IGNORING PERSONAL BIGOTRY

Oh, how we American "purists" love to heap piles of our "pure" criticism on Moslems.  The "purist of the pure" here identify all Moslems as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.  What if I were to be so blatant as to tell you that Islam is a religion of Peace?  Would you cringe?  Would that be impossible for you to process?  If you absolutely cannot accept the peace identification with the faith of Moslems, then it is an indication of how completely brainwashed you are, and perhaps more importantly, how easily you can fall prey to any prejudice, especially religious bigotry.

While the history of Mohammed and Islam are somewhat different and easily misunderstood by Jews and Christians, the majority of Moslems are people of peace.  True, many have been led in a direction away from the true precepts of Islam, there is also ample evidence to support the reaction that many of that faith have in the way Christians and Jews have historically mistreated Moslem people.  In truth, there has been a history of centuries of looking down at Moslem culture and people.  We do this even as we ignore the major contribution of Moslem culture, and the flowering culture that was flourishing while Christian peoples were languishing in a dark period in European history.  When the powerful nations of Europe evolved and became empires, they stomped heavily on Moslem people and raped them of much wealth and held them down in just about every way possible.

Even as we stepped on Moslems with our heavy Christian empire boots, we were always fighting among ourselves.  The history of the world is replete with Christian wars.  The brutality of Christians fighting Chrisitans and others is repulsive.  In southeastern colonial America, Christians nailed fellow Christians of a different denomination upside down on crosses.  The state of Maryland was formed so that Catholics would have a place to live in the strongly bigoted Protestant U.S.  The list of Christian on Christian atrocities is common in American history.  And the uncivilized treatment of Native Americans by Christians is clear and present in all of our U.S. history.  Indeed, the very existence of a wealthy American economy is built upon the stomping of American Indians, Hispanic Americans [especially Mexicans], and wars of both moral and questionable natures...World War I, World War II, but also wars against American Indians, Vietnam, Iraq, the Spanish-American War, taking of land from Mexico, invading the tiny island of Greneda, supporting horrible dictators like Somoza and Batista, ad infinitum.  Military-industrial wealth has been a big part of the economic "American dream."  We have left in our path destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of our "enemies" [which includes the very people who were here when Europeans landed in America].  The bringing of slaves to America, and the treatment of their anscestors is a sad, brutal history of the United States.  But we love to pound our chests in celebrating our own "heritage" and think of ourselves as pure and a leader of the "free world."  That free world meant white, Europeans and their descendants in the United States.  Proud?  Do we truly and honestly recognize it in ourselves?

There are many faces of evil.  The terrorism of people of a radical brand of Islam is certainly an obvious face of evil.  But the face of evil marks much of our history in the U.S.  To me, even a worse face of history is shown by people who ignore their own atrocities and hide behind the mask of two-faced religion.  As we judge others, we Americans must first take a long, hard, honest look at ourselves and how we have terrorized people of many faiths and cultures ...and not always for noble reasons.  Any patriotic American must first have a clear understanding of the history and actions of our nation, both noble and ignoble.  It is far too easy to judge people who we view as "different" from ourselves.