Where the world is united in fighting the menace of the coronavirus, Gazan Imam Jamil Al-Mutawa used his sermon in Gaza to praise the virus as sent by Allah to kill Westerners and Jews while sparing Palestinians. If the translation is accurate on MEMRI from March 20, 2020, the Imam is enthralled by the virus declares “[Allah] has sent just one soldier, [the coronavirus].” In the meantime, Ralph Drollinger, a Christian leader with ties to President Trump, argues in two blog posts that the virus is the wrath of God over our sins. Another preacher is claiming to heal all carriers attending his services because the virus is merely the manifestation of the devil. He added “You’re not spreading God’s word, you’re spreading this virus.”
Al-Mutawa reportedly declared the virus as a victory of Islam against its enemies and suggested that it spared Gazans. However, after this sermon two such cases were reportedly found in Gaza:
“[Allah] has sent just one soldier, [the coronavirus]. What would happen had he sent 50 like the coronavirus? He has sent just one soldier and it has hit all 50 [American] states. An hour ago, they said on TV that in California… They said that they expect 58% of California to be infected within two months. They talk about 25 million infected people in just one of the 50 states. Allah be praised. Look how anyone who schemes against the Al-Aqsa Mosque is being shattered to smithereens by the soldiers of Allah.”
Cases were confirmed in Gaza the next day.
I cannot confirm this translation, but, if true, this is not simply a disgusting sermon but a dangerous one. There are cases in Gaza and doctors are worried about a catastrophic outbreak given the living conditions and concentration of the population. Other Islamic leaders have been more responsible, including advising followers not to attend services like this one. The failure to heed such advice however is not limited to the Islamic religion, as we recently discussed.
For his part, Drollinger references the “religion of environmentalism” and express a “proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality” in his discussion of the wrath of God, including his explanation of the virus in a column entitled “Is God Judging America Today?” one of the minister’s posts about coronavirus pandemic, have infiltrated “high positions in our government, our educational system, our media and our entertainment industry” and “are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.”
His language is rather convoluted but the conclusion is clear:
“Some leading evangelicals believe and teach that America is now experiencing God’s judgment.
If that is the case, as a public servant who is sacrificing so much in your attempt to turn our nation around, it would stand to reason – if those Evangelical leaders are correct – that you are wasting your time now. But let me qualify that: I do not believe American [sic] is experiencing the forsaking wrath of God, but yes, American [sic] is experiencing the consequential wrath of God. “
The “consequential wrath of God” seems to be connected not to a wild animal market in Wuhan but our social and political choices in the United States?
He is not alone in such wrathful conclusions. Evangelical pastors like Rick Wiles has told his viewers that the “death angel” was sent to reap mass death for things like “forced abortions” in China and he is now likely coming for us.
All of this shows how disease is not simply a public health emergency but an opportunity for some. It is uncanny how such disasters are so easily claimed to fit religious and political agendas. Just as we have market profiteers, these are religious profiteers who claim windfalls from disasters.
I read, even own, a translation of the Quran. It states over a hundred times to “argue gently with the people of The Book”.
So the hatred of Jews is anti-religeous.
— David B Benson
Karen S, you need to actually read a translation of the Quran, rather than just Make Stuff Up.
— David B Benson
Benson:
I bet you’ve read neither the Quoran nor the Hadith. If you had, you’d be stocking up on ammo. History is full of losers who never saw in coming or were in denial when they did.
I won’t be stocking up.
See Thos. Sowell for a different interpretation of our problem here. Sowell notes that in most circumstances, constructive counter-mobilization is not a response to embarassments or reversals of fortune. Recrimination is the norm. He cites Japan’s Meiji restoration as a counter-example; nb, even Japan had a very destructive bout of revanchist politics from 1931 to 1945. See also Bernard Lewis (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1990/09/the-roots-of-muslim-rage/304643/). Islam demarcates one civilization from another. Islam may regulate the response to embarrassment and reversal of fortune. Islam is an idiom in which this rage is expressed (succeeding the fascistoid discourse in Nasserism and Ba’athism). Islam per se is something you can live with (even if importing Muslims into your country generates social friction which would not otherwise be present). The parts of the world wherein revanchist Islam is a problem intersect a great deal with the parts of the world where Nasserism and Ba’athism have been a problem (Afghanistan the major exception). Erdogan in Turkey is a novel problem; recall though that the late Ottoman government and its Kemalist successor practiced mass deportation (which resolved into mass death) and the Kemalist government engaged in a vicious round of property confiscation during the 2d world war (to which their various cultural minorities were exclusively subject). OTOH, our dealings with Malaysia and Indonesia and most west African states are passably congenial.
Indeed. Islamic fervor is not automatic as whenever they have been able to vote, they have mostly chosen secular leaders and with exceptions Jews have been allowed to live peaceably in places like Iraq for millennia.
Jews have been allowed to live peaceably in places like Iraq for millennia.
They weren’t enslaved the way they were in Yemen. Otherwise, not so great.
Sure sign that someone has not read the Koran>>> they ask people facetiously if they’ve ever read the Koran.
And oh yeah, they spell Koran wrong as well.
It’s a transliteration, you knucklehead.
Let’s have Mespo tell us what the Koran actually says.
Pauly J:
I’ve read both and the Bible. I’ll bet again you’ve read none of them and understood even less. As for the English spelling, I’ll let you take a whack at it: القرآن الكريم
Paulie J:
“Let’s have Mespo tell us what the Koran actually says.”
*******************
About what? It’s topical and divided into 114 chapters. The Hadith sets out the culture of Muhammad and lists his sayings. I find the Hadith more interesting like the Old Testament of the Bible.
Ah, the buffoonery.
“The Seventh Seal”, directed by Ingmar Bergman
“The Seventh Seal” is a truly great movie and starred a young Max Von Sydow. It takes place during the black death and he plays a knight returned from the Crusades who ultimately distracts the Grim Reaper by playing chess with him while the young family he has befriended escapes. Obviously the symbolism is not obscure or difficult to grasp but beautifully done.
Regrettably, Max can’t save us this time as he died about 2 weeks ago.
Thanks a lot, Gazan Imam Jamil Al-Mutawa, for focusing attention on the religious bigotry encoded in the Qur’an. The whole killing Jews behind every rock where they hide sort of thing.
That’s super awesome for all the moderate Muslims who ignore those parts of the Qur’an.
These sorts of cataclysms are terrifying. People try to make sense of a pandemic, but it’s just biology and math. One infectious person in contact with others equals more infectious people, equals more, and so on according to the R nought. There are complicated formulas that epidemiologists use to study outbreaks.
One infectious person plus one spring break in Florida equals a thousand infectious people…
“Jews under Islamic rule were given the status of dhimmi, along with certain other pre-Islamic religious groups.[1] Though second-class citizens, these non-Muslim groups were nevertheless accorded certain rights and protections as “people of the book”. During waves of persecution in Medieval Europe, many Jews found refuge in Muslim lands.[2] For instance, Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula were invited to settle in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, where they would often form a prosperous model minority of merchants acting as intermediaries for their Muslim rulers.
Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with Iran and Turkey being home to the largest remaining Jewish populations…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Muslim_rule
This imam must be a Sunni and he forgot to include Shiites in his list – Iran has had the 4th most deaths from this “soldier of Allah.”
At home we are teaching, working, practicing our Catholicism remotely. Instead of blaming God or ascribing “punishment” for our sins (pride, wrath, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, lust), better to use this time of social distancing to engage in introspection, personal renewal and an opportunity to grow inwardly. Our country is in desperate need of practicing humility and less self-righteous finger pointing.
If you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the second is humility, and the third is humility. Not that there are no other precepts to give, but if humility does not precede all that we do, our efforts our meaningless.
Saint Augustine
Bishop Robert Barron has a few suggestions on how to see our current predicament
Terrible to see. One thing that should be mentioned is that lots of evangelical christians aren’t much better around here…
There are True Believers who do crazy things. In this case it is crazy medical opinion. Dangerous to his True Believers’ very lives. Quarantining a country is possible?
This is wrong!
God is Dog spelled backwards and we don’t blame Dog!
Awesome partner of yesterday’s article on those 1000 at the church service. Heavily fundamentalist religions sure are good at having their finger on the true pulse of things. Oh my god.
More compassion from the “Religion of Peace” and why the travel ban is essential US policy. At some point, we’re going to have to take on this cancerous philosophy. Like Nazism of the 30s, it growing and virulent.
It’s been around for nearly 1,400 years. The occident is still here and, comparatively speaking, thriving. No need for pointless and futile exercises contra abstractions. Bar the threats against Israel, the trouble they cause is trouble betwixt and between their own or for cultural minorities in their own countries. 9/11 aside, the vast majority of attacks on civil aviation have been by revanchist nationalists, not Islamists.
It’s an amazing thing about the human population, as a whole, that pretty much anything can be weaponized, including a virus, that can not be seen with the nekkid eye.
It brings out our best traits and our worst traits as a species. Mark of the beast, we are the beast, meh, close enough.
I cannot confirm this translation, but, if true, this is not simply a disgusting sermon but a dangerous one.
It’s completely unsurprising. Over a period of nearly a century, a critical mass of Arabs (among the political class and the rank-and-file alike) have been anything but sensible in their dealings with the Jews. With regard to the Arab states, the state of affairs has generally not been particularly challenging if the state in question did not adjoin Israel. With regard to the four states adjoining Israel, the state of affairs for 46 years now has been suboptimal, but, again, something with which Israel can live with day-to-day without too much trouble. There are two sets of persistent anxiety: Iran’s ambition to be a nuclear power and Turkey’s escalating hostility. In terms of it’s productive capacity and social mobilization, Turkey is much more threatening than any Arab country.
Israel’s real problem (and one certain Arab states have suffered as well) is paramilitary organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the various and sundry wings of the PLO. This sort of thing is what animates them and there is nothing Israel can do about that but take ad hoc measures. There is no solution. There is merely security. Something better might be an option at some future date, but that’s going to require the elites and the public on the West Bank, in Gaza, and in various UNRWA camps take an interest in material improvements in their situation. Right now, what the bulk of them want is revenge on the Jews. You can see what that’s gotten them. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I did hear that Doctors without Borders were expelled. Iran’s population is Muslim and is dying. They are not making friends and people are going to need friends.
They are not making friends and people are going to need friends.
Characteristic of Iranian government policy for about 40 years now. The life expectancy of Ayatollah Khameinei is about 8 years. I suspect with his passing, the situation will improve a great deal. See Soviet Russia under Khruschev, China under Teng Hsiao-ping, and France during the July Monarchy.