White House Rightly Faulted for Avoiding ‘Islamic’ Labels

As more and more information comes to light linking ISIS and its atrocities to a medieval form of Islam, it is becoming impossible to continue to pretend that Islam is not part of the problem.  True, not all Muslims subscribe to the poisonous form of Islam ISIS promotes, but the reality is that portions of the Koran and the writings of the falsely named Prophet (who in my view was worthy of a mental institution) support the barbarity that we are seeing.  Fundamentalist religion is a pestilence plan and simply and to claim that Islam isn't part of the problem is like claiming the Bible and Christianity have nothing to do with the hate and vitriol one hears daily from American Christofascists who are best defined by hate.  It's time for the White House to face reality and start condemning ALL fundamentalist religions that foster hate, bigotry and, in the case of ISIS, horrific violence.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the growing criticism of Barack Obama's refusal to lay blame where it is due.  Moderate Muslims - just like moderate Christians - need to loudly and consistently condemn and work against their foul coreligionists.  Religion deserves no deference whatsoever.  Here are article highlights:

President Obama chooses his words with particular care when he addresses the volatile connections between religion and terrorism. He and his aides have avoided labeling acts of brutal violence by Al Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State and their allies as “Muslim” terrorism or describing their ideology as “Islamic” or “jihadist.”

With remarkable consistency — including at a high-profile White House meeting this week, “Countering Violent Extremism” — they have favored bland, generic terms over anything that explicitly connects attacks or plots to Islam.

Obama aides say there is a strategic logic to his vocabulary: Labeling noxious beliefs and mass murder as “Islamic” would play right into the hands of terrorists who claim that the United States is at war with Islam itself. The last thing the president should do, they say, is imply that the United States lumps the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims with vicious terrorist groups.

But Mr. Obama’s verbal tactics have become a target for a growing chorus of critics who believe the evasive language is a sign that he is failing to look squarely at the threat from militant Islam. 

“Part of this is a semantic battle, but it’s a semantic battle that goes to deeper issues,” said Peter Wehner, a veteran of the past three Republican administrations and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Self-deception is not a good idea in politics or international affairs. We’re lying to ourselves, and the world knows it.”

While the most vehement criticism has come from Mr. Obama’s political opponents on the right, a few liberals and former security officials have begun to echo the criticism.  “You cannot defeat an enemy that you do not admit exists,”

“Obama’s reaching a point where he may have to ditch this almost scholastic position,” Mr. Ahmed said. “He sounds like a distinguished professor in the ivory tower, and he may have to come down into the hurly-burly of politics.”

Many advocates for Muslims appreciate Mr. Obama’s care in keeping their religion separate from the terrorist groups whose claims they reject. “We support the Obama administration and the administration before them for not falling into the Al Qaeda-ISIS trap of saying this is a religious war,” said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a national group.

But even Ms. Khera complained that the name of the White House conference on the topic was too vague. While the label was “violent extremism,” the vast majority of speakers spoke only about Islamic extremism, ignoring all other kinds, she said. “If the summit were called ‘Countering ISIS,’ that would be fine,” she said. “But it’s not.”

Yes, there is huge hypocrisy on the right and among Congressional Republicans who attack all Muslims as extremists yet prostitute to Christian extremists here at home and work to subvert the U.S. Constitution's guaranty of religious freedom by striving to enshrine Christofascist beliefs in the nation's laws. 

The Evils of Religion: ISIS States Enslaving and Raping Nonbeliever Women is Permitted

The parallels between ISIS - the Islamic self-proclaimed  terrorist state - and Christian fundamentalists just keep getting more pronounced.  Both groups, of course, base their toxic beliefs on selective readings of their "holy books," the Bible and the Koran which they maintain permits, if not requires, countless horrors to be done to others.  CNN is reporting on ISIS' proclamations that enslaving, having sex with 'unbelieving' women (even , prepubescent girls) is just fine under the Koran.  Meanwhile, here in America we have Christofascists and spokesmen for Family Research Council basically stating that the murder of gays on a wholesale basis is justified by the Bible.   First these highlights from CNN (NOTE: These "godly folk" are enslaving women):

Can you take non-Muslim women and children captive? Yes, says ISIS.

Can you have sex with them, even prepubescent girls? Yes, according to the Islamist extremist group.

Can you sell them or give them as gifts to others? The answer is yes, once again.

People in Mosul -- the Iraqi city now under control of the group calling itself the Islamic State -- got these and other messages loud and clear after sunset prayers Friday, when armed men handed out a color-printed pamphlet "Question and Answers on Female Slaves and their Freedom," three residents told CNN.

The idea that ISIS is kidnapping, selling and raping women and children is hardly surprising. Many such accounts have surfaced since the group began its often brutal run through Syria and Iraq, including chilling stories from members of the Yazidi religious minority. And these are on top of other horrific allegations, such as the killings and mistreatment of innocent civilians simply because they didn't subscribe to ISIS' extreme take on Sharia law.

And that's the thing about ISIS: Its militants have justified their actions -- like the beheadings of journalists and aid workers -- in God's name.  Even then, it is rare to see its rationale laid out as plainly as in "Question and Answers on Female Slaves and their Freedom."

In the document, for instance, it is explained that capturing women is permissible if they are "nonbelievers." It adds, "Female slaves are the women that Muslims took from their enemies."

Much of the pamphlet talks about ISIS' policy on having sexual intercourse with a female slave, something that the group cites the Quran to justify.

As to girls: "It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn't reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse," the document reads. "However, if she is not fit for intercourse, he (the owner ) can only enjoy her without intercourse."

All done in the name of God/Allah.  Meanwhile, if you travel back to America, talking heads for Family Research Council tacitly agree with a caller who advocates for the wholesale slaughter of gays.  Again, the "holy book" justifies it.   Here are highlights from Right Wing Watch:

Craig James, the failed Republican U.S. Senate candidate and former sportscaster who now works at the Family Research Council, spoke on Friday with a “Washington Watch” radio show caller who shared his “solution” to the problem of gay people filing complaints against businesses that deny them service because of their sexual orientation: execute gay people. 

[W]hen they try to force us to go against God, I think that’s where they cross the line and we should pass laws to execute them when they have judges to go against our businesses.”

James couldn't quite bring himself to denounce or oppose this call to put gays to death, instead merely saying “I don’t know about the executing” before offering up a response about the need for Christians in America, like the martyrs of the past, to get “firm” in challenging gay people:

Perhaps the FRC just doesn’t mind calls demanding the execution of gay people, as its president Tony Perkins once defended a Ugandan law which made homosexuality a crime punishable by death in certain cases.

Rape women and young girls all because the Koran says you can.  Murder gays on a whole sale basis because the Bible tells you so.  There really is not that big a difference in the underlying mindset.  The take away?  Fundamentalist religion is a foul evil regardless of which "holy book" is being cited as justification.  A religion free world would likely be a better, less violent place.

ISIS and Islam - A Case Study of the Evils of Religion

As regular readers know, I am no fiend to religion, and fundamentalist religion in particular.  Our the centuries, religion has brought untold needless wars and deaths and countless ruined lives.  Coupled with this is the reality that time and time again we see fundamentalist Christians and Muslims rebelling against knowledge, education and modernity.  Why?  Because they all call into question the myths found in the Bible and the Koran.  They also encourage a debate about the meaning and binding authority of both of these supposed "holy books," something that is anathema to fundamentalists.  With the horrors now being perpetrated by ISIS, it is only natural that Islam is being given harsh scrutiny.  Some apologists for Islam are trying to make the case that the followers of ISIS are not "real Muslims."  That's akin to saying that foul far right Christians in America aren't "real Christians."  Andrew Sullivan has followed the debate and has some dead on reflections (most are also applicable to America's far right Christofascists).  Here are some excerpts:

Hitch’s arguments about what must follow from a religious text still regarded as perfect and pristine and utterly unquestionable, and a caliph or Shi’a theocrat regarded as a “supreme leader”, and a politics saturated in apocalypticism, and a culture marinated in absurd levels of sexual repression, and an endemic suppression of blasphemy and apostasy as unthinkable offenses, stand the test of time.

The totalism of Islam is as dangerous as any other totalism – and liberals better understand that about it.

Yes, it is vital to make distinctions between the various ways in which Islam is practised across the world – which reveals some potential for reform, in the way that Christianity and Judaism have reformed and examined themselves over the past century. But the resilient absence of a collective understanding that religious violence simply is not worth it. . . . is a real problem. 

Until the Shi’a and Sunni love the future more than they hate each other, until the Koran can be discussed and debated there and around the world the way any other religious text is discussed, until apostasy is respected and not criminalized, we will have more trouble in store.

Does this explain everything? Of course not. Culture, history, politics matter just as powerfully and can lead to different manifestations in time and place. Certainly there was a time in which Islam was far more tolerant than Christianity; and in the Middle East too. But that is no more, and central elements in the doctrine of Islam are all too easily compatible with its modern intolerance, and now post-modern virulence.

In another post, Andrew also notes as follows:

What percentage of Muslims across the diverse Muslim world favor Sharia law? The key graph from Pew on executing apostates is on the right. And when you do the math (and yes, fair warning that I usually do it wrong), you find that 63 percent of Egypt’s Muslims, 58 percent of Jordanian Muslims, 78 percent of Pakistani Muslims, and 53 percent of Malaysian Muslims believe that if you decide you don’t believe in Islam any more, you should be executed. Think about that for a minute.

How this disastrous situation can be cured is hard to say.  Education, of course is essential, yet most of these countries will not allow education policies or curricula that challenges a fundamentalist approach to Islam.  While Americans ponder the evils of religion as embodied by ISIS, they need to also recognize that we have our own virulent evil at home: fundamentalist Christianity  which seeks to deprive others of their civil rights and which now ,in the wake of same sex marriage rulings,is calling for "civil disobedience" and a subversion of the rule of law.

Study: Children Raised With Religion Cannot Judge Fact From Fiction

I've said before that, in my view, raising a child in a conservative/fundamentalist religion household is a form of child abuse.  The related irony is that it is the conservatives who are constantly decrying America's supposed decline in the world.  Yet it is the religious conservatives' embrace of ignorance and rejection of science and objective facts - modernity itself - that is helping to dumb down our school curricula and creating a generation of uninformed citizens.  All so that the religious conservatives can avid facing the fact that their religious beliefs are based on myths and ignorance.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at a new study that found that children raised with religion were at a disadvantage in discerning fact from fiction.  Here are excerpts:

In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories," an abstract published by Cognitive Science, a journal of the professional Cognitive Science Society. "In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion."

Children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school, or both, judged the protagonist in religious stories to be a real person, whereas secular children with no such exposure to religion judged the protagonist in religious stories to be fictional. Children's upbringing was also related to their judgment about the protagonist in fantastical stories that included ordinarily impossible events whether brought about by magic (Study 1) or without reference to magic (Study 2). Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional.

The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories.

The study, “Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds,” was led by Kathleen Corriveau, a Boston University Assistant Professor. . . 

Bottom line: Researchers concluded that "religious teaching, especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible, that is, a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations."

Perhaps this explains why the GOP base so easily accepts that party's policies which are opposed to objective fact and reality.

Two Thirds of Gay Youth Have Considered Suicide

While things are improving in America for LGBT individuals, albeit very unevenly, things are not as they should be.  Worse yet, in many countries that embrace fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam, being gay can still be a death sentence.  What fuels all of the anti-gay animus and misery for LGBT youth?  As just noted, religion, one of the most foul and toxic forces on the planet in my estimation.   Working hand in hand with religion are those who embrace ignorance and have a sick psychological need to feel superior over others.  The end result is that even today, a new study shows that two-thirds of LGBT youth consider suicide.  Having considered it my self countless times growing up and having made two serious attempts in the past myself, I understand what drives individuals to see suicide as a solution.  When one cannot change who they are and face bigotry and rejection, simply ending it all can look very appealing.  More importantly, it is a way to stop the pain.  Pain most often fueled and fanned by the "godly folk" for whom I have nothing but absolute contempt.   A piece in Gay Star News looks at the evil still being done.  Here are excerpts:

Two thirds of young gay people have considered suicide, while a shocking 80% have said they are bullied because of their sexuality.

New research has revealed a further 37% of gay 13-18 year-olds have attempted suicide as a result of bullying.

It is a similar, sad story for transgender teens. Two in five have tried to kill themselves, while a further 62% have considered suicide because of bullying.

For lesbians, two thirds of lesbians were bullied, and more than half contemplated suicide. 36% attempted it.

The shocking statistics were published by anti-bullying charity Ditch The Label following a survey of LGBT gay and college students in the UK.

Liam Hackett, founder of Ditch the Label said gay males were the most ‘heavily targeted group’.

‘Our research has identified that bullying is having profound impacts upon the self esteem, mental health and academic performance of LGBT students and is not something that can be ignored,’ he said.

‘Whilst we have found a decline in homophobic attitudes within wider society, we are concerned that they are still manifesting within our education system.

‘It is my hope that our research will strongly urge educational establishments and government to invest greater resources into continuous education and interventions to promote equality and diversity.’

Ditch the Label will be launching a sponsored silence on 18 May to raise awareness of bullying.

Here in Virginia the main opponents of meaningful anti-bullying laws are, you guessed it, the "godly folk" led by The Family Foundation, a hate group in all but formal designation - something I hope the SPLC addresses soon - and their political prostitutes in the Virginia GOP.   The larger public needs to come to see these people as poisonous and anything but decent and nice people.  They are monsters.

 

The Internet: Bad for Institutional Religion

Over at Civil Commotion Bob Felton raises an interesting question:

I’ve wondered through the years if the clergy’s hostility to the Internet was really about porn and online-dating and -gaming, or if they sensed the danger to them of easy information sharing — about their own misbehaviors, about life outside the church bubble.

A new study described in MIT Technology Review suggests that thatthe answer is the latter.  The that more information is available through a medium that the"godly folk" cannot censor or restrict, the harder it is to maintain religious based myths and outright untruths.  Here are highlights from the review:

Back in 1990, about 8 percent of the U.S. population had no religious preference. By 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18 percent. That’s a difference of about 25 million people, all of whom have somehow lost their religion.

That raises an obvious question: how come? Why are Americans losing their faith?

Today, we get a possible answer thanks to the work of Allen Downey, a computer scientist at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, who has analyzed the data in detail. He says that the demise is the result of several factors but the most controversial of these is the rise of the Internet. He concludes that the increase in Internet use in the last two decades has caused a significant drop in religious affiliation.

Downey’s data comes from the General Social Survey, a widely respected sociological survey carried out by the University of Chicago, that has regularly measure people’s attitudes and demographics since 1972.

He finds that the biggest influence on religious affiliation is religious upbringing—people who are brought up in a religion are more likely to be affiliated to that religion later.

However, the number of people with a religious upbringing has dropped since 1990. It’s easy to imagine how this inevitably leads to a fall in the number who are religious later in life. In fact, Downey’s analysis shows that this is an important factor. However, it cannot account for all of the fall or anywhere near it. In fact, that data indicates that it only explains about 25 percent of the drop.

He goes on to show that college-level education also correlates with the drop. Once it again, it’s easy to imagine how contact with a wider group of people at college might contribute to a loss of religion. . . . . But although the correlation is statistically significant, it can only account for about 5 percent of the drop, so some other factor must also be involved.

That’s where the Internet comes in.  In the 1980s, Internet use was essentially zero, but in 2010, 53 percent of the population spent two hours per week online and 25 percent surfed for more than 7 hours.

This increase closely matches the decrease in religious affiliation. In fact, Downey calculates that it can account for about 25 percent of the drop.

That’s a fascinating result. It implies that since 1990, the increase in Internet use has had as powerful an influence on religious affiliation as the drop in religious upbringing.

“For people living in homogeneous communities, the Internet provides opportunities to find information about people of other religions (and none), and to interact with them personally,” says Downey.

I have long maintained that ignorance and lack of education (and perhaps psychological problems) are prerequisites for adherence to fundamentalist religious belief.   Now, it seems that lack of access to uncensored information provided via the Internet is another prerequisite.  Knowledge and access to information are mutually exclusive with fundamentalist belief.  No wonder the "godly folk" hate the Internet and easy access to the truth.  Interestingly, the decline of religion mirrors what happened in the former Soviet Union: once information and other views became increasingly available, it became harder and harder to maintain the lie that communism was working.  So too with fundamentalist religion.

 

Prosecutor: Parents' Religious Belief Led to Child's Death

We hear the disingenuous mantra from the National Organization for Marriage and anti-gay hate groups that "every child deserves a mother and father."   It's a line of bullshit and in the case of  Brandon Schaible, the young boy might still be alive if he had a gay couple as parents as opposed to Christianist whack jobs, Catherine and Herbert Schaible who withheld medical treatment, preferring to "pray."   Thankfully, the boys parents are being criminally prosecuted and will hopefully be convicted and spend time in prison.  Brandon Schaible again underscores the dangers of unfettered religious belief be it crazy Christian fundamentalism or Islamic jihadist.  Both are a foul and poisonous evil in the world.  Both need to be eradicated.   CNN Religion Blog looks at Brandon's murder by his "godly" parents (the murderers are pictured above).  Here are excerpts (NOTE: they had already killed another child):

When Brandon Schaible got a rash, his parents prayed.  When the 7-month-old became irritable with diarrhea and lost his appetite, his parents, Catherine and Herbert Schaible, prayed again.
When Brandon had trouble breathing and gasped for air, his parents called a pastor - this, in spite of the fact that a judge had ordered them to call a doctor.

Brandon Schaible died on April 18 from bacterial pneumonia, dehydration and strep, according to the district attorney’s office – all treatable with antibiotics.

On Wednesday his parents were charged with third-degree murder.  The Schaibles are lifelong members of the First Century Gospel Church in Philadelphia, one of several religious groups in the U.S. that relies on faith, and eschews most medical care.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams says the Schaibles’ failure to seek medical attention resulted in the death of their son.  “Instead of caring and nurturing him,” Williams said, “they ultimately caused his death by praying over his body instead of taking him to the doctor.”

The Schaibles are also charged with involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy and endangering the welfare of a child. In April, the couple admitted to police that their son had exhibited symptoms for several days before he died.

On Friday, Court of Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner ordered the Schaibles held without bail out of fear they were a flight risk.

The Schaibles are already on probation for the 2009 death of another son, Kent, who died from bacterial pneumonia. A jury convicted the couple of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced them to 10 years probation.

“How many kids have to die before it becomes an extreme indifference to the value of human life?” McCann asked. “They killed one child already.”

If convicted of third-degree murder in Brandon’s death, the Schaibles could face a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison, Lerner said. They also face an additional 7 to 14 years if a judge decides to revoke their probation in Kent’s death.

I hope they get the maximum.  Let's be clear.  Raising children in Christofascists homes is nothing short of a form of child abuse.  Groundless deference to religious belief needs to stop - especially when it endangers the lives and mental well being of children.

Study: Belief in an Angry God Associated with Mental Illnesses

An article about a new study that has correlated belief in an angry God with a variety of forms of mental illness was too good pass up for a post.  It could well go a long way towards explaining the behavior of the Christofascists and seemingly, Islamic extremists as well.   The study is reported in the April edition of Journal of Religion & Health and makes for interesting reading.  Here is an abstract from the study:

Abstract

This study examines the association between beliefs about God and psychiatric symptoms in the context of Evolutionary Threat Assessment System Theory, using data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults (N = 1,426). Three beliefs about God were tested separately in ordinary least squares regression models to predict five classes of psychiatric symptoms: general anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion. Belief in a punitive God was positively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, while belief in a benevolent God was negatively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, controlling for demographic characteristics, religiousness, and strength of belief in God. Belief in a deistic God and one’s overall belief in God were not significantly related to any psychiatric symptoms.

Raw Story discusses the study findings (access to the full journal article requires a subscription).  Here are some highlights:

People who believe in an angry, punishing God are much more likely to suffer from a variety of mental illnesses, a scientific study published in the April edition of Journal of Religion & Health finds.

The study, conducted by Marymount Manhattan College Assistant Psychology Professor Nava Silton, used data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults to examine the links between beliefs and anxiety disorders like social dysfunction, paranoia, obsession and compulsion. 

To do this, Silton viewed the data through the lens of what’s called Evolutionary Threat Assessment System Theory, which posits that parts of the brain specifically evolved to detect threats, and suggests that many anxiety disorders may be a result of dysfunction in the brain’s perception of those threats.

In keeping with prior studies on this very subject, she queried the data on three types of believers: those who see God as angry, those who see God as neutral and those who see God as loving. Controlling specifically to weed out the non-believers, Silton found that a belief in a forgiving, loving God is associated with positive psychological traits, “almost protecting against psychopathology,” she told Raw Story. 

But for those who think God is angry and preparing punishments for sinners, “that belief seems to be very much related to these negative symptoms,” Silton said. 

“If you look at the previous research, they’ve connected it to depression and all sorts of other psychiatric disorders,” she said. “We were looking at social phobia, obsession, compulsion, paranoia and a lot of features of anxiety disorders.”

“We are looking at correlational findings. That means we’re not saying belief caused psychiatric symptoms, but we see relationships between beliefs and these psychiatric symptoms.”

Readers can decide for themselves whether religious extremists were crazy first or whether their beliefs made them crazy.   Needless to say, if one looks at folks like Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell,  the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, the study does seem to have nailed it.

Captured But Still No Explanation as to Why

 

Calm is at last returning to the Boston area after last night's capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the second of the Boston Marathon bombers.  Yet so far, there seems to be no clear explanation of what triggered the carnage and brutal attack on innocent strangers.   There are indications, however, that the older of the bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26,may have drifted into religious extremism and may have been radicalized while visiting Russia last year.    Some family members, in fact, blame the older Tsarnaev for leading his younger brother on a path to darkness.   A column in the New York Times ponders about what lead to such violence and apparent derailing of lies that had seemed in some ways to be tracking the proverbial American dream.  Here are highlights:

“A picture has begun to emerge of 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an aggressive, possibly radicalized immigrant who may have ensnared his younger brother Dzhokhar — described almost universally as a smart and sweet kid — into an act of terror,” The Boston Globe reported Friday. 

The Globe quoted a person named Zaur Tsarnaev, who the newspaper said identified himself as a 26-year-old cousin of the suspects, as saying, “I used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamerlan was up to no good.” Tamerlan “was always getting into trouble,” he added. “He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling. He used to strike his girlfriend. He hurt her a few times. He was not a nice man. I don’t like to speak about him. He caused problems for my family.”

But what about that image of Dzhokhar as sweet?  On Friday, BuzzFeed and CNN claimed to verify Dzhokhar’s Twitter account. The tweets posted on that account give a window into a bifurcated mind — on one level, a middle-of-the-road 19-year-old boy, but on another, a person with a mind leaning toward darkness. 

Like many young people, the person tweeting from that account liked rap music, saying of himself, “#imamacbookrapper when I’m bored,” and quoting rap lyrics in his tweets. 

He tweeted quite a bit about women, dating and relationships; many of his musings were misogynistic and profane. Still, he seemed to want to have it both ways, to be rude and respectful at once, tweeting on Dec. 24, 2012: “My last tweets felt too wrong. I don’t like to objectify women or judge anyone for their actions.” 

He was a proud Muslim who tweeted about going to mosque and enjoying talking — and even arguing — about religion with others. But he seemed to believe that different faiths were in competition with one another. On Nov. 29, he tweeted: “I kind of like religious debates, just hearing what other people believe is interesting and then crushing their beliefs with facts is fun.” 

His politics seemed jumbled. He was apparently a 9/11 Truther, posting a tweet on Sept. 1 that read in part, “Idk why it’s hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job.” On Election Day he retweeted a tweet from Barack Obama that read: “This happened because of you. Thank you.” But on March 20 he tweeted, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” This sounds like a take on a quote from Edmund Burke, who is viewed by many as the founder of modern Conservatism: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

Hopefully, we will find out what motivated the horrible acts that injured so many and took innocent lives.  The younger Tsarnaev strikes me as accurate on one point: religions are in competition.  Both fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam claim that only they are right and that all need to conform to their toxic belief systems.  And both ultimately cause their followers to view those who are different or who hold different beliefs to as less than fully human and, as a result, set the stage for evil.    Don't believe me?  Just listen to what the Christofascists are saying about Muslims and immigrants in the wake of the Boston bombings.  I continue to believe that a religion free world would be a far better place.

Feel the "Christian" Love Rev. Donald Spitz Style

Give the nature of my law practice and the upscale nature of the boyfriend's salon clientele, it's sometimes easy to forget the very frightening Neanderthals that inhabit Hampton Roads, especially in Chesapeake and some of the more rural areas.  I received a harsh reminder of the near life threatening hate harbored by some who claim to be "godly Christians."   A case in point is a comment left on a post about the Tracy Thorne-Begland judicial appointment controversy in which the Richmond Circuit Court judges - at the urging of all of the five Virginia based mega law firms - appointed Tracy to a General District Court judgeship.  The author of the comment? The Rev. Donald Spitz (pictured above left), a Chesapeake based anti-abortion extremist who has been written up by the Southern Poverty Law Center.   Among other things, Spitz stated in his comment (which I did NOT publish):

Sodomites like Thorne-Begland belong in prison not on the bench. Homosexuals commit crimes against God, against nature, against the Holy Bible and against the human race. 

After last year's Hampton Roads Pride event in Town Point Park in downtown Norfolk on the waterfront, Spitz nearly blew a gasket and ranted that Town Point Park had been taken over by sodomites who he says are worthy of death.  He also accused gays of being sexual predators of children and lambasted members  of Norfolk City Council "who did zero to stop this sodomite pollution to our city and to our children."   But Spitz's hatred isn't limited to gays.  He advocates the murder of abortion providers and the bombing of abortion clinics.  And he's moved on to adding racism to his resume as the SPLC noted some years back:

The Rev. Donald Spitz has never been a pleasant man. Considered a wild-eyed extremist even among his colleagues on the radical anti-abortion scene, the head of Pro-Life Virginia and long-time principal of the Army of God Web site (armyofgod.com) applauds the murderers of physicians, clinic workers and secretaries.

He rails against "filthy faggots" and "lesbos." Islam is "Satanic," Arabs are "Rag-Heads," and Muslims "should not be allowed to live in the United States." New York City is a "sex perverted cesspool" that richly deserved Sept. 11.

But there is one type of vicious group hatred Don Spitz has always denied — the "false accusations of racism" against blacks "put out by desperate babykilling abortionists." If a black man accepts Christ, "then that man is my brother."  Well, maybe. And maybe not.

This summer, on the Web site long run by Spitz, a remarkable series of headlines began to appear under "Current News Stories for Christians." To almost anyone but Spitz, these racy one-liners reflect the crudest kind of racism.

"African-American on bike randomly shoots people," screams one link to a legitimate news story. "83 Year old White Woman beaten to death by three African-Americans," says another. "African-American Killed her," a third reads under photos of the principals, "because she was White and her parents 'didn't allow her to have sex with a black man.'" And the list goes on.

With representatives like Spitz, it's little wonder why the under 30 generations of Americans are deserting institutional Christianity in droves. 

And like most of his Christofacsist brethren, Spitz seems to have an utter contempt for the U. S. Constitution  and its guarantee of freedom of religion to ALL citizens, not just the Christofascists.  If one wants a glimpse of what America would be like under the rule of Spitz and his fellow Christianists, one need only look to this story out of Pakistan where the Islamic version of Spitz and his fellow hate merchants continue to cost innocent lives:

A popular female Pakistani singer who defied the Taliban's decree against singing and dancing was shot and killed in northwest Pakistan Monday night, police and hospital officials told CNN.

Ghazala Javed, who recorded scores of songs in her native Pashto language and became a household name among young, progressive ethnic Pashtuns in northwest Pakistan, had just left a beauty salon and was driving home with her father when gunmen on a motorcycle raced towards their car and sprayed it with bullets, Altaf said.

Javed was hit with six bullets and pronounced dead at a hospital in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, according to hospital official Rahim Afridi. Javed's father also was killed, police said.

In recent years the rise of the Pakistani Taliban in the region and the group's ban against singing and dancing made it difficult for Javed and other musical artists to perform and record songs in Pakistan. Javed recorded and taped many of her latest songs and music videos in nearby Dubai.

Last year Javed made headlines when she asked for a divorce from her husband after she reportedly found out that he had at least one other wife. It was a rare decision in a deeply conservative and male-dominated society where many view a woman's demand for a divorce as a dishonor to the husband.

Javed is pictured above.  Fundamentalist religion of whatever label is an evil.   Individuals like Spitz are, in my opinion, a clear and present danger to the rule of law and constitutional government.  His advocacy of what amounts to terrorism is indeed scary.