Probably will get nailed with lightning bolts

I want to point out I am not surprised about Jihad Jane. Converts to a religion, change their faiths for many reason. Some like Stephen Schwartz were raised in families that had no faith. Others are troubled looking for all the answers from a pied piper.

When Stephen Schwartz practices his faith he does so as a man of arts, culture and firmly versed in our American Tradition. These converts like Jihad Jane and Richard Reid are troubled people and are using Islam as an answer for their failed lives and mental illness. Even the case of the Nigerian Bomber and Zazi show troubled people looking for answers.

Schwartz has written many articles on placing the wrong type of Imams in prison and the Army.
This may sound weird but the way we practice our faith is a reflection upon us. Junglemom, TMW and AOW are among many of the loving Christians who see a community type of Church serving for the sake of service. There are also the hateful political scammers who preach liberation theology or its racial corollaries like Pastor Wright. Much of the page one bashing of the Catholic Church scandals comes from political activists who are upset over this Pope's role in
eliminating the malady of Liberation Theology from his Church.

More important than the house of worship or lack of one is the lives we lead. There is no doubt Merlin Olsen and Rosey Grier were both men of faith who thought that violence never solved anything. Violence is to be used only to protect loved ones or to serve your country. In the case of Grier he probably did save Sirhan Sirhan's life. Luckily, for us because we as a society have been spared the never ending hateful conspiracy idiocy afterwards.

For many of us we ponder what it is to be a man or a woman. Yet in essence one never does know the real meaning until you are a parent or serve your community. Not everyone is cut out for these roles. Sadly, the mental health industry has become politicized and hurts as many people as it helps.

Maureen Dowd wrote a recent article where she expressed surprise that as a non Muslim she is not allowed into the holiest of places. The question is "where has she been and what has she been
reading for decades". This is common knowledge, yet one can see the criticism of these very policies from the pages of the Center for Islamic Pluralism.

Many of us see Islam as not being able to change. Yet Memri has translated a wide variety of articles critical of child brides. Perhaps twenty years ago this would have been unthinkable. The criticism comes not from fake Islamo Communist progressives, but from within Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Commies usually ignore these topics and lump it under cultural differences. I vividly recall a so called Socialist leader framing the topic of honor killing as the case of a Yezidi woman
who was killed for taking a Muslim husband. This sleight of hand trick with a problem that is almost entirely within the Muslim community is quite typical of Marxist duplicity. When asked about her knowledge of the Yezidi community it was nonexistent.

Much of our problem with Islam comes not from Muslims but from ourselves. It is entirely inapropriate to discriminate against people of any faith. However, when a coworker is justifying
suicide bombings this should have set off alarms. The Fort Hood shooter was aided by a system that encourages fear of being called a bigot. In the end the ultimate responsibility lies with the people who would not let him resign when it was obvious he was unfit for service. The educators
who allowed him to subvert class assignments into political diatribes unrelated to the topic need to also come under scrutiny. If a fundamentalist Christian went on an anti abortion tirade instead of their class assignment a predictable F would have been issued. While we should respect religion we should not fear common sense prudent judgment.

Much of our culture of fear is caused by the Marxist left. Sorry, but apologists for despotism and pointless death are the last persons who should be lecturing others about morality. The truth is while Schwartz and others work for a more positive world Communists are more apt to be rationalizing evil and fostering divisions. Communists are the enablers of terrorism and turn a blind eye to everything that they does not fit their agenda.

Schwartz as a man of arts and letters can talk at length about the humanities. He most likely would take a similar position to my own about reading the classics in the context of its time. I do remember reading the Merchants of Venice, Dickens and the Canterbury Tales in a Yeshiva. We joked with a Jewish teacher who was no Bolshevik about what seemed like being bombarded with the worst in English Lit. We were given a polite but serious discussion about history and lit
that was memorable. Sadly, when we hear calls to ban Mark Twain for the use of the N word it comes from the bug eyed far left. We seldom hear these same people make similar calls to ban Eugene O'Neil for the Emperor Jones which communist icon Paul Robeson uttering that same word multiple times.