The Unlearned Lessons of Garland, Texas

By: American Decency Staff

At first glance, the shootout in Garland, Texas seems like an isolated incident at least in America.

But, that’s at first glance.

It's been a while since we've had a high profile terror attempt on American soil like that of the "Underwear Bomber" or the Fort Hood Shooter, or even the Boston Marathon Bombing, already two years past. 

Lately, we've been allowed to ogle the savagery of Islamic extremism from across an ocean as terrorists pointed guns at primarily non-American civilians whose mortal crime was being non-Muslim.

The lessons of September 11, 2001 have long been forgotten and, if anything, our government is less wary of the ideology that ushered over 2,000 American sons and daughters into their graves that day.

As I'm sure you've heard, recently  two Muslim radicals with guns showed up at Pamela Geller's Mohammed drawing contest to attempt to massacre its attendants. The shooters were killed in the attempt having accomplished nothing more than piercing an infidel foot and making the nightly news.

We can safely say that that is purely God's grace.

But, in as much as so violent a reaction to insulting Islam has not been experienced in our country before, at least not with such a specific focus, the attack is certainly not the only one of its kind; it's not even the only one of its kind this year.  And, if we think that this is the end of it, we're simply fantasizing.

In Bangladesh, three attacks motivated by Islam have taken the lives of anti-Islam bloggers this year.  The bloggers have been hacked to death with machetes and meat cleavers in broad day light on the streets of their cities.

And of course, we cannot forget the horrific Charlie Hebdo attacks in which Muslim radicals entered the French magazine's offices and opened fire, killing twelve staff members.

Before that there were threats of violence when Terry Jones threatened to burn the Koran on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and attempts on a Danish cartoonist's life for drawing Mohammad holding a bomb in 2005.

What stands out about each of these attacks is the wrong-headed  tendency for the conversation to revolve around the right of the cartoonists to draw such "provoking" depictions.

It pains me to say this, but I'd personally be inclined to agree with Bill O'Reilly's analysis of the event.

"…Some Muslim countries are now fighting ISIS and al Qaeda themselves.

Jordan and Egypt are two of the most powerful.

… do you think it's a smart strategy to insult the Muslim countries of Jordan and Egypt by besmirching their religious icon?

…insulting a religion with more than a billion followers does not advance the cause of defeating the fanatical jihadists.
It hurts the cause."

For a Christian, whose motivation in everything should be to bring glory to God, it is a questionable tactic at best.  Albert Mohler (President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) offers his insightful comment:

An argument can be made that the exhibition in Dallas was in bad taste, and certainly when it comes to Christians driven by the gospel that is not the approach that we would want to take. But we should be deeply concerned when you have the editors of the New York Times trying to argue that they can make a distinction between Charlie Hebdo on the one hand and the Garland, Texas, exhibition on the other. They can declare that one is an exhibition of free speech, and the other of hate speech. The very logic of hate speech is the problem here because this is a logic that can be turned on any argument that anyone doesn’t want to be injected into the public square. And we can quickly see how this logic can be extended even to a theological critique of Islam, or for that matter any other worldview. And when it comes to the current moral revolution over the issue of gay rights, it’s very easy to understand where the logic of this hate speech argument can go.  …

 How long will it be before we are told that the understanding of the exclusivity of the Christian gospel, that is that only those who come to a conscious saving knowledge of Jesus Christ will be saved, is itself a form of hate speech? But wait a minute, we don’t have to wait. That argument is already in some quarters being made.

That is one of many troubling aspects surrounding this story. When "hate speech" is such an ambiguous and indefinable term, it leaves the door open for the culture, and eventually the courts, to try to deduce the motivation behind the expression. To those outside of the Christian faith, it is too easy to dismiss the exclusive nature of our faith as "hate speech," when in fact our attempt to convince people of Biblical truth is motivated by love.

However, this is certainly not the only takeaway coming out of the Garland, TX shooting.  Consider the following points from Gary Bauer's End of Day update, May 6, 2015:

1.      No American who chooses to exercise their First Amendment right should be blamed for violence that is done by someone else who is intolerant. Extortion is a crime. We do not give in to mob violence or terrorism. 

2.      Censoring ourselves because we fear Islamic violence is a slippery slope. In countries like France and England, Jews have been told that they can go anywhere they want. But they have been strongly discouraged from wearing anything that identifies them as Jews because it might enrage Muslims. By this flawed logic if Jews are attacked it must be their fault. No! The only person responsible is the assailant. 

3.      By the way, how did the Coptic Christians who were beheaded by ISIS offend Muslims? What did the Boston Marathon runners do that offended the Tsarnaev brothers? How about the Israeli worshippers hacked to death at a synagogue in Jerusalem? 

4.      What happened to the courage of all those marching in the streets of Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attacks? Remember the chant, "Je suis Charlie"? (I am Charlie!) Perhaps we need a new campaign: "I am Pamela!" 

 

In the end, followers of Islam tried to kill Americans because of a few pencil marks on a page, and we're more concerned with those who did the coloring than those who tried to do the killing. 

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