Bravo. Greater love hath no fellow bus passenger.
Kenyan Muslims shield Christians in Mandera bus attack – BBC News
A group of Kenyan Muslims on a bus attacked by Islamist gunmen protected Christian passengers by refusing to be split into groups, witnesses say.
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The explanation I've heard is that Islam is not a religion of war. But it's also not a religion of peace. What happened on that bus is wonderful but also tragic because the gunmen were islamists.
Somehow the dangerous set of ideas that keep attracting people to extreme Islam needs be questioned and reformed.
+Jon Weber I strongly suspect that the answer is parallel to the extreme ideas that attract people to gangs, to the Mob, to the Nazis (in 1940 or 2015), to the KKK, to any extremist movement: hopelessness and frustration and fear and anger given an outlet of belonging, purpose, unity, opportunity, slathered with righteousness and a promise of reward now and/or in the future.
An interesting description I heard (from Resa Aslan, I think) is that Christianity is the religion of kings, and Islam it the religion of empires. It's not necessarily a matter of war or peace, but a matter of scale to which the beliefs are applied.
+Dan Eastwood Both religions, as social constructs (which all religions are, at least in part), are heavily influenced in their contemporary beliefs by the period of their creation and their promulgation.
In the case of Christianity, it was born as a poor schismatic faith living in the shadow of hostile religious authorities and foreign military hegemony. It grew when it took over (or was taken on by) the state, and its fortunes and theology were forever changed from being an apocalyptic religion focused on caring for the outcasts of society to being an inextricable part of the power and social structure / status quo.
Islam was born in conflict and came to age in conquest. That mixed bag colors many of its writings and the historic precedents that some followers today focus on.
Both religions, in turn, were colored by their conflicts with each other — invasions, crusades, the Reconquista, the breaking up of the Ottoman Empire and Western domination of the Middle East and North Africa, the rise of the petro-states, and, most lately, the Iranian revolution, the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and terror organizations like Al Qa'eda and Da'esh.
What's remarkable is that large majorities within each faith remain more interested in the basic moral nature of their beliefs rather than the religious-cultural tribalism of domination.
>What's remarkable is … … rather than the religious-cultural tribalism of domination.
As it should be.