by Andrew Scott
The Pocono Record
May 08, 2011
This week’s news of Osama bin Laden’s death is positive news for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, say some in the Islamic community.
“True Islam is a religion of love, peace and justice, not violence and terror,” said Hooshang Pazaki, a native of Iran who teaches sociology at East Stroudsburg University and is faculty adviser to the ESU Muslim Students Association.
Echoing this sentiment is Moein Khawaja, executive director of the Philadelphia office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which works to promote understanding of the religion and dialogue between Muslims and everyone else.
“What happened on 9/11 was an attack not just on America, but on the Islamic faith as well,” Khawaja said. “Bin Laden was never a true Muslim. But unfortunately, in the minds of many people less familiar with Islam, bin Laden’s face has become the image representing the faith. It’s a false representation.”
Pazaki said groups like al-Qaida and the Taliban, which most of the world views as terrorist extremists, wrongly use religion to justify political motives and killing innocent people.
“In fact, around the world, there have been more Muslim than Christian or Jewish victims of people like bin Laden because the extremists within the Islamic community view other Muslims as not legitimate,” Pazaki said. “What doesn’t help is the news media traditionally focusing only on the negative, like the conflict in the Middle East and extremists committing terrorist acts. It’s unfair to everyone when people of different religions or races, who have only a limited understanding of each other, are given only negative, false, stereotypical information on which they base their decisions about each other.”
The Rev. Tom McLaughlin of St. Luke’s Church in Stroudsburg joins Pazaki, Khawaja and others in hoping for and working toward a more just, peaceful world.
“We as Christians are taught not to rejoice in anyone’s death, even that of a terrorist who has orchestrated the killing of others,” McLaughlin said.
“Our leadership, in seeking to reduce further suffering, hostility and death, made a decision,” he said. “History will determine if that was the right decision. We can only act on what we believe to be right at the time. As we’ve seen throughout human history, the price of peace has been paid with the blood of those noble and those not so noble.”
