Ban the Qur’an

A thousand or so demonstrated outside Parliament yesterday against the proposed incitement to religious hatred law. The protest was made up largely of evangelical Christians, but the National Secular Society was also represented.

The almighty nutter Stephen Green of Christian Voice was there too to provide suitably barmy quotes for the press to latch on to. He told the Guardian that, should the bill pass into law, his organisation will take legal action against bookshops selling the Qur’an:

If the Qur’an is not hate speech, I don’t know what is. We will report staff who sell it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that unbelievers must be killed.

Wiccans or believers in other gods might have something to say about that. Exodus 22:18 commands that “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” and, two verses later, “He that sacrificeth unto [any] god, save unto the LORD, shall be utterly destroyed.”

Oops.


9 Responses to “Ban the Qur’an”

  1. Adam Tjaavk says:

    From the lips of the godman himself:

    “But those mine enemies which would not that
    I should reign over them, bring hither, and
    slay them before me.” Luke 19:27

    _

  2. Marc says:

    Hate to say it, but we told you so Steve. 😉

    If this is the true compassion of Christianity I can’t see why anyone would want any part of it!

    Mind you, I wonder how many people that call themselves Christians actually KNOW these passages… not many I expect. Green himself seems to have missed them even though he managed to quote stuff from memory on Question Time the other week.

  3. Andrew Nixon says:

    Don’t forget, there is a secret list that only nutters like Stephen Green have access to, that tells them the parts of the Bible that they can ignore.

  4. The list of bits of the bible you can ignore has been published by the Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland. See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811332,00.html

    It includes Mathew 27:25, which blames the Jews for the crucifixion and, regardless of what Stephen Green says, has been used to justify many a pogrom.

  5. Simon Barrow says:

    Good piece from Index on censorship (‘A government sponsored bear pit for religious extremists’: http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2005/4/britain-plan-to-outlaw-incitement-to-religio.shtml) Incidentally, Luke19.27 records not the opinion of Jesus (who asks his followers not to retaliate) but of a brutal ruler in a parable told for purposes of contrast. I say that not to defend the Bible from accusations of hate-speech (about which I’ve written here: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/barrow/article_2003_09_7_2737.shtml), but in order to point out, contra fundamentalism, that all texts, by their nature, require and invite interpretation. On Christian anti-semitism, see Rosemary Ruether’s excellent ‘Faith and Fratricide’.

  6. G. Tingey says:

    One really hates to agree with green, but on this one issue, he has a point (not that Xtianity is any better) but he haterd verses in the “recital” are too blatant to be ignored…

  7. Bloggerheads says:

    You know what to do

    Guardian – Christian group may seek ban on Qur’an Media Watch Watch – Ban the Qur’an [cough] nutter [/cough] It’s bloody great, isn’t it? Christian Extremists Vs. Muslim Extremists… and Our Glorious Leader (the man who gets testy when you…

  8. Steve T says:

    I went to the demo and the non-evangelicals were very much the minority. While I am happy to team up with anyone who opposes this stupid law, I kept wondering how many of the people with “Defend Free Speech” placards had been out trying to get “Gerry Springer – The Opera” banned last year.

  9. DaveB says:

    I was intregued to see Green refer to “the horrors of Hinduism” in his diatribe. what on Earth does he mean by that???