Dear editor:
If a person desired to spread a religion around the world, what would be the best way to do this? Would it be to cause a great fear and a loathing of that faith, or would it be to show it as beneficial and glorious?
If a group desired to destroy a religion, what would be the most thorough way to do this? Would it be to claim to follow that religion, and then to cause others to abhor it by practices that cause the majority to see it as a threat?
Those who claim to follow Islam, and then who cause peace-loving persons to recoil at the murderous brutality in the name of the deity of Islam, are working to see it banned, if not destroyed. Every time a murder is committed invoking the name of Islam's deity, that blasphemes the deity of Islam using murder. Those who do these things cause the name of that deity "to stink" (to use a biblical expression). They seem to have no idea that they are working the very hardest against the spread of that faith, and are not only insulting the deity (claiming what is murder to be an act of war), but they are endangering others who are quite serious in the same faith, and who are innocent of violence.
What should be evident, but somehow isn't, is that when the reputation and person of a deity and his prophet need to be protected by followers, the deity is proven to be very weak. If the deity of any faith is endangered by any kind of action (like cartoons) that a human can do, obviously the deity doesn't have the power to defend himself, and needs human help. (This is akin to one error in Christianity: "We are His hands and His feet." That portrays the deity as in need of human help rather than of human representation.)
If a deity is insulted, and has no power to directly act against the insulter, the deity is impotent. (Of course, the deity might decide to not act against the person at that time; what human has the right to rush the deity that is acting "too slowly" in the mind of the human?)
Advocates of a faith who don't have the bravery to speak up against those who blaspheme the deity within their faith (by attaching murderous behavior to the deity and hypersensitivity to human insults), prove that they don't really care about the faith. I am not Muslim; must I speak up against the behaviors of followers of Islam who blaspheme Islam by openly portraying its deity as impotent and an advocate of murder, hostage-taking and violence, with shouts of his greatness?
The word "Islam" is related to "shalom," meaning "peace." If certain followers of this faith destroy peace in order to show "how great" their deity is, and if suicide bombings are right, there is no connection to Avraham/Ibrahim. He risked his life to save others. He believed God.
James Wilson
Hot Springs
Editorial on 01/25/2015