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...Like CNN
"Gangs of machete-wielding Muslims have been blamed for the weekend slaughter of hundreds of Christian villagers in Nigeria, but analysts say it would be wrong to assume the conflict was rooted in religion."
Remember Charlie the Tuna? He was the mascot for Starkist Tuna who was always trying to lure Starkist into thinking that he had "good taste" when a God-like voiceover said "Sorry Charlie, we're looking for tuna that tastes good." So twist that sentiment around the latest scream of "PERSECUTION!" that Bill Donohue of The Christian League is ratcheting up about 50 decibals. Twist it in another direction: we need to have Christians who have dignity, consideration and good taste. But Donohue exhibits the opposite. Consider his take on the same incident:
According to The Australian, "dozens of bodies lined the streets" of three Christian villages in northern Nigeria. "Other victims of the weekend's Muslim fury jammed a local morgue, the limbs of slaughtered children tangled in a grotesque mess." Children were scalped, "most had severed hands and feet," and "officials estimate that 500 people were massacred in night-time raids by rampaging Muslim gangs." According to one eyewitness media account, "They then set homes on fire and attacked men, women and children. Many were decapitated."
It
was later found out that the attack could have been a response to a
massacre in January of the Hausa Muslim Community resulting in 150
deaths. Christian mobs in Kuru Karama were said to blame.
When people started criticizing Donohue, he answered:
Back to CNN. It cited an ugly Muslim-Christian incident in 2001 in the same area. What started the Muslim massacre back then? "A Christian woman had tried to cross the road through a group of Muslims during Friday prayers." Yeah, that'll do it every time.
It's time to stop viewing Muslim-Christian violence through the lens of moral equivalency.
Perhaps
it's time for Bill Donohue to stop viewing any form of violence through
a veil of blood. His style of "journalism" is more than yellow, it's
red in the extreme. He conjures in me visions of my old nuns (very,
very old nuns) who recounted in nauseating detail Roman orgies, (more
bachannal than orgy), savagery of the Goths and the Vandals in sacking
Rome, the cruelty of Ghengis Khan, the blood sacrifices of the Aztecs.
Of course, their demeanor always changed when mentioning the Crusades
(Western Civilization's first genocide along with the Albigensian
Crusade), the Pilgrims of Massachusetts (who, after presenting the
Massachusetts Indians with a translation of the Bible promptly wiped
them out) or Father Junipero Serra (who, along with the California
Missions established slavery of non-converts).
It's time for many
proselytizing Christians to own up to the annihilation of so many
millions of people in history. And the ones who scream about the
supposed atheism of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot are usually the ones who
disavow any knowledge of wrongdoing by Christians in history. Or at
least chop history's witnesses down to a few Catholic heretics who
minimally staged the auto de fes of a few thousand old women. They
seldom mention Torquemada, and while we had to memorize "Columbus
sailed the ocean blue in 1492" we never heard about forced conversions
of the Moors and the Jews and ultimately the mass exile of those two
populations by good Queen Isabella.
"Moral equivalency" may be the
only true lens we have. CNN has better taste than to run down a gory
list of atrocities. Their viewers are smart enough to envision the
bloodletting without detail.
Bill Donohue, however, believes in shock and awe.
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