Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Love your Enemies: Thoughts in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attack in Paris

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.        

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