They want us to hate.
They want there to be a backlash.
They want shops and mosques to be firebombed.
They want innocent Moslems to suffer.
Every single retaliatory incident plays into their hands. They want us to relinquish the moral high ground.
They hate the moderate Muslims as much as they hate the West.
Their tactics are hardly new. Throughout history, invading armies have used fear and brutality to terrorise and demoralise civilians and defending armies, to destroy their resolve, so that they crumble in the face of their onslaughts; so that they give up the fight even though they realise that it means their own destruction.
We declare that we are fighting for Western values of decency, fairness and democracy, so it is vitally important that we do not undermine our own arguments by indulging in blind hatred and resorting to knee-jerk terror tactics in return.
The last thing that they wish to see is our multiracial society living in harmony.
They can only win if we fall into their trap.
Mick Canning 
True words, Mick.
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Thank you, Helen. I often think of the quotation by Nurse Edith cavell: ‘I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone’
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Yes, exactly. Only then can we let conflict go.
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The barbarians are at the gate, Mick. But, like the Romans of old, honest citizens can do little except put their faith in the legions, which seem to be distant and dispersed. Yes, I fear for my children.
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It is difficult not to feel despair, sometimes, John. I do trust in the basic decency of humanity, however, although that trust seems to get more than its fair share of knocks.
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I never thought about it like that. Well said!
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Brilliantly said Mick. We can’t allow them to shake our faith in humanity. If we receive hatred, we can’t grow into oneness if we give hatred in return. We must love, and love unconditionally. We must love even those we do not like.
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We must try, although they do make it downright impossible at times! At the same time, though, we must remember that we have a right to defend ourselves, and also a duty to defend all those weaker than ourselves.
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Most definitely.
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I completely agree, Mick. The issue has come up in numerous blogs comment threads over the past few days. Scapegoating the entire Muslim community would be a truly moronic response. The terrorists don’t represent Islam just because they say they do. They represent nobody but themselves and only they themselves are to blame for their actions.
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That’s right. Unfortunately, I notice already today that there has been an attack on a Muslim couple in Scotland by a gang of morons who think that they are somehow avenging the Paris attacks. Just what the terrorists ordered.
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Really? Oh, no! That’s just the worst possible response. Morons is right. 😦
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People who had to endure the tragic circumstances of World War II learned to hate very quickly and very effectively and that, my friends, is how we got the determination and kept the determination to see it to a victorious conclusion. There is a time for love and there is a time for love and a time for all things under the sun in its season. As a military man I was taught that to show love for an enemy was to invite death.
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I have no doubt that is essential in a war situation, and that to let down your guard was fatal. I also hear that hate can cloud judgement, but having never been in that kind of situation, I can only listen to others. But the kind of hate that is being invited by their actions is an indiscriminate one, directed towards the innocent as much as the guilty, and I say we should resist that. There is, perhaps, a time for hate, too, and I pray that it should only be the right time. As I wrote in a reply above, we must remember that we have a right to defend ourselves, and also a duty to defend all those weaker than ourselves.
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Innocents always become victims in any conflict. It is an inescapable fact of life that innocents will perish when international tensions inflame to war. Sometimes it is essential that the very hatred that coulds some people’s judgments become the mechanism of judgment — especially for those charged with fighting the battles. Two of the greatest motivators to military conquest and victory are the emotion of hatred and the invocation of testosterone in the warrior elements engaged in the conflicts.
In some instances — when the conflict is expansive and overwhelming it becomes a truism that in the act of defending ourselves we also defend the weaker among us …The defense of the weak is sometimes a by product of self defense — especially if it is all undertaken on a relatively massive scale … such as in an all out war.
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All that is true – the whole history and course of World War 2 would unfortunately bear that out. It has not come to that yet, of course, and the path of this problem may yet take an unexpected turn. But I would be less than honest if I said that I felt there was even a cat in hell’s chance of a peaceful solution.
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You are entirely correct! There is no chance for a peaceful solution because this is in their DNA having been ingrained into them since the time of their infancy. This is all they have ever known and for this purpose they were brought into this world.
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ISIS is a very recent phenomenon, and it seems to me more like a combination of Sunni/Shia rivalry ratcheted up, indoctrination by some charismatic and fundamentalist leaders, and then an unhealthy dollop of crowd mentality and a massive sense of grievance chucked into the mix. It is not as though we have never seen extreme interpretations of religion before – Christianity hardly has a proud track record there. It is important to remember that they are a very small proportion of Muslims, and are no more representative of the whole than the Ku Klux Klan are of Christianity.
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They may be a small proportion but it is also to remember that the teachings that were given to one group were given to all and the teachings that were taught are now somewhere inside everyone who received them and for that reason even though there are only a few at present I feel many are ticking time bombs and that if conditions are right the ideological teachings common to all will rise to the surface and breed many more radicals than there already are…. and while we are at it, there are 1.6 Billion Muslims in the world right now … if only a small percentage are radicalized what would that percentage be?
There are many polls ongoing that tell us that while only a tiny percentage of Muslims support the radical groups themselves, a great percentage do support their goals and ambitions. So where does that leave us with the “Tiny Minority” theory?
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You could equally argue that everyone who has read the bible has absorbed all of the more dubious parts and that stonings of adulterers and all manner of other unpleasant things could rise to the surface, but no one believes that will happen because of the times and social situations we are in. Equally, I don’t see it as likely that most Muslims would be suddenly radicalised.
And whilst I have also seen the polls that say that many Muslims support many of the goals, I am not aware that they support the methods being employed to get there,
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Need of universal brotherhood…….!!!
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A great need indeed, Amit! Thank you for visiting.
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