Irish Republican Army

Barack Obama And Religious Extremism: Totally Accurate Statement, So Why The Outcry?

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President Barack Obama spoke up on Thursday at the Annual Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on the dangers of religious extremism, promotion of one’s own faith as the only true faith, and legitimizing bloodshed and violence in the name of one’s God.

This was in reaction to the horrors that have been perpetrated by ISIL (ISIS) in the Middle East, including beheadings of Americans, British, and Japanese hostages; and the even more horrific act of taking a Jordanian pilot, captured while attacking ISIL targets, and setting him on fire, causing him to be burned to death.

What Obama said was that any religion that endorses or promotes such bloodshed and violence should be condemned, and he reminded our nation, much of it totally unaware of our history, that we had seen the lynching, butchering, and setting on fire of a few thousand African American men and boys in the American South and Midwest over a period of more than a hundred years of Jim Crow segregation in the 19th and 20th century and Ku Klux Klan influence; had also experienced nearly 250 years of slavery, which included similar mistreatment; and that world wide, there had been the Christian war on Islam during the Crusades; and the Catholic Church Inquisition of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance period.

Obama did not specifically mention the horrible persecution of Jews by Christians over two millenniums, and not just the Catholic Church, but also Protestant groups, including Martin Luther and the Lutheran Church; or the mass murder of Catholics vs Protestants in Northern Ireland, as recently as the period of the Irish Republican Army between 1969 and 1998.

And of course, in the Middle East, today, as shown by the setting on fire of a Jordanian who was Muslim, the old holy war of Shiite and Sunni Muslims continues unabated, as it has for 13 centuries; and there is also bloodshed between Muslims and Hindus in India; and turmoil in the Balkans, that led to mass murder by Christians against Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.

From what Obama reminded us of, plus the additional information provided here by the author, and well known to scholars, it is clear how devastating organized religion has been in its promotion of narrow mindedness and hate, and commitment to torture and extermination in the name of God, no matter which religion.

So Obama was offering a moral lesson, but yet the outcry by right wingers, who do not wish to be reminded of the sins of Christianity fanatics, and only wish to look at the Muslim fanatics today, and imagine that this is the whole story of religion in history, is very troubling. They fail to realize that many more Muslims have been killed by the barbarism of ISIL (ISIS), and their refusal to accept and recognize the history of Christianity as being just as full, historically, of violence and bloodshed, bodes ill for the future ability to understand and accept religious differences and promote religious tolerance!

Are Muslim Citizens Threats To Homeland Security? The Peter King Committee Hearings And The Real Threat To The Nation!

Ronald Leave a comment

New York Republican Congressman Peter King, a member of the House since 1993, is the new Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and is about to conduct hearings on what he calls the Islamic threat to America presented by disloyal Muslims in American society.

King can certainly give several examples of Muslims in America who have been proved to be engaged in terrorist activities, fortunately stopped by excellent intelligence activities by cooperation between federal and state government officials. With the tragic exception of the Fort Hood massacre by a Muslim soldier, all of the attempts have been prevented.

But are we to say, for instance, that all community college students should be considered dangerous and worthy of investigation by the Homeland Security Committee, because of Jared Lee Loughner shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, which led to six deaths and thirteen wounded?

Are we to say that all white Christians who had been in the military should be investigated because of Timothy McVeigh blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people and wounding nearly a thousand people?

We cannot allow the Islamic haters in this country, many of them Christian fundamentalists, to anger and provoke good, law abiding Muslims, several million among us and growing, into hating the nation they willingly migrated to or have grown up in as citizens, to feel they are being persecuted or scapegoated, particularly when Muslim soldiers are fighting for us, and in many cases, have helped report and crack plots by the miniscule number of Muslims who have conspired against us!

What Peter King is doing is really the new McCarthyism, loose labeling people as Communists, and now substituting Muslims for Communists!

It is also important to point out that Peter King has a “skeleton” in his closet, his strong advocacy for the terrorist Irish Republican Army in its long war against British control of Northern Ireland. Can a person who supported terrorism actions against America’s strongest ally, Great Britain, be taken seriously when he claims to be fighting terrorism by promoting insecurity among law abiding Muslims, who are certainly over 99 percent of all Muslims?

And it should be pointed out that IF King really wishes to investigate terrorism threats, look to the hundreds of such groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, and Ku Klux Klansmen!

The number of such groups are at an all time high of 1,002, with many of them so called “Patriot” groups that have grown dramatically since Barack Obama became President, and believing that the federal government is the “enemy”!

And if one counts groups that go beyond just hate groups and Patriot groups to include nativist extremist groups which are a threat to ethnic, racial, religious and sexual orientation minorities, then the total is 2,145, a 40 percent increase from 2008-2009 and a 22 percent rise in 2009-2010!

Also realize that many Republican politicians and talk show hosts on radio and television use loose rhetoric, and are encouraging the paranoia and hate by their loose use of language!

So only when Peter King is willing to investigate and publicize the far greater threat from right wing hate groups would his committee be seen as doing something worthy of our support!