It's Not About Islam

Last Friday in Colorado a white man, presumably Christian, shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic. The Oklahoma City bombers were Christians. The Waco Compound was full of Christians. Most shooters in Baltimore or Chicago today would identify as Christians. Dylan Roof in South Carolina identified as Christians.

There is no "ideology" of murder in Christianity. To say that is ridiculous. No one would take that point seriously. It is a ridiculous statement and we'd treat it as such. Even though thousands of white, Christian Americans are in militias, the KKK, and other hate groups, some inspired by religion, some by culture, some on ideology. We recognize them as a small percentage of Christians though. That is what they are.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, give or take a few. On the high end, ISIS might have 200,000 members. On the high end, al-Qaeda might have 4,000 members according to the government (who also says ISIS has about 30,000). Let's go super high end- there might be one million members of terrorist organizations in the Muslim world. There might even be 10 million that want to be terrorists. That's fine. Out of 1.6 billion. That's under 1%. Literally.

After 9/11, one of the most honorable things President Bush did was to make it clear he was not declaring war on Islam. He defended them as good, decent, law-abiding, God fearing Americans. That is what they are. That is how we should view them.

In the Bible, it talks of when it's okay to keep slaves or stone your wife. Religious texts have lots of crazy things in them. They were written long ago. This is not to say we should indict Christians for the lunacy of their forefathers. It's to say we shouldn't indict Muslims for their texts. 1.59 billion plus Muslims don't turn into Jihadis. Almost all Christians don't either. When we start saying "their religious ideology" and then talk about terrorism, we're committing a grave disservice. It's not only potentially harmful, it's incorrect.