Islam & Muslims

My parents were Christians in general, Catholic & Methodist in particular, who compromised and changed to Lutheran. I was raised in the Lutheran church and never thought about changing to another denomination until I went to an USAF school in Illinois. I met a young woman there who brought me to a  Baptist church. At first, it was quite a shock to see how the Baptists preach out of the pulpit and so emotionally.  After a while, I actually embraced the Baptist style of preaching.  Today, I go to both Lutheran and Baptist services.

My father was in the USAF, and I grew up in several different countries: Germany, United Kingdom, France, & Belgium. We visited many other countries while we were in Europe, like Holland, Scotland, Luxembourg, Austria, to name a few.

Growing up in these countries as a child, I made lots of foreign friends and learned about their societies, their customs, and so on.  The experiences I had as I was growing up taught me, along with the teachings of my parents, to accept other people, other cultures, the beliefs and superstitions of other religions with respect for them.

I have problems with other religions that will prevent me from ever changing my beliefs to their's, but I also acknowledge the Christian religion also has problems mostly due to the conflicts (different interpretations) in the Bible and the really off-beat fanatics who have taken Christianity off the really deep end.

I have problems with different denominations within the Christian religion. I have attended other churches seeking either a reason to join or a reason to avoid that denomination.  For the most part, there usually are only a few beliefs with which I find difficult to accept.  I could list them, but it would serve no purpose to do so. Instead, I want to express the major problems I have with Islam and Muslims.

This essay is not meant to anger Muslims or provoke them to seek me out to kill me, but only to express my freedom of speech and be entirely honest about what I believe and what I don't believe, and any problems that bother me to some extent beyond interesting.

I am a Caucasian male, but in so being I do not live life believing whites are always right and non-whites are always wrong.  For instance, what the whites did to the American Indians during the birth and growth of the United States was often unforgivable and in the greatest degree of cruelty. To be fair, the various tribes also were extremely violent and sadistic.  What happened was a classic case of  'do what we say or die', instead of understanding the cultures of others and working to live peacefully together.

The Crusades to the Middle East were misguided.  It is terribly wrong to make attempts to force people to change their religious beliefs to the beliefs of the oppressors. Religious beliefs are usually as deeply a part of a person as the marrow in their bones, and this makes it difficult for those people to change their beliefs.  Those who easily change from one belief to another should be suspected of not really being committed to either.

Parents pass on their beliefs to their children, and their children pass on their beliefs to their children, and so on and so on for generations.  Christian missionaries travel to spread the word of the Christian God, but they make no effort to force people to believe in Christ.  The missionaries just keep preaching and teaching.  They do things to demonstrate what people who love Christ would do and should do to please God.  If people then believe, it is a choice they make of their own free will.

The biggest problem I have with Islam and radical Muslims is the way they are trying to force non-believers to believe. It is my understanding that they have two objectives: first, to send a message to the United States by killing innocent people, and the more they kill the better; second, to make everyone on the planet convert to Islam.

It is a futile effort to try and change the beliefs of everyone.  It will not happen; ever. The continued efforts of radicals and fanatics to convert others does nothing but perpetuate the deaths of thousands of people; a complete waste of lives.

Muslims, understand this: spread your message. Broadcast it to the world. Publish it in every book, magazine, all over the Internet. But don't tell people they must convert to Islam or die.  Most people will choose death, and in so choosing nothing is accomplished.

This life we live is a brief one. The belief all religions have is that there is a better life after this one.  We all believe the next life is peaceful and beauty beyond belief.  Most importantly, most of us believe the next life is spiritual, not physical.

How many believe in an evil supreme being?  Maybe a few do, but they would not be the mainstream believers.  The mainstream believers, whether they be Buddists, Muslims, Christians, Jews, or whatever, believe their gods are good, forgiving, full of grace. It seems to me the fanatic Muslim believes their god, Allah, says it is okay to kill and murder.  What kind of god is that?

After many years of speaking with people of other denominations/religions, I have concluded that there really is only one god.  It's just that all the different religions see Him in different ways.  We all need to communicate, but we do it in different languages. We all need to worship, but we worship differently.

I can visualize Judgment Day when all humans will face God, but He will be much different than we imagined.  We will all realize, even the Muslims, that we were very much wrong about Him.  He will be greater than we imagined; more forgiving, more perfect; more than our feeble human brains could possibly believe.

Just because we believe in God differently does not give one religion the right to exterminate another.  Muslims today, the radical ones, are now even worse than any of the Crusaders ever were.  Muslims believe eventually everyone on the planet will accept Islam as the one true religion.  It is insane for anyone to believe killing and murdering will make this change.

Killing in the name of Islam is thoroughly counter-productive.  Each murder, each killing, each instance of mass killing, does not convince people to convert in order to live, but instead drives them further away from any chance of becoming a Muslim.  Each death to the non-Muslim is reprehensible and unforgivable.  It raises the question, what kind of god is Allah? An evil god? A murderous god?  Is this the kind of god Muslims worship? Is that the kind of god Muslims want everyone to worship?

Message to radical Muslims: killing people is not going to convince the Earth's population to convert to Islam.  It will only convince the people to despise and even hate you.  You are not furthering your objective, but moving further away from it.

In a later post I will talk about the things in the Islam religion that I cannot now and never will accept; not even under the threat of death.

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