Address the faith

Mark Davis can't understand why Muslims don't gather in a visible gesture to say they will not have their faith defined by Osama bin Laden. The simplest answer is usually the best. Osama bin Laden doesn't define Islam to the billion people who practice that religion. If Americans in general, and Mark Davis in particular, are confused about what Islam is all about, so be it. Muslims themselves aren't and, for them, that's what important.

Christians, in general, don't feel a need to gather in a visible gesture to say that Christian extremists like abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph don't represent Christianity. Eric Rudolph may cite Biblical passages that call for death for offenses as murder, cursing one's parents or simple Sabbath violations. But most Christians have no difficulty in rejecting association with Eric Rudolph without having to provide theological justification. Mark Davis distances himself from Eric Rudolph unequivocally.

Likewise, Muslims have no difficulty in rejecting association with the 9/11 suicide hijackers without having to provide theological justifications. Yet somehow Mark Davis, not a particularly noted theologian, does not hesitate from asserting that suicide bombers are true followers of Quranic teachings. He assumes most Muslims must literally accept his own simple-minded reading of passages of the Quran taken out of context.

Mark Davis should probably spend more time in Bible class learning why Christians can selectively assert as true whatever Bible passages they want and less time asserting what other religions teach.

Instead, Mark Davis offers his "outlandish" idea. He decides that what Islam needs most of all is a Reformation. Not only does Mark Davis reject one of the world's great religions, Islam, but he implicitly rejects Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism, too, major branches of Christianity that thrive today, centuries after Mr Davis's outlandish idea split Western European Christianity. Mr Davis is right about only one thing, that is, it's the height of presumptuousness for "the Christian guy" to unfurl his master plan, which amounts to little more than asking everyone else to be just like him.