A couple of weeks ago, ISIS launched a series of attacks across the globe, a series of strikes that the world hadn't seen in quite some time. Suicide bombers struck at a funeral in Baghdad, Iraq and in a crowded market in Beirut. The bigger blow came in Paris, where suicide bombers and armed assailants attacked a restaurant, soccer stadium and music hall. They had also struck at a college in Kenya several months earlier this year (this attack resurfaced after the recent attacks). In response to these attacks, there was a backlash against the Muslim community in this country as well as those who are seeking refuge from the growing violence in the Middle East. The labeling of every Muslim as a terrorist erupted once again, as it did in the wake of 9/11.
On Black Friday, Nov. 27, 2015, a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado came under attack by an armed assailant. After a six-hour standoff and shootout, the police apprehended the gunman, but only after 12 people had been shot. As of now, three have been killed, including a campus police officer who was responding to the scene. The suspect has been identified as 57-year-old Robert Lewis Dear, a Caucasian Christian with origins from South Carolina and a member of a local parish that the cop whom Dear killed also attended.
If you are here thinking I'm going to call for stricter gun laws in America, then your paranoia over losing your precious guns is getting the best of you, and I will kindly ask you to open your eyes. I will again state that it's every American's right to carry and own a gun, and no one should take that away from you. I do, however, wish to point out the hypocrisy and fallacy of labeling every Muslim a terrorist in light of what happened overseas and what transpired in Colorado this past weekend.
To start, Robert Lewis Dear is a terrorist. Just like James Holmes. Just like Adam Lanza. Just like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Inflicting harm and causing terror in any way, shape, or form is what a terrorist is, and that is what all of these (and many more) guys have in common. The 19 men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden and the recent ISIS attackers were all terrorists as well, but only in the latter's case did we condemn an entire religion because of it. Dear was a known Christian, yet Christianity has not been condemned. No one has called for churches to be monitored and every Christian be tracked by a database. This has not been done because we know better when it comes to Christianity, yet we cannot use this same common sense when it comes to Islam.
The hypocrisy continued in how the 2016 presidential hopefuls reacted to this most recent shooting in Colorado. In the wake of the attacks carried out by ISIS a couple weeks ago, every candidate (especially the Republican hopefuls) reacted swiftly by calling for the closing of our borders. One Republican candidate specifically called for mosques to be monitored and every Muslim American be registered in a database.
It has been several days since the attack in Colorado Springs, and only two Democratic hopefuls have given a response. They happened to be Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who made statements via Twitter. Of the 14 Republican Candidates only Mike Huckabee referred to Dear as a terrorist. The other candidates responded with even Trump saying what Dear did was horrible but none of the other 13 candidates crossed that line to label Dear as a domestic terrorist.
The lack of response from the people who wish to run this country is disturbing. This gunman isn't just a random shooter but a domestic terrorist who set out to do serious damage and used his religious beliefs as an excuse to inflict deadly harm on others. Dear is as much a Christian as the guys who attacked Paris and the world a few weeks ago were Muslims: they weren't. Religion has become a scapegoat for radical terrorists both at home and abroad, but because the United States is a "Christian nation," we turn the other cheek when it comes to this violence and lash out when a guy shoots up a music hall while screaming "Allahu Akbar!"
Six days after 9/11, Republican President George Walker Bush spoke at a Muslim Center in Washington where he not only condemned the attacks but condemned the assaults and intimidation Muslims received as a result of American paranoia in the aftermath of 9/11. Don't believe me? Here's the link to the video. We had common sense then, so why can't we have it now? If we aren't going to label every Christian as a terrorist because we know better, then why is it so hard to do the same for the Muslims in this country? It's scary to think that when a radical Christian commits an act of terror on our own soil that we use common sense and don't blame the entire religion (or the religious zealots who have been "blessed" with a 60-minute TV time frame to spew out their biased views) but when a radical Muslim does it, common sense goes right out the window.
