Fundamentalist "Christians" and Muslims: United in Anti-Gay Hatred

Pink News is reporting that the Islamic executioner responsible for having numerous men suspected of being gay thrown from rooftops of tall buildings has been captured by Iraqi security forces.  These horrific murders were motivated by ISIS' selective reading of the Koran which is not consistent with Islam during its golden age.  Back here in America, Right Wing Watch ("RWW") is reporting on the efforts of self-style fundamentalist Christian "leaders" to “re-horrify society about the sin of homosexuality."  Like their Islamic extremists counterparts, this effort is based on a selective reading of the Bible which transforms the Bible into a message of hatred.  Indeed, the only difference between the two groups is the degree of violence - at least so far - the "Christians" are willing to use against gay individuals.  As is the norm with these "Christians" mentioned by RWW, neither Linda Harvey nor Peter LaBarbera - both of who I have had email debates with in the past - have any legitimate credentials to qualify them as experts on sexuality, mental health or medical issues.  Both merely set up "ministries" that allow them to shrill for money while disseminating hatred.   Here are highlights from the Pink News piece:

Security forces in Iraq have captured a ISIS executioner who was notorious for homophobic murders.  Thousands of LGBT people have been displaced in Iraq and Syria, as the terrorist group known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continues to actively target and execute gay men. 

The terrorist group has taunted the West with a string of  ‘death to gays’ execution videos, showing men accused of homosexuality being thrown off buildings and pelted with stones.

One of the ISIS executioners who most aggressively targeted gay people was captured this week.  Abu Omer, a senior jihadi executioner known as ‘White Beard’, had ruled the city of Mosul with an iron fist until the city was retaken by security forces last year.  . . . . according to The Times, he was arrested on January 1 after officials were tipped off about his hiding place in the city.

Among the vicious attacks: ISIL has tied nooses around these men’s necks and dragged them behind trucks, burned them alive, thrown them off buildings and stoned them to death.

The report states: “ISIL has unleashed a reign of terror against civilians and vulnerable minorities living in areas it has seized, including barbarous violence against LGBTQ people.  “ISIL’s extreme ideology is interpreted by its followers to require the death penalty for those who engage in sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage, including same-sex sexual relations.”

Turning to the Right Wing Watch article, note how these parasitic American Taliban members repeat the lie that gays are sexual predators (most are, in fact, heterosexual men):

On a recent episode of her “Mission America” radio show, Linda Harvey interviewed fellow anti-LGBTQ activist Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality about the importance of working to “re-horrify” society about the sin of homosexuality.

The two lamented that homosexuality is now widely accepted in America, with Harvey voicing her alarm that it is even welcomed in public schools where “predators” are allowed to use LGBTQ clubs to target children for recruitment.

“So many of these groups are predators,” she said. “I believe that the homosexual clubs in schools are just red flags for predators. I think that they exist there as an audience to continue to fast track kids into the lifestyle, network with adults—I mean, who knows what goes on there.”

“How do we re-horrify people about the sin of homosexuality?” she wondered. “People are becoming so comfortable with this, even people on our side. We need to re-horrify them.” 

From my past interactions with both Harvey and LaBarbera, in my opinion, they are mentally unbalanced and might benefit from a mental health intervention. 

Trump Tells Muslims to Drive out Extremists as He Panders to Christofascists at Home

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Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans like to depict every Muslim as a would be extremist and terrorist.  Meanwhile, back home in America Trump and the GOP in general prostitute themselves to Christian extremists every bit as consumed by hatred of those who are different and who reject their Medieval beliefs as are the "radical Islamic extremist: that Trump and the GOP so love to condemn.  I have no love for Islamic terrorists, but if we are going to condemn religious extremism and religious based hatred, then ALL faiths that spread hatred ought to be cited and moderates of those faiths should be called upon to drive out and discredit the extremists.  New York Magazine looks at Der Trumpenführer's comments to Muslim leaders that ought to be applied her at home to the majority of evangelical Christians and virtually every "family values" group that preaches hatred and division.  Here are article highlights:

President Donald Trump delivered his first major speech on the world stage in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, a rallying cry to leaders in the Muslim world “to take the lead in combating radicalization.”

“We must be united in pursuing the one goal that transcends every other consideration,” Trump said to the more than 50 leaders gathered in the opulently decorated room. “That goal is to meet history’s great test — to conquer extremism and vanquish the forces of terrorism.”

Trump did not use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” in his address – though he had repeatedly accused Obama of failing to use that phrase during the campaign. In what did seem like a jab to the previous administration, Trump promised that the United States was not here to “lecture,” but to offer its partnership in combatting the scourge of extremist ideology and terrorism. And yet, Trump issued his own demands: . . . . A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out.”

Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy lands. And drive them out of this earth.”

Trump was mostly short on strategy to “defeat terrorism and send its wicked ideology into oblivion,” though he called on Muslim countries to deny “territory to foot soldiers of evil” and access to funds. To this end, Trump announced two broad initiatives: the creation of the “groundbreaking” Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, to be based in Saudi Arabia, and, later, an agreement to form a Terrorist Financing Targeting Center that would be co-chaired by the United States and Saudi Arabia and include the six countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Trump also used his platform to condemn Iran, a direct denunciation that was eagerly welcomed by the president’s Saudi hosts, who considered Obama’s approach toward their regional enemy too conciliatory. . . . . Trump also criticized Iran for its “destabilizing interventions in of Syria,” though he noticeably failed to mention the other key destabilizing force: Russia.

Pretty words but likely disingenuous and filled with hypocrisy.  Trump preaches to Muslim leaders yet the GOP allowed its platform to be drafted by Christian extremists some of who have documented ties to white supremacy groups.  Trump ought to practice at home what he preaches abroad.  The Christofascists should be treated in the identical manner Trump wants Islamic extremists.  Both groups are a blight on human kind.  Oh, and did I mention that Saudi Arabia is the number one financial backer of Islamic fundamentalism and the terror it breads.

Christian Extremists and Islamic Extremists - There is Little Difference

Some will immediately that offense with the title of this post and immediately mount an argument of why I am wrong in my point of view.  But in my view, there are three traits common to Christian extremists and Islamic extremists: (i) hatred of others who are different, (ii) an unfounded sense of self-righteousness and piousness, and (iii) a fear, if not hatred, of modernity and modern knowledge. The only difference that in current times, Christian extremists have not been willing to resort to wholesale murder and violence.  Such, however, was not always the case and one need only look at the genocide committed by white Christians against Native Americans, both in North and South America, the Crusades, Europe's wars of religion, the massacre of "Old Believers" in Russia, the murder of Muslims in Nigeria at the directive of an Anglican archbishop, or the relatively recent murder and destruction of Catholic versus Protestant in Northern Ireland to realize that the relative peacefulness (at least compared to past atrocities) of Christians is not the historic norm.  In modern times, of course, gays are a favored group for attack by both Christofascists and Islamic Extremists. A piece in Patheos sums up what Christofascists think of LGBT individuals:

Baptist Church Senior Pastor Robby Gallaty told his large congregation that Christians should never stop discriminating against homosexuals, claiming that gays could choose to be straight if they only accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Gallaty explained why gays should be put to death:

God said that the sins of the people had infected the very land in which they live. So what happens to people who engage in this activity, this sexual immoral activity? Go to Leviticus 20, God gives us the punishment for engaging in these sins… ‘If a man sleeps with a man as with a woman, they have both committed a detestable thing. They must be put to death. And their blood is on their own hands.’

Pastor Gallaty tried to justify his Biblically inspired hatred for gays and lesbians by repeatedly trying to argue that being gay is a choice, and some sort of rebellion against his imaginary God’s divine plan.

And let's not forget that a number of the Republican presidential candidates last year attended a rally hosted by another "man of god" who supports the murder of gays.

Now, travel half way around the world to the Islamic Russian Republic of Chechnya where a pogrom to kill gays is underway.  Like Pastor Gallaty, pro-Kremlin leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, views gays as an affront to Allah that need to be eliminated.  Indeed, he has declared that gays will be eliminated from the republic by May 26, 2017, for the start of Ramadan.  The New York Times looks at the horrors taking place.  Here are excerpts:

GROZNY, Russia — It was supposed to be a night out. But for the young man who calls himself Maksim, as for scores of other gay men arrested in a pogrom this month in Russia’s Chechnya region, it pivoted into nearly two weeks of beatings and torture.

Maksim said it had started with a chat room conversation with “a very good old friend who is also gay,” and who suggested that they meet at an apartment. When Maksim arrived, however, he was greeted not by his friend but by agents who beat him. Later, they strapped him to a chair, attached electrical wires to his hands with alligator clips and began an interrogation.

“They yelled, ‘Who else do you know?’” Maksim said, and zapped him with current from time to time. “It was unbearably painful; I was hanging on with my last strength,” he added. “But I didn’t tell them anything.”

Gay men have never had an easy life in Chechnya. But the targeted, collective punishment of gays that began last month under its pro-Kremlin leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, is a new turn in the region’s long history of rights abuses.

The sweep has been widely condemned by Western governments, the United Nations and rights groups. Activists in Russia have set up an underground network to spirit the victims out of Chechnya and to protect them from potentially violent reprisals from their families and others. The victims use assumed names in their everyday dealings. Homosexuality is taboo in Chechnya and the mostly Muslim surrounding areas of the Caucasus region in southern Russia. “This society is highly homophobic,” said Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project director for the International Crisis Group and an authority on Chechnya. “Homosexuality is condemned. It is believed Islam considers it a great sin.” Among the fatalities documented by the organization were one man who succumbed during torture and two others who died in “honor killings” by relatives after the police released them. In a televised meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday, Mr. Kadyrov characterized as “libelous” news reports that the security services in Chechnya had been persecuting gay men.

Two different religions, yet the same mindset.  It should come as little surprise that Vladimir Putin is looking the other way in Chechnya since his anti-LGBT laws were enacted as part of his effort to win support from the vitriolically anti-gay Russian Orthodox Church. 

Christofascists point to Leviticus as justification, even though it was written by ignorant, uneducated authors of over 2500 years ago and most of its other prohibitions are completely ignored by the "godly folk."  In the case of Islam, the Koran was largely authored by an individual who in modern society would be placed in a mental institution.   Religion is truly a curse on mankind.

The Hypocrisy of Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

Statistically, the vast majority of mass shootings and acts of terrorism in America are committed by white, male Christians.  This inconvenient reality is ignored time and time again by those on the right who always describe the shooters as "lone wolves" and reject any suggestion that terrorist acts by Christians and gun loving, knuckle dragging whites is a problem.  The shootings at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood center by Robert Lewis Dear, reportedly an end times Christian, and the right's reaction are an example.  Yet, after the shootings in San Bernadino, the right is in a frenzy depicting all Muslims as would be terrorists.  A column in the Washington Post lloooks at the hypocrisy and double standard at play.  Here are highlights:

The most recent act of horrific violence in the United States — in San Bernardino, Calif. — was reportedly perpetrated by a Muslim man and woman. There are about 3 million Muslims in the United States, almost all of whom are law-abiding citizens. How should they react to the actions of the couple who killed 14 people on Wednesday? 

The most commonly heard response is that Muslims must immediately and loudly condemn these acts of barbarity. But Dalia Mogahed, a Muslim American leader, argues eloquently that this is unfair. She made her case to NBC’s Chuck Todd.

“According to the FBI, the majority of domestic terrorist attacks are actually committed by white, male Christians. . . . When those things occur, we don’t suspect other people who share their faith and ethnicity of condoning them. We assume that these things outrage them just as much as they do anyone else. And we have to afford that same assumption of innocence to Muslims.” 

Muslims face a double standard, but I understand why. Muslim terrorists don’t just happen to be Muslim. They claim to be motivated by religion, cite religious justifications for their actions and tell their fellow Muslims to follow in their bloody path. . . . .it is important for the majority of Muslims who profoundly disagree with jihad to speak up.

But it is also important to remember that there are 1.6 billion Muslims on the planet. If you took the total number of deaths from terrorism last year — about 30,000 — and assumed that 50 people were involved in planning each one (a vastly exaggerated estimate), it would still add up to less than 0.1 percent of the world’s Muslims. 

While I believe that Muslims do bear a responsibility to speak up, non-Muslims also have a responsibility not to make assumptions about them based on such a small minority. Individuals should be judged as individuals and not placed under suspicion for some “group characteristic.” It is dehumanizing and un-American to do otherwise.

What is most bizarre is to hear this anti-Muslim rhetoric described as brave truth-telling. Trump insists that he will not be silenced on this issue. Chris Christie says that he will not follow a “politically correct” national security policy. They are simply feeding a prejudice. The reality is that Muslims are today the most despised minority in America. Their faith is constantly criticized, and they face insults, discrimination and a dramatic rise in acts of violence against them, as Max Fisher of Vox has detailed superbly. And the leading Republican candidate has flirted with the idea of registering Muslims, a form of collective punishment that has not been seen since the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. 

This is the first time that I can recall watching politicians pander to mobs — and then congratulate themselves for their political courage.

If the right wants to apply this standard to Muslims, lets apply it to right wing Christians as well.  Let's assume they all support attacks on Planned Parenthood facilities - I suspect many, in fact do - the murder of abortion providers, and the murder of gays.  And let's start demanding that other Christians repeatedly and loudly condemn them.  And if they fail to do so, then let's start treating them all as would be terrorists too.

The Civil War Within Islam

The American far right likes to paint Islam with a broad brush and equate all Muslims with violent and brutal Islamic extremists such as those who flew planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and more recently massacred innocents in Paris.  In fact, Islam is no more unified than the adherents of Christianity who range from Christian dominionists who want a Christian theocracy and advocate executing gays and others they view as non-believers to liberal Episcopalians and Lutherans.  To hold all Muslims responsible for the sins and horrible acts of the few is akin to holding modern day Lutherans and Episcopalians fully responsible the horrors done by the knuckle dragging evangelical fundamentalists.  Yes, the liberals of both faiths need to loudly condemn the hate and embrace of ignorance that defines the fundamentalist believers - something both groups of liberals and moderates fail to do sufficiently - but one must not miss the reality that a civil war is raging in Islam with large segments of the faithful opposing extremists.  The New York Times looks at what is happening in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation (I suspect that most American Bible thumpers do not even know that Indonesia is a Muslim nation).  Note the role of Saudi Arabia, America's false ally, in exporting extremist versions of Islam.   Here are article highlights:

The scene is horrifyingly familiar. Islamic State soldiers march a line of prisoners to a riverbank, shoot them one by one and dump their bodies over a blood-soaked dock into the water.

But instead of the celebratory music and words of praise expected in a jihadi video, the soundtrack features the former Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, singing a Javanese mystical poem: “Many who memorize the Quran and Hadith love to condemn others as infidels while ignoring their own infidelity to God, their hearts and minds still mired in filth.”

That powerful scene is one of many in a 90-minute film that amounts to a relentless, religious repudiation of the Islamic State and the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world’s largest Muslim group to challenge its ideology head-on.

The challenge, perhaps surprisingly, comes from Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population but which lies thousands of miles away from the Islamic State’s base in the Middle East.

“The spread of a shallow understanding of Islam renders this situation critical, as highly vocal elements within the Muslim population at large — extremist groups — justify their harsh and often savage behavior by claiming to act in accord with God’s commands, although they are grievously mistaken,” said A. Mustofa Bisri, the spiritual leader of the group, Nahdlatul Ulama, an Indonesian Muslim organization that claims more than 50 million members.

“According to the Sunni view of Islam,” he said, “every aspect and expression of religion should be imbued with love and compassion, and foster the perfection of human nature.”

This message of tolerance is at the heart of the group’s campaign against jihadism, which will be carried out online, and in hotel conference rooms and convention centers from North America to Europe to Asia. The film was released Thursday at the start of a three-day congress by the organization’s youth wing in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta.

As world leaders call for Muslims to take the lead in the ideological battle against a growing and increasingly violent offshoot of their own religion, analysts say the group’s campaign is a welcome antidote to jihadism.

The campaign by Nahdlatul Ulama, known as N.U., for a liberal, pluralistic Islam also comes at a time when Islam is at war with itself over central theological questions of how the faith is defined in the modern era.

In a way, it should not be surprising that this message comes from Indonesia, the home of Islam Nusantara, widely seen as one of the most progressive Islamic movements in the world. The movement — its name is Indonesian for “East Indies Islam” — dates back more than 500 years and promotes a spiritual interpretation of Islam that stresses nonviolence, inclusiveness and acceptance of other religions.

Indonesian Islam blended with local religious beliefs and traditions, creating a pluralistic society despite having a Muslim majority.

Indonesia today has more than 190 million Muslims, but also has a secular government and influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.

Such liberalism poses a counterargument to the Islamic State, analysts said.  “We are directly challenging the idea of ISIS, which wants Islam to be uniform, meaning that if there is any other idea of Islam that is not following their ideas, those people are infidels who must be killed,” said Yahya Cholil Staquf, general secretary to the N.U. supreme council. “We will show that is not the case with Islam.”

N.U. has established a nonprofit organization, Bayt ar-Rahmah, in Winston-Salem, N.C., which will be the hub for international activities including conferences and seminars to promote Indonesia’s tradition of nonviolent, pluralistic Islam, Mr. Yahya said.

N.U. is also working with the University of Vienna in Austria, which collects and analyzes ISIS propaganda, to prepare responses to those messages, which N.U. will disseminate online and at conferences.

A prevention center based in Indonesia, expected to be operational by the end of the year, will train male and female Arabic-speaking students to engage with jihadist ideology and messaging under the guidance of N.U. theologians who are consulting Western academia.

In scene after scene, they challenge and denounce the Islamic State’s interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith, the book of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings, as factually wrong and perverse.

The Islamic State’s theology, rooted in the fundamentalist Wahhabi movement, takes its cues from medieval Islamic jurisprudence, where slavery and execution of prisoners was accepted. The filmmakers accept the legitimacy of those positions for the time but argue that Islamic law needs to be updated to 21st-century norms.

“The problem with Middle East Islam is they have what I call religious racism,” said Azyumardi Azra, an Islamic scholar and former rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta. “They feel that only the Arabs are real Muslims and the others are not.”

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the main source of financial support for Wahhabism worldwide, has had more success in imposing its interpretation and has even made inroads in Indonesia. Analysts say a steady flow of money from Persian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, supports an active and growing Wahhabist movement here.

Hedieh Mirahmadi, president of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education, an organization based in Washington that works to combat extremism, said that, according to open source data, supporters of the Islamic State were sending an average of 2.8 million messages a day to their followers on Twitter.

“Who’s going to counter that?” she asked.  “It’s what they are doing in Indonesia, it’s what we are doing in the U.S., and in other places,” she said. “You flood the space, and you hope people get the right messages.”

Frankly, to me it is maddening that the United States doesn't have a very blunt conversation with the Saudi royals.  Either the export of extremism abroad stops or America needs to drastically rethink its support for the Saudi royals and make it clear that Saudi funds in American banks will be frozen and/or confiscated.  The Saudi regime can crack down on moderates and bloggers but turns a blind eye to the export of Wahhabism.   This is simply unacceptable.

As for Muslims in the USA, my Muslim clients are incredibly hard working and want nothing to do with extremism - they came to America to escape it and make a better life for themselves and their families.   Just like most of our ancestors did. 

Is ISIS Pushing Russia and the West Closer Together?

While the extremist leading ISIS may have no concern about the possibility of uniting Russia and the West by taking terror attacks against both western Europe and the Russia, from historical perspective, they may be playing with fire.  Over the centuries when faced with a common foe, Russia has sided with some or all of the the West.  This trend dates back to at least the Napoleonic Wars when Tsar Alexander I and Russia's armies played a major role in defeating Napoleon.   World War I saw a similar alliance against Germany and Austria-Hungry.  The same phenomenon occurred again in World War II.  With Russia's historic distrust of the Islamic peoples to its south and southeast, ISIS could perhaps be playing with fire.  A western and Russian joint effort to eradicate ISIS could turn out to be more than ISIS's leaders have bargained for.  A piece in The Economist looks at the possible growing rapprochement.  Here are highlights:

IN THE face of a common threat from Islamist terror, Russia and the West may be moving closer, if not exactly standing shoulder to shoulder. The shift in the relationship first became apparent at the G20 summit in Turkey on November 15th and 16th, where Vladimir Putin found himself the centre of attention. At last year’s meeting, amid tensions over the crisis in Ukraine, the atmosphere was so frosty that Mr Putin jetted home early. This year, in the wake of the attacks in Paris, the Russian president huddled for private chats with the American president, Barack Obama, and British prime minister, David Cameron.

On November 16th the French president, François Hollande, announced that he would travel to Washington and Moscow in the coming days to talk to Mr Obama and Mr Putin about joining forces to fight Islamic State (IS). By the following morning, the Russian president and his security chiefs had acknowledged that a bomb brought down the Russian Metrojet flight over Egypt late last month, bringing Russia’s position into alignment with that of Western governments.

[T]he attacks in Paris have revived talk of a grand coalition. At the end of the G20 meeting, Mr Putin declared that relations had already improved: “Life goes on, everything changes: new problems arise, new threats, new challenges, which would be difficult for anyone to solve alone. We need to join forces.” On Tuesday, echoing Mr Hollande’s anger after the Paris attacks, Mr Putin promised retribution for the 224 people killed over Sinai. He announced that Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria would only be intensified: “We will search for them everywhere, no matter where they are hiding. We will find them at any point on the planet and punish them.” Russian commentators drew parallels with the anti-Hitler alliance that brought Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt together despite their obvious ideological differences.

But despite the apparent surge of mutual goodwill, serious obstacles to co-operation remain. As Vedomosti, an influential Russian daily paper, noted on November 17th: “Discussions of a united front sound pretty as long as they don’t concern details or concrete concessions.” The two sides have yet to agree on the fate of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and an ally of Moscow, whose continued rule the West opposes. Syrian peace talks in Vienna over the weekend produced a vague road map for elections, but no clarity on Mr Assad’s future. Separating an alliance against IS from the situation in Ukraine will also prove tricky.  

Ultimately, partnership requires trust, and after two years of sparring over Ukraine, there is little between Russia and the West. Having a mutual enemy will not bring an end to suspicion and animosity, not least because Mr Putin’s standing at home depends on a heavy dose of anti-Americanism. . . . . Whatever the strategic imperatives, saying “I told you so” is a poor basis for co-operation.

Whether or not an alliance will grow is difficult to know.  Personally, a grand alliance might  have many benefits - not to mention destroying ISIS and perhaps setting the stage for increased cooperation.