Different world views

World views emanate from individual thinking. We create our environment from our life condition or the thoughts we entertain. When we view the world as good, the world presents itself to us as good. When we view the world as bad, that’s what we see.

I have a friend who emailed me recently after a conversation we witnessed in which four people expressed very different views about Muslims. David related to me that he has been reading about Muslim history and culture and how the Muslim believers behave aggressively toward nonbelievers. He concluded with a list showing “from around the world we hear reports of fanatical Muslim atrocities against their neighbors.”

I find it interesting that David has come to these conclusions from his reading whereas I have reached different conclusions. From his reading, he said, “I have not heard of a SINGLE instance of a Muslim being mistreated in the United States.” In the Jan. 22, 2008 installment of this blog, I reviewed The Jihad Next Door about how six Muslim US citizens, were treated by the FBI following the 9/11 attack (http://createmorepeaceandjustice.blogspot.com/2008/01/ perils-of-innocence-in-america.html). This book certainly shows how Muslims have been mistreated and how their families live in fear due to intimidation.

Then David said, “Of course, the 'Old Testament' describes a code that is just as harsh and rigid as the worst examples we now see in Sharia. But in the West, only a tiny few try to live by those strictures, whereas a huge population of the Muslim world live under Sharia and seem to want to impose that on the rest of the World.”

Maybe it’s the qualifiers “tiny” and “huge” but it seems to me that Palestinian Arabs and Pakistani Muslims that I know and read about represent the majority of Muslims who wish to live in peace and have much less of a wish to impose their religion on others than do the Christian missionaries throughout the world.

It’s all about context. If I have a certain belief, then I read and talk with people who have similar beliefs. So my view ends up being much different from someone who reads and talks with people whose views are different than mine.

But I choose to believe that the “tiny” factions are those that promote negative causes and the “huge” factions are those that promote positive causes. And I further agree with Dean Carter of Morehouse College who once related that the positive forces are gathering and uniting so that when the current empires grow too large and collapse, these good forces will rise up to take their place. The current recession leads me to believe that a financial empire is about to collapse. Are the positive forces ready to step up?