Not them, but what they believe

It saddens me to rant so much and so often about Muslims.
Stop laughing, it does.
When I was very young (or so it seems to me from where I am now), I spent a couple of sessions at a summer camp in Northern California.
My counselor one year was an Egyptian guy named Ali. As I dimly recall; it was about the time that Lawrence of Arabia was released, and I may have confused him with his look-alike (and namesake in the movie) Omar Sharif. He was, like Sharif, very good-looking, with that same flashing smile, and a really gentle, nice guy. The fact that his wife, our co-counselor, was a beautiful redhead (an Irish girl from the States he'd married in college) didn't hurt.
It came time for the camp talent show, and Ali asked us (a dozen snot-nosed suburban kids) if we'd be willing to portray an aspect of his culture.
Since it wasn't pederasty, we agreed. (Hey, you can look it up.)
So, the day comes and, outfitted in some hastily cobbled together versions of robes and keffiyehs, we (amid giggles from our fellow campers) line up, kneel, and prostrate ourselves.
How did it feel? No stupider than all the kneeling and genuflecting of the Catholic Mass I attended recently. (An Italian got married, and that's what they do. I went along for the booze and the food.)
Then we raggedly chanted (in our pidgin Arabic) "God is Great! There is but one God and Muhammad is his Prophet!"
That's the shahadah I talked about earlier, the first of the Five Pillars of Islam.
If, like the convert to Islam formerly known as Adam Pearlman (talk about your self-hating Jew!), saying that made me, if only for that moment, a Muslim, then the Islamofascists will now undoubtedly consider me an apostate.
Apostates, in Islam, are eligible for death as unbelievers. (Actually, worse than mere unbelievers. You see, we've given up the One True Faith, and allowing us to continue in our apostasy undermines the legitimacy of the whole delusional structure.)
I'm sorry that the seemingly loving and peaceful religion displayed to me by Ali has been hijacked by its wacko fundamentalist right-wing (sound familiar?) and become the hateful and death-ridden religion it is today.

Ali, if you're out there, I apologize.

The rest of you Islamofascist (and Christofascist) fucks out there, I got some forty Glock ammo here I need to burn up...