People Just Like Us!
Waleed Aly in his book, People Like Us, writes about Muslims and Us:
Only when we apprehend each other as human, with all the contradictions, beauty and frailty that implies, and consider each other's conduct in that light; only once we internalise that those we do not immediately understand are nevertheless people like us – will the world begin to make sense.
He believes we need "to understand the world from the perspective of another." Fortunately, it is possible to understand the Muslim perspective and find out just how much like us they are. Thanks to the miracle of modern polling we can find out just how similar our views and Muslim views are. As it turns out, Wally Aly is as wrong-headed in his views about people like Muslims and people like us as he is about nearly everything else. And the more people like us become more like people like them then the worse things are going to get because Muslims really, really don't like people like us and I'm not just talking about Jews.
These answers are really to the question Is It necessary to Believe in Allah to be a Moral Person?
Now I don't want to say Muslims are stupid, ignorant, prejudiced bigots just on the answer to this one question but … Maybe Australian Muslims are different to those hundreds of millions
of overseas Muslims and maybe the 300,000 Australian Muslims * who have arrived from overseas are the ones who aren't stupid, ignorant, prejudiced bigots. I hope so because otherwise they think
that people like us cannot be good people and that can't be good.
The majority of Muslims believe people like us are selfish, violent, greedy and immoral but Wallyd Aly may still be correct.
The majority of Muslims might believe Muslims are selfish, violent, greedy and immoral and might even believe Muslims are even worse than people like us.
Apparently that question wasn't asked.
Of course they're absolutely right, people like us are selfish, violent, greedy, immoral and arrogant just like people like them. At least we know people like us have some things in common with people like them.
There are other areas of civil life
where Muslims and people like us differ diametrically. The real killer is the condemnation of homosexuality especially as literal killing is also the prescribed punishment in 10 Muslim countries
and homosexuality is illegal in 36 Muslim countries. This is not just a theoretical condemnation of homosexuality. As of 1999 in Iran, more than 4,000 lesbians and gays had been executed
in the 20 years since the 1979 "Islamic revolution."
There's little doubt that drinking alcohol can, at times, cause unwanted behaviour but there is nothing inherently immoral about sharing a meal and a bottle of wine with friends.
It's pretty obvious that there is strong agreement on the need for Muslim women to obey their husbands
… or else. Hopefully there is some disagreement on the meaning of the … or else.
The Pakis and the Arabs seem pretty bloodthirsty against those Muslims rejecting
Islam which is a worry because they'd probably want the same for people like us who jeer at Islam and mock Muhammad.
The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; Quran (5:33)
This cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides cannot be good no matter how you interpret it and I'm sure 1200 years of thoughtful Muslim scholarship has got it interpreted exactly.
A 2013 comprehensive study showed 13 Muslim countries where atheism is punishable by death: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
An overwhelming majority of Muslims want to live under Sharia.
It's reasonable to assume that very few people like us ie non-Muslim Australians, want to live under Sharia especially those who understand what their dhimmi status would entail.
At least a slim majority of these Sharia desiring Muslims are prepared to leave people like us out
of their rules or don't want the conflict that attempting to impose Sharia on non-Muslims would create.
The Grand Mufti to Rule Australia
ABS 2011 census: 61.5% of 476,300 Muslims were born overseas = 292,925