I'm back!

It's scary how time flies when you haven't blogged in a while... Everything's going fine over in the Wookie household, I was just too busy at work to blog. I rarely blog from home, especially since the little Wookette was born. So that really just leaves work, and since they'd been drowning me in paperwork lately, my blogging suffered. True only 3 off you noticed the hiatus, but we love our loyal readers here at Cake or Death, so I'm back. And to be truly honest, I really wasn't very excited about blogging anything lately. Nothing in the news was really grabbing my attention. I needed a jumpstart and who'd have guessed it'd come in the form of an email forward. The Fetching Mrs. Wookie hasn't been feeling well the past couple days, so in her recovery time, she sent out a few forwards. Some are political, some are religious, some are just fun, but one in particular caught a couple people's attentions which led to an interesting reply. The email in question was about, the Religion of Peace. A state employee was participating in a regular training session that included representatives from Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim faiths who were there to summarize their beliefs. Each got their turn to speak, and when the Q&A period came the original author of the email asked the Imam some pointed questions regarding jihad (holy war against infidels), infidels (non-believers), and who qualifies to be labelled as an infidel (anyone not Mulsim), and what devout Muslims are supposed do to infidels (namely, kill them). It was interesting in that the Imam acknowledged everything including the interpretation that Muslims are supposed to kill infidels. But it was the replies to the email that the Fetching Mrs. Wookie got that started the blogging juices flowing again. One friend replied back saying how emails like this promote discrimination and hatred, that Muslims are a peaceful religious community, and that we ought to do the Christian thing and stop such prejudiced emails. That got me a little fired up. My reply was as follows... The problem is that the vocal sects are the ones with the extremist tendencies and the peaceful Muslims around the world stand by and say nothing as the extremists in their midst tarnish the good name of their religion. If a Christian commits crime in the name of Christianity, pastors, clerics, and priests around the world would (and have) publicly denounce the extremists’ actions as evil and not in accordance with their religion’s beliefs. But where are the Imams publicly defending their peaceful religion that’s been hijacked by ruthless killers? They are unfortunately to few and far between. The email was in no way an attack on the millions of peaceful Muslims here in the US or abroad. It was certainly an indictment and criticism of how their religion has been distorted, but not distorted by US citizens or those who distribute these emails. It wasn’t distorted by the news media or our government. Its good name is being destroyed by its own practitioners; those who peacefully practice their religion but say nothing as well as those who murder in the name of Allah. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke So you can either view this email as an attempt to incite hatred and prejudice against Muslims or you can view it as an attempt to flush out those who smear the true nature of Islam and motivate Islam’s peaceful but silent followers to publicly ostracize those who abuse their religion. It's good to be back...