On our television screens we have recently seen ordinary looking individuals matter-of- factly informing us that they will behead persons they do not even know. Their faces are covered in black. Their eyes are vacant. But these are not deformed monsters or extraterrestrials. Such persons live among us. Most recently, these messengers of Allah plunged us several centuries down into the Middle Ages when heretics were burned at the stake.
This is not killing out of fear or necessity or for profit. To me this is total evil. Fanatics are ruthlessly enforcing religious doctrines like blasphemy and apostasy. This is behavior that intelligent human beings abandoned and left behind long ago. This heinous ideology is spreading and metastasizing like an epidemic, infecting more and more people and we do not seem to know how to counter it.
I believe we were wrong in not more widely publishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons for which journalists have died. We should have published these cartoons en masse to present a united front against this creeping ideology but we seem to have lost our moorings when it comes to what should be tolerated and what should not. In the name of tolerance we accept behavior that should be condemned.
We are retreating from asserting our beliefs and convictions just as Galileo was forced to retreat from his scientific observations because the Church ordered him to do so.
Some people like Sam Harris go even further in defending freedom of speech. He believes that Germany should not have enacted laws against holocaust denial because such statements should be answered by discourse not by legislation.
Some disenchanted Western recruits to Jihadism have started to preach a message of integration and are trying to dissuade young people who feel rejected and marginalized from falling prey to brainwashing and alluring promises of a noble martyrdom It is a good beginning. We should find more ways to persuade these young people that there are better goals to achieve. For an interesting example of this, take a look at Average Mohamed.
Your comments are encouraged and greatly appreciated.
Simone–You and your son-in-law, and all others who read your blogs are all fortunate. Although I’ve lived on the same block with you for a few decades, I really didn’t know you until after I started reading your blogs. Later is better than never.
They can be stark or light, but I love my Simone Says Saturday morning blogs!
Thank you, Simone, for giving me something to read that has been thoroughly researched. Yes, you have a point of view (which I happen to agree with), but you always present information to back up your feelings. I wish your blogs reached more people
I just have to say that Saudi Arabia has been doing the same things, and for roughly the same motivations, for quite a long time.
They have been spreading this ideology around the region and the world. They are where ISIS gets these ideas from. And the west has been selling them weapons and buying oil from them while they do it. We have to stop doing that.
The Muslim jihadists group embraced arm-fight and terrorism as a result from no-political option to solve their need for power to rule in their own countries. To them, they are fighting for a good cause. To others, they are evil doers.
Very interesting your website!