Though I have not blogged about the case, I am a supporter of Rifqa Bary, the teen runaway who fled her militant Islamist family after converting to Christianity. It is not my purpose to cover that case here, but please see the great work Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs have done on getting Rifqa’s story out.
Deirdre Hebert, the host of Pagan FM, which I am only aware of through some contact Pagans Against Child Abuse had with her in the past (more on that later) is not a supporter. Someone emailed me a comment she made that said Rifqa was a runaway who was merely afraid her parents were going to “freak out” on her so she should be returned home. In that thread she also claimed only “fundies” cared about this. My comment back was simply this:
Deirdre – She wasn’t afraid her parents would “freak” she was afraid they’d kill her. Literally. Honor killings are a serious problem
Our comments, of course, went to our Facebook profiles and you can see the debate that ensued with Deirdre when see decided to “educate” me about the “indoctrination” of Rifqa by those evil Christians. She also claimed I was a criminal. At some point she decided to do take this conversation to the emails and began a long private correspondence with me by sending me an email with the subject line “Stop Being a Fucking Moron and Listen and Read” which is too long to reproduce but I will forward to anyone who wants to read through. In it she makes several points that I want to use to illustrate the intellectual vapidity and rampant amorality of the leftist mainstream neo-pagan movement:
1) Christians “indoctrinated” Rifqa to hate poor innocent Muslims. Christians also committed more atrocities than poor innocent Muslims and I am a secret Christian for not wanting Rifqa sent back to the parents who blinded her and threatened to kill her.
2) Rifqa Bary is a liar and all children who claim they are abused should be left in the homes of their alleged abusers until we’re sure they are actually being abused.
3) I insulted her out of the box by writing the sentence above (which readers can see is simply mild disagreement), thus the venom she vomited on me over a day and a half was well deserved.
4) Myself and people like me are the cause of her immaturity and inability to agree to disagree sans meltdown.
5) Anyone to the right of George Soros is a fascist and I should get my news from the known anti-Semites at Media Matters.
Her first point is at odds with the facts, Rifqa herself, and a quick perusal of any site that aggregates news involving Muslims such as Religion of Peace. This is politically correct posturing based largely on ignorance of Islam and inexperience with both Muslims and American Christians. The racism of Islam regarding Black Americans was exposed in my coverage of the Sandra Hall murder, and the innate misogyny of unreformed Islam is so blatant that one need not argue the point. The idea that Islam is being smeared by those evil Christians and Jews who spread Islamophobia is utter nonsense. Muslims cause Islamophbia with every call for Jewicide, endorsement of wife-beating, every forced conversion, every honor killing and praise for terrorism.
But Hebert’s rosy fantasy about Islam is actually a symptom of a larger problem with the neo-Pagan community and the cosmography they have cobbled together using neo-Marxism as a guide. Her latter three points are also simply expressions of this world view wherein the world is divided into progressive and “regressive” camps and the “regressive” is de facto evil and at fault for all conflict. Hebert’s charge that I “insulted her first” came after she deleted the conversation on her page in a transparent attempt to alter history for her fellow ideological travelers who she knows will never view my page or this post. This, of course, came after she herself trolled a news story with a series of insulting quotes aimed at the Christian supporters of Rifqa. They, however, deserve derision – they are “fundies” after all.
The idea that Rifqa simply must be lying about her parents, and that risking the girl’s life to prove some cheap political point about “radical Christians” is acceptable is the depraved indifference of Dierdre Herbert that I want to point out, as it isn’t unique to Herbert but it is a feature of the modern neo-Pagan movement whose mainstream is on the very fringe of leftism. There have been dozens of honor killings in America. There have been hundreds of Muslim-driven acts of violence, vandalism and mayhem often targeting the very moderate Muslims Deirdre Herbert claims to be defending. But she instead sides with radical Islamists in an attempt to be on the “right” side of this issue. Herbert doesn’t actually care if Rifqa is in danger, but is interested in peddling a made up version of the story in which Christians lure a teen to their cult compound and turn her against her loving parents.
She has gone so far as to claim I was “advocating breaking the law” by supporting Rifqa’s struggle to stay alive.
This is a far cry from my first contact with Herbert, which happened after the Pagans Against Child Abuse exposure of child exploitation being facilitated and covered up by the owners of PaganSpace. Again through emails (which I will make available to anyone interested, Deirdre Hebert and I came up on opposite sides of the issue, with her claiming I was promoting “vigilantism” for promoting the idea that adult Pagans be alert for predators in our midst who use the loose structure of the various faiths within to prey on teens who make up the majority of new converts. In other words, we should report men who attempt to lure teens into sexual situations under the guise of “worshipping the goddess” to the police, and remain vigilant against what is a threat to the legitimacy of neo-Paganism. PACA was, in Hebert’s estimation, “ruining reputations” for no good reason.
Hardly the stance one expects from a person so concerned with law and order in the Rifqa Bary case. Unless Hebert has had an extreme change of heart since our first contact (and after our discussion I don’t think she has) it would seem that Herbert’s guiding philosophy is to simply take the position of the Left on any argument, then attempt to find reasons to prove the position she has already decided is right. These reasons will then always boil down to me and anyone to her right simply being a fascist. PACA itself has been branded a “conservative” group because in modern neo-Pagan morality it is seen as something Conservative Christians are involved in, so for the modern Wiccan (as an example) even attempting to work against criminality is anti-Pagan.
The anti-Conservative, anti-Christian/Western stance that is considered part of Pagan identity (which is no longer a religion but a sub-culture) is at the root of Pagan support for Islamism in general and the parents of Rifqa Bary in particular.
This pretension, this moral cowardice and herd instinct masquerading as free thinking would be little more than an inconvenience to right-leaning Pagans and a source of amusing anecdotes for non-Pagans. But this attitude has consequences. There is an indifference to actual suffering in the neo-Pagan movement that has long, long ago crossed the line into being depraved. One in ten Pagans I dealt with directly after the PaganSpace exposure even cared that grooming of children was going on. Some claimed it was acceptable, that I was simply a “prude” for not being OK with some 50-year-old claiming a 14-year-old girl needed to service him sexually as part of the worship of whatever goddess he was pretending to serve. Deirdre simply didn’t care at all, instead branding our efforts “too militant” for her to be at ease with.
Here’s a quote from an eamil she sent to one of the PACA members:
Hi,
I was emailing Rob a bit. I’m going to be spending more time on your web site. I definitely respect the mission of protecting children. I come from a family directly impacted by child abuse from a clergy member, and your mission is very important.What puts me a bit ill at ease is that PACA has seemed a bit militant in methodology. While I understand the philosophy of erring on the side of safety of children, I tend to be on the side of caution, seeking to cause harm to no-one.
I know that the incidents with Pagan Space was well-intentioned, and that the way things turned out weren’t entirely your fault, but it is sad that there aren’t better ways to handle things.
We’re militant … in our methodology of quietly observing sites to see if any grown men are publicly making sexual advances to minors. Our methods for finding perverts at PaganSpace consisted of simply joining PaganSpace and reading the forums. We threw caution to the wind by alerting the owners to problems, and the authorities to anything illegal. PACA has in fact helped shut down several child porn trading sites on the Ning networks. But I guess that doesn’t “harm none” in Deirdre’s estimation.
Modern neo-Pagan morality is the same as leftist morality. It is based on identity politics and the breakdown of tradition. It replaces debate with smears and attacks (like the Dominionist smear of Sarah Palin, and the death threats I received for defending her) and refuses to acknowledge the suffering of real victims of crime or oppression if doing so would put them in conflict with some leftist canard. Thus, Rifqa Bary cannot receive support from Deirdre because to do so would mean she sided with Christians and against Muslims, who despite their open promotion of the extermination of Witches and Pagans are held in higher esteem than the American Christians whose companies make our grimiores and altar supplies. Child predators cannot be purged from Paganism because to do so feels too much like supporting sexual morality, something even “Horrible” Herman Slater ran afoul of when he had the temerity to state that gays should be monogamous until the AIDS crisis blew over. The fact that he was himself a gay man who died of AIDS has not stopped modern neo-Pagan myth from claiming he was some sort of radical right homophobe.
It turns out he was simply right, and trying to keep others from dying.
Rifqa Bary will die. Or as Muslim supporters of the Rifqa’s parents have stated publicly “the Christian bitch must die.” No matter how the case turns out, it is more likely than not that she will suffer the fate all apostates from Islam eventually do. My hope that this won’t happen will not stop the family and their supporters from making attempts on her life. Deirdre Herbert is indifferent to that.
Pagan teens are going to be raped and exploited by people who the rest of the Pagan community allows to do so. Horrendous abuse by a “Druid” claiming that sexual exploitation was part of his religion has recently been in the news and a degenerate with a history of domestic violence killed his girlfriend recently because she broke a promise to him making her a “Warlock” (and thus marked for death) in line with the hokey mythology Wiccans pass off as history. Both these crimes could have been averted if there were more Pagans willing to be “militant” in policing our own community.
Deirdre is indifferent to that as well. Instead, she’s invested in the comforting lie of universal brotherhood, that the essential goodness of every individual can be fostered by ignoring their criminality. Instead, she is invested in the leftist lie that Wahabbist Muslims can be tamed and kept as pets by White liberals if only the Right would stay out of it. A transcript she sent me of her recent show says pretty much that. It simply isn’t true and organizing our support around that faulty premise will lead to mountains of dead apostates, but there is an indifference to that fact that is at the very least depraved.
In both these instances, Hebert was willing to allow children to suffer in order to hold true to some elusive principle she is unable to define. Deirdre Herbert advocates the passive acceptance of evil, and worse, attacks those of us who will not accept evil as not being “real Pagans.”
Deidre Hebert is an example of a larger trend. Pagans have morals, and have always had morals. The Deirdre Heberts of the world would do well to remember that Western Civilization, which includes the Judeo-Christian tradition, is built upon the great Pagan empires of old. Though many neo-Pagans these days may not believe in the literal existence of the gods (more’s the pity), for those that do there is no god or goddess who supports standing by and allowing the weak to be exploited and murdered while extending your compassion to the murderers and rapists. Not in Western tradition anyway.
It is Deirdre Herbert and her betrayal of the freedom of each individual to choose their god (even the Christian one) that is truly militant and anti-Pagan. It is Deirdre Herbert, and the neo-Pagan community’s indifference to child exploitation that is an affront to the very gods she claims to serve as clergy for. This is not open-mindedness or a desire to “harm none” since people will definitely be harmed by the inaction she wants Pagans to take with regard to child exploitation or Islamic imperialism. It is depraved indifference, and its acceptance among the wider neo-Pagan movement will ultimately destroy the movement from the inside.
Over a thousand million Christians today blindly accept that Jesus of
Nazareth is the Christ. They produce “a thousand and one” prophecies from
the Jewish Bible (the Old Testament) to prove their claim that Jesus was the
Messiah promised to the Jews. Let us hold the “thousand” prophecies in
abeyance for a moment and examine the only unequivocal claim made by Jesus in
the Gospels and examine whether he fulfilled his promise to the Jews.
We must admit that the word CHRIST is not a name. It is a title. It is a
translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, meaning “anointed”. The Greek word
for “anointed” is Christos from which we get the word Christ. Priests and
kings were “anointed” when being consecrated to their office. The Holy Bible
confers this title even on a heathen king CYRUS (Isaiah 45:1).
We are reminded in the Gospel of St. Luke that “WHEN EIGHT DAYS WERE
ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE CIRCUMCISING OF THE CHILD, HIS NAME WAS CALLED JESUS,
WHICH WAS SO NAMED OF THE ANGEL BEFORE HE WAS CONCEIVED IN THE WOMB.” (Luke
2:21). The name that was given to Mary for her yet unborn son was JESUS and
NOT Christ. It was only after his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist
that he, Jesus, claimed to be the Christ. The Jews were not the ones to
accept his claim on its face value. They wanted proof!
MIRACLE AS PROOF
Matthew records that the learned men among the Jews — the Scribes and
Pharisees — came to Jesus and asked, “MASTER, WE WOULD SEE A SIGN FROM THEE”
(Matthew 12:38). What they really wanted was some “magic trick”, some
“sleight of hand” like producing a rabbit out of a hat or walking on the
water or flying in the air or trodding on burning coal. This is the type of
“sign” or MIRACLE they were looking for. The Jews mistook him for a
sorcerer, a wizard, a charlatan.
NO “SIGN” BUT ONE
With righteous indignation Jesus replies: “AN EVIL AND ADULTEROUS GENERATION
SEEKETH AFTER A SIGN; AND THERE SHALL NO SIGN (no miracle) BE GIVEN TO IT,
BUT THE SIGN (miracle) OF THE PROPHET JONAS: FOR AS JONAS WAS THREE DAYS AND
THREE NIGHTS IN THE WHALE’S BELLY; SO SHALL THE SON OF MAN BE THREE DAYS AND
THREE NIGHTS IN THE HEART OF THE EARTH.” (Matthew 12:39-40). Jesus says, “NO
SIGN”. He does not refer the Jews to blind Barimeus whose sight he had
restored. He does not speak about the “woman with issues” who was healed by
merely touching him; or about the 2000 pigs he had destroyed to heal “a man
possessed”; or the 5000 and the 3000 people he had fed and
satiated with a few pieces of bread. “No sign”, says Jesus, BUT ONE! — “THE
SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAS”! He is putting all his “eggs” in one basket. His
claim to being the Messiah (Christ) stands or falls by the ONLY “sign” he was
prepared to give. Did Jesus fulfill the only sign he gave? Christendom
answers with a unanimous Y-E-S! without heeding the Biblical advice — ‘not
to take things for granted’ — but “PROVE ALL THINGS”! (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
JONAH FLEES HIS CALL
What was the “sign” (miracle) of Jonah? We have to go to the “Book of Jonah”
in the Old Testament to find out. God commanded Jonah to go to Ninevites to
repent from their “evil ways, and from the violence that is in their hands.”
(Jonah 3:8). But Jonah was loath to go as a warner unto the Ninevites, so he
goes to Joppa instead of Ninevah, and takes a boat to run away from the
Lord’s command.
While at sea, there was a terrible tempest. According to the superstition of
the mariners, a person fleeing from his Master’s command creates such a
turmoil at sea. They began to inquire among themselves and said, “COME, AND
LET US CAST LOTS, (like tossing of a coin, “head” or “tail”) THAT WE MAY KNOW
FOR WHOSE CAUSE THIS EVIL IS UPON US. SO THEY CAST LOTS, AND THE LOT FELL
UPON JONAH.” (Jonah 1:7). Though there was a temporary lapse on the part of
Jonah in fulfilling his mission, he manfully and most courageously
volunteers:
“AND HE SAID UNTO THEM TAKE ME UP, AND CAST FORTH INTO THE SEA; SO SHALL THE
SEA BE CALM UNTO YOU: FOR I KNOW THAT FOR MY SAKE THIS GREAT TEMPEST IS UPON
YOU.” (Jonah 1:12).
DEAD OR ALIVE?
Since Jonah was selflessly offering himself as a “vicarious” sacrifice there
was no need for strangling him before throwing him into the sea, no need to
spear him or break his arm or limb. In his own words: “TAKE ME UP AND CAST
ME FORTH”. The question now arises, that when the shipmaster and the crew
threw him overboard, was Jonah dead or alive? Any Christian child who
attended Sunday School will give an immediate reply: “ALIVE!”. The storm
subsides. Was this perhaps a coincidence? A fish swallows Jonah. Was he
dead or alive when swallowed? The answer again is “ALIVE”. Was he dead or
alive when “JONAH PRAYED UNTO THE LORD HIS GOD OUT OF THE FISH’S BELLY”?
(Jonah 2:1)
Surely dead men don’t cry and don’t pray! The answer again is “ALIVE”. For
three days and three nights the fish takes him around the ocean: dead or
alive? “ALIVE!” is the answer. On the third day it vomits him on the
seashore: dead or alive? A-L-I-V-E, of course! What had Jesus prophesied
about himself? He said: “AS JONAH WAS … SO SHALL THE SON OF MAN BE” “soos
Jonah” — “njenga Jonah” — LIKE JONAH. And how was Jonah? Was he dead or
alive for three days and nights? Alive! Alive! Alive! is the unanimous
answer from the Jew, the Christian and the Muslim!
UNLIKE JONAH
If Jonah was alive for three days and three nights, then Jesus also ought to
have been alive in the tomb as he himself had foretold! But Christianity
hangs on the flimsy thread of the “death” of Jesus for its salvation. So it
has to answer that Jesus was dead for three days and three nights. The
contradiction between his utterance and its fulfillment is obvious. Jonah
ALIVE, Jesus DEAD! Very UNLIKE Jonah! Jesus had said ” LIKE Jonah” not
“UNLIKE Jonah. If this is true then according to his own test Jesus is not
the TRUE Messiah of the Jews. If the Gospel record is genuine then how can
we blame the Jews for rejecting “CHRIST”?
THREE AND THREE = 72 HOURS?
The Doctor of Divinity and the Professor of Theology replies that in Matthew
12:40 under discussion, the emphasis is on the TIME factor — “as Jonah was
THREE days and THREE nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the son of
man be THREE days and THREE nights in the heart of the earth.” “Please
note”, says the learned theologian, “that the word “THREE” is repeated
F-O-U-R times in this verse to prove that Jesus was going to fulfill the
prophecy as regards the length of time he was going to remain in the tomb,
and NOT ‘As Jonah was’ in relation to his being alive or dead. If it is the
time factor that Jesus was stressing then let us ask whether he fulfilled
that aspect of his promise to the Jews as well. The Christian dogmatist
answers: “OF COURSE!”
PUBLIC HOLIDAY
The question arises: when was Christ crucified? The whole Christian world
answers: “FRIDAY!” Is this the reason we celebrate “Good Friday” —
“Gooi-Vrydag” — as a Public Holiday in the Republic of South Africa? And
every Christian nation from America to Zambia, from Abyssinia to Zaire have a
Public Holiday on the “FRIDAY” at Easter. What makes “Good Friday” so good?
“It is the death of Christ on the cross on this day to wash off our sins,”
says the Christians. So he was killed on the cross on a Friday, 1950 years
ago? “Yes!” says the Christians. From the Gospel records we gather that the
Jews were in a hurry to eliminate Jesus. Hence the midnight trial, and then
dispatching him off to Pilate in the morning; from Pilate to Herod and then
back again to Pilate. The vested interests were afraid of the general
public. Jesus was their hero. He had been their benefactor. His enemies
had to do away with him quickly, and succeeded in doing so. However, as much
as they were in a hurry to hang him on the cross, they were in equal hurry to
bring him down from the cross before sunset on Friday because of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath starts at about 6 p.m. on Friday and the Jews were warned in
Deuteronomy 21:23 that the victim of crucifixion was an “accursed of God” and
was not to be permitted to remain hanging on the Sabbath day, “that thy land
be not defiled which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance”. To
satisfy the religious scruples of the Scribes and Pharisees the “secret
disciples” of Jesus took down the body from the cross. They gave the body
the Jewish burial-bath, plastered it with “one hundred pounds weight of
aaloes and myrrh” (John 19:39), then placed the shrouded body into the
sepulcher before night-fall.
WHY “SUPPOSED”?
There are numerous differences between the various sects and denominations of
Christianity, but on the above they are unanimous. Jesus is SUPPOSED to be
in the tomb on the night of Friday. He is still SUPPOSED to be in the tomb
on the day of Saturday. He is still SUPPOSED to be in the tomb on the night
of Saturday. Christians agree whole-heartedly with this. It will be noted
that I have repeated the word ‘SUPPOSED’ three times. The reason is that the
Gospels are silent as to when exactly Jesus came out of the tomb. He could
have been taken away on Friday night by his “secret disciples” to a more
congenial and restful place, but I have no right to assume about what the
Gospel writers are silent. I have, therefore, repeated the word ‘SUPPOSED’
three times.
In the final analysis, let us see whether Jesus was THREE days and THREE
nights
in the tomb:
|===========================================================| |
|
IN THE SEPULCHER |
| EASTER WEEK
|===================== |
| |
DAYS | NIGHTS |
===========================================================|
| FRIDAY —> Placed in tomb just | – nil – |
One Night |
| before sunset. |
| |
| |
| |
| SATURDAY–> Supposed to be in the tomb. | One Day | One Night
|
| |
| |
| SUNDAY —> Missing before sunrise. | – nil – |
– nil – |
| |
| |
============================================================|
| TOTAL | One
Day | Two Nights |
=============================================================
You will no doubt note that the GRAND TOTAL is ONE day and TWO nights, and
NOT
three days and three nights. According to the Christian Scriptures Jesus had
failed a SECOND time. FIRST he was unlike Jonah, who was ALIVE in the belly
of the fish, which is exact opposite of what the Christians claim had
happened to their master Jesus, who was dead for the same period of time as
Jonah was — ALIVE.
SECONDLY, we discover that he also failed to fulfill the TIME FACTOR as well.
The greatest mathematician in Christendom will fail to obtain the desired
result — THREE days and THREE nights. We must not forget that the Gospels
are explicit in telling us that it was “before sunrise” on Sunday morning
(the First day of the week), that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb of Jesus
and found it empty.
“GOOD” WEDNESDAY
The Armstrong family has debunked the whole Christian world. They seem to
know
their arithmetic! Mr. Robert Fahey of the “Plain Truth” magazine, delivered
a lecture recently at the “Holiday Inn”, Durban, where I was present. Mr.
Fahey attempted to prove to his Christian audience that Jesus Christ was
crucified on a Wednesday and not on Friday, as is supposed by Orthodox
Christianity for the past two thousand years. According to him if one counts
backwards from Sunday morning deducting 3 DAYS and 3 NIGHTS, one ought to get
WEDNESDAY as the answer.
I congratulated Mr. Fahey for his ingenuity. I asked him, how was it
possible for the past two thousand years the whole Christian world celebrated
GOOD FRIDAY instead of GOOD WEDNESDAY. Thus the 1200000000 Christians of the
world today are ignorant of the correct day of the so called crucifixion! It
means that even the Roman Catholic Church — which claims an unbroken chain
of Popes from Peter to this day — according to Mr. Fahey are mislead.
GOD OR THE DEVIL?
The question arises, who deceived the millions of Christians for the past TWO
THOUSAND years. GOD or the DEVIL? Mr. Fahey categorically answered: “THE
DEVIL!”
“If the devil”, I said, “can succeed in confusing the Christians in the most
elementary things of their Faith, whether to celebrate a Good Friday or a
Good Wednesday, then how much easier for him to mislead Christians in other
things concerning God?” Mr. Fahey blushed and walked away.
If this is the belief of the trend-setters of the Christian Faith in the
world today, may we not then ask: is this not the mightiest hoax in history?
Dear akhter,
First I’d like to say that I’ll be shocked and amazed if anyone reads your entire comment. It’s nearly as long as the OP, for crying out loud, and has nothing whatever to do with the OP in the first place.
Second, I’d like to ask WTF are you hoping to accomplish by posting such long-winded drivel in the comments of a blog post that has nothing to do with what you’re posting? Seriously. Neither the blogger, nor the subject referenced in the OP by the blogger are Christian. The post has to do with child abuse, and the permissive attitude some people have about it. It’s not at all about which religion is “true”.
I’m sure that Rob will not mind me making the suggestion that you take your hate spam elsewhere. Why not start your own blog about it, since you’re obviously so passionate about it? I’m fairly certain that you could attract a fair number of readers to it without stepping on the toes of other bloggers by spamming their pages.
Blessings,
~DF
You beat me to it Dodia but I’m leaving this turds comment in tact as a monument to stupidity. When he or she sobers up may they can explain this.
I had to say something…. my eyes started to glaze over by the middle of the second paragraph and that’s as far as I got. How far did you get?