126 Comments

1. George Jochnowitz:

There are a number of reasons these stories should not be buried. First and foremost, information is always interesting and important. We humans are curious creatures, and our curiosity helps us to learn about the world in order to survive and prosper even though we have no fangs or claws and cannot run very fast.

Besides that, there is the fact that important and intelligent people in Europe and elsewhere are deliberately keeping themselves ignorant about what Islam does. The young woman in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 60 lashes did not conduct an interview. She didn’t even arrange it. She simply worked as an organizer for a Lebanese television station. Intellectuals need knowledge in order to use their intellect, and the knowledge is not being made all that available.

There are many Muslim in the West, and some in Islamic countries, who have access to the news. They should know what is happening in their society. And they should know that such behavior may lead the world to look down on them. They could work from within to redefine their religion. After all, Christians no longer hang or burn witches despite the fact that the Bible commands them to do so.

Oct 26, 2009 - 4:02 pm 2. Hans Mast:

It is never, ever Islam and when Muslims do something truly ghastly (like mow down their own daughter with a car or fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon) it is always someone else’s fault: The Zionists, the Americans, the Western colonialists, the daughter herself who, after all, forced her father into having to defend his obviously non-existent honor.

Wow, I appreciate your logical, fact-based rebuttal to Rania Husseini’s (apparently) true comments about honor killings being something that encompass many Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures, not just the religion of Islam. Of course, Islamists are the ones that do it the most, given they are the largest of the religion/culture combos mentioned.

Husseini’s comments and your “rebuttal” are somewhat irrelevant, however. Honor killings, no matter their motivation, need to be opposed. On the other hand, Husseini should be heeded in the sense that painting with an overly broad brush only serves to alienate the very people whom we need to help us oppose honor killings. I am a conservative Christian and some of my Muslim friends are horrified and angry at honor killings. Lumping them with those they oppose will not help our cause.

Oct 26, 2009 - 4:21 pm 3. David W. Lincoln:

As long as the lie of multiculturalism is preferable to the truth that some cultures do a better job than others in building communities, the no-goodniks will take solace in they being so enlightened that everything is gray, instead of black & white.

So, is it surprising to see those who should know better, setting a bad example for others, because the followers are saying, “look others are doing this”.

In the meantime, those who are not behaving in
lemming like fashion are demonized by the lemmings because the lemmings are “judged unfairly”, because those who are not behaving in a lemming like fashion, via their actions,
are calling out the lemmings, and saying, “your actions are sub-standard”.

Oct 26, 2009 - 4:23 pm 4. Hans Mast:

I do agree with most of your post: honor killings are awful, need to be exposed and opposed.

Oct 26, 2009 - 4:24 pm 5. BettyBlue:

I’d like to believe there are Moslems who oppose honor killlings, yet they never come forward to speak up against such things.

Also, at least here in the West, there is no concept of “honor killings” among Christians and Jews. And, if Delia Mogahed is correct when she says that there are Christian honor killings in the Middle-East (I’d like to see moe documentation about this), since Islam is the dominant culture there, it seems likely that Christians picked such practices up from Islam. Certainly, before the coming of Mohammed, many women seem to have had far more freedom in the Middle East than they do today, and male honor wasn’t dependent on female chastity, or keeping their women in line.

Oct 26, 2009 - 4:46 pm 6. David Thomson:

“…who said that honor killings exist “deep in the isolated hills of Appalachian Kentucky… (and is) prevalent in clannish societies.”

This is about the craziest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. Can somebody point to even one example of a red neck “bubba” honor killing? Even one! What are the odds of such a thing occurring? Are they even one in one hundred million? And yet, they commonly occur on a daily basis within Muslim cultural milieus. They are almost the norm—and not statiscally aberrant acts.

Thomas J. Keil is professor of sociology at Arizona State University. What more do I have to say? Such individuals should be treated as idiots until proven otherwise. Their Ph.D. is normally not worth the paper it is printed on. This phenomenon has only gotten worse since affirmative action policies were instituted some four decades ago. Oh well, we can discuss that at another time.

Oct 26, 2009 - 5:06 pm 7. MiamaMan:

[Although some Sikhs and Hindus do commit honor murders, it is primarily a Muslim-on-Muslim crime. Trust me on this.]

It is correct that honor-killings occur in India among Hindus, more among Sikhs than Hindus (22 million Sikhs in India versus 950 million Hindus). Another big problem in India, which is why I never recommend foreigners to drive cars there, is violent episodes of “accident rage”. If a foreigner hits a child or even an animal while driving in a village, the episode can escalate into grave bodily harm and even death (police presence is scant and they are mostly corrupt).

However, in the case of Hindus Honor Killing is mostly restricted to the poor and uneducated masses, thus has not spilled over to where Hindus have emigrated in the West, such as the United States where the Hindu community is a paragon of immigration. Likewise, the unfortunate, and now illegal, practice of Sati among Hindu widows mainly in India cannot be considered Honor Killing, unless the widow is forced to commit Sati, which is usually not the case.

This cannot be said of the Muslims. What brings contempt, disgust, repulsion, and finally rage, in the United States about Muslim Honor Killings is twofold: 1) The extreme violence and overkill, especially when beheading is used. 2) The total infringement upon the victim’s civil rights, mainly hers religious rights to choose her religion without being violated and her partner in life without being forced into a marriage, and the imposition of a way of life that colludes with all that is cherished as freedom and enlightenment in the West.

Yes, serial killers often overkill. Some, like Danny Rollins in Gainesville even behead their victims, but whereas the public finally accepts this evil as part of the faults of the society where we live, of the madness of certain people, we are reluctant to accept similar violence in the name of religion, as we thought we have left that part already behind.

Make no mistake, honor killings are occurring in Muslim countries throughout the world DAILY, and in great numbers.

Oct 26, 2009 - 5:10 pm 8. Hans Mast:

Certainly, before the coming of Mohammed, many women seem to have had far more freedom in the Middle East than they do today

As horribly as Muslim women in the Middle East have it today, they actually had it worse before Mohammed’s teachings. He gave them more rights than they had before. Wikipedia says, ‘Historians generally agree that Islamic social reforms in areas such as social security, family structure, slavery and the rights of women and ethnic minorities improved on what was present in existing Arab society.’ And, ‘Majid Khadduri writes that under the Arabian pre-Islamic law of status, women had virtually no rights. Sharia (Islamic law), however, provided women with a number of rights.[30] John Esposito states that the reforms affected marriage, divorce, and inheritance.[14] Women were not accorded with such legal status in other cultures, including the West, until centuries later.[31] The Oxford Dictionary of Islam states that the general improvement of the status of Arab women included prohibition of female infanticide, and recognizing women’s full personhood.[32] Gerhard Endress states: “The social system … build up a new system of marriage, family and inheritance; this system treated women as an individual too and guaranteed social security to her as well as to her children. Legally controlled polygamy was an important advance on the various loosely defined arrangements which had previously been both possible and current; it was only by this provision (backed up by severe punishment for adultery), that the family, the core of any sedentary society could be placed on a firm footing.”[33]‘

Oct 26, 2009 - 5:20 pm 9. Richard Aubrey:

There are lot of things which are, apparently, not Islamic. Happen to be perpetrated by people calling themselves Muslims, raised by Muslims, members of Muslim congregations. The perps think they’re doing Islam. But not Muslim. Somehow.
I’d think the Muslims who claim this stuff isn’t Islamic would be dropping the dime a bit more than we see.
If an honor killing is not Islamic, what about being an accessory after the fact? That okay?

Oct 26, 2009 - 5:23 pm 10. dymphna:

Let’s see…first they ignore the killings. Then when faced with the incontrovertible fact of the killings, they deny that they are honor-killings. Finally, when backed into a corner, they’ll admit that yes, they’re honor-killings but rednecks do these things, too. Tu quoque.

In real life, if any family honor was concerned, the so-called “red-necks” would see the boyfriend as the offender and they’d go after him.

Not all clannish behavior is based on Beduoin tribal rules.

The Copts (Christians) in Egypt don’t kill their daughters, but the Egyptians feel free to kidnap Copt girls and tell the families to shut up if they complain. The victims are forcibly “converted” to Islam and married off to a son who can’t get a wife through normal channels.

The Rifqa Bary case is a puzzle. The family is from Sri Lanka, a country of 6-8% Muslims (three different groups of them), and 6-8% Christian (of various denominations). The rest are Buddhist. Buddhism is the state religion and there is sanctioned abuse and discrimination against both Muslims and Christians in Sri Lanka. The Dalai Lama has said that violence against these groups is permissible because there needs to be one country in the world which is solely Buddhist.

I don’t think this the Bary girl’s father was originally very religious. He joined a mosque after moving to Ohio and that is probably where the radicalization began. His children were far too Westernized for her behavior to have been a problem until the mosque got involved. The pieces of the story don’t fit.

Having worked with abused girls who end up in foster care at her age, it has been my experience that the goal is to prepare the child for emancipation. Family re-unification remains the goal with younger children but never with late adolescents. When faced with “he said — she said” testimony, you go with the most cautious decision. In this case, to continue foster care with an intensive Life Skills program and *very* limited supervised visitation betweeen the teenager and the family of origin.

In that sense, this case has been a travesty so far. It remains to be seen what Ohio does. No social services agency wants these cases because they’re expensive to maintain and money is in short supply. I think that’s why there was a tug-of-war between Florida and Ohio. Neither one wanted to be stuck with the girl. A huge bureaucratic headache.

What this girl needs, Phyllis, is for you to write her an open letter about how to survive in a climate where she could likely be killed. So far, she has not been skillful at self-preservation. I have some ideas from my work with battered women, but there are differences for Muslimas — differences you’ve experienced directly. Explaining these to her could save her life if she heeded your words.

In all seriousness, think about it. Write not just for her but for all Muslim women who are trying to get away safely and yet make such huge mistakes. There appears to be a cognitive gap for them re their families. This gap gets them killed.

Oct 26, 2009 - 7:21 pm 11. logos1j1:

Phyllis,
I must disagree. The problems with Islam are legion and honor killing is among them, but this practice not associated with Islam per se. It both predates Islam and exists in other societies today. Sikhs often engage in honor killings also. In my little neck of the woods, central California, there is a fairly large Sikh population, and honor killings in this community arise like clockwork every few years or so at least – and these are the ones that are known to be honor killings and are reported as such. I know of one ex-Sikh woman who is 37 and has never married because she rejected her arranged marriage and is afraid her father would kill her if she married anyone else. Honor killings have been an accepted part of the religion since its inception. This is also true of Hinduism and many ancient societies. Japan, up until recently, was an honor society (there are still elements of this, particularly in Yakuza). In fact most societies, if not all, up until the advent of Christianity, engaged in this practice, and only where Christianity has gained predominance has the practice ended – as with slavery.

George Jochnowitz, 1
“…Christians no longer hang or burn witches despite the fact that the Bible commands them to do so.”
Have you ever actually READ the Bible?! More to the point: have you ever read the NEW TESTAMENT?! The Bible never commands anyone to be BURNED ALIVE, or hanged for that matter. Christians are never commanded to KILL ANYONE – even in self-defense! And the behavior of the early church martyrs bears this out. I’m wondering if you even attempted to find a source for this claim in the New Testament (or the Old) before you wrote it. If you did (big “if”) did you wonder why, gosh darn it, you just couldn’t find it?! Well, there’s a very good reason for that, Georgie – it ain’t in there! Might want to give it a perusal before you make anymore claims about what Christians are COMMANDED to do.

The Old Testament did have a death penalty, AND this applied to witches BUT: death was by stoning, not burning alive or hanging. When burning or hanging was done it was done AFTER DEATH – and it was not COMMANDED. The only command associated with hanging was that if it WAS done the body had to be taken down and buried THAT SAME DAY: Deuteronomy 21:22-23, “If a man… is put to death, and you hang him on a tree [notice the order], his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him THAT DAY.” (My emphasis.) I might add that the Old Testament law does not apply to Christians. (Have you ever noticed that we’re not kosher? Don’t even try to be?) Well, as you’re perusing (at long last), pay particular attention to Romans and Galatians. They’ll be of particularly good help in this area.

Oct 26, 2009 - 7:58 pm 12. Fern Sidman:

Kudos to my friend Martin Rosenthal, who monitors Amy Goodman’s program “Democracy Now!” every night without fail to keep me and others appraised of what the multi-cultural relativists are doing. I applaud you for bringing Rania Husseini’s patently ridiculous comment on the alleged “universality” of honor killings to Dr. Chesler’s attention. Comments such as hers could headline in the theater of the absurd and would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous.

I commend Dr. Chesler for including this in her blog and recommend that we take these falsifications of the facts on honor killing with an appropriate measure of gravitas.

Oct 26, 2009 - 8:15 pm 13. Laura:

It’s extremely frustrating when you have academics, politicians, reporters, journalists and other assorted leftist miscreants providing cover for this horrific islamic practice. As far as I’m concerned they are accessories to murder. These people who proclaim themselves the arbiters of human rights are enablers of islamic fascism, of the human rights atrocities committed against women and non-muslims in the muslim world. In reality, for the left, human rights take a back seat to issues of solidarity with the forces who are waging war against the west and Israel. They can never acknowledge the evil done in the name of islam because it conflicts with their worldview of the muslim world as the poor victims of western, especially American and Israeli “aggression” and “colonialism”. In reality however it is the muslims who are the aggressive conquerors.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:46 pm 14. logos1j1:

It should also be noted that women are not the only victims of honor killings. (It has been noted that men are not the only perpetrators. This is good.) Let’s not fall into the trap of suggesting, by emphasis, that there is only one victim group or only one victim group worthy of our sympathy. In many cases both offenders – the woman and her fiance, for example – are murdered. It should also be noted that murder because of conversion out of Islam is not strictly speaking an honor killing: this is a tenet of the Islamic faith and can (and should) be carried out by any Muslim able to do so. An honor killing is by definition a killing in which the only or primary motivation is honor. Some are suicides. This was very common in Japan – seppuku or hari kari.

Oct 26, 2009 - 10:23 pm 15. Pajamas Media » Honor Killings and Media Bias: Spinning Out of Control:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Oct 27, 2009 - 2:06 am 16. MiamaMan:

10. dymphna:

[The Copts (Christians) in Egypt don’t kill their daughters, but the Egyptians feel free to kidnap Copt girls and tell the families to shut up if they complain. The victims are forcibly “converted” to Islam and married off to a son who can’t get a wife through normal channels.]

The same thing happens in India with Hindu girls of the depressed (Dalit) classes. They are constantly being kidnapped (and sometime bought) by Muslims, forcibly converted, then forced into marriage, thus adding to the “birth rate” of Muslims in India, which is already 4.4 compared to 3.1 for Hindus.

Anyway, as Dr. Chesler pointed out, at this stage and age, honor killing is mostly a Muslim affair. Where suicide is involved, like Sati in India, the concept only applies if it is a “forced suicide”, really murder, otherwise can’t be classified as Honor Killing, which involves murder by others.

Finally, mathematically speaking, Islam is doomed to disappear. An artificial belief system imposed by force can only survive by means of a constant indoctrination.

What we are witnessing now are the throngs of a dying, and violent and intolerant, belief system that has been placed, for the first time in its bloody history, under the magnifying glass of world opinion. The more globalization advances, the less chances for Islam. The more humanity scrutinizes Islam, the more it looks like an obsolete antiquity even for those brought up as Muslims. The problem is, verily, what Islam will do in the meantime to try to prevent the inevitable. That’s why we must be vigilant and condemn it, and fight it, for what it is: an artificial political system of oppression.

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:17 am 17. Pedrosito:

Phyllis: Jews are evil haven’t you got the memo? Muslims can do no wrong because they are anti- ( what ever you want them to be )western , Christian and civilized. Why do academics support them? They hate modernity.

Oct 27, 2009 - 4:51 am 18. Ruebacca:

Multiculturalism runs into a brick wall with Islam.

On the bright side, it does my heart good to know that it’s hard to raise a family with traditional Islamic values in the US. Let’s make it impossible by protecting the girls.

Oct 27, 2009 - 5:16 am 19. Son: Muslim father accused of attempted honor killing was disrespected « Creeping Sharia:

[...] in Arizona: the media is complicit in the honor killing cover-up, as Phyllis Chesler explains here, and the brother of the victim is showing no remorse as we’ve seen before, [...]

Oct 27, 2009 - 6:25 am 20. BettyBlue:

Hans, having read Ibn Warrig, and some histories of the Middle-East before the coming of Islam, I must respectfully disagree that women had it worse before Islam came.

There were already family, and legal systems set up in the Middle-East, long before Mohammed came: among the Coptic Christians of Egypt, the Byzantines and, of course, the Jews. They didn’t need Mohammed to come along, and give them a new set of laws. And, while these cultures didn’t give women all the rights modern societies do, they honored them as wives and mothers. they didn’t have institutions like the “slaves of your right hand” injunction in Islam (sexual slavery of women captured in battle) or unrestrained polygamy. Jewish, and Christian family law, did give women and children more rights than either Islam, or the pagan world.

Many Byzantine noblewomen were as tough, if not more so, as their menfolk. Also, in the Graeco-Roman world of the pre Islamic Middle-East there were many nuns and holy women who influenced society, unlike Islam, where religion was completely in the hands of male mullahs and imams. And Arab women, pre Mohammed, seem to have had a high degree of freedom, going about unveiled, owning property in their own right (Khadija, Mohammed’s first wife, was a merchant), becoming poets, mingling freely in society, even participating in wars sometimes. It was Mohammed who brought the veil, seclusion of women, “Slavery of the right hand”, and teachings that women were lesser than men, and that Hell would mainly be filled with—surprise!—women.

I know the Islamic story is that all was wasteland in the Middle East until Mohammed came, but that simply isn’t true. It isn’t even true for the pagan Arabs.

Oct 27, 2009 - 6:31 am 21. BettyBlue:

And anyone who thinks hillbillies go around performing honor killings—waal, they just don’t know any hillbillies, or rednecks!

Oct 27, 2009 - 6:36 am 22. Lynn:

Mohammad’s first wife was a wealthy businesswoman and that lays one myth to rest that Islam made woman’s lives better. Some facts can be right in front of someone’s face and they still don’t see them.

Islam is a religion of terror and that fact can no longer be hidden by erasing the history books as was done in the past. This macabre dance we are caught in swirling around the floor with Mohammad and Company has gone on long enough.

For Umm Qirfa and all the multitude of victims whose blood stains the sword of Islam, it is our duty to not let these victims be erased by those who wish to wipe them from our memory. Thank you Ms. Chesler for keeping them alive by telling their stories.

Oct 27, 2009 - 6:54 am 23. blotto:

To the morons defending or attempting to mitigate the severity and cruelty of honor killings: Do you not understand what you are saying? These beautiful young girls are being slaughtered and you sit in your ivory tower and speak to us about it being practiced not only by Muslims but other religions. That is multicultural PC crap.

You folks on the left are so desparate to destroy America and western civ that now you defend honor(?)killings because they are perpetrated by the one group that you both fear most and align yourselves with out of this desperation: Islam.

Logos you are a fool. Here you are defending the indefensible killing of young girls by deflecting the topic to The Bible; have you no shame or an ounce of mercy for the lives of these young girls that for one minute you can actually criticize Islam.

I emailed Gov. Crist regarding the Bary girl and he said the state had no authority to keep or even protect the girl. So she has been returned and still the visas of her parents has not been found. So she and her family will disappear and then she will end up dead.

So Logos I hope you are happy. I hope all the hatred you have toward America is worth the life of this and other young girls. Oh, and do not tell us that the left cares about human rights or dignity or protecting the lives of the innocent.

You make me sick.

Oct 27, 2009 - 7:05 am 24. Paul -Indiana:

With the help of some good Christians, Rifqa Bary should go off grid, change her name and disappear into this great country. After a few months she won’t be a news story and can live her life in peace without the ‘religion of peace’ hounding her.

Oct 27, 2009 - 7:23 am 25. Peggy:

Re: Rania Husseini’s comments.

Isn’t it funny that in all of those cases that she cites, the dominant culture is shame/honor driven Islamic culture?

Why isnt honor killing found in cultures where Islamic influence is minor.

Also, The Sikhs are a Muslim derived religion.

Christians in the Middle East have been found to have come under the noxious influence of their oppressors and often side with them in other things. Its a little thing called Stockholm Syndrome only in this case it has become ingrained over generations.*

What is also not mentioned is that honor killings have continued to be a huge problem only in Muslim dominated lands. If it is a cultural or tribal thing or if does pre-date Islam, then Islam has done nothing to stamp it out, and the extreme premium that it places on purity and honor, esp in its womenfolk has only fostered the practice.

I use this example. Christianity in Europe civilized barbaric peoples who had no previous contact with civilization. Today, the descendents of the Vikings and the Huns etc. do not still harbor old cultural practices towards women. They do not honor kill in the name of religion because no justification whatever can be found in the Christian religion which is one that actually embraces shame and counts honor as nothing compared to the gentle example of Jesus. If domestic occurs it is because a man does not cherish the Christian faith and puts his own pride before its teachings.

On the other hand, Islam has shown that it has no power over pre-Islamic cultures and in many ways it idealized element of pre-Islamic Arab culture. It has not stamped out these so-called cultural practices. I wonder why?

*I don’t mean to knock all ME Christians. They are still my bros and sisters, but it is a fact that the Christian religion there has been much influenced by the more dominant and aggressive faith. For one thing, these Christians have completely sacrificed any obedience to the Great Commission, thus relegating themselves to a mere cultural or tribal kind of faith.
They are clearly different from the rest of us because of abhorent conditions in their neighborhood.

Oct 27, 2009 - 7:28 am 26. BettyBlue:

Yes, Lynn, I know; the history of the Byzantines, the pre-Islamic Egyptians (Pharonic Egypt, by the way, allowed a great deal of freedom for women, much more so than Islam), the Greek and Roman Middle-Eastern conquests, the rise of Christianity, the history of Judaism, the history of the Persians—these are not deep, dark secrets! Anyone can study them, if they like! Yet the myth persists that the Middle-East was a lawless, primitive backwater, until Mohammed came, with the “blessings” of Islamic culture.

blotto, the left, unfortunately, is in the tank for Islam at the moment.

Oct 27, 2009 - 7:29 am 27. Things Muslims Do… — Winds Of Jihad By SheikYerMami:

[...] [...]

Oct 27, 2009 - 7:34 am 28. Joe:

Honor killing is directly connected to the religion. Muslims do it, Christians and Jews don’t. So, why can’t the media take this on? Something has happened in this country that is frightening when its ok to kill your wife or your child, due to “honor”. People should wake up.

Oct 27, 2009 - 7:42 am 29. Jamie W.:

“…who said that honor killings exist “deep in the isolated hills of Appalachian Kentucky… (and is) prevalent in clannish societies.”

Huh? the only “honor” killin’s I know of in my clans happened a century ago and were projected OUTSIDE the family, not perpetrated on helpless girls within the family.

Point 1: In normal families, a daddy’s main job is to protect and cherish his daughters, no matter what; in the warped thing that has been imported from the Middle East, his main job seems to be controlling her sexuality by any means possible.

Point 2: In Appalachia, you used to get clan wars – feuds – not some bastard killing his daughters. And we got over it a long time ago. Your sociologist needs to do actual research, not get his “facts” from Deliverance and pop history.

Point 3: I’m glad I was brought up in a redneck, backwoods, unlettered Appalachian clan society, instead of fearing for my life throughout my teen years lest my father find out I’m a normal girl and not a saintly icon. Perhaps my upbringing had flaws, but at least I survived it.

Oct 27, 2009 - 7:48 am 30. logos1j1:

blotto 23,
Did you even read my notes? Try again – this time with your eyes open: things make so much more sense that way!

I wasn’t deflecting anything. I most certainly wasn’t defending honor killing. I was responding to a slander of my religion by George Jochnowitz 1 that was so calumnious and false that it had to be answered. You and Georgie Porgie put your heads together: you can help him find the passage in the Bible that commands Christians to burn witches (or anyone, for that matter) at the stake, and he can help you find where I defended honor killings. You two should have a lot of fun together.

I can’t “for one minute…actually criticize Islam”!!! Well, obviously you’ve not read a single one of my previous posts! This is fine, of course. I would hardly expect it: but you might want to take a gander at a few before tossing out that bull again.

Islam is indeed guilty of condoning (if not commanding) honor killings along with all of the other horror and bloodshed that permeates its entire history, but it’s just plain wrong to suggest that this is uniquely Islamic – IT ISN’T. That was my only objection to Phyllis’ article.

Congratulations: you’re the only person who’s ever accused me of being a liberal. George Will couldn’t call me a liberal with a straight face!

Your tag obviously refers to your general state of mind.

Oct 27, 2009 - 8:14 am 31. George Jochnowitz:

logos1j1,
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18).

Oct 27, 2009 - 8:38 am 32. ab:

The fact is that history, generally, has not been kind to women. They had to depend more on expectations of chivalry and (often absent) good will of men. I suppose there is an atavistic element in human nature – originating in prehistoric times when the survival of a family or a primitive community of families depended on the brutish strength of men both in so far as hunting (the primary source of food) and protection from other aggresive men looking for women, or food to eat, or to protect their hunting territory, was concerned – whereby man is seen as the “provider” for and “protector” of women, who, in turn, provide man with “peace” in the family, a “peace” marked by subservience and servility. Man was the dominat figure because of his prowes to provide and to protect. The dominance was also expressed through sexual behaviour. As civilizations have developed, man’s dominance over women has become a matter of proprietorship and his honour became to be understood to lie between the legs of “his” women. Some societies and cultures, or at least their most advanced and influential elements, seem to have evolved better than others in efforts to overcome this atavistic tendency and its cicvilizational perversion. (The fact still remains, though, that marauding armies of men still see rape of women as the ultimate humiliation of their enemies.) In other societies or cultures, not even lip service is paid to the true humanity, integrity, respectability and independence of women, reflecting their equal status, as human beings, to men. Generally (again), it seems that Islam is a culture falling into the second category. That is a fact which comparisons with the many imperfections existing within the “western” culture cannot obliterate. We, I hope, at least try, in earnest, to overcome those imperfections

Oct 27, 2009 - 8:41 am 33. blotto:

logos: Struck a nerve, eh? First, I have no idea of your previous posts. So to use that as a defense is pretty lame.

Second, “Islam is indeed guilty of condoning (if not commanding) honor killings along with all of the other horror and bloodshed that permeates its entire history, but it’s just plain wrong to suggest that this is uniquely Islamic – IT ISN’T. That was my only objection to Phyllis’ article.” If this is so then just come out and state that honor killings by Islamic fundamentalists is WRONG. Do not obfuscate and confuse the issue of the author by bringing in other cults/religions who may have practiced this barbarity. That is multicultural PC crap.

Third, Mr. Jochnowitz was spot on. He and the author are talking about Islamic honor killings. You tried to deflect the issue because you are defending YOUR religion. Too bad. IF you have to defend the killings of innocent girls by looking to the past and trying to find incidents where it was used by other cults or religions then you are certainly one of the left’s best henchmen. The circular argument by the left is usually its only tactic. And you are masterful.

Lastly, I did not say anything about your political leanings but if the shoe fit, tie it tight. Oh, and what a humorous guy you are. LOL about your closing comment. Too much!

Oct 27, 2009 - 8:43 am 34. Paul of Alexandria:

Richard Aubrey (9):

There are lot of things which are, apparently, not Islamic. Happen to be perpetrated by people calling themselves Muslims, raised by Muslims, members of Muslim congregations.

The problem is that it is Islamic.

While it is true that Muhammad raised the status of Arabian women in some respects,[6] we cannot let this fact cloud certain other issues, namely, (1) that Muhammad permitted husbands to beat their wives, (2) that he repeatedly proclaimed the inferiority of women’s intellectual abilities, (3) that he taught that women’s prospects for the afterlife are extremely bleak, and (4) that, according to Muhammad, it is acceptable for men to rape their female captives.
Banish Them to Their Beds and Scourge Them! Muhammad’s Low Opinion of Women By David Wood

Oct 27, 2009 - 8:56 am 35. EscapeVelocity:

They also hype stories about Christians. Its what the Western Left does, it is an anti Western project. The Western Left is much more dangerous than Islam and Muslims, which could be easily contained and handled, except the Western Left is aiding and abbetting them in their agression towards Western Civilization. Making the combination very dangerous.

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:08 am 36. Paul of Alexandria:

MiamaMan (16):

10. dymphna:

[The Copts (Christians) in Egypt don’t kill their daughters, but the Egyptians feel free to kidnap Copt girls and tell the families to shut up if they complain.

See also the article Missing the point of Coptic tattoos at Get Religion.org. Coptic families put cross tattoos on their daughter’s wrists; besides proclaiming their faith, “They make it harder for Muslim extremists to kidnap their children and force them to convert to Islam, including forced marriages of young Christian girls to Muslim men. It’s hard to cut those crosses out of the thin skin over the veins in a human wrist.”

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:13 am 37. Paul of Alexandria:

BTW, Is the death penalty for apostasy in the Quran?

Two things are being confused here: honor killing and the death penalty for apostasy. Honor killing is not discussed directly in the Qur’an, although it is given strong implicit support by 18:74, 80-81….

The death penalty for apostasy is found more directly in the Qur’an — Islamic authorities generally root it in two Qur’anic verses, 2:217 and 4:89, as Hugh has noted….

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:22 am 38. Ann:

Christians follow the New Testament and look to the Old Testament as prophetic in relation to Jesus. The old testament calls for an eye for an eye, Jesus taught that this was wrong and turning the other cheek was the righteous thing to do. So quoting texts from the Old Testament, where there is much to learn on how we can live our lives to the full, is not Christian teaching and any calls for killing anyone goes against what Jesus Christ taught.

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:30 am 39. MiamaMan:

George, I agree with Ann above, the quote from the Old Testament and witches was not fortunate as Logos follows Jesus and the New Testament.

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:59 am 40. Hans Mast:

Thanks logos and Ann! I really should keep a 3-5 paragraph post handy to copy and paste whenever I run across folks, who don’t know the Bible, quoting the OT in a negative way toward Christians. Here’s one comment I wrote that examines the Biblical proofs for that hermeneutic: http://j.mp/3u99Mi

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:59 am 41. John P.:

In Islam women are slaves to men. In Christianity the option of becomming a nun was always available and it was an avenue that allowed women complete independance, financial and otherwise, from men. These were orders of like-minded women, strong women, who voluntarily entered into an association from which they were free at any time to leave. These women had the right NOT to get married, NOT to have a family and NOT to have children

Nuns orders are strickly forbidden in Islam and celibacy is seen as the ‘enemy’ of god.

So here’s my question to Dahlia Mogahed:If women in Islam are not free to remain childless, if they are not free to refrain from marrying and raising families and if they cannot enter into or build voluntary associations with other women who wish to remain celibate, childless and unmarried, then just what rights and freedoms do they have?

If a culture forbids a women from remaining single, childless and from joining and/or forming organisations of like-minded women, then that culture is absolutely devoid of ANY and ALL women’s rights.

It’s just that simple.

Make no mistake, Christianity has oppressed women in a myriad of ways, but the fact remains that the numerous orders of nuns were always around to provid a safe haven and a free space to which any women could go at any time.

Oct 27, 2009 - 10:03 am 42. alex:

Historically women have been losing their place in society and culture about the same time as the rise of the Greek system of government and culture, and the fall of the Minoan culture, which is about 2000 BC. Before this, women shared political and Business power much more than todays world.

Minoan was probably the last great Matriarchal culture. Although this was power sharing, not matriarchal in the traditional sense. women owned business, voted, and ran political offices. This was 3,500 Years ago.

After the fall of Minoan culture, and the rise of the Greek democracy and societal structure..Women slowly lost political and social power.

The rise of Patriarchal religions such as Judaism,Islam, and Christianity sealed the fate of women for the next several thousand years, wholesale murders, witch hunts, sold as property and treated as slaves.

Women today live in a shadow of what once was.

Oct 27, 2009 - 10:40 am 43. Kris Lepine:

We had a mission conference at our church several years ago with a Syrian man who lives and works in Syria as an engineer. He is an “undercover missionary”. He was educated in the US, so knows both cultures well. He told of 2 men he knew who converted to Christianty. They all worked together. He told them both to keep their faith secret. They did not. One year after the first man told his family of his conversion, he was invited to their home for a weekend. His own brother shot and killed him as he slept. The brother was arrested, convicted and spent 1 month in prison. The second man had a wife and 2 children. He and his wife were forced to watch as their little children were slaughtered, then the parents were killed and it was written on the wall of their home, in their own blood, “this is what happens to Christians”. Those are the only honor killngs of “Christians” I’ve ever heard of. And there is no honor about it, only cold blooded murder. As our culture continues to condemn the moral values that accompany Jewish and Christian faith, these type of crimes will grow, along with all the other evils we read about day after day: abortion, killing handicapped infants (don’t believe me, ask Sarah Palin), rape, legalizing drugs, gang violence and on and on. The liberals don’t want any restraint on their activities and behavior and will go to any length to make this country reject Christian values. Embracing Islam is another way to accomplish those goals. I personally believe it will come back to bite them in the butt, should they get their way, but they don’t care at this point.

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:16 am 44. blotto:

OMG! What are you folks talking about? The article is about Islamic fundamentalist living here in the US and around the world killing innocent young girls because they wanted to live a different life than what Islam would impose upon them.

I don’t give a rats a$$ about what went on 2000 years ago and that some other religions did not treat women well. We are supposed to be talking about Islamic honor killings and how today’s spineless, sychophantic, progressive MSM is whitewashing the story because they have made their Faustian deal with Islam. And young girls are dying.

If you cannot accept that this is an Islamic problem and you feel you must defend Islam or failing at that conflate the issue to mitigate the barbarity of it by bringing in some kind of historical context then you too have sold yourself to the devil.

For you leftist, shame on you. And like I said before don’t ever preach here again about how you defend women, feel compassion for the oppressed and protect the innocent.

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:29 am 45. George Jochnowitz:

Ann and Miama Man,
Christians accept the Old and New Testaments together as the Bible. Since Exodus 22:18 is in the Old Testament, we may assume that there was a time in history when Jews executed witches. There is no specific evidence. Be that as it may, the Talmud made the enforcement of such laws impossible.
We know without any doubt that Christians burned or hanged witches for centuries. When they did so, it was after trials by religious courts, not government courts. They did so for overtly religious reasons.
As the New Testament says, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:31 am 46. EscapeVelocity:

Christianity has oppressed women in a myriad of ways — alex

WTF!

You have been propagandized and indoctrinated.

You might as well say, God or Nature has oppressed women. Feminized societies with female archtypical behavior (enforced through the womens vote currently) have always and are now losing to Male archtypical parriarchal societies. Western Europe isnt procreating(for obvious reasons) and the Patriarchal Muslims are moving in. In the US, the Latino Machismo Catholics are moving in to replace the lack of fertility and the soft yin politics (unable or unwilling to defend itself) of female archtypes are letting them in….receiving the phallus…instead of the imperial force projection of Europe in the past.

So many are so lost, the Leftwing poison of academia has turned the educated into the ignorant and indoctrinated.

And thus the European world is where it is, crumbling and dying…and the patriarchal cultures are vying for future control of the once mighty empire(s), dividing the scraps amongst themselves.

What a shame.

I agree with you, Kris Lepine!

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:41 am 47. EscapeVelocity:

Personally, Id like to see the Western Left attack Islam with the veracity it has Christianity. Ease up on the Christians and focus on the Islamics. But they dont seem to be interested in that project…Christianity and Christians are a much easier target….and Islam is an ally against Western Civilization.

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:44 am 48. BettyBlue:

Peggy, yes, good points. Sikhs are an Islam derived faith, and Middle-Eastern Christians have allowed themselves to become Islamicized to some extent (either that, or they escaped to the US, or some country, where they could practice their faith, and perform the great commission!)

Which just seems to prove the point that Islam is the problem here. Christians not raised in Islamic cultures don’t practice honor killings.

Oct 27, 2009 - 12:02 pm 49. Peggy:

Thanks Ann. You got to it before I could. It needs to be said.

The problem with those who want to lump Christianity and Islam together by comparing the Old Testament to the Koran is a little book called the New Testament which overrides those damning passages like not suffering a witch to live.

While there have always been those Christians who would conveniently use the OT for their own diabolical purposes, for the most part the relationship between the two books has been clear and specific from early on whether any one paid attention or not.

What the NT overrules in the Old Testament is overruled. What it upholds of the Old Testament is upheld.

The New Testament abolished the death penalty for sin. Those Christians who ignored that fact will have to face their maker for it.

There is no abrogating influence for the Koran. All of those commands to kill are considered the last word by Muslims. There is a system by which to settle verses which conflict with one another by considering the later one authoritative. Unfortunately all of the most problematic verses that we hear about come later as Mohammed declined and became corrupt from all his power, riches and wives. All the flower-sniffing peaceful verses that get trotted out came earlier.

There is no equivalency between the ultimate authority in Christianity, the New Testament, and the same in Islam, the Koran.

Oct 27, 2009 - 12:09 pm 50. Brian:

I can’t speak for American media, but the Canadian honour killings Phyllis is writing about received HUGE publicity in this country. In particular, the Kingston slaughter was front-page news for days. It would appear the police did an admirable job. Clearly they didn’t believe the parents’ bogus story about how their daughters (and common-law wife? – it’s still confusing) ended up drowned in a car in a canal. Eventually the sordid truth emerged. Multiple children killed…hideous.

These honour killings sully Islam. Unfortunately I don’t think they are going to stop anytime soon.

Oct 27, 2009 - 12:39 pm 51. Peter the Bubblehead:

45. George Jochnowitz wrote:
We know without any doubt that Christians burned or hanged witches for centuries. When they did so, it was after trials by religious courts, not government courts.

Peter writes: George needs to make a visit to the Salem Witch Museum in Salem, MA. They present a rather engaging history of the 1692 Salem Witch Hysteria and make it quite clear it was civil courts that tried and condemned the victims.

Oct 27, 2009 - 12:41 pm 52. IndoEuropean:

Your studies about Islamic Honor … Horror … Killings are very precious, and since Islam is a Mafia and since they adopt the “big Lie” strategy (being supported by supporters) to hide their Crimes, they will try to defame you, your job, your analysis, and your/our sense of justice. Eventually they will be able to turn themselves into victims, their victims into “mashallah” (it had to happen), and distract attention from their own system. I think a way to keep the attention focused on their Horror Killings is to point out that Islamic people follow Islamic law; that in Islamized coutries law is strictly connected with Shari’a (mentioned in several Constitution); that even the universal Declaration of human Rights has an Islamic version,

and therefore every Crime (Honor/Horror Killing) committed with the agreement of the Islamic community and the Islamic Government (there is a video showing Police watching a man stabbing – 50 times? – her wife, doing nothing to rescue her! Other video show “Allahuakbar” yellers while they stone a girl; not to mention “legal” stoning in case of “adultery” and even “rape” – this dishonoured the female’s family … -), is islamically allowed. It is Islam.

Mafia will go on trying to defame Truth seekers (and finders): and they will do it in a very efficient way. Unfortunately Islamic people (Islamists) even pretend to be moderate or to fight against “Honour” Killings (or even for atheism), while – just deeper analyzing their words, way of thinking and actions – one gets to discover that they are simply protecting their (mafious) system.

It is not easy to fight for justice when it comes to people and systems (very well organized and) based on deception (deceiving others).

Now I remember FoxNews Documentary about Honor/Horror Killings: it was Palestina (a girl) stabbed by her father, while her mother kept her down, and the whole thing got recorded by microphones placed in their home by the police (Palestina’s father was controlled as a suspected Islamo-palestinian terrorist). When her sisters – sic – got interviewed, they stated “Palestina deserved to die, she was unobedient”: should ask them if they stated such things in the name of their (their) holy Islam and Muhammadrasoulallah or in the name of “tribal practices” (I think I know the answer).

I am very thankful to you, to women like Nonie Darwish and Wafa Sultan, for carrying on the Truth and the Love for Humanity/Life, and to expose the ugliness of some Ideologies and related practices (Islam). You’re both intelligent and brave: thank you for your precious precious Engagement and Job.

Oct 27, 2009 - 12:54 pm 53. Hans Mast:

Christians accept the Old and New Testaments together as the Bible.

Since you obviously are simply ignoring the pronouncements of those who have studied the Bible (Do you know what logos means?) and didn’t read my link, I’ll need to quote the Scriptural proofs:

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Romans 10:4 (NASB)

Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Now a mediator is not for one party only; whereas God is only one. Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
Galatians 3:19-25 (NASB)

Since Exodus 22:18 is in the Old Testament, we may assume that there was a time in history when Jews executed witches. There is no specific evidence.

*sigh* Wrong again. There’s one specific instance that springs to mind and I’m guessing there’s more:

Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him and buried him in Ramah, his own city And Saul had removed from the land those who were mediums and spiritists.
1 Samuel 28:3 (NASB)

Please don’t be arrogant about something you know nothing about. I have a two year degree in Bible and Theology, but my 13 year old sister could correct you on these things.

As for those bashing some of us Christians for standing up against some of the false points raised against Islam, please understand our position. We decry honor killings! I lived and taught in the Middle East among Muslims, working to stop some of these practices. I am a staunch conservative and a supporter of Israel, but I’ve seen firsthand what happens when Americans who know only a teensy bit about Islam loudly voice their ignorant thoughts–of course Muslims hate us! And of course that’s mostly their fault, but our ignorance is just a poke in the eye that makes it incredibly difficult for those moderates who are against honor killings, against compulsory veiling, against repression of women, against FGM, etc to do anything about it. When there’s wrong, bigotry, and abridgement of religious freedom on our end, they can claim moral equivalence even if it’s not the case. Any time we do not retain the moral high ground, it muddies the waters. As a Christian, I try to stand up for truth even when it’s defending those I don’t agree with.

Can y’all please understand that just because we’re questioning the accuracy of one or two points doesn’t make it legitimate to somehow attack us as leftists trying to cover up honor killings?

Oct 27, 2009 - 12:56 pm 54. George Jochnowitz:

Peter,
Salem in 1692 had no church-state distinction. A civil court was automatically a religious court.

Oct 27, 2009 - 12:59 pm 55. George Jochnowitz:

Hans Mast,
Nothing could possibly be more cruel and more unjust than eternal damnation. Nowhere in the Old Testament is this ever mentioned. On the other hand, Jesus introduced the idea and spoke of it approvingly in Luke 16:19-31. Not only that, he said that in order to achieve salvation you need faith. In other words, you can’t know the rules until you’re already in hell and it’s too late.

Oct 27, 2009 - 1:10 pm 56. Mari:

George J. and others keep talking about “Christians” suppressing women or burning witches. A Christian, by definition, is one who is following Christ. Not the Old Testament law, or some insane made-up religious law of their own. Jesus never ever said that women were to be treated with comtempt or that husbands should beat them, and he never said that sinners were to be burned, hung, or stoned. It doesn’t matter what some nutjob person or church says they are, if they’re doing things that are in direct opposition to what Jesus Christ taught, then they aren’t Christians.

Oct 27, 2009 - 1:12 pm 57. kenny komodo:

Until the Western world gets over its propensity to treat everything Muslim with kid gloves there will never be honest reporting about honor killings. In my six decades I’ve never ever heard of an honor killing among any of the worlds religions that I’m familiar with. If there have been some Hindu or Sikh’s practicing this custom I’ve never heard of it. But I have heard of Muslim’s doing so, I’ve read about it in books by Muslim women and see reports online. So the apologists for Islam seem to have an awful lot of “splainin” to do. Religion of peace my ass.

Oct 27, 2009 - 1:23 pm 58. Boyd:

“Women today live in a shadow of what once was.”

There is no tradition (a couple witches 500 years ago doesn’t make a tradition) in this country of honor killing, Christian or otherwise. What little there is comes from non-Christian societies. Honor killing is being brought here by Islamic societies and enters our concern because Islam draws no distinction between the civil and religious.

Oct 27, 2009 - 1:26 pm 59. DoubleTapper:

Here in Israel, where Arabic is one of the official languages, there is zero tolerance for honor killings. We treat it as simple murder in the first degree.

DoubleTapper
DoubleTapper@gmail.com
DoubleTapper, blogging on Guns Politics Defense from Israel

Oct 27, 2009 - 1:40 pm 60. visitor:

Whether the so called honor killings are cultural or tribal is wholly irrelevant as such practices have been codified or given legal effect by islamic sharia law. Honor killings are the ultimate manifestation of the misogyny inherent in islam.

Whether Christians or indeed any other group commit crimes of such a nature, is also irrelevant, as they are commited outside the orthodoxy of Christianity. Indeed, no other religion other than islamic sharia gives legal effect to human rights abuses.

The governments of the Muslim world, regardless of how secular, have failed in their duty to eradicate this particularly inhumane crime against women and the family. They had long enough to do so, if only they had the will. The reason being, that the morality of the law reflects the will of the people, in this case, the will of the parasitic mullahs, to keep themselves and the tyrants in power and style. Why eradicate the practice, while their citizens are duly occupied in such misogynist practices, they hardly pose a threat to the various ME totalitarian regimes.

Such primitive, blood letting rituals should not and cannot any longer be tolerated in the civilized parts of the world. It is the duty of the Western governments to deport the perpetrators and their supporters to their places of origin. Our only duty is to protect our evolved and civilized way of life from such retrograde forces. Such attitudes towards human rights and the rights of women in particular, cannot be changed, only be eradicated or outgrown.

Oct 27, 2009 - 2:28 pm 61. myth buster:

55. Wrong on both counts. First eternal damnation is mentioned in the final chapter of Isaiah, and second, it is completely just that those who hate God and want nothing to do with Him be given exactly what they ask for- and everything that comes with it. Is it harsh? Absolutely, but harsh is not the same as unjust. People who want true life will find Jesus; people who want nothing to do with righteousness will perish.

Oct 27, 2009 - 2:38 pm 62. MiamaMan:

54. George Jochnowitz:

[Peter,
Salem in 1692 had no church-state distinction. A civil court was automatically a religious court.]

This is not clear, even with Joan D’Arc, the Inquisition could not proceed with the burning without giving up her fist to the English civil authorities.

55. George Jochnowitz:

[Hans Mast,
Nothing could possibly be more cruel and more unjust than eternal damnation.]

You are totally right on this one. Eternal damnation is one of the 3 major flaws of Christianity. It is not only cruel and unjust, it is also not true (I will refrain from entertaining the other 2 flaws here because people will skin me alive, ha, ha.)

However, I will briefly tell a true story regarding eternal damnation:

When Swami Yogananda (Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization fellowship in California) visited the US for the first time in the 1920s, while traveling on a train, he engaged a conversation with a Christian man that proceeded to tell him about his struggles with his son who was an alcoholic and a sinner, and was definitely going to hell for ever. After a while, Yogananda told him to gather his friends from the church, tie his son to a tree in the backyard and burn him alive. The man, outraged, called him a savage. The Swami answered: “Isn’t that what your cruel God will do to him anyhow, what not do it yourself first?

Oct 27, 2009 - 2:40 pm 63. blotto:

I can’t believe you morons on both sides. The issue is not the history of religions. The story here is the butchering of innocent girls by a cult that pretends to be a religion of peace.

Typical for the left defending the indefensible and deflecting the issue and the those of you on the right for engaging in off-topic debate.

I could give a flip how much you intellectuals debate the 2000 year old wrongs done by religions.

George and Hans take your pseudo-intellectual discussion somewhere else-like a motel room. This commentary is about a sick religion that kills young girls because the Quran/Koran tells its followers to kill apostates.

Oct 27, 2009 - 2:45 pm 64. MiamaMan:

63. blotto:

You are going a little too far. Get a hold of yourself. You opinion is one among many.

We all know about the sick religion that kills girls, and all that you added is OK too, but there are people participating here from different denominations, some Christians, some Jews, I am a Hindu by faith, even Muslims sometimes come in (but surely leave soon though). Capici?

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:03 pm 65. Peggy:

George Jochnowitz

Your understanding of Christian teaching is so infantile that I would recommend that you take a couple dozen courses in basic theology before you propose to speak on the subject again.

In the meantime, here is a short and simple lesson.

People end up in hell as the consequences of their sins in the same way that the consequences of pointing a gun at yourself and pulling the trigger results in getting shot.

In Christian theology, God is the only game there is. There is no good outside of him. Reject him and all that is left is an absence of good.

Christ came on a mission of mercy, a rescue mission. It was very merciful of him to warn people, in the starkest terms, of the natural and inevitable consequences of willfully rejecting God and thus everything that is good and embracing instead a life of unrepentant wickedness. That is what hell is. It is the end of the line after a life like that like a bullet hitting home.

In fact, God was so merciful that he came himself and placed himself in front of that bullet for anyone who really wants him to do so. He has also mercifully given us the choice to choose otherwise.

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:08 pm 66. Peggy:

blotto,

I don’t see what is moronic about it at all. Religion, and the role that it does or doesnt play is part of the original piece and belongs in this discussion.

Some people took that opportunity to equate two different things, Christianity and Islam. I think it is as moronic to proclaim that all religions are exactly alike as it is to say that all people are exactly alike. It simply flies in the face of reality. The world is simply chock full of categories in which some examples are better than others. Some people are better than others. Some religions are better than others.

It is also moronic to think that because a person has some problems then that means they are completely worthless and have nothing to be proud of. It is the same with religions.

It is perfectly germane to the subject to point out that Christianity in face has no theological basis for honor killings since it doesnt put a high price on honor what with its worship of a crucified king. Islam places extreme emphasis on personal, familial and societal honor and purity. It is moronic to suggest that this emphasis has no natural and inherent dark side to it or to believe that this extreme emphasis has nothing to do with Muslims snapping and killing their children when their honor is at stake.

Islam is wrong to have such an emphasis on honor. Period. A religion which has no such thing in it, like Christianity for just one example, will not have the same problem.

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:17 pm 67. Boyd:

blotto; “I can’t believe you morons on both sides.” ‘I don’t give a rats a$$ about …”

we get it, you don’t care about yada yada. Not surprisingly we don’t care what you don’t care about. These comments always taker on a life of their own and this one is far more interesting than most. With the possible exception of … you.

As for honor killings not being uniquely Islamic, at this time in this country they most certainly are and its Muslims who need to answer for this. Denying this with some postmodern evasion solves nothing. For those who might argue this point try this sample SAT test question. Complete the following series; Muslim honor killing, Muslim honor killing, Muslim honor killing, Muslim honor killing, (……..).

Anyone else see a pattern here? Any guesses where the next honor killing might come from?

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:30 pm 68. deguello:

Isn’t multiculuralism wonderful?

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:41 pm 69. Bilgeman:

Ms. Chesler:

I frankly believe that the honor-killing practice was indeed a pre-Islamic practice of certain of the tribes later conquered and Islamicized.
Most likely because it was seen to be useful to keep the newly-converted in line, the practice was adopted and islamicized, (roughly paralleling with what Christianity did with the Christmas Tree).

Pity that it was through this adoption that a barbarous practice was effectively sanctified, and is now a sanctioned practice to Muslims from cultures that never committed such a thing.

But that’s essentially neither here nor there. When it comes to Muslims “honor killing” in America, I think the best response is akin to this one:

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours”-attributed to British General Napier, commenting on the Indian Hindu custom of “suttee” or widow-burning.

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:44 pm 70. Rubicon:

When I read about the incidents in America, it becomes difficult to accept excuses & comparisons to other countries or cultures. The issue at hand was honor killings in America, & its patently obvious they are happening & the only way to stop the practice is to educate Muslims that in the west, where they now live, its an unacceptable practice that will bring jail time &/or the death penalty as proscribed under law for those who criminally take the life of an innocent.

Oct 27, 2009 - 5:16 pm 71. Kelly:

A murderous criminal is killed by police and there are angry mobs protesting. An innocent child is killed or tortured by a murderous parent and a blind eye is turned. Yes we need to do somemthing about it.

Oct 27, 2009 - 8:11 pm 72. alex:

The error is Placing honor killings within a religious context. It is murder, tried as murder, convicted as murder, and executed as a murderer.
This obsession with all things Islamic is nonsense, if someone kills their daughter they committed murder, the state is not in position to determine other than if a criminal act occured, if so, then trial, and if convicted carry out sentence.
Please check your theology and religions in at the steps of the courthouse. Otherwise go live with the Amish, or start a Colony of Puritan law far away from the rest of civilization and reasonable society.

As far as my post regarding the history of women, How can people think they can just take a snapshot of an event, and not place within its historical context.

The History of Christianity absolutely does not start with Christ, it starts several thousand years before, with Enoch and Noah and Cain and Able and Solomon and the Phoenicians and Sumeria and Egypt and Romulus and Remus. If this sounds foreign to you, then read and study and become a scholar in History and Theology as Christ was.

3,500 years ago women voted, ran cities, operated businesses, managed agricultural industries, and were fully empowered citizens of their nation. These were glorious days of human civilization, when each individual was given the same value regardless what gender they were.

With the rise of patriarchal religions ; Judaism, Christianity ( or Pauline beliefs, more accurately), and Islam came about, women became servants to administration of religion, and subject to its whims; keeping quiet in church, refused positions of leadership, etc, etc.

As organized religions grew in power, the role of women in society diminished through the middle ages, until the founding of the United States provided a platform to liberate the chains of religious practices and beliefs, finally providing freedom FROM religious practices. From this came the right to Vote, equal pay, and the rest of rights women had enjoyed 3,500 years ago.

The same will happen with Islam, eventually.

Oct 27, 2009 - 8:38 pm 73. Boyd:

“The error is Placing honor killings within a religious context.”
“This obsession with all things Islamic is nonsense,”

All just a coincidence I guess. If that makes you happy go ahead and believe it. The rest of us know better.

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:38 pm 74. EscapeVelocity:

It seems you are overeducated, alex.

Perhaps a trip to pre Christian Amazonian tribes would wize you up a bit. Or African. Or Australian Abos. Or Native Americans. Or Chinese. Or pre Christian Europe.

I know its wishful thinking that you would do some basic research on the matter, besides what Andrea Dworkin taught you in the Women’s Studies Department.

Oct 27, 2009 - 10:17 pm 75. Hans Mast:

Boyd wrote:

we get it, you don’t care about yada yada. Not surprisingly we don’t care what you don’t care about. These comments always taker on a life of their own and this one is far more interesting than most.

I enjoyed and chuckled at your comment, Boyd, and it motivated me to go back and see where this absurd bunny trail of other religions also having honor killings started. I discovered, much to my shock and amazement, that I was the first commenter that talked about that particular bunny trail! All I was doing was highlighting the total lack of logical progression used by Chesler, but then concluded:

Husseini’s comments and your “rebuttal” are somewhat irrelevant, however. Honor killings, no matter their motivation, need to be opposed.

Unfortunately, no one paid attention to that bit! Go figure.

I, and anyone that spoke in support of the fact that Chesler herself admitted (”Sikhs and Hindus do commit honor murders”), were immediately branded leftists defending honor killings, which couldn’t be further from the truth. All we are saying is that it’s pointless to attack Muslims as a whole for a practice that is not exclusive to them or supported by all (especially not my Muslim friends; I’m reluctant to make any stronger generalizations as my sample size of Muslim friends is small, though one of my students that I hung out with was ultra-conservative and Hamas; most of my friends just thought Hamas were a bunch of lunatics). Even if you’re rabidly anti-Muslim, don’t you all see the strategic advantage of divide and conquer? Don’t you realize that alienating the moderates (moderate Muslims are not a figment of the liberal imagination; I’ve lived, worked, and taught with them) will hurt your anti-Muslim crusade?

My reluctant conclusion is that some of you simply have an unreasoning hatred for Muslims and can’t stand the thought that something as horrible as honor killings can’t be shown to have been first ever done by the Prophet Mohammad to fifty 4-year-old girls with a very dull knife. It seems a modicum of historical context and statements that are properly qualified (not overly broad) by an ultra-conservative such as myself makes some of you foam at the mouth and shout, “Leftist!”

I’ve said it before on this thread and I’ll say it again: many of Islam’s teachings are very bad and should be worked against. I’ve heard the stories first-hand.

However, I’m not cowering in fear of an imminent Muslim takeover of the Western world. I have seen how, from Dubai to Syria, Muslims are being “corrupted” by the West. Most are transparently hypocritical: sneaking food and water on Ramadan, prostitutes, immoral popular TV shows like Noor, etc, etc. My friends would proudly tell me of all the ways they sneaked around Islam’s edicts. That kind of hypocrisy and clear lack of true belief can’t be propped up much longer–it’s already crumbling due in large part to Westernization; Islam will go the way of Christianity (apostasy) in the US, and I say that as a conservative follower of Jesus. Islamic apostasy (not following orthodox Islam) will remove many of the dangers people are expressing concern about here. I think we’ll see large numbers of MINOs in this next generation. Islam and the Episcopal church will be little different from each other in 35 years. (No offense to those few who are Episcopal and following Jesus.)

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:21 pm 76. Hans Mast:

Another thing that most people don’t realize about Islam is that because it was forced by military might on many people (much like Catholicism) it is a very syncretistic religion (much like Catholicism). “Islamic” practices vary incredibly from region to region because orthodox Islam was mixed heavily with the local pagan religions, whether spiritism/shamanism in Northern Africa or Hinduism in the Indian subcontinent. I’m sure most of you know that the rituals around the black stone and ka’aba in Mecca were drawn directly from the Arabic pagan/polytheistic traditions and were simply slightly converted to Mohammad’s new monotheism remix (which drew heavily from Judaism and Christianity). This historical reality is one of the bases for the assertions I’ve made on this thread against the over-generalizations that’ve been happening.

While in a non-Arabic country that had been conquered by the Islamic Empire and which is now ~90% “Islamic”, I met with a man who is a former Muslim and comes from a family of radical Islamists who are terrorist financiers. He is from an Arabic background and his family and other Arabs living in this conquered country are furious with the incredible syncretism that the local “Muslims” have with their old religions. They decry them as apostate Muslims.

When you realize the way Islam has developed and how disparate it is, you too will begin to cringe at some of these blanket statements that have little bearing on reality.

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:49 pm 77. Meeting Shariah with Christ | Jesus Lives!:

[...] Spinning Out Of Control: Honor Killings and Media Bias – Pajamas Media • Rifqa Bary Returns to Columbus – The Columbus Dispatch • Father Charged With Killing [...]

Oct 28, 2009 - 4:25 am 78. Meeting Shariah with Christ | Command the Raven:

[...] Spinning Out Of Control: Honor Killings and Media Bias – Pajamas Media • Rifqa Bary Returns to Columbus – The Columbus Dispatch • Father Charged With Killing [...]

Oct 28, 2009 - 4:27 am 79. BettyBlue:

Yes, Hans, we get it. It’s like Phyllis says in the article—Islam is never to blame.

Oct 28, 2009 - 6:20 am 80. Jwassom:

Phyllis, who is this WOMAN to have this kind of authority? does this girl not have any rights? it’s apalling to me.

“Judge Limits Christian Convert’s Internet, Phone Usage..
COLUMBUS, Ohio — An Ohio judge on Tuesday ordered the state to supervise the telephone and Internet use of a teenage girl who says she ran away to Florida because she feared her father would harm or kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity.”

“Franklin County Juvenile Magistrate Mary Goodrich put the restrictions on Rifqa Bary, 17, at the request of the county children’s services agency.”

Oct 28, 2009 - 6:24 am 81. IndoEuropean:

And more: it is never them (Islamic people – males and females), and never Islam (their Idol, Ideology, best thing in life). Even so called moderates or “now atheists” eventually don’t do anything else but making the Apology of Islam – that horrible bloodthirsty Movement appeared on Earth in VII century, whose Flag is the shahada. (…). The only thing to do is to educate people about wordlwide historical Reality (florishing and ancient Civilizations, then suffocated, oppressed, looted by Muhammedan Islamic Movement), and about Islamic historical Reality (a Mafia style Movement which killed and oppressed others, by sword) – included the one about fake “Islamic Golden Age” -. There is the need to talk about ISLAMIC Colonialism, Imperialism and Slavery, and to closely analyze ISLAMic sadism: the fact that Muhammad wanted stoning back – especially for adulteresses* -, when Jesus-the-Christ brought an efficient Reform about that, which lasted 600 (six hundred) years (in Judeo-christian world), says it all about the unsane mind/essence of Islam (which is, by the way – therefore – unreformable). [*What is an adulteress? It can be a woman or a girl, whose marriage with a man has been arranged, and maybe forced upon her, where she is expected to be a virgin – otherwise an HONOR KILLING could occur -, she has no right to divorce without her husband’s agreement and she can “just” divorce in an official/legal way, while he: can have other three official wives plus uncountable concubines, could be no more vergin at the time of wedding but no one is able to verify it, he’s able to unilaterally repudiate her, and more or less officially divorce her.

It happens that the adulteress meets a man of her taste and choice – and age? -, and that she has any kind of relation with him: the verdict is that she has to be tortured death – be stoned, by a crow of “Allahu akbar” or “La ilaha illa Allah Muhammad rasoul Allah” yelling people, her own family members included, choosing “perfect stoning stones, targeting right her skull, the more it bleeds and smashes, the better it is -. Enough the “adulteress” gets raped by a male or a gang of vaginathirsty males, that the verdict is the same: she must be tortured to death IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, IN THE NAME OF MUHAMMAD.

Oh yes, Jordanian Husseini and Friends are right: these are not Islamic Killings in the name of “Honor”. In the case of Islam they are Murders in the name of Allah and in the name of Muhammad.

Islamic people, undestander or misunderstander of their “religion” persecuted and still persecuting people (mainly Non-islamic people) all over the World, and oppress them: this is the point to be pointed out – and in the case of Honor/Horror/Allah/Muhammad Killings it is so, that one (mainly a female) decides to think, feel and act in a Non-islamic way.

Oct 28, 2009 - 6:28 am 82. BettyBlue:

And, again, I’d love to hear from some moderate Moslems—but where are they? why don’t they speak up against honor killings, or terrorism? Where were they during the Mumbai massacres, that happened almost a year ago? Or 9/11? Or protest the release of the Lockerbie bomber? Oh, yes, I get it—because they’re offended by our lack of understanding for how disparate they are. Or something. Once again, it’s not Islam’s fault, it’s somebody else’s.

Actually, what I get from your description of Islam is that it’s mostly a religion of hypocrites, and phonies. (By the way—if they really don’t believe in their faith, why should they be offended if we don’t understand it?)

Hypocrites and phonies aren’t as bad as terrorists, but they’re hardly champions of justice, or honesty, either. Nor are they likely to stand up to any actual fanatics among them. Faced with a mad mullah, or ayatollah, they’ll probably just go along-to-get along, as always. Some moderates.

Maybe they’ll all end up Episcopalian—or maybe they won’t. Historically, more tolerant, or lazy, forms of Islam tend to get overwhelmed by the more radical, fanatical varieties. All it takes is a Saladin, or Ayatollah, to mobilize the more firey members of the population; apostates are either killed, or decide to go-along-to-get-along. And the whole thing continues.

Meanwhile, actual lives are on the line. No, we can longer wait for support from “moderate” Moslems, before we speak out against honor killings. If Moslems are offended—well, that’s too bad. Hurt feelings aren’t as serious as lost lives. If they really want to us understand them better, let them speak up themselves—and NOT to blame it all on the Jews, the West or the usual Moslem scapegoats. If they really are turning into MINOS—well, how can they expect us to respect a faith they don’t respect themselves?

Oct 28, 2009 - 6:35 am 83. blotto:

Boyd: “we get it, you don’t care about yada yada. Not surprisingly we don’t care what you don’t care about. These comments always taker on a life of their own and this one is far more interesting than most. With the possible exception of … you.”

Wow, Boyd, you really showed me. I’m quaking. For the dense-Boyd, my tact was that the article was about honor(?) killings NOT a recitation of the histories of religions.

Sure put this incredibly misnamed custom of killing young girls in a historical context. But too many posters seek to excuse this barbarity by conflating or confusing the issue with talks of how bad other religions were and are.

And since when did you-oh, exhalted one-become the speaker for the other posters here? Did I miss your coronation?

And you know what, yes I am passionate about this issue. And I am sick and tired of the left and its defense of the indefensible especially when innocent lives are brutally taken. Maybe it’s time for my side to get more passionate about what is going on in my country.

If that bothers you, too freaking bad.

Oct 28, 2009 - 7:04 am 84. BettyBlue:

Jwassom, it looks to me like the legal system is determined to hand over Rifga Bary, signed, sealed and delivered, to Islamic law, despite the fact that she’s been abused, and might be killed for apostasy, if not by her family, then by the radicals at her local mosque.

I suspect something’s going on behind the scenes, and the court is desperate to prove its tolerance, and favoritism towards Moslems.

Oct 28, 2009 - 7:48 am 85. BettyBlue:

Blotto, I think it’s all part of the Islam is nevr to blame, thing.

In order to exonerate Islam of honor killings, it’s necessary to pretend that other cultures are equally guilty of this crime—even if that means pretending honor killings are common in Appalachia, or digging into history to try and find something, anything, that seems comparable.

Remember the mantra; Islam is never to blame. Other cultures are equally guilty. If you criticize Islam, it’s because you just don’t understand it. If you do understand it, you really don’t, because—Islam is never to blame. Repate ad nauseum.

Oct 28, 2009 - 7:52 am 86. blotto:

Thank you BettyBlue: And I am afraid you are correct regarding multiculturalism and its moral relativism. This beautiful, young girl (Bary)will be murdered and the left will have the gall to blame America or something else other than Islam.

I can debate(?) with DS and moho, like you, on other topics but this one topic I cannot. There is no debate. And if my passion is too much for Boyd or other posters too bad.

Oct 28, 2009 - 8:13 am 87. Hans Mast:

BettyBlue wrote:

Yes, Hans, we get it. It’s like Phyllis says in the article—Islam is never to blame.

Hans wrote:

I do agree with most of your post: honor killings are awful, need to be exposed and opposed. [...]

As horribly as Muslim women in the Middle East have it today [...]

We decry honor killings! [...]

I’ve said it before on this thread and I’ll say it again: many of Islam’s teachings are very bad and should be worked against. I’ve heard the stories first-hand.

You’re not even listening.

Don’t you realize that getting your facts wrong on these small points (which logically don’t affect the overall conclusion that there are many teachings of Islam that need to be opposed) weaken our overall case? When we say things that are demonstrably wrong or fairly clearly not evenhanded, our whole message can be easily dismissed. Don’t you realize that the rigor of truth, while it may not paint quite as horrible a picture as you may have hoped for, is much more powerful than a message that people can tell you need to do some fancy footwork to defend?

Oct 28, 2009 - 8:38 am 88. IndoEuropean:

I was just remembering something about Honor in Islam – this is related to the Balkans’ (Islamo-albanians’) “Kanun” (Arabic word for Code), which is a behaviour’s Code, including rules about Honor and protection of it. Shortly: one (Islamo-albanian) can decide him/herself when his/her Honor gets hurted by another, and consequently “revenge” it. People get brutally murdered for having looked at the Islamic person “in the wrong way”, for answering the Islamic person “in the wrong way” (which includes: the Islamic person can insult you, but if you answer insulting him/her, you will be considered as one who hurted the Islamic person’s Honor, and therefore you’re subjected to “punishment” – usually brutal, in perfect Islamic/Muhammedan style -), …. Honor Killings belong therefore to Kanun (Arabo-islamic word/concept) and could be called a “Revenge”.

A way to virtually “kill” someone (today very widely used in Internet forums – since the phisical distance does not allow an Islamic person to immediately and concretely kill another, an “opponent”) is to heavily insult him/her, forbidding any kind of discussion together (therefore forbidding any kind of discussion about Islam and Muhammad’s “example”, or Islamic people’s behaviour), and heavily (and unjustly – but Islam doesn’t care about being unjust toward Non-islam) defaming him/her, heavily (and unjustly) belitteling him/her, ….

Leftists (or Islamists which infiltrated the Left?) use this “Honor Code” toward anyone who is against Islam and its (past and present) dreadful Ideology – being in the West, too.

Under this point of view, life(’s Quality) in the West is already regressed, and impoverished, and degradated – mass and unsustainable Islamic Immigration in the West (where immigrants aren’t officially requested and expected to fully respect Western laws and civil Rights, and the West goes on blaming itself for any evil existing on Earth and disregarding its merits) doesn’t help.

Not to forget, “Kanun” is that Code which rules Islamo-albanian Mafia (Mafia), and Kanun is a pretty male Code – now imagine what kind of treatment “deserve” a girl or a woman, whose behaviour “offend” her family, or is simply judged “too much undependant” (male alike) … when it comes to Kanun, any woman who behave “like a man” deserves harsh treatment (remembering that Muhammad – the Clan’s boss? – self blamed woman behaving “male alike”).

Just reasoning about Honor and Islam and deception or defamation … and Mafia.

Oct 28, 2009 - 9:44 am 89. BettyBlue:

Well, yes, Hans, I am listening; despite some vague, token remarks about some Islamic teachings that need to be opposed (which ones? You don’t go into detail), and opposing honor killings, what I’m basically hearing is, “It’s never Islam’s fault!” It’s our fault, because we’re making “blanket statements”, and because we aren’t being tolerant enough of moderate Moslems. Anyway, there’s nothing to worry about, because they’ll be Episcopalians in a few years.

(And, again, I ask—if the bulk of Moslems, as you describe them, are all becoming irreligious, and Episcopalian, why should they be upset over “blanket statements” about a religion they supposedly don’t care about?)

I am listening, I just don’t agree with what you’re saying.

Islamic honor killings are getting to be more and more a problem in the US. Ten years ago, no one even discussed such murders. They weren’t even on the law enforcement radar. They belonged to the realm of anthropology, not US jurisprudence. Now, with the influx of Islamic immigrants, they’re becoming more and more of a problem, with CAIR, and various other groups always quick to accuse us of “Islamophobia”, or intolerance, if we even attempt to discuss the problem. The problem is honor killings perpetrated by Islam, not some vague, honor killing problem floating around out there.

Nor is there anything keeping moderate Moslems from speaking out against this practice, not in the US. If they are Episcopalians at heart (so to speak), why aren’t they already doing this?

(By the way—you attempt to shift the blame for honor killings, and other problems with Islam, to African, and Hindu cultures—this seems to me more of “Islam is never to blame!)

Oct 28, 2009 - 10:51 am 90. Anonymous:

“…who said that honor killings exist “deep in the isolated hills of Appalachian Kentucky… (and is) prevalent in clannish societies.”

That’s Bubba killin’ Earl for messin’ with his wife… a miles more sensible and healthy concept of “honor” worth killing over than anything nursed by brain-dead, cowardly and twisted islamo-clods.

Oct 28, 2009 - 11:01 am 91. Boyd:

“And if my passion is too much for Boyd or other posters too bad.”

Stalin was passionate.
Lenin was passionate.
Hitler was passionate.
The Marquis DeSade was passionate.

If mere passion was enough to get at the truth we would be there by now. It helps to be right. It helps to be civil.

Oct 28, 2009 - 11:43 am 92. Hans Mast:

BettyBlue:

Well, yes, Hans, I am listening; despite some vague, token remarks about some Islamic teachings that need to be opposed (which ones? You don’t go into detail)

No, actually, you’re not listening or paying attention.

Hans wrote:

Honor killings, no matter their motivation, need to be opposed. [...]

honor killings, against compulsory veiling, against repression of women, against FGM, etc

Oct 28, 2009 - 12:05 pm 93. Hans Mast:

“…who said that honor killings exist “deep in the isolated hills of Appalachian Kentucky… (and is) prevalent in clannish societies.”

That’s Bubba killin’ Earl for messin’ with his wife… a miles more sensible and healthy concept of “honor” worth killing over than anything nursed by brain-dead, cowardly and twisted islamo-clods.

90. Anonymous does an excellent job of illustrating how we can be unwittingly and subconsciously unfair to the moderate populace of Islamic nations. Anonymous and I (or at least I) would never kill Earl for messing with my wife, but both of us sort chuckle when Bubba does it and figure Earl had it coming because we see messing with someone’s wife as being very wrong.

Moderate Muslims see leaving Islam (or whatever precipitates the honor killing) as being very, very wrong (and a hateful rejection of your family to boot) and they often feel the same way about the honor killing as we do about Bubba and Earl: we wouldn’t do it ourselves and we know it’s wrong and should be stopped, but Earl is a real jerk that had it coming, so why get involved in a nasty brawl to protect such a lowlife?

When you actually live with these moderate Muslims and realize that they’re people just like us that must make a living in a tough world and make lots of very difficult decisions–far more difficult and dangerous decisions than most cushy-living Americans have to make–we find it much more difficult to make silly blanket statements like, “Well, why aren’t these ‘moderate Muslims’ stopping these bad things?” What are they going to do? Train with ISI and be the friendly neighborhood Michael Weston stopping honor killings?

This realization and point of view doesn’t change the facts: honor killings are wrong, must be opposed by us and moderate Muslims, but it’s simply human nature 101 that we should understand where they’re coming from or we’ll alienate them post-haste. If I go live in a Muslim nation again and as I interact with Muslim friends in America, I can be a force for good. My Muslim friends listen to me and respect what I say. (Some of my Muslim friends who were huge Obama fans before they met me now realize that McCain was a much better choice in many respects.) I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t feel the same about BettyBlue, blotto, etc.

The pen is far mightier than the sword.

Oct 28, 2009 - 12:27 pm 94. Charles Stevens:

Three points must be made here, one of them an error in logic, and the other two involving flawed assumptions…
1) Logically, just because brutal practices such as honor killings can be found in other societies, does NOT make it incorrect to say that Islam supports honor killings.
2) It is incorrect to assume that Islam is just a religion. It is instead a socio-political ideology, rooted in Arabic concepts, mores, and culture. It is a feedback loop… Arabic culture supports the ideology which in turn supports the culture. As one example, 40 years ago Indonesian Muslim women did not wear clothes based on traditional Arabic garb. Now however, as Islam has become the “strong horse” in that country, womens’ garb has changed significantly. As a final example, Islam considers the only true Koran to be that written in Arabic.
3) There can be no “moderate” Muslims without the strong horse of a democratically endowed set of laws that inherently oppose most aspects of Sharia. In other words, such Muslims are apostates that would quickly be forced to succumb to true Islam if they lived somewhere other than a Western society.

Oct 28, 2009 - 1:09 pm 95. Charles Stevens:

Some further explication…

- My former post should have referred to so-called moderate Muslims living in a Western and/or strongly Westernized society. Note the repeated emphasis on the use of strength, which ultimately is all that can contain true Islam.

- What the Bible relates about killing by Jews is DESCRIPTIVE of certain long-past historical incidents; however, what the Koran states about killing is PRESCRIPTIVE and applies to all Muslims today and in the future. It is illogical to conflate the two.

It is currently a tossup as to who will take over the remains of Western society first, either the leftists with their secular-humanist religion, or Islam. The more that Westerners buy into flawed leftist games such as moral equivalence, the more they become dhimmis to Islam. Thus since leftists have no philosophical means to confront Islam, the final winner will be Islam.

Oct 28, 2009 - 2:39 pm 96. blotto:

boyd: Oh boy, you are funny. LMAO! Got nothing to add to the discussion or intelligently rebut me so you try to, what… marginalize me, make fun of me? What? What you don’t understand because your arrogance negates thought especially-thought and consequences-is that you just made a fool of yourself.

Oct 28, 2009 - 3:00 pm 97. Hans Mast:

Well said, Charles Stevens. I would slightly modify your last point to “There can be no ‘moderate’ Muslims that effect change without the strong…” (Just clarifying that one can be theoretically moderate in thought under Sharia, but not doing anything to change things.)

Oct 28, 2009 - 3:01 pm 98. Bilgeman:

#93 Hans Mast:
“90. Anonymous does an excellent job of illustrating how we can be unwittingly and subconsciously unfair to the moderate populace of Islamic nations.”

True enough, but both yourself and #90 Anonymous are both being unfair to the residents of Appalachia, since one can usually avoid an “honor killing” by agreeing to be the groom in a “shotgun wedding”.

Y’see…now THAT’S being “moderate”.

And is, in a hill-folk wisdom kind of way, an even more exquisite punishment than the killing, since the misery can last for decades.

Oct 28, 2009 - 3:46 pm 99. Bookworm Room » It’s so not PC, but I like it:

[...] Murders women who try to escape the subjugation imposed against them (or just murders women by refusing to allow them the right to escape death). [...]

Oct 28, 2009 - 4:15 pm 100. Spinning Out Of Control: Honor Killings and Media Bias — by Phyllis Chesler :: Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.):

[...] Spinning Out Of Control: Honor Killings and Media Bias — by Phyllis Chesler [...]

Oct 28, 2009 - 4:28 pm 101. BettyBlue:

I am, listening Hans. And what you’re saying is, “It’s never Islam’s fault!”

And, quite honestly, I do not care what your “moderate” Moslem friends think of me, or any other poster here—And, again, I ask—if they truly are upset by this, why do they not speak out?

(Gotta tell ya, Hans—if they really do equate the women and girls murdered in honor killings with “Earl” in the “Bubba and Earl” comparison, i.e, “Earl is a real jerk, and had it coming, so why get involved in a nasty brawl to save his life”, then, far as I’m concerned, they’re scumbags,and being disliked by such creatures is something to be proud of. Yeah, those bad women, or apostates, were just jerks, who had it coming to them! So why get involved to save their worthless lives? Lovely people. And so very moderate.)

Oct 28, 2009 - 4:37 pm 102. digitalis:

It’s time to start banning people from countries who practice this evil. We used to have a sane immigration policy but thanks to the Marxist strategy of destroying countries through mass immigration to prepare us for World Governmant we can no longer count on a rational policy. Why would anyone come here if they know they will never fit in nor even want to? What’s in it for them? The only answer I can think of is they are part of a plan to infiltrate and take over. Nothing else makes sense. You come here, continue to expect and demand that your cultural practices will prevail. So why did you leave your home country in the first place? It’s not as if they just speak a different language. Their entire world view clashes with that of the West. Stop allowing this form of immigration and we have to start seriously thinking about deportation as well. No doubt if you print this there will be the usual rants and hysteria coming from the radical lefties, but I couldn’t give a rat’s behind. We are losing our country and having it stolen from us. We never gave permission for the mess that has been created and our permission is our right to give.

Oct 28, 2009 - 7:47 pm 103. logos1j1:

My original point, addressed to Phyllis, remains unchallenged except by hysteria or “It doesn’t matter.” It does matter, and to reiterate, the point was this: honor killing is not unique to Islam, so to imply or state explicitly that it is in order to attack Islam is wrong and counterproductive. Honor killings occur TODAY, IN THE US, by other groups: most notably Sikhs. They have occurred throughout history all around the world: in fact it is almost universal. (As an aside, the origin of honor killings appears to be the absence of a centralized government. In this sociological landscape it falls on each family head to rein in its members and enforce the social contract. It then survives the institution of centralized power in most cases.) Christianity is the only religion to displace this practice with its philosophy of non-violence in the face of insult (Luke 6:29), forgiveness, redemption, and love for one’s ENEMIES (Matthew 5:43), and the institution of secular government based on this. By refusing to acknowledge this we give our opposition – the liberal left and Islamic apologists – ammunition: they can PROVE us wrong here, they imply our other claims are wrong too. And there’s no reason to do this! Islam IS uniquely evil in many ways. We’ve discussed this, in detail on this blog many times, and that’s good. We need to continue to do this, but when it comes to honor killings we need to take a different tack: that it is a problem within Islam but that it is not just an Islamic problem.

I also noted that honor killing is not the only issue in Rifka Bary’s case. Her life is in danger primarily because she converted to Christianity, and it is in danger not only from her family but from ANY Muslim who knows she is an apostate – and now her pictures are plastered all over the world, literally.

George Jochnowitz,
Time for your Biblical proof that CHRISTIANS are COMMANDED to BURN witches – or a retraction of that slanderous claim. Are you man enough to do this? We shall see.

blotto,
You called me a fool and then accused me of DEFENDING honor killings (23). Once again: show the quote or admit it is a false accusation. There is no quote, of course.

You’re completely hysterical. Everyone who disagrees with you is a moron? 63: “I can’t believe you morons on both sides.” (See, that’s an example of providing a quote as evidence for a claim. Might try it sometime.)

You accuse me of not being willing to criticize Islam: 23: “Have you no shame …. that for one minute you can actually criticize Islam.” (See how easy this is!) Then when I point out that I’ve done so many times you say it’s a lame defense! 33: “I have no idea of your previous posts, so to use that as a defense is pretty lame.” If you don’t know what you’re talking about, shut up. Providing my own words as a defense for what I can and cannot say is not lame – it’s proof! I could have made it easy for you by linking to them but I decided to see if you would make any effort at all. Like George you didn’t, because you knew you would discover nothing to support your claims.

33: “I did not say anything about your political leanings….” Wrong: you did: 23: “So Logos, I hope you are happy. I hope all THE HATRED YOU HAVE TOWARD AMERICA is worth the life of this and other young girls. Oh, and do not tell us THAT THE LEFT cares about human rights…. You make me sick.” (My emphasis.) The clear meaning of this statement is that a) I hate America, my own country, b) I am of the left and, c) I don’t care about human rights. You don’t even know what YOU’RE saying: how can you hope to understand anyone else. Pathetic. I expect nothing from you except, perhaps, more ridiculous, hysterical vitriol.

Oct 28, 2009 - 9:59 pm 104. logos1j1:

George Jochnowitz 55, MiamaMan 62,

George: your misuse of the Bible is getting tiresome, but this at least does not rise to the level of slander.

The concept of an afterlife was universal in the ancient near east, the only question being its nature. The idea of a possible life of bliss goes all the way back to the Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh – to find it was his quest, Utnapishtim and his wife had attained it. The concept of Hell was also common, if not universal. The Hebrew concept of Sheol has to be understood in this context, for this was the milieu in which it existed. As Hans pointed out (53) the account of Saul and the witch of Endor clearly shows that the Hebrews believed that the soul survived death. David’s quote regarding his dead son that, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23) likewise shows this – you can’t GO TO someone who no longer exists! David could easily have said simply that he, too, would die someday, but this is NOT what he said, or what he intended. And in the famous 23rd Psalm he says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE. AND [then] I will dwell in the house of the Lord FOREVER.” (My emphasis.) This is to show simply that the ancient Hebrews believed in an afterlife. Now to Hell: Hell is simply the counterpart to Heaven. The Isaiah passage which speaks of Hell, to which Hans refers (66:24) is directly juxtaposed to the two verses which come before it which speak of Heaven. So the soul survives death; good souls (of those who worship God) go to Heaven, the evil go to Hell. The afterlife generally, or the grave, is referred to as Sheol. Now Jesus comes along. In Luke 16:20ff. He speaks of Heaven and Hell (the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.) There are many other places where He speaks of Heaven and Hell. Don’t object yet that this is the New Testament: my point is that Jesus was explicating the OLD Testament: the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. And He’s speaking of Heaven AND Hell AND: His audience understands what He is talking about. They didn’t say, “Hell? What’s that? Where’d He get that?” So what’s going on? The Jews clearly understood what Christ was talking about and that it was compatible with their religion. Most of them would have agreed with Him on the subject, and indeed there is very little conflict recorded on this subject, whereas there is much conflict on other subjects. But there was one group that disagreed – a very small but influential group: the Sadducees. Not on the subject of Hell per se, but the afterlife in general. The Sadducees tried to create a situation making the idea of an afterlife seem ridiculous, to trip Jesus up. Jesus’ answer goes all the way back to Exodus 3:6 when God says, “I AM…. the God of Abraham.” Jesus pointed out that God can’t BE the God of a nonexistent entity: therefore Abraham must still exist, therefore there is an afterlife. The Scribes, allied with the Pharisees on the subject, were pleased with the answer (Luke 20:39, Matthew 22:33-34) which they had not thought of before in all of their contentions on the subject. Later, in Acts 23:6ff., it is shown just how contentious this debate was. So this was not just Jesus’ view and later the Christian view. This was the majority view prior to Jesus and defended by the Pharisees (of which Paul was one) and the Scribes. The Sadducees were a small minority. Their view that there was no AFTERLIFE was in contradiction to the Old Testament, as shown above. The Pharisees and scribes of that day would have agreed with the current Christian view concerning both Heaven and Hell, and they knew the Tanach inside and out. But later – after Christ (and I suspect at least in part as a reaction to Him) – the Sadducees’ view became dominant.

Now.

I think, perhaps, that you both have a mistaken view of exactly what Hell is and how people get there. Perhaps a view based on Dante? Ah, Dante! Great poem. Horrible theology. Hell is not about people being tortured eternally because God is in a pre-adolescent snit about not getting His way. This IS the Islamic view of Hell, and Dante’s Inferno is very like the Islamic Hell (though his view of Paradise is completely different than Islam’s, and quite beautiful). The point is this: SIN is what is causing all of the pain and misery and chaos in the universe. God wants to save us all from Sin (John 3:16), but we have free will and not all will choose to repent. So those who choose not to repent of Sin, being eternal beings, will continue to spread pain and misery forever – unless someday they are stopped and not allowed to do this anymore. This is what Hell is: it is basically isolation from those who’ve chosen to love God and do Good. If Hell did not exist then the whole universe would forever be awash in Sin, pain, misery and chaos. God will not allow that. But He also created eternal (in the sense of continuing forever once created) creatures with free wills. He will not undo that decision either. Hell is the natural result. Hell was created for the Devil and his angels, not for men (Matthew 25:41) and not one single person has to go to Hell: it is a choice. The lake of fire, I believe (and most Christians with me), is a metaphor for the suffering of those in Hell – the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:42) – which exists because unrepentant sin always causes sorrow and pain. The Bible never says (as Dante did) that devils get to torture its denizens for eternity or (as the Koran says) that GOD tortures them for eternity. It says simply that it is eternal, that it is punishment, and that they are in torment. But the torment is simply their own unrepentant hearts and the distance that this naturally creates between them and their Creator, from Whom only Joy can come. If we truly understood the nature of Sin, the nature of our eternal souls, and the lengths to which God has gone to save us, we would not think Hell cruel or unjust. But only God truly understands these things. A perversion of the concept of Hell – like Dante’s and Muhammed’s – makes things even worse.

Now MiamaMan: I’m really curious as to the other two “major flaws of Christianity.” Don’t worry, the Bible doesn’t command us to skin anyone alive, either!

Oct 29, 2009 - 12:53 am 105. Now and Then:

Stripped, bound, gagged, hung from a tree in the Kentucky woods, the word “FED” scrawled across his chest.

Oct 29, 2009 - 8:02 am 106. MiamaMan:

104. logos1j1:

Logos, I admire you, and hope you are not going to become one of the “psychos-of-the-much-writing”. Who is going to read all that diatribe? Now, prepare the Bowie Knife.

The 3 Major Flaws of Christianity:

1) Eternal Damnation: Not only cruel, but untenable and not true. Christian occult approach to Heaven and Hell childish. There are indeed heaven-like realms, purgatory-like realms, and hell-like realm, none of which are, perforce, eternal. Childish notions of non-Christians going to Hell, even Mel Gibbson’s catholic assertion that his Protestant wife goes to Hell (used as an example).

2) Jesus as the only son of God. Not true. Jesus unique, but an Avatar (direct incarnation of God) like a few others: Moses, Krishna, Rama, Buddha. Everyone a “son of God”. Jesus as the only redeemer of humanity’s sin: not true, not tenable.

3) Rejection of Metempsychosis, transmigration of the soul or reincarnation. Very Abrahamic. Accepted by Sanatana Dharma (Hindus and Buddhists), Plato and ancient Greece, neo-Platonists like Plotinus, early fathers of the Christian church like Origen. Made anathema by fanatic Bishops in Council of Nicea in year 500. No possible explanation of why a baby dies in a cruel world without it, but to resort to dogmatic mistaken assertion “one soul, one life”.

And I could go on, am only mentioning the 3 major flaws, there are several more.

Oct 29, 2009 - 4:56 pm 107. Hans Mast:

MiamaMan, it seems that one could safely relabel your list as “The 3 Major Ways Christianity is Different Than Buddhism/Hinduism/Eastern Mysticism”.

After visiting a Hindu Ganesh festival in Hyderabad and living in Thailand for 8 months, I chalk that up to being a very good thing.

Oct 29, 2009 - 7:05 pm 108. logos1j1:

MiamaMan,
Thanks. Just curious. Those are the things that set Christianity apart from all other religions. I can understand people’s struggle with the doctrine of Hell: it’s been a struggle for me too, and I think for all honest, thinking Christians. That’s why I took the time to answer it. And if someone slanders my religion I’m not going to take it lying down. But I’ll take your advice and take my foot off the pedal – a little. I’ve seen longer posts. I don’t pretend to know if anyone reads mine unless they respond.

Oct 30, 2009 - 1:07 am 109. anon:

MiamiMan 106

That is the problem with organized religions, monotheisms, in particular. They claim to have the answer, to have God on their side. Arrogantly, lending claim to the idea that it is all about us [humans] or in this case, them! The reality is otherwise; we are just a part of it, the same as the birds and bees and flowers and trees and so on and so forth, but not all of it.

Not having drawn from the great thinkers of our past; or not having thought the whole matter through; they have darkened our minds with ignorance and folly, distorting our yearning to develop to our full human potential, without which we shall never evolve to a level whereby we will experience the higher Being or God.

In Plato’s Republic, 10th Book, it describes how the souls of the dead were treated.

“Hear the words of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity, Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of mortal life. Your genius will not choose you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot choose a life which will become his destiny. Virtue is free and as a man honours or dishonours her, he will have more or less of her; the chooser is answerable- God is justified”.

It is all in lot, how we choose determines our destiny which may well end in heaven or hell.

Oct 30, 2009 - 2:40 am 110. MullahObama:

Why do Muslims and all these Easteners come to the West when they cannot assimilate into the main culture…Stay in your countries and live there happily ever after. A girl at the school where I work went to Mecca and came back wearing her Hijab…3 weeks after school started, she took it all off…Poor girl. This is America, where you can be anything you want to be..because we are FREEE!

Oct 30, 2009 - 7:27 am 111. Silence Do Good:

Sir Winston was correct when he said this about Islam…..” No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Oct 30, 2009 - 11:21 am 112. MiamaMan:

107. Hans Mast & 108. logos1j1:

You are both correct that these 3 flaws I postulated can be taken as a list of differences between these religions although that was not my intention. Moreover, I think you are going off a tangent. They are not only differences, but they strictly define your religion, for:

1) If you don’t believe Jesus is the only son of God and came to redeem everyone’s sins, then you are not a Christian. I say this is not tenable and not true, therefore a flaw.

2) Logos’s inquietude with eternal damnation is logical. Both Logos and Hans are obviously intelligent beings, and this concept does not pass the smell test. A Christian that deviates from this belief…is really a Christian? Flaw number 2.

3) Here is perhaps the most important point. I once entertained an epistolary argument with famous Catholic personality Bernadette Roberts, just on the reincarnation issue. She ended up being intolerant, chastised me, and, not being able to counterpoint me effectively, broke the communication. “One life, one soul” not tenable, not able to explain human cycle, unexplainable for babies who die early, one life not enough for the experiences needed by the soul. Can a Christian believe in reincarnation? You be the judge.

Oct 30, 2009 - 4:03 pm 113. logos1j1:

anon 109,
It seems to me that everyone who asserts an opinion claims to “have the answer” including those who say there is no answer. This is hardly unique to religion – “organized”, monotheistic or otherwise. MiamaMan claims to have the answer, and a very definite and distinct one at that. We (not just me and MiamaMan but human beings in general) differ not in having an answer we believe true but in what that answer is.

Christians do not believe this answer comes from themselves or from human reasoning but from God, and that it is available not just to them but to everyone. This is not a prideful position. It is very humbling, in fact.

The similarity of “they have darkened our minds with ignorance and folly” to Romans 1:21-22 is very intriguing.

Plato was more often than not full of crap. (The republic – had it been instituted – would have been an unmitigated, tyrannical disaster. This has come up before.) And to suggest that Christians have not read him and the other philosophers – really! And how, pray tell were those books preserved through the Middle Ages?! This is staggering! I’ll have to tell all the other Christians (about 75% of the class as I recall (at a secular university)) in Attic Greek all those years ago.

MiamaMan
Straight razor. Much more effective.

Oct 30, 2009 - 7:05 pm 114. MiamaMan:

113. logos1j1:

Wait, I did not say I had the answer, I only said I will try to explain it from the Vedic point of view.

[Christians do not believe this answer comes from themselves or from human reasoning but from God]

Sanatana Dharmis also believe everything comes from God, and repeat the Upanishad in Sanskrit: Brahma Ekam Eva Advitiyam. (God is One without a second).

[“they have darkened our minds with ignorance and folly”]

This is a great definition of Avidya, ignorance of God.

[MiamaMan
Straight razor. Much more effective.]

In the Katha Upanishad there is a line that states that the path to salvation is like walking on the sharp edge of a razor. This Somerset Maugham used for the title of his novel “The Razor’s Edge” after he visited Ramana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, next to the famous hill of Arunachala, I have lived in the Ashram and benefited from the spiritual atmosphere.

Tamil Nadu was much affected by the great Tsunami. The Christian church, treacherously, used the Tsunami to build hundreds of churches along the coast and to continue their foul, low, dirty, violent, campaign of conversion by trick, deceit, and phony miracles, targeting the poor. I have founded them there often, the groups of Evangelists from the US, arrogant, dogmatic, looking down on the Hindus, bringing the world of the Lord to the pagans, a sorry sight!

Oct 30, 2009 - 7:51 pm 115. logos1j1:

MiamaMan, 112:
Not sure how we “went off on a tangent.” I think we’re all agreed that your first point strictly defines Christianity: if it is not true, Christianity is not true (1 Corinthians 15:12ff.).

So far as children are concerned (or the unborn) if they die they go directly to Heaven (Mark 10:14). It seems very presumptuous to assume you know how much a soul “needs” before entering Heaven.

Beyond a belief in Christ as The Way, repentance of sins and baptism (Acts 2:38) I am loath to declare anyone not a Christian. Having said that, though, the notion of reincarnation is clearly at odds with the Bible: Hebrews 9:27 and the verses I quoted in 104 among others. It is also unprovable. Christians do not claim to come to these beliefs through logic but through revelation – the Bible. Reincarnation and life after death cannot be proved or disproved logically. Without a truthful revelation we simply have no information at all.

Oct 30, 2009 - 8:32 pm 116. On the Culture War « Pond’rings:

[...] While we all understand the US media is biased towards a liberal political viewpoint, few of us realize just how biased they are on the worldview front in general. To being with, there is a large blackout on anything that might be deemed harmful to Islam. Honor killings in the US, where the daughters of Muslim families are killed for impugning the honor of their families (for instance, if a Muslim girl is raped, the dishonor is on her head, and she must be killed to restore that honor), are consistently unreported. With a few exceptions, the mainstream media continue to kill stories about honor killings and attempted honor killings in North America. How often did you read stories about the honor killings that took place in Toronto (07), Dallas (08), Atlanta (08), Oak Forest, Illinois (08), Alexandria (08), Buffalo (09), and Kingston, Canada (09)—on and on, until the most recent attempted honor killing in Phoenix? -PajamasMedia [...]

Oct 30, 2009 - 11:02 pm 117. MiamaMan:

115. logos1j1:

[So far as children are concerned (or the unborn) if they die they go directly to Heaven (Mark 10:14). It seems very presumptuous to assume you know how much a soul “needs” before entering Heaven.]

Really? Do they go there with a child soul, or undeveloped soul? What heaven? My “presumption” about reincarnation is based several scriptures of Sanatana Dharma: Upanishads, Baghavad Gita, Vedas, PLUS the experiences of realized Sages and Yogis.

Yoga does not accept dogma, and logical arguments, although having its place, is considered inferior to knowledge by intuition and identity.

The notion of reincarnation not need be at odds with Christianity. The Bible is another story. The Christian gnostics, Origen, and others believed in it. The church thought that by declaring it anathema, people would concentrate on this life, the result was the opposite, as people now said: “it is only one life, so I am going to have it now”.

Revelation is a way to disguise a dogmatic position. Beware of anyone or any book that tell you this or that without providing means for the possibility of that being experienced by yourself right here.

Oct 31, 2009 - 6:38 am 118. logos1j1:

MiamaMan, 117:
“Do they go there with a child soul, or undeveloped soul?”

I suppose. What of it? I don’t see why this idea galls you so. Why shouldn’t an infant soul be accepted into the Presence of its Creator? And it will have all eternity to “develop” – the same as all other beings in Heaven.

“What heaven?”

Ah! MiamaMan! You rebuke me for being a “psycho writer” guy or whatever for my synopsis of Hell and then you tempt me with this?! I won’t be drawn. I’ll say only that Heaven/Paradise is essentially being in the very Presence of God and several scriptures give us insight into it, a few being: Luke 23:40-43 where Christ invites the thief, His fellow in crucifixion, to it; Acts 1:9-11, Christ’s ascention into it; Acts 7:54-55, Stephen’s vision of it; 2 Corinthians 12:3-4, Paul’s vision of or visit to it; Revelation 4:1-11, John’s vision of the Great White Throne of God. Make of it what you will.

“Yoga does not accept dogma…”

Yoga is dogma: “a system of principles or tenets, as of a church.” (Dictionary.com definition 1.) Reincarnation is dogma: “a settled or established opinion, belief or principle.” (ibid, definition 4.) It is impossible to live without dogma. Those who say they do are deceiving themselves. Your assertions of Yoga as a path to God, of pantheism/monism as a correct understanding of God and of reincarnation as the eternal experience of the soul are no less forcefully propounded than mine are. So if you are not dogmatic, fine: neither am I. But if I am dogmatic you must admit your own dogmatism, too.

“The notion of reincarnation not need be at odds with Christianity. The Bible is another story. The Christian gnostics, Origen, and others believed in it.”

Anything at odds with the Bible is at odds with Christianity. Christianity arises entirely and only from the Bible ( 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Revelation 22:18-19). The Gnostics were heretics: the entire book of 1 John is a rebuke of Gnosticism. Origen was a nut who castrated himself because he thought it would make him more spiritual. I won’t say he’s lost (review my point above) but he’s no one I want to emulate! And I’ve already shown reincarnation to be in contradiction to the Bible.

“Revelation is a way to disguise a dogmatic position.”

Nothing is disguised: Christianity is dogmatic. So are all other religions and systems of thought – otherwise they wouldn’t be systems of thought. I have never understood people’s tendency to deny this. “I’m not dogmatic” is a dogmatic statement. “We will reincarnate many times;” “We will die and be no more;” “Christ is the only way;” how, pray tell, is the last statement any more dogmatic than the first two?

“Beware of anyone or any book that tell you this or that without providing means for the possibility of that being experienced by yourself right here.”

I have experienced the saving grace of Christ, the Presence of the Holy Spirit, the overpowering Love of my Father.

Oct 31, 2009 - 3:43 pm 119. MiamaMan:

118. logos1j1:

1) Your statement: [Yoga is dogma:]

No, Yoga is the opposite of dogma, you define dogma well as “a system of principles or tenets, as of a church”. Yoga, on the contrary, is: a system of techniques and practices. Principles or tenets must be accepted as “principia”, but in Yoga you only accept what you experience yourself.

2) Your statement: [You rebuke me for being a “psycho writer”]

I never said that. I wrote “psycho-of-the-much-writing”, referring to those that write long. If that offended you, I apologize.

3) Your statement: “Reincarnation is dogma”.

I don’t think so. You would be benefited by reading “Reincarnation: The Missing Link In Christianity” by Elizabeth Clare:
http://www.amazon.com/Reincarnation-Christianity-Elizabeth-Clare-Prophet/dp/0922729271/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257035661&sr=1-2.

But more importantly, the classic and authoritative for being totally scientifically written book by Dr. Ian Stevenson “Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged (Paperback)”, which is a prove of it.
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Cases-Suggestive-Reincarnation-Enlarged/dp/0813908728/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257035661&sr=1-10

If anything, just read this last one.

4) Your statement: “It is impossible to live without dogma”

Religious dogma is the antithesis of spirituality. Jesus knew it. Organized religion definitely, totally, prevents spiritual advancement (entering into the Kingdom).

5) Your statement: [So are all other religions and systems of thought – otherwise they wouldn’t be systems of thought. I have never understood people’s tendency to deny this...]

That’s your limitation. Yoga is not a system of thought, but an scientifically mapped path of spiritual experiences toward Union with God (Yoke comes the Sanskrit Yoga). In the Christian world there have been Sages that practiced a Yoga; namely, Santa Teresa de Avila, San Juan de la Cruz, Ignatius Loyola, and Meister Eckhart.

The Prayer of Quiet of Santa Teresa is well recognized in Yoga. In the Dark Night of the Soul and The Ascent of Mount Carmel of San Juan, both, a Yogi, to his joy, finds innumerable similarities to his/her experiences. I mean, in perfect detail. The exercises of Loyola are, likewise, very close to Yoga practice.

Finally, as Meister Eckhart wrote:

“Only the hand that erases can write the true thing”

Oct 31, 2009 - 6:00 pm 120. Hans Mast:

What logos said.

Oct 31, 2009 - 11:11 pm 121. logos1j1:

MiamaMan, 119:

“I wrote “psycho-of-the-much-writing”, referring to those that write long. If that offended you, I apologize.”

I wasn’t insulted, I meant it tongue-in-cheek. I should have included a smiley face. No apology necessary.

Your arguments do not persuade me. I cherish my copy of Dark Night of the Soul. The Cloud of Unknowing was a life-changer.

Nov 1, 2009 - 2:30 am 122. MiamaMan:

121. logos1j1:

[Your arguments do not persuade me. I cherish my copy of Dark Night of the Soul. The Cloud of Unknowing was a life-changer.]

I know I won’t be able to persuade you. In reality, I never try to persuade anyone of anything, but my favorite topic is God. This is called Brahma Abhyasa (Brahma = God; Abhyasa = Practice).

In Panchadasi VII-106, Brahma-Abhyasa is defined as: “The practice of meditation on Brahman, the wise cognizer, means reflection on It, talking about It, mutually producing logical arguments about It – thus to be fully occupied with It alone.”

[I cherish my copy of Dark Night of the Soul. The Cloud of Unknowing was a life-changer.]

The Convent of the “Carmelitas Descalzas” in Avila where Santa Teresa lived and San Juan took confession by her, remains in my mind as one of the holiest places I have ever been in.

Nov 1, 2009 - 7:37 am 123. anon:

logosIjI .
113.

Plato was just one example from among the many, many great thinkers of our past, whose wealth of knowledge we may draw upon in our quest for the Higher being, or the Light or God. While many of them referred to the gods, none of them referred to a singular God or claimed to be a god.

The gods or God does not care, not a whit. To know this is not humbling, but liberating. We have been endowed with free will, if only we would exercise it to cultivate our own souls. Confucius; “the truly holy man is concerned with his own soul and not that of the souls of others”

In any event, how can anyone reconcile the subjugation, enslavement, rape and murder of young women with any god, be it one God or ten gods. “Honor” crimes are so breathtakingly, heartless, so unnatural, there are no words for them, other than “evil” An evil, which stems from an ideology, pervasive in man made or organised religions. Islam in particular, is so stagnated it has not even made its way out of the androcratic epoch. A system which denied and alienated the female component with all its creativity, life giving forces, nurturing qualities etc. In fact, everything that runs contrary to the natural order of the life force and to the detriment of their own societies. To quote Stendhal: “ the genius that is born of women is lost to the world”

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:36 am 124. logos1j1:

MiamaMan, 119:

“Yoga is not a system of thought, but an scientifically mapped path of spiritual experiences toward Union with God”

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The Bard, Romeo and Juliet.

anon, 123:

“we… quest for the Higher being, or the Light, or God.” …. “…how can anyone reconcile the subjugation, enslavement, rape and murder of young women with any god, be it one God or ten gods.”

These two statements contradict each other. In the first you agree there is a God (however you define Him/It) and talk about striving for Him/It. In the latter you give one of the most popular atheistic/agnostic denials of God. Which is it? As to the second point I would suggest reading C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain. I don’t think you’ll find a better treatment of this issue anywhere.

Atheists/agnostics have bigger problems: they cannot explain the existence of anything, or the development (”evolution”) of life, despite their arrogant and shrill assertions that their view is the only view that ought ever be taught. And they have no basis for any moral system at all: if “survival of the fittest” is the way of the world then what about murder, rape, slavery, cannibalism, etc. should gall us in the least? And this is why liberal relativism arises out of evolutionism as did Nazism and Maoism. Hitler was frankly trying to rid the world of the “lower races” – Darwin’s phrase; Mao cared not how many tens of millions died of starvation from his social experiment: the more resources left for the “fit”! These two “philosophers” (sluurp) were far more consistent in their world view than those before and after them who try to create out of whole cloth a system of “good without God.” So the question is not, Why does a good God allow evil, but rather if there is no God, or if God is not good, where does the notion of True Morality and Love come from at all?

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:31 pm 125. elspeth:

These people are taught that lying to the infidel is not only alright to do, but it is expected.

You can’t believe anything they say. They say what they think you want to hear. Non-muslims do not deserve the truth.

Saying honor killings does not have anything to do with Islam is a lie.

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:03 pm 126. logos1j1:

elspeth, 125:

“These people are taught that lying to the infidel is not only alright to do, but it is expected.”

Correct. It is a DOCTRINE, in fact: called taqiyya. I have mentioned this before, and once again I will recommend Raymond Ibrahim’s excellent treatment of the subject on his website raymondibrahim.com. This is essential to understanding the true nature of Islam and should not be left out of any discussion of it.

“Saying honor killings does not have anything to do with Islam is a lie.”

Not exactly. Honor killing per se is a broader issue.

Nov 2, 2009 - 4:41 pm

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