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. 

Christian Activist Arrested At Pulse Memorial

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the Pulse massacre that left 49 dead and more than 50 people wounded (and countless more emotionally and psychologically scared).  And true to form a "Christian activist" showed up spewing hatred and bigotry - see the image above - and disrupting the memorial service.  As noted before, unless and until religious liberals loudly confront and condemn the hate groups and individuals - e.g., Family Research Counsel, Tony Perkins, Brian Brown, James Dobson, the Southern Baptist Convention, etc. - who traffic in such ugliness, they will continue to allow Christianity to be defined by these types of hate merchants.  Sometimes open confrontation is warranted.  Thankfully, the Orlando police intervened and arrested the "Christian" protesters.  Here are highlights from WFTV 9:

A man who protested outside Pulse nightclub Monday following a ceremony marking the anniversary of the attack was handcuffed by Orlando police.

Local officials and the community had just finished a remembrance ceremony at the venue, which honored the victims and first responders.

The man, who has not been identified, was part of a group of about three protesters holding anti-gay signs. The crowds chanted, “Love conquers hate,” as the man was placed in handcuffs.

With "Christians" like these protesters on constant display, it is no wonder that nearly one third of the under 30 generations have walked away from religion.  With Hampton Roads Pride events in full swing this week and this weekend, this incident is a reminder that many hate us because we challenge their myth and fairy tale based beliefs derived from Bronze Age herders in the case of Christians, and the writings of a mentally deranged individual in the case of Islam. 

On a more positive note, the Orlando Sentinel has a number of respectful articles on those who died and the experiences of survivors which can be found here.

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.

Is the West Playing Into ISIS's Hands?

Many fundamentals Christians want a war in the Middle East because passages in the Bible are claimed to predict that Christ will return after Armageddon.  The fact that they love to see non-Christians and most Jews slaughtered in the process is only icing on the cake for them.  The Koran has an equally dark prophecy, except the victors will be followers of Islam after defeating invading armies from the West.  Thus, once again poisonous "holy books" set the blue print for death and destruction, with each side falsely claiming that God or Allah is on their side.   An article in the New York Times looks at how those in the West who want to send ground troops to the Middle East could be aiding ISIS's propaganda war and setting the stage for the recruitment of more followers who will be manipulated by evil religious prophecies.  Of course, Donald Trump's declaration of war on Muslims will only further this cause and perhaps radicalize American Muslims.  When religion is involved, generally logic, reason and decency are the first things to be thrown overboard.  Here are article highlights:

As the debate on how best to contain the Islamic State continues to rage in Western capitals, the militants themselves have made one point patently clear: They want the United States and its allies to be dragged into a ground war.

In fact, when the United States first invaded Iraq, one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the move was the man who founded the terrorist cell that would one day become the Islamic State, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He excitedly called the Americans’ 2003 intervention “the Blessed Invasion.”

His reaction — ignored by some, and dismissed as rhetoric by others — points to one of the core beliefs motivating the terrorist group now holding large stretches of Iraq and Syria: The group bases its ideology on prophetic texts stating that Islam will be victorious after an apocalyptic battle to be set off once Western armies come to the region.

Should that invasion happen, the Islamic State not only would be able to declare its prophecy fulfilled, but could also turn the occurrence into a new recruiting drive at the very moment the terrorist group appears to be losing volunteers.

It is partly that theory that President Obama referred to in his speech on Sunday, when he said the United States should pursue a “sustainable victory” that involves airstrikes and supports local forces battling the Islamic State rather than sending a new generation of American soldiers into a ground offensive.

“I have said it repeatedly: Because of these prophecies, going in on the ground would be the worst trap to fall into. They want troops on the ground. Because they have already envisioned it,” said Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, and the author of “Apocalypse in Islam,” one of the main scholarly texts exploring the scripture that the militants base their ideology on.

“It’s a very powerful and emotional narrative. It gives the potential recruit and the actual fighters the feeling that not only are they part of the elite, they are also part of the final battle.”

Terrorism experts say it has become a powerful recruiting tool for the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which sells potential fighters on the promise that joining will give them the most direct chance to battle Western interests and will bring ancient Islamic prophecies to fruition.

The specific scripture they are referring to describes a battle in Dabiq as well as in al-Amaq, small towns that still exist in northern Syria. The countdown to the apocalypse begins once the “Romans” — a term that militants have now conveniently expanded to include Americans and their allies — set foot in Dabiq.

Regardless of a ground intervention’s potential to succeed, some veteran analysts caution that the act of invasion would play handily into the group’s prophetic vision.

“To break the dynamic, you have to debunk the prophecy,” Mr. Filiu said. “You need to do so via a military defeat, like taking over Raqqa. But it needs to be by local forces — by Sunni Arabs.”

The effort has been limited by the fact that the only viable partners so far have been Kurdish militias, who are willing to fight only in a ribbon of land in northern Syria, which is predominantly Kurdish. . . . To date, the United States and its partners have failed to find a Sunni Arab partner force.

Proponents of a ground assault argue that an even bigger recruiting drive than the militants’ end-of-times prophecy is their promise of an Islamic state.

Two take aways, in my view: (i) religion is always ultimately an evil that seeks division and hatred of "non-believers" and (ii) many in America continue to want to perpetuate the blunders of Bush/Cheney who set the stage for the current ongoing nightmare through hubris and disregard for the local culture and religious factions.

What ISIS Really Wants

Barack Obama and European leaders among others continue to dance around the issue of facing the reality that ISIS is driven ultimately by a horrific form of Islam.  And while millions of Muslim disagree with its goals and tactics, including genocide and brutal murders, to say it does not represent Islam is like claiming that hate-filled American Christofascists do not represent Christianity.  In both groups the root of their hate - and, in my view, one could say mental illness - traces right back to religion.  Yes, religion, one of the most perverse forces throughout history.  Both groups want to force their beliefs on all and the only difference is the level of violence they are willing to use to achieve their desired theocracy.  A lengthy and detailed piece in The Atlantic makes the case that cancer like form of Islam is at the heart of ISIS' agenda.  Here are excerpts:

What is the Islamic State? Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers.

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior.

We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al‑Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it. The Islamic State supporters I spoke with still refer to Osama bin Laden as “Sheikh Osama,” a title of honor. But jihadism has evolved since al-Qaeda’s heyday, from about 1998 to 2003, and many jihadists disdain the group’s priorities and current leadership.

Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells.  The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.)

We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. 

There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.

Denying the holiness of the Koran or the prophecies of Muhammad is straightforward apostasy. But Zarqawi and the state he spawned take the position that many other acts can remove a Muslim from Islam. These include, in certain cases, selling alcohol or drugs, wearing Western clothes or shaving one’s beard, voting in an election—even for a Muslim candidate—and being lax about calling other people apostates. Being a Shiite, as most Iraqi Arabs are, meets the standard as well, because the Islamic State regards Shiism as innovation, and to innovate on the Koran is to deny its initial perfection. . . . That means roughly 200 million Shia are marked for death. So too are the heads of state of every Muslim country, who have elevated man-made law above Sharia by running for office or enforcing laws not made by God. 

Following takfiri doctrine, the Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks. Muslim “apostates” are the most common victims. 

Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest.

[T]he exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons.

Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”

According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance.

In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

The Islamic State differs from nearly every other current jihadist movement in believing that it is written into God’s script as a central character. It is in this casting that the Islamic State is most boldly distinctive from its predecessors, and clearest in the religious nature of its mission.

The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself. The provocative videos, in which a black-hooded executioner addresses President Obama by name, are clearly made to draw America into the fight. An invasion would be a huge propaganda victory for jihadists worldwide: irrespective of whether they have given baya’a to the caliph, they all believe that the United States wants to embark on a modern-day Crusade and kill Muslims. Yet another invasion and occupation would confirm that suspicion, and bolster recruitment.

There is much more and none of it encouraging.  ISIS underscores the dangers of fundamentalist belief based on myths and fairy tales or the writings of someone - i.e., the "Prophet" - who nowadays would be permanently residing in a mental ward.  Fundamentalist religion whether Christian or Muslim is evil.  It needs to be eradicated from the Earth.

 

The Plight of Gays in Iran (and the Islamic World)

WARNING; Graphic photos.  Yesterday I received an e-mail from filmmaker Wajahat Ali Abbasiwho is seeking funding on Kickstarter for a movie that will highlight the plight of gays in Iran with focus on the government backed hanging of two gay teens in 2005.  While the movie's focus is on Iran, the problem is much larger and is occurring under the U.S. Puppet government in Baghdad.  Indeed the problem of government sponsored murder of gays exists across most of the Islamic world where fundamentalists cling to the seventh century ignorance and limited knowledge of the Koran - much like fundamentalist Christians who seek to govern the world based on the writings of ignorant herders from 3,000+ years ago in Israel.  Only by exposing the problem can sufficient international pressure be brought to bear to end these cruel and senseless deaths.  Here are some highlights of what the movie seeks to accomplish:

Filmmaker Wajahat Ali Abbasi is gearing up to make the feature film “Sin”, inspired by a true incident where two boys were hanged to death because they were in love. This brutal, public killing took place In July 2005 witnessed by thousands of people in Iran. Pictures and videos of this incident were uploaded on the internet by spectators, but the Iranian government and media denied its occurrence.

Wajahat, through the cinema screen, will bring the tragic tale of these boys to life, while addressing an important question why in some societies people are denied the right to life because of their sexual orientation.

While Iran is in total denial of the existence of homosexuality like many countries in the world, it will be interesting to see the world’s reaction to this controversial movie and how it will impact global public opinion on this issue.

‘Sin’ will be shot in English with a few words of Persian. Dubbed versions in Persian, Spanish, French, Chinese, Hindi and Arabic will also be made so that this story can reach out to larger audiences worldwide.

The imagines in this post are truly horrible - as is what is being done to gays daily in far too many countries, often in African nations with the aid and incitement of American Christianists.  Just as frightening is the fact that some Christian Dominionists in America support the execution of LGBT citizens.  Religious based bigotry and extremism that rejects modernity and modern knowledge and which dehumanizes others simply because they are different is a cancer on the world.  It needs to be eradicated just like any disease or plague.