You can accept a person without accepting their ideology. You need not believe what they believe, not approve of it, not even in them, nor grant “tolerance” of a thing you abhor — in order to recognize a fellow and friend in a person you know.
Not all friends are of the same order. Not all beliefs must be accorded the same respect.
I have friends who adhere to a larger ideology which I find despicable, monstrous, satanic. Yet these men are proven heroes, worthy of respect and no small degree of admiration.
When my friend does not slay the infidel, nor kill the Jew, neither push to expand the realm of Jihad and Sharia nor draw a bloody line between that dar al Islam and dar ul harb, perhaps he is not adhering well to the plain written and much evidenced meaning of those words. Is he a bad Muslim? Not for me to say. But when he risks his life and that of his family to help me and my compatriots in a very direct way, in our own efforts to help in a long-term, indirect way, he is a hero to me, and I proclaim him a good man to all.
He no doubt has some integrating to do. So do I. And one of the supreme acts of cognitive volition is to suspend calculation for all the right reasons. I need not slavishly follow where the facts lead, nor finish the problem and show my work.
Consider it a partial derivative, or an integral over an incomplete set of d_. We imperfect humans have a perfect right to insist that things need not be as they appear.
Or what’s a free will for?
Death to Islam. Long life to my Muslim friends. And good luck to all so cursed as to live under such a system. May their fortunes improve and their families be healthy. Death to the dictator, not to those who slave under him.
This makes me think of a friend of our family who was a Japanese pilot toward the end of the war. He was going out on a mission you don’t come back from. As he was going out his engine failed. He was over the ocean and an American fighter comes and has every right to shoot him down but doesn’t. The fighter sees tho poor guy is going to have to ditch and in that moment there is the bond of the scared. The American fighter lets him go with a sense of wishing him luck.
Thank you for writing this moving piece, BDB.
Wise thoughts worth remembering.
Wisdom that’s applicable in almost every sphere of life, beloved Admin, TANKS for it! S/Q & S/F times 2!