Muslims and Obama: Thoughts on the Current Issues

If you have any contact with society I'm sure that you have heard about President Obama's thoughts on the Muslim community building an Islamic center around "ground zero" in New York. I have heard a lot of people outraged at this action and the fact that the President does not condemn this is causing even more problems and anger. I understand why many people do not like this idea -- Islam has been linked with 9/11, the terrorism, and the loss of loved ones, partly because the hijackers were Muslim extremists -- because if Islam is really responsible for that horrible act (I do not believe that Islam is to blame, just a few of the extremists) than putting an Islamic center or Mosque anywhere close to it, is a slap to the face for all the people who were there, lost someone they loved, or felt like it was an attack on all that we hold close to our hearts. Unfortunately the media and just our fear of cultures that we do not understand has caused a divide between Muslims and Westerns (which by the way there are many Western Muslims). People now see every person of Arab decent as a Muslim and terrorist just waiting for the opportunity to strike. I hope that down the road our ignorance about Islam and people of other cultures will become less prominent in our society as sexism, racism, etc. have kind of gone into the background of our history.

I however am on the side of the President: I think that an Islamic center is actually a step in a positive direction for our country. The third article of the Bill of Rights protects the freedom of religion for everyone, not just Christianity. Many people think that Muslims are scary, dangerous people that only live to hurt anyone not Muslim, when in fact many Muslims are very nice, peaceful people who only want to live a good life and go to heaven. Our society is plagued with this fear of Muslims that is simply unwarranted, especially today when we are supposed to more accepting than we were even 100 years ago. We cannot move past that fear until we begin to act against it and I think that President Obama is thinking in the right direction by not stopping any construction of an Islamic center by ground zero. If we limit their religious freedom we are no better than the extremists that do the same thing.

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear." - Bertrand Russell

Violent Jesus and the Robber's Den pt. 1

For those of you that follow my blog, I wrote on peace and violence a while back (click here to read the post that started the series). During that four part series a few questions were raised: God's "violence" in the First Testament, Jesus mostly nonviolence, etc. Since then, I have been trying to work through those issues with friends and mentors, and although I do not have all the answers I would like to propose my own thoughts on Jesus' nonviolence. Whenever I push nonviolence as a means to fight evil, as Jesus did, someone usually says, "What about that scene in the Temple, he didn't seem very nonviolent there" referring to what we call "the Temple cleansing" passage in Matt. 21:12-14, Mark 11:16-18, and Luke 19:45-47.

When looking at these passages I asked a few questions: What is the context and why did the author choose to put this story where he did? What did Jesus and his contemporaries think of his actions? Can we take this story at face value or is there some deeper meaning? Do we simply use this proof-text as a way to justify "righteous anger", not selling things at church, or to say that Jesus really was violent? Finally, if Jesus was violent in his message why is this the only violent recording of his life?

I am sure there are more questions, but those are the ones that I think about when the church tells me their different responses to the passages stated above. I am not satisfied with what I have been told and so I feel compelled to respond to those questions and I challenge you as you read through this blog and hopefully through the passages in question that you will come up with some questions of your own and that you will not be afraid to ask them, nor be afraid of the answers you might receive.

I started out with the intention of answering these questions in one blog, but I realize now that it will be far to long for me to do that and for the sake of mine and your sanity, I will break these questions up into a few manageable portions over the next week or two.