My uncle sends me conservative spam, and every tenth one is worth republishing. Here you go. I would alternately call this post "Why moderate Muslims can’t keep Islam from killing millions and threatening humanity as a modern-day, religious Nazism."
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
"Very few people were true Nazis "he said," but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."
We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.
Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant.
It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the "peaceful majority", the "silent majority", is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this – think about it – and send it on.
What each of the tyrants you mentioned above have in common is marriage of the church and the state. Once that connection is made it is easy to connect the economy and the state, the media and the state, and the private lives of individuals with the state.
What had set America apart was the deliberate separation of the state from media, church, and economy. But here, the economy fell first, in 1913 with the creation of the Fed and the IRS. Media and religion remain free, as they ought.
But it is wrong to fear Islamic Fundamentalists any more than Evangelical Fundamentalists who would use the power of the state to enforce a particular interpretation of morality. Such action is not the role of the state. And as a Christian, manipulation of the political mechanism for purposes of extending the gospel is anathema.
Be not afraid! Stand up for liberty!
Nathanael Snow
ndsnow@gmail.com
Hi Nathanael:
I must disagree with your analysis (although I definitely agree with your conclusion about church and state). The economy is by definition governed, whatever it is that enforces the rules of the economy is the government. The political/economic question is simply whether or not the government will be democratic or autocratic. The reason the Communist tyranny happened is NOT because of socialism, it was because of dictatorship.
There is one thing that all the crimes mentioned in the post had in common though: the idea that killing is a justified way to promote the good. That noxious idea is the engine of all genocides, of the killing fields in Cambodia, of the atomic holocaust in Hiroshima, of the Crusades, of the gassing of the Kurds. Christiandom (as opposed to the Gospel of Christ) drank the Constantinian kool aid of marrying church and state, instead of heading Jesus' instruction that His kingdom isn't of this world, that the kingdom isn't even visible to anyone who is not born of Spirit.
your friend
Keith
I like this article & have posted it on my own blog. I received it from a friend in my email & decided to see who else liked it enough to post.
Thanks for helping spread the word when good articles come out.
My blog is at http://voice4fact.blogspot.com/
in case you would like to see some of my other articles.