Jihad

The brutal and inhuman jihad which ISIS is waging against those they consider infidels has caused widespread fear among us. The media help whip this fear into a frenzy. We don't fear being killed in a car accident or in a mall by an angry gunman or in a school by someone who is  mentally ill or in a murder suicide in our own family. Yet any of these latter incidents is more likely to kill us.

There's no glamour for the media in death tolls that slowly accumulate from automobiles, alcohol, suicides, murder-suicides, person-on-person murders, gang violence. These number in the tens of thousands each year.

The religious hatred in radical Islam is only different in degree from the racial hatred of the Aryan Nation or the Ku  Klux Klan or the hatred that is at the root of gang violence or the hatred that drives those who are intolerant of the beliefs or sexual orientation or religion of others. In fact, in some cases these groups dream of restoring turf and dominance as ISIS does by resurrecting a failed past.

Fear can bring a healthy caution. But fear should not be a knee-jerk reaction lacking any measured reason.