I don’t usually do political posts (unless they’re environmentally related) and I’m not a Muslim, but with Donald Trump seemingly trying to turn the entire country against Muslims, I thought it was important to say something.

I’ll get into how Muslims helped saved my life in a bit, but first, as I said, I am not Muslim, nor is anyone in my family. However, I am writing this because I also don’t believe that an entire religious group should be condemned for the actions of an extremist few. Calling all Muslims terrorists because of some radical extremists who distort the true teaching of Islam is like calling all Christians members of the KKK.

The vast majority of the followers of Islam are just normal, peace-loving people. The Muslim Bible itself, the Quran actually forbids killing. It also does not promote the killing of Christians and Jews as some Islamaphobes believe, quite to the contrary in fact. The Quran actually states that faithful Christians and Jews will reach paradise as well, so long as they remain faithful. “Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians, and those Sabeaans, whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness–their wage waits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow.” The Quran even forbids forcing Islam on others, stating that people must embrace the religion of their own freewill. Terrorists choose to ignore these teachings of Islam.

Terrorists are not true Muslims, they are simply terrorists. They twist the words and traditions of Islam to fit their own desires, hiding behind the warped religion they have created and trying to force it on everyone else. They completely ignore the Muslim laws laid out by the Quran or will take single Quran sentences out of context to try and use religion to justify their violence (much in the same way the KKK cherry picks singles lines out of the Christian Bible to try and justify their racist acts.) Terrorists are not true Muslims, and they are certainly not what the majority of Muslims believe.

Muhammad Ali, one of America’s most famous Muslims, responded to the extremists who bombed Paris by saying: “I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world,” he said. “True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.”

Terrorists are not true Muslims. Terrorists follow what they want, not what the Quran actually tells them. Such is exactly why Mr. Trump’s plan to prevent Muslims from entering the country is doomed to fail. Mr. Trump’s plan consists of having customs workers ask immigrants if they are Muslim, and deny those who answer “yes.” True Muslims who have no terrorist intentions are the ones who will not lie about their religion. They will honestly admit their Islamic faith. It is the terrorists who will lie. When asked if they are Muslim, they will not hesitate to answer no, because in their own skewed version of Islam, their terrorist actions are justified, so they will do anything to carry them out, including lying about their faith. Mr. Trump’s plan will do nothing other than succeed in keeping out good Muslims, while allowing terrorists to pass through, because they will have no trouble lying about their religion.

While most of Mr. Trump’s ranting focuses on Muslims from outside the country who want to enter the US, some of it has been aimed at those of our own citizens who practice Islam. Granted Mr. Trump has now started to back off “homegrown” Muslim Americans, but the damage has already been done, with Trump briefly considering shutting down Mosques and requiring Muslim Americans to be registered in a database. It sounds very reminiscent of the WWII era when our country rounded up any American citizens of Japanese ancestry, ordered them out of their homes, and herded them into internment camps simply because, as George Takai (the actor who played Sulu in Star Trek and whose family was forced into an internment camp when he was a child) put it, they “happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor.” I would have hoped that we as a country would have a matured a bit since that time.

Not only are Mr. Trump’s comments racist, they’re also dangerous. They are exactly what terrorist organizations want. Terrorists can use Mr. Trump’s words to recruit more people to their cause by making people believe that there is a vast hatred of Muslims in America. Words like Mr. Trump’s also alienate the rest of the country from US Muslims, indirectly encouraging acts of violence against innocent those Muslims by Islamaphobics.

Lest we forget, those Muslim Americans are just as much a part of this country as Christian, Jewish, or any other Americans. They fight for it in the military and die protecting it, such as those in the picture of Muslim military tombstones at the top of this post, killed while fighting against terrorism. Muslims also helped make our country. It is believed that Bampett Muhammad and Yusuf Ben Ali, who fought in the Revolutionary War under George Washington, were Muslims. Muslims were also in the military fighting to free the slaves during the US Civil War, with Muhammad Ali ibn Said having been a sergeant in the famous all-African-American 55th Massachusetts Regiment in 1863.

So back to the title of this posting, how did Muslims help save my life? Well, over the summer when I broke my face and almost died, some of the doctors and nurses who saved my life were Muslims. One nurse in particular (and yes, she wore a hijab headscarf) on the night shift was so very wonderful and kept me amused with her adorable sense of humor (exactly the medicine I needed at the time). Just a perfectly normal American nurse who happens to wear a headscarf while doing her best to help the patients.

Copyright © Amber Reifsteck ~ The Woodland Elf

The information provided on this website is for general information purposes only. If you choose to rely on the information on this website, you do so at your own risk and you assume responsibility for the results. (Full disclaimer here)

Ads by Google

Related posts:

The Real Halloween The Creative Life Is The Creative Life Lonely? 5 Myths About the Creative Life