We are NOT at war with "The Muslims"

Submitted by Jon Frost (Germany), Jul 24, 2008 at 04:55

Mr. Barthaway,

Exactly this kind of comment scares the crap out of me. We are NOT at war with "The Muslims" - there are one billion Muslims in the world and a few million in the US, most of whom live peaceful lives like the majority of Christians in the world. The overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose religiously based violence and practice a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion with a lot of similarities to Christianity (e.g., Jesus is also a prophet in Islam, the moral code is clearly similar). Killing of innocents (including women and children) is strictly forbidden in Islam and those Muslims who commit acts of terror are defying their religion.

If all you know about Islam is what you read about violent attacks in the newspaper, this is a sad state of affairs. Imagine if in another country, a Muslim knew only about Christians what they saw of US soldiers at Abu Ghraib? Would they conclude that Christianity is a violent religion which must be destroyed? Would they seek to get Christians out of their country? In some ways, this is happening in Iraq (Christians, who have lived alongside Muslims for over a thousand years, are increasingly being targeted). It just shows how dangerous such religious intolerance is.

(By the way, in many other majority Muslim countries, like Egypt, Muslims and Christians live together peacefully without major incident).

In the US, a country founded on religious freedom and equality, people of all religions have a right to live peacefully. The solution to this confrontation between Christians and Muslims isn't to target Muslims, but to strengthen tolerance and show that the US is not fighting Islam, but terror. If we choose to fight Islam, we will be declaring war on a sixth of humanity with horrific consequences for ourselves and the world.

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