By Susan Olsen.Sunday,

Dear Rose,

Your stunt at the Trump rally was well played. You appeared to be an innocent Muslim woman seeking peace and understanding. Let us assume that this was not crafty deception but genuine naiveté (even though we both know better). It would seem that you simply don’t understand where most Americans are coming from. To say that you placed yourself at a Trump rally to show that Muslims are just regular people is a profoundly simplistic and shallow attempt to smooth out a deep and complicated problem. It is even insulting to assume that Americans are that simple minded.

Indeed, there are those who actually are that simple minded, they are the ones who applaud you. You may always have the support of the regressive left but that’s only because supporting Islam appeals to their vanity. Being tolerant of hatred and bigotry when it’s practiced by brown foreign people makes them look amazing and kewl.

Granted, there are also those who are genuinely xenophobic, you’ll likely find some of them at a Trump rally. But for the most part, the xenophobes are a minority of Americans that is even smaller in percentage than Muslims who are terrorists. Many here in the West have actually looked into the ideology of Islam. While the unenlightened might be assuaged with the argument that there are many different interpretations and sects of Islam, those who have taken the time to study the ideology know that there is a bottom line: The prophet is considered the ultimate moral standard for all Muslims to emulate. In reading the Qu’ran, hadith and Sirah, one will readily find that all of the atrocities the terrorists have committed are indeed emulating the prophet. Jihadis are adhering to their faith. If there is another version of Islam, it is not represented in the texts.
Sure the president is on your side (not ours) but when it comes to Americans who know and value their country, you will have a hard time when you dress in a way that announces to all that you are a proud member of an ideology that describes itself as a threat to everything we believe in. And by the way, what’s up with the star of David on your clothing? Are you not aware that Hitler got the idea to put those stars on Jews from Islam? This was the practice for identifying dhimis or non-Muslims to assure that Muslim society would treat them with the cruelty and humiliation that might persuade them to convert. How odd for you to self-identify with a people that your faith condemns far more harshly than the Third Reich did. How bizarre to try to gain sympathy by comparing the adherents of your ideology to those who were slaughtered in world war 2 while Islamists continue to slaughter them (and many others) today. Very strange since your holy books also command that they be slaughtered in the future. The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Oh Muslim (or servant of Allah) there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. – Bukhari Volume 4 book 52 number 6985.

Were you not aware of this or were you just hoping that we would not be aware?

Don’t waste your time engaging in mental gymnastics that claim these are misinterpretations and that anyone who follows this kind of hateful bigotry and supremacism is twisting the faith. Don’t waste your breath on the Kafir; go tell the terrorists! Let THEM know that Islam is a religion of peace, apparently, they didn’t get the memo. Go to Europe and have some meaningful dialogue with the immigrants who think they have the God given right to rape infidel women. Go tell the ISIS members who are torching churches with Christians inside them that there is no compulsion in religion. Inform THEM. Meanwhile, we will believe what our eyes see, not what the apologists say. Until you have convinced the Jihadis, we will remain skeptical.

Welcoming others is the American way, we want to love all Muslims. But for now, we just might have the audacity to be concerned about an ideology that promises to overthrow our government, replace our laws with a barbaric legal system and kill us if we don’t agree with it. It is not just our right to oppose a belief system that is completely incompatible with our constitution and liberty but our DUTY. Until Islam has a reformation we can trust, you will always be regarded with suspicion. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.