Unbelievable

[KiwiHopeful]

I'm sure there's a difference between the strength and fanaticism of Christian fundamentalists in the UK and the US. In the US, Christianity has given us the Oklahoma City Bombing and Eric Rudolph, who were both connected to the Christian Identity movement. We have our own Taliban-wannabees in the Westboro Baptist Church.

Extremist and radical Christians don't need to take to the streets in the US because they just go on the TV instead. They don't need to wave knives because we can drop bombs instead:

Here's a quote from Ann Coulter, who you can see on Fox News (snicker) pretty much at least once a week: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

I guess I would sum it up this way: when was the last time you heard one of these 'Christians' talking about the Beatitudes or the Sermon on the Mount?

The whole Golden Compass thing is an excellent example. It used to be that they'd burn the books and publicly call for them to be banned. They're more sophisticated in their approach now.

You can see Gary Bauer going on Fox News (notice a theme?) and saying, 'Well, people can go see this movie if they want, but I just want them to know what they are going to see ..." (not an exact quote) but I *guarantee* that within the week we'll have more calls for school board to ban the book and I'm sure at least one (probably in Kansas or Texas) will.

I'm also certain that despite this series being one of the best selling young adult book series of all time, there are libraries and schools where it is not to be found, because the people in charge made sure it wasn't bought in the first place.

The big difference is that we're fortunate to have a system that prevents people like this from getting too much power. But if people like Jerry Fawell and Pat Robertson had their way, life in the US wouldn't be any different.

[selchie]

Fortunately it sounds like that teacher was allowed to leave Sudan.

I just don't understand that kind of religious extremism, no matter what the faith. It all seems so antithetical to what one really wants from a relationship with the divine. But that's what can happen when religious authority is handed over to another human.

[KiwiHopeful]

I had not seen news footage of the original protests, but I wonder if they were over-hyped by people in the media trying to fit the story into the 'blood thirsty Muslims' storyline.

I became skeptical because I did see a protest outside the government offices in Sudan. The news caster said 40-50 people had gathered to protest her release. It looked more like it couldn't have been more than 20-25 to me. How an original protest involving 'thousands' somehow dwindled to even 40-50 when she was released seemed suspect to me. If anything, I would have thought that the 'easy' punishment she received would have made people even madder.

That said, if someone here says, 'I saw the original report and the footage showed thousands,' I'll believe them. It's just the story as I've seen it reported doesn't quite sit right with me.