Murderous Hypocrisy. Two items from the news make plain once again that the guardians of religion are very selective about which features of their religion they should guard.
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Pat Robertson, a supposed Christian conservative, has called for the assassination of a democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation in this Hemisphere. Since when are Christians allowed to commit murder?
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CBS News on Logo, Viacom's new "lesbigay" cable channel, reported last nite that in another area of the world, Iran, supposed moral leaders have executed gay men. The excuse given was that they had committed rape, but CBS's take is that they were killed for being homosexual. Islam is traditionally tolerant of homosexuality, but the current leaders of lunatic Islam don't seem to know that tradition.
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Pat Robertson must admire Iran's current leaders, and maybe Radical Rightwing Christian 'conservatives' of his ilk can do something to head off a grave conflict that the newly installed President of Iran is eager to engage in.
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According to the New York Post's frequent contributor Amir Taheri, an expatriate Iranian, Iran's new Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has presented a 7,000-word document setting forth his goals.

The document states that the region is heading for a "clash of civilizations" in which the Islamic Republic represents Islam while the United States carries the banner of a West that has forgotten God.

The document calls the United States "the hegemon" and asserts that the Bush plan for the Greater Middle East is a device to slow down the decline of the United States as a superpower: "Despite its pharaonic roars . . . the hegemon is in its last throes." [Hmm. I thought the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes".]

The United States, Ahmadinejad's manifesto explains, is a "sunset" (ofuli) power while the Islamic Republic is a "sunrise" (tolu'ee) one. America will crumble because it is based on a system that produces "endless material needs" which lead into "the desert of lust" where men are handed over to Satan. The Islamic Republic is going to win because it has God on its side. The Americans may "mock the divine system" in Iran. But Islamic Iran is the model for the future of mankind. * * *

The goal of the "Islamic pole" [of a multipolar world] would be to unite the world under the banner of Islam as the "final Divine message" and "the only True Faith."

— "Iran Prez: Democracy? Never!", column by Amir Taheri in the New York Post, August 24, 2005

Pat Robertson probably thinks that Christianity is "the only True Faith", so on this point the two forces, Iranian Islamism and conservative Christianity, might not be able to agree. But perhaps they can agree on enuf other points, from abortion to homosexuality, to keep us from total (nuclear) war. And all it will require is the murder of twenty or thirty million homosexuals. Ain't religion wonderful?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,873.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:41 PM