Religious nuts

Murdering people- or executing them judicially- for blasphemy fits my definition of "religious nut." Christians used to do it, and I read now and then that some few still advocate it. Those Christians who do advocate blasphemy laws are so far out on the fringe as to be generally considered nuts by other Christians.

By contrast, a lot of Muslims not only advocate blasphemy laws, including ones which carry death sentences, they have enacted, maintain, and enforce them in the face of some opposition. They are religious nuts and I decline to respect their views. Pure and simple: They are advocates and in some cases practitioners of murder. Whethor the killings are judicially sanctioned or by mobs, they are all murders.

Ben Arnoldy and Owais Tohid explain the practice in the Christian Science Monitor:

The Koran has a special status in Islam that sets it apart from the way many Christians view the Bible, for instance. While Christianity's holy book is held to be divinely inspired and to have been set down by holy men, the words themselves are not considered a direct work of God.

But most Muslims believe that the Koran was transmitted to Muhammad from Allah by the angel Gabriel nearly 1,400 years ago and written down precisely as Allah intended.

...Strict Muslims are expected to clean themselves ritually before touching the Koran. They don't allow the book to be set on the floor and, in some cases, hold that nonbelievers should not touch the book.

Sorry folks: This does not explain why some Muslims think murdering people is a good thing.

More than 4,000 blasphemy cases have been registered since the laws were enacted (in Pakistan) in 1986, according to human rights activists. While no one has ever been officially executed for blasphemy, dozens have been killed by vigilantes.

...Ghafoor Ahmed, the deputy chief of Jamaat-i Islami...(says) the blasphemy laws are necessary..."No one who believes in God or in the prophets of God can allow them to be insulted."

And so we read stories like this one from Pakistan:

When Ashiq Nabi got into an argument with his wife, she held up a Koran to protect herself, setting into motion a deadly series of events. Mr. Nabi then pushed his wife, say human rights activists, sending Islam's holy book onto the floor and prompting the local mullah in Spin Kakh, Pakistan, to file blasphemy charges.

Before the police could act, Nabi was spotted in town and the mullah allegedly spread the word over the mosque's loudspeakers. A mob of more than 400 villagers chased Nabi until he climbed up a tree, then shot him dead.

This is the mentality we are all up against, and by "all" I do include all the many Muslims who do not advocate murder. There are enuf of these nuts in Pakistan to have gotten this law in, and to maintain it. Saudi Arabia is ruled by such nuts, and al Queda is composed of them. It was religious nuts who murdered film maker Theo van Gogh in Holland. They are religious fascists, and genocidal, and they want us dead.