March 7th, 2010
Last Tuesday marked the 250th anniversary of the burning of Voltaire’s Candide in Geneva. This capped a long and glorious history of Genevan religious repression, which is worth remembering today.
The first interesting event in Geneva’s religious history occurred long before Voltaire arrived. In 1342, the Count who ruled Geneva fathered a son, named Robert. Since he wasn’t the eldest son, Robert was not in line to succeed his father as Count, and so joined the clergy instead. Being the Count’s son had certain advantages in this line of work; at the ripe old age of 19 he was appointed a Bishop, and before his 30th birthday Robert was made a Cardinal.
Cardinals have many duties; in 1377, the Pope asked Robert to lead an army to put down a rebellion in the Italian town of Cesena, which was resisting God’s will that it be added to the Papal States. Upon discovering how heavily fortified the town was, Robert pleaded for negotiations, swearing clemency by a solemn oath on his cardinal’s hat, and releasing 50 hostages as a demonstration of good faith. The townspeople responded in kind, opening the gates so that Robert could come in and work out an amicable arrangement. This was a mistake; as soon as Robert entered the town, he ordered the gates shut behind him and then proceeded with a general slaughter of the inhabitants, “to exercise justice.” For three days and nights, the massacre, rape, burning, and looting continued, with hundreds drowning in the moats in their attempt to escape. “All the squares were full of dead” wrote one survivor; for masterminding the murder of 3-5,000 people, Robert earned the title “Butcher of Cesena.”
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Posted in Intolerance | No Comments »
February 28th, 2010
The Commonwealth of Virginia is going off the deep end.
First came the election last November of Bob McDonnell as Virginia’s new governor. McDonnell is a graduate of Regent University, a right-wing Christian law school. His 1989 thesis, “The Republican Party’s Vision for the Family,” laid out a detailed plan for restoring Oliver Cromwell-style Godly rule to the Commonwealth: putting religion back in the public schools, banning contraception, and keeping women out of the workplace where God does not want them to be. When his opponent began telling voters about this paper, McDonnell countered that it was unfair to criticize him for what he had written when he was a mere child of 34, and that he would never actually try to put in place what he had so passionately argued was God’s will for the people of Virginia.
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Posted in Judaism, Politics | No Comments »
February 21st, 2010
Last week our President met with America’s favorite God in human form, Tenzin Gyatso, more commonly known as the 14th Dalai Lama. Obama took the occasion to kowtow to organized religion once again, this time sucking up to Buddhism rather than to Christianity or Islam. The official White House statement about the meeting was that “’The president stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity.”
There’s not much doubt about Tibet’s “unique religious identity.” Tibet was a Buddhist theocracy under Chinese suzerainty for many centuries, right up through the middle of the 20th century. It was ruled with an iron hand by the predecessors of the current Dalai Lama, who is believed to be their magical reincarnation. I can see no meaning to the phrase “preservation of Tibet’s unique religious … identity” other than restoration of the Buddhist dictatorship.
Why exactly is America concerned about what supernatural beliefs prevail in Tibet? Suppose, for example, something bizarre happens and the government of China were to say “OK, Dalai Lama, we quit, you win. Come on back and you can restore Buddhist rule just like your predecessors had.” Would preserving Tibet’s religious identity mean that Obama would then prevent Christian missionaries from entering the country? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Eastern Religion, Politics | 2 Comments »
February 14th, 2010
An Arab student at Oxford University named Noor Rashid is in hot water for making an intemperate statement. In attempting to wiggle out of his problem, he may be making things worse for himself.
Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister of Israel, was delivering a speech at the Oxford Student Union last week. As often happens on college campuses, angry students interrupted him with a variety of insults. According to Mr. Ayalon, Noor Rashid went too far: “Slaughter the Jews!” crosses a line of acceptability, even after giving the customary indulgence to overenthusiastic college students. Rashid now faces disciplinary action from the university, and possible criminal charges.
Rashid’s best defense probably would have been “It wasn’t me.” Instead, he says he was misquoted. Ayalon claims he said “Itbah Al Yahud,” which in Arabic means “Slaughter the Jews.” Rashid says that in the commotion his words were misheard, and he actually said “Khaybar ya Yahod.” As he told the Oxford Student: “My version went: ‘Khaybar, O Jews, we will win.’ This is in classical, Qur’anic Arabic and I doubt that apart from picking up on the word ‘Jew,’ that even the Arabic speakers in the room would have understood the phrase.” Khaybar, he explained, was a 7th century battle in which soldiers led by Muhammad defeated a Jewish army. “As you can see, I made no reference to killing Jews.”
Or did he? The Battle of Khaybar, if it actually occurred the way early Muslim historians describe, carries connotations that the condescending Mr. Rashid may have trouble defending if he is ever subjected to cross-examination.
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Posted in Intolerance, Islam, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
February 7th, 2010
Napoleon did give Europe an efficient civil code. Mussolini did make the trains run on time. Hitler did revive the German economy, and genuinely liked dogs. In the spirit of giving even the worst devils their due, let’s hunt for something nice to say about the Ku Klux Klan.
Last week in Oregon, Democrats pressed for repeal of a perfectly sensible law enacted in 1923, at the behest of the Ku Klux Klan at a time when the Klan dominated state politics. The law is simple and understandable: public school teachers are not allowed to wear religious clothing in their classrooms. Introducing the legislation last fall, House Speaker Dave Hunt said it would “allow teachers to have the same religious free exercise rights as every other Oregonian.” At a hearing on the bill last week Hunt held up a picture of a Klansman who had legally changed his name to “Kasper K. Kubili” before becoming his predecessor as Speaker of the House, and urged the committee “To send a strong message that Speaker Kasper K. Kubili and the KKK members of the era were wrong.”
I’m not so sure they had this one wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Free exercise | No Comments »
January 31st, 2010
As a rule, the tone of these articles for the past 2½ years has been a bit negative. That’s the nature of the beast: pointing out the inanity, past and present, of listening to con men and their flunkies tell us what God wants us to do. This piece is the other 1%: a paean to someone standing up for truth, even when it is inconvenient to do so. I speak of our Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, and her speech last week on internet freedom.
Secretary Clinton spoke at the “Newseum,” a Washington landmark dedicated to the freedoms Americans enjoy under the First Amendment to the Constitution – carved in 50 tons of marble on the building’s exterior. She started with the usual banality about how marvelous the internet is, then got a little saltier when talking about governments around the world who are engaged in censoring it. China is the most well-known offender, but Clinton slammed Muslim-dominated governments as well. She picked on not just our enemy Iran, but even our so-called ally, Saudi Arabia, which routinely blocks people’s access to internet sites not in strict conformance with Wahhabi Islam. Just within the past year, she pointed out, Uzbekistan and even a relatively moderate Muslim country like Tunisia have tightened the screws on what their people are allowed to look at online.
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Posted in Popular culture | 2 Comments »
January 24th, 2010
This week’s insight on the world of religion comes from Trijicon, a company in Michigan that manufactures gun-sights for the wea-pons used by the United States mili-tary and others in Iraq and Afghani-stan. For the past few decades, unbe-knownst to almost everyone, Trijicon has added codes to the end of the serial number that was stamped in an inconspicuous location on the device. One such code, for example, was “JN8:12.” It turns out this code has nothing to do with identifying the gunsight model, or the batch in which it was manufactured; instead, it is a reference to chapter 8, verse 12 of the Gospel of John: “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Another code was 2COR4:6, which stands for II Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Other codes cited the books of Revelation and Matthew; a common theme seems to be Jesus as “the light of the world.”
Some, but not all, of the company’s products shine a laser beam on the person about to be shot. It’s not clear whether this feature is somehow connected to the “Jesus is the light of the world” theme, or whether shining the light of Jesus on a Muslim is supposed to be a euphemism for shooting him.
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Posted in Magic | 1 Comment »
January 17th, 2010
Within hours after the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince last Tuesday afternoon, NPR was reporting that “Church groups are singing throughout the city all through the night in prayer. It is a beautiful sound in the middle of a horrible tra-gedy.” Another re-porter on the scene noted that “Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray in an intersection here by 9 o’clock last night, a little more than four hours after an earthquake had devastated much of the Haitian capital … I couldn’t make out many of the words. ‘Alleluia’ was the refrain for some of the hymns the group at the crossroads sang. A minister was preaching to the other group about Bondye (‘God’) and kretyen (‘Christians’). The congregants replied with bursts of song.”
Hundreds of people still trapped in the rubble were probably of the view that singing and praying should not have been the number one priorities for Haitians right at that moment. The mentality that begging some outside force – God, America, the UN, whatever – is the best way for Haitians to improve their lot underlies most of what is wrong with that pitiable country.
Of course, it is possible that the preachers on the scene were echoing what Pat Robertson told Americans the following day: that the earthquake was a “blessing in disguise.” Robertson explained Haiti’s problem as follows:
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Posted in Money, Science | 3 Comments »
January 10th, 2010
The response of Ireland’s atheists to the new blasphemy law was immediate. The day the law took effect, a group called “Atheist Ireland” published on its website 25 potentially blasphemous quotations from figures such as Jesus, Muhammad, George Carlin, and Mark Twain, daring the government to prosecute.
Care was taken in selecting the 25 candidates. The arrangement is politically correct, covering most of the world’s major religions (with the notable exception of Hinduism). Many of the passages, though, do not fit the statutory definition of blasphemy – thus playing into the hands of the law’s backers, who can now say “You are just proving that we carefully wrote a good law, that does not prevent you from saying exactly what you are claiming is blasphemous.” For example, leading the list is Jesus at Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” While it is true that the Jewish priests of the day alleged this statement to be blasphemous, it would not fit the definition of the new Irish law, because it is not “grossly abusive or insulting.”
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Posted in Church & State, Intolerance, Popular culture | 2 Comments »
January 3rd, 2010
Ireland has a new law, effective New Year’s Day. The offense of blasphemy, which Ireland’s Constitution has long prohibited, has now been carefully defined, and made punishable by a hefty fine of €25,000.
Of course, atheists are outraged. They are good at being outraged. Richard Dawkins fumes that it is “a wretched, backward, uncivilised regression to the middle ages. Who was the bright spark who thought to besmirch the revered name of Ireland by proposing anything so stupid?”
Simply calling your opponents stupid is, well, stupid. Had Dawkins spent a little time looking at history rather than spouting off, he might have realized what a fabulous opportunity this law presents.
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Posted in Church & State, Intolerance, Popular culture | 4 Comments »
