I know those who defend islam have there hearts in the right place

[Mc Mike]

44. I, also, am very sorry about the murder of all those innocent people in Belgium.

And the innocent people that radical ISILs are murdering in the Mid East nations, too. I also agree with you about the danger caused by Saudi-funded Wahabi radical sunnis, the danger posed by Saudi Arabia itself and their Standard Oil bush pals, and the threat from non-Saudi radical Shias.

But, where the pig repug party wants to take attacks like this politically and philosophically, I disagree 100% with. I don't know you as a post-er, and am not indicting you. But the people who slaughtered the Belgians are not "those same people they had there hearts opened up to". So having you feel that "THAT is the hardest part for me.." is a false feeling based on an idea that is factually incorrect, but it is a bogus idea that the repug Islamophobes will try to push forward and get propaganda mileage out of.

Again, you haven't posted here long, and I read your journal to try to see where you're coming from better, and it didn't leave me feeling you're advocating for the other team. But that feeling of yours, coming from a factually incorrect place, that believes that "Islam in whole" committed this mass murderous crime, is exactly what good people of all religions and no religion have to fight against. And we are going to get this false idea promoted endlessly by the bad guys in the other party, so why does it need to be promoted here, even taking into account the extremely high level of heartbreak or outrage the attack has caused?

I'm a Catholic, and don't feel I should tell someone steeped in the Islamic tradition where to get off, regarding how to feel about the Islamic religion. But Islam didn't do this, and all moslems aren't to blame. The killers are to blame, and their leaders and financial backers are to blame. If you are personally now against Islam, fine. That's your experience, your choice. You can't blame a billion people for the actions of a very tiny minority. The people who got killed who you think may previously have been protesting in favor of refugee immigrants weren't welcoming their own killers, they were welcoming other victims of those same killers.

To use the deaths of those pro-refugee Belgians as a tool to advocate that Western countries do exactly what the killers want -- when what the killers want is to get their hands on other victims who are trying to escape those killers -- that use of the victims' deaths is a supreme disservice to those pro-refugee people who were murdered by those killers. It's exactly the same as saying "Those people killed you, so we're going to obey them and give them other victims to kill, because they said that's why they killed you. Since they said that's what they want us to do, we're going to do it. Because we're terrified, furious, and heartbroken, so this supremely non-sensical idea seems completely sensible to us."