Those who don’t speak up now could pay later

Those who don’t speak up now could pay later

EDITOR:

The Sept. 12 Vindicator ran an article entitled “Al-Qaida leader urges Muslims to be martyrs.” While that recommendation coming from the run-and-hide leader of the movement, Osama bin Laden, will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears with most Muslims, the sad fact is that it will also fall on Muslims with muted lips. That is utterly understandable. That blatant coward is quite ready to ask other members of his religious persuasion to sacrifice their lives, but he does not have the courage to face up to the demands he makes on others. Furthermore, if you do not heed his warning you too become the enemy.

We often hear talk show hosts calling for the “moderate” Muslims to take a stand against the religious fanatics who would like to annihilate all Christians, Jews and other infidels from the face of the planet. Unfortunately they fear Osama’s ire as much as the rest of us do. If they speak up, they are also in danger of losing their heads.

Let’s not be too hard on their silence. Remember that it was the Christian community who stood by Nazi controlled Germany watching Adolf Hitler carry on his infamous “final solution” during the years between 1938 and the end of WWII. Aside from a few brave souls like Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died in a German concentration camp for his rebellious sermons, and the Ten Boom family of the Netherlands, whose heroism was heralded in the film “The Hiding Place,” hardly any gentiles and more particularly Christians, took a stand against Hitler’s slaughter of 6 million Jews.

One Protestant minister would later write these somber words of lament: “When they came for the Jews I said nothing because I wasn’t a Jew. When they came for the gypsies I said nothing because I was not a gypsy. When they took away the mentally retarded and the mentally ill I said nothing because I was neither retarded nor insane. When they came for the infirm I said nothing because I was in good health. Then, when they came for me one night, there was no one left to say even one word in my behalf.”

If I read bin Laden and the other crazy Islamic terrorists correctly, the term moderate Muslim is not part of their vocabulary. You are either for their mission to conquer the world for Allah or you are in infidel. There is no room for a moderate an the mind of a fanatic. I would suggest to my Muslim friends that they speak up while there are still some of us left to speak for them.

CHARLES H. McGOWEN, MD

Howland

Ohio hospitality

EDITOR:

Saturday evening, before the Labor Day weekend, we were expecting my cousin and his wife to arrive from Germany for a three-week vacation. We knew that they would arrive in Cleveland by evening, rent a car and drive to Youngstown. When they did arrive at our house around 11 p.m., they were quite exhausted, tired, but full of excitement and could hardly wait to tell us their most “wonderful experience” about having met a real Samaritan.

After waiting in Cleveland to receive the car they had ordered and paid for back in Germany, they were told that there were no more cars available for the evening. Now, late in the evening, as strangers in a strange city, without transportation, they felt quite upset, disappointed, and started to lament about being stranded in Cleveland for the night. Just then, a gentleman, who had waited ahead of them and who had just received the papers and keys to a car, (obviously the last car for the evening) approached them and told them that he would let them have his car. He said he really needed the car for the next day, that he lived close to the airport and that he would call his son who could pick him up and bring him back the next day for a car.

My cousin realized that this man was certainly inconveniencing himself, but most gratefully accepted his offer. When they told us this story they said they would not be sure to find this kind of generosity in Europe, but it sure lets us believe in the goodness of man.

FLORA PAMER

Youngstown