On Fort Hood …

My Muslim friend Eboo Patel offers a powerful response to the killings here …
One of the ten questions in my upcoming book deals with religious identity, pluralism, tolerance, and interfaith dialogue. In light of my earlier post about a group of Christians in Ohio joyfully burning books and even Bibles (because they weren’t the King James Version!) … I wonder if there would have been an uproar if a group of Muslims had burned those Bibles. Why won’t there be an uproar when it is fellow Christians?
I hope every reader of this blog will respond to the Fort Hood shootings (and every act of religious bigotry, racial intolerance, sexual stereotyping and prejudice, unequal treatment of gay folks, etc.) by rededicating themselves to follow the example of Jesus: move toward “the other” with love and respect. Don’t fear, avoid, dehumanize, stigmatize, or allow bigoted statements to go unchallenged, but instead, have a cup of tea, take a walk, exchange dinner invitations, hear their stories, and treat “the other” as you would be treated. Learn to see “the other” as your neighbor, and respond as Christ taught.
And if you’re starting to see how important this issue of interfaith friendship is, how about reading my friend Samir Selmanovic’s important book too … available here?