Monday, June 18, 2007

Well, Iran has "condemned" the granting of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie by the Queen of England. The British government says it is to honour his contribution to literature. The Iranis say that it is a deliberate slap in the face to vast numbers of Muslims who allegedly despise Rushdie as a "blasphemer" of Islam. That lovely caring and compassionate man Ayatollah Khomenie (sp?) issued a fatwa against Rushdie calling for his death and encouraging faithful Muslims to murder him. That fatwa has never officially been withdrawn.

The Rev. Tom Harpur writes, "There is one gift that we all must get from our reading of the Gospels or any other scriptures, and from any religion worthy of the name, and that is compassion. Philosophers and theologians, and indeed all ordinary people of good sense, know in their hearts that the core of any true religion is to be found in compassion".

I heard an Iraqui woman member of Parliament on NPR this morning. She converted from Sunni Islam to Shiite Islam (and married a Shiite man, for which her family threatened to kill her) because she could not accept the Sunni injunction that all who were not Sunni were infidels, nor support their alleged inclination to kill those who were not "real" Muslims.

Could Allah be such a God who would approve of such things? My own feeling is that, if any Muslim believes this, that their Islam cannot possibly be an authentic religion to the mind of any ordinary person of good sense. And I dearly choose to believe that most Muslims do not believe in such an Allah, despite the prevalence of such portrayal in the media these days.

Brian+