When Muslim Religious Leaders Finally Grow Up

Today, a Marine was pulled from duty in Iraq for passing out "Christian coins" with the verse from John 3:16 on one side and the words, "Where will you spend eternity?" on the other. (See Fox news story ) A week or two ago, a sniper was pulled from Iraq for (stupidly) using a copy of the Quran for target practice. Even more stupidly,the soldier left it lying in the dust on the target range near the local police station in a former insurgent stronghold. While, I lament the American's actions because his job in this fight is to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people while breaking the will of or converting insurgents and killing unreprentant terrorists, I fail to understand the childishness of the Muslim leader's response. It is always the same with these folks. Throw a pebble, they respond by blowing up babies and invalids in hospitals or shooting up Catholic churches or cutting off Nick Berg's head. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if we could just nuke the folks we dislike off the planet, but a mature response requires that we suck it up, apologize, and try to become friends so we can exploit each other with corporate big business in peace and most especially, prosperity.

Given the nature of our mission in Iraq and the secular nature of our government, I understand why we are responding this way to these infractions of discipline, but in a perfect world, the Marine who passed out the coins would have been given a medal instead--the Sniper, well, for his lack of prudence, maybe a little time back with his family to regroup and get some perspective back in his life.

Muslims are notorious for their publicly over-reactive, ridiculously emotional reponses to these sorts of incidents. They typically respond by shooting up a Catholic Church (as in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002, or the Chaldean Catholic church in Baghdad in Dec 2004), or kill an Archbishop (e.g., Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho) when someone who is even nominally Christian, or maybe not, irresponsibly offers the feintest slight because they still believe we are fighting the Crusades. Idiots. Until they learn to grow up and behave like adults instead of like my three year-old whose Hot Wheel car was taken away, these responses are what will always make them look silly, petty, and stupid in the eyes of the world. When I see these things, I feel like I'm playing kindergarten cop. (Actually, correction, my three year old is more mature.)

Let's consider some of the responses of this audience:

(Courtesy Fox News website)..."Demonstrators in Baghdad's Sadr City district chanted 'No to America! No to the occupation!' A statement from al-Sadr's office has called the negotiations 'a project of humiliation for the Iraqi people.'

"Demonstrations?" The Iraqis want us to go away. They obviously have too much time on their hands. Maybe if they spent the time trying to fix their country instead of wasting time demonstrating we wouldn't need to be there.

"A project of 'humiliation?'" Passing out Christian coins on a street corner makes you feel humiliated? What is wrong with you, low self-esteem? Is Islam not fulfilling you adequately enough with self-worth? God created you and willed you be here. This ought to fill you with ample self-worth, not humiliation.

"Al-Zubaie said a man brought one of the coins to a mosque on Wednesday to show it to him and other Sunni leaders." This is like my three year old telling me that his older brother broke his 50 cent toy. Want to solve the problem? Why don't you ask China to make you bigger coins and give it to your people on the next street corner.

"One anti-U.S. Iraqi Sunni group condemned the Quran shooting, calling it 'a hideous act.'" He accused the Marines of trying to do missionary work in Fallujah and said Sunni leaders had met with U.S. military officials and demanded "the harshest punishment" for those responsible to make sure it doesn't happen again. What is more hideous are grown men acting like their shorts were pulled down on the kindergarten playground and crying to the principal about it. Oh? So, you demand the harshest punishment for an immature 19 year old who shoots an inanimate object, but you don't even bat an eyelash at your own 30 year old man who takes multiple human lives in the name of God and then blasphemously claims he is doing it FOR God? My apologies if I do not empathize with your pain.

Maybe if our Muslim terrorist extremists would act with a little more maturity and condemn something that really ought to be condemned, like abortion, pedophilia, torture of political prisoners (it's OK for liberals), then I might be willing to join you in your condemnation frenzy. A word of advice, grow up.