A few days ago I read in a Huffington Post article by Qasim Rashid that Franklin Graham had put these words on his facebook page:
“We are under attack by Muslims at home and abroad. We should stop all immigration of Muslims to the U.S. until this threat with Islam has been settled. Every Muslim that comes into this country has the potential to be radicalized–and they do their killing to honor their religion and Muhammad. During World War 2, we didn’t allow Japanese to immigrate to America, nor did we allow Germans. Why are we allowing Muslims now?”
I remember World War II. I was a kid, old enough to catch the mood of the day, educated enough to read the papers but not mature enough to use wisely what I read. My Daddy went to war. I ripped Emperor Hirohito’s picture out of the paper and tore it into tiny pieces to demonstrate my hate for Japanese faces.
But I have been in other wars, too. In the middle of the Lebanese civil war, I wrote down my 20 rules for surviving. Two of them were related to fear. No. 15, quoted from my memoir said, “Don’t read scary books or watch scary movies, including the evening news.” No. 10 was: “Separate your fear from danger, know which one is in the driver’s seat.”
Why do I mention these now? Because if we are going to survive the worldwide crisis of terrorism, with our souls intact, we need some policies. I have a suggestion: “Don’t listen to people who preach fear.”
Fear is an appropriate response to real danger, but it gets in your eyes like smoke; it moves your feet before you know where to go, and it loosens your tongue before you have time to think. In other words, it will make you do something unreasonable, like tearing up the newspaper before other people have read it. Like lumping all the people of one religion or one race or one nationality together to take the punishment for what a few people did. That’s what we did during WW II, the thing Graham seems to think was right. We got scared of Japan, and we didn’t just go to war immediately and stop immigration from Japan, we locked up all the Japanese-Americans! Frankly, Graham’s thoughts are running in a dangerous direction.
There is another thing. It seems to me that fear is not becoming to a Christian. In the Gospels that I read, less than I should but enough to be moved, Jesus tells me over and over not to be afraid. The very first time the subject of fear came up between him and his disciples was in that little boat in the middle of a storm, and when they woke him up, Jesus said, “Why are you so afraid?” I feel a little shy to say this to Billy Graham’s son, but somebody needs to say it. If Jesus is asleep in your boat, just wake him up.