No wonder the Army that had taught him to kill brought him home after he killed, lest he be tried by the Afghans whose community he had shattered. After all, that same Army has time after time killed civilians, murdered wedding parties, broken the brains and bones of children -- claiming all the while these dead were merely "collateral damage." That same Army has taught such fear and hatred of Islam that its soldiers could piss on the bodies of dead human beings because they were Muslim, they could casually burn the book that to Muslims is the very Word of God.
So one soldier went beyond the Army's expectations. If they were honest, they might give him a medal. Not the Medal of Honor, not the Medal of Courage, but the Medal of Fear Transcended.
In every one of our traditions, religious and secular, there are streaks of blood. In the Torah, proclaiming genocide against the Midianites. In the Gospels, pouring contempt upon the Jews. In the Quran, calling not only for the inner jihad, the struggle against arrogance and idolatry, but on occasion for jihads of blood against some communities. In the Declaration of Independence, with its denunciation of "the merciless Indian savages" who were the indigenous peoples of this land.
Let us not turn our rage, our fear, and then our violence against those "others" who have such bloody streaks amidst their wisdom, while pretending there are no such streaks amidst our own.
Let us instead remember that these streaks are only streaks in the many fabrics woven of connection and community, woven of a "decent respect to the opinions of Humankind." A fabric woven by all human cultures and by all the life-forms of our planet. A fabric of fringes, where every thing we call our "own" as if we own it came into being only through the Inter-breathing of all life.
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