Reflections on a Bloody Season

Every Day is A Precious Gift

'Tis the season of suicidal, mass murderers.  The latest is the murder of hundreds in Sri Lanka, mostly Christians, gathering together to worship God and His Christ on Easter Sunday morning.  In this case, the perps have been declared to be Islamists.

In New Zealand just over a month ago, there were 50 dead at the hands of one murderer.  The dead were Muslims, peacefully gathered for religious services on a Friday morning.  The perp was a solitary malefactor, twisted into such a mess that he (apparently) believed murdering Islamic men, women and children was somehow a righteous thing to do.  In his case, he believed he had a bunch of  anonymous cheerleaders on the dark web who would celebrate his courageous deeds.

It seems reasonable to expect that within another few weeks there will be another mass killing of innocents at the hands of vulpine murderers.  'Tis the season.

Secularists and atheists appear to join with every body else in condemning such an evil.  We are not sure why since their secularist religion has no ultimate truth--no "Thou shalt not kill".  As Sartre once put it, if the existentialist is driving down the road and a pedestrian steps out in front, it is an entirely neutral or irrelevant as to whether the existentialist chooses to avoid the pedestrian or accelerates to run him over.  When there is no ultimate meaning, life is cheap.  Thus the recent mass murderers have displayed their faith.

Right On the Money!

Leading Muslim cleric says Islamophobia a result of Islamic extremism and not racism

---

3 April 2019

The senior member of the world’s biggest Muslim organisation has insisted that Islamophobia is not rooted in racism and that the distrust of Muslims in many countries is a result of Islamist extremism and terrorism throughout the world.

Yahya Cholil Staquf, the secretary-general of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama movement, which claims to have more than 90 million adherents, wrote in an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph saying that the traditional Muslim mindset needed to change.

He called for a rejection of Islamic orthodoxy, condemning it as “obsolete and problematic” and “fuelling violence on both sides”.

Yahya Cholil Staquf, secretary-general of the world’s largest Muslim movement, believes Islamic extremism based on “obsolete” religious orthodoxy is fuelling Islamophobia

The influential cleric wrote that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims was “factually incorrect” in linking the definition of the word “Islamophobia” to racism, and that it was “counter-productive” to do so.

“The truth, we recognise, is that jihadist doctrine, goals and strategy can be traced to specific tenets of orthodox, authoritative Islam and its historic practice. This includes those portions of sharia that promote Islamic supremacy, encourage enmity towards non-Muslims and require the establishment of a caliphate. It is these elements – still taught by most Sunni and Shiite institutions – that constitute a summons to perpetual conflict,” he wrote.

Staquf stated that Brenton Tarrant’s murder spree, which killed 50 people  at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March, was part of an “ancient cycle of violence” and that the killer shared a “historical framework” with many Muslims that went back almost 1,400 years. He explained the traditional Islamic teaching that “Muslims and non-Muslims are and shall remain in a state of permanent conflict, until the end of time (according to Islamists) or the disappearance of Islam (according to advocates of a ‘counter-jihad’).”

“If Muslims do not address the key tenets of Islamic tradition that encourage this violence, anyone – at any time – can harness them to defy what they claim to be illegitimate laws and butcher their fellow citizens, whether they live in the Islamic world or the West. This is what links so many current events, from Syria to the streets of London,” he added.