The Middle East and Extremism

Well the current situation in the Middle East (more specifically, Israel's invasion of Lebanon) has taken centre stage in political discussion, derailing the fisheries issues for the time being.

I currently don't have a position on the current conflict. I'm neither pro- or anti-Israeli/Lebanese or whatever. The reason for this is I don't believe I know enough about the issue to take a position. However, I have been attempting to educate myself further about this issue.

In my attempts, I have found some very disturbing commentary out there.

A few posters at the Western Standard's Shotgun Blog, spout some rather hate filled speech at not just the Fundamentalist Muslims that are causing the current problems. Instead, they argue that all of Islam is evil.

A few quotes:

"Islam is not a race, it's a disgusting, cruel and dangerous socio-political ideology that must be destroyed.
Islam has no place in Canada and Islam lovers like you don't have a clue how evil Islam is."

"There's only one policy that can work:

1) Restrict Muslim immigration
2) Muslims here must assimilate"

"The Muslims are the worst problem Canada is facing now.

The solution is to restrict their immigration and expect them to assimilate.

Watch the news people.... almost every day the Muslims are involved in terrorism, murder, protests, support of terrorists, electing terrorist, etc. etc.

We had enough with the Muslims, we have better things to do. Just stop bringing them to this Country."

This is disturbing on a whole new level. You could almost trace the problems in the Middle east to views similar to that. Israel came into being after WWII, partially as a result of the Holocaust, which occurred after a nation was convinced that Jews were evil and should be eradicated. This is turn displaced the Palestinians and its been a rather rough 60 odd years since.


One can only hope those people stay in the minority. One hopes that the public in general can distinguish between elements of race/religion/cult/etc. that are evil and what not, and the race/religion/etcetera.


UPDATE:

It was pointed out to me that I should mention that the comments I highlighted are not in the majority of the discussion occuring at the Shotgun Blog. I chose these comments to emphasize some of the material I found that concerned me.