By Bryan Hyde
Since the suspected bombers of the Boston Marathon were revealed to have been Muslims, a new wave of antiMuslim fear has been unleashed.
Once again my inbox is filling with email containing dire warnings of the danger that Islam poses to our freedoms. Taken as a whole, most commentaries amount to simple anti-Muslim screeds.
Most of them rely on shock words to promote broad-brush demonizing of all Muslims. All of them use deliberate distortion of many Muslim religious beliefs. An especially memorable commentary included was from a Dutch Member of Parliament, it ended with a call to “stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.”
Before digging the mote out of Islam’s eye we should remove a few beams from our own eye
How to “stop” Islam is left to the reader’s imagination, but before digging the mote out of Islam’s eye we should remove a few beams from our own eye.
If Muslims wish to destroy the remaining freedoms of average Americans, they’ll have to get in line behind our own government.
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After all, it wasn’t Islam that gave us a shadowy Federal Reserve banking system. Over the past 100 years this system has systematically inflated and debased our currency to where the dollar has lost more than 95% of its initial value.
Islam doesn’t seek to cripple our economy by substituting government bureaucratic intervention for the power of the free market.
Muslims didn’t create our incomprehensible income tax system that holds each American personally accountable to the Federal Government. They don’t operate the Internal Revenue Service that can take any of us from warm, well fed, and happy to cold, hungry and impoverished in a matter of hours.
Muslims aren’t the ones who are spying on our phone calls, e-mails and financial records looking for anything potentially incriminating. They don’t try to keep track of our every movement through inescapable surveillance.
They’re not the ones who created a compulsory school system aimed at creating obedient citizens and workers rather than freethinking individuals and entrepreneurs.
Muslims aren’t the ones requiring all airline passengers to submit to electronic strip searches or being fondled as a condition of traveling. They are not the ones drowning our society in a flood of sewage that enters our homes through television and computer screens.
It’s not the Muslims that are seeking to punish law abiding gun owners for acts that they have not committed. They weren’t the ones going door to door sticking guns in the face of innocent citizens last month in Boston.
Distasteful as Sharia law may appear to us, it doesn’t really sound all that far removed from our own ever-increasing laws, statutes, and regulations.
We can be punished financially or criminally for things like not having green enough grass in our yards, for building a fence on our own property without the proper permit, or for carrying a large amount of cash. These draconian laws appear to serve the needs of those in power and not the interests of the citizenry.
While we wring our hands over the Muslims, our own leaders are destroying our freedoms right under our noses and with our approval.
It always seems easier to blame others for our problems. Like any religion, Muslims have their troublemakers whose indefensible actions tarnish the reputations of more than a billion Muslims who’ve never harmed anyone.
Our own ignorance makes them an inviting target. But they are far from the greatest threat to the American way of life.
[Bryan Hydeis a news commentator and co-host of the Perspectives talk show on Fox News 1450 AM 93.1 FM.]
(Courtesy: StGeorgeUtah.com)
Since the suspected bombers of the Boston Marathon were revealed to have been Muslims, a new wave of antiMuslim fear has been unleashed.
Once again my inbox is filling with email containing dire warnings of the danger that Islam poses to our freedoms. Taken as a whole, most commentaries amount to simple anti-Muslim screeds.
Most of them rely on shock words to promote broad-brush demonizing of all Muslims. All of them use deliberate distortion of many Muslim religious beliefs. An especially memorable commentary included was from a Dutch Member of Parliament, it ended with a call to “stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.”
Before digging the mote out of Islam’s eye we should remove a few beams from our own eye
How to “stop” Islam is left to the reader’s imagination, but before digging the mote out of Islam’s eye we should remove a few beams from our own eye.
If Muslims wish to destroy the remaining freedoms of average Americans, they’ll have to get in line behind our own government.
Islam doesn’t seek to cripple our economy by substituting government bureaucratic intervention for the power of the free market.
Muslims didn’t create our incomprehensible income tax system that holds each American personally accountable to the Federal Government. They don’t operate the Internal Revenue Service that can take any of us from warm, well fed, and happy to cold, hungry and impoverished in a matter of hours.
Muslims aren’t the ones who are spying on our phone calls, e-mails and financial records looking for anything potentially incriminating. They don’t try to keep track of our every movement through inescapable surveillance.
They’re not the ones who created a compulsory school system aimed at creating obedient citizens and workers rather than freethinking individuals and entrepreneurs.
Muslims aren’t the ones requiring all airline passengers to submit to electronic strip searches or being fondled as a condition of traveling. They are not the ones drowning our society in a flood of sewage that enters our homes through television and computer screens.
It’s not the Muslims that are seeking to punish law abiding gun owners for acts that they have not committed. They weren’t the ones going door to door sticking guns in the face of innocent citizens last month in Boston.
Distasteful as Sharia law may appear to us, it doesn’t really sound all that far removed from our own ever-increasing laws, statutes, and regulations.
We can be punished financially or criminally for things like not having green enough grass in our yards, for building a fence on our own property without the proper permit, or for carrying a large amount of cash. These draconian laws appear to serve the needs of those in power and not the interests of the citizenry.
While we wring our hands over the Muslims, our own leaders are destroying our freedoms right under our noses and with our approval.
It always seems easier to blame others for our problems. Like any religion, Muslims have their troublemakers whose indefensible actions tarnish the reputations of more than a billion Muslims who’ve never harmed anyone.
Our own ignorance makes them an inviting target. But they are far from the greatest threat to the American way of life.
[Bryan Hydeis a news commentator and co-host of the Perspectives talk show on Fox News 1450 AM 93.1 FM.]
(Courtesy: StGeorgeUtah.com)