Pastor Jones, those who ignore history perpetuate its repetition. If you would study the history of Christianity you will find that the same crimes you attribute to the Koran and to Islam were committed in its name.
Hatred begets hatred.
Pastor Jones, there is no end to the cycle of violence, but to end it. Jesus Christ taught this when he taught the turning of the cheek and the loving of one’s enemies. In the natural order of things, the slightest violence is still violence. Doing violence to a book is genuinely to do violence to the people that revere it. I know you would feel great indignation were the people of a Mosque to put the Bible on trial, find it guilty of heinous crimes and sentence it to burning. But that’s silly, isn’t it? The book has committed no crime, only people commit crimes. What is it about a book that you are so afraid of, that offends you so? The Bible and the Koran are equally flawed, but it is not the flaws in a book that is the problem, it is the flaws in our own thinking. If there is something to burn up it is the hatred, ignorance and intolerance we harbor in ourselves. Our job is not to rout it out in others, but in ourselves. We must look to nurture the love and tolerance we are capable of, and to do that we have to first be honest with ourselves about our own intolerance and selfishness and small mindedness.
There is no “us” and no “them” and no time.
Redemption occurs only in the present. If in this very moment we have the realization of our “sins” (greed, hatred, delusion), then we have a great victory – the beginning of true redemption. In order for a person to be”saved,” they have to be able to break loose the bonds shaped in time from the very beginnings of their existence. Redemption is not the result of the accumulation of more ideas over time, but rather a sloughing off of a mistaken identity. Forgiveness occurs in an instant, and in that instant, there are no books, no philosophies, no teachings, no ideologies, no us, no them, no Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Jains or Buddhists. There is only the recognition that all are children of the ineffable, what some call God. There is only the recognition that for a brief flash of time we have the privilege to occupy a human form. Therefore we should behave humanely towards other beings and have compassion for their struggles.
Is that so difficult?