of this post - "All I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11."

The second is this news article on the San Francisco Chronicle site, "For US Muslims, a 9/11 anniversary like no other", the gist of which is that Muslim communities feel so threatened by anti-Muslim hysteria that they are going to great lengths to advertise their peaceful and charitable activities.