The men who hijacked the four airplanes and crashed them worshipped a false god.
In the speech of the great statesman, George W. Bush, he spent a lot of time explaining that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. That we know and love a lot of good Muslims, all around the world, but especially here in the United States of America.
As were many other people, I was very favorably impressed by that speech. But the part about the good Muslims and the bad Muslims bothered me.
Here is my humble advice for our Commander in Chief:
Have another meeting with Muslim leaders. After the friendly greetings, say to them, "The men who hijacked the four airplanes and crashed those airplanes worshipped a false god."
After the fuss calms down and some of them can hear him again, continue, "Do you worship a god who rewards killing Americans with an afterlife of sexual delights?"
If they find this a hard question, maybe they are not some of those good Muslims that he spoke of in his speech.
"Well, then those suicidal murderers from September eleventh worship a different god than you worship. If you worship the one true god, they worship a false god. I'm glad you agree with me."
"Then you worship a false god. The living and true God calls that murder and condemns it with eternal damnation."2
Continue, "About twenty-four hours from now, I'm going to make a speech. I will be talking about true religion and about false religion. Just as the United States would not tolerate Incas practicing their religion of human sacrifice, even so the United States will not tolerate people who call themselves Muslims practicing or teaching a religion of human sacrifice. The twenty-four hours gives you men time to say it first. Or it gives you time to try to marshall the defenders of diversity to defend a religion of human sacrifice."
This war is a religious war and it doesn't work well for us to try to fight it by pretending that every religion is equally good.
Neither does it work well for our president to offer instruction in the doctrines of a religion that he has only studied under the pressures following the events of September eleventh.
1. Don't take this as criticism of the president. It took me more than two weeks to think this through and I've had a lot more leisure for thinking about theological issues than he has since the towers came down.
2. See, for example, 1 John 3:15, "...and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."