HOW RIGHT WING MEDIA SUPPORTS ISIL AND HAMAS

ISIL, HAMAS SUPPORTED BY RIGHT WING MEDIA

What is the correct response to the despicable crime of beheading a reporter? It may sound inane but giving serious thought to this question is something we all should do as individuals. What is even more important is to debate the correctness of whatever we decide our response should be. I was surprise to learn that the United States had made a military attempt to recover the reporter even though intelligence agencies believed he was in Syria; sort of like saying to my self; that was so obvious, why didn’t I think of it. To achieve the same end, European governments pay ransom and U.S. does not; does that mean terrorists are more apt to kidnap European reporters? I have no way of knowing the answer to that question; if I did, how would that affect my thinking. The point is that every response has ramifications.

Although we should think about these things as individual people, we should not loose sight of the fact that we are dealing with the behavior of groups of individuals, which can be the source of much frustration. Sometimes, trying to discern what the “average” behavior might be. We look at our government’s response to groups of terrorist such as Hamas and ISIL; whatever our governments response to them as a group is what it is; thus a single response is our group response.

We look at the turmoil in Egypt and tend to address the problem in Egypt. In fact, when we talk about the problems in Egypt, we are talking about two or more factions of Egyptian people. Some of our politicians have solutions that are not sensible; bomb, bomb, McCain for example; however, our government has responded in a way that will allow them to work out their own problems without us being intimately involve as we did in Iraq. In view of the situation in the entire Middle East, the “Arab Spring”, which deals with the complicated marriage of religion and governance, something so fundamental that a Christian nation such as ours could not understand well enough to do otherwise; thus, unlike bombing, our response fits. Groups of individuals with the different religious beliefs spread across many different countries, with different allegiances, some more closely held than others are, but complicated: democracy verses caliphates, Arab verses non Arab, Sunni verses Shia; Christian verses Muslim; again some believe in each to widely different degrees.

For example, we abhor the idea of having an Islamic government in the United States. One of the first things we cite is the constitution; “separation of church and state”, which is as fundamental to democracy as you can get. Thus, we declare we are a Christian Nation with separation of church and state. Does that make any sense? If we live in a 100% Christian Nation, how are we different from a Caliphate, which is 100% Muslim? It is true that a caliph, the title of a religious leader, is the head of a caliphate, which is where that form of government gets is name. In a democracy, we have a president or prime minister while in a royalty we have a king or queen; thus, we claim not to understand the intensity of beliefs in their caliphate government based on a belief in God or Allah, which has been around for thousands of years as opposed to 250 years for democracy; it involves more than just the title of the leader.  

A religious dictatorship is a religious dictatorship whether Christian or Muslim.
Only the Catholic Church has a Caliph equivalent, which is the Pope, which religious leaders have singled out by church leaders, but church members certainly do not considered the pope a political leader in the same sense as they consider a president, or king as a leader or as Muslims consider a Caliph. Judaism lacks a “worldly” leader or Pope Equivalent selected from among Rabbis; in this respect, they resemble the many other fractions of the Abrahamic religions. Is it so outrageous that we believe in democracy as a dictatorship with the only difference from a caliphate being that “we the people” hold the power? For them, it is unthinkable that someone other than God or Allah holds power. People around the world have been killing one another for centuries over which God is the real God or which Allah is the real Allah, and now we tell them it doesn’t matter and suddenly expect them to believe us; understanding has taken 250 years and counting. Even in our country, many seem not to understand. +Catherine Crier was so successful at hiding her clear outlined the danger of religion is having on the  United States government in her book, Contempt (2005) that the book was never really well appreciated as I thought it merited.

The President said, "ISIL speaks for no religion." This profound statement begs the question about the identity of ISIL. If they do not speak for some religion, who do they speck for? They claim to speak for Islam but they don’t; I believe like the President, no modern religious condones beheading of anyone and certainly, we the people do not think that way. This provides the clue I think “we” as individuals  need to know how to respond to them. ISIL is claiming affiliation with 1.2 billion Muslims from around the world, when in truth, there is only a few thousand individuals slaughtering and murdering their way to what they see as dictatorial power. Every dictator known has done the same thing; held power by terror: Stalin, Moa, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and currently Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad.

The way to defeat them is to allow them to isolate them selves. This murdering horde claims to be Muslims but is not. Our media is dead wrong, especially the right wing media, by identifying them by agreeing with them that they are Muslim. Some segments of our society are dead wrong in our attitude toward building a Mosque in downtown New York based on the terrible events of 9/11, for example. How will the right wing respond to the horrific beheading? They will create an insurmountable challenge in our fight against terrorism if the continue on the same “hate all Muslims” trajectory. They are doing exactly what ISIL wants, WITH SOME SUCCESS. I just heard on TV, “The beheading boost support for U. S. from European Countries to fight Muslims.” To me this is a tragic choice of words. The statement reminds of the Palestinian-Israeli war debate. Arabs want to destroy Israel, which is a call for all Christians and Jews to join and destroy all 1.2 billion Muslims. How can this be a solution to Hamas or ISIL terrorism?

We, the largest military in the world, have a small group of terrorist to defeat. We should isolate them and kill, or at least defeat them. We do not have to claim falsely that our president is starting another world war; thus, is an evil man. We do not need to eliminate all welfare programs to support a bloated Pentagon, a sea full of ships and a sky full of planes, as well as legions of Admirals and Generals to do it. What does this tell us about Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News? What they are saying in the year 2014, should be equated to saying “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. As individuals, we all know the results of that collective attitude. We changed as individuals since then; not all of us but more and more every day.            

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