American Muslims…
AMERICAN MUSLIMS…
SHOULD WE STAMP THEM OUT?
Have Christians or Islamic Terrorists Killed More Innocents?
By: Robert R. (Dusty) Schoch, DW Foreign Policy editor
October 18, 2006 (advanced copy of headline http://www.Democratswrite.com )
Dear DW readers.
What follows here is an open letter I just wrote to a dear Christian friend in response to his e-letter to me forwarding a call for all good Christian folk in the U.S. to protest the printing and boycott the buying of a new (Christmas 2006) issue of U.S. Postage stamp depicting Islamic symbols and paying tribute and respect to the Muslim faith and tradition. I’ll print the letter I received in full and follow it with my own comments in an open letter to my friend, Eugene.
Here’s what my Christian friend forwarded me without comment:
Subject: Christmas Stamp .. How could this happen???? They don’t even believe in Christ and they’re getting their own Christmas stamp, but don’t dream of posting the ten commandments on federal property. USPS New Stamp to be re issued in 39 cent denomination this month. This one is impossible to believe. Scroll down for the text. If there is only one thing you forward today…..let it be this!
Islamic Stamp
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of PanAm Flight 103!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the military barracks in Saudi Arabia!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001!
REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks!
Now the United States Postal Service REMEMBERS and HONORS the
EID MUSLIM holiday season with a commemorative first class
holiday postage stamp.
REMEMBER to adamantly and vocally BOYCOTT this stamp
when purchasing your stamps at the post office.
To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those
AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.
REMEMBER to pass this along to every patriotic AMERICAN you know . .
Back with Dusty:
Before I share with you my reply to Eugene, let me set a few facts straight: The above stamp commemorates the two most important festivals (Eids) in the Islamic calendar: Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha. These are religious—not terrorist–events.
Secondly, the stamp in question was issued by the U.S. five years ago under the George Bush Administration, and is neither new nor a Christmas stamp.
Thirdly, the Muslim population in the U.S. is presently between 3 and 6 million strictly LEGAL citizens or legally-registered aliens. So far, they have proven to be peaceful and loyal Americans in spite of the wars in the Middle East and the U.S. alliance with Israel. So far, then, this minority, soon to exceed in numbers our resident Jewish population, deserves our respect, and presumably for those of us who are truly Christians, our love.
All the details of this bogus letter are viewable on the internet under “urban legends” at http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/eidstamp.asp
The mistake my Christian friend has made in forwarding this letter of intolerance and hate is certainly forgivable. The ignorance of today’s realities concerning Islam, terrorism and the relative dangers posed by fundamentalists of the Christian Faith as compared with those of Islam is perhaps “forgivable” but just as clearly intolerable. This is the type of ignorance and hypocrisy that is fueling today’s clash of fundamentalist ideologies that is heading the globe into Armageddon-type World War III.
Now for Dusty’s (now open) letter to his Christian friend
(written before I did the research and discovered the Christmas stamp story was mostly bogus.
the sentiments, principles and hypocrisies being the same in any case…)
Dear Eugene,
What’s the message here? You want me to forward this Fundamentalist Christian hate mail opposing the new stamp to my friends, and you want me to “boycott” using it? So as not to dishonor those who have been “bombed or killed by Islam”? At this proposal, my friend, I feel confident that ‘Ol’ Jesus would have puked” (Holden Caufield, “Catcher in the Rhy”)!
Eugene, true Christians do as Jesus said: They love those they perceive to be their enemies. But the hypocrisy is not what galls me in this pathetic little Christian mob reaction. What galls me is the dogmatic ignorance. These terrorists did terrible things and they did many of them (including 9/11/01) in the name of Allah. But that didn’t mean they were right. That didn’t make it true.
Moreover, when you compare the number of people who’ve been slaughtered in the name of Christ by purported Christians, Islam can’t hold a candle to Christians.
Starting from the most recent, your bully Christian boy George Bush in his retaliation for 9/11 has now accumulated in Iraq alone probably close to 800,000 killed. Some (a distinct minority) were militants; most innocent Islamic civilians including women and children. All the innocents killed in that list you mailed me don’t number close to what Lancet just calculated the number of innocents killed by Christian America since the Bush-led invasion of Iraq. And that’s just in the past 3 years. In my lifetime a purported Christian named Adolph Hitler waged a war in the name of Christ that consumed over 20 million lives before it was over. The swastika was a Christian Cross for Christ’s sake! Should the Holocaust victims hate today’s Christians because of what Hitler did in his name?
In the name of Christ more crusading and just plain imperialistic acquisitive invasive murders have been committed than for any cause de guerre in Earth’s history. From the killing of ancient pagans by Christian mobs by the thousands…e.g. Emperor Theodoslus executed children for playing with the remains of their father’s destroyed pagan statues. Charlemagne had 4500 Saxons beheaded because they were unwilling to convert to …Jesus. German peasants unable or willing to tithe were slain in Germany on 5/27/1234, numbering between 5000 and 11,000 men, women and children.
In the Christian “Crusades” it would take thousands of words just to list the battles where non-Christians were systematically exterminated sometimes 200,000 at a time (e.g. Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099)–all “killed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”.
Then came the so-called purging of “Heretics”…where Christians are killing each other for spouting the wrong Christian Dogma…. Several thousands of Christians were killed in Europe because they chose to baptize their children at age six (when they could think and consent) instead of at birth (look up the story of these “Anabaptists” )!
Then came the Witches….several thousands of innocent women slain because they were supposedly in league with the Christians’ enemy-the “devil”. (Most were simply disobedient in the face and ambit of fiery fundamentalist Christian church elders).
20th Century Christian atrocities include the Catholic extermination camps (Croatia and elsewhere), Rowanda massacres and the list goes on and on without end, amen.
More have been killed by putative Christians in the name and cause of Christ than for any other cause in man’s history. Don’t take my word for it; read the history you evidently either never read or have forgotten. I will attach it for you…one very-well documented bibliographed essay on “Victims of the Christian Faith” by Kelsos.http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm
Go ahead and boycott the stamp. Raise Holy hell over America’s finally doing something right…honoring the beliefs (and freedom to exercise that belief) of 3 to 6 million Islamic Americans who have been our neighbors, living over here in peace while terror was being performed elsewhere in the name of their professed God. And in the same process, try not to forget that both claim the same man (Abraham) as their ethnic and religious progenitor and patriarch respectively, which would make Jesus’ and Mohammed’s claimed Father and God…you guessed it…the same One.
When Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to turn the other cheek, and even to love our enemies, he made no exceptions I know of. I guess he just wasn’t as smart as the one who generated this piece of hate mail you ask me to circulate to those I care about.
Your hate mail stops here. It’s deleted. It’s a wrong which, at least from my own standpoint is forgiven…Forgiven for a reason Jesus uttered shortly before the end of his all-too-brief stay here on earth…. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
Love always,
Dusty
______________________________________________________________
For those of you who want to know more about …what Christians really do…. Read the attached history lesson. There’s a really good benefit to reading history. It helps us avoid repeating it. (DW readers may find the Kelso history letter I sent Eugene on line at
http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm )
For a bottom line…
…let me close this open letter with the following supplemental declaration behind which I will stand pat: Bin Laden’s brand of terrorism is a perversion of Islam, but no greater a perversion of Islam than Bush’s (or Hitler’s) brand of perverted onward-Christian soldier terrorism presently being waged as preemptive war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Only difference is, according to recent count, bin Laden is falling way behind Bush in terms of body counts. Do the math: 3,000 + killed on 9/11/01 (OK this is an exaggeration since about 20 percent of the dead were Islamic) and about 3,000 more in the wars—Afghanistan and Iraq—(which Bush started). Bush on the other hand has just been credited (read the Lancet report on line) with probably 800,000 and counting, just in Iraq. Bin Laden’s Islamic warriors are true slackers next to Bush’s Christian Crusaders.
War is still the only enemy.
But Ignorance is war’s greatest ally.
The antidote for ignorance and hypocrisy is…. history.
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