With the recent bombing at the Boston marathon and the revelation of the identity of those involved as Muslim, there is a danger. I have already seen a number of Christians on social media claim that this shows that all Muslims are terrorists and want to kill Americans. I see this as a problem for Christians.
First of all, I need to make clear that I believe Christianity and not Islam represents the true religion of God. Secondly, I am not a proponent of Chrislam, a blending of Christianity and Islam.
Having said that, I think that many of the people who claim that all Muslims are evil terrorists have never 1) read the Qur’an or 2) taken the time to get to know a Muslim. Many Christians believe that the Qur’an teaches Muslims to kill all non-Muslims when it says nothing of the sort. Also, Muslims are like any other people (including Christians), there are good people and bad people. Sure there are Muslims involved in terrorism. But there have been people who claim to be Christian who have been involved in terrorism as well. In fact just about everything Christians don’t like about Islam is something that Christianity has been guilty of as well.
When Christians paint Muslims with a broad brush, we look foolish. It also makes us look like hypocrites. We would hate it of outsiders judged us by the actions of Westboro Baptist Church, why should we judge Islam by a very small minority?
I understand that terrorism is a very emotional event and there is a human need to find blame. But when we judge all people who belong to a religion based on a small minority, we look foolish. If Christians really want to express the truth of Jesus to an unbelieving world, we need to realize that giving in to the easy path of false judgment creates obstacles to reach Muslims who are offended and other non-Christians who know we are wrong.
