With the stories that I see each day, I find myself struggling with my own convictions and beliefs with regards to the Muslim community as a whole based mostly on the actions of a few.
As a Jew, I have a personal reason to know better than to dislike a group for their religious followings and beliefs. To understand that by picking out a group for their religious beliefs and casting them in a shadow or shunning them BECAUSE of their religious following, would make me no better than those that have done the same to me and my people.
As I have posted in the past, I KNOW that there are good Muslims out there, and I am not talking about the recent converts. I am talking about the people that are “Multi-Generational” Muslims who have practiced in the manner that their predecessors have before them. People for whom this is more than words on a page, but a part of their culture.
With the events in England and Boston over the last couple months, as well as the other rumblings, it remains my focus to explain to people that these are the actions of a few, militant, groups within the Islamic community and certainly the exception and not the rule. But it would be so easy for me to cave… to give in to the anti-Islamic uproar and fall in step with them to condemn the Islamic community as a whole for this.
But that would be wrong. It would also be wrong for me to allow others to take this attitude without my trying to explain to them, like I am trying to here, that you cannot hold an entire group accountable for the actions of a few within it whom have decided to act on some misunderstanding that they have picked up from their readings.
This is usually the point were someone points out how violent the Qur’an is and how, but I would ask those same people, mostly Christians, to review their own texts and tell me that there are no violent or outdated actions that are suggested to carry out in the Bible. But I am not writing this to argue religious texts.
The point of this to not hate Muslims, or any other group, for the actions of a few within it. All this does is raise distrust among all of us and create more hatred, thus giving other groups the feeling that they have earned some right of revenge against the other, and so the hate and anger become self-perpetuating.
I will say, to all servicemen and women everywhere, to please watch yourselves carefully. With the horrific attack on Lee Rigby and the suggestions that the Radical Islamism are going to carry out more such attacks on soldiers, I worry for all of you serving out there. Keep your guard up and I would suggest, as I think many commanding officers should as well, to not travel alone, if you are in uniform.
As always, I thank you all for reading.