Convert or die

According to the Associated Press (via Fox News Channel);

Christians in a Pakistani town beset by pro-Taliban militants sought government protection Wednesday, the eve of a deadline for them to convert to Islam or face violence.

About 500 Pakistani Christians in Charsadda, a town in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, received letters earlier this month telling them to close their churches and convert by Thursday or be the target of “bomb explosions.”

Several Christians, a tiny minority in the predominantly Muslim country, have fled town and others are living in fear, community leaders said.

Ron Paul and the Iraq Study Group and Nancy Pelosi say we should negotiate with these people. They don’t seem to be a mood to negotiate. Seems pretty simple to me – they want everyone to either be like them or dead. Where’s the wiggle room?

The AP story is oddly consistent with what Mike at Flopping Aces wrote last night on Ron Paul’s idiot explanation Tuesday night;

From the bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American People:”

What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them – peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions.
…
You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

In comparison, Little Green Footballs tells us that the Saudis are concerned that the Western world is xenophobic towards Arabs, and they don’t understand why we could think that. And islamophobia is a worse form of terrorism than being beheaded or blown to smithereens while doing your grocery shopping;

“The increasingly negative political and media discourse targeting Muslims and Islam in the United States and Europe has made things all the more difficult,” the foreign ministers said. “Islamophobia became a source of concern, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but the phenomenon was already there in Western societies in one form or the other,” they pointed out. “It gained further momentum after the Madrid and London bombings. The killing of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in 2004 was used in a wicked manner by certain quarters to stir up a frenzy against Muslims,” the ministers pointed out. Van Gogh had made a controversial film about Muslim culture.

Imagine that – everytime an Arab commits an act of terrorism against perfectly innocent people, living their lives peaceably and no one in the Arab World condemns the act, and the Arab people dance in the streets celebrating the act, hatred towards Arabs increases.

Sounds like Scrappleface.

Category: Foreign Policy, Terror War