Responsibility Hypocrisy

Six days after the destruction of the world trade center towers, President Bush visited the Islamic Center in Washington “to denounce incidents of prejudice against Muslim Americans.” He was attempting to defuse the national outrage against the attackers and prevent a violent backlash against Muslims living in America.

Since then, government leaders and the media have worked hard at establishing in our minds that most Muslims are peace-loving and the terrorists are fringe extremists.

But the line between the two remains very blurred. “Unfortunately, it is not so easy to find Muslim leaders who have genuinely renounced violent jihad and any intention, now or in the future, to impose Sharia (Muslim Law) on non-Muslim countries,” writes Robert Spencer, author of several books on Islam. (From some random post on Myspace.com)

The thing about this is that Muslims speak out against terrorism all the time but what more do we want them to do? It's like we expect them to form their own anti-terrorist terrorist group to terrorize the terrorists because after all Muslims are supposed to be violent so why can't the moderates be violent against the extremists...sounds ridiculous when you actually say it out loud but I believe this is what a lot of people are thinking.

Also on the other hand, when the shoe is on the other foot and Christians are fucking shit up no one expects the Christians to stand up against their extremist compatriots because when it comes to Christians we can draw a distinction between the two sides but with Muslims we tend to think of them as all one congruent group.

The facts are that a lot of moderate Christians actively detest extremist Christianity as do many Muslims detest extremist Islam (and even die for it) but the difference is that we as a society don't expect the Christians to be obligated to do so but feel that it is absolutely the Muslims responsibility to do so.

Sunday Shanninigans

I witnessed a couple of interesting things last Sunday. The first incident happened on my morning commute to work. I was on the bus, there was an elderly man in a motorized scooter up front. As the bus took a turn the man, along with scooter, fell to the floor. No one came to the man's aid except for a couple of women, one in her teens and the other a senior citizen, they were together. Now the interesting part is that this man who was obviously a Christian gentleman dressed in his Sunday best on his way to church and so was about two thirds of the rest of the passengers, many with Bible in hand. None of them and I repeat, none of them came to this man's aid...a fellow Christian. These two women? They were Muslim in complete Islamic garb. Don't get me wrong, this is not a stab at Christians, I know many good Christians that wouldn't of hesitated for a moment to leap to this man's aid, regardless of his religion. And at the same time this is not an attempt to promote Islamic ideals. However, this does go to show that you can't judge a book by it's religion so to speak.

The other incident that witnessed this day? Well, I was at a fast food restaurant and as I was waiting for my order a man and his two very young children (boy & girl) came in to order after me. The kids were both extremely dirty and looked to be a real handful for this father (who by the way was a soldier dressed in fatigues and from the bits of conversation that I caught sounded like he was about to be shipped out soon, didn't catch where exactly...has nothing to do with the story just a bit of interesting information). As this man was ordering his son was trying to climb up on the counter. The man gave him a swift slap on the butt. The boy then bent over, reached down the back of his shorts...at first I thought he was just rubbing his bottom because it hurt but no, he was digging! And he continued to dig for a good thirty seconds. He then removed his hand from his shorts, looked at his finger, which the tip was in fact brown. He then wiped it on the counter, then on his dad's uniform, then he touched all over the cup lids and straws and after they sat down was rubbing his hands all in his dad's face...pops was oblivious to what his son was doing with his hand earlier. The kid was young but he was old enough to know better. It was hard for me to eat my food because all I could think about all the things he had touched and if anything I had came into contact with any of those surfaces. Moral to the story...you never know what just happened before you got there, no matter where it's at. Nasty...

Christian Victim Complex

It seems that everywhere in the World Christians always complain about being victims of intolerance. I just had a conversation with a woman who claims that it is common in a certain West African country for Christians to be despised and looked down on. Now, I am no expert on this country but I have been there on occasion and retain close ties to it. I am certain that there is at least some intolerance towards Christians there as no country is immune to these types of attitudes (not just towards Christians from non-Christians). But in my first-hand experience and second-hand information from knowledgeable sources I am certain that it is not the norm. This country is about 95% Muslim and if they wanted to treat the Christians as second-class citizens or worse the Christians would be way outnumbered. Yet if they were so anti-Christian why would they celebrate Christmas? Why would they have a huge church in the middle of their capitol city? Why would Christians be protected by their constitution? Christians have for far too long cried victim. The days of Rome are over...shit, they own Rome now! Yes, there are places in the World where Christians are jailed and killed simply for being openly Christian. But this is true of every group of people in one place or another...Christians have no special claim to this. In fact, Christians have the most followers of any religion World wide! And in many places where they claim to be victims, especially here in the USA, they more or less run the country and have done so since the beginning. Christians historically have been intolerant of other faiths and although it ain't right, a lot of the intolerance towards Christians now is a reaction to that! This woman mentioned that when people that she knew (or heard about) in this country converted to Christianity it put a strain on the families and they were often times kicked out of the home...now I was not there so I can not say that this was the situation but I can completely imagine, based on the Born Agains I know here, they were probably constantly trying to convert the rest of the family, telling them that their beliefs were wrong and that they all would perish in Hell if they did not accept Jesus into their hearts and that is what probably caused the strain...not their conversion to Christianity but their constant disrespect for the other family members beliefs.