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Fear Cannot Take Hold When Holding to the Love of TruthReader comment on item: What Actually Causes American Fear of Islam and Muslims? Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Feb 18, 2015 at 17:09 The six billion person question should be: what causes fear, of any sort, in the first place? There is the fear of water (I can't swim), the fear of spiders (I don't want to be bit), the fear of anything not understood (I do not know why). Fear, by one definition, is essentially the anxiety of not being in control of one's circumstances and surroundings, from a minimal stretch of emotion to the extreme where death is the ultimate obstacle to an understanding of life and its fragility. It is internal, proximal and functional to the mortal human condition. Primal fear is the deep seated sense of these things and that is what ISIS/ISIL/IS preys upon; essentially the fear of death. But here is a paradox; ISIS/ISIL/IS practitioners of terror have their own fears as well. Were this not so, they would not have cause for the destruction and fears of death they project to their proposed victims. What do they fear? Easy: what they feared when they killed the professing Christian faith of those children in Iraq and the others elsewhere is the love they cannot share/do not share in their beliefs. That is the basis of ultimate death, the second death of Christian tenets, that love which they cannot conquer. So, if America, being a Christian based nation (so called, since the leader of the free world no longer holds to that faith), presents as a nation that fears the ISIS/ISIL/IS interruption of the former freedoms now being threatened even from America's own government (and there are malefactors currently plotting those very actions), what message does that send to a world that desperately seeks peace and freedom and the leaders of the Islamic revolution are intent in depriving the world of any respite to that end? If truth is not sought out in the true faith that America was formed in, then fear has every basis to take hold and destroy the inner being that no longer holds to the courage that helped found this nation; a simple cause and effect. Love of God was the basis to start America. Love of God cannot be conquered; but it can be replaced, a choice all too easily made when truth is forgotten, and worse, no longer sought after. Fear results. Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (56) on this item
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All materials by Daniel Pipes on this site: © 1968-2024 Daniel Pipes. daniel.pipes@gmail.com and @DanielPipes Support Daniel Pipes' work with a tax-deductible donation to the Middle East Forum.Daniel J. Pipes (The MEF is a publicly supported, nonprofit organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Tax-ID 23-774-9796, approved Apr. 27, 1998. For more information, view our IRS letter of determination.) |