The 20 Virgens in Heaven Syndrome

Over the past sixty years the perception of Islam, at least from Western eyes, has been steadily deteriorating. It is quickly judged and in almost all cases not fully understood. Most people have no idea what true Islam is and are stuck on the most noticeable, but ironically the smallest, interpretation of Muhammad’s message: Extremism. The irony in this is that extremism is obviously not limited to Islam. There are hundreds of thousands extremist Christians just in the Mid-West of the United States alone. Not to mention the atrocities committed by the Catholic missionaries in colonial America, and all other—predominantly European—Christian missionaries in whatever time or place their activities were taking place. People fail to see that we as Christians have done just as bad, if not worse, than the Muslims have in the past six decades. And now, more than fifteen hundred years after its founding, Islam has taken great leaps and bounds, turns and curves. But unfortunately, most of us are unable to see past the cruel and wicked front amassed and distributed by the very incarnation of evil. To truly understand the most frightening of unknowns, one must be able to place themselves in their “enemy’s” shoes, see the world from their eyes, sensitivity, is what’s needed. A wise man whose name is lost to my mind once said, “In religion as in philosophy humanity's best hope is open-minded toleration.” Whoever this man was, he couldn’t be more right.
I’m really jealous of most Muslims. They have this remarkable sense of faith; a religious zeal unlike almost any other people of our modern age. They make one really question whether they’re missing out on something by not being as faithful as they are. Praying 5 times a day, fasting, the Hajj, it’s really quite admirable if you can put aside all the differences we’ve built up over the past fifteen hundred years. They are a people who are strong believers in their ways, which is just as true for us, and when two peoples as strong a willed as both of us—Westerners and Muslims—are it’s a given that we will have confrontation. I feel that Christianity has hit stagnation, and is leaning towards a drop of some sort, while Islam, on the other hand, has had almost a rebirth. They are a growing faith—again—and the typical perception of this faith is, well, fanatical to put it lightly. Muslims are proud of who they and their past and don’t want to be bossed around by Westerners; let alone Christians. But this resent of the west, out of all honesty, manifests itself in fanatical-extremist tendencies so rarely. Most Muslims are peaceful people, adherers to the Koran, and its 5 Pillars. Most don’t want x amount of virgins in heaven and to die in the name of Allah. Most want exactly what we want: a family that loves and cares for each other, economically successful, and active participants in their society.
People fear that which they don’t understand. It’s a natural instinct. Animals have it, it’s not exclusive to humans but we tend to exaggerate our misunderstanding thus enflaming our fear. The difference is animals don’t have any means to truly understand what they fear for obvious reasons. We on the other hand have the means and the definite capacity to educate ourselves. To be able to learn and hopefully to gain an understanding of each other, but unfortunately this is not what happens. Instead our fears are amplified by mass media, FOX News, and war stories. And people instead choose to not understand but simply hate. It’s definitely the easier path but what an atrociously offensive path. It pains me to know the resources making education so available to the general western public—who are affected by the Western-Muslim conflict—and their lack of use of it. Instead it is used to wrongly augment the situation. Blow it out of proportion. Anyone with a basic level of analytical skills who reads a chapter on the origins of Islam and its empire could profoundly change their view. But, unfortunately this also isn’t the case. What is so frightening about understand WHY a people think that particular way? Why? Because, honestly, they might actually discover that we’re wrong in most cases. That in reality they have every right to be angry with us because if the western world was portioned between Western powers – as it was at the turn of the 20th century and continued to be until the 1950s – we would do the exact same thing, or worse. The U.S. fought a war of independence because they had to pay extra taxes, imagine if some Muslim nation a whole world away treated us like we treat them, just imagine…
The image that most hold of Islam is an unfortunate one. They are one of the most admirable and culturally diverse religions and civilization there is and has been. No other religion has united such diversely different groups of people maintaining a sense of uniformity while still staying true to ones people. Islamic knowledge covered almost all there is to learn. They were skilled mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and inventors while still acceleing in literature, philosophy, medicine, theology, and other humanitarian subjects. They are not all barbarians who strap bombs to their chests to kill themselves in the name of Allah for an easy ticket to heaven and 20 virgins to do with what he pleases. But as in any religion there are people who pervert the message and wield it for evil. We’re not all that different. We are both peoples of the book; we can find some common ground be it in religion or politics. There is much to be done if we expect to better our relationship in the Middle East and the first thing would be to as fully as possible understand Islam and its people.