This article first appeared in local papers a month ago. Over the last month we have had a lot of time to reflect on our involvement in the Middle East and what the future of that may look like.
Being enrolled in this World Religions course at the same time has also given me a chance to think about the religious background of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan and what impact our North American Christian involvement has had on their religious system(s).
To begin, Bin Laden was the leader of the Al-Qaeda- an extremist Islamic group. As we learned in this course, Islam is both a religion and a political system (Corduan, 77). It also centres on the question of whether or not a person submits to Allah (p. 88). Although, the Al-Qaeda is clearly not within the "normal" stream of Islam, I believe it is important to come to a full understanding of the Islamic religion before trying to understand its sects.
Secondly it is important to understand the North American response to the Al-Qaeda. As "Christian" nations, the United States and Canada chose after the September 11th attacks by the Al-Qaeda to launch the War on Terror. We made it our mission to find, and essentially shut down, the Al-Qaeda by killing their leader. I will not give opinions on whether this was right or wrong at this point. I will merely say that after ten years of the "War on Terror" Bin Laden is now dead, and North Americans are left feeling the need to educate themselves on what it is we have been fighting the last ten years.
As stated earlier, I believe it is our responsibility as North Americans to educate ourselves on what is we have been fighting so as not to create stereotypes of religious groups based on one sect of their followers. I will leave this post with a challenge for all of us: as educated people, we need to educate ourselves on all aspects of a religion, and not be satisfied by mere stories or articles. Specifically following this monumental death, let us challenge one another to understand the difference between Islam and its extremist groups, and how these compare and contrast with our North American Christianity.
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