What do you mean she “signed up”?
It’s a loose way of saying she’s now joined up to a belief-system that I find abhorrent.
With respect to my daughter, she was born Muslim, and knew nothing besides Isalm until she was 17. Yes, she believes what she was taught as a child, but it is not the same Islam that people are trying to paint as being Islam on this thread, and that is why I will continue to object to such portrayals. Indeed, unlike Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, there is no Muslim government seeking to bring an end to the USA. I find the vast majority of Muslims, while wishing to proselytize non-Muslims (as I would gladly share my Christian faith with them), are content with the belief that there should be no compulsion in religion. (Though I would agree with those who say that Sharia laws fall well short of true religious freedom.) I find that the vast majority of Muslims also abhor what they see as a perversion of Islam by those who have adopted terror as a means to their various ends, be they poltical or even religious.
Now, you may say that my personal experience and acquaintance, no matter how broad can only be an infinitesimally small percentage of Muslims. Very true. But, on what grounds would you find them not to be representative? They are people from dozens of countries, some western, some middle eastern, some Asian, some with dominantly Muslim populations and yet secular, and some with a president who seems ready to wage nuclear war with the USA as if it were his personal religious duty. Even those solidiers I know who serve in Iraq, and two Christian friends who are missionaries in Kurdistan report to me that, while they have to be cautious, on the whole they find that they are well received by the common people, Muslims though they be.
Now, surely there are places where those who have adopted terror as a weapon exert great influence and even have some power, but again they do not represent Islam, at best they represent only one aspect of Islam, and by emphasizing it absent other aspect of Islam they have become unbalanced both in their beliefs and in the actions.
So, we must resist those who, having perverted the teachings of Islam to arrive at some sort of quasi-religious justification for their own agendas, now engage in terrorism. But we need not label all who are Muslim as believing in those same set of beliefs, because they don’t. And if instead, we go about convincing ourselves that everything about Islam is evil by citing only those verses that back up this singular view absent others that might provide a more rounded view, then we have merely copied those terrorist in becoming equally unbalanced in our thinking with regard to Isalm just like they have.
And lastly, yes, when this unbalanced view toward Isalm reaches the point where it attributes ideaology and attitudes to my daughter that I know are not true of her then, yes, you can bet it is going to get personal. So, please, take the time to learn the whole story, not just one portion of it.
Are there Muslim terrorists? Yes, there are terrorists who claim to represent Islam. They are terrible people. But they are not truly representative of Islam, even less are they representative of all Muslims. Just think of all the Muslims who are citizens of countries that we are allied with in this “war on terror”, surely that fact alone should convince one that there is no monolithic entity that is Islam. And to act as if there is would be bad politics as a nation, and sinful as individual Christians. As followers of the Christ, I believe we are called to something better than that.
