You would think that Muslims everywhere would be horribly embarrassed that, in the name of their religion, a handful of criminals are running around the world slaughtering innocent civilians. Why is the Muslim world not rising up in a single voice to condemn these killings and demand that the criminals stop, or at the very least, stop defiling the name of the Muslim religion?
Suppose there were a band of Christian criminals, running around the world targeting Muslims with car bombs, and fully-loaded airplanes, demanding that the non-Christian-infidels vacate the planet. I can’t imagine that the rest of the Christian world would be as quiet as is the Muslim world. I can’t imagine that the leaders of the Christian world would look the other way, or send money to the families of the Christian-criminals whose sons and daughters died while committing murder. I can’t imagine that the Christian community would allow a band of hate-filled, low-life criminals to paint for the world, the bloody picture of what their religion actually is.
Silence from the Muslim world is nothing less than approval of the criminals’ actions.
Sure, there have been a few Muslim leaders who condemn the terrorists’ actions. But there has been no organized, determined effort to put an end to the senseless slaughter by the Muslim religion. Muslims could stop the foolishness, if they chose to do so. Someone knows where Osama bin Laden is. Someone knows where every terrorists cell is located. Every terrorist has a family, friends, a source of money. Every Muslim terrorist – since they act in the name of the Muslim religion – is affiliated with a Muslim spiritual leader. Why is the Muslim community not tightening the noose around the necks of these criminals?
Come to think of it, why is the mainstream environmental community not tightening the noose around the necks of the domestic terrorists who perpetrate their crimes in the name of the environment? The Earth Liberation Front, and their sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front, are cut from the same hate-filled, low-life criminal cloth as the Muslim terrorists. Someone knows who burned the ski lodge in Vail, Colo. Someone knows the people who committed every act of eco-terrorism in this country. The mainstream environmental community could put an end to this foolishness, if they chose to do so. Why are they so silent? Why do they look the other way?
Terrorism is terrorism, whether committed by a religious nut, or an environmental nut. Both types of nuts have one thing in common: They are either too arrogant, or ignorant, to understand the first principle of civilized behavior. The principle is simply this: Any right that I claim for myself, I must freely grant to all others.
If Osama claims the right to embrace the religion he chooses, he must be willing to grant that same right to all others. Of course, he has not yet discovered that this principle is the basis of civilized behavior, and, therefore, his behavior is far from civilized. Osama is not alone in his failure to discover this principle. It is far too simple, too profound, for bomb-wielding, Molotov-cocktail-tossing criminals to notice or care about.
It is a principle that has escaped the notice of many people who claim the right to choose how they wish to live, but then insist that everyone else live as they dictate, denying to everyone else the right they claim for themselves. The nuts that congregate under the ELF/ALF tree have every right to choose not to drive SUVs. But to inflict terror on those who make a different choice, is at once, the height of arrogance, and the depth of ignorance.
Muslims who choose to embrace Islam have every right to do so. To refuse to grant to all others the same right to choose – even if their choice is different – may be the result of arrogance or ignorance, but it is certainly uncivilized.
If the Muslim world fails to rise above the image that Osama bin Laden, and his fellow criminals are painting, the rest of the world will eventually lose the great Muslim heritage. The rest of the world will continue to blunder its way toward civilization, leaving the eco-nuts and the religious-nuts to pretend they are martyrs in their backward-looking dreamworld.
The civilized world is eager to move forward, to find ways to cooperate, to expand friendship and commerce, to broaden educational horizons for everyone, and to elevate prosperity for every person on earth, to help all people everywhere know the individual freedom that the Creator intended for all creatures on this earth – even humans.
The eco-nuts and the religious nuts are trying to stop the unstoppable flow of civilized progress. Both Islam, and environmentalism need to remove the obstacles to progress, by cleaning the nuts from their midst.
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Dave Ramsey