As of late, there has been an increase of the number of negative stories involving Muslims, the religion of Islam, and their holy book the Qur’an. Why is there such an uproar as of late? Do we have a pandemic on our hands? It seems like there has been a great fear started, but why?
A lot of this started when the there was a proposal for a Mosque near the Ground Zero memorial site. We can all thank Newt Gingrich for bringing this to our attention. Incidentally, Newt Gingrich has been getting a great following by the rise of the Tea Party as of late. Sarah Palin and Newt have the biggest Tea Party “Bounce” when it comes to candidate support. So, it would be logical to see that their message is being favored amongst the Tea Party supporters. The more they speak out against Islam, the more the Tea Party is inclined to follow it, causing a powerful anti-Islam movement to get started. It’s a sad spiral of hate proving even more that true Christianity is forgotten.
As the controversy and attention of the “World Trade Center Mosque” was being fueled by the media, there were others that started to take a stand against Islam by trying to start an international day to burn their holy book, the Qur’an. As anticipated, the pastor did not follow through with it, but there were copycats that started to spring up online as well as in a Christian church in Tennessee. Now a small town in up-state New York is all of a sudden claiming that a Muslim cemetery is illegal and that they need to exhume the graves and move them.
Take a moment to think about it, did people forget that there was already a Mosque at the World Trade Center? What do they feel about the people practicing Islam in the Pentagon? That was bombed as well, remember? Some people even believe that President Obama practices Islam due to his middle name and their unfounded and innate hate and angst towards him… Obviously this isn’t the case. It seems like there is a very selective memory about the past, what was there, what happened, and people are focusing on what is happening in the present in relation to some extremists actions and then generalizing those actions amongst the whole.
Can this snowball of hate be stopped? When? How?
As in every religion or political faction, there are extremists. Don’t condemn a society of over one billion Muslims because the actions of a few. If members of the Tea Party keeps on touting their Christian faith and God as their guidance, maybe they need to look a bit closer to what Christianity really means and what Jesus taught about tolerance and forgiveness.