BlakeHuggins.com

You gotta love those Oklahoma lawmakers. Seventeen Twenty-four of them are rejecting a gift copy of the Qur’an given to them by the Governor’s Ethnic American Advisory Council because they don’t “condone killing…in the name of ideology.” Maybe they should look more closely into American imperial ideology and the history of Christianity that has not only condoned violence, but actively supported war and state sanctioned terrorism. I hate to bring up the word hypocrisy, but doesn’t seem to be unwarranted.

Nathaniel Batchelder of the Oklahoma City Peace House wrote this letter to the editor of Tulsa World:

Dear Editor,

State legislators declining the gift of a Quaran on the grounds that Islam foments violence must be unaware of Old Testament scriptures describing mass murder for God: Leviticus 24:16, Numbers 31:17-18, Samuel 15:2-3, Josua [sic] 6:21 and Luke 19:27. These passages justified the Crusades to kill infidels who would not convert to Christianity.

Don’t these legislators know that Rev. Pat Robertson used his TV ministry to call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez? Or that biblical scriptures were used to justify slavery in America for 250 years? But that’s “old violence.”

Modern violence by our “Christian nation” is worse: Since the US invasion of Iraq, more than a million Iraqis have been killed, some five million have been seriously wounded, two million have left the country, and two million are homeless refugees inside Iraq. That’s 40% of the Iraqi population.

Perhaps the 17 righteous legislators who would not accept a Quaran should consider the admonition: “Look not to the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but rather to the log in your own eye.” Shame on them for another “Oklahoma embarrassment.”

Indeed, how quick we are to point out our own problems in others and project our shortcomings onto “them.” For shame.

~bh ><>