"Nearly every time I turn on the television, someone is asking what can be done to win over Muslims and defeat terrorism. The answer is simple. We should start acting like Americans," says Frankie Martin in his Huffington Post article entitled 'What I learned about America from visiting one Hundred Mosques'.
Martin talks about meeting Muslims from all around the world and discovering that most of them used to be America's Number One Fan, until a number of policies, and invasions, and wars made it so they could not any longer. He goes on to imply that if America lived up to its values and traditions, to its very constitution, then she would not be the target of such hate and violence.
Obviously, there is no way can terrorists be excused for targeting children and civilians. It is very likely that those who murder innocents would simply find another victim in order to continue spreading terror. What Martin seems to be saying is that the United States of America could have been easily overlooked by terrorists had they stuck with the guiding principles that America was founded upon.
This wondrous snippet from Frankie Martin's article needs to be read by as many people as possible:
'Studying the writings of the Founding Fathers, my gloom turned to pride. I was inspired to see what these extraordinary men wrote about Islam and the inclusive vision they had for the nation. John Adams cited the Prophet Muhammad as one of the world's great truth-seekers alongside Confucius and Socrates; Thomas Jefferson learned Arabic using his Quran and hosted the first presidential iftaar during Ramadan; and Benjamin Franklin expressed his hope that the head cleric of Istanbul would preach Islam to Americans from a pulpit Franklin himself had funded, so passionate was his belief in religious freedom. In fashioning a nation of law and civil liberties, the Founding Fathers wanted to make America a haven for the oppressed and "begin the world over again," in the words of Thomas Paine.'
Now this is the America to be proud of!
To find out if a mosque in Michigan and/or the city of Ann Arbor was visited during the writing/researching of the book, Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam, you'll just have to pick up a copy for yourself.
