Looks like somebody finally carried out the fatwa.

There's no dealing with religious fanatics.

They're beyond reason.


https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-62524833


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/12/salman-rushdie-attacked-onstage-new-york


Author Salman Rushdie has been attacked onstage at an event in New York state, according to the Associated Press.

Rushdie, the author whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was attacked on Friday morning as he was about to give a lecture in western New York.

An Associated Press reporter witnessed a man storm the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and begin punching or stabbing Rushdie as he was being introduced.

The author was taken or fell to the floor, and the man was restrained.

Photos taken by an Associated Press reporter show Rushdie lying on his back, with a first responder crouched over him.

Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous.

A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.

A bounty of more than $3m has also been offered for anyone who kills Rushdie.

Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment lingered.

In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8m to $3.3m.

Rushdie dismissed that threat at the time, saying there was “no evidence” of people being interested in the reward.

That year, Rushdie published a memoir, Joseph Anton, about the fatwa.



UPDATE:

Rushdie on ventilator and may lose an eye, agent says

Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator, unable to speak, and may lose an eye, his agent told Reuters and the New York Times.

“The news is not good,” Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s agent, said Friday evening. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2022 12:17AM by anybody.

How is the fatwa against John Bolton and Mike Pompeo working out ?

This is horrible. I hope he is going to be OK. As of this post, I can't tell how critical the stab wound is to his neck.

I have read most of his books which I found illuminating and entertaining. He is a brilliant person.

This looks like another possible example of someone taking their religion so seriously that they act violently to protect it. Religion ruins everything IMO because it radicalizes, purposely gives mixed messages, and encourages people to act out or punish in defense of their beliefs.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2022 03:21PM by Nightingale.

Atheistic communism is just as brutal as extremist religion is. Saying religion is the only menace is pretty ignorant. We could get rid of all the religions and we would still have the same problems. Authoritarianism is the problem and that never goes away.

Rubicon Wrote:
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> Atheistic communism is just as brutal as extremist
> religion is.

Dagny didn't contest that.


-------------------
> Saying religion is the only menace
> is pretty ignorant.


Dagny didn't say that.


-------------------
> We could get rid of all the
> religions and we would still have the same
> problems.

I've suggested may times on RfM that religion and political ideology are functionally very similar. The division between the two phenomena is, in my view, artificial.

Right. I never said that, Rubicon. Humans will behave like this with many types of "ism" ideologies as we have seen.

I think that getting people to believe they are doing God's will or standing up for God using violence seems disappointingly manipulative and helpful for authoritarian types. Devoted humans to their dear leaders are a fact of life.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> I've suggested may times on RfM that religion and
> political ideology are functionally very similar.
> The division between the two phenomena is, in my
> view, artificial.

Yep, religions are political idologies: they want to govern.

And they both peddle mythologies that appeal to the human irrationality.

Yes, Atheist communism is brutal, as are religious right wing dictatorships. What's your point ?

The world is what it is and we can complain but the world goes on it’s way and most of us live our short lives not even making much of an difference. Power does what it does.

In the case of Rushdi. If you tease a bull you eventually are going to get gored. So we supposedly went to the Middle East to quell extremism. We supposedly got Bin Laden. What we really got were rich military contractors, trillions of dollars in debt, damaged and dead service men and women. Did it really change anything? Nope.

So are you going to change anything? Ha! Ha! Ha! My advice. Don’t tease bulls.

The South Park guys are in big trouble.

Right.

The worst thing about bulls is you have to watch where you step.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> The worst thing about bulls is you have to watch
> where you step.

Not excluding Papal bulls, which have been issued, astoundingly, since the sixth century.

Interestingly, one of the early bulls was issued to annul the Magna Carta way back in 1215, just a couple of months after the charter was penned.

We can see how well that turned out!

Magna Carta: States that "everyone is subject to the law, even the king, and guarantees the rights of individuals, the right to justice and the right to a fair trial".

What amazing concepts eh?

(Sorry to veer off topic but I couldn't resist. Papal bulls have been on my mind since the Pope's recent visit to Canada. It's such a funny word to use, with its unfortunate, yet in some cases most fitting connotation.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2022 05:42PM by Nightingale.

safer on the streets.

fatwa:its like selling free indulgances to commit murder

This ties into the good vs evil thread. To many Iranians, this is a good thing. To most of us, the attack was evil. The stabby guy in handcuffs looked pleased with himself.

So is the attempted assassination of an apostate good or evil? Depends who you ask. Fortunately for us, the church is too cheap to offer bounties on exmos.

> So is the attempted assassination of an apostate
> good or evil? Depends who you ask.

No, it doesn't.

That's why jingoism is a good thing.

bradley Wrote:
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> That's why jingoism is a good thing.

???

He's just trying to get a rise.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2022 11:37PM by Lot's Wife.

Look at it this way. The Ayatollah is a religious leader for millions of people just like Russell M Nelson. What ever happened to "follow the prophet"? Don't you know obedience is the first law of heaven?

As for blasphemy, I'm kinda all for it.

This raises the question:

Where is the outrage from prominent American Muslims--in politics, the press, and public life generally? Arguably, they should have been the first to denounce this action forcefully and publicly, just like they do when confronted with Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians.

Notice that as usual they are--as far as I can tell-- conspicuously silent when Islam shows its ugly side, as here!

And yet, people criticize people, like Bill Maher, as 'Islamophobic' when they call into question the hidden jihadist attitudes and motives of Muslims generally, which appear to be so deeply ingrained within the Islamic faith that when they surface, there is an apparent wink and a nod, as manifested by their silence.

[?] Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And yet, people criticize people, like Bill Maher,
> as 'Islamophobic' when they call into question the
> hidden jihadist attitudes and motives of Muslims
> generally, which appear to be so deeply ingrained
> within the Islamic faith that when they surface,
> there is an apparent wink and a nod, as manifested
> by their silence.

As with any vast generalization, this conclusion about "all Muslims" is way wide of the mark.

Same as if you say "all Canadians", "all Europeans", "all Americans", "all cowboys".

Sure, we have similarities, sharing the prevalent culture in whichever area we grew up and/or reside in, and we can laugh about some benign "national" characteristics. But we are not literally ALL one thing or another.

As for people's silence: It can be difficult, risky, scary, dangerous to poke a menacing giant. It must be awesomely frightening to try and go up against militant tyrants.

I wouldn't conclude that everybody holds the same views and would adopt the same hardline approaches, rather that our overarching impulse as humans is to choose safety and life for ourselves over danger and death. Hopefully then we can live to fight another day, in whichever ways we can manage short of sacrificing our very lives.

It *is* Islamophobic to attribute "hidden jihadist attitudes of Muslims generally" to all Muslims.

I am friends with a family who came to Canada as refugees (due to war) from a Muslim country. They are observant and they know I am Christian yet we instantly fell into friendship which has endured.

So there's one Muslim family (2 parents, 5 kids) which is NOT jihadist.

I've met Muslims from various countries and so far, so good. No Jihad.

Just my long way of saying absolutes are bound to be inaccurate.

Plus, this appalling attack just occurred yesterday. Maybe give people some time to react instead of forming hasty conclusions about them.

I have mixed feelings about this. I have questioned about 10 Muslims now to see if they would repudiate the passages in the Koran that clearly call for violence and revenge. Every one has said the Koran is holy, so no.

I have a hard time understanding how they cherry pick, since obviously they know other devout Muslims have the facts behind them if they act out according to what their holy writ actually instructs. The ones who don't ignore the ugly verses are "bad" Muslims who apparently didn't get the memo that Islam is peaceful.

This isn't that different from what Christians do when they cherry pick the Bible, but some of the Muslim verses seem more heinous to me at least.

I've never met a Muslim who didn't seem like a nice reasonable person, but I guess there can be bad apples in any barrel. Still, if people don't take a stand that they disagree with what is taught is in divine holy books, they are by default - at least a little - supporting it when people act out, IMO. Cherry picking, apologetics, spin and denial doesn't help solve the problem that certain devout types are going to take that stuff seriously.

This isn't limited to religion like Nighty pointed out, but religion is a big source of it. A holy writ has an extra "God said so" justification behind it.

I respect your opinion, dagny, and the way you express it.

It's certainly a thorny thicket for people, born into a certain overarching faith which defines a culture, influencing civil life as well.

I don't know enough about the tenets of Islam to comment wisely about how verses are interpreted. I guess I've assumed that, as with Christianity, there are different interpretations and some people are more fundamentalist than others, adopting a literal view while others see various meanings.

But with Islam, maybe not - sorry to say I'm ignorant in that.

I know many fire-and-brimstone Christian preachers who I've never assumed meant their words of "warfare" to be taken literally. It's always presented as "spiritual warfare" as far as I've ever heard.

I somewhat loosely assume too that the Muslim refugees I have known, from various countries, perhaps get out at least partly because of religious strife or oppression but some at least have continued to practice their faith rituals, understandably I think.

But I've never felt they were alien or dangerous or judgemental but rather just all good things, in my experience.

There are certainly stereotypes. When my mom passed away unexpectedly and I was gutted I had to go and tell the Muslim family of refugees that we knew well and Mom had been very close to. The kids in particular loved her as if she were their own grandma. I am well used to controlling my emotions but I totally broke down there and the husband put his arm around me and stroked my hair and murmured words I couldn't understand but they were comforting. He had a houseful of male friends at the time and his wife wasn't home. He steered me away from the crowd into a quiet bedroom and we sat on the bed while I just cried. Very unlike me. His young kids were there in the room with us, also offering silent comfort to me. It touched my heart very much.

My point is I would *never* have expected that he would ever touch me because man/woman/Muslim thing. But in that moment we were just two humans together. And despite not having a common language, at all, we communicated. It helped me and forged a close bond between us all.

I know they still practice their faith even though they've left their home country. In fact, they even pray in front of me at the required times of day so I know they are very observant.

I don't know if we would ever talk about religion with each other even if we had a common language. It's not a factor in our relationship. We just accept one another.

I know I can't make generalizations about all people of one nationality or faith on the basis of the few I have known but I can't accept that they would be jihadists or believe in violence on religious grounds or that they think it's OK. I guess I assume that's a reason they would make their trip overseas away from their country - that they are observant but not fanatical.

In my youthful JW days there was a lot of talk of war too and Armageddon was always on the horizon. They mean literal war but not that they would do the killing. That is left to God. Not that appealing a doctrine to me. I can never reconcile a God of Anger and a God of Love as one and the same. Yet there were other faith beliefs of theirs that I did find appealing (which I came to see are not unique to JWs).

I think that if you disagree with the teachings of "divine holy books", that you refer to dagny, you would decide they're not literal, or choose to disregard or not believe them, or you would leave the faith. I wouldn't expect that as an imperative but I can see how others may think you should.

Perhaps, like me, the majority of religious people cherry pick what they believe, what they cast aside, and whether they decide a certain belief is figurative or literal.

I can understand why outsiders would have a problem with that.

It's inconsistent, definitely.

dagny,

Liberal and moderate Muslims handle the violent passages in the Quran the same way Christians do the similar passages in the Bible. They interpret those scriptures metaphorically or just ignore them. Mormons do the same thing: very few of them go around severing Laban's head or lopping off unbelievers' arms.

For my money what matters is whether believers model their behavior after their holy books' extremism.

Is there outrage from prominent Christian leaders when an abortion clinic is bombed?

Exactly.

Normal Muslims don't identify with extreme and/or insane Muslims any more than normal Christians feel responsibility for Christian bombers in Lebanon or any other location.

Black people don't need to apologize for black criminals, white people for white criminals, Jews for Jewish criminals, Muslims for Muslim criminals.

The suggestion that culpability follows race or creed or faith is itself bigotry.

Thank you, LW. That's what I was trying to say. I wish that had been the bottom line in my post. Or my whole post.

We make a good team.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We make a good team.

I count on you to do all the heavy lifting. :)

Quite the opposite, NG. I get the easy part.

TY :)

Two days after the implied fatwa against the FBI was issued (shrill “they are the Gestapo” claims) a guy shows up at an FBI office in body armor, with an AR-15 and a nail gun that he apparently planned to use to shatter bullet-proof glass. Pro-tip: bullet-proof glass generally isn’t glass. It’s plastic. Nails won’t shatter it.

How is he different from the guy that stabbed Rushdie? He wasn’t Muslim, so I suppose that’s a difference. Otherwise, birds of a feather as far as I can tell.

I thought of that same example.
It's the same kid of thing: Rhetoric can inflame and people act on it.
When that rhetoric is divinely inspired, it's even worse, IMO, because someone is using the concept of a god to get people to do stuff.

The fact that humans can be easily manipulated has never been more clear to me than in the past few years. That tribal thing and dear leader thing are like siren calls.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre being a case in point -- pioneers moving westward, who were bothering exactly nobody, and Brigham Young has to order their extermination. Any Mormon who complains of persecution should contemplate the MMM.

There is in Wilford Woodruff's journal, now locked up by the church but previously seen and reported by Quinn, in which the future prophet says that what BY was doing would probably result in bloodshed.

His musings were not specifically about southern Utah. This was during the Mormon Reformation, when BY and his factotums were inciting rage throughout the Mormon West and among the Native American tribes in anticipation of possible US military action against the church. Woodruff was worried that the raging hostility of the people in what is now northwestern Wyoming and southern Idaho would likely lead to violence against wagon trails passing along the Oregon Trail.

But the passage says a lot about MMM since it proves that the First Presidency knew its rhetoric was highly inflammatory and dangerous. BY later expressed insouciance regarding the slaughter when at Mountain Meadows he said something like, "vengeance belongs to the Lord, and now he has taken some."

[If anyone can provide the exact quotation and a source, I'd be grateful.}

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If anyone can provide the exact quotation and a
> source, I'd be grateful.

From FAIR: (I don't know who Alexander is):

"That sets up the background for an incident that occurred a couple of years later that Alexander covers:

"Moreover, as late as 1861, Young still believed the stories of Baker/Fancher crimes which led to the massacre, in spite of his efforts to bring the perpetrators to trial. On visiting the massacre site in May 1861, Woodruff recorded Young's assessment that the plaque Carleton had erected on the mass grave which read: "Vengeance is mine and I will repay saith the Lord:' should read: "Vengence is mine and I (the Lord] have taken a little." Young clearly refused to take responsibility for the massacre. Later, the same month, Young told John D. Lee that the emigrants "Meritd their fate, & the only thing that ever troubled him was the lives of the Women & children, but that under the circumstances [this] could not be avoided."


"Juanita Brooks and her co-editor of the John D. Lee diaries find the entry below to be evidence of Brigham Young's complicity in the post massacre cover-up.

"Pres. Young Said that the company that was usede up at the Mountain Meadowes were the Fathers, Mothe[rs], Bros., Sisters & connections of those that Muerders the Prophets; they Meritd their fate, & the only thing that ever troubled him was the lives of the Women & children, but that under the circumstances [this] could not be avoided. Although there had been [some?] that wantd to betreyed the Brethrn into the hands of their Enimies, for that thing [they] will be Damned & go down to Hell. I would be Glad to see one of those traitors, though I [don't] Suppose that there is any here now. They have ran away, & when he came to the Monument that contained their Bones, he made this remark, Vengeance is Mine Saith the Lord, & I have taken a little of it."

See what I mean about the heavy lifting?

One quick little Google :)

But you've piqued my curiosity and now I'm looking into MMM. I know it has been a frequent focus/mention at RfM but I don't know much more about it than the headline. For a relatively young faith it has a lot of history to check out.

There are numerous understandable reasons for many ex-BICs/mo-s to have a deep distaste (?understatement) of Mormonism and its leadership, including its founders.

It was ever thus, so very unfortunately, that leaders of all types and places are overly concerned about image, to the great detriment of their flocks and followers and people in general.

We see it play out every day in our own lives and throughout history. Many of the powerful have a disturbing propensity to pillage, rape, murder and generally wreak havoc on the unfortunates who wield much less power, or none.

One very overlooked detail in re MMM is that it occurred later in the same year Parley P. Pratt had been killed in Arkansas by an Ankansas angry husband whose wife had ditched in favor of Parley.

Utahans thought they had a legitimate gripe against natives of Arkansas, despite the minor point that the Fancher party left Arkansas before PPP was killed.

It was probably a strong talking point for the mormons.

The Mormons claimed that some of the Fancher party had been in the mob that killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith, too. The claim was probably a complete fabrication, but it was a bruited about by church authorities to help fan the flames.

If you are interested in the topic and asked my opinion--not that silence in that regard ever influences me--I would highly recommend The Blood of the Prophets by Will Bagley. It's the most comprehensive volume, adding a few corrections and a lot of new information, to Juanita Brooks's magisterial account. It's also very well written.

I'd rank it up there with Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven in terms of putting particular atrocities in their equally engrossing contexts.

That goes without saying.

EXCELLENT Discussion and graphics by YouTuber TheraminTrees:
attacking ideas | my changing view of Islam — and the ex-Muslims and Muslims who changed them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9rTbh4a57o&t=46s
This is a MUST WATCH!

JK Rowling (Harry Potter author) has received a death threat over her support of Rushdie from a Twitter account in Pakistan.

OK, so Rowling gets a crackpot threat on Twitter from some bozo in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the US FBI is on high alert, there are armed protesters at the FBI offices in Phoenix, somebody in body armor and armed with an AR-15 tried to invade an FBI office in Ohio on Thursday, and this morning, somebody crashed his car into a barrier near the US Capitol building, it exploded in flames, though no word if it was a deliberate fire bomb, and the driver came out of his car firing a gun. He shot himself before police got to him.

Yet somehow Muslims are the problem? Really?

Somehow I think JK Rowling has little to worry about re the twitter threat from Pakistan. Someone finally managed to attack Rushdie after he was on a hit list for decades. How many federal officials are likely to be attacked or killed over the next 25 years? Or even 25 days? And it won't be by Muslims.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> And it won't be by Muslims.

Yeah. Scary to think the danger could be in your own backyard, from sources you wouldn't imagine.

Utilizing scapegoats doesn't keep one safe.

The problem is that the danger from homegrown sources is far more than imaginary. We not only know the sources: we know that they will, on their own impulse or at the behest of their political manipulators, kill at will.

Yeah, watching the news these days is nerve-wracking.

Information vacuums. False Messiahs. Crooks and liars. Etc

You've got to consume a variety of sources.

Of course, some of us already do so. Others, not so much. Sadly. Because yow.

Perhaps fatwas issued by Muslim clerics should be answered with bounty rewards when those fatwas are carried out -- "Wanted, dead or alive" with a rich reward.

Be careful what you wish for.