Bajrang Dal Activists Shave Man's Head, Parade Him On Donkey For Alleged Religious Conversion

A man was tonsured, garlanded with shoes, and paraded in disgrace on the streets of Jalaun in Uttar Pradesh by Bajrang Dal activists who accused him of converting Hindu men to Christianity.

The Bajrang Dal activists tonsured the man for allegedly converting Hindus and paraded him through the town after his shaving his hair, eyebrows and moustache.

The mob reportedly accused Awdhesh Savita of luring Hindus on the pretext of attending a satsang and allegedly converted them to Christianity.

Bajrang Dal Activists Shave Man's Head, Parade Him On Donkey For Alleged Religious Conversion

UPDATED::ISIS throw 4 more gay men to their deaths - Gay Star News

UPDATE::  According to a report from the Advocate via ARA News on the incident in Mosul:

A civil rights activist in the region told ARA News the judgment of who is gay is based on “superficial information without any investigation.”

The pretext in the Mosul execution, reports ARA, is that the men were determined to be a gay couple. Daesh, or ISIS, interprets the Koran as forbidding homosexuality, a widely held belief in the Muslim world. The Human Rights Campaign notes, however, that “because Islam has no central governing body, it is not possible to state clear policies regarding issues of interest to LGBT people. Depending on nationality, generation, family upbringing, and cultural influences, Islamic individuals and institutions fall along a wide spectrum, from welcoming and inclusive to a level of rejection that can be marked by a range of actions ranging from social sequestration to physical violence.”

The ISIS-linked Sharia Court had issued a decision to execute every gay man by throwing him from the top of a building. 

The extremist group has executed dozens of allegedly gay men in its areas of control in Syria and Iraq in the recent months. 

“Daesh accuses people of being gay only on basis of some superficial information without any investigation. Although the Islamic law bans homosexuality, but the brutal punishment by Daesh has never been witnessed throughout history,” civil rights activist Raed Ahmed told ARA News.

 From Towleroad concerning Nineveh,

Meanwhile, Twitter account “Terrormonitor.org” tweeted graphic pictures of the executions that reportedly took place in Nineveh.

WARNING GRAPHIC PICTURES #IRAQ #IslamicState (#ISIS) Barbaric Terror Group Throw 'Gay' Man To His Death In #Nineveh . pic.twitter.com/FIXrdPBSCj

— Terrormonitor.org (@Terror_Monitor) October 4, 2015

The reports from Aria and Terrormonitor.org have not yet been independently verified, and human rights groups have yet to weigh in. ISIS does, however, have a history of hurling men they suspect to be gay from buildings as a means of execution. Gay refugees fleeing ISIS-held territory have also spoken out of the brutal and grave conditions they faced living under the Islamic State’s draconian rule.

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Islamic State (ISIS) militants executed four more gay men in Iraq over the weekend.

Two young men were thrown off the roof a building in Mosul under the pretext they were a gay couple.

‘On Sunday afternoon, Daesh called on the people of Mosul to gather in the square of Bab al-Toub in order to witness the execution of the two allegedly men,’ an eyewitness told ARA News.

‘The victims were taken to the top of a building and were brutally thrown off the roof.’

Also on Sunday, the Terror Monitor group tweeted photos of a separate execution of two ‘gay’ men, who were thrown from a building in Ninevah into a pile of cement blocks.

ISIS throw 4 more gay men to their deaths - Gay Star News

India woman’s arm ‘cut off by employer’ in Saudi Arabia - BBC News

India's foreign ministry has complained to the Saudi Arabian authorities following an alleged "brutal" attack on a 58-year-old Indian woman in Riyadh.

Kasturi Munirathinam's right arm was chopped off, allegedly by her employer, when she tried to escape from their house last week, reports say.

Ms Munirathinam was working as a domestic help. She is recovering in hospital.

Her family has alleged that she was being tortured by her Saudi employers.
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The family of Ms Munirathinam in the southern Indian city of Chennai said that her employers had been "angered" after she complained about the "harassment" she was facing at her employer's home, where she had begun working three months ago.

They are asking the government to secure them compensation from the family, and also help pay Ms Munirathinam's medical expenses.

India woman’s arm ‘cut off by employer’ in Saudi Arabia - BBC News

Syrian gang rape victim who fled to Germany is stabbed to death 'in honour killing' | Daily Mail Online

A woman whose family branded her 'unclean' after she was gang-raped in her Syrian homeland has been found murdered in Germany – allegedly on the orders of her own mother.

Police believe the victim, named only as Rokstan M, 20, was stabbed to death by her father and brothers in the twisted logic that she had brought disgrace on her family through the sex attack.

Shortly before she was found dead in an allotment garden in the eastern German city of Dessau, she apparently had a premonition of her fate.

Writing on her WhatsApp profile, she said: 'I am awaiting death. But I am too young to die.'

Syrian gang rape victim who fled to Germany is stabbed to death 'in honour killing' | Daily Mail Online

Murders test Bangladesh claims that radical Islam in check - Yahoo News

A string of slayings claimed by radical Islamic groups has Bangladesh scrambling to contain what appears to be a rising tide of extremism, and it couldn't have come at a worse time — the country's fragile economic growth is faltering this year amid renewed political unrest.

The secular South Asian nation — traditionally moderate even if unstable at times — has repeatedly insisted it has religious radicalism in check and is maintaining peace among its 160 million people. That claim was severely tested this week after an Italian aid worker became the fifth person to be killed this year in attacks claimed by extremist groups.

A foreigner being gunned down in the country's capital is bad news for Bangladesh, whose economy is heavily reliant on a $25 billion garment industry that produces clothing and fashion wear for international brands including Zara, Benetton and Gap.

Hassan Shariar, a well-known political commentator and columnist, said even though the government won't acknowledge it, there clearly are pockets of radical Islam in the country.

"I don't know why intelligence (agencies) failed to understand that things are going out of control," he said. "It is clearly evident ... that they are failing to contain it with an iron hand."

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Then on Monday, three motorcycle-riding assailants gunned down the Italian aid worker, Cesare Tavella, in the diplomatic quarter of Dhaka. The Sunni extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility and vowed more such killings in Muslim-majority countries.

The government dismissed the IS claim, saying there was no evidence. It described the killing as an "isolated incident."

"There is no existence of the Islamic State here," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Tuesday.

Murders test Bangladesh claims that radical Islam in check - Yahoo News

Indonesian women wait to be whipped in front of a baying crowd for having unmarried sex | Daily Mail Online

A woman kneels and grimaces as she is lashed with a cane for having unmarried sex in an Indonesian province which is ruled under Sharia law in newly released photographs.  

The images show women dressed in white and sitting with their heads bowed as they wait their turn to be punished in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

In one photo, a woman can be seen kneeling on a red platform as her back is whipped with a cane in front of guards and members of the public.

Aceh is the only province in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country that is allowed to implement Islamic Sharia law.

Although public whipping is a common punishment in the province, it is rare for women to be caned.

Indonesian women wait to be whipped in front of a baying crowd for having unmarried sex | Daily Mail Online

Christian Cannabalism and Josh Duggar's Sins: Michael Pearl Vs. Zsuzsanna Anderson

I post this more for posterity sake, a refernce so to speak into the cult mind-think of the "[e]xtreme Christian cultural enforcers."  For those that follow along with my ramblings, it has three of my usual targets
Steven L. Anderson (Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona) via his wife Zsuzsanna Anderson (also Quiverfull), Michael (and Debi) Pearl - To Train Up a Child, and of course the Duggars.

Calulu, I think sums up how cut-throat the "ultra extreme" shtick is becoming and highlights that the best counter to the movement as a whole comes from those within.

This is the real Christian cannibalism – Extreme Christian cultural enforcers and self-appointed leaders fighting like rabid dogs over a sliver of rotten meat for a tiny slice of control over others, no matter who they have to blame or shame. The real pharisees.  Not the average every day folks pointing out how hypocritical the Duggars have behaved.

Christian Cannabalism and Josh Duggar's Sins: Michael Pearl Vs. Zsuzsanna Anderson

See also:

The Language of Cults, Duggars and Quiverfull: How to Communicate With People Outside the Subculture

A good look into the cultic mindset prevelent in the sub-culture.

In 2008 in a workshop examining the Patriarchy Movement, I referred to it as quite “non-monolithic,” characterized by clustering of activities, traits, and interests — though none of those variables were universal or definitive. In epidemiology and the study of the cause and transmission of disease, the term of ‘clustering’ explains this phenomenon of common features experienced or by clusters of people experiencing them that may or may not have a known causative connection. For that reason, I use the term to describe the connections among Patriarchy and Quiverfull lifestyles which are also now associated with Christians who homeschool their children.

People from across many different denominations bear many of these same common variables, and in some respect, I think that it may reflect the zeitgeist of the generation that is also common to the culture. (Look at Martha Stewart’s popularity which has fostered an interest in domesticity — something mirrored in this religious subculture.) Whatever the cause, there are what might be found as markers or possible and presumptive characteristics that often occur in tandem with one another.

Egypt: ISIS beheads Egyptian in western desert - General news - ANSAMed.it

Eight jihadists with ISIS have beheaded an Egyptian in the Egyptian western desert and crucified him to a tree after accusing him of cooperating with police. According to local sources, the beheading yesterday occurred in the same area where tourists were killed in an anti-terror raid by Egyptian police.

Witnesses added that local residents asked for the police to intervene to find the killers who fled aboard a jeep, a similar model to the one used by tourists killed in the same area.

Egypt: ISIS beheads Egyptian in western desert - General news - ANSAMed.it

Afghanistan probes 'poisoning' of 600 Herat schoolgirls - BBC News

Police in Afghanistan are investigating the suspected poisoning of hundreds of schoolgirls in Herat province.

About 600 students from different schools have been taken to hospital in the past two weeks, complaining of nausea, pain and shortness of breath.

It is not clear what caused the symptoms, although officials believe the girls may have inhaled a toxic gas.
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Many schools in Afghanistan have come under attack in the past, with officials suspecting that militants opposed to women's education were behind the incidents.

Afghanistan probes 'poisoning' of 600 Herat schoolgirls - BBC News

Bangladesh internet law has 'chilling effect': UN rapporteur - Yahoo News

An internet law in Bangladesh has had a "chilling effect" on society, the UN's Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion said Wednesday after a nine-day visit to the country, as he warned of rising religious extremism.

Under Bangladesh's Internet Act, any person who deliberately publishes material deemed to hurt religious beliefs, offend the state or damage law and order can be jailed for 14 years.

The law has been used to imprison several high-profile journalists and social media users in the Muslim-majority nation in recent months.

"This law has a chilling effect on civil society organisations, human rights activists and members of religious minority communities," rapporteur Heiner Bielefeldt told reporters in the capital Dhaka.

The UN rapporteur's visit came in the wake of four murders of atheist bloggers by suspected Islamic militants this year and mounting concern over shrinking press freedom and human rights abuses.

Bangladesh internet law has 'chilling effect': UN rapporteur - Yahoo News

ISIL Persecutes LGBT People, Experts Tell UN | Al Jazeera America

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for executing at least 30 people accused of sodomy, the head of an international gay rights organization told the U.N. Security Council on Monday.

The executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Jessica Stern, said that courts established by ISIL claim to have punished sodomy with stoning, firing squads, beheadings and by pushing people from tall buildings.

"In addition to men perceived as gay, trans-identified people and lesbians are among those who have been raped and killed," Stern said.

Stern, who addressed the issue at the council’s first-ever meeting on LGBT rights, says fear of the group, which controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria, has fueled violence by other armed groups and "private actors" against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals.

"It's about time, 70 years after the creation of the U.N., that the fate of LGBT persons who fear for their lives around the world is taking center stage," said U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, who organized the meeting on violence and discrimination against LGBT people with Chile’s U.N. envoy, Cristian Barros Melet.

Stern called for specific strategies to combat LGBT attacks, including U.N. action to relocate those most in need and bringing the gay community into broader human rights and humanitarian initiatives.

ISIL Persecutes LGBT People, Experts Tell UN | Al Jazeera America

Are you sure you’re not the next target? | Dhaka Tribune

Niloy Neel, the last blogger to be killed, knew that his life was in danger. After his murder, it has been learnt that he went to the police seeking protection. But instead of giving him protection, the police advised him to go abroad. It has also been learned that Niloy told others about this matter on May 15.

When are we ever going to learn that, sometimes, making things public instead of keeping them secret can ensure protection? The friends of Niloy who knew were probably concerned about him, but what about the possibility that if they had made the matter public, could Niloy’s life could have been saved? After Ananta was killed, we came to know that he had been trying but had failed to go abroad. His friends knew this.

But there is no reason to feel upset that those friends failed to create a security cordon around him. The machete is filling up the gap created by our inability to form solidarity. The quicker you realise that, the better it will be.

Are you sure you’re not the next target? | Dhaka Tribune

Extremist killing of atheist bloggers stirs panic in Bangladesh - The Globe and Mail

“My best friend, my husband is gone. How can I survive in a conservative society like this where I am not safe because I am a woman?” she says. “I want to leave. I don’t want to die here.”

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 The day he was hacked to death with a butcher’s blade, Niloy Chatterjee slept in. Muslims in Bangladesh were preparing for Friday morning prayers but Mr. Chatterjee, an outspoken atheist, had no such demands on his time. He rose at 11 a.m. and walked to a nearby vegetable market while his wife of two years, Asa Moni, scrubbed pots at home.

He returned with potatoes and salt, sweaty from the humidity that drenches Dhaka in the final weeks of the rainy season. He showered, then sat down on his bed with his laptop.

Moments later, he was dead.

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Such writings were controversial even among fellow atheists.

“They were a bit irresponsible,” Mr. Alam said. “You cannot change a society that doesn’t trust you, that hates you, that wants to kill you.”

Mr. Alam has sought to bridge religious differences to enable dialogue. He desires a country “where people are more tolerant about each other’s views.”

Still, the blogger deaths have scared him. He recently installed a welded metal gate at the foot of his stairs and two dogs now stand guard outside his room.

“After Niloy was killed in his home, I got a bit paranoid,” he says.

,,,

For Ms. Asa Moni, hope is far from mind. For three nights after Mr. Chatterjee died, she screamed into the darkness, plagued by images of the attack.

The knock on the door came as her husband tapped at his computer. She opened the door to a strange man who said the landlord had sent him to look at the apartment.

The man was perhaps 20 years old, thin and dressed in a black T-shirt and blue jeans. He walked around twice, then stood in front of the kitchen and began mashing buttons on his mobile phone.

Moments later, three people barged into the apartment, brandishing a gleaming chapati, a rectangular cleaver made to splinter bone. They said nothing, instead moving straight toward Mr. Chatterjee, who had come to the bedroom door.

With their first swing, they severed parts of one hand. Chunks of his fingers fell to the floor.

“Who are you guys?” was all Mr. Chatterjee could manage before an attacker brandishing a pistol pushed Ms. Asa Moni onto the apartment’s veranda. “Save us! Save us!” she screamed.

But the attack was viciously efficient. The men left within minutes, Mr. Chatterjee’s head almost completely severed from his body.

Extremist killing of atheist bloggers stirs panic in Bangladesh - The Globe and Mail

Argentinian teenager gang-raped then had her eyes gouged in brutal exorcism | Daily Mail Online

Usually when something this horrific occurs, it is all over the news.  In some ways this story is, but with one caveat, all roads lead back to just this one article with few additions from other sources.  I am perplexed by this just because of how gruesome it is.  And please take that as a warning, as details are a bit graphic.

A teenager was brutally gang-raped then had her eyes gouged out by her sister in a brutal exorcism ritual that the rapists claim was ordered by a local pastor.

The victim, aged just 16, is now fighting for her life in hospital after the horrific ordeal, which her family said they orchestrated because they believed she was possessed by the devil.

After the terrible ordeal, the teenager was pinned down and her elder sister cut both of her eyes out.

The victim's sister claimed that the religious centre even gave her the sharp knife used in the attack and said that she must personally carry out the brutal act in order to cure her.

The horrific attack happened in the town of General Pinedo, in the north Argentine province of Chaco and police have arrested the older sister.
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Police Commissioner Pablo Almiron said that the girl's parents also believed she was possessed by the devil.

They told police she kept seeing animals like goats that were not there, and they had asked the evangelic centre and its pastor to help them 'cure her'.

Once again the bile is being twisted for nefarious reasons, or I should say possibly since we don't have much to go on.  That aside, it seems as if this family through counsel of some dimwit "local pastor" took Matthew 5:29 at face value:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. (KJV)

What most interpreters or commenters on the Bible take as hyperbole, this group has taken "leterally".  A strict almost legalistic point of view in interpretation, ie. Christ versus the Pharisees.  It is clear that Jesus is not meaning for this passage to be taken literally - as the left eye would be just as likely to lead into sin.  Jesus is using an extreme example to make sure his audience understands the importance of his teachings.

Argentinian teenager gang-raped then had her eyes gouged in brutal exorcism | Daily Mail Online

Russia’s Most Notorious Radical

Fascinating, we are not the only country with crazy right wing cranks,,,
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The first time I meet Leonid Simonovich-Nikshich, the white-bearded leader of Russia’s ultra-conservative Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers movement, he’s dressed in black paramilitary gear festooned with skulls and holding a chunky silver crucifix above his head.

The paunchy 60-something Russian Orthodox Christian activist is standing among thousands of far-right nationalists who have gathered in central Moscow. The purpose of the protest: to call for the expulsion of migrants from Central Asia and Russia’s mainly Muslim North Caucasus region. “Darkies out!” masked youth chant, as riot police look on and a police helicopter hovers overhead.

Simonovich-Nikshich and his black-clad followers aren’t doing any chanting, but it still strikes me as an odd event for a Christian movement to attend. How exactly does this rabid racial hatred, I ask Simonovich-Nikshich, tie in with the biblical concept of tolerance?

“Tolerance?” Simonovich-Nikshich asks. He peers at me over his glasses. “Where does it say anything in the Bible about tolerance?”

This is the first time I’ve spoken to a member of the Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers. But the movement is notorious. It traces its roots back to the chaotic years after the Soviet collapse, when a nation that had been cut off from the outside world for decades was suddenly confronted with a host of forbidden ideologies and beliefs, from Scientology to neo-Nazism. For many, it was too much, too soon, and they sought refuge in the potent mixture of religion, mysticism and ultra-nationalism offered by groups like the Banner Bearers. While the organization has around 50 hardcore members based in Moscow, they’ve attracted thousands to their religious processions in the Russian provinces.

[,,,]
For many liberal Russians, the group’s appearance—they frequently wear black hooded capes in public—and unsettling slogans have made the Banner Bearers a symbol of the xenophobic, aggressive atmosphere at the core of Putin’s Russia.

“We have a bad reputation,” Miroshnichenko admits. “The liberal papers write that we kill and beat people up. That’s not true at all. We don’t attack anyone. Well, apart from gays when they try to hold their parades. But they really make us angry, and we can’t control ourselves.”

[,,,]
The Banner Bearers’ leader turns out to be a chatty sort, and we quickly get down to a discussion of the essentials: Satanism, Pussy Riot, Putin and the imminent return of the czar.

Russia’s Most Notorious Radical

Yes, weird Christian beliefs do influence America - Salon.com

Although this article is a bit dated in regards to the examples cited, the premise is still valid. Even more so now than before as exampled by our recent election results. It is something I have harped on for over a year now and will continue, brick wall and all.

It’s an understandable urge: people spouting crazy nonsense are better ignored. Their numbers are small and they really can’t build an audience for their wacky theories without relying on the mainstream media’s interest in covering weird, marginal characters spouting random, nonsensical ideas. People who think cassettes are the best music medium, cults built around the belief that space aliens are coming for us, people involved in Peter Thiel’s island project are all people whose wackiness comes in small enough numbers that ignoring them really robs them of power.

The problem with that theory is that right-wing, apocalypse-obsessed Christians are not marginal characters who have little power in the world. They constitute a huge percentage of Americans, and just as disturbingly, they have influence over another huge number of Americans. They actually don’t want attention drawn to their wacky beliefs a good deal of the time. On the contrary, the preferred fundamentalist right-wing communication strategy is to use their own spaces—spaces that are often far from the prying eyes of the larger world—to talk about their lurid fantasies, and they prefer to show a more sensible, moderate face to the larger world.

Let’s be clear: Pat Robertson does not want liberals watching the 700 Club. Mike Huckabee is careful to curtail some of his more extreme views when he’s on national television. Rick Santorum has openly claimed that asking right-wing politicians about their hard-right views on things like contraception in the mainstream media is dirty pool. There’s a widespread and concentrated effort on the right to keep the crazy talk as far out of sight of the opposition as possible, while simultaneously disseminating their ideas among the true believers. This reality doesn’t comport with the claim that they benefit from mainstream media attention, but the opposite.

The rule of thumb with bizarre Christian right beliefs, such as the belief that Syria’s conflict is a sign of the end times, is that by the time it percolates up to a Google search or a website like the Blaze, it’s been flying around in lower-profile venues such as Internet forums, Facebook posts, books sold in Christian bookstores, in-person meetings in churches, sermons and presentations, and email forwards for a long time now. The fact that these points of view are concealed from prying liberal eyes doesn’t mean that they don’t have a huge impact on right-wing communities—and that includes Republican politicians.

Yes, weird Christian beliefs do influence America - Salon.com

LGBT Groups To Journalists: Stop Conflating Bigotry With Religious Faith | Blog | Media Matters for America

I am having a tough time with this one, particularly the "fringe" part. While I do agree that the media gives the Reich (too) much air-time, I am not completely sold that it is the journalists "conflating religious belief with anti-LGBT attitudes." Granted they are not helping the matter but I think they are victims, just as the viewers are, to, as Joseph Goebbels puts it, propaganda:

To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realized as being true, that is called propaganda. In the beginning there is the understanding, this understanding uses propaganda as a tool to find those men, that shall turn understanding into politics. Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. Those are found in other circumstances, I find them when thinking at my desk, but not in the meeting hall.

Combine that with the Big Lie sentiment of Hitler - If you tell a lie long and loud enough, people will eventually start to believe it,

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

You can see where it all leads,,,

Two prominent LGBT groups are urging journalists to stop conflating religious belief with anti-LGBT attitudes in their coverage of the upcoming midterm elections, pointing to the dramatic rise in support for LGBT equality in communities of faith across the country.
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Instead of highlighting religious support for LGBT equality, media outlets tend to rely on the voices of some of the most extreme voices of anti-gay conservatism, treating them as broadly representative of religious voters. Nowhere was this more apparent than during the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, when even mainstream news networks relied heavily on commentators like Tony Perkins - president of the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council - to speak on behalf of religious voters:
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Perkins represents a tiny, fringe element of the religious right - the kinds of people,,,The media's unwillingness to distinguish anti-LGBT bigotry from sincere, mainstream religious belief isn't just inaccurate - it makes it more difficult to advance meaningful protections for LGBT people. Coverage of the upcoming midterm elections offer media outlets a new opportunity to dispel the "God vs. gay" mythology that has warped audiences understanding of faith in America for years.

As for the "fringe" I will reiterate something I wrote last year,

To those that criticize us that have differing beliefs (Pagan, Wiccan, atheist, agnostic,,, insert any non Judeo-Christian religion you wish) or attempt to silence us because of your ignorance, it is time to wake up.
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"I would say that the moderates of any religion wouldn't condone extremism. That is the fringe that is held by the radicals of the given religion."
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This is no longer true, it never has been. This ignorance that is being spread is utter bullshit, what was once "fringe" by some people’s thinking is the mainstream. As Anderson so readily demonstrates, it is a Sunday morning norm.

Sorry to say, if you do not speak out against the extremism you condone it, it is no longer fringe when it is occurs in our everyday life. To borrow a phrase from a wise friend, I leave you with this: "The religions of "love" teaching hate!!"

LGBT Groups To Journalists: Stop Conflating Bigotry With Religious Faith | Blog | Media Matters for America

The Reich Exported

Is this the influence of the Reich?  Exported to Africa via the likes of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (by Jeff Sharlet);  people like Scott Lively, Mike Brown, Mat Staver, Paul Cameron, Rick Warren, Lou Engle et al.

Reports of Witchcraft-Related Child Abuse On the Rise in London

Kevani Kanda was just six years old when her family accused her of being a witch. She was being molested by a relative and the trauma made her wet the bed and sleepwalk.

But instead of trying to find out what was wrong, Kanda's family were convinced she was possessed by an evil spirit. For the next five years, she was starved, forced to eat her own vomit, beaten repeatedly and given suppositories containing spices to "get rid of the evil spirits." And the torture occurred in a London suburb.

"I never told anyone what was happening to me because to me it was normal," the 25-year-old Christian told NBC News. "That was my normal world back then and unfortunately my teachers did not pick up on the fact I was being horrendously abused."

Kanda isn't alone. London's Metropolitan Police announced this week that reports of abuse where the child is accused of being a witch or possessed by an evil spirit are on the rise. Fourteen years after the force recorded its first allegation of such an incident, there have been at least 27 cases during in 2014 alone.

[,,,]
British authorities acknowledge they have been slow to react but say it is clear the issue is widespread in many religious communities in London.

These "rogue pastors" often tell families that a period of bad luck or even an illness has been caused by that child being possessed. What motivates these religious leaders? "Power, money, greed and control," Kanda said. "A lot of these people who go to church are vulnerable and they are looking for something to hold onto."

"Some of the people who do this are gangsters," added Bob Pull, a communities consultant with the London-based Churches' Child Protection Advisory Service charity. "They are making money out of the worries that people have."

Rise in cases of ritual child abuse linked to witchcraft beliefs reported, say police

Police officers will meet a group including teachers, childcare and health workers at London’s City Hall on Wednesday to discuss how to tackle the issue, which is rarely reported.

Det Supt Terry Sharpe from the Metropolitan police said it was “a hidden crime”.

He said: “Abuse linked to belief is a horrific crime which is condemned by people of all cultures, communities and faiths. A number of high-profile investigations brought the issue of ritual abuse and witchcraft into the headlines but it is important that professionals are clear about the signs to look for.

“Families or carers genuinely believe that the victim has been completely taken over by the devil or an evil spirit, which is often supported by someone who within the community has portrayed themselves as an authority on faith and belief.

“Regardless of the beliefs of the abusers, child abuse is child abuse.”

A new training film will be launched at the event today.

Simon Bass from the Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service said: “We are not remotely surprised that the Metropolitan police alone has already received 27 referrals of this type this year – or three a month.

“We are pleased that the Metropolitan police has undertaken such great work in this area, but we are convinced that this form of abuse is hidden, and that the statutory agencies across the UK are facing similar situations.”

The $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy You Haven’t Heard Of - The Daily Beast

Although the speakers list was not that over-the-top as far as names go, this "group" will bare watching.  As there is much to digest, I may have to revisit both articles for all the information to sink in.

Have you heard of the $1,750-per-person “Gathering,” which starts Thursday in Orlando, Florida?

Probably not. But if you’re female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state, your life has been affected by it.

The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders. Most of them are not household names, at least if your household isn’t evangelical. But that’s the point: The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest. They’re probably behind that, too.

Featured speakers have included many of the usual suspects: Alliance Defending Freedom President and CEO Alan Sears (2013), Focus on the Family President Jim Daly (2011), and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins (2006). This year, however, they are joined by David Brooks of The New York Times and Michael Gerson of The Washington Post. What’s going on? Has The Gathering gone mainstream?

Hardly, says Bruce Wilson, director of the advocacy group Truth Wins Out’s Center Against Religious Extremism and a leading researcher on The Gathering. The selection of this year’s speakers, he says, is just the latest in a long line of misdirections and canards.

To be sure, untangling webs of funders, organizations, and campaigns can often feel like conspiracy-mongering. Your brain begins to resemble one of those bulletin boards from A Beautiful Mind or Se7en, full of paranoid-seeming Post-Its and strings. Wilson has been untangling these webs for years, and sometimes it shows. His many publications and his emails to me are long-winded, occasionally exaggerated, and sometimes hard to follow.

But often he’s dead on. And beneath the hyperbole, The Gathering is as close to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” as you’re likely to find. So with this year’s conference about to get under way, Wilson gave The Daily Beast an exclusive interview over email—heavily redacted here—about this shadowy, powerful network of hard-right funders.

The $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy You Haven’t Heard Of - The Daily Beast

See also:

The Gathering: The Religious Right’s Cash Cow

Americans Are Leaving Religion Behind and It Scares the Hell Out of the Christian Right | Alternet

There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the increasing political polarization in America , which is at historically high levels. There are a lot of reasons for it, including changing demographics, women’s growing empowerment, the internet, the economy and cable news. But religion and religious belief plays an important role as well. There’s no way around it: America is quickly becoming two nations, one ruled over by fundamentalist Christians and their supporters and one that is becoming all the more secular over time, looking more and more like western Europe in its relative indifference to religion. And caught in between are a group of liberal Christians that are culturally aligned with secularists and are increasingly and dismayingly seeing the concept of “faith” aligned with a narrow and conservative political worldview.

That this polarization is happening is hard to deny, even if it’s harder to measure that political polarization. The number of Americans who cite “none” when asked about a religious identity is rising rapidly, up to nearly 20% from 15% in 2007, with a third of people under 30 identifying with no religious faith. Two-thirds of the “nones” say they believe in God, suggesting that this is more of a cultural drift towards secularism than some kind of crisis of faith across the country.

But even this may underrepresent how secular our country really is getting, as many people who say they belong to a church don’t really go to church much, if at all. While Americans like to tell pollsters they go to church regularly, in-depth research shows they are lying and many of them blow it off, putting our actual church-going rates at roughly the same level of secular Western Europe.

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there’s reason to believe that conservative Christians might also be getting more conservative. After all, the political polarization that we’re seeing lately is driven solely by the right, with conservatives getting more frantic and repressive by the minute. Much of this is due to dramatic surge in reactionary ideas rooted in religion. While public opinion on reproductive rights has stayed roughly the same, conservative Christians who make up the anti-choice movement have grown more extremist in recent years, not only dramatically surging in the attempts to wipe legal abortion out of red states but also expanding the war on women’s rights to include attacks on contraception access, as recently seen in Burwell v Hobby Lobby. Anti-gay sentiment is quietly becoming more extremist as well. While most of the country is coming around on gay rights, conservative Christians have expanded beyond just opposing same-sex marriage to backing laws that would allow restaurants and hotels to refuse gay people service.

That some people are becoming more fundamentalist as others become more secular is hardly a coincidence. In a sense, the trends are feeding into each other. That’s easy enough to see when it comes to the rapid expansion of secularism. As the word “religious” increasingly gets coupled with an image of intolerance and hatred, more and more people, regardless of their belief in God, are downscaling the impact religion has on their lives, or in the case with the “nones,” giving up the idea of religion altogether.

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That’s the idea that’s animating the Christian right: They really do believe everyone else owes them, that we are obligated to tithe to their churches and pray to their God and if we don’t want to do that, we should somehow be treated as less than fully American. You may think you’re just exercising personal choice when you get married in a park or choose not to hang Christmas decorations, but as Carlson’s interview demonstrates, conservative Christians see this as an attack on their “right” to live in a society that flatters their beliefs everywhere they go.


Americans Are Leaving Religion Behind and It Scares the Hell Out of the Christian Right | Alternet