Yesterday the White House released a statement about the murder of an American journalist by Islamic jihadists hell-bent upon creating a new caliphate:
I agree with most of this statement, but part of it is clearly designed to give Abrahamic religion a free pass:
Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages — killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children, and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims — both Sunni and Shia — by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can for no other reason than they practice a different religion. They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people.
So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.
Would that this last part were actually true, but anyone who has actually bothered to actually read the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy books can tell you that they are just chock full of torture and rape and slavery, not to mention massive slaughters of innocent people. From the global flood to the genocidal conquest of the promised land to the psychopathic orgy of torture by fire in the Book of Revelation, the Bible is full of precisely those things that President Obama (quite rightly) condemns here.
ISIL are doing evil things, and they must be opposed, but let us not pretend that their faith is unrelated to their actions, and let us not pretend that Judeo-Christianity is not similarly drunk with blood.
