Don't Hate, Debate

Abu Loren wrote: Asalaamu Alaikumhttp://www.iera.org/dawah/dont-hate-debate-article

There is quite a bit there I would debate (as a tangent, that S�ren Kierkegaard was in the slightest "post-modern"!) but I would more pressingly remark on how much of this needs to be clearly and loudly addressed to some Muslims.
The positive and calm picture painted if Islam does not match, not the picture painted by popular media (which I'd trust as far as I can throw it), but my experience in a good number of encounters with those (most unmistakably) professing Islam, up to the point of being told that my perspective meant that I deserved the death penalty here and now, as well as punishment in the afterlife.   
I agree that it is difficult to debate when being insulted, yet that has been my frequent experience (not here) and it is also difficult to debate when offence is taken and insult assumed at any comment which does not agree with that Muslim believer's perspective.

No, that's nothing like all Muslims, or my uniform experience. And yes there are mere insulters and haters of Islam: I denounce them and disassociate myself from them.

But this: the insult and offence is not one-way. Do look also to those who, considering themselves Islamic, hardly resemble in speech or behaviour the positive picture of Islam given in this piece.

Yours, from a member of a minority distrusted in the USA about as much as Muslims are!

Chris