Cut Muslim People Down from the Whipping Post

The truest thing in this life, is that people are all the same. Accept it and move on.

Courtesy: mysteryoftheinquity.wordpress.com

(SACRAMENTO, CA) - Americans have an ugly habit of blaming a person's race or religion for their mistakes. It is a problem as old as any and one we're all hard pressed to not encounter at least occasionally.

Examples...

"Them Blacks are always drinking and stealing",

"Illegal Mexicans all get free healthcare",

"Damned Jews all horde their money", and the ever predictable,

"Muslims are all a bunch of terrorists".

The truest thing in this life, is that people are all the same. Accept it and move on. Emotions are equal in people, we feel pleasure and pain and happiness and loss, the same. We love our children and want to see them grow and live, the same.

We have no choice as to where we are born, or what our religion is, yet people all over the world miss this point.

Each Faith Believes They're Right, All Others Wrong

The Jews think they're the chosen people; Wahhabi Muslims think they are the chosen people; Christians think they are the only ones who aren't going to hell; Buddhists in at least two countries are murdering and driving out non-Buddhists; and Hindus live by a caste system that leaves millions extremely disadvantaged while they continue arranged marriage in the 21^st Century.

One group was enslaved and historically, is more likely to face poverty; one may be known for frugal spending due to a history of persecution; one may be terribly misunderstood because they don't speak English; one has had more family members killed, and have strapped on more suicide bombs over time.

But they are all the same.

Murderers, rapists, war criminals, child abusers, they all exist in every facet of life, in every station, organization, etc. There is no getting around it. Sometimes people who are exemplary citizens turn into maniacs on a dime.

We are all a reflection of how we were raised and our parent(s) or caretaker's system of values, in conjunction with our own individual mental health. Religion however either robs or gives to its subscribers, and that has everything to do with the integrity of the institution in mind. Large numbers of human beings fail to benefit from the teachings of religion for a multitude of reasons.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

An interpretation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the most basic needs at the bottom. Courtesy: Wikipedia

The discussion inevitably leads back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs; a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Many psychology students are familiar with Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs; it is a theory of psychology that Maslow proposed in his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation.

Wikipedia describes Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a pyramid consisting of five levels:

The lowest level is associated with physiological needs, while the uppermost level is associated with self-actualization needs, particularly those related to identity and purpose.

The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are met. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer be met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level.

For instance, a businessman at the esteem level who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.

Simple Common Points

There exist radical Muslims, hardcore Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Buddhists, and as this chart shows, Christians who believe only their specific version will open heaven's pearly gates.

All religions have offending clergy who abuse and molest their congregation's children. In many cases they encourage persecution and intolerance of Gay people. Some religious leaders grab torches and burn the neighborhoods of religious minorities. Others encourage firebombing abortion clinics.

Everybody's messed up, few have much to be proud about.

It is noteworthy that in reference to the Muslims and the Middle east, Americans frequently say, "They've been fighting over there for thousands of years".

Now, what is that exactly supposed to mean?

I take the implication to be that Muslim people just fight all the time, this is not true. In fact, Muslims are the new kids on the block in terms of big religions, evolving roughly seven centuries after the passing of Christ.

So, the statement "thousands of years" is literally impossible if you are talking about Muslims.

However hundreds of years would be accurate and the reason for that goes back to the Crusades and who was that again? Right, Christians, traveling great distance in order to kill Muslims, an old story that keeps repeating.

Religion deserves a great deal of praise and criticism. It is sadly misrepresented in most cases when people hide behind it and use it in a way that causes them to feel righteous yet behave condescendingly toward others.

Examining Religions and their Tendencies

Christians kill the most. A million and a half ghosts in Iraq can attest to it. In recent time, no other religion has been responsible for more death and destruction than those who claim to follow the teachings of Christ Jesus.

Of course Christians are told they are forgiven and will go to heaven as long as they accept Christ in their heart. No matter what they do.

The legacy of Christianity in the world includes the Spanish Inquisitions, the persecution and burning of suspected witches throughout Europe and also the Salem witch trials.

Buddhists have waged two Genocidal campaigns already in the 21^st Century.

One, in Sri Lanka, left up to 160,000 Hindus and Christians dead among the Tamil communities. The second, in Burma (Myanmar), saw Buddhists burn villages and slaughter Muslims, mostly Rohingyas, by the thousand, and its not over.

The goal in both countries is to establish all-Buddhist nations.

Jews in Israel are responsible for generations of ethnic cleansing, war crimes and human rights violations against the Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

Israel bombs civilian targets in Gaza and other parts of Palestine at random and kills Muslims on at least a 1 Jew to 100 Muslim ratio.

Israel kills nearly 1500 Gazans in a single attack, one recent event left almost 400 children dead.

Muslims have been involved in the Arab Spring and attempted and successful overthrows of longstanding governments.

They have been broken and abused for so long that the religion is greatly fragmented and has little unity, with Syria as a prime example.

Iraq is a great example of a country that did well under almost secular leadership, as was Libya. But western governments have replaced those governments with genuine radicals.

Hindus seem to be the only religion today of significance that has little blood flowing from its hands,

Though it is responsible for the caste system that leaves huge segments of India's population subjugated and deadly poor.

Still, the concept of harming no living thing is beautiful and I love the Hindu people and their colorful, loving community that truly is the oldest monotheistic religion on the earth.

The worst Genocide in the planet's history is not the Holocaust of Europe or Rwanda or Cambodia. It was the Christian elimination of Native Americans and don't think that wasn't all done in the name of religion and Christ in particular. So when people start bashing the Muslim religion over the actions of a handful of poverty stricken imbeciles, I will always speak up no matter how uncomfortable it is, and stand up for the race I belong to, which is the human race.

I ask of these people who keep writing "Ah, Islam, the religion of peace" over and over each time some oppressed individual snaps and does something stupid, can I apply that same phrasing to your faith? Would I be a bigot if I said, "Ah Jews, the religion of peace" each time one of their F-16's snuffs another "suspected terrorist" and his family driving down the road in their car? Every time a U.S. drone drops a bomb on some family's roof in Pakistan, splattering them all over the walls, shall I say, "Ah Christianity, the religion of peace"?

We must as a society stop hanging the mistakes of a few on the backs of one particular group of people. If one wants to talk about a religious sect like Zionists, Wahhabis, Sinhala Buddhists, Rakhine Buddhists, or Westboro Baptist Church Christians, they must be specific and not brand all members of that faith with the acts of a few.

Photo by Justin King

Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer

Tim King has more than twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Tim is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008. Tim is a former U.S. Marine who follows stories of Marines and Marine Veterans; he's covered British Royal Marines and in Iraq, Tim embedded with the same unit he served with in the 1980's.

Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing from traditional mainstream news agencies like The Associated Press and Electronic Media Association; he also holds awards from the National Coalition of Motorcyclists, the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs; and was presented with a 'Good Neighbor Award' for his reporting, by the The Red Cross.

Tim's years as a Human Rights reporter have taken on many dimensions; he has rallied for a long list of cultures and populations and continues to every day, with a strong and direct concentration on the 2009 Genocide of Tamil Hindus and Christians in Sri Lanka. As a result of his long list of reports exposing war crimes against Tamil people, Tim was invited to be the keynote speaker at the FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America) Conference in Baltimore, in July 2012. This is the largest annual gathering of North American Tamils; Tim addressed more than 3000 people and was presented with a traditional Sri Lanka ‘blessed garland’ and a shawl as per the tradition and custom of Tamil Nadu

In a personal capacity, Tim has written 2,026 articles as of March 2012 for Salem-News.com since the new format designed by Matt Lintz was launched in December, 2005. Serving readers with news from all over the globe, Tim's life is literally encircled by the endless news flow published by Salem-News.com, where more than 100 writers contribute stories from 23+ countries and regions.

Tim specializes in writing about political and military developments worldwide; and maintains that the label 'terrorist' is ill placed in many cases; specifically with the LTTE Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, where it was used as an excuse to slaughter people by the tens of thousands; and in Gaza, where a trapped population lives at the mercy of Israel's destructive military war crime grinder. At the center of all of this, Tim pays extremely close attention to the safety and welfare of journalists worldwide. You can write to Tim at this address: tim@salem-news.com. Visit Tim's Facebook page (facebook.com/TimKing.Reporter)