Here’s the thing: seems to me like there’s two faces of Islam.  There’s what a lot of us think - terrorists, wife-beaters, etc - and there’s a lot of evidence to back that up.  Then there’s what certain elements of the media would have you believe - religion of peace, few radical extremists, etc - and lots of other people believe that.

Now, I’m a simple boy from the midwest.  I don’t have a lot of experience with Islam, and I can really only go by what I’ve seen with my own eyes.  So here’s my #1 example: when I was a ute I worked at a local auto shop, changing tires.  The guy I worked with most frequently was a black dude who’d been hired shortly after me.  We got along pretty well, and the times when we didn’t were mostly stress at the legions of jerkoffs who wait till the first snowflakes start falling, and then flooded in all at once expecting their bald, ragged-ass maypops to be in and out of the shop in 15 minutes, and damn the thirty people in front of them.

Anyway, one night was kinda slow and I decided to run up the street to a take-out BBQ joint.  Asked him if he wanted anything, he said grab me a beef sandwich and handed me a ten.  Great.  Got up there, the beef was out and the next wouldn’t be ready for a half hour, so I grabbed him what I was having - burnt end ribs.  Who the hell doesn’t love burnt end ribs?

See where this is going yet? I get back with the dinner and hand it over, told him the deal, said I got him some ribs because they were the same price.  And sure enough...he can’t eat pork, he’s a Muslim.  I had no idea, the subject had never come up.  I felt like a complete schmuck.  He didn’t flip shitty on me, there was no jihad, no lecture, no “Allah forbids it”, nothing...he laughed it off.  I paid him back for the meal he couldn’t eat, and that was the end of it (well..till a month later, I went to McD’s to grab burgers for us and he told me “not to come back with no damn McRib.")

This is the sorta thing that you can picture a rock-chucking Parisian street Muslim turning into a serious, maybe even deadly insult.  But he didn’t.  It was no big deal.  I didn’t know anything about the guy’s personal life or his conduct outside work, but I just can’t picture him as some fanatic; he he made his statement of faith, and left it to me to feel like a clod on my own hook.  And since I haven’t really had any noteworthy contacts with Muslims since then (that I’m aware of, anyway) I kinda wonder...how many of them are out there just living their lives like 99.9% of Christians do, doing their thing and not being all dickish about their beliefs?

I have trouble accepting the story I’m being getting from either side.  I don’t deny there’s a lot of Islamic hate out there (how many of the current global conflicts are Muslim vs. someone else?  I haven’t seen that list recently, but I do recall it being pretty overwhelming evidence against that “religion of peace” thing) but what little I’ve experience doesn’t really jive.

Guess I’m asking for other personal anecdotes, pro or con, either way.