Essay:A Response to Majid Rafizadeh

I get frusterated by things I see on the internet. And one of the most frusterating things I've read are "articles' from the Galestone Insitute, a "non-partisan", "think-tank". Some of their "articles" don't even have any facts in them, only generalizations based on the authors' own baseless opinons.

The editorial I address here was written by Harvard scholar Dr. Majid Rafizadeh. In his writing, he accuses "most" liberals as being "apologetic for all types of fundamentalist Islamist laws" and that they "turn a blind eye to Islamist governments such as Iran that...execute people for expressing their opinion".

Inisting that liberals defend Iran and countries like it would require M. Rafizadeh to ignore liberal groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Internation, both of which have clearly critizied Iran for its wrongdoings. Saying that most liberal support Iran and other Islamist government is an awfully strong claim to make without sufficent proof.

He also claims that "these liberals -- indulging in faulty, sophisitic, logic -- seem to think that if they criticize Christianity and Islamists criticize Christianity, then Islamists will like them for hating the same thing. In the same vein, many liberals hate the U.S. Republican government and many radical Muslim groups hate the U.S. Republican government, so perhaps many liberals think that Muslims will like them for hating the same government? Sadly, as these liberals will soon find out, the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend". When the hell has a liberal ever thought that Dr. Rafizadeh?! Could you have bothered to provide at least some ancidontal evidence to support such a claim? Unbelieveable!

Another thing he says is that liberals are "sympathizing with all kinds of Islamist practices and radical Islam seems to fit a wider narrative of bashing the West and white people for imperialism, colonialism, and any sense of superiority. Unfortunately that view fails to take into account that there have been no greater imperialists the Muslim armies; they conquered Persia, the great Christian Byzantine Empire in Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East, virtually all of Eastern Europe, most of Spain, and Greece.?". This ties into my previous point about not having any proof to back up the assertion that liberal support Islamism. Secondly, lets do some calculations, shall we? Muslim armies have indeed conquored Turkey, North Africa, the Middle East, Persia, the Balkans (not all of Eastern Europe as he claims), and most of Spain. Muslims have conquored also conquored Sicily, most of India, Central Asia, and some parts of West Africa (for my calcultions, I'll include all of West Africa to be safe. If my calculations are correct, that is a total area of 31,121,977 square kilometers. Christians have conquored (and colonized) the Holy Lands during the Crusades, Spain during reconquista, the Baltics and some parts of Eastern Europe, Siberia, Austrilia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, most of Africa, and all of North and South America. If my calculations are correct, this is a total area of 103,668,584 square kilometers. That's a difference of 72,546,607 kmsq. But my point isn't to show that Christians were the biggest conquorers in history, it is merely to point out that you're wrong about Muslims being the greatest imperialists.