"Big Brother is watching."
Or, should I say, Pastor Terry Jones is preying - preying on young, pure-minded individuals and on adults all around to further his radical claims and perpetuate a fear-based cause.
Just as radical Muslims make Islam seem like a radical religion, Jones makes Christianity seem like a largely radical religion. His following, the Dove World Outreach Center, has not been using the honey approach to win converts, but rather a distorted and mutilated fire-and-brimstone approach that alienates those who see through the faulty logic and incendiary devices the Center (not called a church, oddly enough) employs.
Accusing anyone or anything of being "of the devil" is a pretty serious claim, and Jones just doesn't have enough credibility to back his assertion up. This pastor seems to miss the fact that Islam and Christianity are closely tied by Abraham and his sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Thus, Christianity and Islam are basically first cousins. Though their contemporary appearances are different, their origin and central tenets are essentially the same.
Making an appeal to patriotism, the protesters held American flags and erroneously claimed to support the views of the United States. Though Jones is right that the U.S. is a mostly Christian nation, he's wrong that it needs to stay a Christian nation. He somehow seems to have overlooked that the pilgrims' purpose for coming was for religious freedom. Although founding (not basing) the nation "under God," our founders clearly sought an acceptance of all, regardless of race, religion, creed and so on.
Though he claims to express the opinion of the Bible and Jesus Christ, all Jones is doing is slandering a belief system and committing a fallacy by claiming that a few radicals (the terrorists and suicide bombers) can account for a religion with more than 1.5 billion, or more than 22 percent of the population, adherents worldwide. Most Muslims recognize no commandment in the Koran supporting the terrorists' actions. Furthermore, religious extremists claiming diving support for their actions is not unique to Islam, but has happened before with Divine Right and during the Crusades and the Protestant-Catholic controversy in Northern Ireland.
We all agree that the Center and its members have the right to protest, but I'm pretty sure it's against man's and God's law to indoctrinate children and distort their ideologies, turning them into walking zombies repeating only what the Center advocates and not thinking for themselves. Also, I'm pretty sure the First Amendment doesn't protect against incendiary speech, nor fighting words, nor slander and that the Center is undoubtedly showing actual malice.
So, as a note to Jones, the Center, and his devotees following his doomsday scenarios: Please, stop now, before we need to have another civil rights movement. It seems we are slipping back against our central tenet of religious tolerance into the shadowy depths of bigotry and fanaticism. If we don't correct ourselves, I suppose it all comes back to it: "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength."
Oh, and Brainwashing is Education. Bigotry is Tolerance. Radicalism is Moralism.
Alexander Salamanca is a psychology and political science junior.
