Blasphemers, Heretics, and the like

Grigoriy Myasoyedov 1835-1911 "Baptism by Fire"

But the Bible says:

Bring out of the camp the one who cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him.

Yes it does, but a people should be judged by their actions, not their dusty old words.  I refer to those Islamic apologists that defend Islam by pointing to the Bible and saying "See, your book says it too".

The last person executed for heresy in Britain was Thomas Aikenhead, that was in 1697.  There is not a tribe among men that hasn't killed, killed the outsiders, killed the different, or killed the enemy.  The question then should be, when was the last time they did it?  

Thomas Aquinas said:

“if we compare murder and blasphemy as regards the objects of those sins, it is clear that blasphemy, which is a sin committed directly against God, is more grave than murder, which is a sin against one's neighbor. On the other hand, if we compare them in respect of the harm wrought by them, murder is the graver sin, for murder does more harm to one's neighbor, than blasphemy does to God.” 

To find western nations executing blasphemers one must go back centuries, to find Islamic nations executing blasphemers one generally need look no further than the previous week.

A Mosque or a Church?

Spain is home to Cathedrals that were once mosques, and European Muslims are asking for their houses of worship back. I'm sympathetic to their cause. After all, the Christians aren't using them, except as musty museums that attract tourist dollars.

American Christians are un­usual in that their churches rarely occupy sites sacred to other faiths. But throughout history new religions often appropriated older sacred places for their own purposes. London's St. Paul's Cath­edral stands over the re­mains of a pagan temple, and the Metro­politan Cathedral in Mexico City is within the sacred pre­cinct of Aztec Tenoch­titlán. Invaders normally as­sumed that dominant religions should by right occupy the greatest buildings, and they grabbed sites ac­cord­ingly.

Such displacements are much in evidence across Europe and the Middle East, where Christians and Muslims often battled each other and where frontiers shifted frequently. (Whose Holy Ground)

The non-practicing Europeans who won't cede ground to Muslim worshipers remind me of an older child stubbornly clinging to a toy even though he has outgrown it. Here's an idea. Hold a contest to see who can get more people to show up to the building, Catholics or Muslims. Whoever produces the bigger crowd wins the property.

The author of the article just wants to let sleeping dogs lie, and ends with a question...

And what would happen if Christians tried to recover the many former churches in the Middle East that are now Islamicized?

What would happen? The Islamists would cut their heads off.

And that’s the difference between us and them. It is telling that while Christians cower in fear all over the Muslim world, prey to burnings, bombings and murder, Muslims in the west freely exercise their religion and bring their cultural and religious practices to the public square without fear of violence.

Meanwhile, here's a cool story about a brave Muslim Voice for European Christianity.

Religion or Culture?

I have little patience for people who sing from the catalog of Christianity's sins but brook no criticism of Islam.  When defending Islam, their favorite argument is that it's not the religion, its the culture

Sir Charles, OM, QC, OFM, Knight of the Queen's Girdle and all that, (Peace Be upon Him), charges to the rescue any time someone casts aspersions upon the Religion of Peace. (See this thread at Leticia's)

He and fellow Defenders of the Faith have excuses from now to doomsday explaining away the horrors that Islam has spawned:

It's not the religion but the national culture...
... religious conservatism...
... women like being swaddled head to toe when it's 120 degrees outside...
... and they don't like driving anyway...
... but it's only a small stick ....

OK, I added the last three, but I have heard variations of them at other forums...

The Christmas day killing in Texas where a man gunned down his entire family as they were gathered around the Christmas tree spurred my fellow Right Blogistanis to yet another gang attack on Islam, but it actually caused me to back up and reconsider. Mr. Yazdanpanah was obviously mentally distraught and emotionally anguished due to bankruptcy, family problems and a marriage breakup.

The Yazdanpanah's were not Muslim Fundamentalists

This is a man who reportedly enjoyed happy hour cocktails with men and women after work.  Look at family pictures and how the women dress.  This is not a fundamentalist family.  They were celebrating Christmas (albeit secularly), with a Christmas tree for Pete's sake!  Religion probably did not motivate him.  But did his native culture?  And what shaped that culture?  He's Iranian, so I'm waiting for an apologist to suggest Zoroastrianism...

Every time a Muslim man decapitates someone or kills his (always female) family members, a "Religion vs. Culture" argument breaks out. It's a silly argument over a false choice. Religion and Culture, you can't have one without the other. Cultures are informed by their dominant religions, and a religion accepts what is not objectionable from the surrounding culture. 

Grand Ayatollah Imam Shirazi explains it better than I ever could:

So in the case of Islamic religion and its followers, Islam does influence the culture, but culture does not generate the religion; for all the teachings of Islam are generated or inspired by none other than the divine entity. Inherently every aspect of the teachings of Islam is based on a reason and wisdom for the good of mankind - [whether or not the reason happens to be known to him.]

On the other hand if a practice or a particular aspect of culture does not contradict the system that is brought for the good of mankind, i.e. it does not contradict the teachings of Islam, or it is good for mankind, then it is accepted or endorsed by the Islamic religion, since anything which is considered good or is not considered harmful for mankind is declared permissible and therefore accepted and endorsed by Islam. And this is the kind of relationship Islam harbours for faith and culture. (Imam Shirazi)

So why are some practices absolutely prohibited (drinking), while female genital mutilation is AOK?  These are religious judgement passed on cultural practices.

Ducky, Jack and other ably proffer evidence to bolster the "culture, not religion" argument. Places like the United Arab Emirates, though ruled by Sharia, are relatively free from stonings and head chopping. The Emirates are very rich, and they bribe jihadis to leave them alone, and they deal harshly with public fundamentalist outbursts. Ducky has pointed out that various religions in Africa perform female genital mutilation, and the practice pre-dates Islam.

So, we have some evidence that prosperity tamps down a religion's most repugnant rituals, and we find that some practices are shared among various religions.  Neither observation answers the culture or religion question definitively, and that's because the two are inextricably entwined.

All I can offer in response is a different attempt at disaggregation.  What about those non-Muslims living in Muslim-dominated cultures?

* Number of bombings carried out by Christians compared to Muslim-inspired explosions.  A quick glance at the news or some googling will reveal Islam beating Christianity 10-1, or greater.

* Since Pakistan is proud home to over 600 honor killings annually, I'd like to see the Christian/Muslim breakdown of the statistics.  Again, some googling will reveal it is approximately, oh... 100% Muslim and 0% Christian, unless it is a Christian who is on the receiving end of an angry wielder of the Flaming Sword of God.

An additional comparison that would be interesting would be the annual number of per capita Old Testament-style punishments meted out in Israel over the past decade compared to surrounding countries.

So is it really the culture?  

Even an intellectually dishonest redefinition of honor killing (carried out by apologist feminists, no less), cannot snatch first prize in body count from Islam's bloody grasp.  They still outnumber even Catholic Latin American husbands who kill their wives in a fit of jealous rage.

So, I don't condemn Islam or its practitioners; I simply view it with eyes wide open. I appreciate the contribution my fellow Americans of the Islamic faith make to this nation in the fields of industry, medicine, the arts, and defense. I thank God we are spared the darker aspects of their faith here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Maybe culture and national character have something to do with it after all...

Daily Mail
WFAA.com
PEW Survey - Muslim Attitudes
Imam Shirazi - Teachings of Islam

Nutballs From Hell

All religions have their problems and suffer the sins of their fools and Grand Inquisitors.  Islam, like its fellow faiths, has earned the obloquy heaped upon it.


It should be nobody's business how a religion conducts its affairs, but its influence on society is everyone's concern.  If a religion advances the culture and is a boon to the society, all the better.  Even those who don't practice it benefit from it.  It works in reverse also.  A religion can drag a culture down, keeping its people shrouded in ignorance and society mired in misery.

I'll leave it to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions on the differences between Christian-influenced cultures and those under the spell of Islam.

One major difference between Islam and Christianity is the nature of their spectacular sinners, the ones who make the news in some big way. Christians make the front page almost always by acting in violation of the teachings of Christ. Muslims  trigger news updates usually by taking their teachings too far or too literally in defending faith and honor. I must give Islam credit. It's followers are much more fervent than Christ's.

We Christians bear the shame of a minuscule percentage of pedophile priests or flock-fleecing evangelists whose grave sins are not some weird perversion of the faith, but rather a bald-faced repudiation of it. The sin of slavery was ended in large measure by appeals to Christianity, and that faith powered America's civil rights movement. That is an important distinction between Christianity and Islam. While Christian crimes and atrocities spring from a rejection of the Gospel, and are ultimately ended by appeals to the same, Islamic horror shows stem from "misinterpretations" of their sacred texts, or turbo-charging some passage.

"A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike."

This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational. (Christopher Hitchens, Slate)

Islamic Extremists:  Taking it Too Far

All religions that reach back to antiquity have some barbaric aspects to them. Judaism and Christianity have gotten past them (how many stonings happen nowadays in Israel, or Utah?) Islamic societies cling to ancient brutalities and bring them to new heights of horrible culmination.

It is also true that all religions have their kooks and practitioners on the fringes who, when God asks them to take one aspirin, decide to go him one better and gobble the whole bottle. Mormons condemn those "Jack" Mormons who go outside the church and practice polygamy, which often includes teenage girls. All Christians condemn the murder of abortionists and the bombing of their clinics. We are near unanimous in our condemnation of Revrund Phred Phlapps and his First Church of God Hates Fags.  There is no way the teachings of Christ can be twisted out of shape enough to call these actions righteous.

About all I can say in defense of Christianity compared to Islam is that our kooks are less spectacular and have a harder time making the news than their flamboyantly violent Islamist rivals. Violent criminal acts in the name of Christ are so rare as to make each one a singular and memorable event, while Islamic violence has metasticized into a global miasma so routine that it has lost its shock value.

To My Atheist Friends

Correction:  Maya Angelou did not write this.  And I have updated the text to reflect the true author's words.  See Snopes for the full story.  Shame on me for not checking my facts, and thanks to Anonymous, whoever you are!

"When I Say I am a Christian" 

By Carol Wimmer


When I say, “I am a Christian”

I’m not shouting, “I’ve been saved!”
I’m whispering, “I get lost!
That’s why I chose this way”

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I don’t speak with human pride
I’m confessing that I stumble -
needing God to be my guide

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I’m not trying to be strong
I’m professing that I’m weak
and pray for strength to carry on

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I’m not bragging of success
I’m admitting that I’ve failed
and cannot ever pay the debt

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I don’t think I know it all
I submit to my confusion
asking humbly to be taught

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I’m not claiming to be perfect
My flaws are far too visible
but God believes I’m worth it

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I still feel the sting of pain
I have my share of heartache
which is why I seek His name

When I say, “I am a Christian”
I do not wish to judge
I have no authority
I only know I’m loved

Muslim Population set to Double

This is horrible news


Just look at predominately Muslim countries. Is there a good one in the lot? All we hear about from these lands is beheadings, stoning of women and honor killings of daughters, embassies burned down over cartoons, illiteracy, belief in wild conspiracies...

No Nobel prizes, no scientific breakthroughs, no contributions to literature, humane letters or art. Almost anywhere any violent conflicts are going on, Muslims are a party to it.

They seem to have a knack for snuffing the light of reason in every corner they infest. Contrast this with the Christianity-spurred Scholastic movement of the theocratic Christian Middle Ages. Other than a few flare-ups, Christianity rode the enlightenment and the renaissance rather than launch bloody rampages against it. Christianity has had its violent episodes, but it powered the advance of Western Civilization, and now sits content to let earthly powers run the governments. There are no Christian theocracies.

There is some good news, if we can believe it…

Despite the rapid growth of Islam, Christianity seems set to remain the biggest religion in the world for the next 20 years. There are currently more than 2 billion Christians - 30 to 35 percent of the global population - making it very unlikely that there will be fewer than 2.2 billion Christians in 2030.

The report undermines the notion that Europe is heading toward having any country with a Muslim majority. The continent will be about 8 percent Muslim in 2030, it projects.

"The data that we have isn't pointing in the direction of 'Eurabia' at all," Grim said.

"The Muslim population is growing and slowing. Instead of a runaway train, it's trending with the general global population," he said. (CNN)

Muslim numbers are increasing and spreading across the globe, and that is bad news indeed. I say this based upon my observation of the world.

What is the religious status of successful countries? 
The typical successful and free country has a religion-neutral government where practicing believers of various and disparate faiths peacefully coexist with one another and with non-believers. Until Muslims learn to do this, their lands will continue to be snakepits of hatred and economic misery