MILT THOMAS

Enough has probably been said about the City Council’s Humanist incident, but I think it is appropriate to make one more observation.

I was pleased to see the unified response from local clergy and religious representatives disapproving of Fletcher and Carroll’s comments. However, we didn’t hear anything from one of the three religions that shares our common Judeo-Christian heritage – Islam. Yes, that’s right folks. Muslims (practitioners of Islam) believe in the same God, the same Old Testament prophets and consider Jesus Christ to be a prophet, but not the son of God. Yet, can you name one Muslim house of worship (mosque) in Indian River County? Do you know any Muslims even talking about their religion?  That is because they keep a very low profile here in Indian River County. Believe it or not, many Muslims live here, but they recognize their religion has not received much good press in recent years.

So, I wonder what the response would have been if the City Council’s proclamation was for Muslim Week instead of Humanist Week? Just look at how we became aware of the Humanist proclamation incident. This publication, InsideVero, reported the incident and commented on it within hours. It took the Press Journal a week to publish an editorial deploring it. And the island weekly curiously avoided the subject altogether. It must be difficult for some media and elected officials to defend constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom in this community if it isn’t the religion of most voters.

But Humanism isn’t lethal. You won’t find too many Humanist suicide bombers or terrorist groups around the world. In fact historically, the most controversial Humanist movement was called the Renaissance.

However, defending Islam would probably take – pardon the reference – “a leap of faith” for many of those same people having difficulty with Humanism. The very term, “suicide bomber,” is clearly associated with radical Muslims, as are the terms “shoe bomber” and “underwear bomber.”  Of course, the “Unabomber,” Ted Kaczynski, was not a Muslim and suicide bombings in general have occurred in many countries over the past 150 years or so in the name of many causes.  True, they have only recently been defined by articles of clothing.

Terrorist is another term we tend to associate with Muslims, although prior to 9-11 it was associated with the Italian Brugati Rosa, the German Baader-Meinhof Gang, or the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, to name a few. As a matter of fact, terrorism has occurred throughout history, employed in many causes that had nothing to do with Muslims or Islam. Lest we forget, it was American “terrorists” who fought for our independence, at least according to the British at the time.

In all those cases, we didn’t describe all Italians as terrorists, or all Germans as terrorists, or all Japanese as terrorists, even though those nations were sworn enemies of the U.S. in World War II.  So why are many people willing to call all Muslims terrorists? Or why is a Humanist or an Atheist considered unworthy of a simple proclamation, not because of any harmful act they perpetrated on us but simply because they have a different set of religious beliefs than the mainstream?

All of this simply illustrates the wisdom and vision of Thomas Jefferson, himself a Humanist, and his fellow framers of the U.S. Constitution. The concept of American democracy is only possible when we accept that all citizens who live here are equally protected by our laws. There are millions of Muslims and Humanists in this country, many of them our friends and neighbors, leading productive lives and dying in defense of our country. They should not be condemned by the millions of us not practicing their beliefs. They should certainly not be debased by the officials they helped elect to public office.