The protesters’ concerns, according to the website of a Mississippi group that was trying to mobilize opposition to Zed’s appearance, were based on the fact that Hindus worship multiple Gods.

That is quite wrong. Hindus believe in a single God, but conceptualize many aspects of the creator in different forms.

As it happens, I’m just now home from a weekend where I had a couple of enlightening conversations with a Hindu scholar. As a Quaker, I’m completely comfortable with all aspects of Hinduism. Central to their tenets is a recognition of the presence of the divine in all beings and an acceptance of all faiths. (OK, you can find plenty of examples of Hindus behaving badly in the news–that only proves Oliver’s initial point.)

There are roughly a billion Hindus in the world. Couldn’t we trouble ourselves to find out there’s more to it than chanting about a flute-playing blue guy?

These fools were radicals; those who disrupt a house of the United States to push a theocratic objection to a mere ceremonial invocation are radicals per se. But I think there is a difference between “radicals” and “terrorists” that is worth reiterating.

The Chicago Seven were radicals but not terrorists. The Black Panthers were extreme radicals but it seems unfair to call them terrorists. McVeigh was raised a Catholic and was probably an agnostic, but one steeped in the culture of extreme radical Protestantism of the Turner Diaries and the Christian Identity movement.

The folks who got themselves arrested were probably mainstream right-wing Christians. I suspect that the couple with Slavic names were Roman Catholic Croatians or Croatian-Americans but that’s a total guess. But these three were not comparable to murderers (and you did not explicitly make any such comparison.)

He was a Catholic, and yes, you can be both.

The accusation that McVeigh was Christian came largely from Muslims who were getting pissy about the multitude of radicals killing in the name of Islam.

Going to make a correction?

I doubt it, but in a few days we’ll find you screeching like a schoolgirl over an error a conservative blogger makes.

which is a whole different church.

*With the possible exception of Quakers.

I believe the proper Christian response would be to pray for the poor lost heathen Hindu.

That is a religion that burns childless widows, they need some prayer.

The Wikipedia article on Timothy McVeigh states he was “agnostic”

Surely they are a creation of the librul media.

How about just plain bombings?

The United States is trying to protect gays from hate crimes, and American Christians are acting like they are the victims.

The only real difference between the two groups is the amount of political power they have. If the leadership had no sway on the government, you can bet they would resort to violence.

Attempts to discern which group of religious extremists are more violent, Christian or Muslim, miss the point: the two groups are not arising from anything near an equivalent background that would allow for easy comparison. The countries that are producing Muslim extremists have a long history of Amero-European interference, toppling their governments and choosing new ones, etc. There is *no* excuse for terrorism–but this is a background that, had it been Christians living in small nations that were regularly bullied politically, economically, and militarily by a much stronger group of Islamic countries, might well have produced the same kind of terrorist response.

And if you think they wouldn’t, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Northern Ireland. Where Christian terrorists held sway for many years.

-Frank Zappa-

-Frank Zappa-