I had hoped....

I had hoped when I read this pass weekend's headlines calling Iran's President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a moderate that they were true. I had hoped that this was the beginning of the end of the Extremist Islamic rule of Iran. My hopes however crumbled as soon as I opened the articles and learned who the President-elect was. This article on Fox News points out that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have been one of the captors that held 52 Americans hostage in 1979. It seems my hopes for a moderate Islamic leadership in Iran will have to wait.

Hopefully we are able to avoid going to war with Iran, however if we are unable to avoid war I hope and pray it is based off an actual threat of nuclear weapons and not a rampant fear of Islamic governments. Yes I realize the terrorists that flew used planes as missiles on September 11th were all Muslims. However I also have friends who are Muslims, who are as appalled as I was at the attacks that took place on September 11th 2001 and the continuing attacks taking place today. We've discussed philosophical view points and theirs aren't that different from mine. Which is why we need to ensure that all of Islam isn't tarnished and its followers aren't billed as the dregs of society.

Now before you get all hot under the collar and jump into the comments section and start riddling off the various times throughout history Muslims have attacked folks I want you to think about this. How many people were killed during the crusades? How many people were forcefully converted to Christianity during the inquisitions? How long ago was it that there wasn't a moderate Christianity? Think back to the Salem witch trials. How many people were burned at the stake for being heretics?

ALL the major religions have changed. We can not continue that path of judging an entire religion by the acts of a few extremist. If we continue the trend of attributing the actions of the extremes to the group as a whole we end up with a very narrow view of the world and the people in it. Don't follow?

You've voted democrat in the past 16 years, well you must be a pot smoking anti-war troop hating hippy.

Your relatives are from the Middle East? Well we'd best not allow you to ride on public transportation; you may decide to follow the path of your countrymen and blow it up.

You went to church last Sunday, well how's your buddy Eric Rudolph doing? Remind me not to be within a couple of city blocks of the clinic when you're in town okay?

Think these assumptions are off the wall and baseless? You're damned right they are. But they're no more off the wall and baseless than judging 1.4 billion people based off the actions of a fraction of a percent of the population. What would happen if the world's view of Christianity and Americans in general were based of the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church, statistically speaking it's about the same.

I had hoped we'd learned something since the days of burning witches at the stake during the Salem witch trials. However it seems we've only changed our definition of a witch and the locations where we're hunting.