Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Myself, far from a participant in any organized religion (because, you know, I went to Catholic school for 12 years), yet I frequently find such beautiful language within the Bible, ancient yet so very relative to today...

"The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

The Bible, that textbook that every Christian places above all else, yet every Christian I know personally is completely against allowing the Syrian refugees in. Because ISIS. Because Islam.

I really do try, when I debate these individuals, to relay the absolute fact that you can use the Bible to justify good. You can use the Bible to justify bad.

You can use the Qur'an to justify good, and you can use the Qur'an to justify bad.

But when's the last time we agreed even on the facts?

--

I recently watched an ISIS fighter and his totally indoctrinated barely 6-year old son on a youtube video somewhere in the desert near Raqqa. To paraphrase, in the clip the man rants about the tough life here. His tough life, and the fact that the tougher the better, for all of this here on this world does not matter.

All that matters is the afterlife, and the tougher the worldly experience, the better the next will be.

And then it hit me.

The root cause is not Islam. It's not even religion.

It truly is all a matter of geopolitics. Religion is merely a tool, and determined by geography.

For years, there were men like this, women and children too, in Syria, Iraq, and any other shithole dictator-led country, barely living, in oppressively hot desert lands where air conditioning is the last concern, where money made in the few actual jobs buys next to nothing any way, where your own government may very well kidnap you in the dead of night and torture and kill you ANY day or time.

Depending on where you live, religion may be used as a feel-good Sunday social gathering or a straight up psychological defense mechanism to block the harsh reality that is your life from you.

Islam just happens to be the dominant religion in said shithole countries.