Wednesday, July 18, 2007

War of Words: "Terrorists" = "Muslims"?

I was watching cable news this afternoon, and there was a segment on terrorism in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the potential for terrorism here in the United States. And I got to thinking ...

Check it -- I took the newscaster's narration and replaced "terrorists" with "fanatical Muslims," "terrorism" with "radical Islam" and "suicide bombers" with "suicidal Muslims" ... and you know what? It was still completely accurate.

Go ahead, try it. Go to any news story about terrorism and replace the words, and the story stays the same.

The fact that these terms can be synonymous, doesn't that alarm you?

It should.

It seems Islam is the only religion that will kill you for not doing what they tell you.

I've read parts of the Quran (translations, though, so I have to take that into account), and it's pretty violent. Some people will tell you the Bible is violent, too, but I haven't seen any murderous Bible-thumpers lately.

Left-wingers will tell you to fear the "Christian right," because Christian right-wingers oppose things like sexual deviance and abortion, but I'm not worried about Oral Roberts trying to cut my head off.

When the Jehovah's come to my door trying to get me to convert, I can politely tell them to get lost and they don't blow up my house.

And you can tell me that Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist, too, but he wasn't. He was nothing more than a nutjob who blew up a building because he was pissed off. He didn't have some religious ideology behind his act, he was just a nut.

It's only these radical Muslims that are dangerous in the core of their belief system. And, the worst part is that I don't even know how long I'll have to use the word "radical," because I haven't heard a whole lot of "non-radical" Muslims reject such behavior -- at least not loudly enough, and not to the right people.

All I know is that if Islam truly is not supposed to be violent, then average Muslims better start speaking up and help us eradicate the bad ones, because if full-blown jihad breaks out I'm not asking questions before swinging my sword.

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