I am surrounded by friends and people I hold dear both physically and also via social media. Like most other people, I feel quite secure in my imaginary cocoon that is my life. I never really give much thought to the fact that a large number of people want to kill me. Why these people would want to kill me is a puzzle. They don’t know me, they don’t interact with me, they don’t know my name or what I do with my life. They don’t know about the things I am good at, they don’t know if I am a good person or a bad person. They don’t care about my hopes, my fears, my loves or my passions. Rather, I am somehow a subject of hatred for them and if they could, they would kill me and seek reward for it in heaven.
Who on Earth is he talking about? I can hear you say.
I am talking about people like Abu-Salha. An American who recently blew himself up in order to kill for God. People like this man who have been somehow subverted in to believing that hatred is love, that death is life and that a paradise of beautiful women – and I suppose ostensibly great sex for eternity – awaits them. People like this want to kill me and you because we are free to believe what we want as opposed to believe in what they want us to believe in. Yes, its a bit more complex than that I suppose but at the end of the day, when a religion or a system demands that you kill in order to go to paradise and asks you to kill then you know that somewhere a man has taken over that religion or system. The God of love would never ask anyone to kill. Only a man of hate would ask this.
The world has a growing and large population most of whom live in poverty and ignorance. They are easy prey for men whose hearts are filled with hatred. Those of us that sit comfortably in our homes with full bellies, a roof over our heads surrounded by luxury are a minority that gets smaller every day. The spread of such hate is like a plague – I have often thought the fascination with zombies rather silly but it is a very appropriate analogy if you think about it. This spread of this insidious religious fanaticism is like a zombie-plague. Once infected, people lose their sanity and reason and become killers of light and love without remorse.
What to do? I only know of one thing to do and that is to pray for these people in any way you can.