Fred Phelps Jr., the son of the Westboro Baptist Church’s pastor, blamed the tornado’s death and destruction on Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Kevin Durant who expressed his support for Collins.

Fred Phelps, Jr. @WBCFredJr
OK Thunder’s Durant flips God by praising fag Collins. God smashes OK. You do the math. #GodH8sFags #FagsDoomNations #FearGod #GodH8sU
10:47 PM – 20 May 2013

Evidently one tweet was not enough to make his hate-filled point. So, two minutes later, Phelps chimed in again:

Fred Phelps, Jr. @WBCFredJr
God’s wonderful wrath in Oklahoma reminds me: #GodCursesUForFagMarriage #GodIsYourTerrorist #GodWillRepay #GodAvengesHisPeople #GodH8sU
10:49 PM – 20 May 2013

It was not made clear why God didn’t aim his “wonderful wrath” at the Washington, DC area where Collins lives (Collins is a Wizard not a Thunder).

However, John McTernan, Christian preacher and blogger, clarified exactly why Oklahoma was selected–Oklahoma’s Christians weren’t praying fervently enough against homosexuals:

Oklahoma is supposed to be part of the Bible belt. How many churches were interceding before the Lord on Sunday about the open homosexuality in the streets of the state capital? I dare say almost none. I see this as judgment on the entire Christian church for not fearing God. How many of these massive destructive storms does God have to send before the church will see what is happening? Will it ever fear God and intercede and cry out to Him?

Got it: not enough prayers against them homos.

However, it was not made clear why God was especially angry at homosexuality and not, say, greed, arrogance, the killing of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, or lack of concern for the poor, the widow, and the orphan.

One might think that since Jesus uttered not a single word against homosexuals (but had a lot to say about loving your enemy, loving your neighbor as yourself, and helping the poor and dispossessed) that those who hate in the name of God aren’t Christians at all. Or, if they are, they fail to grasp what it most deeply means to be a follower of Jesus.

Even “respectable” and mainstream Christians are purveyors of hate. After the Oklahoma disaster, John Piper, popular Christian preacher and author, tweeted twice in rapid succession:

@JohnPiper: “Your sons and daughters were eating and a great wind struck the house, and it fell upon them, and they are dead.” Job 1:19

@JohnPiper: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.” Job 1:20

After being accused of insensitivity, Piper took down the tweets. He would later tweet:

@JohnPiper: My hope and prayer for Oklahoma is that the raw realism of Job’s losses will point us all to his God, “compassionate and merciful.” James 5:11

Before we accept Piper’s wounded clarification of his cryptic tweets, let us examine some theological dots. Piper believes that God foreordains or predestines, causes even, every single event that happens on earth. God has, he writes, “absolute sovereign control of God over all things, including evil.”

In 2009 a tornado hit the Minneapolis Convention Center and then broke the steeple of the Central Lutheran Church at precisely the time when the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was holding its national convention in the Convention Center and was considering the issue of whether practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry. Piper contends that the tornado was God’s “gentle but firm warning” to turn from the approval of sin. Piper’s post-Oklahoma tweet, which he has not clarified, likely communicated Piper’s belief in God’s firm but this time not gentle warning to turn away from sin. Genuine love, Piper insists, must hate.

I leave it to the reader to connect the dots.

From Phelps to Piper, Christians who speak hatred on behalf of God outdo Jesus who humbly professed ignorance of the reason for disasters. Jesus used the example of the Tower of Siloam which collapsed, killing eighteen people (Luke 13:1-5) to refute the claim that tragedies are divine judgment on human sin. He replied: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?” Then he confounds those who arrogantly proclaim themselves privy to the divine mind. He instructs the questioners to look not at the sin of those who suffered but to look within, at their own heart of darkness. Were Jesus here today, he might offer the same advice to Phelps and Piper and their ilk.

God, Falwell and Robertson proclaimed, was mad at the pagans, and the ACLU, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians. God was not mad at Christians who have embraced a materialistic lifestyle, who have fought against health benefits for the poor, and who attribute to the one who blessed the meek their natural right to bear arms. And God was not mad at prideful preachers who so confidently proclaim their privileged insight into the mind of God. Homosexuals have particularly drawn God’s ire.

While WTF seems the most fitting response, one might nonetheless ask, “WWJD?”

If what Jesus would do has anything to do with what Jesus did, one should simply hold one’s tongue on the topic of homosexuality because Jesus uttered not one word about homosexuality for or agin. Such followers of Jesus, though, are typically undeterred by Jesus’s complete silence on the topic of homosexuality.

Jesus did, on the other hand, explicitly condemn divorce except in the case of infidelity and he forbade remarriage if the divorce were due to something other than infidelity. Yet divorce is rampant and Christians are statistically no more likely to avoid it than are non-Christians. There is very little contemporary condemnation of divorce and remarriage among Bible-believing Christians. And there is no Christian movement to make divorce illegal in the U.S.

Liberal divorce laws and the attitudes that attend them are an unquestioned threat to marriage (vastly more, one might think, than permitting gays to marry). And Christians are complicit in both the laws and the attitudes.

Don’t get me wrong — Christians are not pro-divorce. But they have made a compromise between their commitment to the high teachings of Jesus and what’s culturally acceptable in this day and age. They are leaving the divorce laws alone rather than imposing their convictions on everyone (including themselves, in this case). Intriguingly, 9/11 was not blamed on the soaring divorce rate among Christians.

Christians continue to enjoy a substantial majority and cultural dominance in the United States and some Christians are keen to impose their moral vision, one that would preclude gay marriage by definition, on every U.S. citizen. Let me argue why they should not.

In parts of the world where a religion/ideology other than Christianity is dominant, Christians suffer. While western Christians live in societies where everyone, especially Christians, can worship and live out their faith as they please, Christians in other parts of the world, mostly in Muslim-majority nations, are not so privileged. In those parts of the world, Christianity is imperiled and Christians live in fear. Jews fare worse — in Indonesia, for example, the last major synagogue was forcibly closed in 2009; there may now be fewer than a dozen Jews in all of Indonesia. In China, Christianity is an officially permitted religion, yet the majority of Chinese Christians worship in illegal, house churches.

Christians should pay heed: in countries where a religion/ideology predominates, those in the out-group suffer. When the beliefs and practices of a religion/ideology become normative, those with differing beliefs and practices are treated as subhuman.

Christians, then, should hope for change in the countries their less-privileged brothers and sisters live in; they should hope that the norms in those countries would stop reflecting those of the dominant religion/ideology.

What they think should happen in Muslim-majority countries and China, they should apply at home: they should hope that the norms in our country would stop reflecting those of the dominant religion — Christianity.

Better for everyone — Muslim, Christian, Jew, even Communist — to live in a society which guarantees freedom of belief and practice. Better for everyone to live in a society where no religion/ideology is politically or culturally dominant.

Followers of Jesus, then, should not aspire to found a Christian empire. They should not seek to perpetuate their alignment with power, or to impose their distinctly Christian beliefs and practices on others. The kingdom of God is within.

And so, as the Supreme Court deliberates on the issue of gay marriage, they should hope for more freedom of belief and practice, not less.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi may have shown his true colors. In several incriminating videos which have gone viral Morsi’s apparently anti-Semitic slurs have come to light. In one, a television interview from three years ago, he calls Zionists “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.” In the same year, at a rally in the Nile Delta denouncing the Israeli blockade of Gaza, he declares: “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” He’s not yet finished inciting hatred. Egyptian children, he said, “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue. The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.” Lest we dismiss these blasts from the past as mere youthful indiscretions, just three months ago, a pious Morsi, worshipping at a Mosque, can be seen mouthing the word “Amen” as the preacher urges Allah to “destroy the Jews and their supporters.”

Morsi claims, as politicians have a habit of doing, that his remarks were taken out of context. He claims that his remarks were aimed at Israel’s policies, not Jews. There’s a fine line between Israeli policies that discriminate against Palestinians, on the one hand, and Jews, on the other. Morsi claims that he didn’t cross that line.

But while policies may be like bloodsuckers, such slurs seem more appropriately ascribed to persons. It’s Zionists, after all, not Zionist policies that he calls bloodsuckers; it’s Jews that he calls upon Egyptians to hate and to destroy.

I was recently traveling in Turkey with a Muslim friend talking about strategies for cultivating religious liberty and tolerance in Muslim-majority countries. In particular, we talked about whether or not there was sufficient theological common ground for Muslims and Christians to work together for religious liberty in Turkey. We waxed eloquently on Christian charity and Muslim compassion. I then asked what we might do for Turkey’s Jews. Once a haven for Jews, the Turkish Jewish population has dwindled dramatically (from over 500,000 during the Ottoman Empire—40% of Istanbul’s population—to about 25,000 today). His countenance fell immediately and he said, without irony, “Everyone hates the Jews.”

“Everyone hates the Jews.”

Since the blood of Abraham runs through the Prophet Mohammed and Jesus the Christ, where does that sentiment come from? How could followers of Allah, the All-Merciful and Jesus, who demands love of neighbor as oneself, hate the Jews (or anyone, for that matter)? How could it be that the one thing that unites Muslim and Christian alike in Turkey, and them together with Mohammed Morsi and his followers, is hatred for the Jews?

When I ask, “Why does everyone hate the Jews?”, then, I mean something like this—“How could children of Abraham possibly hate one of their brothers?” Or, “How is it possible that professed followers of an all merciful God could hate one of God’s creatures?”

Morsi’s unfortunate but all too familiar remarks offer a clue. Morsi trades on familiar anti-Semitic slurs: Jews as bloodsuckers, descendants of apes and pigs. The first step toward hatred of a group of humans is dehumanization. You don’t willfully hurt, discriminate against, terrorize, or kill innocent human beings. But you can squash bloodsuckers and slaughter pigs. You don’t deny human beings their right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, but subhuman animals can have no such rights. Nazi Germany was prepared for genocide by a successful propaganda campaign in which Jews were systematically portrayed as subhumans.

Morsi’s first step towards following the All-Merciful should be to denounce the dehumanization. Jews are, according to Muslims and Christians, created in the divine image, just a notch below angels. As such, they are creatures of infinite worth, worthy of deep and abiding respect (even if one disagrees with their treatment of Palestinians). As creatures of infinite worth they deserve respect for both their selves and for their rights.

Calling them bloodsuckers, apes or pigs, then, is disobedience to Allah, a kind of blasphemy in which one believes one knows the nature of God’s creatures better than God himself.

In the Hadith, there is a story told of the Prophet who shows his deep respect for an unknown Jew.

Sahl bin Hunaif and Qais bin Sad were sitting in the city of Al-Qadisiya. A funeral procession passed in front of them and they stood up. They were told that funeral procession was of one of the inhabitants of the land i.e. of a non-believer, under the protection of Muslims. They said, “A funeral procession passed in front of the Prophet and he stood up. When he was told that it was the coffin of a Jew, he said, ‘Is it not a living being (soul)?’”  

The Prophet showed his respect by standing up for a Jew (and a dead one, at that). It’s time for Morsi to stand up for Jews.

Hedieh Mirahmadi

Last week I wrote about the most persecuted religion in the world — Christianity. So dire is the persecution of Christians, Christianity is in danger of disappearing from its homeland. Christianity is most in peril, I noted, in Muslim-majority countries where either by official policy or official laxity, Christians are discriminated against, persecuted, tortured, threatened and even killed (Christians are not alone in this; atheists, Jews, Baha’is, and Muslims judged heretical are likewise persecuted.) Since this impending threat to Christianity has been largely ignored in the West I called upon the Western media to report on these atrocities and so prod Western governments to act in support of the universal human right to the free expression of religious belief. Finally, I said it was not my place to speak for Muslims but that Muslim leaders needed to make a compelling case that Islam is not inherently intolerant.

Noting the behaviors of some Muslims in Muslim-majority countries might leave the impression that most Muslims and most Muslim leaders endorse intolerance and persecution. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Most Muslims in most countries oppose violence in the name of Islam. For example, according to a 2009 Pew survey, in Pakistan, for example, 87 percent of Muslims hold that suicide bombing can neverbe justified (up from 35 percent in just 2004); 74 percent of Turkish Muslims and 78 percent of American Muslims concurred, and we have reason to believe that number to be higher today. Only 1 percent of American Muslims think suicide bombings are often justified, and only 7 percent think they are sometimes justified. I suspect, if suicide bombings were not so closely associated with Islam in most people’s minds, a similar number of non-Muslim Americans would think they were sometimes justified.

Five Muslim leaders, in my recently published Abraham’s Children: Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict (Yale University Press), argue that Islam, properly understood, is a religion of peace. I described one of these authors as a “moderate Muslim,” and he objected to this description because of its redundancy — he said that Islam is, by definition, moderate, peaceful, just, and tolerant. Let me introduce you to two of the authors and their understanding of Islam.

Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi is the president of WORDE, an organization that informs public policy about the difference between mainstream Islam and radical ideologies, and implements programs around the world that develop resilience to religious extremism. She has interviewed hundreds of Muslims around the world to understand what theologically motivates people towards the extreme, as well as to understand the economic, social, and financial incentives used to recruit followers. She writes:

“Modern-day Muslim scholars often repeat the catch-phrase, ‘Islam tolerates other religions,’ however I believe this is an inadequate representation of the faith. ‘Tolerate,’ as defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is to ‘endure, put up with, to bear.’ According to this definition, tolerance allows one to develop only superficial or shallow relationships devoid of compassion, empathy, and mutual understanding. In Islam it is not sufficient to simply tolerate others. Rather, Islam encourages Muslims to listen to and observe others so that we may truly understand them and accept them as part of God’s creation. Acceptance — more so than tolerance — breathes life into social structures; potentially shifting them from a stance of conflict to one of mutual respect.
The injunction for acceptance was established when God said in the Holy Qur’an: ‘O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other, not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of God is (he who is) the most righteous of you.’ This verse is generally the strongest affirmation of Islam’s belief in the unity of mankind and the equality of each soul, applying to both men and women, as well as to every race, tribe, and ethnicity. It emphasizes that the true measure of value is not a person’s wealth or status, but rather his or her moral character or ‘righteousness.’”

Abdolkarim Soroush is an Iranian philosopher, devout Muslim, and one of the leading intellectual forces behind the Islamic republic’s pro-democracy movement. A Muslim activist during the 1979 revolution, Soroush has since braved death threats to argue for Islamic pluralism and challenge the notion that religion should not be open to different interpretations. Soroush writes:

“In the Quran Ch. 60, verses 8-9, we read:
‘Allah does not forbid you in regard to those who did not make war against you on account of religion and did not expel you from your homes that you may deal with them with kindness and justice. Indeed Allah loves the just. Allah forbids you only in regard to those who made wars against you on account of religion and expelled you from your homes and supported others in your expulsion, that you may make friends with them.”‘

This categorical and lucid statement concerns relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims. These verses were revealed to Mohammad during the second phase of his mission, when he was living in Medina as the powerful head of the first ‘Islamic state’ ever. How, then, should the now dominant Muslims treat their non-Muslim neighbor? The verses commend without reservation the showing of kindness and justice towards non-Muslims neighbors. These verses are significant because the kindness towards neighbors they enjoin is not an arbitrary and unexpected recommendation on the part of Allah but is rather a reasoned conclusion stemming from a principle of justice. This is precisely what makes it universal and categorical.

The number of Muslims hoping for peace and justice vastly outweighs the very small minority of extremists that have come to define Muslim as “Muslim terrorist.” We can seek for justice for Christians in Muslim-majority countries knowing that the majority of Muslims are on our side.

Finally, one might reasonably ask about the causes of the animus Muslims feel towards the U.S. and then we might reasonably seek to alleviate those concerns. These are hard questions to ask especially when patriotism has come to be understood as unquestioned allegiance to America and its causes (unlike America’s first patriots who were harsh critics of their government). Self-criticism is never easy and national self-criticism can be hazardous.

Let me hazard a guess, pun intended and awaiting flak, about two of those causes.

First and foremost could be the U.S.’s unflagging support of Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Only the U.S., Israel, Canada, the Czech Republic, Palau, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama and the Marshall Islands voted against Palestinian statehood (I didn’t even know Palau, Nauru, and the Marshall Islands were countries). Let us note the irony: Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are denied human rights in some of the same ways that Christians in Muslim-majority countries are.

The second cause might be the U.S. invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. Maybe that’s not quite the best way to put it. Consider the more than 130,000 (counted very conservatively) to 1,000,000 mostly civilian deaths over the past 20 or so years caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The dead are mostly Muslims, and the invasions were, President Bush claimed, endorsed by God. As General Tommy Franks proudly proclaimed, “We don’t do body counts,” but we should if we hope to understand the tragedy of the Iraqi invasion and Muslim anger at American imperialism.

We can attract more Muslims to the side of justice, peace, and liberty when our majority Christian nation genuinely seeks a world with liberty and justice for all.

In early November, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion in the world.” Although met with predictable criticism, Rupert Shortt’s recent research report for Civitas UK confirms Merkel’s claim — we may not want to hear it, but Christianity is in peril, like no other religion. While this is a contest no one wants to win, Shortt shows that “Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers.” Shortt is the author of the recently published Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack. He is concerned that “200 million Christians (10 percent of the global total) are socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.”

Christianity is facing elimination in its Biblical homeland. Between a half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have departed or been killed over the past century. Shortt attributes the intolerance and violence towards Christians to the rising Islamicization of Middle Eastern countries. Some of the oppression is government sanctioned and some government permitted; most is government ignored.

Shortt looks at the plight of Christians in the Middle East, country by country. When it comes to religious oppression, the devil, one might say, is in the details. In the Salafist website, ‘Guardians of the Faith’, you can read that Muslims are superior to Egypt’s Coptic Christians because “Being a Muslim girl whose role models are the wives of the Prophet, who were required to wear the hijab, is better than being a Christian girl, whose role models are whores” and “Being a Muslim who fights to defend his honor and his faith is better than being a Christian who steals, rapes, and kills children.” Little wonder, then, that radical Muslims unleashed their fury on Christians in 2010, murdering 13 worshippers as they emerged from a service and later bombing a church in Alexandria which killed 20 and injured 70. We can only hope that Morsi’s new government will see fit to stem the rapidly increasingly violence against Coptic Christians.

In 1990, there were over 1.2 million Christians in Iraq but by the end of 2003, there were fewer than 500,000; in 2013, there are fewer than 200,000 Iraqi Christians. In 2010, al Qaeda militants attacked a Baghdad cathedral, killing over 50 people and maiming many more. While Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites are deeply divided, they are united in their persecution of Christians. Bishops and priests have been kidnapped and tortured; churches are bombed, killing and injuring Christians. The message, sometimes sent in an envelope containing a bullet, has been delivered: “Christians should leave or die.”

In 2011, Shahbaz Bhatti was murdered by the Pakistani Taliban for his opposition to Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws. Bhatti, a Catholic, was Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities. In fact, a death sentence is meted out to any Pakistani courageous enough to speak out in defense of religious minorities. Bhatti instructed his estate to publish a video upon his untimely death; in it he said, “I am living for my community and for suffering people and I will die to defend their rights. I prefer to die for my principles and for the justice of my community rather than to compromise. I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know… the meaning of the Cross and I follow him on the Cross.” Speaking of justice — Bhatti’s two killers have never been charged.

We can move more quickly through the countries. Consider apostasy laws in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Iran, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Sudan and Malaysia. By apostasy, read “Muslim convert to Christianity.” Of the plight of apostates, Ziya Meral, a London-based Turkish scholar, writes: “Apostates are subject to gross and wide-ranging human rights abuses including extra-judicial killings by state-related agents or mobs; honour killings by family members; detention, imprisonment, torture, physical and psychological intimidation by security forces; the denial of access to judicial services and social services; the denial of equal employment or education opportunities; social pressure resulting in loss of housing and employment; and day-to-day discrimination and ostracism in education, finance and social activities.”

We have scarcely skimmed the surface of violence and intolerance to Christians in Muslim worlds. If it should continue at its present rate, Christianity will very soon be completely eradicated in its homeland. While the cultural loss is deeply worrisome, the lack of liberty, intolerance and violence in Muslim countries is even more worrisome. Reports by the Freedom House think-tank echo this concern: religious liberties are most threatened in Muslim-majority countries.

Christianity is not, as Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury reminds us, an import to these countries. The Christian communities that are now being threatened and even wiped out are nearly as old as the New Testament itself. Christians have called these countries home for two millennia; Christianity is not a Western imposition on historically Islamic countries.

It is not my place or purpose to defend Islam but the Quran explicitly states that there is no compulsion in religion and suggests no punishments for apostates. Sadly, portions of the Hadith and sharia law do suggest murder for apostasy. And while some take “jihad” to mean “jihad of the heart” and so to preclude violence against others, other passages in the Quran state that Muslims should fight against those who lack faith in Allah. Muslim defenses of liberty and tolerance must account for these difficult passages in their Holy Book and tradition. The challenge to Muslim leaders today is to offer a cogent answer to the question: Is Islam inherently intolerant and violent?

Why has the tragedy of Christians in the Muslim world been ignored? Shortt blames this on the media’s fear that criticizing Muslims is tantamount to racism. I attribute it as well to secular media’s lack of interest in and sometimes even scorn for religious belief. Western media must overcome its fear of criticizing Muslims and its disinterest in religious belief.

Religious liberties are the most fundamental human liberties — they are indicators of a country’s political willingness to allow people to choose their own way of life. In countries were religious liberty is conspicuously absent, one is likely to find a host of other liberties threatened as well.

Finally, the U.S. government must actively defend Christian liberty in Muslim-majority countries. While no U.S. politician worth his or her salt would deny the right to a Jewish state in the Middle East, so, too, no politician worth his or her salt should ignore the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Sadly, in the Middle East both Judaism and Christianity are threatened by Muslim extremists intent on violently recreating the world in their own image.

I am not an anti-Muslim extremist. I have partnered with like-minded Muslims, Christians and Jews in the path toward peace. I have come to admire the courage, wisdom and compassion of my many Muslim friends. And yet I worry that their clarion call to peace will be drowned out by shouts of radicalism.

The U.S. government, prodded by the U.S. media, needs to add its voice to those calling for peace, liberty and justice in Muslim-majority countries.

How seriously should the Sphinx take the sheik?

“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he continued. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”

My advice to the Sphinx: be afraid, be very afraid.

While no one has been tempted by the Sphinx to worship the sun God Harmakhis for over two millennia, this is a legitimate threat. High-profile and more mainstream religious relics have been a target in the recent past. Salem al-Gohary, a jihadist with links to the Taliban, participated in the destruction of Afghanistan’s priceless and irreplaceable Buddha statues. You can construct a new Buddha replacement statue but you can’t construct an ancient Buddha. Misdirected religious fervor can destroy priceless relics just about anywhere.

So it’s not surprising that an Egyptian sheik would find a convenient target in his own backyard. Given the size and status of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, they afford a convenient target.

And what more could an otherwise unknown imam do to call attention to himself than call for others to destroy Egypt’s most important and irreplaceable cultural relics?

Islam has no Pope, no centralized religious authority, so just about anyone can assert himself as a religious authority; and many do. I can’t speak for Islam, but, lacking a centralized authority, no one authoritatively can. But because no one can really speak for Islam, just about anyone can. So a reactionary like Salem al-Gohary can incite violence by a misguided appeal to Islamic tradition and there are enough dispossessed Muslims who are only too eager to comply.

One should be wary, though, of generalizing from the proclamation of a single extremist to all Egyptian Muslims. While there are surely jihadists in Egypt eager to topple both pyramids and vestiges of Western cultural imperialism, they are a small minority. Egyptian Muslim attitudes towards extremist groups are way down on the list of fundamentalist sympathizers in the Middle East. For example, only 20 percent of Egyptian Muslims have a favorable view of al-Qaeda. Here’s a better way to put it: 80 percent of Egyptian Muslims hold a negative view of al-Qaeda.

Yet, once again, the crazed call of a single extremist will confirm Western prejudices of all Muslims. And should the sheik succeed, the prejudices will be all the more dramatically confirmed.

The Sphinx can sleep in peace tonight. President Morsi has increased security at the Sphinx and pyramids.

Their loss would constitute a huge cultural, economic and political setback. The cultural loss is obvious. But Egypt’s economy is deeply dependent on tourist dollars. Take away the pyramids, add fear of fundamentalists, and Egyptian tourism will dry up.

Over 10 percent of Egypt’s economy is due to tourism. Subtract tourism as from the economy and the consequences will be disastrous and not just for the pyramids. Egypt cannot afford, pun intended, the loss of tourism dollars.

While one might have thought the so-called Arab Spring simply a demand for freedom, it was equally a cry of the impoverished and dispossessed for jobs. We continually forget: It’s the economy, stupid. And since revolutions are not job creators, the economy is still in turmoil. Growth has shrunk from 6 percent pre-revolution, to its current 1.8 percent. Ninety percent of Egypt’s unemployed are between ages 15 and 24. Nearly 50 percent of Egyptians live in poverty (on less than $2 per day).

There are political consequences to the Sheik’s incitement as well. Morsi, despite many vocal Western critics, has pursued the path of moderation and won’t be deterred by fundamentalist Muslims who comprise a very small percentage of the Egyptian population. Now Morsi must concern himself with minority, pyramid-destroying elements in Egypt.

So Morsi needs power. His recent assertions of authority may simply be a reaction to threats to the revolution and to stability. Salem al-Gohary and his ilk surely constitute a threat both to stability and democratic rule.

Has Morsi thereby acquired too much power? His recent rulings seem to place him above judicial correction. Let us take hope in Morsi’s brokerage of a ceasefire in Gaza. Let us hope that he is a man of peace and the people.

Egypt’s path to democratic rule will be long, slow and painful. Opportunistic extremists will seize on youthful dissatisfaction to derail democracy and assert authoritarian and repressive rule. We must do all we can to protect both the Sphinx and Egypt’s fragile democracy.

How seriously should the Sphinx take the sheik?

“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he continued. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”

My advice to the Sphinx: be afraid, be very afraid.

While no one has been tempted by the Sphinx to worship the sun God Harmakhis for over two millennia, this is a legitimate threat. High-profile and more mainstream religious relics have been a target in the recent past. Salem al-Gohary, a jihadist with links to the Taliban, participated in the destruction of Afghanistan’s priceless and irreplaceable Buddha statues. You can construct a new Buddha replacement statue but you can’t construct an ancient Buddha. Misdirected religious fervor can destroy priceless relics just about anywhere.

So it’s not surprising that an Egyptian sheik would find a convenient target in his own backyard. Given the size and status of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, they afford a convenient target.

And what more could an otherwise unknown imam do to call attention to himself than call for others to destroy Egypt’s most important and irreplaceable cultural relics?

Islam has no Pope, no centralized religious authority, so just about anyone can assert himself as a religious authority; and many do. I can’t speak for Islam, but, lacking a centralized authority, no one authoritatively can. But because no one can really speak for Islam, just about anyone can. So a reactionary like Salem al-Gohary can incite violence by a misguided appeal to Islamic tradition and there are enough dispossessed Muslims who are only too eager to comply.

One should be wary, though, of generalizing from the proclamation of a single extremist to all Egyptian Muslims. While there are surely jihadists in Egypt eager to topple both pyramids and vestiges of Western cultural imperialism, they are a small minority. Egyptian Muslim attitudes towards extremist groups are way down on the list of fundamentalist sympathizers in the Middle East. For example, only 20 percent of Egyptian Muslims have a favorable view of al-Qaeda. Here’s a better way to put it: 80 percent of Egyptian Muslims hold a negative view of al-Qaeda.

Yet, once again, the crazed call of a single extremist will confirm Western prejudices of all Muslims. And should the sheik succeed, the prejudices will be all the more dramatically confirmed.

The Sphinx can sleep in peace tonight. President Morsi has increased security at the Sphinx and pyramids.

Their loss would constitute a huge cultural, economic and political setback. The cultural loss is obvious. But Egypt’s economy is deeply dependent on tourist dollars. Take away the pyramids, add fear of fundamentalists, and Egyptian tourism will dry up.

Over 10 percent of Egypt’s economy is due to tourism. Subtract tourism as from the economy and the consequences will be disastrous and not just for the pyramids. Egypt cannot afford, pun intended, the loss of tourism dollars.

While one might have thought the so-called Arab Spring simply a demand for freedom, it was equally a cry of the impoverished and dispossessed for jobs. We continually forget: It’s the economy, stupid. And since revolutions are not job creators, the economy is still in turmoil. Growth has shrunk from 6 percent pre-revolution, to its current 1.8 percent. Ninety percent of Egypt’s unemployed are between ages 15 and 24. Nearly 50 percent of Egyptians live in poverty (on less than $2 per day).

There are political consequences to the Sheik’s incitement as well. Morsi, despite many vocal Western critics, has pursued the path of moderation and won’t be deterred by fundamentalist Muslims who comprise a very small percentage of the Egyptian population. Now Morsi must concern himself with minority, pyramid-destroying elements in Egypt.

So Morsi needs power. His recent assertions of authority may simply be a reaction to threats to the revolution and to stability. Salem al-Gohary and his ilk surely constitute a threat both to stability and democratic rule.

Has Morsi thereby acquired too much power? His recent rulings seem to place him above judicial correction. Let us take hope in Morsi’s brokerage of a ceasefire in Gaza. Let us hope that he is a man of peace and the people.

Egypt’s path to democratic rule will be long, slow and painful. Opportunistic extremists will seize on youthful dissatisfaction to derail democracy and assert authoritarian and repressive rule. We must do all we can to protect both the Sphinx and Egypt’s fragile democracy.

Thousands of Pakistanis have rallied to express their support for Malala and their condemnation of the Taliban; they pray for Malala and for what she stands for — the education and rights of women.

Malala has been an activist since she was 11, writing a blog to protest Taliban edicts against the education of girls. The Taliban carried out these edicts by destroying hundreds of schools for girls. Malala spoke truth to cowards with no regard for her own wellbeing.

While many lessons are being drawn from Malala’s assassination attempt, I’d like to offer her up as an example to our presidential candidates.

We have one last debate and three weeks left in the campaign. Can our politicians set aside their lies, obfuscations, misleading statistics, and caricatures of one another and just speak the truth? And, like Malala, speak the truth with no regard for their own wellbeing? I don’t mean that they should not be concerned with attacks on their lives. By “wellbeing” I mean “whether or not they get elected.”

Our representative democracy is predicated upon candidates telling us the truth. Failing this, we read in the Federalist Papers, we may find the following:

A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.

So candidate A tells what she stands for and what she would do and candidate B tells what he stands for and what he would do. Only then can the demos, the people, reasonably decide which of the two candidates/ideologies they prefer. “Let the people decide” only works as intended if the people have been given truthful information from the candidates. Otherwise, we trade popularity for the public good.

Unwillingness to forthrightly speak the truth leads to democracy’s demise — the people, then, must guess based on image not on reality. Of course, this plays into the hands of the media which slices images like baloney. But make no mistake, an election run on image is still baloney no matter how thin you slice it.

So here is the Malala challenge for Obama and Romney. Tell the truth. Let the people decide.

There is bad news in the truth and there is no easy solution to that bad news — from the trillion-dollar debt to global warming, from our complicity in Israel’s treatment of Palestine to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there are no, shall we say, revenue-neutral solutions. We face very difficult problems with no obvious and certainly no free solutions. Tell us what the problems really are, Mitt and Barack, let us confront them as a country, and get us thinking about difficult solutions. Then let us decide, based on the truth, which of the two of you is most suited to solving the problems.

Romney’s prevarications are aplenty. His message seems to change on a whim, usually depending on audience. The presidential candidate Mitt of 2012 bears only a superficial resemblance to the Governor Mitt of 2003. Explain to us, Mitt Romney, how you could have changed so drastically and what you really stand for. Do you or do you not stand for tax cuts for the most wealthy? Do you or do you not oppose abortion? And come clean: Have you managed to avoid paying taxes by shipping your money into off-shore accounts? Will you or won’t you cover pre-existing conditions? And, while you’re at it — what is your plan for peace in the Middle East and for global warming? Is peace in Israel-Palestine really impossible? Finally, do you really care about the 47 percent (I don’t mean to focus on images here –surely too many people, including many rich people, are getting benefits from the government without adequately paying for them).

Democrats cannot take the moral high ground on truth-telling. Obama promised to close Guantanamo immediately upon taking office; its continued existence is a blight on US pretensions to justice — the natural right to a fair and speedy trial is universal, it is not just a right of U.S. citizens. He promised to repeal Bush’s tax cuts for the rich but then fought for their extension in 2010. And though he promised to repeal Bush-Cheney’s medieval and inhumane counterterrorism programs, his use of drones to kill without judicial recourse dwarfs the ambitions of Bush. You can see a top-ten list of Obama’s broken promises here.

You can attribute Obama’s missteps to the horrific condition Bush left our country in (tax breaks for the rich, two unfunded wars, and permitting the collapse of our financial system). Or you can attribute Obama’s missteps to a recalcitrant Republican Congress who would shoot our country in the foot rather than cooperate with Obama.

But in the next few weeks, President Obama, tell us truly what the problems are and what your solutions are. You, too, Mr. Romney. Give us the truth for once — if it’s ugly and the solutions painful, let us know. We won’t be coddled with lies.

Give us the information we need to make a responsible decision and don’t fret about the consequences. If the people should reject your positions come election day, rejoice — democracy has spoken. But if you continue in your prevarications and obfuscations, if you keep telling us there are easy solution to not really very difficult problems, then we will fail in democracy: we will be moved by passions in response to fleeting images not reason in response to truth.

In short, mime Malala’s courage. Speak the truth. Don’t fret the consequences.

He knows these are lies, he states, because (a) he’s a scientist and (b) scientific data proves the earth to be young.

Broun serves on the House of Committee on Science, Space and Technology with Todd Akin (R-MO) who believes that women cannot become impregnated as the result of rape because during “legitimate” rape, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Broun and Akin are joined on the House Committee on Science by Ralph Hall (R-TX), chair of the committee, who rejects the human contribution to global warming because God alone is responsible for global warming. Theories of climate change, he opines, are rooted not in scientific data, but in human greed: they were hatched by devious scientists to secure federal funding for their research. Others on this Committee likewise reject human-induced global warming, calling scientists who affirm global warming “fascists” and “frauds,” and their theories “hoaxes.”

Judy Biggert (R-IL) stands alone: “The science behind climate change is sound.”

But, as disturbing as the rejection of global warming is, I digress. Let us return to evolution and embryology.

Why does Broun, with his BS in chemistry and an MD, claim that evolution and the big bang are lies from the pit?

His reply: they are designed to convince us we don’t need a Savior.

If Augustine is to right, it is Broun’s babbling incompetence not evolution that is liable to convince us that we don’t need a Savior.

Augustine argued that the interpretation of Genesis involving seven literal, twenty-four-hour days could not be the correct interpretation. Since Augustine (354-430 AD) wrote and lived more than a millennium prior to Darwin, he could scarcely be accused of being held captive by the spirit of our Darwinian age.

Augustine argued that the text itself precludes a naïve interpretation of literal twenty-four-hour days. He asks the simple question: if night and day are not created until the fourth day, how could there possibly be a day in the first three days of creation? The term “day” must have some other meaning than, as Broun claimed it must, “days as we know them.” Augustine’s interpretation was not prompted by the big-bang, it was based entirely on a careful reading of the bible itself.

Augustine refused to limit truth to the bible; instead he held that a Christian “should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord’s.” There can be no real contradictions between true science and the proper interpretation of the scriptures. Christians need not fear science.

Finally, Augustine offers wise counsel to Christians like Broun who so loudly proclaims his ignorance on scientific matters:

Even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a [nonbeliever] to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

By demonstrating his ignorance on scientific matters, Broun has made it easy for detractors to laugh and scorn and then to infer: If Broun is ignorant on scientific matters (which we know well), we have no reason to trust him on religious matters. Augustine writes,

If [nonbelievers] find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about [the Bible], how are they going to believe [the Bible] in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think [the Bible's] pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Broun’s foolish opinions, not evolution, according to Augustine’s reasoning, are leading people away from the Savior.

My aim is not to determine the best strategy for persuading people to be Christians. It is, however, to show to Christians, who share Broun’s and Augustine’s beliefs and bible, that Broun’s understanding of evolution and the bible is scientifically, theologically and biblically defective (and an Augustinian approach is superior).

Broun’s proclamations are politically troubling as well. Broun stated in his talk that he takes his political marching orders from God: “As your congressman I hold the holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C.” This makes Broun’s ignorance of science and the Bible deeply and doubly troubling. Not only has he proven himself unfit for the House Committee on Science, his poor understanding of both theology and the Bible proves him unfit to fulfill his Congressional duties. Given Broun’s shallow and theologically inept understanding of the opening chapters of the Bible, even the most devout Christian should not be encouraged about his ability to make wise Bible-based votes in Congress.

So I thought to myself, if Geller can say what she thinks about them Muslims, why can’t I? As a blogger I have an advantage over Geller—I can say whatever I want for free.

So, here’s what I don’t like about them Muslims.

1. Muslims are seeking to take over the world and institute Sharia law. In fact, as we speak, Sharia laws threaten to take down the entire US legal system.

Pretty soon all of our women will wear burqas and all of our men will face Mecca to pray.

But wait, wait: the US is a constitutional republic. The constitution is the foundation of US law. Sharia law is no more likely to replace the Constitution than are Old Testament prohibitions such as those against mixing fibers (Leviticus 19:19) and grabbing and squeezing the testicles of your husband’s opponent in a fight (Deuteronomy 25:11-12) (the wife’s hand should be cut off for the latter offence). US textile manufacturers and wives need not worry—your right to mix fiber and grab testicles is secure. Islam itself holds that Muslims should obey the law of the land; in the Quran Muslims are commanded to “obey those in authority among you” (4:59). Claims about sharia law sweeping the US are just plain political opportunism with no basis in reality.

2. Islam is, by its very nature, violent.

From 9/11 to the storming of the Libyan embassy, the global jihad is on. Islam’s violent face is on display for all to see.  We all know well: “Not every Muslim is a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim.” From that and media portrayals of crazed and violent Muslims, it’s easy to see that Islam is inherently violent.

Wait, wait (again). Both 9/11 and the embassy attack were (likely) the plot of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda scarcely represents Islam. In fact, Al Qaeda is no more representative of Islam than the hate-spewing Westboro Baptist Church is representative of Christianity. It is also unclear how much members of Al Qaeda are motivated religiously and how much of their motivation is socio-political. Just because someone is Arab (and may even profess loyalty to the Prophet) does not mean that the person is a Muslim. Using the name of Islam is not tantamount to understanding Islam and being motivated by it. Using the name “democrat,” after all, does not thereby make the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea a democracy. I will let Muslims speak for the Quran and Islam, but most Muslims oppose most forms of violence including most of it perpetuated in the name of their religion. Finally, our exclusive fascination with Muslim violence has put blinders on the West—we see only the most radical of Muslims, which is a very tiny minority at that, and ignore violence in the name of Christianity and Judaism. Recent studies have shown that 80% of Americans say that self-proclaimed Christians who commit acts of violence aren’t genuine Christian but less than half think that self-proclaimed Muslims who commit acts of violence aren’t genuine Muslims.

3. Muslims are savages who wish to return us to the dark ages.

Images abound of wild, hot-blooded, young Muslim men attacking symbols of modern Western, liberal values. And, if that’s not enough, just ask Pamela Geller. Case closed.

Not so fast. During the so-called Dark Ages, Muslim or Arab scientists were the shining intellectual light of the world. From algebra to optics, Muslim thinkers were the scientific leaders of the world. In our own day and age, slightly more US Muslims have graduate degrees than the general population, 60% of American Muslims see no conflict at all between Islam and living in a modern society, and the vast majority of Muslims around the world prefer democracy to any other form of government; they don’t want a Muslim caliphate, let alone one with Sharia law, in the US or in their own countries.

The problem with Geller’s approach is that it paints Muslims with too wide a brush. In fact, any time someone talks about “them,” they are likely painting with too wide a brush. Any time you say something about them—whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, Republicans, Democrats, blacks, the Chinese, women, or the Clarks—you are wrong. There are no true universal generalizations about them. Them are all different. With respect to them Muslims around the world, the vast majority by a long stretch want what most folks want—peace, economic prosperity and security, a better future for their children, and the freedom to live according to their deepest values.

So while Geller is perfectly within first amendment rights to talk about them as she sees fit, what she did was not right.

Talking about them is the first step towards dehumanizing them. And when they are dehumanized, it’s easier to harm them.

Geller would do well to collectively remember that dehumanization comes in many shapes and sizes. Nazi propaganda portrayed Jews as uncivilized subhumans intent on world domination. The Jewish jihad had to be stopped. By successfully caricaturing them Jews, Nazi propagandists persuaded a nation to persecute and even kill them. Dehumanization is the first step toward holocaust.