Honor-Killings, Islam, and Christendom

Posted by R. Cort Kirkwood on June 18, 2007

If you want to know just how bizarre the Moslem clerical view of women is, consider this concise item from the Associated Press:


CAIRO, EGYPTAl-Azhar University, one of Sunni Islam’s most prestigious institutions, ordered one of its clerics Monday to face a disciplinary panel after he issued a controversial decree allowing adults to breast-feed.


Ezzat Attiya had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, saying adult men could breast-feed from female work colleagues as a way to avoid breaking Islamic rules that forbid men and women from being alone together.


In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers. It means the child could not marry the nursing woman’s biological children.


Attiya — the head of Al-Azhar’s Department of Hadith, or teachings of the Prophet Muhammad — insisted the same would apply with adults. He argued that if a man nursed from a co-worker, it would establish a family bond between them and allow the two to work side-by-side without raising suspicion of an illicit sexual relation.


You wonder what the La Leche League has to say about this, or whether too little time at mama’s breast really could cause psychosexual frustration, but that aside, the brouhaha over the “Lactation Fatwa” conjures a disturbing picture of what Moslem men think of their women, and what those women face in their quotidian intercourse with those men, social and otherwise.


One example of what Moslems think of women is the so-called honor killing, the murder of women who disgrace a Moslem’s family. This estimable practice, occurring with alarming frequency in Islamo-Europe, has Western elites wringing their tremulous, uncalloused hands. On one hand, they fear offending the feminists seeking justice for their Moslem sisters. On the other, they fear offending an unassimilable racial and religious minority that is demanding, and getting, all manner of “rights,” not least of which is the “right to castigate” a disobedient wife.


Given the refusal of Moslems to assimilate, as well as the range of successful Moslem demands upon European elites for heretofore unimagined “rights” and public and corporate policies, one wonders when Christendom’s benighted lands will relent and sanction not only honor killing but also bride burning, genital mutilation and the other merry folkways the Islamic horde brought with them.


Honor Killings And Other Islamic Practices


An honor killing involves the brother, father or uncle of a girl killing her for besmirching the family “honor.” The possible list of offenses inviting a young woman’s murder is a long one. It includes trying to flee an arranged marriage to an older man, often a cousin or other relative, merely writing love notes to a boy in class, and falling in love (or merely conversing) with an unapproved suitor. A pregnancy out of wedlock demands swift and brutal retribution. Worse yet, other women, typically mothers and mothers-in-law, often help the men commit murder.


On Feb. 7, 2005, The Boston Globe reported last year, 23-year-old Hatun Sucuru was standing at a bus-stop in Berlin when her brother walked up and shot her to death. Her crime? She fled her husband, an older cousin in Turkey whom her parents forced her to marry, and returned to Germany with their son. And, “further enraging her family,” the Globe reported, “she abandoned the hijab — the traditional head scarf worn by some Moslem women — in favor of earrings, makeup, and blue jeans.” The German cops charged her three brothers with the murder; the youngest had pulled the trigger. At a largely Moslem school outside Berlin, the Globe reported, “students greeted news of her slaying with loud approval. Her brothers were hailed as local heroes.” In its article on the subject in 2005, Der Speigel put an even finer point on schoolboys’ approving these killings. “One boy said, ‘She only had herself to blame,’ while another insisted, ‘She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German.’”


Another infamous honor killing occurred in London in 2004. Holding his daughter over the bathtub, Iraqi Kurd Abdullah Yones slashed his 16-year-old daughter’s throat because she’d written love letters to a classmate. In Birmingham in 1998, 19-year-old Rukhsana Naz, pregnant by her lover, made the mistake of trying to leave an arranged marriage. Her brother strangled her with a jump rope while her mother held her down. In 2002 in Stockholm, Rahmi Sahendal shot his 26-year-old daughter, Fadime, in the head because she too refused an arranged marriage and instead planned to marry a Swede.


Such honor killings are so prevalent among Moslems in Europe that police met in the Hague in 2004 to discuss the matter. As Der Speigel reported, women are dying by the dozen: “The Turkish women’s organization Papatya has documented 40 instances of honor killings in Germany since 1996. Examples include a Darmstadt girl whose two brothers pummeled her to death with a hockey stick in April 2004 after they learned she had slept with her boyfriend. In Augsburg in April [2005], a man stabbed his wife and 7-year-old daughter because the wife was having an affair. In December 2003, a Tuebingen father strangled his 16-year-old daughter and threw her body into a lake because she had a boyfriend.” Last year’s article in the Globe disclosed that police in Germany and England are reopening suspicious cold-case murders. Eight women were murdered in Berlin in 2005, with some 47 slain in the six years before the Globe article was published. Also in 2005, British police reclassified 18 of 22 reviewed murders as honor killings: “Scotland Yard has reopened probes into 109 suspicious deaths, covering a 10-year span, that seem to have been family conspiracies to kill Moslem women.” In 2004, the BBC reported that London’s metropolitan police were combing decade-old files to investigate 52 murders in London and 65 across England and Wales.


Yet Moslem women aren’t the only victims of Moslem men. White Swedish women are suffering a wave of unprecedented rape and mayhem at the hands of their country’s Mohammedan guests. Unsurprisingly, an Islamic mufti’s comment about it jarred the Swedes. Women who don’t wear headscarves, he averred, are “asking to be raped,” a view prevalent among the young Moslem predators teeming in Sweden’s streets. But the Swedes didn’t get beyond a little indignation. Neither have the Dutch. After a Moslem murdered Theo Van Gogh because he directed a film called Submission about misogynist Moslem violence, the authorities wanted to sweep the connection to Islam under the prayer rug.


But even worse is the German judge who refused to give a horribly abused Moslem woman a divorce because the Koran sanctions wife-beating. As Srjda Trifkovic of Chronicles magazine reported, the judge cited the “right to castigate” in refusing the divorce, and even used a few lines from the Moslem holy book to justify the decision:


Men have the authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.

Unsurprisingly, the paper of record was quick to exonerate Islam as the fountainhead of misogyny among Moslem men.


The New York Times had a bone to pick with the German judge mainly because of her suggestion that Islam justified violence against women. It stated matter-of-factly: “While the verse cited by Judge Datz-Winter does say husbands may beat their wives for being disobedient—an interpretation embraced by fundamentalists— mainstream Moslems have long rejected wife-beating as a medieval relic.”

In reality “mainstream Moslems” do nothing of the sort. New York Times’ claim notwithstanding, the original sources for “true” Islam — the Koran and Hadith — provide ample and detailed evidence on Islamic theory and the sources of Shari’a practice that remains in force all over the Islamic world today.

Truth is, the Koran is explicit on the subject of disciplining women in general and wives in particular, as critics of Islam, former Moslems in particular, observe. And while the Koran may not suggest “honor killing” per se, Islamic societies and culture, as well as its men, have absorbed its sacred injunctions on the subject of women. No wonder a “French” Moslem gouged out his wife’s eyes for refusing sex.


The Western Response And The Death Of The Faith


The New York Times and others—quick to assert that Islam does not sanction such violence, which is a falsehood—wish to explain away honor killings, the rape wave and the Islamic domestic violence that has beset Europe. It’s a crime problem. Or their host societies refuse to “integrate” them. Or whatever. It can’t possibly be the fault of the resentful, alien host that sent Paris up in flames two years ago.


The reason the Western elites, particularly the media and politicians, refuse to condemn these explicitly Islamic outrages is the fear of being called “racist” or “Islamophobic.” As one Moslem woman explained to Der Speigel, “People were afraid they would be called Nazis if they dared to bring up issues of human rights in the Turkish community.”


Serap Cileli, a Turkish writer and filmmaker, “forced into an arranged marriage” at just 15, couldn’t get published in Germany. “Everything I wrote from 1994 to 1999 was rejected, even by newspapers,” she told the magazine. “They told me I was writing about a minority issue and they were afraid of appearing racist.” There you have the cult of diversity: suppress the truth because it might inspire a charge of racism. These same anti-Christian elites love nothing more than ridiculing evangelical Christians or devout Catholics and do not fear being called “Christophobic,” but in any event their infatuation with diversity came with a stiff price: Their fear of criticizing Islam precludes them from defending the sisterhood. A Swedish feminist has said women must bow to the wishes of Moslem men and dress more modestly. Thus does Islam’s war against Christendom, as Trifkovic observes, inspire the silence of those who would otherwise condemn Islam’s inherent misogyny:


Such treatment of women might be expected to make Islam abhorrent within the cultural milieu epitomized by the equal-rights obsessed European Union and the neofeminist New York Times, but this has not happened. There is a reason for this. It is the refusal of Islam to accept the wife as her husband’s closest and inseparable loving partner and companion. Islam therefore challenges Christian marriage in principle and in practice. Moslem teaching on marriage and the family, though “conservative” about “patriarchy,” denies the traditional Christian concept of matrimony. Islam is therefore an “objective” ally of postmodernity, a few beatings here and a few rapes there notwithstanding.


In other words, the leftist, feminist elites of the West will not oppose Islam because it helps undermine Christian marriage, itself as much an institution of patriarchal oppression as Islam. That is a lie, of course, and those elites now know what they have permitted to enter their house, even if their pusillanimity in the face of name-calling, or worse, riots and wanton murder, offer psychological refuge for their denial.


The question is who, or what, opened the door. Pope Benedict answers indirectly, or perhaps not, when he calls for a restoration of faith and fecundity in Europe. The inevitable Islamic conquest of Europe and its affiliated horrors would never have been possible had Europe remained true to its Catholic faith, the bulwark that stood firmly against Islamic conquest for 10 centuries. Islam’s triumph first required the repudiation of the Faith and its traditions, as well as the steady dissipation of Europe’s Catholic culture, which not only included chivalry, or defending the honor of women and assuring them an esteemed place in home and hearth, but also elevating the most admirable and worthy of the fairer sex to sainthood, a practice that finds its spiritual apex in devotion and prayers to the Blessed Virgin Mary. That mighty edifice of the Church Militant in Paris, Notre Dame, arose for a reason. Clearly, one faith cannot live comfortably next to the other. Part of Trifkovic’s point is that Islam is the anti-Christian elite’s ally in the latter’s quest to destroy the Faith they hate but which gave them everything they have. The late atheist Oriana Fallaci recognized this truth, which inspired her to spend her final years denouncing the coming Islamic conquest of Italy.


The likelihood is that anti-Christian elites would be more explicit about helping Islam conquer Europe were honor killing and rape not part of the bargain. This brings to mind such neocon allies as Christopher Hitchens, one of the leftists who think a good reason for going to war in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East is liberating the Arab sisterhood. The Hitchensians would use the American military to establish “women’s rights” in a part of the world that has never known them or indeed ever known women as anything but domestic slaves and fertile soil for the seed corn of Mohammed’s future disciples. It sounds chivalrous, but don’t be fooled. This, too, is anti-Christian in its motive. Feminism is an appendage of atheist leftism, an enemy of Islam and Christianity. Indeed, that Americans are fighting against Moslems in Iraq and Afghanistan, not as Christians but as secular democrats, is the principal reason Hitchens and his anti-Christian, neocon tribe can support the Bush Crusade in Iraq. They wish to defeat Islam not because it is anti-Christian, but because it strives to destroy leftist secular democracy in the West, which dethroned the Christian polity, culture and religion they so despise.


Thus, unlike Fallaci, who, while an atheist, understood that the Church built Western Civilization, the Hitchensians see the global projection of American power as a means to spread anti-Christian democracy and further undermine the Faith. If they don’t wish Islam to succeed, it is only because one oppressive religion, in their view, would replace another. But secular democracy cannot defeat Islam. Only the Faith can. Then again, as Bush clearly says, the war in Iraq is not a war against Islam, a “religion of peace,” but a “war against terror,” which cannot be won because a tactic cannot be defeated. Either way, the war in Iraq is lost.


Which leaves just one observation. Until the West awakens from its spiritual slumber and raises the Cross, it will continue losing the fight not against “terror” but against Islam itself. Until then, the honor killings, rapes and riots will continue with customary ferocity. Brothers shooting sisters. Fathers slashing throats. Husbands gouging out eyes. Mothers strangling daughters. Next to these, grown men suckling a co-worker’s breast is but a mild indignity.


R. Cort Kirkwood is the author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans To Know And Admire (Cumberland House). His articles appear regularly in The New American and Chronicles. His last article for Taki’s Top Drawer was “Cowards, Bullies and Killers.”

Comments

Were Moslems to emigrate into places that actually had a working consensus of beliefs and standards, they would probably assimilate nicely. Modern Europe, however, is not such a place, and that is half of the problem. When a repressive culture comes in contact with a truly free culture, the repression gradually subsides. The problem is that the people of Europe no longer have an ideology of human freedom, due to their wholesale abandonment of historic Christianity. That is the fundamental problem, and Islamicization is one of it’s many symptomes. I would wager that Europe’s loss of faith (including, of course the resultant decline in birth rates) is more responsible for the present situation than immigration policy could ever be.

Posted by Matt on Jun 18, 2007.
Click to flag this comment as abusive

In his well written essay, Mr. Kirkwood has hit the historical and theological nail on the head.  Until the Cross is raised by Catholic men of virtue and valor, Europe will continue to be Islamized.  The leaders of Europe, as well as of the United States, remind me of the characters of an organization called N.I.C.E. in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength (the 3rd volume of his Space Trilogy).  They tolerate everything except truth, beauty, and goodness.  They bring nothing but ruin.  Personally, I hope for the day when I hear the mass cry of “Deus vult” in response to the exhortations of a brave and inspired Pope.  We have had enough dialogue—it doesn’t work.  It only brings compromise.

That Hideous Strength is an amazing book, one of Lewis’ best, I believe. I sincerely hope that your hopes for a Europe united under the pope are not realized. My ancestors were killed as a result of that situation, and they were far from infidels.

Posted by Matt on Jun 18, 2007.
Click to flag this comment as abusive

Gruesome as it seems, it is not too much different from what some christians are doing to their females. What shocks Westerners can’t be the killings, but rather the word ‘honor’ associated with it (as though we had some idea what it is, after the Abu Ghraib exibition).
As a young man, I lived many years among Muslims without ever noticing those dishonorable honor-killings, which makes me believe that our society somehow stimulates bad Muslim behaviour.
I have some unanswered questions, that perhaps J.Cort Kirkwood ( or anyone else) would care to clarify for me.
First, why is the Muslim Religion, despite all the horrors attached to it, the fastest growing religion in the World?
Second, assuming that everything is right what is said about the Muslims, when the Hell are we going to appologize and pay the damage to those Serbs, we bombed to smitherns for their fighting the Muslims?

The biggest shame of all is that Iraq and Iran were two of the more liberal states in the Middle East.  In our rush to appease Israel and Saudi Arabia, we turn against our natural cultural allies in Saddam’s Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.

“ . . . why is the Muslim Religion, despite all the horrors attached to it, the fastest growing religion in the World?”

Yes, Islam is expanding, but so is Christianity, among the populations and in the very third world regions so often disparaged by paleo-cons.  If present trends continue (and the force of momentum is just about unstopable), Christianity will remain numerically the largest religion in the world in the twenty-first century.  See The Next Christendom by Philip Jenkins (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Matt claims that a Europe united under the Pope killed his ancestors “and they were far from infidels.” For the sake of argument, he should be specific.  Not only should he be specific, he should offer evidence that it was because of the Pope that his ancestors were killed.  He should, also, present the reasons, if this were the case.  My initial argument is based on the words of Christ recorded in Luke 11:23, “He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.” I can only assume that these words of His have great meaning for those who believe that Jesus Christ is God and man.  According to St. Cyril and St. John Chrysostom, those who are working against the mission of Christ and His Church are the devil, the Jews, heretics and schismatics.  The mission of Christ and his Church, the Catholic Church, is the salvation of souls.  This is the ultimate in seriousness.

My ancestors believed that baptism should be given upon confession of faith rather than at birth. For this they were killed.

The logical leap required to assume that “He that is not with me is against me” applies as easily to a certain group of bishops as it does to Christ himself is large, but made easier by wealth and power.

Without the Protestant Reformation, the Muslims would have taken over 300 years ago, because the abuses of Catholicism (including but not limited to the inquisition and the selling of indulgences) were killing the religious impulse of the common people.

Posted by Matt on Jun 19, 2007.
Click to flag this comment as abusive

Matt said: “Without the Protestant Reformation, the Muslims would have taken over 300 years ago,...” This is totally wrong. In fact it is the opposite, the only people who stopped the Muslims from conquering Europe where Catholics (and Orthodoxes). Think about Isabel and Fernando at Granada, Juan de Austria at Lepanto, Jon Sobieki at the Gates of Vienna. Where are the Protestant version of Juan de Austria and Sobiecki?
In fact it was even worse, Protestants like Luther speculated with a victory of the Turks against Catholic forces. Matt, read some history before writing nonsense.
Regarding the Inquisition, all countries had it, including the Protestant ones. In England Catholics were murdered and dispossessed. The Inquisition is responsible for about 3000 deaths according to historians like Jean Dumont, and many others recently.

Posted by H.A. on Jun 19, 2007.
Click to flag this comment as abusive

Mr. Kirkwood, which part do you find bizarre - the fatwa or the disciplinary action taken against the man who issued it?  Several months ago, there was another interesting ruling by Azhar’s highest cleric which permits reconstructive hymen surgery? - http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5719

George Ajjan, http://www.georgeajjan.com

I’m inclined to agree with Peter RV.  Killing of women out of sexual jealousy or lust is quite common in the (no longer) Christian West.  It’s just that nobody pretends it has anything to do with honor.  What’s more, child killing on an industrial scale, is the practice of the West, not yet of the Moslem countries.  When the Israelites of the divided monarchy spent generations burning their children in honor of pagan gods, the Lord sent against them the Assyrians and Babylonians - not because the latter were mild and loving, but precisely because they weren’t.  It’s a lesson that modern men and women should, but probably won’t learn until many more have been killed or raped in the name of honor.

Mr Higdon wrote:

“I’m inclined to agree with Peter RV.  Killing of women out of sexual jealousy or lust is quite common in the (no longer) Christian West.”

Good GOD, man!  What Western country are you living in?  None that I’ve ever visited.  Have you actually witnessed those killings?  Do you have any records to support what you said?

Yes such things happen in the West.  Rarely.  But you’re way out of line to say it is “common.” If anything, in American and Britain, the women have the upper hand, including in violent ways.
And in France, they generally have non-violent ways of dealing with erotic passions.  And English generally just ignore erotic passions, if they ever have any to begin with.  ;-) (Alright I’m being snarky there.)

But seriously, what you described is not
“common” in Western countries.  It happens, but it’s not “common.”

And you wrote:  “What’s more, child killing on an industrial scale, is the practice of the West...”

What the hell are you talking about?  The only way this would make any sense at all, would be if you were referring (Marxist style) to the child labour which exists in third-world countries, from which Western countries benefit economically.  But if that’s what you mean, then the problem is a non-Western one in the first instance - unless I’m mistaken in my assumption that no European or North American countries allow child-labour.  So what the hell are you talking about?

You coulc say - arguably - that the West collaborates in child-killing in non-Western countries.  But you’re being extremely dishonest in implying that “child-killing on an industrial scale” is peculiarly Western - unless you’re positing the ridiculous Marxist paradigm which blames all of the barbarities of non-Western countries on
“Western imperialism” while exculpating the putatively “Noble Savages” who collaborate in it.

In there something being tiptoed around? “The Western elites, particularly the media and politicians.....the leftist, feminist elites of the West.....anti-Christian elites.....secular democrats....” These are vague terms. What is needed is a rigorous sociological survey of these groups to define the economic, educational, religious. ethnic parameters of the problem. It may well be that an undue, but concerted, concentration of small numbers of subsets of the population are undermining Christianity. If so they should be identified and marginalized. Scholarship, however how politically incorrect, is called for, not obscurantism.

Dear Mr. Ball,
I believe that Mr. Higdon was referring to legal abortion, which is completely unrestricted in the U.S., laxly regulated in most of Europe, but rather rarer in most of the Islamic world. That is, indeed, “industrialized” child-killing by a multi-billion-dollar industry. Planned Parenthood ALONE takes in almost $1 billion per year. (http://www.lifenews.com/nat3177.html)
We may well deserve the rod of the Assyrians--but that shouldn’t stop us from fighting.

Dear Mr Zmirak,

Thank you for that, my Friend.  I need truthful friends like you to correct me sometimes.  And you are totally right about THAT kind of “industrialised child-killing.” Now I get it.

It is hoped that I am not belaboring a point and I am not sure that this website tolerates such things.  However, I do seek the truth and when I read words that are ambiguous or incoherent, or undocumented, I must ask for a clarification.  Such is the case in Matt’s response to my last.  First he claims, “My ancestors believed that baptism should be given upon confession of faith rather than at birth. For this they were killed.” Would he, please, cite the persons, times, the places of these alleged killings, and his sources.  Second, he says, “The logical leap required to assume that ‘He that is not with me is against me’ applies as easily to a certain group of bishops as it does to Christ himself is large, but made easier by wealth and power.” This seemingly vague statement needs to be clarified.  Please, do not assume I know what is in your mind that you are trying to express.  Spell it out.  Third, as for Protestantism keeping Islam at bay, H. A. handily rebutted your assertion, Matt.  Furthermore, I submit, that the serious problems humanity experiences in the West, today, in terms of theology, philosophy, political philosophy, economics and morality is historically linked to the Protestant Revolt of the sixteenth century.  By the way, I, as a Catholic, do not apologize for the Inquisition (which once enjoyed the connotation of “inquiry").  Centuries before Christ was born, Plato asserted that it is the duty of government to show no tolerance toward those who denied the state religion.  Did you know that those Jews chased out of Spain by Isabella and Ferdinand, and who settled in Holland, conducted their own inquistions?  Of course, Elizabethan England did all in its power to snuff out Catholicism.  Did you know that the first inquisitor was Moses?  The Inquisition, particularly the Spanish Inquisition, was a means of protecting the Catholic social order from its enemies.  It has been disparaged by dishonest men, whether Jews or Protestants.  What they wrote as history was a distortion and the whole compendium of lies is known as the Black Legend.  I recommend that you read Characters of the Inquisition by William Thomas Walsh for a balanced presentation, as well as his biography of King Philip II of Spain.

Dear Felipe,

What many people do is to try to avoid admitting that the West, and even the U.S. is no longer a Christian realm.  You are indeed correct that clarification is needed, but this will be fought fang and claw by the ruling elites.  As Machiavelli noted early in Modernity, “the appearance of religion is a good thing.” The unfortunate splintering of Christianity has enabled scoundrels to appropriately mask their paganism under a very thin veneer of Christian appearances.  Mr. Higman and Dr. Zmirak give us a useful litmus test to see through the mirage, that is that a true Christian does not take innocent life.

Thank you, Mr. Zmirak.  The abortion industry is indeed what I was referring to.

Mr. Meng,
My apologies if I have, in fact, been unclear.

My point was that the Catholic church has a great deal of blood on it’s hands, as it has executed thousands, if not millions of heretics.

If you choose to justify the Catholic bloodshed by appealing to Plato, comparing it to Protestant and Jewish injustices, and citing historians who are the Church-History equivalents of Holocaust deniers, I don’t think that there is enough common ground between us to make continued discussion profitable.

May you not be held responsible for the injustices you have defended.

Posted by Matt on Jun 19, 2007.
Click to flag this comment as abusive

There’s no point in trying to be more “Catholic” than the pope. The Holy See issued a solemn apology for the cruel persecution of those (rightly) deemed as heretics in past centuries, and has fully assimilated the one legitimate development of doctrine which occurred at Vatican II: the teaching on religious liberty, which asserted that the human freedom of conscience trumps the right of the State to impose conformity of practice or belief. This rectifies a mistake which went back to Augustine--who in his early career favored freedom of belief, but who later quoted (out of context) the biblical verse “compel them to come in” to justify persecuting the (admittedly repulsive) Donatists. The Imperial persecution which ensued did not eradicate the heresy, but deepened the splits among Christians in North Africa, such that many of them regarded the invading Islamic hordes as liberators. (The poor Ukrainians made the same mistake in 1941....)
Friends of the Church do her no favors by trying to defend the crimes committed in her name, against her spirit. Remember that St. Dominic founded the Order of Preachers to win back souls from the (hideous) Albigensians by PERSUASION. It was his successors who were pressured by secular power and some not-very-saintly popes to employ force against these confused, deeply mistaken people.
Sure, it might make sense in certain contexts to restrain the public preaching of certain very destructive doctrines --such as Nazism, poisonous cults, and I daresay Marxism. And it’s necessary sometimes to fight defensive wars, such as (several, not all of) the Crusades. But by renouncing the Inquisition we move closer to the spirit of the saints and the apostles. And that can hardly be a bad thing.

Well said, Mr. Sarto.

Mr. Sarto,
One doesn’t have to go deepr into History than the WWII.
In 1941, the Croatian Ustashas i.e.local Nazies, put under knife some six hundred thousand Serbs in Croatia-Bosnia (at that time representing the same quisling state).There are documents that Whermacht itself was aghast at the brutalities committed. On this occasion some two hundred thousand Serbs were forcefully converted to catholicism under the eye of the Holy See which has never mentioned these events, never mind appologizing for them. Serbs, for your information, were Eastern Orthodox. What heresy did that represent? (Taki,being a Greek will be able to explain it to you better)
Mr.Sarto, you have been lied to, about the catholic repentence of its past sins.

Dear Matt,
You continue to avoid the issue.  For example, your latest, “My point was that the Catholic church has a great deal of blood on it’s hands, as it has executed thousands, if not millions of heretics.”

Wow! This kind of accusation must have reams of historical evidence in its support.  Although you continue to make these general statements against the Catholic Church, you either refuse or are unable to give us documentary proof.  Why is that, since, I have been asking it from you for several days?  Please, indulge me with proof.
Sincerely,
Jerry

Dear Matt, No apologies necessary.  Just give me what must be overwhelming historical evidence that the Catholic Church is responsible for the death of thousands if not millions of people.  That’s all I am asking from you.  Sincerely, Jerry

Here we go again. A citizen of the most violent modern society on earth , a society that raped 94 thousands women and murdered 4 thousand of them , a society with a $10 Billions pornographic industry (the most vile of violence against women) , a society where viewing pornography is not only discussed on TV but promoted through shows like the TV series Friends . This citizen of this society wants to enlighten us on the horrors and violence perpetrated on Muslim women everywhere. 
Where does he get his research materiel. First example an obscure article not surprisingly from the Jerusalem Post (same newspaper who claimed that a giant atomic plant was found in Iraq few days after the US invasion ) about an Imam in El Azhar University in Egypt who condoned breast feeding among adults. So far so good. However he wants to show us that: 1) ‘’Islamic rules forbids men and women from being alone together”.  FALSE. In all the dozens of Islamic countries, only a couple like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain do actually enforce that. Egypt does not. It is like concluding that if 10 millions Muslims may not allow man and women to be together therefore it is applicable to all the 1.3 Billions of Muslims.  I think not ! 2)’’ it conjures a disturbing picture of what Muslim men think of their women, and what those women face in their quotidian intercourse with those men, social and otherwise. ‘’Wow that’s a whole load of presumptions you are making. By deductive logic you are saying that Muslim men do not dare touch their lovers breast, that they are terrified of them . Right ? FALLACY AGAIN. Let me give you an example : Jim Jones is a christian (I have my doubt let’s pretend he is ) then using your arguments all christian priest are mass murderers. Right ? no WRONG !
Need I go further ? I think not ! It is all of the same, same falsehoods. My dear friend would call it propaganda cheaply packaged. I conclude further by saying that long, long after this citizen and many others like him are gone from this earth, Islam and all the Muslims will still be here (in greater numbers). No amount of propaganda, hate will dislodge them from this earth. How about that ?

Post a Comment

By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.

Commenting is not available in this section entry.