Religious War

It has been over twelve years since the twin towers in New York fell victim to a terrorist attack.  We have had several terrorist attacks before and after the towers fell.    Islamic extremists are planning and committing these terrorist attacks.

The Middle East is in terrible shape.  We hear of the problems in Syria, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.  We lost people in Benghazi, Libya a year ago and no one has been held accountable in any way. 

We are concerned with human rights, but choices seem to be dictators or Muslim Sharia law.  If we could replace the brutal dictators with democratic republics, it would be great, but Muslims seem to take over every time a dictator is eliminated. 

What are the objectives of the Muslim religion?  It is clear the objective is to convert everyone to Islam and observe Sharia law worldwide.   I know this is not a politically correct statement in a country where we advocate everyone should be free to practice the religion of their choosing.  The problem is assuming people of every religion agree with freedom of choice. 

The means used to achieve these Muslim objectives is where it gets fuzzy.  Most religions have missionaries and this is good.  We advocate separation of church and state and have taken it to an extreme that would appall our founding fathers.  The Muslims clearly do not agree with this as shown by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  I heard people say the Muslim Brotherhood would never be a political party and could not win if they did put forward a political candidate.  How naive can someone be?  How did that work out in Egypt?

Jehad is defined as, “a holy war undertaken as a sacred duty by Muslims.”  How many Muslims feel this way?  When the Muslim religion leads to a civil war, people die.  This is obviously not just the action of a few extremists.  The Muslim leaders apparently condone and support these wars. 

When it comes to terrorist attacks, it become more personal to us.  We blame them on a few Islamic extremists, but right or wrong, these acts and extremists led us into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I have heard many times how 90% of Muslims are peace-loving people.  Maybe we should ask some of the people dying in the civil wars about this.  Maybe we should stop supplying weapons to fuel these wars. 

I have one other question.  I will pick on Lutherans since I happen to be a Lutheran.  If a small percentage of Lutherans were planning or committing terrorist acts in the name of their religion, I would expect other Lutherans to talk them out of committing any violent acts or turn them in to the authorities.  This does not seem to happen with Muslims in spite of how nice they act with non-Muslims.  Since I believe actions speak louder than words, I question if a greater percentage of Muslims and Muslim leaders are sympathetic with the terrorists and believe in Jihad.  I hope not, but the Muslim community and Muslim leaders must prove me wrong with actions and not just words. 

We need to face the fact that we are in a religious war.  We will be dealing with this war for decades.  Do you remember when President Bush predicting this war on terror would last for decades?  Until we recognize this war on terror is a religious war, we will continue to prolong the war.