Newshoggers Archive: Sunday School

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Sunday School

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The purveyors of hate on the religious right often claim that Islam is inherently a violent religion. A couple of examples here and here. And yes indeed they can find many examples of violence in the Qur'an. But have they read their own Bible?

1 Samuel 15:3
Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

Deuteronomy 13: 5
And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God...

Deuteronomy 13:15
Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.

Numbers 31:16-18
"Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

Isaiah 13:15-16
"Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished."

Deuteronomy 2:34
And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain."

Joshua 6:21
"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

Some 500 hundred years after the Qur'an was written the Pope's "holy" Jihadists Crusaders marched into Jerusalem and massacred over 10,000 men, women and children, both Muslims and Jews.

And 500 years after that we had the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition where Muslims, Jews and protestants were killed. The wrath of the Spanish Inquisition found it's way to the Spanish colonies of the new world.

Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is an Abrahamic Religion which has it's source in the violent tribal culture of the middle east. A Christian calling Islam violent is without a doubt a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The violence is part of the foundation of all Abrahamic religions.

Cross posted at The Moderate Voice