A Date with Don Cheadle

My friend Michael wrote the other day about anticipating a date night with his wife Lauren. I somehow missed that it was Friday night so me and my wife, wolfpack whitley, invited them to go to the drive-in with us. Alas, they decided to keep their ever-important plans of dinner and a movie. We, however, pressed on; thus, having a date night of our own...without all the foreplanning and anticipation. I dare say, it was just as good though. 

The two movies we saw were The Longshots and Traitor. Both good movies. The Longshots was a great story of unexpected success and redemption. Traitor, while also being a good movie, had a bit of a different message. Without giving all of the story away, I will talk about one part that I particularly liked. 

Don Cheadle was the star and played Samir Horn. Cheadle is one of my favorite actors, but gets much less press than he deserves. Moving on, though to the scene I want to reference. One  detective is particularly turned off by Muslim extremists and his partner responds (as my  memory serves me anyway): "Where I grew up, the KKK burned crosses in black people's yards and my dad would go over and put them out. Seems that all religions have some evil

 in them." While that may not have been his exact words (I have searched for the full script, but been unable to find it. If anyone can find it please point me in the right direction) the sentiment is clear, nonetheless. Often times Christians, myself being one, label Islam as a whole a terrorist religion and conveniently forget our own past: the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, The Ku Klux Klan, Christians bombing abortion clinics. 

Have we forgotten what some guy said a long time ago that we should remove the log from our own eye before we point out the speck in someone else's? All religions do have elements of evil in them. Is that to say that evil is inherent in religion? Not necessarily, but all religions do contain humans and humans have potential for great evil. Thus, we recognize that Islam has extremists, but so does Christianity. We can no longer point our blame fingers at others; we must also point them at ourselves.