Friday, May 11, 2007

The Universal Brotherhood of Man

It doesn't matter what your race, creed, or color is; you can still be a son of a bitch. -- Duncan Philip Frissell 1899-1965

Another Muhammad Cartoon Controversy

So a Christian chaplain at New York's Rockland County jail was passing out some of Jack Chick's anti-Muslim cartoon tracts.

Jail hiring Muslim chaplain after uproar

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW CITY, N.Y. -- The county jail where a Christian minister handed out anti-Islamic cartoons announced it will hire an imam for its Muslim inmates. The Rockland County Jail also said it will provide religiously appropriate food. Rockland Undersheriff Thomas Guthrie said Tuesday that the imam will work one day a week, joining the jail's priest and rabbi.

The Christian chaplain, the Rev. Teresa Darden Clapp, was suspended with pay last month after inmates complained she was passing out anti-Islam booklets. In the cartoon panel stories, a tract titled Men of Peace? said Islamic fundamentalists who commit terrorist acts are not "bad Muslims" but "very good Muslims" who act in accordance with their religion. Another tract, titled Allah Has No Son, said Allah is not God, Muhammad was no prophet, and the Quran is not the word of God. Both stories end with people being convinced Islam is false. In one, a Muslim converts to Christianity. Local Muslims have called for Clapp's dismissal, and the county requested an independent investigation.

Clapp has not commented public about the controversy and has not responded to messages seeking comment.
Jack Chic's tracts are famous for their anti-Catholicism and stories of strange conspiracies. One tract argues that after demons created the Catholic Church to draw Christians away from Christ (based on Alexander Hilsop's pamphlet The Two Babylons: Papal worship Revealed to be the worship of Nimrod and His wife), Rome created Islam to produce the warriors required to destroy true Christianity.

Ironically, even though the Rev. Teresa Darden Clapp takes a pretty literalist reading of scripture, she somehow missed 1 Cor. 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Buddhist Children of Lesbian Moms are per se Un-American

How do I know? The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey asked one:

"Jhanelle said that as a Buddhist and the daughter of two lesbian moms, the pledge "doesn't represent my family or my beliefs".

From a story about how laws which have been declared unconstitutional (such as one requiring non-pledging students to stand during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance) still remain in the law books and on the websites of the State of New Jersey.