(CORRECTED) Christians To Be Executed In Indonesia Within 72 Hours

Major, Major Correction. See below.

At least that's the plan.

Not to rap on Dean Esmay too much, but there is nonjudgmentalism and then there is willful naivete. Perhaps he should talk to the Muslims about to kill Christians for the greivous crime of prosyletizing masterminding a massacre and ask them whether Islam is, at least as currently practiced by, yes, a majority of the world's Muslims, a violent, intolerant, totalitarian creed. (See Correction.)

A majority? Well, hey, when 40-60% of the world's Muslims say they support Osama bin Ladin, it simply does not obtain to claim we're simply talking about "a few bad apples."

1% is a "a few bad apples." 5% is a not-so-few bad apples.

40-60% is either a very strong minority or outright majority.

A Few Bad Apples In Palestinian Sixth-Grade Classrooms: What a lovely textbook for eleven-year-olds:

As if things weren't crazy enough already in the Middle East, here's the officially sanctioned message in sixth-grade Palestinian textbooks for 11- and 12-year-old kids: "The noble soul has two goals: death and the desire for it."

The goal isn't to build magnificent skyscrapers or write brilliant novels or to work on cures for the world's most lethal diseases. The noble goal for the noble soul is as simple as strapping on a dynamite belt and blowing oneself into a million pieces in an Israeli pizza shop.

The "death-and-the-desire-for-it" line is from a poem by Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud. Along with other writings that glorify child martyrs, the quote is included in "Our Beautiful Language," a standard text for sixth-graders after the Palestinian Liberation Organization took control over education in the Palestinian territories.

As officially stated, the underlying ethos of the Palestinian curriculum is "built on the principle of breeding the individual on the basis of serving society as a whole." Translated, that means breeding kids who believe suicide and murder are noble, who believe it's noble to create a society where the individual reaches his highest stage of development by extinguishing his own individualism, his own existence.

Whether Islam is inherently violent is an unknown. Certainly there are non-violent strains of Islam.

But the industry-standard of Islam currently selling the most units seems to come pre-configured for violence.

Correction To Lead Piece: Read the f'n' article, Ace. RTFA.

I made a major and seriously embarrassing error on the lead story. The Christians are not being executed for prosyletizing. Where I got that, I don't know, but that's what I thought the story was about since it's been running. I think I conflated this case with previous cases.

That's not an excuse, it's an explanation. I was horribly sloppy here.

The Christians are being executed for their alleged role in a massacre of Muslims.

Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus da Silva and Marinus Riwa were condemned to death because they were found guilty of masterminding a massacre of 200 Muslims in Poso during inter-faith clashes in 2000. Their case has drawn international attention, with both Christian leaders and human-rights activists protesting that the court convicted them under heavy pressure from Islamic militants.

Big thanks to the commenters who caught this huge error. Thank you all.

posted by Ace at 01:21 PM

| Access Comments