Is Islam really a peaceful religion?

With what's happening in the world, Hanukkah has felt different for me this year - more current, more timely, less about then and more about now. In case my Gentile readers aren't quite sure, the “Festival of Lights” commemorates the Jewish victory against an oppressive ancient government that didn't allow the freedom to worship in one's own way.

If it that feels uncomfortably familiar, it's because in recent months our officials here at home have grown increasingly comfortable denigrating an entire religion. Muslims represent almost a quarter of the world's population, though they're less common in the States than elsewhere. Maybe it's that - the fact that many Americans in general and Southerners in particular - have never encountered a Muslim. Maybe that makes Islam feel exotic and unknowable.

The first and only time I've ever met a Muslim, in fact, was when a few years ago I hosted a religious forum on my television show. The imam sat alongside a rabbi, an evangelical preacher, and a Buddhist swami. Of all the clergy on the set that day, the imam was the most palpably humble - soft-spoken, unassuming, and deferential. I got the sense that he knew he was, more than the others, under a microscope.

Obviously lots and lots of Muslims aren't as good-natured as that imam, as we've witnessed recently in Paris and San Bernardino and Beirut. The question becomes, then, how do we tell the good ones from the bad ones?

Donald Trump has one idea: just assume they're all the bad ones and ban them all from traveling to America. He's not the only or even the first person to say that, he just happens to be the most resonant. Is it a good idea, though?

Well, setting aside the glaring constitutional and democratic and historic considerations, it would require a gigantic leap of faith in the very government which Trump rightly distrusts.

Remember that the San Bernardino terrorists had long been radicalized, and clueless U.S. officials allowed the wife into our country anyway. That sounds surprising until you consider the bombshell congressional report from earlier this week which revealed that a whopping 72 workers at the Department of Homeland Security happen to be on the U.S.'s own terrorist watch list.

A logical libertarian (me, I mean) sees these instances of institutional failure and vows not to give up any more freedom in exchange for the illusion of safety. Other people (Democrats, Republicans) see these instances of institutional failure and vow to empower this same government even further.

It's baffling. For a decade and a half our nation has fought the “war on terrorism,” and in so doing has eroded our basic freedoms to the point that we not only accept but expect our own private activity to be under state surveillance. Yet for all of the lives lost and the trillions spent and the liberty lost, our government still can't even stop a pair of murderous newlyweds.

So now we're at a place where people are petrified because global jihad seems more and more inevitable....unless we contain anyone who just might be a jihadist. Which sounds like a solid plan, on paper. But being that it's Hanukkah and I happen to be a member of the most persecuted faith ever, I can't help but feel personally worried. I mean, the whole point of Hanukkah is to be mindful of what happens when regimes rob their people of the freedom to worship. Not to mention the Holocaust, the purpose of which was to extinguish an entire religion.

You can see, then, why it scares me when governments start seriously considering doing away with whole groups of people. . .

Besides, what worries us is not terrorism itself so much as uncertainty - the knowledge that there are no safe spaces, that any one of us could be at the wrong place at the wrong time. And so it's tempting to inject some illusion of certainty, and we could do that by, as Trump suggests, halting all Muslim travel into our borders.

But I for one would feel like a total hypocrite if I endorsed that position while lighting my Hanukkah menorah, an emblem of triumph over government gone wild.Letter

Mande Wilkes is a local cultural critic. Contact her at M@mandewilkes.com.

This story was originally published December 14, 2015 at 11:02 AM with the headline "Is Islam really a peaceful religion?."