Muslim dad allegedly strangles teenage daughter for not wearing a hijab.
This happened not in Iran, not in Palestine, not in Saudi Arabia or Iraq or Pakistan. This happened in Canada. Where journalist Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine are facing federal human rights charges for a 2006 article Steyn wrote in which he engaged in a critical discussion of Muslim demographics. Here's Stanley Kurtz's must-read backgrounder on l'affaire Steyn, in which Muslims are using the state's human rights laws in an attempt to silence free speech. Steyn points out a certain glaring hypocrisy in his chief Muslim critic's stance here.
I'm sure if we look hard enough, we can find Christian fathers murdering their daughters for not wearing hijabs. Or something to blame the rest of us for this alleged crime (see the question from the Canadian TV station in that item). Manning's Corollary, you know.
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Let me try this one more time, just for Chris and Rob.
Didn't God slaughter first born sons to punish their parents?
How do you feel about that?
Isn't Jesus' position on whether you spend enternity in a non-consuming fire or in a mansion He's prepared for you based upon your confessing He is the Son of God?
How do you feel about that?
The questions are based upon the tenets of Christianity, Moses and the Jews getting their freedom from the Egytpians, and Jesus' explanations about why human beings should become Christians.
They have nothing to do with my atheism. However, I think Rob and Chris need to think about something that might mean something to them as Christians. That something is people sometimes find these discussions because they're searching for answers in their own lives.
There are kazillions of people searching the internet. What if one of those people find this discussion and find my questions intriguing? What might be even more intriguing to them is the lack of a Christian answer.
After all, surely a Christian wouldn't serve a God that slaughtered children for the sins of their parents, or do they?
One of the great dichotomies of Christianity is the most Christian of acts are unChristlike.
Think Sister Teresa, she accepted people as they were and loved them all the same. If she'd been Christlike she'd have turned on them like Jesus did when they denied Him what He felt was His due.
Rob and Chris would much rather discuss my atheism than their Christianity, interesting, no?
harvey, I'd love to discuss this with you, but I don't want to derail the challenge to Rob and Chris, because I'd really like to hear their answers, too. However, just FYI, I went and googled "Jesus Hell"--which I thought was a very amusing search term. I found all kinds of extremely scary and offensive material. This, for instance, by the Rev. J. Furniss, which is thought to have been one inspiration for the Hell sermon segment of Portrait of the Artist As a Young Dog. (I honestly hesitate to quote it, because it is so gruesome and horrible. So, spoiler alert--do not read if you have tender sensibilities.)
See on the middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl: she looks about sixteen years old. Her feet are bare. Listen; she speaks. “I have been standing on this red-hot floor for years! Look at my burnt and bleeding feet! Let me go off this burning floor for one moment!” The fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven. The little child is in the red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. God was very good to this little child. Very likely God saw it would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished more severely in hell. So God in His mercy called it out of the world in early childhood.
This strikes me as obscene. Really. The stuff of nightmares in the name of a merciful God. What could Muslim writings contain that would be a lot worse?
However, I also found the following interesting website by one Samuel Dawson.
http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/jesusteachingonhell.html
He argues that when Jesus is made to speak of "Hell," this is a mistranslation and that's not at all what he had in mind. A quote:
False theories of eternal punishment of the wicked have done unfathomable damage in the religious realm. Untold millions of people have obeyed God purely out of fear of a false concept of hell. Other untold millions have turned their backs on God because of a false sense of hell, as described by Roman Catholic sources, and their followers in most denominations.
I can certainly say Amen to that, whether Dawson's exegesis turns out to be correct or not.
Morning Sig, it is an interesting discussion we got going here.
The topic defines two things in my mind. One of course is it defines Christianity. It is a multi-splintered faith because there are so many different people adhering to it for so many different reasons. The God is loving and understanding individual reads the scriptures and finds support for their position. The person who isn't quite so loving and understanding of others finds the divine design that assures them man was created evil and has to earn salvation.
It also supports the atheist like myself who looks at the faithfull and sees Gods instead of God because each individual's identification of God reflects their needs and wants. It confirms the man created God instead of the vice versa premise.
We can look at Rob and Chris and see their reluctance to acknowledge scriptural evidence of a very mean spirited God, self defined as a jealous God, as perfectly understandable. That's because they can't define what God means to them as individuals in their lives on any topic without using scriptural tags they can quote and not explain.
They're not alone of course. I haven't found a Christian yet who can sit down and explain their personal faith without drifting into the perfectly acceptable unexplainable. Paul defined the perfectly acceptable unexplainable as faith, substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.
Having faith is what we do. Even atheists have faith. We believe too. And just like everyone else, Christians included, our faith is individual, it's about us more than it is anyone else.
What is difficult is to accept is another's faith as the only only acceptable faith on faith. That's our humanity speaking. We question.
OK let me get this straight. Because of "flaws" in the main texts of Judaism and Christianity, it's wrong to say that it's wrong for a Muslim to slay his daughter because he feels he is obeying an equally "flawed" Muslim text?
Its wrong for a muslim father to kill his daughter !! murder is not allowed in islam and whoever murders another person is concedered to be dead in islam. yet alot of humans make mistakes becuase we are simply not angels or flawless so MAY GOD GUID US ALL
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