East is not West, and West is not East

There are two camps concerning how to deal with Islamic extremism and its attendant terrorism.

The left-most camp says we are all basically the same people with slight cosmetic differences (but we absolutely must embrace those small variations as if they were monumental, or risk damaging the self-esteem of the slightly different, if not provoking them to an understandable retaliation of hurt feelings, expressed in flying jet airliners into buildings full of slightly the same civilians).

The right-most says it is as plain as the nose on your face that folks wearing towels on their heads are psychopaths with inferior DNA and a demon-possessed religion and they should all be confined to their own continent, if not nuked into a glass parking lot.

It has been very difficult for me to let go of my own bias about the global homogeny of mankind. I really want us all to be one big family with enough variety to make things interesting. I grew up believeing this kinder, gentler fairy tale.

I know a lot of people with the same (crack-)pipe dream, and for them I need to share a personal experience that might help them accept the possibility that Pollyanna is very wrong about this situation.

I once embraced religion. I identified myself with Christians. Among Christians there are diverse styles and opinions. Some have Sunday School parties for adults in their homes complete with booze and flirting. Some thump Bibles, forbid dancing or drinking or dating or other D-started debaucherie. Some yodel and weep and march around colisseum-sized auditoriums for hours. For a time I have been in each of those divisions throughout my life!

Among the strange fringes of deep discipleship, there are subdivisions. They are, in fact, cults, but that word has such a negative connotation that it is impolite to say so.

I lost two very dear friends over a squabble between 99% identical doctrine. That 1% was enough to rob me of people dear to me. One dear lady believed that the seemingly vicious, genocidal deity of the Jews was just as much in charge of things as the kinder, gentler Rabbi so often depicted as a shepherd. When this lady was unable to answer my polite questions about her doctrines ("The Torah etched stone says to execute adulteresses but the Torah made flesh in Messiah said to leave her alone . . . which Torah do I obey?") she became so agitated that her husband forbid her from communicating with me any longer (we were corresponding by email).

Now, this lady and I agreed on so many more things than we disagreed on that I can't come up with a realistic ratio. For illustration, I sya we disagreed on only 1% of our various beliefs. And while there was no physical violence in our parting, there was a very bitter emotional loss for me. Even with our differences I would gladly have remained friends with her, and the other friend too closely related to her to stay in contact.

If people born and raised in the same nation, practicing religions that were 99% identical, have a falling out and cannot speak or write to one another any more . . . what happens when the cultural backgrounds are more divergent, the religions more contrary?

What happens is the Middle East.

And 9/11.

I do not believe that the differences between radical Islam and western Judeo-Christianity is genetic. I do not believe that the differences make civil, mature, respectful relations impossible.

Still, I know for a fact what history proves over and over again. The differences are more than enough for some to have violent opposition, and the differences go beyond superficial degrees of dress or speech.

Islam is not Judaism. Islam is not Christianity. If radical Islam (not to be confused with more centrist Islam) has anything to do with the Golden Rule, it is confined to other members of the same sect.

The lessons: Islam in general is different enough (and deep enough) from Judeo-Christianity to be treated carefully, skillfully, and cautiously, and variations within a religion can be as profound as night and day, making radical Islam as unpallatable to other Muslims as neo-Messianic-Judaism is to evangelical-apostolic-quasi-Judaism.

And it doesn't matter if you have not had the same experiences in your own insular world, or if you choose to believe it. The murdering butchers who took their faith into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were clearly unimpressed with your viewpoints and took meaningful, terrible action on their own.

Hope and pray for peace.

Expect and be always ready for war.