Patterico's Pontifications

9/3/2006

The Onion on Religion Bringing Peace to the Middle East

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:01 am



When I was in New York City, I picked up a print edition of the Onion. As Al Qaeda seeks to convert us all, the lead story of the Onion edition I picked up speaks to us all:

War-Torn Middle East Seeks Solace In Religion

As an uneasy truce between Israel and Hezbollah continues, millions of average men and women in the Holy Land are turning to the one simple comfort that has always seen them through the darkest days of their troubled history: the steadfast guidance of their religious faith.

Arabs and Israelis alike are embracing their faith as a way to make sense of the violence from which there seems to be no escape.

. . . .

Palestinian Omar Abdel-Malik, a resident of the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, credits his Islamic beliefs for preserving his sanity.

“The Israelis have fired missile upon missile on my neighborhood, but it has only made my trust in Allah that much stronger,” Abdel-Malik said. “I cringe to think where the people of the Middle East would be right now if it weren’t for our steadfast belief in one true, merciful, and loving Supreme Being.”

Palestinian widow and mother of three Dareen Idriss agreed, citing the healing power of prayer as a way to cope with the relentless slaughter she and her family witness every day. “When the children cannot stop crying because of the bombs, we all gather our families in the rubble of the mosque to pray for justice,” Idriss said. “During this calm meditation, we also pray for the annihilation of the Hebrew race.”

This being the Onion, they skewer both sides:

West Bank settler Ari Chayat, whose neighborhood has also been ravaged by violence, echoed this profound reliance on faith. “The world is so brutal and unfair,” Chayat said. “Many days, my uncompromising belief in a vengeful creator is all that gets me out of bed in the morning.”

“If it wasn’t for my faith that the God of Abraham has given these lands to Jews and Jews alone by divine decree, I probably wouldn’t even be here today,” Chayat added.

It’s very insightful:

“Every time I want to give up hope, I just open the Quran to my favorite passage, Surah 2:194: ‘Whoever acts aggressively against you, inflict injury on him,'” Hamid said. “Whenever I read those words, I am immediately filled with inspiration and a renewed sense of purpose.”

. . . .

“It’s always frightening to be reminded of your own mortality, as we all were this past Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday,” Hezbollah commander Mahdi al-Zaidi said. “But rather than react irrationally, I looked deep within my faith, consulted the Quran, and by the mercy of Allah, I gained the resolve to oversee a massive airstrike against the enemy.”

Disclaimer: the preceding quotes were culled for humor purposes. No blasphemy was intended or implied. Patterico is not responsible for any lightning bolts smiting those who chuckled at the preceding excerpts. All blame and liability rests with the editors of the Onion . . . those damn atheists.

2 Responses to “The Onion on Religion Bringing Peace to the Middle East”

  1. What fun! Sunday morning blasphemy. And what a perfect opportunity for me to contribute to the Hitchens hagiography that I missed out on a few days ago:

    “Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT [Mother Theresa]: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud…(http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/)

    FI: You mention in your book that Mother Teresa is used by the Religious Right and fundamentalist Protestants who traditionally are very anti-Catholic as a symbol of religious holiness with which to beat secular humanists.

    HITCHENS: Yes, she’s a poster girl for the right-to-life wing in America. She was used as the example of Christian idealism and family values, of all things, by Ralph Reed – the front man of the Pat Robertson forces. That’s a symptom of a wider problem that I call “reverse ecumenicism,” an opportunist alliance between extreme Catholics and extreme Protestants who used to exclude and anathematize one another.

    In private Pat Robertson has nothing but contempt for other Christian denominations, including many other extreme Protestant ones. But in public the Christian Coalition stresses that it is very, very keen to make an alliance with Catholics. There is a shallow, opportunist ecumenicism among religious extremists, and Mother Teresa is quite willingly and happily in its service. (http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/hitchens_16_4.html)

    Asinistra (97116c)

  2. They will inlist the aid of the ACLU and the imerpeal court system especialy the infamous 9th curcut court

    krazy kagu (52a738)


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