As one who believes in promoting good and extinguishing evil, I find myself again pondering how to articulate our wrestling after another terrorist attack… I hate evil. I know I’m not alone in that. As articulated frequently here, there aren’t a lot of things I hate — and remember, I try to only hate what I perceive God hating (which, by the way, does not include any people or people group) — but… I do hate what motivates a person to intentionally take the life of the innocent.
This is not about anything else. It’s not about gun control, foreign policy, or any kind of phobia. It’s not about statistics, economics, or any long term research study.
This is about an organized group of people within one religion, who have embraced the command included in their holy book to kill the person who does not believe what they do, arguably believing that their call to combat is against those fighting against the established Muslim state.
This perceived call to combat is not a new idea; it’s not something that instantly arose when Pres. Bush grabbed that blow horn amid the rubble and boldly announced that “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” In fact, in his October 2001 video, terrorist Osama bin Ladin mentioned the “humiliation and disgrace” tormenting Islam for “more than 80 years.” He was referring to an 1918 Islamic defeat of the once mighty Ottoman Empire.
My intent is not to dive into all aspects of Islam or all that drives some in their hatred of the Western world. My perspective is no doubt limited at best, as I’d pose, most of ours is. My point, no less, is to acknowledge our struggle in solving this problem and extinguishing the evil. On one hand, some pronounce the need to go after the terrorists in their terrorist-hosting countries and blow the crap out of them; on the other hand, some boast that Islam is an entirely peaceful religion and we just need to love them better.
Yikes. I unfortunately see two groups of people telling us what we most want to hear instead of really wrestle with the truth. They then lure the rest of us into adopting their manipulated perspective instead of carefully examining all the ins, outs, and relevant aspects of this problem — even though solution only comes via correctly handling the truth. Yes, most Muslims are peaceful. But also yes, many Muslims are bent on killing us. Both are true.
This manipulative attempt seems in constant motion. Look, for example, at how the concluding report on what happened in Benghazi was handled this week, saturated by media attempts to lure us to a skewed side. I borrow from Issie Lapowsky, an articulate staff writer for WIRED.com:
“If you were to read the way the left wing and right wing media were covering the newly released report on the attacks in Benghazi today, you could be forgiven for thinking they were referring to two entirely different documents…
If you’re an American voter, trying to decide whether or not [Hillary] Clinton was responsible for the deaths of four Americans in Libya in 2012 — which was, after all, one of the chief missions of the House Select Committee on Benghazi — which story do you believe? The answer: Whichever one you want.
It is the beauty and the tragedy of the Internet age. As it becomes easier for anyone to build their own audience, it becomes harder for those audience members to separate fact from fiction from the gray area in between. As media consumers, we now have the freedom to self-select the truth that most closely resembles our existing beliefs, which makes our media habits fairly good indicators of our political beliefs.”
Look at what’s happening; whether we wrestle with Benghazi or the terror that happened Tuesday in Istanbul or this morning in Afghanistan, the media fuels our increasing inability to separate fact from fiction. They — and thus we — are skewing objectivity.
Skewed objectivity is not objectivity. Self-selected truth is not truth. We thus have to find a more authentic, effective way to deal with evil.
Respectfully…
AR