May 10, 2011
In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, what are the prospects for the Middle East? The answer: more violence promoted by followers of a twisted religion that commands its practitioners to kill people with different beliefs.
In supposedly moderate and changing Egypt, hundreds of Christians and Muslims hurled stones at each other in downtown Cairo on Sunday, hours after Muslim mobs set fire to a church and an apartment building owned by Christians in a frenzy of violence that killed 12 people and injured more than 200.
You can’t change the direction of a violent and false religion with the death of one man. A virus continues infecting people long after one of its hosts dies. That’s because it’s contagious and the contagion that is Islam has infected and affected more than one billion people worldwide.
Let’s put in the bromide that not all Muslims are fanatics and killers. But enough of them are that we only have to worry about them. And they remain a considerable force, with, or in this case without, bin Laden.
Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.
