Tuesday December 28, 2004

The evil we do

Today I read that the tidle waves in Asia has killed over 50,000 people. To see pictures of mothers mourning over their children is so heartbreaking to me, but apparently this is not so for everyone. I've spent the last two days in shock after reading the comments at Little Green Footballs (a conservative blog that doesn't deserve a link) that celebrate the deaths of the tsunami victims because many of them are Muslims. Other message boards have seen the same kind of reaction --cheering on the horror.

Three years ago, we witnessed some Arab Muslims similarly cheering on the attacks on the World Trade Center in the United States. They believed Americans to be evil, and celebrated God's wrath on the infidels. Yet we believed that they were evil, or at least very lost. We proclaimed ourselves to be morally superior to those who found pleasure in seeing other people die. We thought we were so different. We would never revel in the misery of others, because we're good Christians.

But are we really so different than those who hailed the 9/11 tragedy? How could any decent person enjoy hearing of thousands of children being swept out to sea? Or seeing photographs of people crying over the bodies of their loved ones? How could any human being with a single shred of morality get any satisfaction out of a tragedy like this? And how can we miss the fact that we're exactly like the people we hate?