The Hijacking of Islam

Bob Leonard
Thursday, April 1, 2010

The following talk by Bob Leonard was given to the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel de Allende (Mexico) on April 18, 2010.  Leonard has had a long career in development work for various government and international agencies.

Good morning everybody.First off, I would like to explain why I have felt compelled to make this talk, but also to state  that this paper does not pretend to be a balanced presentation of issues, but rather an opportunity to raise events and concerns that are almost entirely overlooked by the press and media.

So now the why?  Every day we hear or read about suicide bombers, UXOs, drones attacking the Taliban, moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, pushing Karzai to cut out corruption, pushing Pakistan to move against the Taliban, and all the while our congressional committees bring in the “observers” and listen to their expertise and advice, and the American people keep asking, “Why do they hate us,” and say, “Islam is a violent religion.”  The simple answer is, “We have invaded two of their countries, and of course, this is critical.”  But I see this as way too simple.  We are only looking on the surface.  We see only the symptoms of a much larger picture.  Let’s imagine we are seeing events on top of a shelf, but we say, “Hey, wait a second, let’s look under the shelf, let’s dig deeper and see what else is going on.”  Today, we will look under this shelf and explore some of the underlying issues that are almost never mentioned in the press or media