Mini had some questions after school on Friday. They’d had their Remembrance Day assembly and something just wasn’t sitting right with him. He had no idea of the causes of WW1 & WW2, but he seemed to understand why Canadians were there and what their sacrifice meant. What he couldn’t understand (he’s 11) is Afghanistan and why we’re there. This is when a dad is supposed to say something intelligent. Impart words of wisdom that will enlighten and clarify.

I tried. I explained about the United Nations and how the powers that be believed it was the right thing to do, that to leave now would lead to anarchy and slaughter. I tried to explain why it’s so complicated; the pros and cons for staying and for leaving. He asked how I felt about it. I told him I support the troops, but not the mission. He seemed satisfied with that, but I wish I could have given him more.

I watched Hockey Night in Canada last night and during the Coaches Corner segment they showed the pictures and ages of all the fallen from the past year and it was just so…sad. Good Canadian kids that should be home with their families drinking beer and watching the hockey game. I know they must have believed in what they were doing when they left, but to be involved in a bloody civil war with no end in sight makes no sense to me. But on the flip side we sat back and watched the slaughter in Rwanda. What’s worse? I look at our two boys and shudder.

This wasn’t the post I planned to write tonight, but I got the following email and really felt the need to post it.

Muslims just want to live in peace.

A German’s point of view on Islam

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

“Very few people were true Nazis “he said,” but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian, Jewish and tribal groups throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa, gradually taking over an entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or ‘honour kill’. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority”, the “silent majority”, is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.

sss