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Holy War

Jill

You’ve probably all seen those Rumsfeld intelligence briefings, but just in case you haven’t had the pleasure, click over and read this GQ article. This is the kind of stuff that, if you replaced Biblical quotes with Koranic ones, would be on every right-wing blog (not to mention network news) as evidence that crazy, irrational Jihadists are fighting a holy war. I have nothing more intelligent to say than that is some scary shit.

17 thoughts on Holy War

  2. This is pretty frustrating. Most of the scriptures are taken out of context, some offensively so. It bothers me so much that people have bastardized my beliefs and churned them into this cash and war machine that most people think is Christianity. There’s not a whole lot of difference between the mainstream idea of “the church” and the GOP.

  3. Of course, if they were Koranic passages it would be different. It’s not just that the right is largely Christian-identified. It’s that they don’t even see their Christian mindset as anything other than simply the way things are. It’s like fish not knowing what water is.

    So, for many of them, if Jill made her point to their faces, they’d be really confused–I mean, in the Muslim scenario it’s people pushing their religion, but in the Christian scenario it’s just a nice affirmation of goodness/responsibility/duty/whatever.

    Maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But people everywhere have a habit of taking majority culture for granted.

  4. As I mentioned elsewhere, apparently Rumsfeld has some version of the Bible with the apocryphal “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” verse.

  5. What, Christian leaders in the west are using the Bible to justify war on nonbelievers? They’re using the scriptures to agitate for violence? Last time I check that just means you’re in the west…

  6. “As I mentioned elsewhere, apparently Rumsfeld has some version of the Bible with the apocryphal “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” verse.”
    You mean, like pretty much the entire Old Testament?

  7. The quote on #5 is especially hilarious.

    Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.
    -Proverbs 16:3

    That worked out really well for King Josiah, didn’t it? (see 2 Kings 22:1 – 23:30) There are others destroyed despite complete obedience to Yahweh, but since I’m in 2 Chronicles right now, that one stands out.

  9. William & Tiktaalik,

    Thank you. No, Rumsfeld does not have it wrong. Christians like to pretend that all that ugliness from the OT aren’t part of the religion. So, in essence, they pick and choose which scriptures to believe. The fact is, according to their own holy book, Christians are practicing a religion that pushes the murder of gay men, hates women, absolutely supports state-sanctioned murder (umm…capital punishment, I mean), says that their god ordered his followers to murder civilians and sexually enslave “women children” (i.e. virgin females) captured in war, and holds that females suffer in childbirth as punishment for their peculiar kind of evil, just to name a few things. That is what your religion says. You can choose to ignore that your god supports all these things, but he does. It’s right there in black and white.

  10. I feel like someone should create a hoax blog post using those exact same Bible quotes, but attributing them to the Koran, saying these are Koranic verses used on documents by Iraqi soldiers. Then we just sit back and see how long it takes for a mainstream news source or at least a popular right-wing blog to pick it up and denounce Islam because of it.

  11. catfood – I don’t think you’re exaggerating. I know many people to whom these quotes/pictures combinations would be exactly what you say: affirmations of faith in god and belief that EVERYTHING they do is right and just.

    And then they go on about how Christians are so oppressed and persecuted and why can’t the rest of the world just leave them alone in peace?!

  12. *wants to build a time machine so he can go back and vote against these people again*

  13. Wow, Kim, so I guess if we’re going by reading what the book literally said, us Jews are just fucked, since we ONLY have the OT.

    Way to have a limited perspective on religion. Yes, William is absolutely right, there is a political exploitation of Christianity in the West as old as Charlemagne. However Kim, it absolutely does NOT ignore the OT, it uses it to bolster its own violent delusions. How it does so is interesting, complicated, and doesn’t really bear reduction to biogtry and caricature.

    Yes, “the book” says “those things.” You can also choose to, oh, not be a fundamentalist nitwit and see that the BOOK was written by men, at a specific time, and requires interpretation (sort of like the Constitution, which supported gender and race based slavery). Or you can just choose to set up a strawman critique that only applies to straight up textual literalists.

  14. As for the cover sheets–they should have had no place in the White House. There’s nothing wrong with most of the quotes, even with using them to inspire Christian soldiers–it’s the context that screwy. It contributes to a fanaticist mindset that is utterly inappropriate for the leader of a pluralistic society (or any, really). I think taking those particular passages unexamined can also lead to dehumanization of the enemy–NOT something the POTUS should be doing for kicks.

  15. A theocracy is a theocracy, whether it’s about the Ten Commandments or Sharia law. This was loud and clear at the anti-gay marriage rally I was protesting at on Sunday here in New York, where I saw marchers carrying a large American flag with a giant cross added to the middle of it.

  16. Just to clarify, I was making a snarky comment about a western leader using Christianity to justify bloodlust and how that wasn’t anything new. For the record, I think violent expansionism is intrinsic to any religion which encourages dualistic thinking and proselytization, which is why I tend to distrust strong faith in both Muslims and Christians.

  17. Pingback: John Boehner resembles a certain cat named Howdy Doody; plus more linkage. « Small-Town Elitist

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