Trying to Understand

Dear editor:

I just don’t understand.

Truly, there are peace loving Muslims all around the world, including the United States.  They want to go about their business, dress and pray in their own way and that is welcome wherever they are.  Their religion, practiced according to the Koran (which they state) is one of peace.  But what do we see?

Is there something in their religion that encourages the likes of ISIS, al-Quida, the 9/11 terrorists, Hamas, the Egyptian Brotherhood, etc?  What is it that makes young men and women strap tons of TNT to their body, giving up their lives and those around them in the name of Allah and Jihad?  What is it that makes these Muslims fly planes loaded with passengers into the Twin Towers on 9/11 or drive car bombs  into crowded areas?

What makes one branch of their religion, Sunni or Shia, hate so much that they kill and slaughter each other in the so-called name of their faith since the first century?  To me it would be the same as Catholic killing Protestant or Orthodox Jew killing Reformed Jew in the name of religion.

For so long Arab/Muslim  countries have used the whipping dog of Israel as the reason for all the hatred and killing in the Middle East.  But, let’s face it, that is a smoke screen for their sectarian violence.  If Israel, our only true friend in the region, would God forbid disappear, nothing would change and Muslim would continue to fight and kill Muslim.

Is life so meaningless to these Jihadists? Is showing beheadings and gun executions of men not mean anything? How do these people turn into religious fanatics that hate and are willing to kill and die? 

And why don’t the true Muslims speak out loud and clear their hatred for all this killing?  Why don’t they, on a constant blitz of news, letter writing, interviews and social media shout it from the roof tops that not all Muslims are haters and killers?  We of other faiths need to hear from them and their condemnation of what is going on today in so much of the world.  Silence is not the answer.

I just don’t understand.