Some people say Islam is a religion of peace. Some say it is the religion of peace, suggesting that this particular religion exemplifies 'peace' better than any other religion. Others disagree. They say Islam is not a religion of peace. They say it's the religion of terror (John Burger, "Islam: religion of peace or font of terror", aleteia, January 21, 2015). Still others say Islam is a religion of peace, all right. But it's been hijacked by terrorists (or, alternatively, extremists) (ibid).
Certainly, two things are true when Westerners talk about Islam: first, it's politically correct to say Islam is a religion of peace. Second, it's 'Islamophobic' if you put 'Islam' and 'terror' in the same sentence.
Now that we've got that straightened out, let's put analysis aside. Let's talk about reality.
Here's a cartoon from Israel. It's about Islam. It's about terror (please note: I do not use 'Islam' and 'terror' in the same sentence). This is not a cartoon about religion. It's not about politics. It's just a picture about reality in Israel:
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| from: dirouge, at arutzsheva, July 19, 2017 |
It's an ugly cartoon. But then, it depicts an ugly reality.
In Israel, relatively few people have much to say about the extent to which Islam provokes bad behavior (notice how I do not use 'Islam' and 'terror' in the same sentence).
We don't spend a lot of time thinking about Islam and the world. We're too busy looking over our shoulder, worried about hearing the words, 'allahu akbar!'.
We don't care about Islamic theology. We care about staying alive.
We're Jews. We don't know much about Islam. We know a lot about being the targets of terror.
We're realists. We know that those who seek to murder us like to shout out the name of their god while they attack us.
Do we need to know anything else?
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