BloomingPeaches – Sit. Think. Imagine

Here’s an excerpt from an article I found. It comes to me with no surprise that I never saw this on the news. Source :  The Huffington Post

Nine members of a Christian militia group, Hutaree, were charged Monday with plotting to kill a police officer and slaughter scores more with homemade bombs. According to the indictment, the actions were done in hopes of igniting an uprising against the U.S. government.

News of this terror plot is likely to spark a great deal of discussion around the idea of domestic terrorism. But there are some things that are not likely to be part of that discourse. For example, we’re not likely to hear experts discussing whether or not Christian doctrine teaches its followers to overthrow governments and kill people. And, although the Hutaree website quotes scripture passages that allude to battle and sacrificing lives for the greater cause, the Bible is not likely to become condemned for inspiring acts of terror.

Hutaree means “Christian Warrior,” yet the American public is not likely to blame Christianity. And Homeland Security probably isn’t going to single out all people with Christian names in the airport security line. The FBI most likely isn’t going to start wire-tapping Churches and Christian homes, and it’s unlikely that the whole world will be expecting every peace-loving Christian to apologize for actions they had nothing to do with — just because it was done in their name.

Unfortunately, these rules do not apply to Muslims. When a Muslim commits a crime, the Quran goes on trial. For example, after the failed “Christmas bombing,” a January Wall Street Journal piece highlighted the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had studied at the San’a Institute for Arabic Language. “He knew how to read and write in Arabic because he had learned to read the Quran being a Muslim, but his speaking abilities were very limited,” recalls Mohammed Al-Anisi, the institute’s director. Abdulmutallab may have also studied French poetry as a student, but that probably wouldn’t have been considered relevant to his crime. The study of the Quran and Arabic, on the other hand, seems to be.

If there’s news of a Muslim terrorist, Islam becomes complicit in the crime. Yet few people are going to accuse Christianity of motivating the terrorism of the Hutaree militia. These Christian terrorists are considered violent criminals who’ve perverted a peaceful religion.

Muslim terrorists, on the other hand, are just following a violent, perverted religion. A Christian terrorist is considered violent in spite of his or her faith, whereas a Muslim is violent because of it. Are we now going to create a new brand of crime called “Christian terrorism”? Is the entire Christian community going to be put on the defensive, while media pundits begin the mantra: “Why aren’t Christians condemning acts of terrorism?” Probably not. The question is: why should someone named Christopher need to condemn the acts of the Hutaree militia any more than someone named Mohammad does? And why should Mohammed be expected to condemn the acts of the “Christmas bomber” any more than Christopher?

As FBI agent Andrew Arena said, Hutaree is just “an example of radical and extremist fringe groups which can be found throughout our society.” Their crimes are committed in spite of their religious affiliations — not because of them.

There wasn’t a soul in Canada that did not watch the final hockey game at the Olymics this past Sunday. Everyone had their eyes and ears locked onto their television sets. It was an intense game and at one point victory did not seem so certain. But Team Canada finally delivered and the nation went crazy!

Crazy is an appropriate word to describe the atmosphere in pretty much every street across the country. The magnitude at which celebrations took place was phenomenal. People were out in the streets cheering and screaming, singing O’ Canada, honking…doing pretty much anything they could to express how happy and proud they were. For a quiet peace loving nation that sight is a little unusual. Either ways, it was an incredible experience. I’ve never seen anything like it and I am not sure if anything of that magnitude has happened in recent history. Honestly, I don’t think it’ll happen again either.

So it got me thinking. What was it that made Sunday nights game so special. Obviously it wasn’t just another Olympic hockey game. We’ve won Olympic hockey gold medals in the past but something was different about this one. I’ve boiled it down to a number of things. One was certainly the fact that it was against the Americans. I don’t think it would have meant as much if it was against some small European country. For political reasons this is never verbalized, but there is a part of every Canadian’s heart that secretly hates the USA (perhaps I can expand on that in another post lol). Another factor was that Canada was playing for its record 14th gold medal. Other factors include the fact that the game was being played on home soil…or ice as was the case and it was the last event of the 2010 Olympics. Also, the game was on a Sunday which basically meant you had no excuse to miss it.

The power of a sport to unite an entire nation is extremely fascinating. It didn’t matter if you were a hockey fan or not, you were a part of the celebrations. Its amazing to know that everyone experienced the exact same thing at the exact same time across the entire country. The only other I can think of that unites people to such an extent is war… or perhaps a natural disaster of some sort. Interestingly enough both are quite grotesque.

So I guess its been proven once again… Hockey is Canada’s Game!