Rod St. Aubyn: Should We Fear All Muslims?

With the recent beheadings of innocent Americans, a British citizen, a French tourist and many other beheadings in both Iraq and in Syria we were all shocked by the brutality and lack of humanity of ISIS and their allied terrorists. They have proclaimed themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and now the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), with Levant denoting a larger geographic region which also covers Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

The President then announced that ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, “is not Islamic.”

If that doesn’t confuse you, I don’t know what will. They have declared jihad and declared war on the US. We can’t forget that this war actually started with the hijacking of commercial airlines and crashing them into the World Trade Center buildings by a related group of radical Islamic terrorists called al-Qaeda.

Our country rallied around President Bush in going after these terrorists in Afghanistan. That war then spread to Iraq. We exited Iraq and are in the waning days of our presence in Afghanistan, even though the threat still exists.

Now we are back in Iraq fighting an air campaign against this new threat, ISIS or ISIL. President Obama has stressed that we are not going to put ground troops back in Iraq or Syria even though most military commanders state that this task cannot be accomplished with only an air offensive.

There have been several news reports of several Muslim Americans, some from Minnesota, who have left the US to support ISIS and other Islamic terrorist organizations. US officials have stated that at least a hundred of those who have left have come back to the US.

There have been recent bills introduced in Congress to require the loss of citizenship for those individuals who leave the US to support our enemies, but I am doubtful that any of these bills will ever pass.

On November 5, 2009, Nidal Hasan, a US Major and psychiatrist, allegedly fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others allegedly based on his radicalized Islamic beliefs. One of those soldiers killed was John Gaffaney, someone that I graduated with at Williston High School.

A news report described the heroic actions John took during that shooting even after first being shot. The Obama administration refused to call this an act of terrorism, instead calling it “workplace violence.”

Now we have a story from Oklahoma about a recently terminated employee who came back to his former employer and allegedly beheaded an innocent employee who happened to be standing at the wrong location at the wrong time. Another employee was severely injured in the knifing attack.

Further bloodshed was most certainly avoided when the Chief Operating Officer, who happens to be a reserve deputy for the local Sheriff’s Department, stopped the attack by shooting and injuring the alleged attacker. Once again this was initially reported as “workplace violence.”

The attacker, Alton Nolen who goes by Jah’Keem Yisrael, is Muslim and reportedly has been harassing co-workers trying to get them to convert to Islam as he had recently done. I heard reports of his Facebook postings on some news reports, so I took the time to go through some of those postings. After a while I could not continue.

These Islamic fundamentalists have declared war on all “non-Muslims” which they often declare as the infidels. They feel that it is the duty of all Muslims to kill all that are not of the Muslim faith.

I am a Christian, Lutheran to be exact, and I will be the first to admit that I don’t understand the Islamic (Muslim) faith. However, I refuse to believe that any God would condone the innocent slaughter of people. One question that enters my mind is if the Muslim or Islamic faith is a peaceful religion as

I have heard many times, why aren’t these peaceful Muslims speaking out and aggressively acting out against these extremists all over the world? If most Muslims are opposed to violence and the hate that these “terrorists” have exhibited, why haven’t they reported these extremists before they even had the opportunity to do harm? I know every religion has its own extremists. America has had its experiences with the Westboro Baptist Church and Americans have reacted against them in actions and in some cases with laws.

If I was aware of anyone advocating violence within my church, I would immediately report them to the authorities.

It is time to get rid of the “political correct” thinking and call it what it is. When violence like these incidents occurs, it is NOT “workplace violence”, it is terrorism. I am sure there are peaceful Muslims, but with these incidents it creates an environment of distrust when we see no actions by other Muslims to fight this terrorism. With the many Muslim Americans who have gone overseas to support our enemies and have since returned to the US, do we have to fear all Muslims or will the peaceful ones take actions to prevent these terrorists from discrediting and hijacking their religion?