Maybe you missed it since “pray for Baghdad” didn’t trend on Twitter and Facebook didn’t give you the option of overlaying an Iraqi flag on your profile picture, but something truly horrific happened there Sunday morning. A suicide truck bomb tore through a busy shopping district in Baghdad. ISIS has already claimed the attack as their own.
The carnage it left behind was comparable to our Oklahoma City bombing, but worse. It tore through an entire block, ripped gaping holes in huge buildings, and killed at least 215 people — including dozens of women and young children. The death toll is expected to rise. It was the single deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly a decade. As you read this, people are still combing through the rubble hoping to find their loved ones alive.
This is not the terrorism Olympics, but it was deadlier than Orlando (49 dead), deadlier than Paris (130 dead), and even deadlier than Oklahoma City (168 dead). It was the deadliest terrorist attack in the world this year and one of the deadliest ever measured.
Did you know that Baghdad is the second largest city in the entire Arab world and that government officials now estimate its population has exceeded 9 million people — making it larger than New York City? I didn’t know that. Because most of what I know about Baghdad I learned from watching mainstream news in the aftermath of 9/11, I knew next to nothing about the city before I prepared to write this article.
I have also come to learn that all or nearly all of the victims of Sunday’s attack were Muslims.
They weren’t attacked because they love Jesus or Taylor Swift. They were attacked by ISIS because the men who make up ISIS are evil and hell-bent on carnage and destruction. Another suicide bomber detonated himself on Monday in Medina, Saudi Arabia, at what many consider one of the holiest sites in all of Islam — The Prophet’s Mosque — where the Prophet Muhammad is buried.
These men aren’t Muslims. They have no regard for Islam.
Walking in a field doesn’t make you a cow. Even if you paint spots all over your body, crawl on your hands and knees, eat grass, and make strange “moo” noises — you’re still not a cow.
Lacing up some Jordans doesn’t make you a New York Knick. Even if you wore those J’s to Madison Square Garden, put on a Knicks jersey, and somehow got on the court and swished a three-pointer — you’re still not a Knick.
Visiting the White House doesn’t make you the President. Even if you toured the Oval Office, wore your best suit, and sat behind the President’s desk and declared the words “I am the President” — it’s simply not the case.
Claiming a religion as cover for terrorism doesn’t make you a genuine follower of that religion. Yelling “Allahu Akbar” (which simply means God is great) before killing people makes a man a Muslim no more than yelling “Hallelujah” before a mass shooting makes a man a Christian.
One can wear the outer garments of a faith, throw in a few buzzwords, but never really be a true follower.
When white men, many of them deacons, would meet up at their local churches covered in white robes and white hoods to go and lynch an African-American in the Jim Crow South, they may have somehow thought they were doing the will of God — but they were not. They may have checked the “Christian” box on their local census, but claiming Christianity and being a follower of Jesus is simply not the same thing. The KKK were white supremacist terrorists. They weren’t Christians — even if they claimed it.
Islam is no different. The world has 1.6 billion Muslims. Estimates are that ISIS has less than 35,000 members. They are the KKK. They are a small, ugly group of evil, insecure, hyper-masculine men who do not represent the faith. Period.
Americans aren’t great at nuance, but it’s time that we understand the primary people being attacked by ISIS aren’t Americans, or Europeans, or Christians, or even white people — they are Muslims living in places like Syria and Iraq. Talk of banning Muslims from entering this country isn’t just xenophobic — it’s fundamentally dumb and misinformed. It’d be like banning white Christians from traveling to Canada or Europe because of neo-Nazis or the KKK.
Now is the time we need to stand in solidarity and strength with Muslims who are being terrorized.
