The news stories this week read something like, "Six Islamist Jihadists. . . " or "Six foreign born Muslims. . . " or "Six Islamic Militants. . . " These were followed by stories of "Muslim community fears backlash. . ." Now the men arrested in the planned attack on Fort Dix are self-proclaimed Muslims and pronounced that their plan was, in their minds, "jihad" in defense of their religion, so one cannot fault the media for proclaiming them as such. I continue to be concerned, however, about how little many people seem to know about Islam, and the contradictory perspectives and at times caricatures people in this country encounter. Obviously the Muslim community in the US has similar concerns, hence their legitimate worry about a backlash.

One of the difficulties Americans face is that like any world religion, Islam is not a cookie-cutter religion. Not only are there different sects of Islam, Islam is practiced differently in different parts of the world. Muslims themselves have very different viewpoints regarding Islam depending on their own upbringing in the religion. On the extreme level, it is the same as Catholics and members of the Ku Klux Klan both calling themselves Christian. Even within mainstream Islam though, there are differences similar to those among "conservative" and "liberal" Christians. How many of us have at one point in time met an ex-Catholic who had a VERY negative experience in the Catholic Church? Asking that person to tell you about Catholicism and a person who has found their life rejuvenated by practicing the Catholic faith is going to yield two very different pictures of what "Catholicism" looks like.

One can quote seemingly violent passages of the Qu'ran. One can also quote excessively violent passages from the Bible

"Slay, therefore, every male child and every woman who has had intercourse with a man. But you may spare and keep for yourselves all girls who had no intercourse with a man." - Numbers 31:17

Oh, but that is the Old Testament, some of you may protest!"

"If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." - Lk 14:26

Or again:

"He [Jesus] said to them, "But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one." Lk. 22:36

But these passages are taken out of literary and historical context, you may protest. Exactly! But they are there to be misinterpreted by those who might choose to do so. In the Christian world of the Middle Ages, during the Crusades, in colonial times, during the Salem witch trials, etc., passages in the Bible were often used as a divine mandate for violence.

Even before the stories in the media this week, I was struck when two friends were talking about reading the writings of two different Muslim women with two completely different viewpoints about women in Islam. One was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote Infidel, a book that tells her story of experiencing a very oppressive Islamic culture first in Somalia, then in Saudi Arabia, and finally in Holland, where she left the Islamic faith and began speaking out publically on the dangers to women in Islam. The other is Ingrid Mattson, a former Catholic, who is the first woman and the first convert to be the President of the Islamic Society of North America (I have to point out here, that no woman has ever been the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops). Her experience is that the religion of Islam is very liberating for women. Both stories are important, because they bring home the very different ways in which the religion of Islam is practiced in the world. Neither woman is "wrong". Islam can't be judged in theory; it can only be judged in practice. The same is true for Christianity.