A cartoon says your religion is violent. You are offended, and your response is to shoot someone or bomb something.
You say you are "pro-life" because of your religion. You blow up clinics and shoot doctors in the name of this belief.
And you wonder why I smirk when you say yours is a "religion of peace," or that you follow the "prince of peace."
I'm not fond of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, because of what they say about women and their funding of the proposition in California to ban marriage equality, also known as proposition hate. But I was so impressed when I walked out of the musical The Book of Mormon, there were Mormons standing amid the crowd - not protesting, not shouting, but, instead, handing out the actual Book of Mormon and saying, "You've seen the musical, now read the book!"
I high-fived one of those Mormons and said, "That's awesome."
You have every right to counter a message with your own peaceful message. You have every right to be outraged by anything. You have every right to demonstrate that outrage, so long as it is not violent, nor oppressive. You have no right to violence against other humans. None.
Freedom of expression is not only a basic, universal human right - if you are responding to a criticism that says you are violent with violence, you're an idiot.
This attack in Paris today on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo does far more to paint Islam as violent than any cartoon ever has.
I do not blame all Muslims for this. But I do believe that any Muslim who supports blasphemy laws, or who doesn't not believe in freedom of expression, even when he or she does not support what is being expressed, shares some of the blame for what has happened today in Paris.
My best wishes for safety to the staff of The Onion, to the guys at South Park, to James Franco and Seth Rogan, and to anyone else who has been threatened for their satire.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
#JesuisCharlie
#CharlieHebdo
#vivalafrance
#imagine
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
You think the Koran is violent? Have you read the Bible?!
I was raised in a Christian household, in a Christian community, in the Bible Belt. The faction of choice, for the most part: General Baptist, though there was a lot of Methodist meeting attendance also going on. That means there were at least weekly Bible readings going on (often more). I knew a lot of the bible by my teen years, but I decided reading excerpts at least twice a week wasn't enough to really understand it, and so I went through the whole enchilada, cover-to-cover. And as I read, I realized, more and more, that I didn't believe. Reading the Bible over several weeks, cover-to-cover, helped me come to terms with my disbelief -- which I'd always had but would never admit to. I was officially an un-believer shortly after that, per a phone call from a church youth leader asking me to come to church camp, and my saying, for the first time out loud (but not the last), that I am not a Christian.
For various reasons, about 20 years later, I decided to do it again: read the Bible cover-to-cover. I needed a refresher course to keep me sharp for comments like, "Jesus said homosexuality is a sin" (he never did, actually). I remembered that the Bible had made me uncomfortable, even angry, as a teen, for some of its assertions, but as an adult, I was absolutely flabbergasted at how incredibly violent and woman-hating the text is, over and over again. I had remembered the hate of the Bible from the first time around, here and there, but the text is permeated with it, and the violence -- wow. I hadn't remembered that from the first time around. Horrific. And nothing I wanted any part of!
(I have to admit that, on this second reading, I gave up at Revelation -- it's just too crazy to get through)
A couple of years later, I decided to read the Koran. All sorts of Christians were telling me it was oh-so-violent and women-hating, and so I wanted to see for myself. And... I was shocked at how far, far less violent it is than the Bible. It is far from woman-hating, as the Bible is. In fact, it does, quite often, lay out the rights of women -- something the Bible never does. "There are at least 30 verses in the Koran that support equality between women and men and that refer to women's rights in various aspects of life." (reference). Further research showed that Islamic cultures that are anti-women base their beliefs on Hadith, an oral tradition of quotes attributed to the Prophet Muhammad but that are in wide dispute as to which are authentic, on ideas they think are in the Koran but aren't (a lot like Christians who think Jesus commented on homosexuals -- which he never did), and on cultural practices that preceded Islam. While I'm still no fan of the religion (any religion), it's a shame that militants are taking over a religion whose basis for belief is actually far more peace-promoting than the Bible.
In short, Christians certainly have plenty of Biblical basis to beat their wives, rape women, keep their wives and daughters hidden at home, beat their children, and kill whomever they deem as a non-Believer. To have these same Christians claim the Koran is violent shows a jaw-dropping duplicity. By all means, condemn violence and justifications for such -- but condemn ALL justifications for such. Condemn the 911 hijackers -- and the men who blew up clinics and shot doctors in Christ's name. And if you want to say that And if they give birth, I will slaughter their beloved children. (Hosea 9:16 NLT) shouldn't be taken literally, fine -- but you have to say the same for the Koran. If you want to claim that when Paul says oh-so-clearly in 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 that women should be silent in church that, really, he's just saying women only have to be silent when tongues or prophecy is happening, then you ALSO have to acknowledge that the Koran is ALSO open to interpretation.
For various reasons, about 20 years later, I decided to do it again: read the Bible cover-to-cover. I needed a refresher course to keep me sharp for comments like, "Jesus said homosexuality is a sin" (he never did, actually). I remembered that the Bible had made me uncomfortable, even angry, as a teen, for some of its assertions, but as an adult, I was absolutely flabbergasted at how incredibly violent and woman-hating the text is, over and over again. I had remembered the hate of the Bible from the first time around, here and there, but the text is permeated with it, and the violence -- wow. I hadn't remembered that from the first time around. Horrific. And nothing I wanted any part of!
(I have to admit that, on this second reading, I gave up at Revelation -- it's just too crazy to get through)
A couple of years later, I decided to read the Koran. All sorts of Christians were telling me it was oh-so-violent and women-hating, and so I wanted to see for myself. And... I was shocked at how far, far less violent it is than the Bible. It is far from woman-hating, as the Bible is. In fact, it does, quite often, lay out the rights of women -- something the Bible never does. "There are at least 30 verses in the Koran that support equality between women and men and that refer to women's rights in various aspects of life." (reference). Further research showed that Islamic cultures that are anti-women base their beliefs on Hadith, an oral tradition of quotes attributed to the Prophet Muhammad but that are in wide dispute as to which are authentic, on ideas they think are in the Koran but aren't (a lot like Christians who think Jesus commented on homosexuals -- which he never did), and on cultural practices that preceded Islam. While I'm still no fan of the religion (any religion), it's a shame that militants are taking over a religion whose basis for belief is actually far more peace-promoting than the Bible.
In short, Christians certainly have plenty of Biblical basis to beat their wives, rape women, keep their wives and daughters hidden at home, beat their children, and kill whomever they deem as a non-Believer. To have these same Christians claim the Koran is violent shows a jaw-dropping duplicity. By all means, condemn violence and justifications for such -- but condemn ALL justifications for such. Condemn the 911 hijackers -- and the men who blew up clinics and shot doctors in Christ's name. And if you want to say that And if they give birth, I will slaughter their beloved children. (Hosea 9:16 NLT) shouldn't be taken literally, fine -- but you have to say the same for the Koran. If you want to claim that when Paul says oh-so-clearly in 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 that women should be silent in church that, really, he's just saying women only have to be silent when tongues or prophecy is happening, then you ALSO have to acknowledge that the Koran is ALSO open to interpretation.
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