Christian individuals, ministers, churches and public officials are publicly exhorting the American public to offer friendship, neighbourliness and assurance to their fellow citizens who are Muslims. This is right and just and a good thing. No one should be persecuted for their religious beliefs.
President Bush has lent his weight on this by including Muslims in the nations ecumenical service of mourning and by going to Washington's Islamic Center to issue a similar statement. Muslim organizations in the United States and in Islamic countries have naturally also issued similar calls. These too are good.
Perhaps it is time for us to give Muslims all the rights and privileges that non-Muslims have in their countries.
Perhaps it is time to publicly ask our Muslim friends who have been issuing these statements and who have been "serving notice" to us to explain why in Islamic countries non-Muslims - both citizens and non-citizens - are being murdered, maimed, persecuted, sold into slavery, and prosecuted with, more often than not, the active collaboration of the religious and governing authorities.
Perhaps it is time to hold press conferences, send million-signatures petitions to the President and Congress, and to inform all relevant authorities and the media, about these Islamic organizations with names, dates, details and documentation of actual cases of non-Muslims so murdered, maimed, and persecuted.
Perhaps it is time to organize high profile information campaigns, seminars, and write open letters in newspapers to get the truth about Islam out to the public. We need to challenge Islam live up to its own propaganda. Right now there are non-Muslims in Afganistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran all under sentences of death for nothing other then their religious beliefs. Let us see real action not just empty words.
Perhaps it is time to have Islam and Muslims, who so piously declare that theirs is a faith of peace and tolerance, to publicly account for these travesties and to inform the American public and the world why they are doing this and what specifically they will do to end it.
Perhaps it is time to have Muslims explain the strange phenomena of their crying "persecution" and "give us freedom of religion" when they do not allow anything of the same in their hallowed Islamic nations. Islam so predictably preaches tolerance, peace, and fair play while they are in the minority. Then once they are in the majority, they oppress freedoms and persecute other faiths in the name of Islam. In the past 10 years over 1000 Mosques have been opened in America. How many churches have been allowed to be built in all the Muslim countries of in the world? Can you name one country in the world where an Islamic government is in control that has a true democratic form of government and full freedom of religion?
Perhaps it is time to invite/challenge these Islamic organizations, officials and governments to give an accounting for their actions, concerning non-Muslims in Islamic countries, so that some good may come from those killed on September 11th and other lives may be saved.
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