Muslims Exhausted and Depressed

David Crumm’s Detroit Free Press article on Friday, “Muslims, Jews start to heal ” had a couple of interesting comments. The event, according to Crumm, included "nearly 200 Christians, Jews and Muslims met at Congregation Adat Shalom in Farmington Hills on Thursday night to listen to two rabbis and four Muslim leaders from metro Detroit.”

One of the leaders was Victor Begg, chair of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan. He "said local Muslim leaders are fed up with non-Muslims’ demands that they continually condemn terrorism, as if they are responsible for all such crimes.

‘It is exhausting and depressing to be responsible for everyone in the world who uses our faith for evil,’ Begg said.”

Doesn't it sound as if Begg were suggesting that Islamic terrorists who commit acts of murderous evil are merely using Islam for evil, rather than engaging in violent acts in obedience to Islam? And isn't it more accurate that aren't demanding continual condemnations of terrorism, but that Islamic terrorist acts are being committed on a continuing basis?

Begg can’t be held responsible for the irony of the arrest, the very next day, of Derrick Shareef in Chicago. But, on the exhausting and depressing point of people using the faith for evil, Shareef was a Muslim convert, “who talked about his desire to wage jihad against civilians” by setting off “hand grenades at a shopping mall during the Christmas rush….Officials said Shareef had been under investigation since September, when he told an acquaintance that ‘he wanted to commit acts of violent jihad against targets in the United States as well as commit other crimes.’"

Is Begg asking us to accept, along with him, that, just supposing here, every once in a great, great while some person claiming to be of the Islamic faith commits an evil act, he is clearly doing it in part with the intention of making the Islamic faith look bad? That such a person isn't practicing Islam, he is only using Islam?

Najah Bazzy, teacher at the Islamic Center of America here in Dearborn was also one of the speakers.

She talked about the "fear" a lot of non-Muslims have of Islam "and its cultural symbols, such as Muslim women wearing scarves over their hair."

“’I will be so happy when people finally quit worrying about what's on my head and focus on what's inside my head.'"

Those of us who have fears about Islam aren’t the least bit fearful of Ms. Bazzy’s scarf.

And we are focusing upon what’s inside her head. And the heads of other Muslims, too. Say, like Derrick Shareef’s head, and whoever filled it with jihad.