For some reason, yesterday’s shooting in Ottawa made me angrier than 9/11 did. Whatever the reason, it got me to thinking. I’m going to step out of my reminiscing for this post and write about something that disturbs me deeply. The ideas I express here are my own and are admittedly based more on supposition than direct knowledge.
I was taught to respect other people’s religions, but lately I’ve been forced to reconsider that. I find it very hard to respect a religion where the religious leaders condone outright evil or at least look the other way. I can’t see how killing innocent people can be anything else but evil. A new group of extremists has moved to the forefront of Muslim Terrorists and they are killing people who don’t believe exactly as they do. Yet as far as I can tell none of Islam’s religious leaders have spoken out against them.
I’ve heard that the Qur’an has passages that can be interpreted to rationalize what ISIS is doing, but the keyword there is “interpreted.” Perhaps it should be “twisted.” Their actions are outright evil. Surely, the Qur’an doesn’t justify that.
I suspect that the religious leaders who should know better are succumbing to fear of being reprimanded by higher ups if they speak out. Or they fear becoming targets themselves, and perhaps that’s warranted. But they’re the ones who should be stepping in to end the violence by providing more knowledge based guidance. As far as I can tell, Islam is an authoritarian religion, so that guidance should start from the top. Where is it?
Now comes the part that I’m having a hard time expressing. As far as I know Muslims believe in Allah and Satan. To my knowledge Satan is supposed to be constantly working to turn people to evil. The evil the Islamic terrorists are doing looks a lot more like the work of Satan than the work of Allah. I believe that at some level in their leadership the extremists know that what they are telling their followers to get them to commit atrocities is untrue. Reasonable Islamic leaders should acknowledge that these extremist have crossed the line and are Minions of Satan. I think that’s important. Regardless of our religions or lack thereof everyone in the world needs to deal with the extremists in terms they understand. We need to start calling the extremists, “Satan’s followers,” and make sure that the extremists know that everyone knows they are.
Maybe, just maybe, some of them will start to think about what they’re doing.