A Humble Request to Frederick County Voters

Do NOT vote of Joe Chmelik for Frederick County School Board.

Toward the end of the school year in Frederick County, a small controversy arose. An extracurricular student group at Urbana High School invited the local Islamic cleric, who also happens to be a professor at Georgetown University, to speak about Islam and some issues relevant to the Middle East. As this group was formed by IB students to learn about the Middle East, such a talk/lecture/presentation seemed appropriate and was approved by school officials, as it did not promote Islam, it just provided some information about Islam. However, a small (and I do mean small) minority of residents in Frederick County decided that the cleric should not be allowed to speak on the grounds of separation of church and state. (Mind you, these seemed to be conservatives who are the first to denounce such a separation.)

Well, the day of the talk came (and attendance at the talk was voluntary, I might add), and the controversy did not die down. Apparently, someone called an attorney from the Eastern Shore of Maryland (I guess the lawyers in Frederick County knew better) and said attorney threatened a lawsuit. But the kicker is the reaction of one of the candidates for school board, Joe Chmelik. He decided he needed his photo-op at Urbana, and was quoted by the Frederick News-Post as saying, "(Muslims) are the masters of the death squad and they are good at it" (Frederick News-Post, page A1, 11 June 2008).

Funny, I would have given the title to the Nazis, and I don't think they were Muslims. Or perhaps Josef Stalin, and he wasn't a Muslim. History has seen many "Christian" death squads (Northern Ireland, anyone?).

And may I give Mr. Chmelik some advice? "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3-4, NRSV). Okay, these words aren't mine, but they come from a source very credible to Christians. We Christians have been quite capable of killing large numbers of people on our own. Let's not say Muslims are the greatest offenders. We all have blood on our hands.

Very rarely will I make an endorsement (or anti-endorsement) of a candidate on this blog (most of you reading this should already know many of my political leanings). But this situation called out for it.

So please, vote for anyone but Joe Chmelik. And maybe we should rethink the whole elected school board thing.