Our View: How a Muslim and a Christian ripped out ISIS's heart

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2017/06/22/muslim-christian-ripped-out-isis-heart/414438001/

Editorial: Imam Mohammed Mahmoud and Christian relief worker David Eubank proved how to defeat global terror in incidents a world apart.

(Photo: Isabel Infantes, AFP/Getty Images)

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Terrorism continued to convulse the planet this past week as new fronts opened in London, Paris, Brussels, Flint, Mich. and across the Middle East.

Amid the violence, two men, one fair-skinned, one dark-skinned; one Christian, one Muslim; demonstrated as eloquently as human beings can – through their actions – that we are not in a clash of civilizations that pits the West against the Muslim world.

We’re in a clash of civilization and barbarity.

Let’s begin with the Muslim.

He protected a man who wanted to kill him

Mohammed Mahmoud is the imam at the Muslim Welfare House in North London, next to one of the largest Muslim places of worship in Great Britain – the Finsbury Park Mosque.

In the very early hours of Monday morning, just as worshipers were gathered for prayer during the holy month of Ramadan, a man in a white box-van drove his vehicle into a group of Muslim worshipers.

He mowed down and injured 11 people, three of whom were fighting for their lives this week and another four treated for less serious injuries at a hospital.

When the attacker got out of his van, he turned out to be 47-year-old Darren Osborne of Cardiff. He was a white man screaming at the Muslim onlookers, “I want to kill all Muslims.”

The crowd subdued him and was noticeably angry. One witness, Abdikadar Warfa, told The (London) Guardian that Osborne was kicking and punching and trying to escape. “Some people were hitting him.”

That’s when Mohammed Mahmoud and others stepped in between the crowd and their attacker. “Some tried to hit (the van driver) either with kicks or punches,” Mahmoud said. “By God's grace we managed to surround him and to protect him from any harm."

Think of that. They protected a man who had just tried to kill them.

When police arrived, the white man was hustled into a police van and was seen laughing at the worshipers.

 

He saved a girl amid gunfire

Far away from London, in the urban battlefield of Mosul, Iraq, a middle-aged American aid worker, who had years ago been a U.S. Special Forces commando, spied a pile of bodies where ISIS snipers had shot Iraqi civilians fleeing their terrorist army.

The aid worker, 56-year-old David Eubank, told the Los Angeles Times, “There was a woman sprawled on her face. Dead. A baby, all shot up. Dead. Near them, two old people. Dead. And then you realize all those lumps of rags were kids. Dead, dead, dead.”

Amid the carnage, Eubank saw movement. A child about the age of 5 looked out from under the hijab of her slain mother, according to the Times.

Eubank was taking cover with Iraqi soldiers behind a tank, staying out of the line of fire from ISIS troops. 

A dramatic video shows what happened next.

Two Iraqi soldiers stepped beyond the tank and with their semi-automatic rifles began laying cover for Eubank. He ran toward the bodies in a hail of bullets and moments later returned with the frightened girl in his arms.

They refused to play into ISIS's strategy

Two men, one Christian, one Muslim refused to play into the ISIS strategy of provoking a war against Christians and Muslims.

A handbook written by ISIS sympathizers promotes such confrontations, writes Rick Noack, Europe-based foreign affairs correspondent for the Washington Post. It reads, “When Muslims and Mosques will be attacked by neo-Nazis in protests, Muslims will do counter-protests. …This is how the future Jihad in Europe will begin. People in between will be caught in crossfire and will have to pick sides.”

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This is the kind of story that needs to be circulated. It puts a major damper on the narrative of hatred coming out against all Muslims.