moral equivalence

Submitted by D. Saltsgaver (United States), Jan 13, 2012 at 21:59

I utterly and completely reject this writer's bizarre suggestion that Christians hate Muslims and that all Muslims hate Christians. The fact is that the Government of the United States is not a Christian government. It is a secular government, committed by its very Constitution to the idea, practice, and reality of religious freedom and tolerance for all religions no matter how different from that of our demographic majority. The vast majority of Americans are Christians, although many do not practice the majority religion at all, and would be more correctly described as proto-Christian or Christian-agnostics. The Holy Scriptures of our Christian majority, as did our Lord in his carnate person, called Christ, the Annointed One, command us to love our enemies and to pray for them. Any Christian who espouses hate for Muslim people on the basis of that individual's religion risks bringing judgment upon himself, and does so utterly without warrant of Christian scripture. As American citizens, we nevertheless can make and we do make just war on those who first declare and make war on us and our nation unjustly and without provocation, even though the majority of our citizens are Christian by professed faith. There is absolutely nothing inconsistent in defending one's nation and the requirements of a Christian life or the Christian faith.

In reply to this writer, I would remind him that the hostilities and hatreds between Muslims and Hindus on the Indian subcontinent are ancient, legendary, and undisputed, not to mention, ongoing. Further, these predations were historically attributable almost entirely to Islamic aggresion and hegemonic war against Hindus.

As Americans we have the right, duty, and obligation to defend our nation, and no discrepancy or conflict whatsoever exists between those rights and duties, and those posed to the adherents of the majority religion in our country. You therefore, accuse Christian Americans of having hate in their hearts, but how can you credibly discern what lies in the hearts of Christians in any country simply by such a brazen assumption. You cannot, because you've presumed to know what you cannot know by definition. Muslims have shown us unreasoning and indiscriminate hate by bringing violence to our people in the name of Allah. Compare that to the commandments of our Lord, Jesus, the Annointed One, the True Son of God, who taught us to "love ye one another." Christ's instructions to those who profess to follow him were neither optional nor conditional. We will continue our just war against our enemies, even though with every passing day, we can no longer deny that our enemy is a religion, and that religion is Islam. While Islam is indeed our enemy, we recognize that not all Muslims have joined in the Islamic Jihad, and that is a significant part of the just war our Christian faith permits us.

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