Tsarnaev Sentenced to Death

 
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Bomber, has been sentenced to death.  The jury took almost 15 hours to reach this verdict which I disagree with.
To morally justify this on the basis of “an eye for an eye” is uncivilized and immoral.  This type of justice harks from the infancy of our species when we truly behaved like the animals we are.  We’ve since grown up and have other options available to us to ensure our collective safety from the deranged.

Killing killers achieves nothing. It will not stop other killers from killing again, particularly other killers who also believe, like Tsavnaev did and quite probably still does, that killing non Muslims is a ticket to eternal paradise.

Executing Tsarnaev will only make him a martyr and rally other Islamic extremists to follow in his footsteps or to join the Islamic State.

To fight the scourge of religious fundamentalism, we need to kill religion not the religious.

Blood in the streets of Karachi

 
Religion has blood on its hands once again.  This time in Karachi, Pakistan.  At least 43 Ismailis were killed and 13 wounded when attackers boarded a bus and executed the occupants at close range.  Jundullah, a splinter group of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has claimed responsibility for the attack.  The Al Qaeda affiliated group which has recently pledged support to the Islmamic State (IS) is notorious for targeting Shia minorities.  A blood stained pamphlet entitled ‘Advent of the Islamic State’ was left on the scene by the attackers.

The Ismailis, a peaceful. progressive and largely apolitical community, are a branch of Shia Muslims. Shia Muslims, who make up 20% of Pakistan’s predominantly Muslim population, have been embroiled in sectarian violence with the Sunni Muslim majority since the inception of the competing sects.  Attacks on the Shia minority have been increasing in recent years with over 1000 Shias killed in Pakistan by hardline Sunni groups in the last two years.

Notwithstanding the notoriety that Islam is increasingly attracting on the global religious stage, it is sad to see that even within the ranks of Islam, competing pockets of faith continue to breed violence.  In the words of the late Christopher Hitchens, religion truly does poison everything.

 

Prayers for Nepal Quake

 

On Saturday the 25th of April an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale caused widespread devastation across large parts of Nepal.  To date over 7000 people are injured and over 4000 people are dead.  To put this death toll in perspective, remember that the September 11 attacks resulted in 2996 deaths.

Whilst there is currently a huge international humanitarian response underway, there is also a widespread call to pray for Nepal.  I’ve never understood the purpose of prayer following such disasters.  I suppose, on reflection, that the purposes would range from requesting salvation of the souls of the dead to pleading that missing persons are found.

I am assuming that when prayer is offered to a deity that this is an implicit admission by the faithful that their deity has the power to control the course of future events.  If this is so, then is it not also true that this deity had the power to prevent this disaster in the first place? If the answer to this question is “Yes”, then why did he (deities are traditionally male) choose instead to kill and orphan children?

Related articles:

The Worthlessness of Prayer in Crisis

Gruesome Garissa Attack

A gruesome 16 hour attack on Garissa University in Kenya has just ended. The four attackers have been killed. In the wake of this day of terror 167 students are dead and 79 are injured.
Any guesses as to who is responsible?

What if I told you that the four masked gunmen who stormed the campus asked students whether they were Muslims or Christians, spared the former and executed the latter. Would you like to have another guess?

Al-Shabab, an Islamic militant group, have claimed responsibility.
All of this has happened in a week in which Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the author of a book entitled ‘Heretic’ which calls for a reformation of Islam from within, has come under fire from the leftist commentators and feminists for sprouting rascism and Islamophobia.

The politically correct left need to wake up and smell the roses. Tonight those roses are covered in Christian blood spilled by Islamic killers. And Islam has everything to do with this attack. Whether or not all Muslims support such extremism is irrelevant. What is undeniable is that the Koran calls for the slaughter of non-Muslims and these killers are doing no more than faithfully taking direction from their holy book. Just as Christianity was once a problem when its followers performed heinous crimes inspired by its holy texts, Islam is a problem today for the same reason. Christianity underwent a reformation. Now it’s Islam’s turn.

One more thing that irks me about the response in social media to this tragedy is the many tweets and posts turning to God in prayer. I can assure you that if I was all powerful I would have prevented this tragedy. God does not work in mysterious ways. He either doesn’t care, is weaker than we think or, quite frankly, doesn’t exist. What do you think is the most likely explanation?

Related stories:

Terrorists trick female students

BBC gains access to Kenyan student dormitories

Talking to a dead person



When devout Christians John and Diane Gormley were asked, during a recently screened CNN special on atheism, what it felt like to interact with their non-believing son David (pictured above), John replied saying “The reality is, you’re talking to a dead person”.

Kyra Phillips, the CNN interviewer, was visibly taken aback. Due to the Gormleys refusal to be jointly interviewed with their son, Kyra played back John’s response to David from her laptop at a subsequent interview. His reaction, whilst bravely disguised, was heart breaking. I can’t imagine what that level of rejection from a father must feel like.

Because David is different to his parents they choose to conditionally hold back their love for him. What kind of parent would do that?

I’m reminded of Pink’s haunting lyrics from her 2006 song, Dear Mr President:

“What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away? And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?”

My answer to Pink is this: Only a religious father.

Ruined by Religion



The other morning, whilst checking out at a local grocer, I noticed a man wearing a T-shirt.  He and his partner were queuing immediately behind me.  I sensed that he had become aware that I had noticed his T-shirt.  I tried to catch his eye.  On my second attempt our eyes locked. He looked complacent.

“I like your T-shirt”, I said.

He smiled, immediately aware of what bonded us, even as strangers.

“You’re brave to wear that in Hillcrest”, I added.

“Especially on a Sunday morning”, his partner quipped.

I laughed.

After paying the cashier I turned back to wish them well.

His T-shirt had sported the text “Ruined by Religion”. How refreshing it was to stumble across strangers with a common outlook on life – a rare event in the heart of Kwa-Zulu Natal, the Bible Belt of South Africa. 

I felt inspired to join them, to challenge the groupthink that persists in our young democracy. If he can, surely I can. What stops me? Is it a fear of offending? No. I am not an offensive person and back myself to sensitively manage any discussion wearing such a T-shirt might induce.

I think it’s that I fear for my children. I fear that my local, god-fearing community would ostracize them because of their father’s views.

How sad? Perhaps I shouldn’t care. Perhaps my children need to learn to swim against the tide of ignorance that pervades our country and our world even in 2015.

Frikkin’ hell, Franny



Pope Francis, in response to the recent Charlie Hebdo massacre, said today that freedom of expression was a fundamental human right. However he claimed that their was a limit to freedom of speech when it came to offending someone’s religious beliefs. He went on to say: “It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

The Vatican and four French imams have recently jointly denounced the attack but urged the media to respect religion.

Why should religion be shielded from satire, ridicule and criticism when politics and economics are not?

No, Franny, religion has been respected for too long. Religion is an idea. Any idea must be open to questioning. And satire is a form of questioning.

If an idea cannot withstand ridicule then that feels to me suspiciously like a bad idea. People have a right to differentiate between good and bad ideas. Freedom of speech, even if it is offensive, is a sure way to pressure test an idea.

Salman Rushdie recently said: “Respect for religion has become a code phrase meaning fear of religion. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire and, yes, our fearless disrespect.”

Charlie Akbar!

Yesterday three masked gunmen brandishing AK47s stormed the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and murdered twelve people execution style. They then brazenly left shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great) and “We have avenged our Prophet”. All three monotheistic religions have been the target of Charlie Hebdo’s satire which has often included cartoons depicting Islam’s prophet Mohammed.

This much is clear: This barbaric act of terror was an Islamic attack against the democratic values of freedom, equality and fraternity; and no degree of offense, particularly that offered by a cartoon, justifies murder. Religion, and particularly Islam, has been protected from criticism for too long.

It is high time we lift the protective cloak and subject religion to the same questioning, ridicule and satire we reserve for its cousins, politics and economics.

To censor free speech in the wake of this attack is to run scared and surrender our freedom. Stand firm for Charlie. Charlie Akbar!

Lennon killed for Jesus

On the 8th of December 1980, Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon by firing four .38 calibre hollow point bullets into his back at close range. Chapman remained at the scene until police arrived and arrested him. He later pled guilty, claiming that his actions were the will of God.

Chapman, originally a big fan of both the Beatles and Lennon, changed his tune after becoming a born again Presbyterian in 1971. He was angered by Lennon’s comment that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”, considering this blasphemous.

In the weeks preceding the murder, Chapman stated the following: “I would listen to this music and I would get angry at him, for saying that he didn’t believe in God… and that he didn’t believe in the Beatles. This was another thing that angered me, even though this record had been done at least ten years previously. I just wanted to scream out loud, ‘Who does he think he is, saying these things about God and heaven and the Beatles? Saying that he doesn’t believe in Jesus and things like that. At that point, my mind was going through a total blackness of anger and rage.”

I had no idea that Lennon’s murderer was a Christian fundamentalist. They’ve kept that one very quiet, haven’t they?

Religion kills

“Paradise is for those of pure hearts. All children have pure hearts. They have not sinned yet… They have not yet been corrupted [by their kafir parents]. We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones, in Paradise, where they will be loved more than you can imagine.”

These are the words of a Taliban supporter questioned following an attack on a school in the Pakistan city of Peshawar on Wednesday the 17th of December 2014. During the attack Taliban militants massacred 132 children. Some as young as 8 and 9 years were found with as many as four bullets holes in their faces, chests and heads. When the school principal pleaded with the attackers to take her life and spare those of the children, they killed her, set her alight and forced the children to watch.

Despite the obvious Islamic motivation of this and other acts of terrorism, the view of the political left, most recently represented by Ben Affleck on Bill Maher’s talk show, Real Time, is that Islam is not to blame and that any criticism thereof is racist and Islamaphobic. This political correctness is playing into the hands of Islamic jihadists such as Taliban, ISIS and Boko Haram. They rub their hands in glee as Islam enjoys protection from criticism.

How many more children does religion have to kill to change your mind, Ben?