osama bin laden is dead

As much as I appreciate the news of Osama bin laden‘s death I am troubled by some of the news clips showing young people rejoicing at his death.  You have probably seen the clips of young, college age, people waving and cheering on the Washington D.C. streets.  I am happy he is dead, and I hope it will help cool things down but, I am reminded of the clips from various Muslim nations, just after 911, that show about the same thing going on the those countries.

While his death was necessary  it is, to my mind, a sad thing that we can take such joy in the death of anyone, no matter how evil we see them.

Peacfull? I wonder.

I recently read an article by Tony Blair, the ex-Prime Minister of the UK, where he pointed out that out of 22 conflicts going on in the world , all but one of them involved Muslims.

It is easy to point to this kind of article and say, “no, they are not a peaceful religion”, or look at the Qur’an and see where they are supposed to be tolerant of other religions. Much like the Christian Bible.

What is needed to be done is to look at what they do. Like Forrest Gump said, “stupid is as stupid does”, and the same goes here. It does not matter what you say if, you do not do what you say.

I would love to think that it is just the radicals who a responsible for the violence. The problem is in that statement by Tony Blair…

Do not just look at the middle east, look around the world and see the attacks on other cultures, or even their own, and it is hard to think that they are indeed peaceful.

I remember a time when in the Irish had a war going on between the Catholics and Protestants, they made peace eventually, and I have not heard of a resurgence of hate, but could you use that to say that either the Protestants, or Catholics, were a violent people? Some might.

The real question is.. is that conduct wide spread? Does it only happen in a limited area, such as the middle east, or is it global? It is global… and takes place in Africa, obviously the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and even in the Pacific Rim countries.. Does that make Islam a dangerous religion? Yes!

Are there radicals in Islam? Yes. Are there moderates who prefer peach? Oh, yes.

When 911 happened, how many of the moderates came out of the Mosques and said how horrible it was that 3,000 people were killed. Did any of the go on the airwaves to talk about who evil this act was? Did you see any of them? No, we saw on the news broadcast happy crowds rejoicing at the deaths suffered by the “Great Satan“.

I recently saw a video, I can’t remember his name, about a man who pointed out some of the similarity between Christianity and Islam, and then pointed out that the main difference was that Christian populations were better at assimilating into the host countries.

You can look back at the Crusades, 7 or 8 of them in a 200 year period, or the eradication of other European religions as the church spread across Europe and said tat Christians were evil. What you should keep in mind is that they got over it. Islam started 570-632 A.D, and has yet to learn the tolerance that the Christians display.

Christians have practice for thousands of years so, maybe there is a chance that Islam will mature into the kind of religion they say they are now.