A church pastor in Florida burned a Quran. It's a stupid and sick thing to do. Burning Qurans is not something that I want America to be known for. It's an insult to all Muslims and it demonstrates a level of intolerance the large majority of Americans oppose.
But then this happens. A mob of 'average citizens' in Afghanistan storms a UN compound and randomly kill UN workers over what an unrelated person did on the other side of the planet. Let's see. Burning a book (okay, a holy book!) versus killing innocent people who are in your country as volunteers to help rebuild your country/society. Which is a worse offense? Maybe I should ask, which ought to be the worse offense in a sane world? This is soooo far from 'civil'. In fact, it seems to be the very definition of barbaric.(Look it up in the dictionary if you don't believe me.)
When I hear Muslims call Americans intolerant (for things like wanting to understand what's behind radical Islam for example) and then I hear about a mob of average muslims murdering innocent people (who were actually loving on them, resepecting them and sacrificially demonstrating compassion toward them) because of what some totally unrelated loon in Florida did I wonder where the balance is?
If Islam is truly a religion of peace, how could Muslims do something like this to innocent people who are sacrificially and selflessly(!) helping them? I haven't heard yet but I don't expect all the murdered UN workers to have been Americans. What does that say about the Muslim form of justice? Even if they were Americans, the mob had no way of knowing it in advance so they obviously didn't care who they killed. For all they knew, some of the murdered UN workers could have even been Muslims too. I doubt those in the mob had any way of knowing that either.
Muslims cannot call it justice to murder innocent people. Real justice doesn't work that way. Real moral justice isn't delivered at random. In fact, the Quran is very strong on delivering harsh justice ... to those who committed an offense. Cut off the hand of a thief, lashing, etc. It's all done to specific people for their offenses. Justice cannot be random and still be justice.
So, there's nothing just or moral about what that mob did in the name of their religion of peace. If there's real peace in their hearts as so many Muslims claim, how can peace-loving Muslims murder someone engaged in trying to make their lives better? In what nature of religion is such a thing possible, much less be acceptable?
If Muslims want non-Muslims to believe that Islam is religion of peace they have an odd way of trying to prove it. The mob made a point for sure. I think I get it now.
What's interesting about my religion and ironic about this circumstance is that I'm called to forgive and to love those in that mob anyway. As you might imagine, I'm struggling with that right now but it's what I must try to do. It's what I'm accountable to do. So, how do I accomplish that? What will my reaction be? Well, it starts by: 1) forgiving them even though I don't want to and 2) praying for them to find real peace and learn to appreciate people who sacrificially try to help them in their challenging lives.
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