God Commands

The newspapers are full of stories of youthful Muslims from European countries who have gone to join jihad in Syria and other war torn spots.  They are as depressing as accounts of various knee jerk reactions among the evangelicals in our own country toward behaviors that their version of God and the Bible will not tolerate even for other people let alone themselves.  And I list in the same category the believers in a newly created religion, couldn't be more than a hundred and fifty years old, who are convinced of the sort of unverifiable mythological nonsense that in the ancient religions is let by because long time spans make everything fuzzy.  Maybe a human really could walk on water thousands of years ago.  And then there are countries dictated by one variant of a religion while all others walk on borrowed territory, so to speak.  When I was sixteen I left the Christian faith because their authority figures insisted that they had the proof that I was an enemy of their god for being gay.  Hey, I won't stay where I am not wanted.  And the distance thereby obtained gave me the chance to study the atrocities committed by various Christian sects over the centuries and still continuing.  I felt glad to be out of it.  So it is,  I do not understand how modern day moderate Muslims can remain within a faith system that produces such violence and terrorism the world over.  Disaffected youth is not an answer; if the same disaffected youth had grown up on "Mary Poppins" and "Ivanhoe" there orientation would be entirely different.  I think of the complicity of the Christian churches with the Holocaust and I don't want to be part of Christian churches anymore, even if down the block is the sweetest dearest old rector, his bald pate shining in the morning sun as he welcomes parishioners.  In the same way if I were a Muslim I would not want to be part a religious system that has created the inferno in the Middle East.  The only thing to say for Orthodox Jews is they keep their mishigas to themselves and if Israel is willing to tolerate their growth to the point that they bankrupt the state with their welfare needs, so be it.  To all of these intolerant and rigid religious people, let me say firmly I don't believe in any kind of god that you are espousing nor in any of the dictates that your god seems to be demanding.  I pass on all of this.