Saturday, April 23, 2005

RoP Issues Death Threat

A Norwegian minister is under police protection in Sweden because he denounced Mohammed as a 'confused paedophile'- and a fatwa calling for his death was promptly issued. There are several interesting points raised by this story.

First off is the actual factuality of the statement- that Mohammed was a paedophile. Well, he was married to a girl called Aisha when she was six, consummating the marriage when she was nine years old. Sex with a nine year old girl would pretty much fall under the heading of paedophilia for me. Now, I got to this story via FARK and I decided to enter the comments section there to see what the general view was. Boy, what a mistake. In relation to the facts of the case the point was made that long ago in olden times, young girls got married. This seems to obfuscate the point- a grown man having sex with a 9 year old, regardless of who else was doing it at the time, is still a paedophile.

The second point is one of free speech. This didn't seem to bother too many of the FARKers. Few railed against the fatwa and its effect on others speaking their minds. That the preacher merely uttered something that was true was also pretty much disregarded. According to the Aftenposten story, Muslim groups have called the preacher's statement "a hateful attack on Islam". They were also fearful of the violence seen in the Netherlands after Theo van Gogh was killed by an Islamist for making a film. They didn't elaborate on whether they were fearful of retaliatory attacks on them if the preacher was killed. I don't recall reading in the article that the Muslims in Sweden had denounced the fatwa as being entirely inappropriate. Maybe I missed that section? An Islam expert also said he thought that the preacher's statement was intended to provoke a religious war. He found it 'unpleasant'- he's not the only one, I find it unpleasant that a Christian preacher can point out a fact mentioned in hadiths regarded as the most accurate by Sunni Muslims, and then be issued a death threat. The only religious war being threatened here is by the Muslims. So far, Swedish Christians have not issued any kind of death threats.

The other thing about this that really got my blood boiling- quite apart from the fact that Islamists can issue death threats against someone was speaking their mind- was the FARK comments. It doesn't take them long to stop criticising the Religion of Peace and begin attacking Christianity. I wonder if it had been a Christian issuing a death threat if the reaction would have been the same? Would other religions have been attacked too? The majority of the posters also seemed to miss the point that Christianity is not in the habit of threatening to kill those who speak out against it. Nor are there sections in the New Testament advising on how to fight infidels or cut off their heads. This fact seems to have missed some of these mooonbats entirely- "oh, but Christians did bad things hundreds of years ago". How this has any bearing whatsoever on the state of Islam today is beyond me. Nor can I see how wars in the past which had been claimed in the name of Christ can have any relation to Christ's teaching- love your enemy and turn the other cheek are what he preached. He did not call for war.

Besides, what has Christianity got to do with Islam? What's the link between Islamists calling for a man's death for speaking and the Christian Church? I don't know what's p*ssed me off more- this ridiculous fatwa or the sheer ignorance and muddled thinking of the moonbats. Argh!

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