Terrorism Has No Religion

There really is nothing one can write that will adequately express what we are feeling. Everything is wrong. Everything. Nothing is right in this moment.

As the details pour out and the reactions and analysis flow forth in a steady stream, we start with anguish, sorrow, hurt and prayers (if you are the praying sort) or strong thoughts for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

We condemn wholeheartedly these terrorist acts committed by Daesh (ISIS) and their horrific statement issued in support of why they did what they did. We are not reading from the same playbook. We are not on the same team.

Others say they are beyond statements of condemnation, saying they don’t identify one iota with those so-called Muslims who commit acts of terrorism and violence.

All of it I understand.

I understand and agree with Patheos Muslim contributor Leanne Scorzoni, who posted this in a status update:

If the perpetrators called themselves [sic] Muslim, then I hope they’re all dead, courtesy of French military and police. I hope the bodies are left to bleed out in the streets, set on fire, and then just swept into a dust pan somewhere. I don’t care what country they were originally from, I don’t care how hard their lives were, I don’t care what terrible thing happened when they were five. I know too many refugees and immigrants and native born people who go through hardship and tragedy and change just fine, or if they struggle, none of them have ever planned a country-wide destruction of others.

I’m sick to death of “Yes, but…” That somehow because they identify with our “team” we can’t say what we really want to say. No, not all Muslims are lunatics murdering people because I AM one, and I just had dinner with a few of them. But like the Catholic Church I was raised in, that for years didn’t want to acknowledge that SOME clergy hurt and sexually abuse children, SOME Muslims mix their ignorance and regressive cultural views into their religion and spew poison and violence through their twisted interpretation. The lack of acknowledgment is the biggest and most helpless insult to the victims and the people who love them.

I don’t want the “Yes, but…” I don’t want religious quotes or endless discussions of theology. I want the acknowledgment that they did evil and should be brought to justice, or shot like a dog with rabies and thrown in a Dumpster as the waste of the life they are. As always, I point to the uncle of the two Boston Marathon bombers. His first live television comments in Boston weren’t to call for a conspiracy theory, it wasn’t to pull out a religious text and quote Scripture. He said “My prayers are with the families of those kids, and my nephews are cowards and losers, and they deserve to die.”

I understand and agree with Dawud Walid, executive director of CAIR-MI (and an occasional Patheos Muslim contributor), when he wrote this in a status update:

2 suicide bombers killed over 100 Turks last month. There was no global outcry, even among many Muslims. Yesterday, dozens were killed in Beirut, and many Muslims were silent on that.

Now, all the Muslims are showing sympathy for the Paris attack.

We should speak out against all treachery including Paris, but I see a couple of things that really bother me:

1) Many Muslims crave to be accepted by the West, white folks in particular, and feel compelled to show more outrage for non-Muslim white lives killed than Muslims. This reflects how much, or should I say how little, we value ourselves.

2) Sectarianism lifts its head up in which some Muslims are ambivalent when Muslims not in their camp are slaughtered. The statements are like, well you know the people there do support this group or that group.

We have a serious problem as American Muslims, and it’s not extremist groups. It’s our collective psyche. We have to repair that firstly.

And, I understand and agree with Brie Loskota, managing director at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, who wrote this in a status update:

Really over the self-righteous tragedy competition going on. If you can only talk about a particular tragedy when it hits a less recognized or privileged group, and as soon as one hits a privileged society or group you just can’t bring yourself to say anything about it in particular and instead have to include every other tragedy in the world or universalize it and basically trot out a lefty version of All lives matter, there is simply something off in your moral compass.

But I think most of all, right now, in this very moment, what I believe most is that terrorism has no religion. That there is too much evil and hate growing in this world, and we need to commit more than ever to really listening to each other, leading with love and drawing on our common humanity to find our way forward.

I don’t have the magic words. There are no easy solutions. These are dark and awful and hateful times. These are also times filled with great resilience and hope. I look at my three children, and my hope lies with them. My hope lies in the life I live and the hope that those I interact with will see honesty in me and my beliefs.

As a dear childhood friend of mine said: “The followers of Christianity, Judaism, other religions and even those who don’t … follow a religion would agree based on interactions with the millions and millions of normal Muslims around the world [that the horrors inflicted by ISIS is not the Islam practiced by the majority of Muslims].

What these extremists did was absolutely terrible. May God bless the people whose lives were senselessly taken yesterday, and may He help Paris and the rest of us heal. ‪#‎TerrorismHasNoReligion”