Tag: Jesusland

Pope’s no dope: I’m sure your reaction to the news that Pope Benedict said that Islam is a religion of violence was similar to mine — What kind of incense are they burning at the Vatican these days? I mean, look at what’s going on in the world, Bennie. Read a paper, listen to NPR, watch the “O’Reilly Factor.”

Maybe he figured that, since he was speaking German, the Muslims wouldn’t suss out what he said. Sorry, Leader of All Christendom, but there are German Muslims nowadays who understand the language and can translate for the other guys.

Since the Pope’s speech the felafel has really hit the fan. It’s gotten so bad that Benedict said he regretted that some people didn’t like what he said. He didn’t apologize, and from where I’m sitting, that’s a good thing because it appears he was right about Islam.

In a Reuters story today, Islamic leaders and groups really don’t sound like they’re ready to forgive and forget the Pope’s remarks:

“We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya,” said a Web statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq’s branch of al Qaeda.

“We shall break the cross and spill the wine,” said the statement, posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.

I don’t believe that those guys mean breaking the cross and spilling wine in a good way. And they burned the Pope in effigy, which is the next best thing to perpetrating real violence.

But there is real violence aplenty out there, too. On Sunday in Somalia an Italian nun and her bodyguard were shot an killed in what is presumed to be retaliation for the Pope’s slander of Islam. In Gaza, Palestinians are vandalizing Christian churches.

So it would appear that Pope Benedict really was right — Islam is basically a cult that uses violence as a means of suppressing dissension and denying alternate viewpoints. The Pope merely said what many people already believed — and he backed it up with some insightful medieval philosophy too; he didn’t resort to burning an effigy of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Still, I wish he hadn’t said it.

ABC News reports on “Jesus Camp,” a new documentary about the religious right’s proto-Hitlerjugend indoctrination programs:

Speaking in tongues, weeping for salvation, praying for an end to abortion and worshipping a picture of President Bush — these are some of the activities at Pastor Becky Fischer’s Bible camp in North Dakota, “Kids on Fire,” subject of the provocative new documentary, “Jesus Camp.”

“I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places,” Fisher said. “Because, excuse me, we have the truth.”

“A lot of people die for God,” one camper said, “and they’re not afraid.”

“We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” said another, “only in a funner way.”

Ecumenical collaboration: Friday afternoon I received a press release from a PR firm that caught my attention. It was from a woman with a Jewish name working for a PR agency with two Jewish names that promotes Jewish and ecumenical causes, and it was about an op-ed piece written by the United State’s first Muslim ambassador and printed in the pages of the Washington Times, which is owned and operated by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. It started this way:

Hello,

I thought you might be interested in this op-ed written by the first Muslim U.S. ambassador M. Osman Siddique wherein he calls on American Muslims to serve as sentries in their own communities in order to safeguard America and to protect Islam from being co-opted by extremists. It appeared in the Washington Times this morning . If you have any questions feel free to contact Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications.

Sincerely,

Jessica Rosenbaum
Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications

I read the piece, then wrote back to ask why I had been chosen to receive this weirdly ecumenical essay. As of today, I still have not heard from Rosenbaum, Rabinowitz or Dorf.

It’s strange to consider the provenance of the press release and one wonders what all these folks are really trying to accomplish. Do you really believe that these folks are trying to protect Islam from being “co-opted by extremists?” I think Siddique might actually be sincere, if misguided, but the Jews and the Moonies? Hmmmm ….

Siddique obviously is being used as a tool, and the cynics behind this piece of propaganda certainly don’t have Islam’s best interest at heart. Here are some excerpts. Read the whole thing here.

I am embarrassed when I read the names of the terrorists in the newspaper. What must non-Muslims think when some criminal claiming to act in the name of Islam and bearing the same name as the Prophet Muhammad is arrested?

I am also embarrassed that not all American Muslims do all they can to expose those in our community who would commit mayhem or would give succor in any way to those who would cause harm. Too many American Muslims hold back from publicly speaking out against extremist ideologies that threaten us all because they fear being stigmatized by their coreligionists for cooperating with security agencies.

Why is this? In part it is because some Muslim immigrants are relatively recent arrivals from nations in which security forces were corrupt and could not be trusted. Some shy from cooperation because of their immigration status or the status of those around them. Still others hold back because they disagree strongly with American foreign policy. They truly believe that the current administration is fighting a war against Islam under the guise of fighting terrorism. Regrettably, this sentiment is widespread among Muslims, more so abroad but to a substantial degree in America as well.

Our government may act incompetently and unwisely. But I’m confident that it holds no animosity toward Muslims simply because they are Muslims. Sadly, it is Muslims who perpetrate most of the worst terrorist attacks today. As we approach the fifth anniversary of September 11, this reality must be acknowledged by all Muslims.

Oh wait, now I see — the idea here is to get the good Muslims to rat out the bad ones!

If Muslims are to gain the full confidence of non-Muslim Americans they must come forward whenever they sense an extremist presence in their midst. If anything, we must go the extra mile in these suspicious times.
…

It’s often said that freedom is never cheap. For American Muslims, the price we must pay is taking responsibility for serving as sentries in our community. Our primary communal allegiance must be to the nation in which we thrive.

In no way do I mean to imply that the American Muslim community is ridden with potential terrorists or that extremist ideologies dominate. But we fool no one, and certainly not ourselves, if we fail to admit that within our ranks are at least some individuals who have the potential to turn on America.

There is no better time to act on this truth than the fifth anniversary of September 11.

So good Muslims — and you know who you are — get out there next Monday and report to the U.S. authorities all the bad or merely suspicious Muslims. Or use the opportunity to get even with your Muslim neighbors you simply don’t like.

Allah, Yaweh, Rev. Moon and George Bush will thank you for it.

It doesn’t matter to me — but the Christian Nationalists who make up his base might not be too happy when they learn that Sen. George Allen, a neo-Confederate Republican from Virginia, is in fact Jewish:

It seems that George Allen’s mother is Jewish (which, according to Jewish law makes Sen. Macaca Jewish too)… [But] Allen has gone to some length to hide his Jewish background. Why? Ashamed of mom? A bigot? Or making sure the “base” does not stop supporting him because he’s half Jewish.

He would be hiding his Jewish identity from the same ultra-rightwing Republicans who made hateful albeit ridiculous aspersions about John Kerry’s Jewish ancestry, such as:

[M]ost Jews still study the Babylonian Talmud, still hold secret Bar Mitzvahs in dark Boston cellars, and still despise Christians, who the Talmud states are merely sub-human animals, to be killed at leisure. Members of this American Zionist fifth column … “Marranos,” or “hidden closeted Jews.”

Fearing the imminent economic collapse of America, and by default the collapse of the Jewish State in Palestine, someone somewhere at Zionist headquarters in New York stacked the deck by shuffling a single very dangerous Marrano into the middle of the pack. The Marrano was Senator John Kerry, whose real name would probably be Judas Kohn if his family had not already pulled the covert Jewish name-change trick.

This would be laughable (“most Jews still hold secret Bar Mitzvahs in Boston” — whah?) if it weren’t so creepy and the menace weren’t so real. The threat of violent antisemiticism seems remote, even dormant, in the United States. But occasionally it burst through, as it did in 1999 when Buford O’Neal Furrow killed five people at a Jewish daycare center in San Fernando Valley.

To the rightwing fringe, there’s no such thing as “half-Aryan.” Unfortunately for Allen, he can’t afford to lose these voters if he plans to run for president in ’08. After his “Macaca” moment, they’re all he’s got.

Devil made ’em do it: In another shining example of what’s wrong with the Catholic church (besides the whole transubstantiation business), the pope’s head exorcist has come and declared that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were both possessed by Satan. I am not making this up — it was published in the Daily Mail.

Father Gabriele Amorth who is Pope Benedict XVI’s ‘caster out of demons’ made his comments during an interview with Vatican Radio.

‘I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed.’
— Father Amorth

Father Amorth said: “Of course the Devil exists and he can not only possess a single person but also groups and entire populations.

“I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler – and Stalin did. Almost certainly they were possessed by the Devil.

“You can tell by their behaviour and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders. That’s why we need to defend society from demons.”

Then-pontiff Pius XII tried to perform a long-distance excorcism on Hitler during World War II, according to secret Vatican documents. But Amorth said that rarely works. He hinted that you have to be within pea soup spitting distance.

Amorth has spoken out against the Harry Potter books as promoting satanism:

Father Amorth, who is president of the International Association of Exorcists, said of the JK Rowling books:”Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil.”

He said that Rowling’s books contain innumerable positive references to magic, “the satanic art” and added the books attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in fact, the distinction “does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil.”

For the record, Father Amorth has performed more than 30,000 exorcisms, and he told the interviewer — no joke — his favorite film is “The Exorcist.”