I am continually hearing and reading about an Islamic state and Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, too many American citizens have fallen into two rhetorical traps that hinder corporation with Middle Eastern Islamic nations in resistance to radical terrorism.
First, there is no Islamic state because there are no geographic boundaries. Whether formed for good or bad, multinational organizations cannot be states simply because they are multinational. Second, a multinational radical terrorist organization can no more be Islamic than it can be Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto or any other faith based on their belief in and understanding of a just God.
Yes, today’s radicals behead innocent victims, but is beheading innocent people new? Who ordered the beheading of John the Baptist and James, the half-brother of Jesus Christ? Yes, today’s radicals claim to be Islamic, but what was “Christian” about the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the White Citizen’s Council and the (Christian?) Knights of the Ku Klux Klan?
Yes, radical terrorist who defame Islam with their claims of association proclaim “death to America,” “death to all Jews,” and “death to infidels,” but is that type of mentality new? Save Rahab and her family, what happened to the residential “infidels” of Jericho, after “the walls came tumbling down?”
Yes, according to the Holy Scriptures, God ordered the utter destruction of Jericho, but in Adolph Hitler’s demented mind, did God order the torture and execution of six million Jews. Furthermore, how did those who followed Hitler’s orders justify the horror of the holocaust in their minds?
Profiles of the perpetrators of the attack in Paris further prove that radical terrorists practice neither the moral nor the peaceful ideology of Islam, yet many reporters, commentators, and political leaders continue to refer to them as “Islamic” terrorists, and lend credence to the title radicals chose to justify their political rather than religious terrorism.
Yes, terrorists shout religious references as they commit atrocities, but what did radical white supremacist burn as they tortured and lynched innocent people of color? Have you noticed that today’s radical terrorists kill far more innocent Muslims than members of other faiths?
Until our political leaders, journalists and commentators stop crediting the faith of most of the radical terrorists’ victims with the atrocities they commit, how can we expect Islamic nations’ full cooperation in eradicating the horrors committed by radicals claiming to be something that absolutely cannot exist — a non-geographic state that violates the principles of the faith it claims?
Think about it, please.
Robert C. Currie Jr.
Laurinburg