A community under attack always goes into defensive mode, and with attacks and hostility rising exponentially that defensiveness will only increase. Which is a tragedy, really, because there is so much we need to talk about internally. We so desperately need to hold ourselves to account for a whole litany of abuses, injustices and crimes.
People who were just on the verge of speaking up about wrongdoing and the problems in their communities, have now been silenced by the gathering ideological armies on the frontier. When your community is under attack, every dissenting voice must be silenced: we self-censor to protect our people, our community and our interpretation of religion. Instead of speaking about what we know to be wrong, we instead find ourselves framing everything as a conspiracy, or a witch hunt, or the fruits of prejudice and hate.
The tragedy here is that there is so much rot within, and if we do not deal with it soon, the whole structure will likely implode before long. Beyond the public relations exercises and apologetics, we are broken within. We are in a mess. But for as long as enemies gather, ready to attack and delighting in their conquest, who in their right mind would dare speak up about our own crimes? Who would dare confront an enemy such as this?
Last modified: 29 November 2017
