I think your argument is sophomoric and jejune, and I don’t wish to correspond further with you here.

Frankly, I don’t care for your style, D__.

These niggling post mortem dissections of “I said…You said…” are a crushing bore.

I must say that, syntactically you suggest that you were of this opinion prior to your ‘conversations on the street’ and these encounters served to re-enforce your opinion. That you state that your “impression” were re-enforced by these conversations suggests very strongly that your opinion predated those encounters.

The way you frame your reply and attempt at clarification seems to support my contention as well.

I simply reiterate that I, based upon this sampling on the street, could not be persuaded to feel confident that a pan-Muslim zeitgeist did not exist. The number is far too small to come to such a sweeping conclusion.

If you are at ease with it in your own right I am comfortable with that. I just do not agree.

It serves no purpose to be combative in an exchange of ideas. Pursuasion is not the goal here, rather, an exchange of opinions, nothing more.

I did not support my statement, “Even though there’s no such thing as a Muslim zeitgeist” by citing opinions I obtained on the street.

I mentioned that as something I consider a given, because there are so many different factions and sects of Islam.

I didn’t purport to be conducting a scientific survey, I simply stated that my conversations with local Muslims in places where they’ve lived over a thousand years reinforced my “impression” that I think there’s such a thing as pan-Muslim suspicion of George W. Bush and the U.S. government.

Here again you misrepresent what I write. Saying that an ‘impression’ I have was reinforced by what people I met on the street told me, in no way implies that I thought I was conducting a statistically significant sampling.

Your comments here are absurd, and distort what I said.

I suggest that you read my comments more closely before you offer these non sequiturs in response.

You write that “there’s no such thing as a pan-Muslim zeitgeist”, and support that statment by citing opinions you obtained on the street. THAT is statistically insignificant sampling for such an absolute statement.

A sampling of thousands, if not millions would be required to support that kind of conclusion. Of course, the bias’ in the sample population would have to be factored out in order to capture the pure data for analysis.

I for one would be comforted more by an overwhelming, well publicized outcry of protest by the Islamic community at large at the way a minority are distorting the faith to their own purpose and committing horrific acts in the process.

To the best of my knowledge, such an outpouring has not yet taken place. Failing that, I cannot share your confidence and belief that a pan-Muslim zeitgeist does not exist.

My saying that “I imagine few Muslims
will believe that this wasn’t done at the behest of the Bush administration”, doesn’t necessarily mean that I believe it, though I certainly think it’s a possibility.

Please don’t attribute things I didn’t say to me, although I realize that’s like asking a right-wing zealot not to breathe.

Even though there’s no such thing as a pan-Muslim ‘zeitgeist’, I think there’s such a thing as a pan-Muslim suspicion of George W. Bush and the U.S. government.

My conversations with Muslims on the street in Morocco and Spain have reinforced this impression.

… also take a moment to recall Neville Chamberlain and Munich as we begin to collaborate with the Iranians in striving to reach common ground.

I imagine few Muslims will believe this wasn’t done at the behest of the Bush administration.