Well, well, well, it's going to be awfully hard for the apologists for Hamas to explain how it's our Christian duty to pity the poor Islamists after this news:
The Hamas parliament in the Gaza Strip voted in favor of a law allowing courts to mete out sentences in the spirit of Islam, the London-based Arab daily Al Hayat reported Wednesday.According to the bill, approved in its second reading and awaiting a third reading before the approval of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as the Palestinian constitution demands, courts will be able to condemn offenders to a plethora of violent punitive measures in line with Sharia Law.
Such punishments include whipping, severing hands, crucifixion and hanging. The bill reserves death sentences to people who negotiate with a foreign government "against Palestinian interests" and engage in any activity that can "hurt Palestinian morale."
According to the report, any Palestinian caught drinking or selling wine would suffer 40 lashes at the whipping post if the bill passes. Thieves caught red-handed would lose their right hand.
These people are theocratic monsters. Islamism is a cancer. As you must be aware, under Islamic law, Christians living under sharia must accept official second-class citizen status, and pay the jizya, or tax, for the privilege of living as dhimmis. And what value do you think free speech will have in a society in which the theocrats running the state reserve the right to execute anyone who does anything they judge to "hurt Palestinian morale"?
Hamas are bloodthirsty barbarians, plain and simple. No person reading this blog would suffer to live under Hamas rule for a single day. And if that kind of government, a government that openly states its goal is the extermination of all the Jews in Palestine, were sitting on our border firing rockets into our country, do you think for one second we'd put up with it?
I don't believe it's America's business to fight Islamism wherever it exists. If Muslims want to live like that, that's their business -- though God help the Christians, Jews, Bahais and secularists who have to suffer their yoke. But when Muslims choose an Islamist government whose program includes the murder and expulsion of most inhabitants of a neighboring state, and that government sends rockets against the people of the neighboring state, why on earth would we mind seeing these Islamists destroyed?
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I'm not an "apologists for Hamas" nor have a ever met such a straw man, but when I read this, I was instantly reminded of the Iranian-Jews-forced-to-wear-yellow-badges hoax from a few years back, that I debunked on my old blog — Axis of Yellow Journalism?
It looks like the Hamas-crucifixion story is of a similar vein, as I posted above — The Islamic Law That Wasn't. Author Nathan Brown, "an expert on Arab constitutional law, Palestinian politics, and Islamic movements at George Washington University," notes that a "combination of old and new media can sometimes create an echo chamber that magnifies inaccuracy rather than corrects it" and shows how the story was misreported.
At the time of the Iranian-Jews-forced-to-wear-yellow-badges story, I challenged the Catholic blogosphere's most prominent woman-married-to-a-laicized-priest to update a post in which she had reported the story as fact. I pointed out that such fabrications lead to increased sentiment for war, in which innocent people, including women and children, are killed. She was unmoved. I never visited her blog again.
I challenge you to update this post.
Need we be reminded of how the Iraqi-soldiers-killing-Kuwaiti-incubator-babies story, itself a replay of the the German-soldiers-killing-Belgian-incubator-babies story, was a hoax, with the Kuwait ambassador's daughter playing the role of nurse before the American congress?
Panthera: I never thought of it that way, but I guess one's native language would influence how one perceived the structure of Latin. Most Americans, in my experience, are not well-grounded in grammar, anyway. When we take Latin or other languages with grammatical gender, we tend to get puzzled as to why inanimate objects are masculine or feminine, or why living beings are sometimes neuter. Perhaps since grammatical gender in English is practically non-existent (outside of the pronouns) and since in academic settings the term "gender" is used to mean masculine and feminine biology or behavior, we tend to confuse the concept of "gender" with the concept of "sex". Strictly speaking, one should not say that his gender is male, or that his cat's gender is female--it is technically more accurate to say my sex is male and my cat's sex is female. However, English speakers get all caught up in the implications of "sex" as it now used, and I think tended to go to "gender" as a less--well, sexy--word to use, a euphemism. Which further screwed up our understanding of grammar, but oh, well.
Feel free to use as much of my post as you wish and to edit it as need be. The capcha messed up my formatting, anyway. And it is truly amazing how far off the beaten path we can go--part of what makes this blog so much fun!
PRETRIB RAPTURE - HIDDEN FACTS !
How can the “rapture” be “imminent”? Acts 3:21 says that Jesus “must” stay in heaven (He is now there with the Father) “until the times of restitution of all things” which includes, says Scofield, “the restoration of the theocracy under David’s Son” which obviously can’t begin before or during Antichrist’s reign. Since Jesus must personally participate in the rapture, and since He can’t even leave heaven before the tribulation ends, the rapture therefore cannot take place before the end of the trib! Paul explains the “times and the seasons” (I Thess. 5:1) of the catching up (I Thess. 4:17) as the “day of the Lord” (5:2) (which FOLLOWS the posttrib sun/moon darkening - Matt. 24:29; Acts 2:20) WHEN “sudden destruction” (5:3) of the wicked occurs! (If the wicked are destroyed before or during the trib, who would be left alive to serve the Antichrist?) Paul also ties the change-into-immortality “rapture” (I Cor. 15:52) to the posttrib end of “death” (15:54)! (Will death be ended before or during the trib?) If anyone wonders how long pretrib rapturism has been taught, he or she can Google “Pretrib Rapture Diehards.” Many are unaware that before 1830 all Christians had always viewed I Thess. 4’s “catching up” as an integral part of the final second coming to earth. In 1830 it was stretched forward and turned into a separate coming of Christ. To further strengthen their novel view, which the mass of evangelical scholars rejected throughout the 1800s, pretrib teachers in the early 1900s began to stretch forward the “day of the Lord” (what Darby and Scofield never dared to do) and hook it up with their already-stretched-forward “rapture.” Many leading evangelical scholars still weren’t convinced of pretrib, so pretrib teachers then began teaching that the “falling away” of II Thess. 2:3 is really a pretrib rapture (the same as saying that the “rapture” in 2:3 must happen before the “rapture” ["gathering"] in 2:1 can happen - the height of desperation!). Other Google articles throwing light on long-covered-up facts about the 178-year-old pretrib rapture view include “Famous Rapture Watchers,” “X-Raying Margaret,” “Revisers of Pretrib Rapture History,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Wily Jeffrey,” “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism,” “Scholars Weigh My Research,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” “Pretrib Rapture Desperados” and “Deceiving and Being Deceived” - all by the author of the bestselling book “The Rapture Plot” which is available at Armageddon Books online. Just my two cents’ worth. Todd (This article of mine will hopefully help prepare believers for even worse things than crucifixion!)
Yet another HOAX all over the internet.
People need to use their brains. Esp when the so-called "credible source" (JPost) itself says it "cannot verify" the story!
Hamas are bloodthirsty barbarians, plain and simple. Hey im tottally agree with this.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.