OK. Religion – any; all – fairly whacky.

Barry Obama has already changed his religion and continues to walk around upright, so there’s at least one Muslim who seems to have successfully quit. (Or maybe not: could all just be a vastly elaborate subterfuge to get elected. After he gets into the white house he has 24 hours to resume bowing and scraping toward Mecca, or “boing” goes the Barry…) And if he could quit Islam so easy, what’s his issue with cigarettes?

The question, then, becomes not “Can This Culture Be Saved;” but: “SHOULD This Culture Be Saved” – or is it just such crap it should be pitched over the nearest cliff and its former adherents invited to begin again?

I incline to the latter view. Events have caught them up, they are no longer relevant, the place formerly occupied by them no longer exists: so toss it and start over. The manufacturers of buggy whips and wagon wheels had to face a hard truth regarding their personal relevance to a changing world; and the days of clan vengeance, and honor killing may have joined suttee on the shelf, right next to Zeus, Osiris, Om, and Ba’al.

The world moves, the vast majority of us are no longer tribal and wandering in the wilderness: we had the wit to move out of the wilderness to better and kindlier climes, and the need for clan vengeance – or “clan” anything else that supported us through the tribal wandering years – subsided. The race no longer requires the culture that got us through the desert years. We aren’t in the desert any more. (“Desert” being something of a metaphor – don’t take it so literally!)

Once the majority of the race has migrated away, which we have; and once we are somewhat beyond the primitivism that prevailed there; which we are -then the question becomes: do we need to hang on to this annoying, idiotic, and somewhat dangerous relic or artefact left over from those times?

No. You are living in the seventh century, well before indoor plumbing, flu shots, shaved legs or the birth of Enzo Ferrari – and you have nothing to tell us. “People” magazine, which I do not read but spot in the market has a picture on the cover this week of a girl in a Prairie dress with a couple of little kids and the headline: “Inside the Cult.” Well, hell, “People:” take the same picture, draw a bag over her head with a porthole in it, extend the dress to drag on the ground, cross out the word “cult” and replace it with “Islam” – and what’s the difference?

If that cult here in Utah isn’t worth saving, then neither is that other one in the Middle East, because there isn’t much difference between them. Except that the girl in the Prairie dress probably won’t be killed for some miniscule transgression – and she probably doesn’t WANT to kill anyone, either.

I’d like to identify why they can, or why they cannot.

If they can, I want laws and amendments enacted affirming the right to change faiths (or to have no faith at all), and to punish those who advocate murder. I do understand, and affirm, the right of a community – in this case, the Muslim umma – to shun and ostracize those who depart from the mores of the community. I believe an Amish that chooses modernity must leave his or her community, is that not true? But I cannot accept the murder of apostates, and I cannot accept preachers who advocate it either. I want them punished.

So, does anyone know if my thoughts follow established cases and what they are, or if not, what am I violating? I’d really like to be educated on this one!

I agree completely. We can’t fix everything in this dark world, but we can take care of our own backyard.

Here in the Dallas area, we are still dealing with the horrifying killing of two teenage Muslim girls by their father, who disliked the direction their lives were heading. And, thus, he murdered them. And then this horrifying psychopath – oops, culturally misunderstood patriarch – fled to a foreign country to save his own sorry skin. Coward. Monster.

We will be facing more and more of this. Unless we make a stand for individual rights and MAKE IT STICK.

If I’m wrong about any of what follows, please yell at me! It might be offensive from a freedom of speech perspective…

There can be no tolerance of those who preach the correctness of honor killings, nor of those who threaten it. This is not free speech by our standards; it is closer to yelling fire in a crowded theatre. It is a direct threat against a life to preach and advocate murder.

In addition, we must make it absolutely clear that in this country, a Muslim has COMPLETE AND TOTAL FREEDOM to change his or her religion. At any second, any point in time, and for any reason whatsoever, throughout every second of any individual’s life: TOTAL FREEDOM TO CHANGE FAITH. We must never tolerate, not for one second, anyone even preaching that an individual that changes his religious faith should be put to death.

We would never tolerate human cannibalism in the name of religion. Similarly, we must not tolerate honor killings nor the murder of those who change faith. We must not accept any preaching of these either; they must be illegal under the category of a direct threat to a life.

I don’t think that “freedom of religion” prevents the murder of a Muslim who changes faith.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” only restricts the State, I think. We need to make it absolutely clear that this is not allowed, nor is preaching it allowed.

The only way I could be wrong about this, is if I am also wrong in the idea that I cannot use free speech to advocate the murder of everyone within an ethnic group. And even were I allowed to preach and advocate, right now: “Kill every person in America who has even an ounce of (for example) Korean blood!”, then I believe that that should not be considered free speech, and it should not be allowed.

If you think I’m wrong, please let me know!

The Union didn’t keep federal forces in the South long enough, either, to force the kind of societal change that would have guaranteed the freedom and equality for freed black slaves in the South. All of the Radical Republican initiatives to safeguard freed black civil rights disappeared in smokes when the federal troops were pulled due to a compromise with Southern Democrats.

ou’re right as far as that goes, but Jim Crow and racial discrimination was our own issue to fight in our own back yard — this isn’t.

The fight of humanity in getting rid of parochial and self-defeating cultural legacies is everyone’s fight, even if it occurs in different times and places. What goes for one goes for the other, since humans are still involved and the same things are at issue.

(And it took us darn near a century to finish that job, anyway.)

partially because of Andrew Johnson and the Redemption Democrats which eventually resulted in the pullout of US federal troops out of the South.

And if you think the job is finished, then you haven’t seen the institutional racism perpetrated by welfare and Democrat welfare policies in action.

The South didn’t magically welcome backs after they lost the Civil War. It took federal troops and crackdowns on the KKK insurgency to ensure that blacks weren’t terrorized and that Republican governments could stand in the South.

You’re right as far as that goes, but Jim Crow and racial discrimination was our own issue to fight in our own back yard — this isn’t. (And it took us darn near a century to finish that job, anyway.) Multiculturalism aside, I don’t see any political will on either side of the isle to keep our military forces in Iraq long enough to impose that kind of societal change on them. If the Iraqis themselves don’t think it’s an issue, I don’t think anything is going to change.