Respect

It is Wednesday and we are officially half way through the week. I'm anxiously awaiting Friday to see if my boss actually put through my raises and I get the back pay owed to me. If you hear an explosion from the Midwest come Friday morning you will know she didn't get around to it.

I'm beginning to feel I'm in the middle of a kitty war zone. Merlin keeps hissing and spitting at Pixie and Pixie is hissing and spitting back and both want my undivided attention. Sigh. Big sigh. I keep hoping that the two of them will at least learn to coexist in the same house. I'm not holding out much hope that they will be friends.

Speaking of peace there were some excellent suggestions in the government report on how to diffuse the Middle East threats. Why aren't we approaching some of the Muslim religious leaders who can moderate the inflammatory rantings of the extremists? If we could get people that can be respected on the side of peace we would have a chance of ending the conflicts.

It comes down to the word respect. I think the current situation of portraying all Muslims as extremists who want to kill all non-Muslims is hurting our chances of getting the more moderate of the Muslim leaders to step in and try and diffuse the situation. We need to start showing respect for the Muslim religion and start differentiating between terrorists who are using their religion as an excuse to commit violence and the religion itself.

I think one of the most important things about the late Pope John Paul II is that he was able to show respect and tolerance for many religions and peoples of diverse ethnic backgrounds. He reached out to the Jewish people to try and build bridges. He reached out to Protestants to try and build bridges. He reached out to governments to try and build bridges.

Right now we need to try and reach out to the Muslim leaders who can win the hearts of their people and show them we do have respect for them and their religion. Violence begets violence. We have the start showing more respect for those not like us if we want to establish peace. We need to show respect.