Well here we go again same manure different shovel on the whole Islamist issue: Are they all terrorists?
In recent days and weeks London has been hit by a number of terrorist attacks from ISIS. Once more the anti Muslim rhetoric is get rid of Islam, ban Islam, deport all Muslims or ban Muslims from immigrating to Australia or other western countries.
Australia has been fortunate so far in that our intelligence agencies seem to be a few steps ahead of the sleeper cells and emergent individuals that want to take up the ISIS and Islamic State’s cause. Is there any real difference between the extremist Islamic groups? Not really. All these groups have the same end goal; kill and take control. One should wonder what would happen in the middle East if two of these groups gained political control in the same region at the same time. Could they or would they get along with each other?
Considering that each of these terror groups have a very specific view of the Qua-ran that they don’t appear to compromise on; I would wonder how that would work. Extreme Islam seems more hell bent on ridding the world of moderate Islam than it is on bringing down western civilisation… Of course after the extremists run out of moderate Muslims, we’re next! Thankfully that will take a long time.
Mean while back in the West all the right wing anti Islamic advocates seem only to have the ability to focus on the west at the expense of the middle East situation and how many moderate Muslims are dying at the hands of extremists. When terrorists bomb concerts as they did the Ariana Grande concert there is rarely if ever a mention of what faiths the victims belong to. I posed this challenge to Australian Liberty Alliance’s Kirralie Smith on more than one occasion. Kirralie is also of the opinion that Christian’s can’t be radicalised and couldn’t become extremist… Kirralie apparently has a B.Th; I wonder where she was during the church history lectures. But I digress!
My point here is there seems to be an ethnocentric flavour or bias in both social media and how commentators are reporting these tragic circumstances… leaving out specific details or not even bothering to research the matter at all. What we are getting appears to be the same kind of lopsided reporting that Al–Qaeda propagates.
I tried an experiment the other day where I posted to a friend of mine who is part of a few anti Islamic groups that want Islam banned from Australia. What I posted was from https://www.phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/statements.htm . What I attempted to do was expose the rhetoric of these anti Islamic groups and show the similarity of their near sited comments to those of the Nazi’s. So far without exception all those who saw my post in Social media thought I was linking Islamic terrorism with Nazism. To be fair the link between Nazism and extremist Islamic rhetoric has a strong correlation; however so does the anti Islamist rhetoric! Forget about the superior race and master race stuff and simply read the hatred the Nazi’s had for the Jews, how they justified that hatred and how in the end the extermination of the Jews was the next logical step that didn’t even need qualification or explanation… it was simply a fact; it was truth! I don’t see much difference between the opposing sides opinions or attitudes of the anti-Islam movement when compared to Nazism.
The real victim here is the truth! Truth in the sense that facts and information are openly and fairly distributed by at least one side ( that should mean us) so that we at least get a fair balanced view of the situation. Sure everyone could go and read a Qua-ran for themselves however that isn’t as simple as it sounds; the Qua-ran isn’t written in chronological order however following the context is the same as any literary work if you read each section and follow its context you might be surprised to find that some of the verses quoted by its opponents are quoting it out of context. Quoting out of context is also a very common weapon of anti-Christians so that even when you do properly cite a text they ignore the context as if the rules don’t apply to them. Try and explain this to them and they start staring blankly like deer stunned in headlights, or they hyper-focus on their specific information that blocks out any other interpretation and ignores context altogether.
In the same way the extremist’s on the other side insist on a single literal translation of the text (Christian fundamentalist’s are guilty of the same thing) However in Islam extremists may spend thousands of hours memorising the Qua-ran verbatim but lack any real understanding of what the text means. In Islam comparatively like some Christian groups there is little or no thought put into understanding the text and its deeper meaning; the text itself is really only a means to and end or a justification of a belief, a judgement or an action. There is really no room for discussion debate or dialogue.
In conclusion both fore and against Islam are guilty of the same flaws and blind rhetoric. You can’t argue with their extremism because it simply reinforces their beliefs and resolve; the rest of us are apparently ignorant rock apes who haven’t discovered fire yet with Ostrich like necks and heads that we keep firmly entrenched in the sand! They simply can’t hear past their own rhetoric and think the rest of us have to join their Jihad or anti-Jihad before we are enlightened.
I know it may sound like I am repeating myself, (and I am) however One way or the other both extremist Islam and extremist anti-Islam have the same outcome; loss of freedom, loss of the right to practice one’s religion freely and openly and persecution of anyone who tries to take a moderate middle road approach. That means we all lose, the so called winners only really have a short lived victory before they become the source of tyranny and oppression that the masses will once more have to fight!
The Calvinist 
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