During the Fox abetted outrage over Brandeis U's revocation of an honorary degree for Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Fox's "The Five" weighed in with their usual bucket of anti-Islamic bile. Andrea Tantaros whined about the evils of radical Islam and how "far left" feminists are not standing up for Ms. Ali's freedom of speech. She cited Brandeis' belief that Ali's views do fit their core values and, in engaging in her standard Islamophobia, asked if Brandeis' core values include persecuting homosexuality "because that's what Islam does." (Actually, Islam's teaching on homosexuality is no different from evangelical Christianity and Catholicism) But Tantaros said something else which was intriguing. In suggesting that she and Ali have something in common, she said that she has spoken about "radical Islam" at colleges where she will never be invited back. And that, according to what I discovered, was with good reason
Back in 2012, Tantaros was invited, by college Republicans, to speak at Guilford College in North Carolina. According to the college newspaper, Tantaros engaged in "shocking" rhetoric which included comments such as “Muslims tend to be peaceful only if they are outnumbered" and "Islam is a religion of hate." One of the students, frustrated with what he felt was hate speech confronted her: “You should be patently ashamed of yourself, first and foremost, for even remotely implying the sorts of things you are … about Islam.I’m baffled first that you were brought here, that you came into this community and spewed this hate." Tantaros told him that he should not have attended her speech and snarked that "it's a free country." She claimed that the student was obviously not familiar with the Koran which she has read. (Andrea Tantaros, Islamic scholar, who knew!)
She also smeared the ACA birth contol mandate which she compared to helping women buy shoes. (So shoes prevent unwanted pregnancies, who knew!) A visiting professor said that Tantaros' comments "bordered on hate speech." The Campus Activites Board then issued an apology to the Guildford community. The college Republicans even issued a statement in which they praised Islam and said, regarding Tantaros speech, that "the way the speech was structured, it would lead anyone to the conception that she thought that all Muslims were told by their religion to behave in such a manner."
Obviously Tantaros hasn't changed. As is said, haters gonna hate...
Or what about Cameroon? Another largely Christian country with virulent anti-gay laws. Did you know that simply being gay can land you in jail for at least a decade?
Or how about Zimbabwe? A country with very few Muslims but a lot of bigoted Christians, whose leader—not so long ago—“suggested” that gays be hanged in public.
And then there’s Russia. Good old Russia. Which just last year passed a very stringent law against “gay propaganda” which results in the swift imprisonment for such horrific crimes as promoting gay rights to an audience in which there’s a single “minor” present. Russia barred foreign adoptions by LGBT parents to the point that it won’t allow nationals from any country that recognizes or has legalized same-sex marriage. And we’re not talking about punishing gay couples—STRAIGHT couples who have the “misfortune” of living in countries like South Africa or the UK or Spain or the Netherlands are barred by the law from becoming adoptive parents (Italy used this law as an additional reason to not recognize marriage equality).
As for the “Christians etc have evolved,” well that may be, but how many MILLIONS of people suffered along the way before those “Christians” could “evolve?” Native children in the USA and Canada and Australia were forcibly removed from their parents by Christian “missionary” workers. How many natives in the Americas were massacred by the Spanish conquistadors (in the name of God—plus gold and glory)? Or by the Puritans half a century after having helped save those very same Puritan ancestors from a brutal first year in the New World?
How many native Africans were killed in the name of the Christian God during the slavery era? See, the CHRISTIAN Bible was used by many slaveholders (who, in the US, were overwhelmingly Christian—to the 99+% level) to support slavery.
And how many innocent Orthodox Christians died at the hands of Catholic Crusaders during the 4th Crusade? How many innocent Christians died as a result of the Protestant Reformation? Catholics killed Protestants, Protestants killed Catholics. In the German states, a Protestant duke might be forced to flee at the hands of his Catholic subjects while a Catholic duke might be forced to flee at the hands of his Protestant subjects. Or there were forced conversions—Catholics to Protestants, Protestants to Catholics. And then, of course, the Holy Roman Inquisition and its various “spin-offs” (the Spanish Inquistion being the most famous) invented whole new ways to torture hapless victims—but without drawing blood (apparently, it was okay to slay the heretics and heathens, but you couldn’t cause them to bleed while you were torturing them).
As Jesus once said, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matt 7:5) You can make all the whiney claims that Christianity “has evolved” but the reality is there’s a very LARGE segment of your “Christians” who are every bit as bad as the vilified Muslims—if not in deed, then most assuredly in word. And as any LGBT person can tell you, words can hurt just as much as a fist. (And, incidentally, you can only die once from physical violence; the brutality of words can inflict death time and time again.)
Go back to your bridge.