Religious wars are basically people killing each other over who has the better imaginary friend.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
It’s Sunday. Like every other Sunday, I woke up and religiously started to go through all the social networking sites I am active in, to see what I missed out on in the entire week; even before I’m out of bed. Once in a while though, I come across posts from different pages that make me stop, not scroll down, and think. And I came across one today.
A Muslim shooter means the entire religion is guilty.
A Black shooter means the entire race is guilty.
A White shooter means he’s a mentally troubled lone wolf.
Now this might seem like just another post to few people, some might even comment LOL on it. But it is so much more than that. We often relate terrorism to Muslims. We relate rage and destruction to the Blacks. But we relate civilization, sane behavior and judgement to the Whites. You might oppose this, but you and I both know that this is true. When I say ‘close your eyes and imagine a terrorist’, I am sure as hell you would never imagine a white man holding a gun and shooting people. Why is it that when you are asked to imagine a terrorist, you never imagine a person whose face you cannot see; that you can just see a figure- just see him holding a gun and shooting innocent people. No, I am not excluding myself from this question; I belong to the same society that includes you in it too.
Race, religion, and geographical set ups; they are not platforms on which we can judge people. What if none of these existed? What if there was no religion? Who would you blame? On what basis would you blame them? Would you accuse them of being a stone hearted insane inhumane person, or would you simply say “you’re Muslim”? If you do some research on it, you’ll know that most of the terrorist activity in the U.S in recent years has not come from Muslims, but actually from radical Christians, militant groups and White supremacists. After 9/11, every attack had been associated with Islam, and what it preaches. So much, that media gives it a week’s coverage and highlights every possible link and connection, cause and effect; even if the number of casualties ranges from 1 to 1000. But how often is the terrorism by any other religion highlighted so much? When a Sikh man was killed in the Wisconsin Sikh temple massacre on Aug 5th of 2012, by a White supremacist- Wade Michael Page- who mistook him for a Muslim, the media didn’t highlight this much, did it? Not a lot of people know about this, because I was one of them.
The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009; everybody imagined that a physician had been the victim of an attempted assassination by an Islamic jihadist in 1993, and received numerous death threats from al-Qaeda after that, before being murdered by an al-Qaeda member. Yes, the physician was the victim of a terrorist killing that day, but neither the terrorist nor the people who inflamed the terrorist were Muslims. Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder on May 31, 2009, was a victim of Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda. There are a lot of other examples like this, but why does it never come to the limelight? Why are Muslims the first people to be examined; judged? Why the Blacks are considered shooters? Why is it that they all in the same category, just because one man couldn’t think straight and choose between what is right and what isn’t.
And why is it that a White man’s crime doesn’t lead to his whole race being blamed?
Whatever the reason is, it is wrong. It is wrong to blame anybody for a mistake they didn’t do. Things like caste, creed, race and religion are not something nature did, it is something we created. We are born into it, and not born with it. Even if you’re a Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or a Christian, think twice before categorizing the an entire religion as bad, because the Holy texts and the religions are the solutions and not creators of the problems, if one truly understands that in the end, no matter which religion or race you belong to, peace is the only thing that’ll keep you going. Wars and judgements based on religion is nothing but useless in the end, because if you didn’t have religion to follow, who would you truly be?
Something to think about; make your conversations count.
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