OPINION – Since the suspected bombers of the Boston Marathon were revealed to have been Muslims, a new wave of antiMuslim fear has been unleashed.
Once again my inbox is filling with email containing dire warnings of the danger that Islam poses to our freedoms. Taken as a whole, most commentaries amount to simple anti-Muslim screeds.
Most of them rely on shock words to promote broad-brush demonizing of all Muslims. All of them use deliberate distortion of many Muslim religious beliefs. An especially memorable commentary included was from a Dutch Member of Parliament, it ended with a call to “stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.”
How to “stop” Islam is left to the reader’s imagination, but before digging the mote out of Islam’s eye we should remove a few beams from our own eye.
If Muslims wish to destroy the remaining freedoms of average Americans, they’ll have to get in line behind our own government.
After all, it wasn’t Islam that gave us a shadowy Federal Reserve banking system. Over the past 100 years this system has systematically inflated and debased our currency to where the dollar has lost more than 95% of its initial value.
Islam doesn’t seek to cripple our economy by substituting government bureaucratic intervention for the power of the free market.
Muslims didn’t create our incomprehensible income tax system that holds each American personally accountable to the Federal Government. They don’t operate the Internal Revenue Service that can take any of us from warm, well fed, and happy to cold, hungry and impoverished in a matter of hours.
Muslims aren’t the ones who are spying on our phone calls, e-mails and financial records looking for anything potentially incriminating. They don’t try to keep track of our every movement through inescapable surveillance.
They’re not the ones who created a compulsory school system aimed at creating obedient citizens and workers rather than freethinking individuals and entrepreneurs.
Muslims aren’t the ones requiring all airline passengers to submit to electronic strip searches or being fondled as a condition of traveling. They are not the ones drowning our society in a flood of sewage that enters our homes through television and computer screens.
It’s not the Muslims that are seeking to punish law abiding gun owners for acts that they have not committed. They weren’t the ones going door to door sticking guns in the face of innocent citizens last month in Boston.
Distasteful as Sharia law may appear to us, it doesn’t really sound all that far removed from our own ever-increasing laws, statutes, and regulations.
We can be punished financially or criminally for things like not having green enough grass in our yards, for building a fence on our own property without the proper permit, or for carrying a large amount of cash. These draconian laws appear to serve the needs of those in power and not the interests of the citizenry.
While we wring our hands over the Muslims, our own leaders are destroying our freedoms right under our noses and with our approval.
It always seems easier to blame others for our problems. Like any religion, Muslims have their troublemakers whose indefensible actions tarnish the reputations of more than a billion Muslims who’ve never harmed anyone.
Our own ignorance makes them an inviting target. But they are far from the greatest threat to the American way of life.
Bryan Hyde is a news commentator and co-host of the Perspectives talk show on Fox News 1450 AM 93.1 FM. The opinions stated in this article are his and not representative of St. George News.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @youcancallmebry
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2013, all rights reserved.
It isn’t the Muslims who are shipping manufacturing jobs overseas to China. Lets ask Mormon Romney who is doing that.
It isn’t the Muslims who are closing companies, driving them into bankruptcy and calling on the Federal Government to bail out the pensions, etc… Again, let’s ask Mormon Romney about that.
It isn’t the Muslims who instigated the harshest & most restrictive gun laws in this country. Let’s ask Mormon Romney why he did that as Governor of Massachusetts.
It isn’t the Muslims who funded one of the most criticized political campaigns (Proposition 8) in the US, a political movement based on false information designed to deny Americans freedoms and rights. Let’s ask the Mormon church about their political involvement with Proposition 8.
Buy: I think you missed a rather relevant point. The article was about taking personal accountability and not blaming others. You immediately tried to blame Romney and the LDS Church. Thank you for proving Bryan’s point.
Mormon church needs to stay out of politics and end it attempts to dictate others’ lives.
Thank you again for proving the point of this article. We all appreciate your willingness to show us the path America is going down.
Thank you!
The Mormon Church meddling in Politics to the extent it did with Proposition 8 is a perfect example of organizations attempts to take away one’s freedoms and destroying this country. I think the mormon church has been as destructive to this country as any Muslim terrorist group.
That is why all Americans should vote for someone that will act for them and not for himself. Americans need to be more active on voting and electing not only the president but the senators and house representatives. That is why we are in the hole that we are, is cause no one cares of getting out of their @$$ to vote and elect someone with dignity and respect for their country and not be elected for power. Americans should blame them self for the trouble we are all in, not point out side or other for something that was cause by someone that was supposed to be leading you, yea was leading you to the hole we are in now.
I know absolutely nothing about the Muslim Religion. So I also know, that makes me a part of the problem. But I do know that it is easier to blame something on a particular group of people, than it is to try to learn and understand what has happened. And the majority of human beings will take the easiest road to travel. It isn’t right, but it is the way it is.
Historically, race and religion are what most wars have been fought about. Sad, isn’t it?
The lds church does not encourage politics in church what mwmbers do ia between themselves and the Lord
Watch the Movie about Proposition 8. Then tell us where have you been?
You really should see the movie Proposition 8 / The Mormon Proposition. Then tell us how your church bishops don’t try to sway you politically.
BTW, the worst act of terrorism against Americans until 9/11 was the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Everyone knows which group was responsible for that despite their lies and placing blame on the Indians.
Bryan–
I agree with you about the path the Fed Govt is taking towards turning the USA into a police state.
However, that is irrelevant to whether we should be concerned about radical Islam and jihadists.
I am not anti-Muslim. I have been friends with and worked with Muslims, but I am very concerned about those who espouse Islam but would do us great harm from physical harm to imposing some interpretations of Sharia law.
So — how do we protect ourselves from the radical jihadists without typecasting all Muslims ?
Well, it’s not the Amish flying planes into buildings and blowing up women and children all over the world. No, it’s Muslims. And yes, the Mormom church needs to get out of politics. Anyone who thinks they are not heavily involved, need to look no further that this state’s ultra goofy liquor laws.
“If Muslims wish to destroy the remaining freedoms of average Americans, they’ll have to get in line behind our own government.”
No they don’t.
Hussein Obama and a lot of his co-religionists are your government.
You must be living under a rock to have missed it.
That photo sucks. It’s misleading and just wrong to portray, even in jest/sarcasm, such a peaceful religion as scary. Couldn’t you have found one depicting an act of compassion? Crazy!
Interesting Article Bryan.
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But you don’t actually come out and say that Muslims aren’t actually our enemies. You just say they’re not the most important enemies.
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Can you clarify your position? Are “they” or a portion thereof our enemies?
I echo the words of LDS prophet Gordon B. Hinckley who said, “We have no quarrel with the Muslim people.”
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Muslims, as a religion, are not an enemy to anyone but the enemy-driven. But if it weren’t Muslims, the enemy-driven would find another boogeyman because that is where they derive purpose in their lives.
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Even those radicalized Muslim individuals are less an enemy to us as individuals and more of an enemy to our government for its incessant meddling in their countries and their lives. They should not be ignored, nor should they be built up to superhuman proportions. Capability is what counts and cranks who live in caves are not nearly the threat that our government makes them out to be.
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I hope this clarifies my position.
Well said, Bryan. The enemies we have in the Islamic world are of our own making. The U.S. and imperial Europe have been meddling in the affairs and exploiting the people of Islam for centuries. Our economic greed and misplaced religious fervor have created enemies of a people who could easily have been our close friends and allies. It is notable that nearly all of the “enemy-driven” opponents of Islam were previously consumed with anti-Communist paranoia during the Cold War.
We as individuals may be reaping what our Govt has sown, but it was not “the Govt” that died in the twin towers or Boston or a number of other places