WOW! So as many as 180 million of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world have each beheaded "dozens" of non-Muslims. That works out to 6.5 billion beheading or just about every non-Muslim person on the planet. Funny what happens when you actually look at the numbers - W. ColletteEDITOR'S NOTE: We've had a lot of chatter on Facebook on this article I wrote, a lot of it in defense of the bigoted, anti-Muslim remarks made by state Sen. Elaine Morgan. One of my favorites was from Kathleen Hamill who said Morgan was doing her job to warn people about the evils of Islam because, Hamill claims, between 5-10% of Muslims "have beheaded dozens of non-Muslims."
“Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume [Samaritans]?”James and John to Jesus
As
‘lone wolf’ terrorism will likely rise, how will we relate to Muslims? Should
we escalate wars in Muslim countries?
Samaritans, who
share religious roots with Muslims, utterly rejected Jesus and his disciples.
So the disciples proposed Holy War. Jesus rebuked them.
Samaritans and
Jews detested each other: As to religion, Jews cursed Samaritans in their
synagogues; as to race, Jews called Samaritans half-breeds; as to foreigners,
Jews walked 40 additional miles when traveling north just to avoid Samaria.
Americans mimic
this hatred by reviling Muslims: 56 percent recently polled stated Islam is not
consistent with American values. This ignores three million Muslim-Americans,
most born here, who cherish this nation.
Enter
Donald Trump. He hysterically whips up fears of Muslims and Mexicans. He even
retweets that whites are killed by blacks 81 percent of the time—with a black
man’s image pointing a gun. The truth: Whites killed by blacks total 14
percent.
Sadly, I must
also conclude Trump is a white supremacist. The evidence: Trump hates and fears
people for their religion (Muslims) and their race (blacks) as well as
foreigners (Mexicans).
Trump dismisses
Jesus’ teaching to love people whose religion, race or nation is different.
Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan—not The Good Israelite—was scandalous.
Today, instead of The Good American, Jesus would scandalize Trump’s followers
with the parable of The Good Muslim.
Actually,
Christian extremists have killed and maimed far more Americans in recent years
than Muslim extremists. Anti-abortion bombers and “Christian” mass shooters are
terrorists.
Indeed, the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies 142 neo-Nazi and
72 Ku Klux Klan groups. Christian identity and sovereign citizen groups have
also increased.
Still,
can we imagine discriminating against Christians as Trump discriminates against
1.5 billion Muslims? Imagine a “total and complete shutdown” of Christians
entering this country. Imagine registering our nation’s Christians. Imagine
surveying and closing churches.
Hatred and fear
of all Muslims is no more justified than for Christians.
The U.S. is not
a theocracy. We are not a “Christian nation.” We cannot favor one religion, but
must affirm America’s religious freedom for all.
Jesus taught we
must take the log out of our own eye before removing the speck in our
neighbor’s eye. So consider the 3,000 who died on 9/11 as well as the fourteen
in San Bernardino. How horrendous these attacks were for our nation! Now
consider the half million Iraqis
who died. That’s 166 days of 9/11 attacks.
American deaths
from 9/11 are one per 100,000; Iraqi deaths are one per 75. Four million
Iraqis—one in ten—are refugees. Iraq is decimated.
We
rightly condemn jihad, a Holy War. But our politicians’ moral justifications
for Iraq’s invasion begat a vastly more destructive Holy War than 9/11.
Jesus rebuked
his disciples’ Holy War “solution” for enemies. Do we agree regarding our wars?
It’s not just
Iraq. Many want to escalate war in Syria. Have we learned nothing from our
failures?
How many more years will we kill and be killed in the Middle East?
How many more lone wolf attacks must we endure? Does our unceasing warfare risk
another massive attack? Are we really surprised that inflicting great suffering
brings retaliation?
The military
cannot defeat terrorism. Bombs and bombastic rhetoric continually recruit ISIS
fighters.
We must overcome
our country’s fears and purge our national prejudices. Recall the aspiration of
the Star Spangled Banner’s concluding verse. The opposite occurs, our nation
becoming ‘the land of the cruel, and the home of the fearful,’ if we adopt
Trump’s dogma instead of Jesus’ teachings.
Rev. Harry Rix is a retired pastor and mental health
counselor living in Providence, RI. He has 50 articles on spirituality and
ethics, stunning photos, and 1200 inspiring quotations available at
www.quoflections.org.