Republicans and Religious Tolerance

I am a devoted conservative in that I agree with much of the Republican platform but there are some things which some Republicans do, which really annoy me. And one of these things is being intolerant of other religions.

There are far too many Christian conservatives in the Republican party that automatically hate anything that isn't Christian. This isn't true of all of them, or the majority of them, but it is true of too many of them. Yes, we all oppose radical Islam. But there is absolutely no reason to attack one of my strongest influences, Dr. Tawfik Hamid, who happens to be a Muslim. Or another one of my heroes, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser who is also an Arab Muslim. Or Sheikh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi. Or any of my friends that are Sikhs. Or Jews. Or Druze. Or Buddhists. Or whatever.

When it comes to religion, my overall philosophy is that as long as you aren't hurting anybody else, you should be left alone. Everyone should have the right to practice their religion in peace and it shouldn't be brought up in a political campaign. Everyone has different religious beliefs. The important thing is that they have moral values and are loyal to their country. And if a person is not Christian, if they are a Buddhist, like a few of my friends or some other peaceful religion, I don't think that this should be a problem or issue. There was a campaign several years ago, between State Senator Stephen Martin and now Representative Eric Cantor, who is Jewish. Martin slammed Cantor's religion by making one of his campaign talking points that Cantor, because he was a Jew, didn't have moral values that represented Virginia. This is obviously insane and absurd. And anti-semitic. My belief is that people only get into religious mud slinging when they don't have anything better to discuss.It is an extremely lowbrow tactic and disgusting.

If someone is an Islamic terrorist, do we have to defeat them? Yes. Without a doubt. We must not hesitate to destroy evil or evil will destroy us. And, as I have said before, my problem with Islam, as it is taught today, is that instead of moral values being taught, in most Islamic mosques today, values of racial and ethnic hatred are taught. In other words, people are taught that it is moral and good, to kill others based off their ethnic and / or religious backgrounds. And this is bad. Any group doing this must be destroyed. But we must not generalize and think of everyone who is simply different as evil. And we must recognize that even within Islam, there are reformers, such as Dr. Hamid, who need our love and support. And prayers (if that is what you do.) We must also recognize that just because the West is having such a problem with Islam, it doesn't mean that every non-Western religion is bad. In other words, we can't equate every religion with radical Islam. For example, Sikhism. I had a few friends growing up who were Sikhs. They were calm peaceful people. In fact, they were as a whole, very pacifist. More peaceful than many Christians. Yet some criticize them because of their religious beliefs, while not even understanding these beliefs, which is foolish.

This is very important and while most conservatives understand this, there are some that definitely do not and it is important that we, as conservatives, work on this.