Been There, Done That

So Bill Maher went on the Charlie Rose show and said blah blah blah something something something “most Muslim people in the world do condone violence just for what you think”. Not having seen the show but only reading the transcript, I don’t know if Maher meant it in the sense of “condone violence just for the thoughts you think” or if he meant it in the context of beheadings, stoning apostates, genitally mutilating women, etc., etc., and of course, etc. being what you think the Muslims condone.

And being the crafty shifty shaper of words that he is, he immediately tries to have his cake and eat it by saying “vast numbers of Islamic people around the world [are not distancing themselves from ISIS]. That's just not true” but “Vast numbers of Christians do not believe that if you leave the Christian religion you should be killed for it. Vast numbers of Christians do not treat women as second class citizens. Vast numbers of Christians…do not believe if you draw a picture of Jesus Christ you should get killed for it.”

Well, thanx, Bill: You just created enough straw men to cast every production of The Wizard Of Oz well into the 23rd century.

Next time tell us what you mean by “vast” and “not vast”.  You can pull anything out of your ass hat and claim it fits those parameters.

He blathers on: “There was a Pew poll in Egypt done a few years ago -- 82% said, I think, stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultery. Over 80% thought death was the appropriate punishment for leaving the Muslim religion.”

Cherry picking data from a poll taken at an unspecified point a few years back, Maher fails to state if he is citing actual responses to questions or if he is merely extrapolating from data.  More recent polls have indicated a small-to-medium shift away from Islamic believers support of strict Sharia law, but, hey, you can’t trust “those” people, can you?  They never change their attitudes and beliefs…

…just as American Christians never change their opinions on matters like same sex marriage.

And needless to say, the bigoted chattering class has embraced Maher’s weaselly rantings.

I'm sorry, folks, but I can't hear you over the screams of Holocaust victims, burning Huguenots / Knights Templar / "witches", Caribbean and Native American peoples, or the weeping of Africans crammed in the hulls of slave ships...

Yeah, right now there’s some pretty ugly stuff flourishing in various corners of the Islamic world.  We in the Christian West had to go thru similar festering periods in our own history, they have to go thru it now.

You don't get to escape your adolescence on your way to becoming an adult.  The West has, for a variety of reasons, a 500 year head start on the rest of the world.  We also have more blood on our hands and in our history than they do.

As a brown skinned Middle Eastern religious leader of a few millennia back once said: “First take the plank out of your own eye…”

Read Rodney Stark.  Read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, And Steel.  So called "Christian" nations & leaders have behaved just as swinishly as non-Christians, they just sugar coated it with "it’s God's will" or “manifest destiny” or “divine providence” or “American exceptionalism”.

Bull.  Fucking.  Shit.

Look how many people were murdered in the Holocaust by Germany because they were the wrong religion. Germany gave us Martin Luther, and for all the good he did Luther also signed off on the persecution of Jewish people.

His poison permeated the German culture: Track down an unexpurgated collection of the Grimm Bros tales and see how many stories involve a Jewish villain who deserves death or a Jewish victim the Christian hero is justified in abusing.

All this created a toxic environment where selfish industrialists in the aftermath of World War One promoted a crackpot and his failing anti-Semitic party in order to prevent communists / socialist / trade unions from demanding any of the industrialists’ hard earned won stolen cash.

And weep not for Germany: Millions of them turned a blind eye and kept a silent tongue towards the hatred and persecution of the Jews and the gypsies and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  They capitalized on the extermination of their neighbors even if they didn’t shove them into the showers personally.

What happened to them at the hands of the Russians was richly deserved.

They never questioned their culture, they never asked if “those” people were truly as evil as their children’s stories and popular literature and pastors claimed.

To further quote the aforementioned brown skinned Middle Eastern religious teacher of two millennia ago: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Oh, but that was those nasty rotten Germans: We are better; we are Anglo-American Christians and thus have a higher, nobler standard we live by.

Again: Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Look at the Manga Carta; while preening over how wonderful a document it is regarding rights and freedoms, don't overlook the part where a Jewish person’s estate couldn’t collect debts after they died, nor should you overlook the Edict of Expulsion just a few years later.

Cross the Atlantic: Read about Columbus & his men enslaving or massacring Caribbean natives, often using brutal methods that make a trip to the showers at Auschwitz seem like a spring walk.

And speaking of walks, how about that Trail Of Tears?

Want something a little more recent? Let’s talk about how the Southern Baptist Convention was formed to justify slavery as a Christian institution in the U.S., how after the Civil War they supported segregation and fought against civil rights, how they and others of their ilk formed the backbone of the Ku Klux Klan, lynched hundreds of African-Americans, terrorized hundreds of thousands more, then when the rest of the country finally said, “Hold!  Enough!” to segregation, they ran off to form colleges and private schools and start home school movements to make sure their previous white broods didn’t have to breath class room air contaminated by…”them”.

Maher's rant is based on one thing: All he sees in the Islamic world is a bunch of "not-mes" he can justify dehumanizing and hating.

Maher, being an avowed atheist, is welcome to his God-damned opinion.

What disgusts me is the huge number of purported Christians who kvel orgasmically at this utter repudiation of Christ’s basic message.

Going back to that ol’ brown skinned Middle Eastern religious teacher: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’  Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”

If you want to embrace this bigotry, please, by all means, feel free to do so.

But have the common courtesy to renounce Christ first, m’kay?