When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for all freedom-loving people to stop people whose mission in life is a suicide mission against Christians and Jews, to stop people from burning the world’s oldest churches and bombing a people whose faith forces them to endure the world’s oldest hatred—when we act to stop them, we must not silence ourselves in the process. Kara Swisher’s column in the New York Times notwithstanding, stopping Islamists has no online “STOP” button.
Supporting Sri Lanka’s attempt to block social media will not stop a virus that predates the use of (computer) tablets, whose origins make the Stone Age look like the Age of Enlightenment, whose adherents have no use for science except to pervert it, whose assassins use fire to extinguish the lights of science, whose architects see beauty in the destruction of beautiful architecture—particularly churches and synagogues.
Attempting to stop people from saying hateful things only encourages people to do more harmful things: to hurt or kill innocent human beings.
More ironic is Sri Lanka’s attempt to defuse a bomb its own people lit, albeit under different circumstances on behalf of a different God. From the Tamil Tigers of the God that failed to the Islamists of a bloodthirsty God, Sri Lanka has a long history of suicide bombings.
Stopping future bombings depends more on smart soldiering than dumb soldering, as if we can or should muzzle what we should monitor instead.
From the altars of the remains, let us lift our voices and raise our anthems. Let us be one in faith and spirit, so all faiths may flourish in peace and harmony.
Photo credit: Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images