I select movies each week to put on my Netflix cue based on some reviews I read in a cursory manner. Months later, they show up for me to watch and I generally have little idea what they are about unless it was a major movie like Star Wars or Spotlight. When a movie called War Room arrived, my reaction was “Oh boy, a good blow ‘em up movie.” That assumption was grossly wrong as it was a movie about a family healed by Christian faith, which started me focusing on faith and God.
I grew up among Jews who often questioned the tolerance of Christians in our society. Once I broke free of that thinking and got more involved in the Republican Party, I experienced Gentiles who had a great love for Jews. They were befuddled by why more Jews did not embrace the Republican Party since they thought our underlying values of family, education, charity and entrepreneurial success were more akin to Republicans than Democrats.
It became clear to me and many people who had like thinking that the issue was faith and God. We think that people who have religious faith and belief in God are our real soul-mates no matter the religion, not the people who question religion or God. Thus, our concern today as Jews is not the people who regularly attend church services or profess their belief in God, but the ones who don’t. That is not to say that all people who attend regular religious services are all good or that the ones who do not are all bad; it is just that their behavior is on a bell curve and it is shifted to the better for church-goers. We would prefer that someone who has a challenge with the use of drugs attend a church or synagogue-based program to heal as opposed to a soulless government program.
Which brings us to the question of what in the world is going on with people of the Islamic faith? And that begs another question: why do some of our political leaders in the West make up excuses for the ill-behavior of the Muslims? There were 452 suicide terror attacks in the world last year and 450 were promulgated by Muslims. Immediately some clueless elected official runs to a microphone and insults us by stating that this latest heinous act is not representative of all Muslims. We know that, but we also know we have not heard anybody of recent murdering people and saying “In the name of our Lord Jesus” or “Holy Moses or “Here’s to Buddha.” If someone says they have pledged allegiance to ISIS or yells out “Allahu Akbar,” it is a definite signal they are doing this murderous act in the name of the religion in which they believe and follow.
It has become fashionable on the left, particularly among college professors to develop distorted statistics showing these Muslims are just a pittance of the murders done. Referring to above, very few if any of the others are done in the name of their religion. It baffles an observer why these people are so possessed to defend people who are against the vast majority of liberal orthodoxy like women’s rights, homosexuality, gay marriage and on and on. The conceived explanation is their favoring a perceived underdog. Or maybe it is anyone challenging the Christian-based society they live in is alright with them. These people would never jump so readily to the defense of Evangelical Christians.
What would cause the Mayor of Cologne, who is a woman, to tell the women of her city that “It is always possible to keep a certain distance that is longer than an arm’s length” after rampaging Muslim immigrants accosted and raped her female residents on New Year’s Eve? If a male elected official in America made that insipid and deplorable statement, he would be in instant political oblivion. Nothing like blaming the victim. Once again, it was done so as to not offend Muslims or state that followers of Islam are in anyway bad people.
The mayor of Philadelphia came out even stupider after a man shot one of his officers and then stated he was a follower of ISIS. Jim Kenney, who should be impeached, did not defend his police force. Instead he lectured us about how this was not about Islam, when the perpetrator insisted it was all about that.
This has caused leaders in Europe to allow unfettered immigration of Muslims into their countries with no history or plan to integrate them into their culture. The results have been left on the streets of Paris and Brussels. While a call by an American leader to patrol Muslim neighborhoods may be over the top, our president’s callous disregard of the fear being created in our society and his unwillingness to address the issue or call it by its rightful name, Islamic terror, is far worse.
We have had these attacks going on since at least 1979. Our political leaders immediately warn us about not displaying intolerance for Muslims instead of confronting the problem. President Obama spoke of that in the State of the Union address. Why was he not railing about the fact that in the United States there are four times as many anti-Semitic acts recorded as anti-Muslim acts? Why do these people keep warning us against hating Muslims or acting out when there is no evidence of such?
There is only one conclusion I came to and that is that these elected leaders of the left don’t really understand religion or God. Their catering to these Muslim misfits needs to stop.
We, who actively practice religion and believe in God, understand that as long as they placate these Muslims they will only be enablers and we will never have peace in the world. Isn’t that what we all want, including the vast majority of followers of Islam?