People are dead in Texas because common sense has vanished from our discussion about terrorism.
I am a Christian and believe abortion is a wicked act, but if my neighbor began to spout extremist rhetoric and talk about killing abortion doctors, I would have to do something. Though uncommon, extremists have murdered physicians in the name of perverted Christianity and so it would be reasonable to worry about my neighbor.
In the years after the Second World War, we confronted an aggressive and hostile ideology in the Soviet Union. It was fiercely secular and murdered thousands of Christians. A few secularists in the United States were seduced by the rhetoric of revolution and betrayed our nation. If your neighbor who worked in a key defense job started handing you copies of Mao’s little red book and talking about supporting the Revolution, a good American atheist would get worried and do something.
It is not bigotry to use our past experience to detect signs of an impending evil act!
And yet when a Muslim man applauded terrorist attacks and had a track record of hateful talk against this nation, nothing was done. He was in a job that gave him easy access to weapons and exhibited obvious signs of being subversive to our values.*
The real bigotry is non-Muslim Americans who assume it is normal for Muslims to talk this way and so don’t know to be worried when they hear extremist talk. Believing that this is how “they think and act” slanders the millions of patriotic American citizens who are Muslims. People who defend shootings and talk about the need to bomb New York City are dangerous whatever their religious background.
If your Christian friend said killing abortion doctors was necessary, you would know he is a fringe lunatic. If your secular friend thinks Christians should be sent to mental hospitals or retraining camps, you would know your friend is weird and wicked.
Good religions or philosophies do not advocate imposing their ideas by force. The same rule can and should be applied to Muslims.
My Muslims friends don’t chat about how much they approve of terror. They might not agree with United States policy, like many other Americans, but they do so peacefully and they use republican means to try to produce change.
Sadly a large minority of Muslims are trying to hijack their faith from the more peaceful majority in the name of terror. This perverse pseudo-religion, like violent forms of Christianity and secularism, is incompatible with our republic.
There is no possible compromise with those who use persecution, force, and terror.
Speech and opinion should be free, but when a man exercises this right he takes a risk. You have the right verbally to attack this country, but I don’t have to reward you for it. We have rightly marginalized those who openly espouse racism, and the same zero tolerance policy must apply to those who espouse violent forms of Islam.
You have the right to approve of terrorism, but no right to hold those dangerous opinions in a highly sensitive post with access to government weapons.
The time is long past to get serious about education on the nature of mainstream Islam.
Why? We must learn the difference between the rhetoric of the lunatics and the sane Islamic community.
We have to recognize that terror is not coming at us from every direction. Today a terrorist attack is far more likely to hit the United States in the name of Islam than in the name of Jesus or a secular revolution. We must focus our efforts.
These efforts will liberate mainstream Islam from captivity to terror. Islamic people and nations contributed to the formation of the West, to the creation of modern science, and have produced works of enduring beauty and importance.
The violent forms of Islam have produced nothing but misery and ugliness. It is time to end the confusion between the two and protect our nation, including its Muslims, from the wicked.
*My thoughts are based on the news accounts as they appear at the time of writing. If these accounts are in error, my analysis would change.