This is sorta/kinda happy news. A Muslim cleric in Pakistan has been arrested and charged for trying to frame a Christian girl for “blasphemy”. The cleric, Khalid Jadoon, who is a tremendous goat blower and should be pissed on, ripped pages out of the Quran and put them in the girl’s bag, which “triggered an exodus of several hundred Christians from her poor village after mosques reported over their loudspeakers what the girl was alleged to have done.”
If found guilty, the child would have faced the death penalty, but I suspect she was merely collateral damage for that twatwaffle Jadoon. I’ll bet you dollars to little green apples that Jadoon’s main goal was driving the Christians out in fear of their lives. And I’ll bet you that his motivation was doing the ‘right thing’ for his community and religion. It didn’t matter to him that bearing false witness against his neighbors is as forbidden in Islam as it is in the Christian faith. Nope. He ignored both the letter and the spirit of the laws, and I profoundly suspect that it because he felt justified in doing something horrible because he just knew Christians were dangerous influences on Muslims and God would want them gone.
Religious extremists are untrustworthy because they always think the ends justifies the means. I’m glad that Jadoon was busted by the authorities, who were undoubtedly also Muslims, before his plan could come to the full fruition of a Christian massacre.
Meanwhile, a mosque in Joplin, Mississippi was burned to the ground in what looks like a second arson attack. The FBI are offering a reward for information about this, because it is a hate crime. Some buttmunch thinking he or she was a “good American Christian” no doubt set fire to the mosque, in spite of the fact this kind of attack on a neighbor is forbidden in the Christian religion, because he or she felt justified in doing something horrible because he or she just knew Muslims were dangerous influences on Christians and God would want them gone. Ditto for the dipshit racists who shot and burned a Quran in Tennessee and painted racial slurs on a mosque in New York.
Same extremist asshats, different religions.
But extremists are fortunately not all religion has to offer. On a happier note, “Jill Michel, pastor of the South Joplin Christian Church, said several area churches have offered their churches to members of the Islamic Society if they need a place to gather. She said she and other faith leaders from the community had been at a dinner Saturday at the center, and that the community would rally around the center’s members.” In turn, even before the girl was known to be framed, a Muslim imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf wrote a defense of the maligned child and provided the Islamic context of why she should not be punished. Furthermore, for more than 100 years there has been a Fatwa (religious decree) against Muslims killing Christians, so the atrocities committed against Christians is counter to Islamic law.
The problem in religions is not the doctrinal differences, but in the extremists jackasses who use their religion as an excuse to unleash their bigotry, violence, and fear.
Amen.
You are right again, Fokker. And thank you for pointing out religious people who are doing the right thing. It is disheartening to always hear the negative and never the positive. I’m uplifted by the news of people of the same faith as the haters who are helping those who have been harmed by extremists. Brava.
You know, I have traveled a fair amount in the world on several continents and the most important thing I have learned is that we are all much more alike than different. We all worry about our homes, our familes, our jobs…and every country, every religion has their fine upstanding people (who, I the eternal optimist, believe are the majority) and also has their raving loonies, extremists and other embarassments (who, unfortunately, receive disproportionately excessive press).
Bless all those good people, regardless of their faith, who tried to help this poor girl — and a pox on all those bigots who try to sow dissent, regardless of “religion” (whatever they claim to be, they are not true adherents of either Christianity or Islam…).
I read about that. That poor little girl and all her family has gone through…that creep who framed her is just beneath contempt. And if I recall correctly doesn’t the little girl have Down’s? So he framed a CHILD who has SPECIAL NEEDS? There’s a “real man” for ya.
Have I told you about the gringo here in Ecuador who has a hate on for me because I challenged her statement, at one of our weekly expat meetings, that “All those Moooslems just want to kill us all, they sure hate Christians and the United States.”? I asked what she based her theory on. “We’re reading about it in a book we’re using in our Bible Study group.” I explained, calmly, how I always spend the first day of my poli-sci classes teaching my students about bias, consider the source, and then asked her who the author of this book was, and whether they were actually educated about Islam, because all of my research into the Koran and Islam shows that it is a peaceful religion that considers the Bible a holy book. She fumed and has rarely spoken to me since, but she does love to gossip about me. Funnily, she also fought with a friend of mine on the topic of politics, insisting on discussing even after my friend had repeatedly told her to keep her ideas to herself. The theme was how evil Obama is. Need I mention that she is a Southern “Lady”?