FLASH! From Liz Smith | 10/30/2009 3:40 pm
LIZ SMITH FLASH! A Question From National Review
Here we present a religious question from the opinion and editorial pages of the National Review magazine. And it’s a very good one, I think.
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November issue of National Review: "We all know that Jihadists believe that pious Muslim males will be rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise. What will those virgins actually be like, though? Saudi cleric Sheikh Muhammad al-Munajid has been telling us on Saudi Arabia’s Al-Majd TV. Main point: They will be white. Very white. ‘Allah said that the black-eyed virgins are beautiful white young women … whose skin is so delicate and bright that it causes confusion. They are like precious gems and pearls in their splendor, their clarity, their purity and their whiteness.’
"We (at the National Review) confess to some slight confusion ourselves. Is there a separate afterlife for pious but unwhite Muslim females? If not, where do their souls go? If so, what’s their reward? Perhaps we all get new bodies in paradise, with the gals guaranteed to get white ones. Another possibility is that Sheikh Muhammad al-Munajid is a gibbering lunatic.
"This is, after all, the man who last year issued a fatwa against Mickey Mouse, whom he described as "one of Satan’s soldiers.’"
***
I just love fanatical religions, don’t you? They make so much sense.
***
November issue of National Review: "We all know that Jihadists believe that pious Muslim males will be rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise. What will those virgins actually be like, though? Saudi cleric Sheikh Muhammad al-Munajid has been telling us on Saudi Arabia’s Al-Majd TV. Main point: They will be white. Very white. ‘Allah said that the black-eyed virgins are beautiful white young women … whose skin is so delicate and bright that it causes confusion. They are like precious gems and pearls in their splendor, their clarity, their purity and their whiteness.’
"We (at the National Review) confess to some slight confusion ourselves. Is there a separate afterlife for pious but unwhite Muslim females? If not, where do their souls go? If so, what’s their reward? Perhaps we all get new bodies in paradise, with the gals guaranteed to get white ones. Another possibility is that Sheikh Muhammad al-Munajid is a gibbering lunatic.
"This is, after all, the man who last year issued a fatwa against Mickey Mouse, whom he described as "one of Satan’s soldiers.’"
***
I just love fanatical religions, don’t you? They make so much sense.
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I share the following excerpt of nineteenth poetry by Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney it is so appropriate for Thanksgiving:
The Indian’s Welcome to the Pilgrim Fathers
" …when sudden from a forest wide, a red brow’d chieftan came
with towering form and haughty stride, and eye like kindling flame:
No wrath he breath’d, no conflict sought, to no dark ambush grew,
But simply to the Old World brought the welcome of the New.
That welcome was a blast and ban upon thy race unborn
Was there no seer, thou fated Man! Thy lavish zeal to warn?
Thou in thy fearless faith didsst hail A weak invading band,
but who shall heed thy children’s wail Swept from their native land?…"
We really need to think of what sort of beliefs coupled with actions our country was founded on. I think this part of our past lets us know where a lot of the bad "karma" originates. But it is just as much of our history as the documents we cherish and we need to deal with the fact that we made some horrendous mistakes along the way.
Amen Susan, amen. poem says it all Thank you
Thanks for your gentle admonishment. You are correct. Others do still need and want it. When posting, one must always remember there are many sides. Therefore, I shouldn’t have said there’s no reason to have religion.
What I should have said is that people should not use religion to abuse, and one example is what was done in my family. I come from a family that tried to beat religion into their children. And it doesn’t work. I never believed and the sister who fervently believed in childhood got involved in cults in adulthood, developed a memory loss problem at 47, became childlike and died at 52. Three others believe various degrees of religiousness and one is as agnostic as I am. At our sister’s funeral, we all agreed on one thing, our parents spent too much time beating religion into us instead of looking at themselves or nurturing us. We also realized that even in our 50s, we still haven’t overcome our horrible childhood.
All religion is fanatical when you really get right down to it - I began wondering early on why the followers of the god of Abraham hated each other. Jews, Christians, and Muslims. They worship the same god. I wonder if any of them realize that. Few people know the story of the Black Rock which Abraham built a temple around in what is now Mecca. It fell from the sky. Personally I think god threw it at Abraham. He didn’t get the message. Neither has anyone else. Next time god may not miss.