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Islam, religion of Peace burns down American Embassy illustrating dedication to rational non-violent ways of resolving disputes.
This just in the from insano-delusional land (credit CBC.ca):
“Many Muslims find it offensive to depict the Prophet Muhammad in any fashion, much less in an insulting way.
This week’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Egypt and Libya, the latter of which claimed the lives of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others on Tuesday, erupted after a 14-minute trailer of an obscure movie by a California real-estate developer. The film was posted on YouTube in English and later in Egyptian Arabic.
Ultraconservative Islamists were suspected of being behind the attack in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Advocating a strict interpretation of Islam, they have bulldozed Sufi shrines and mosques that house tombs in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and other cities, including ancient sites dating back to 5,000 years ago.”
So, like the danish cartoons, the publishing of this film somehow gives people the right to flip out the buttered insane fuck-crumpets and burn shit up and kill people? This is part of the trailer that has incensed the reality challenged.
Wow. This film ranks below Poolboy:Drowning out the Fury on my list of awful movies.
So, full marks for beating out PoolBoy, but not really a honour one should be striving toward. Let’s recap so far, some dude makes a crumby, ass-pustule of a flick and because it makes fun of your godhead of choice *you* get to kill people.
“The movie trailer depicts Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres. An amateur cast performs a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as revelations about Muhammad, whose obedient followers are presented as a cadre of goons. The film was being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States, and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors according to Sam Bacile, who wrote and directed it.”
Yep. I can totally see how shedding innocent blood is called for in cases like this. Chris Stevens and three others were destined to give their lives to fanatics hepped up on righteous god-juice over a D-list movie.
Let me reiterate, religion is harmful to people and society if it is not kept in check by a strong secular state the kind of irrational bullshite that our muslim friends demonstrated in Libya happens. Believing in magic and mythology for the nth time, has no place in the modern world. We commit plenty of atrocities without the help of those who lose their shit when you depict their ooga-booga of choice.
Indeed, religion does poison everything it touches and creates the nightmare world which we striving to leave behind us.
It’s funny, for all the take-down, all the arguing all the debate that has been featured here at DWR, sometimes a picture just nails what is so wrong with a concept. In this case the idea is christian religion.
The picture is so sad. And yet people want to believe that this happened and are *happy* about it. The work of a loving vengeful god.
Hey I need some help eroding the church/state separation. Lets ask the experts!
I’m not really sure what is so shit-hot about the attitudes and conventions of the Dark Ages, but Harper and his government have decided to fecklessly dive into the land of pants-on-head stupid and establish a official government bureau of “Religious Freedom”. Let’s be clear, not something useful like an office sponsoring freedom FROM religion, so sorry Rishma of Pakistan, you still get be sentenced to death for allegedly burning pages from a magic book. Because, obviously we need MORE religion in the world because rational thought is too fucking hard to deal with.
“The federal government’s long-awaited Office of Religious Freedom will be unveiled soon, officials say, after months of delays caused by difficulty in finding the right person to head the office.
The new body, which will be housed within the Department of Foreign Affairs, was expected to be up and running earlier this year.
But a senior government official told CBC News that Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has had a hard time finding someone to fill the role of ambassador to head up the office. Two people who were approached ultimately turned the post down for logistical and personal reasons.?
Reasons why? Because being head of the Canadian christian god brigade overseas is not appealing. I’m really flabbergasted at my government right now. I’m imaging that in some meeting some wonk pops this ass-blister of a suggestion and throws it out there –
“Hey, you know that separation of church and state thing, its dumb, lets set up an office and get the government officially involved in delusional religious shit”. Ohh the meetings goes quiet. “But where are we going to get the money?” says Economic Wonk, our resident member of brain trust of turdistan says, “oh, well we closed a bunch of science and research down there is plenty of money saved from that…”.
And then there was cabinet/Harper approval. Yes, lets close down scientific research on one hand and fund the promotion of stale religious brain-flatulence from the bronze age. Brilliant! How can we lose? It is astonishing that people voted for people that actually endorse this sort of thinking.
“Some supporters of the idea have grown frustrated with the long wait. The $5-million office was first announced during the May 2011 election campaign as a centrepiece of the government’s foreign policy.”
A vesitgal bone thrown at the dumb-as-dirt religious value voters that worked. Apparently jebus said lower corporate tax rates so we can screw the rest of society over. To my idjit right of centre commentators, did you notice that you only get lip-service paid to your nuttily-regressive ‘social conservative” goals all the while the economic conservatives who hold the real power happily continue to gut the bastions of the social democratic state? You think getting screwed over would become tiresome after the nth time, apparently you thought in 2011, *this* time it would be different.
Bhatti argues the new ambassador must be objective.
“The person shouldn’t be one-sided,” he said. “He doesn’t focus on the one religion, or one persecution. He will treat every religion equally and give his recommendation to the foreign office and government regarding truth and reality.”
I don’t even know what this means. But I think I would be a good candidate for the job. I all religions the same, with contempt, would this make me a good candidate for the job? Probably not since the ability to think clearly is not selected for when trying to get a job within a religion.
“As CBC NEWS reported last year, internal Foreign Affairs documents showed nearly all of the panellists who participated in a closed-door consultation with Foreign Affairs last fall in Ottawa were drawn from Western religions, primarily Christianity. Few Muslims were in attendance and there were no Muslim panellists.
Arvind Sharma, a Canadian scholar of religion, has been carefully monitoring the government’s plans, and says the idea presents a great opportunity for Canada on the world stage.
But the McGill University professor warns that’s only if Canada avoids promoting proselytization.”
Yep, Canadian Christians for Christ, sponsored by the secular government of Canada? *sigh* Canada is a secular democracy and really needs to axe this crumby idea.
Giving government support to mythology is stupid and needs to stop before even more people get that idea that religion is an still acceptable choice in the 21st century.
By now most people (the US being the notable exception) get that religion is a toxic entity that has no place in the 21st century. The insipid nature of religion is usually highlighted in the DWR Sunday Disservice, however today will be different. Today we get to share one persons story of how they transitioned out of belief in the grand ooga-booga to more rational atheistic world view. So, no blood pressure raising religious idiocy today, just kick back and relax.
Or anyone who claims to be rational. I’m not sure how the religious do the whole indoctrination thing with a straight face. Can you imagine?
Child: How were we made?
Parent: Well you see this magic ooga-booga decided to scrape some mud together and breath life into it about 6,000 years ago….
Child: But I learned in school today that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago…
Parent: Stop talking sense, or you’ll go to hell!
Child: (cowering)(is quiet)
Err…yes, anyhow lets not do that kids, they deserve better. Much better than what the vapid crusty old religious have to offer.
Thank you to Slender Means for posting this, everything below this disclaimer is hers:
This is a very long post (linked below) but it is worth reading to see what some Christians still want to teach and believe about gender roles and norms, men’s rights to women’s bodies, and women and sex. Further down the post, racist beliefs are also discussed.
When Church teaching is about rape apology and white supremacy. You want to believe that it’s delusion and that we can all laugh at it and him but he has his followers and they believe every word of it. If you have time, I suggest you go to the link at the very bottom of this post and read all of it.
The following is a quote by Douglas (Doug) Wilson, a complementarian pastor, from his book Fidelity: What It Means to be a One-Woman Man:
The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.
We cannot make gravity disappear just because we dislike it, and in the same way we find that our banished authority and submission comes back to us in pathological forms. This is what lies behind sexual “bondage and submission games,” along with very common rape fantasies. Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the “soon to be made willing” heroine. Those who deny they have any need for water at all will soon find themselves lusting after polluted water, but water nonetheless.
The quote is part of an excerpt posted by Jared Wilson (no relation as far as I know) to The Gospel Coalition blog, with an approving note that explains the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey and “other modern celebrations of perverted sexual authority/submission.” (h/t Rachel Held Evans.)
[via arewomenhuman]
It is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read. Maybe I shouldn’t be so shocked. It’s not wildly different from from things John Piper or Doug Wilson’s wife Nancy have said about submission and authority in sex.
But Wilson goes much farther than any rape apologist Christian writer I’ve ever read, and that’s a lot of people. His notion of godly sex is little more than sanctified rape. In the name of Jesus.
He also says (as Jared Wilson states in a comment defending this filth) that “rape is judgment upon a culture that does not cherish and protect women.” We should be OK with this, according to Jared, because Doug Wilson isn’t blaming rape survivors for being raped. He’s only blaming all women who want to be treated equally and all of our allies. That’s all.
[…]
A second point: Doug Wilson is not only a rape apologist; he’s also a slavery apologist. And contrary to Jared Wilson’s dismissal of commenters who repeatedly tried to point this out, this is absolutely relevant to Wilson’s teachings about obligatory female submission in sex.
Wilson is the co-author with Steve Wilkins, a white supremacist, of a pamphlet called Southern Slavery as it Was, which claims that Southern slavery “was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity” but a relationship between “friends and often intimates”:
Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, [slavery] was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The credit for this must go to the predominance of Christianity. The gospel enabled men who were distinct in nearly every way, to live and work together, to be friends and often intimates…
[WPA Slave] Narratives consistently portray an amazingly benign picture of Southern plantation life. Affection for former masters and mistresses is expressed in terms of unmistakable devotion. Testimony to the good treatment, kindness, and gentleness of many so-called “heartless slave holders” abounds. Many of the old slaves express a wistful desire to be back at the plantation.
Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care. In the narratives taken as a whole, there is no pervasive cry of rage and anguish..abuses came from a distinct and very small minority. [emphasis mine]
If you can stomach any more: video [on link] of Wilson on why he’s a Paleoconfederate, why the post Civil War Reconstruction Amendments – you know, the ones that abolished slavery (in theory) and established black citizenship and voting rights (in theory) – “inverted the meaning of the Constitution,” and why the Civil War wasn’t God’s way of ending slavery and is to blame for racial animosity today.
[…]
What does this have to do with rape apologism? Firstly, both Wilson’s rape and slavery apologism hinge on that little word ”patriarchal.” He’s trying to sell a vision in which white male patriarchy rules benevolently over the rest of us, for our own good and protection.
[…]
Wilson means for us to accept a theology that revolves around authoritarian hierarchy, with white, straight, cis, Western men at the top, and everyone else knowing our proper place. We’re meant to accept that movements for racial and gender equality are actually the causes of racist and misogynist abuse and violence, and that the real root of such violence – white male patriarchy – is actually its remedy.
This isn’t just about Doug Wilson. It’s about an entire culture of white Christians who promote his teaching of sanctified rape and domineering patriarchy as godly theology. It’s about a culture that conveniently ignores his vile racism when it suits them, thinking they are remaining “neutral.” In fact they implicitly endorse his racism by promoting him as “sound and compelling” while refusing to acknowledge, much less condemn his defense of slavery. This is about an entire culture that majors in perpetuating rape culture and racism by looking the other way.
[via arewomenhuman]
Linked posts:
- Doug Wilson on The Gospel Coalition: How Christian Patriarchy Turns Sex into Rape and Pregnancy into Slavery (barefootchristianfaith.wordpress.com)
- The ‘Gospel’ Coalition? Maybe They Should Call Themselves the ‘Haunt of the Reprobate Rapist’ (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
- If This is What Christian Sex Is Like, No Thank You (patheos.com)
- Rape: A Punishment for Egalitarians? (sarahoverthemoon.com)
Watch what happens when you mix broken foreign policy with religion…
“One of Pakistan’s most influential clerics has renounced his support for polio immunisation, claiming that the programme is a cover for American spies.”
Pakistan needs less of this particular brand of religious stupidity. The stupid is compounded by the bullshite American cloak and dagger games being played in Pakistan.
“But now he says he cannot back the policy after it emerged that the CIA had used a fake hepatitis drive to hunt for Osama bin Laden last year.
Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who organised the vaccination campaign, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison and his actions caused a wave of paranoia about foreign aid workers.”
Thank you America your botched war is screwing up yet another county in your drive to be the imperial power of this century as well. Newsflash – China isn’t going to let you; get over yourself and stop killing brown people for not agreeing to be vassals.
“Pakistan is one of three countries where the disease remains endemic. Only 22 cases have been reported this year – compared with 59 in the same period in 2011 – and hopes were high that it could soon be declared polio free.
However, hard-line clerics have long opposed what they suspect is a Western conspiracy against Muslims. As a result health workers carefully cultivated moderate leaders, who issued fatwas – or religious rulings – declaring vaccination to be in line with Islamic teaching.”
There is just so much wrong going on here. Vaccinations to eradicate polio are a fundamentally good idea. This fundamentally good idea is trumped though when Western spy agencies use them to further their foreign policy goals. Then you get backlash like this:
But Haq said that it made no sense for foreign agencies to keep children free from disease while bombing Pakistan.
“If you people are that much curious about the health of people living over there, it means that you are keeping these people alive just to kill them by drones,” he said.
The sad fatalism of marginalized people. Wrong, but understandable given the circumstances. Never forget that we are categorically *not* the good guys for much of the world. If we’d taken the time and effort simply not to perpetuate misery and destruction on poor coloured folk we might actually have some respect in the world.
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