Religion of Peace?

From the Assyrian International News Agency

West Bengal, India (AINA) -- A mob of nearly 7000 Muslims attacked a group of Hindu pilgrims in West Bengal, a state in Eastern India that borders Bangladesh on the west. According to a Hindu blog, a sacred Hindu site frequented by Hindu pilgrims, including women and children, has experienced a sustained attack since Thursday evening. Muslims have thrown gas cylinders and Molotov cocktails at the pilgrims, burning down the camp building and trapping 180 men, women and children, along with fifteen police officers, within the confines of the compound.

The Muslims attempted to breach the wall of the compound by exploding gas cylinders against it. The fifteen police officers have not been able to disperse the mob, even afer firing several rounds.

Fifteen people have been injured; seven of them are not critically injured and are not expected to survive. The names of the critically wounded include are Subodh Kundu, Bivas Mondal, Gopinath Biswas, Prasenjit Sardar and Gautam Halder. Two victims could not be identified because of serious facial burns. Nine victims are missing and are believed to have been kidnapped by the Muslims. Their names are: Gautam Mondal, Kartick Biswas, Ram Shil, Palash Roy, Gopal Dolui, Piyush Senapati, Ashok Das, Shankar Nandi and Subhash Roy.

Two police officers have been injured.

The police have issued an arrest warrant against the Hindu leader, Sri Tapan Kumar Ghosh, and 15 other Hindus. They are charged with "Incitement and Instigation for Rioting" and "Disruption of Communal Harmony."

No arrest warrants have been issued against Muslims.

This is the "Religion of Peace"? This is it.

Don't Know Much About Their Own Religion

It seems that Christian students at universities do not know a lot about how Christianity developed as well as Christian beliefs and church history. The Christian Century has an article by Barbara Brown Taylor who teaches a class on world religions at Piedmont College.

Students who complete the class say they feel more at home in the world. They are less easily frightened by religious difference. They are more informed neighbors, better equipped to wage peace instead of war.

The only place the course backfires is in the unit on Christianity. Students who have spent every Sunday of their lives in church may be able to name the books of the Bible in order, but they rarely have any idea how those books were assembled. They know they belong to Victory Baptist Church, but they do not know that this makes them Protestants, or that the Christian tree has two other major branches more ancient than their own. Very few have heard of the Nicene Creed. Most are surprised to learn that baptism is supposed to be a one-time thing.

With only five class sessions for each religion, I cover the basics quickly: early Christian history, composition and content of the New Testament, the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, central Christian doctrines and common religious practices. Faced with so much new information, students often have a hard time formulating their questions.

“If Paul wasn’t one of the 12 disciples, where did he get his stuff?”

“Do Catholics really think saints answer their prayers?”

As often as I have answered such questions, my sinking feeling never goes away. The things I tell students are so different from the things they have heard in church that I can hear their brains straining against the waves. They never noticed that Matthew and Luke tell different stories of Jesus’ birth, or that Mark and John tell no such stories at all. They never imagined that the first Christians did not walk around with New Testaments in their pockets. No one ever told them about Constantine, Augustine, Benedict or Martin Luther. They never thought about what happened during the centuries between Jesus’ resurrection and their own professions of faith. In their minds, they fell in line behind the disciples, picking up the proclamation of the gospel where those simple fishermen left off.

Even as they are turning in their quizzes, the students know that something has just gone badly wrong. “I think I just did the worst on my own religion,” one says.

They also find it difficult to reconcile the knowledge they gain with their pre-class beliefs.

"I couldn't hold onto what I was learning," one capable student said. "I loved it, but I couldn't make it stay in my head. It was too different from what I had already learned, so my brain just kept switching back to default."

I am not surprised to learn this, nor would I be surprised to read the same thing regarding non-observant Jews. But in this case, the Christians are actually the involved church-goers.

George Will on Colbert: Conservatives versus Liberals

Colbert: What do you think are the differences between conservatives and liberals?

Will: The difference between truth and confusion, basically... A slightly longer answer is that the competing values are freedom and equality at all times. Conservatives tend to favor freedom and are willing to accept inequalities of outcome in the free market. Liberals tend to favor equality of outcome and are willing to sacrifice and circumscribe freedom in order to get it.

QOTD: Motti Berger and Henry Kissinger

One of my favorites: Rabbi Motti Berger roughly quoted Kissinger on hearing about the 1993 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

"People that have been spending the last 50 years trying to kill you -- don't you think they'd lie to you, also?"