My point was that life experiences might cause some people to have a unbalanced view of a certain entity, whether civil or ecclesial. Some gay and lesbian young people have committed suicide after experiences with those who attempted to “turn” them heterosexual in the name of Jesus.
Would the parents of one of those suicides be good people to make an presentation on conservative Christianity?
No, but they might be a good place to look for a talk on suicide, the history of gay rights, or some other topic. The school bringing this person in to talk about the nature of Islam generally. Her talk has more to do with women’s rights and struggle with oppression. ISIS just happens to be the backdrop to her story.
a) I too think ISIS is the backdrop and oppression of women is the front story.
b) This is in Canada. I don't know if we have Canadians on this board or looking in, but Canadians tend to be more sane, more balanced, and less polarized by far than Americans. Of course there are less of them, and it's really cold a lot of the time. But still.
c) I don't know if anyone on this forum knows a lot of Muslims and/or Christians from predominantly Muslim countries, but oppression and persecution of Christians is not at all rare in the Muslim world. Many of the people with whose baptisms and ministries I've been involved have deep personal experience of that persecution. It's no light thing. And yet those same people would encourage us to work in areas of mercy and community outreach with Muslim leaders, and join in seasonal festivities as signs of our common humanity and American citizenship. In other words, those whom you might think would be most Islamophobic are not.
Dave Benke
I do not doubt your experience in interacting with people in your parish and community.
I suspect that it is primarily people with little or no real interaction with Islamic people that are most likely to lump them all together as like the worst examples of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the like. Just as Christians need to acknowledge and deal with the worst excesses of Christianity over the ages, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the list goes on but you get the idea, so Muslims need to acknowledge and deal with the worst excesses of Islam.
In my favorite episode of the TV show
Bones, episode 6, season 8, "The Patriot in Purgatory" the entire crew of principles and interns end up dealing with 9/11. One of the forensic interns is Muslim, devoutly so. One of the other interns wonders if dealing with a victim of 9/11 would be hard for him since his co-religionists were involved in the attack. The Muslim reacts angrily that the attackers did not really represent his religion but highjacked his religion for their own evil purposes that day. His actual response in the show was longer and worth viewing, but that is the gist.