Dealing with Martyrs, Prisoners, and Ourselves-10-18-ReligionAndReality.com

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ReligionAndReality.com

Finding God

By Faith And By Reason

Responding to Religiously Inspired Violence

Dealing with

Martyrs, Prisoners, and Ourselves

Dealing with Would-be Martyrs: If possible, do not kill these fellow humans or allow them to commit suicide. It's far better to keep them alive and, if necessary, in prison for the remainder of their lives. Treat them humanely, at least a well as one would treat any other prisoner. Offer them the opportunity to Transform Islam from the Inside. If they decline, allow them to be. Let them simple be forgotten.

For those who decline the transformation offer, we could put them to work designing and building a humane living facility in a remote, cold weather location, such as in Alaska. Why a frigid climate? Because keeping then out of society is much easier if they are in a location where escaping alone into the surrounding countryside means almost certain death.

We could also put them to work designing ways to transform prison life from its present barbaric form as punishment to an enlightened form of banishment. We could also put them to work designing a way for people physically excluded for society to participate in the evolution of humanity

We could also put them to work designing a way to be financially self sufficient or even profitable and then use the profit to compensate crime victims or their families.

Instead of punishment, humility, or deprivation, offer those who cooperate and participate:

** money for their families,
** sexual fulfillment for themselves, and
** treatment with honor, respect and dignity.

"Perhaps the best way to kill an enemy really is to make him our friend."

"If you want to teach a person how to be a criminal, simply put him in prison."

If you want to create a dedicated terrorist, find someone who practices Islam, put him in prison for a while, punish him, humiliate him, deprive him of dignity and then turn him loose.

Where Is the Real Enemy? You ask why I should be loving and compassionate to someone who would, if given the opportunity, murder me and set off a bomb that would indiscriminately kill thousands of innocent people? The true jihadist thinks that I am his enemy. Do you want me to prove to him that he is correct in that belief?

He is all but hopelessly stuck in a set of highly destructive beliefs that have no evidence to prove their validity. Murder and mayhem are the only tools he presently has available with which to respond to a world that treats him as an enemy. Shall I reinforce his beliefs?

Unless we can convict him of a crime that requires him to be imprisoned for life, it's only a mater of time before our present legal system sets him free to return to and be among others who are equally as intent on the mass murder of infidels. After he is turned loose, what will become of him? What can we expect to get in return for our gross mistreatment of him and others like him?

Perhaps it's time to get our own house in order. We, in our so-called civilized society, don't intentionally destroy other cultures with guns and bombs. We do it with unbridled capitalism which treats everything and everyone as a resource to be exploited and then discarded. When the call to profit is sounded, nothing stops our wheels of progress. Entire cultures and ways of life die with the roar of our chain saws and under the grinding treads of our bulldozers. Millions starve to death in the wake of our unbridled destruction that we euphemistically call capitalism. But none of that counts because it's hidden from plain site by mountains of publicity and propaganda. We are the good guys! We wear the white hats.

Perhaps it's time for each of us to take a walk down that yellow brick road and realize that not only are we false wizards, we are each lions seeking courage to face reality, scarecrows seeking knowledge and wisdom, and tin men seeking to find and love who and what we really are in own hearts.

The world's longest journey is the one we take to find ourselves. No matter where I go, I always take me along. No matter where I am it's always "here." No matter what the clock or the calendar says, it's always "now." This brings up the eternal question: Where in the physical universe do I go the find Creator/God?

Perhaps He/She/It is hiding in plain sight -- perhaps not hiding at all -- perhaps you and I are intimate pieces of both the beginning and the end of creation and everything in between.

We can be angry about the past, fearful of the future, or be present within ourselves right here, right now. Perhaps the suggested technique of Transforming Islam from the Inside could be altered slightly to fit our own religions and then applied to our own lives.