The Most Important Issues in the 2016 Presidential Race (Part 3)

Have you been to a baseball game lately, or at least followed the news? Going to a game is not like it used to be. You must now submit to a thorough security check.

I’m from Chicago which probably has more gun violence than any city in the country, but these security checks weren’t started because they thought somebody was going to bring a gun into a ballpark and start shooting people. They’re afraid that somebody is going to blow themselves up.

This kind of security is now the new normal. You have to take your shoes off before getting on an airplane. Why? You might be carrying a bomb. You can’t even bring a liquid in your carry-on. Why? You might have a bomb.

But there is something that is not being said here. While it is true that any given person might have a bomb, why is it only now that this has become a concern? We could say that it is because it is happening more often now. But we are still missing the point.

If it were not for one simple common factor in all of this new kind of violence in the world, the world would be generally a pretty safe place. That common factor is that this violence, or terrorism as it is now called, is committed by Muslims. If there were no Muslims, nobody would be worrying about terrorism. If there were no Muslims, nobody would be worrying about bombs. If there were no Muslims, nobody would be screened at airports or ball games.

And, no, this is not xenophobia or Islamophobia. It’s just a fact.

But certainly isn’t it unfair to think that any and every Muslim is a threat to the safety and security of our society? Nobody is saying that, but the simple answer is yes. But then the answer isn’t really simple, and nobody is really trying to understand the question in the first place.

Those who are willing at least to name this problem use expressions like Islamic terrorism, radicalized Islam, Muslim extremists, or Islamists, trying to distinguish the problem from the vast majority of Muslims.

But they are missing something very basic here when they do that. A radical or extremist is a person who takes something that is already there and then overdoes it.

If a Christian becomes radical or extreme, he or she may sell all of their belongings and give the money to the poor. They may fast for days at a time or pray all night, or they may give up everything to go to a remote jungle village and spend years developing a written language and then more years translating the Bible into that language.

If a Jew becomes radical, he may start dressing differently, mostly in black and white, mostly black. He won’t drive a car on Saturdays. He won’t even turn up the heat on Saturday, the Sabbath. And he will only eat certain foods that have been prepared in a certain way.

If a Muslim becomes radical, he kills people. Nobody noticed this before? If a Muslim kills people as a result of become a radical Muslim, that means that there is something already in the religion that accepts or encourages violence in certain situations.

Every Muslim nation in the world became Muslim through killing people. Is there an exception? I asked an ex-Muslim once who was supposed to be knowledgeable about those things, and he said no. No exceptions. Even Mohammed himself formed an army and went out conquering the infidels.

Muslims don’t send out missionaries to teach literacy to primitive people so they can read the Word of God in their own language. They don’t start medical clinics to care for the sick. They send in warriors to kill people and blow things up, mostly people.

Now certainly few Muslims will ever do anything like this. The problem is that, if we don’t monitor their social media or the places where they pray, any Muslim can apparently become radicalized. Doesn’t matter whether they are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, employed in a good job or not at all, whether they have a family or not. It can happen anywhere without warning. But this only happens with Muslims.