Update: Jones Unrepentent, Islam Unforgiving, Christians And Muslims Continue To Suffer ... As Death Toll Mounts

As of this writing, riots continue throughout Afghanistan. Anti-American and anti-Christian furors have sprung up, injuring more people. The death toll is now at 10, with 83 wounded.


What hath Jones wrought?

It is said that Pastor Terry Jones virtually studied his hatred at the feet of Fred Phelps. Phelps has not spoken to Jones after Jones' plans to burn the Quran last Sept. 11 became public, primarily because his efforts received more attention (the Phelps clann had actually burned the Holy Book before). I wonder how Phelps is reacting to his former student's fatal publicity grab. 


To the nation and the world, Terry Jones looks like Fred Phelps on steroids: with his deliberate act to cause mischief and strife, Jones has now run past Phelps in the race to be the Most Hated Man In America. Let us not miss the irony that both hold the title of "Reverend." That title alone would have forced Jones to feign shock and dismay at the results in Afghanistan. However, he showed neither, thus relegating him to the status of  self-righteous, cold-blooded killer. His ubiquitous statement to ABC News ...

“Of course we were very saddened and devastated by that,” he told ABC News. “It is of course a terrible thing anytime anyone is killed.” relayed not even the least amount of sympathy or regret. 

Afghanistan's indignation has sparked terror and criticism around the world:

Endangering Christians

Last week, St Thomas church in Wah Cantt (Afghanistan) was attacked by a group of Muslims who tried to break through the front door and set fire to the building.
The church’s pastor, Father Yousaf, said: “This is a reaction of the desecration of the Koran in Florida. Although the Catholic Church has officially condemned the incident and we have also displayed a banner outside the church condemning the incident, still the innocent people are facing the consequences.”

Pakistan has released official letters to the Vatican and to Interpol, beseeching both to take appropriate action and calling Jones a blot on the name of humanity.


The city of Dearborn, MI is hoping to dissuade Jones from a scheduled protest. A northern Michigan Militia group invited Jones to help protest outside of Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America.


Ethiopia: 

... Muslim extremists burned dozens of churches near Jimma town in the western Oromia region over the past several days. Even though the census show that about 60 % of the Ethiopia is Christian, still the sever reaction of the Muslim extremist couldn’t not be controlled or stopped.

More than 11 countries so far have condemned the Quran burning by Terry Jones: India, Bahrain, Indonesia, Pakistan, Britain, Canada, Malaysia, Lebanon, Germany, Vatican City, Kuwait. Note that they have condemned JONES and not the afghans who rioted.

WE ARE NOT ALONE

According to Examiner.com "Close to one million bloggers responded, providing reports, comments and analysis to these tragic events." Most of them are kinder than this writer by not attributing the violence entirely to Jones, but statements of "idiot" and "lunatic" abound. 

The matter of Jones' accountability, however, will be on everyone's mind in the weeks to come. It engenders the same angst we suffered during the Phelps vs. Snyder case and its treatment by the Supreme Court: freedom of speech vs. accountability. This time, however, people will suffer both emotional and physical anguish - including death - because one man chose to spurn humanity in deference to his own ego, an ego which was fostered and enlarged by a section of our religious society that did little to silence him.

Sorry Billy, We're Looking For Christians With Good Taste

...Like CNN

“Gangs of machete-wielding Muslims have been blamed for the weekend slaughter of hundreds of Christian villagers in Nigeria, but analysts say it would be wrong to assume the conflict was rooted in religion.”

Remember Charlie the Tuna? He was the mascot for Starkist Tuna who was always trying to lure Starkist into thinking that he had "good taste" when a God-like voiceover said "Sorry Charlie, we're looking for tuna that tastes good." So twist that sentiment around the latest scream of "PERSECUTION!"  that Bill Donohue of The Christian League is ratcheting up about 50 decibals. Twist it in another direction: we need to have Christians who have dignity, consideration and good taste. But Donohue exhibits the opposite. Consider his take on the same incident:

According to The Australian, “dozens of bodies lined the streets” of three Christian villages in northern Nigeria. “Other victims of the weekend’s Muslim fury jammed a local morgue, the limbs of slaughtered children tangled in a grotesque mess.” Children were scalped, “most had severed hands and feet,” and “officials estimate that 500 people were massacred in night-time raids by rampaging Muslim gangs.” According to one eyewitness media account, “They then set homes on fire and attacked men, women and children. Many were decapitated.”

 It was later found out that the attack could have been a response to a massacre in January of the Hausa Muslim Community resulting in 150 deaths. Christian mobs in Kuru Karama were said to blame.

When people started criticizing Donohue, he answered:

Back to CNN. It cited an ugly Muslim-Christian incident in 2001 in the same area. What started the Muslim massacre back then? “A Christian woman had tried to cross the road through a group of Muslims during Friday prayers.” Yeah, that’ll do it every time. 

It’s time to stop viewing Muslim-Christian violence through the lens of moral equivalency. 

Perhaps it's time for Bill Donohue to stop viewing any form of violence through a veil of blood. His style of "journalism" is more than yellow, it's red in the extreme. He conjures in me visions of my old nuns (very, very old nuns) who recounted in nauseating detail Roman orgies, (more bachannal than orgy), savagery of the Goths and the Vandals in sacking Rome, the cruelty of Ghengis Khan, the blood sacrifices of the Aztecs. Of course, their demeanor always changed when mentioning the Crusades (Western Civilization's first genocide along with the Albigensian Crusade), the Pilgrims of Massachusetts (who, after presenting the Massachusetts Indians with a translation of the Bible promptly wiped them out) or Father Junipero Serra (who, along with the California Missions established slavery of non-converts). 

It's time for many proselytizing Christians to own up to the annihilation of so many millions of people in history. And the ones who scream about the supposed atheism of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot are usually the ones who disavow any knowledge of wrongdoing by Christians in history. Or at least chop history's witnesses down to a few Catholic heretics who minimally staged the auto de fes of a few thousand old women. They seldom mention Torquemada, and while we had to memorize "Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492" we never heard about forced conversions of the Moors and the Jews and ultimately the mass exile of those two populations by good Queen Isabella.

"Moral equivalency" may be the only true lens we have. CNN has better taste than to run down a gory list of atrocities. Their viewers are smart enough to envision the bloodletting without detail.

Bill Donohue, however, believes in shock and awe.