Allahu Akbar
If god is so great why does it need you to murder people while shouting “god is great!”?
Three people have been killed in a knife attack at a church in the French city of Nice, police say.
President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “Islamist terrorist attack” at the Notre-Dame basilica after visiting the scene in the southern city.
One elderly victim who was praying was “virtually beheaded”. Another woman and a man also died. A suspect was shot and detained shortly afterwards.
Not a very kind god, is it. If it wants humans stabbing other humans to death because they worship the god under a different alphabet, it can’t be a benevolent god.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi spoke of “Islamo-fascism” and said the suspect had “repeated endlessly ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest)”.
Mr Estrosi compared the attack to the recent murder of teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded close to his school outside Paris earlier this month.
Police have not suggested a motive for the attack in Nice. However, it follows days of protests in some Muslim-majority countries triggered by President Macron’s defence of the publication of cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed. There have been calls in some countries for a boycott of French goods.
Macron’s defense of free expression did not trigger the protests. Theocratic Islamists protested Macron’s defense of free expression. Macron is not a criminal or a villain or blameworthy for defending free expression and rejecting freelance decapitation of school teachers.
I don’t know if the UK govt has done a public message of support to Macron. IF they haven’t, I wish they would. The writer of this article is citing the American press rather than the British. I can’t see The Times being anything but robust, also the Spectator, without the foot shuffling.
“Commenting on the media amplification of Erdogan’s portrayal of France as hostile to Muslims, prominent journalist Caroline Fourest told me: “This is American soft power helping Islamist soft power.” In an interview with L’Express, Fourest said: “The Anglo-Saxon press does not care. It understands nothing about the French situation and only reflects the American situation… The cultural misunderstanding runs deep.. It’s a form of cultural imperialism, a desire to push the French model into the American.””
https://unherd.com/2020/10/why-is-the-anglo-media-portaying-france-as-the-villain/
Look, God is really really great, but… (sigh)… he’s a wee bit insecure.
(Cue Python sketch, “Oooh, you are so big. Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell you that!”)
“Perhaps if I chop off your head, you’ll recognize how great Allah is!” Yeah, sure, works for me. Right?
Skynews – “Clash of cultures”
https://twitter.com/post_liberal/status/1321860437315624962/photo/1
Washington Post “Instead of fighting systemic racism”
https://twitter.com/post_liberal/status/1321860437315624962/photo/2
OK that’s someone’s tweet of a headline and the actual articles may not be foot-shuffling apologia for decapitating theocrats – but I wouldn’t count on it.
IMHO the most important question to be asked is ‘why are all these Middle-Eastern and African Muslims so interested in migrating to the non-Islamic west?
Could it be because Islam itself is so stultifying of scientific, technical and economic development generally, in turn because the last skills that Islamic educational establishments want to encourage are those involved in the development of critical thinking in the population at large? And could that in turn be because they don’t want such skills turned on the religion itself, out of a sense of its vulnerability?
Here we have an effective admission on the part of Islam’s clerics and believers generally that God is not great. God emerges out of Islam’s teachings as a temperamental little toddler, easily upset and wanting continual praise and pampering, whether he deserves it or not. And I emphasise the he, because ‘male’ and ‘female’ are in a Hegelian dialectical relationship: the idea of either one is meaningless without the idea of the other.
So where are the female gods and divine beings? What has God done with Mrs God, or his sisters, or his mother? (Christians after all have their Mother-of-God.)
The plot thickens. And I strongly suspect there has been foul play. In Heaven.
Well, the Greeks had a lot of them. I always did rather prefer Greek mythology to Christian mythology. It’s more fun, more diverse, and doesn’t require you to have an all-wise, all good, all knowing god in the face of the nonsense in the world. Their gods were remarkably human in their appetites and their attitudes, just with somewhat overblown skill sets.
iknklast:
St Paul, as I recall, visited Ephesus, where the locals all worshipped the goddess Diana. “Great is Diana of the Ephesians” was the popular slogan. Bertrand Russell I think it was who subsequently noted that the Council of Ephesus of 431 AD promoted Christianity to the locals by upgrading the status of Mary to what amounts to a Christian goddess, ‘Hail Mary’ being a Christian prayer addressed directly to her. So everyone found something in it for them.
Christianity was never monotheist, unlike Islam.
Omar, it seems to me that Christianity has always been opportunistic. They adapted many pagan rituals into their rites, like, all of Christmas, and then claimed them as genuine Christian holidays. Aesthetic Christianity wasn’t much fun, and couldn’t compete with the fun-loving pagan gods and goddesses, so they had to adapt to thrive. And when people balked at no meat on Fridays, they decided fish wasn’t meat. Because…reasons. They will grab everything, including trying to claim every inch of the abolitionist movement while denying any role of Christianity in the world view of the slaveholders.
Opportunistic.
I suppose Islam probably has been, too, but I don’t know as much about the religion, or the history of the religion, as I do about Christianity, since I imbibed Christian “values” from birth until I refused to drink anymore.
Omar, that is perhaps uncharitable, not that I’ll quibble overly. I think Catholic and Greek Orthodox theologians would argue that Mary and the various saints were deity adjacent, rather than deities. They have the ear of God or Christ and manifest God’s power (that applies even to Christ), rather than possessing that power themselves.
That was after all the whole point with the Protestants. They regarded the Catholic and Orthodox churches as idolators. High Anglicans try to keep a foot in both camps, but then Anglicanism was always really about the power of the English Throne, rather than religion per se.
A headline crossed my feed: “Nice church attacker identified as 21-year-old Tunisian man”. I briefly thought it meant that the attacker personally identified as a 21-year-old Tunisian man, but was actually a 43-year-old Turkish man or something. Then I realized of course that the man was identified by other people; it didn’t make a bit of difference how he perceived himself.
Rob#10
But I think that by any definition other than those of Catholic and Greek Orthodox theologians Mary and the various saints are in fact (well, not ‘ in fact’, but you know what I mean) minor deities who may be prayed to, have their effigies carried about on the streets, and have the power to perform magic and to intercede with old Nobodaddy.
Tim @12, I think in the minds of many (most?) worshipers, certainly in the past, you’re right. Theologians do love to dance on the head of pins though. And, as we’ve observed throughout history, there’s nothing like religious hairsplitting to provide the justification for any degree of abuse, torture and (mass) murder.
Rob,
I take the view that gods and their doings, be they in the Greek Pantheon, Hebrew god/s, Zoroastrian gods or whatever, are projections into the sky of humans and their doings ‘here below’ on Earth, and of particular importance to Bronze Age patriarchal farmers and herders. The Ten Commandments are written in that vein: Thou shalt not covet they neighbour’s house, wife, manservant, maidservant, ox, ass or anything else of his. (Exodus 20:17)
Moreover, there is more than a hint that Yahweh himself recognises that he is not the only god in the universe, and that there are others. But he does not like a single one of them, and proclaims himself to be “a jealous God.” He commands in the KJV: “Thou have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3) implying (gods, not Gods) that there are others, and he knows all about ‘em. I assume that the word ‘god’ is capitalised or not according to the creators of the KJV. To my knowledge, it was not in the original text; neither was the verse numbering.
The above I offer as a humble contribution to the body of theology available on this site. ;-)