2015-12-08 – Not all mammals are dogs.

You probably know this. You and I are not dogs. Your pet cats are not dogs. Horses are not dogs. Nor are bears or giraffes or sheep. Some mammals are similar to dogs, like hyenas or wolves or coyotes, but they are just similar to dogs. They are not dogs. You would not get good results if you handled all these different kinds of mammals as if they were dogs. They are not dogs.

It’s the same thing with Muslims. Not all Muslims are radical Islamic terrorists.

There are, of course, radical Islamic terrorists. Just like there are dogs. But there are Muslims who are not radical Islamic terrorists. In fact, most Muslims are not radical Islamic terrorists. A lot more. It’s not a good idea to treat non-terrorist Muslims as the same as terrorist Muslims.

Some people get this confused.

Some people have launched wars against the wrong country because they can’t tell one Muslim from another. And they laugh at people who say there is a difference.

In World War II, east Asians would have had a hard time telling a Nazi from a Jew. . . . Well, most of the world had this problem, or something like it, and were unwilling to admit Jewish refugees. They didn’t really get that Nazis and Jews were enemies.

Just like Wahhabis and Shias and . . . well, you and I can’t even begin to list the varieties of Muslims there are, varieties that are as different as Nazis and Jews.

It’s probably pretty important to be able to tell them apart. In 2001, a bunch of mostly Saudis attacked the United States on 9/11. For some reason, we didn’t get mad at Saudi Arabia. Ultimately we launched a war against Iraq instead. Oops, wrong Muslims. And they don’t like us much as a result. So now, we want to try this again.

It’s very manly, of course, to get all up in arms when someone attacks you. I want to do that, too. But don’t you think we ought to know who we are fighting against and who might be our friends before we go out and launch a new war? The old one didn’t work out too well.

I’m all for muzzling the radical dogs, but not all the cuddly kittens. Failure to tell the difference puts us all in danger.