The Republican Party’s presidential candidates have started
to promote policies against Muslims that resemble what Nazi Germany did to Jews
during World War II. In the US and
Canada, there have been violent attacks, including physical, emotional, and
rhetorical attacks, against Arab people, Muslims, and people presumed to be
Arab or Muslim. I have read stories of
white-supremacist groups, neo-Nazi groups, TEA party groups, and government officials protesting near Mosques, oftentimes armed, and spreading racist
vitriol and hate over the Internet.
Various US states, and the Republican controlled US Congress, with
Democratic votes, have sought to limit and close off the process of resettling
refugees from Syria seeking to escape the ongoing civil war; never mind that
the process of gaining asylum in the US for refugees is very difficult. Since the terrorist attacks in Paris, people
have given into their fears. Not only
the fear that fighters from the Islamic State will follow the refugees coming
from Syria, but the same fear that has been gripping the US since the September
11 terrorist attacks, the fear that somehow Muslims are seeking to destroy the
US in one form or another; bearing in mind that the majority of terrorist
attacks in the US since 2001 have been by white American men.
These are my initial thoughts. Those fears are ridiculous. The racist, xenophobic, and fascist attitudes
people and politicians have been spewing since the Paris attacks are
reprehensible and need to stop, now.
Most importantly, and I think it needs to be said above all
else, and though it applies to the refugees trying to get out of harms way or
those living in North America and Europe seeking a peaceful life, it also
applies even more so for the people who have chosen to fight for or have no
choice other than to live under the Islamic State. They are human. They are not monsters, they are not robots,
and they are no more evil than the rest of us.
Yes, some within the Islamic State have chosen to do evil, either by
choice or because of fear, but that does not make them any less human than you
or I. Should those who have caused harm
in the Syrian civil war be held responsible for their crimes? Yes, but we should remember that those who
have caused harm are not only to be found in the Islamic State, but in every
nation that has chosen to take an active role in exacerbating the violence in
the Middle East, but even those military and governmental leaders are human, no
better, and no worse than the rest of us.
As I Christian, I believe that every PERSON bears the image of God, regardless of who they are, what
they look like, or what they believe.
Every act of violence, no matter if it is physical, emotional, or
rhetorical, distorts and injures that image.
Whether it is done face-to-face, or through pushing a button a thousand
miles away; whether it is one person being harmed, or a million, it is all the
same. It is easy to say that God loves
us, and that God blesses us; but God loves the people who live under the
Islamic State too. In every land, in
every nation, when someone is harmed, whether in the Syrian civil war or
elsewhere, I cannot help but believe that God weeps, and we are all diminished
as a people when a single life is lost to such mindless bloodshed.
People have to break the cycle of violence against
people. It is for this reason that I
believe that the people living in the Islamic State are human beings just as I
am, and no matter what, God too loves them.
