David McElroy

It was about 10 p.m. Wednesday. I was taking my nightly walk through my quiet suburban neighborhood when I realized that something seemed wrong at a house just ahead.

I couldn’t tell what was going on, but I heard the low murmur of voices that didn’t sound happy. There was a car that seemed to be about half packed. The trunk and the doors were open. It was dark, so I couldn’t see much, but I knew there were people in the driveway.

I heard the low sound of a child sobbing. Then I heard a man’s voice. He wasn’t shouting or angry, but the voice was firm.

“I don’t want Mommy to leave, Amber, but that’s her choice.”

The soft, muffled sobbing continued. Then I was far enough past that I couldn’t hear what else might have been said.

And with that, I was a child again — just for a few minutes — reliving similar scenes from my own dysfunctional family’s past. Even though it’s been decades since I experienced those things, I could feel the feelings as if they were fresh. Hurt. Fear. Anger. Betrayal. Confusion. Mostly fear that I was being abandoned, although the child-size version of me didn’t have had the words to call it that.

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Tyler Weaver loves to read. The 9-year-old in Hudson Falls, N.Y., has been entering his local library’s summer reading contest for years. In fact, he’s been the winner of the reading contest for five years now, reading 373 books along the way.

In any rational universe, Tyler would be celebrated and encouraged. Instead, the director of the local library wants to change the rules of the contest. She wants to draw a random name out of a hat instead of allowing a child’s work and merit to determine the winner.

Tyler comes from a reading family. His 7-year-old brother, Jonathan, has taken second place for two years running now. Their mother, Katie, is proud of Tyler and Jonathan.

“I’ve told them God makes all of us different. There are some things that are hard and some that are easy, but they should excel at what they enjoy doing and Tyler just loves to read,” she told the local newspaper. “Everybody he tells, he gets high-fives. Everybody’s so proud of him.”

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Unless you’re just determined to ignore facts, this story makes it hard to keep believing that all Muslims are terrorists who are out to kill everyone who doesn’t share their faith. I suspect it will be ignored or discredited by those for whom it causes serious cognitive dissonance.

Late last week, the picture above was posted on the Facebook page of the Sohag governorate in Egypt. According to the caption, it’s local Muslims protecting a Christian church as marchers of the Muslim Brotherhood went through the city. In the political violence in the country, Christians have sometimes been targets of the pro-Morsi faction, so local people seemed determined not to let it happen in their city.

I’ve written before that it’s misguided and evil to hate everybody of any particular religion, whatever it is. I see a lot of people online who seem determined to believe that all Muslims are evil terrorists out to destroy this country. It’s certainly true that there’s a serious strain of hate and violence among certain radicalized Muslims, but it’s factually wrong to believe that reflects on every Muslim.

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