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

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.”

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?

Brotherly love

Imagine attacking your sister with an axe and leaving her for dead with her brains leaking from her smashed skull. What could possibly drive a brother to such barbarity?

Steven Weinberg once said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

Gul Meena, pictured above, was married off to a 60 year old man at the tender age of 12. After years of repeated beatings from both her husband and her family (when she turned to them for help), she fled from Pakistan into Afghanistan with another man. Her brother tracked them down, killed her friend and then attacked her with an axe, hacking at her head, face and body 15 times. Assuming she was dead he returned to Pakistan certain he had restored his family’s honor.

What does it take to so short circuit a man’s innate morality and a brother’s natural love for his sister? It takes an institution that indoctrinates from a very young age; demands a suspension of rational thought; and holds as a virtue unquestionable obedience and blind faith. It takes religion.

Related articles

• Scars are an ‘honor’ victim’s sole testimony (nytimes.com)
• How my brother tried to kill me in ‘honor attack’ (cnn.com)

Baptism of Fear

I attended a Greek Orthodox baptism last weekend.  There was something deeply unsettling about seeing a naked baby girl covered in olive oil being breathed on, handled by and chanted to by old men with grey beards and cloaks.  There was something deeply unsettling about seeing the child’s mother’s family smiling while the baby girl cried.  There was something deeply unsettling about seeing the child’s father grimace and shake his head while returning to his pew.  There was something deeply unsettling about seeing a band of adults deciding a 10 month old child’s belief system.

Homosexuality is Evil

I have just watched the documentary, Missionaries of Hate.  For those of you who have not heard of it, it deals with Uganda’s Anti Homosexuality Bill which advocates life imprisonment and even death as punishment for homosexuality.

It makes for harrowing viewing.

The documentary suggests that American Evangelicals were instrumental in fueling the wave of homophobia that immediately preceded the passing of motion to introduce the legislation.  Fortunately, due to international pressure, the Bill has not yet been passed.

I am left reflecting on the power of religion – how the very basis of religion, faith, which advocates belief without proof, provides fertile ground for the suspension of all rational thought when it comes to understanding morality.  Religion does not rationally construct morality.  Instead it blindly (and selectively) sculpts morality from its (apparently) holy texts.

The verse in the Bible that underpins Christian hatred of homosexuality is found in Leviticus 20:13.  It reads “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.”

Twenty-eight words in a book written 2000 years ago by a band of donkey merchants.  That is all it takes for Christians to believe that homosexuality is immoral.    By that token, Christian morality also then dictates that we kill witches, fortune-tellers, adulterers, non-believers and our daughters if they are not virgins on their wedding night.

Religion’s blind faith in a set of rules written (by humans) 2000 years ago as a basis for morality is laughable.  It suspends even the most basic thinking around morality.  It suspends the very essence of good and evil.  Instead of good simply meaning doing what someone else desires (without negatively affecting anyone else); religion dictates that good is defined by a set of rules written in ancient texts.

Quite frankly, if someone wants me to sodomize them, and I want to sodomize them, and I do so (privately), and I sodomize no-one else, then who is some ancient donkey herder to tell me that this is evil?