Feverish minds cook up the wrath of God

You may think you've seen it all, but religious fanatics are always capable of surprise. That's because they operate in the realm of the irrational, and it is impossible to rationally predict what they'll say next.

When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans virtually on the eve of the annual gay parade Southern Decadence [1], I knew that some bigot somewhere would say the storm and flooding were punishments from the Christian God for what they would surely allege as debauchery.

"Southern Decadence" has a history of filling the French Quarters [sic] section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars. Last year, a local pastor sent video footage of sex acts being performed in front of police to the mayor, city council, and the media. City officials simply ignored the footage and continued to welcome and praise the weeklong celebration as being an "exciting event". However, Hurricane Katrina has put an end to the annual celebration of sin.

Further on,

The past three mayors of New Orleans, including Sidney Barthelomew, Marc H. Morial, and C. Ray Nagin, issued official proclamations welcoming visitors to "Southern Decadence". Additionally, New Orleans City Council made other proclamations recognizing the annual homosexual celebration.

Then in conclusion,

We must help and pray for those ravaged by this disaster, but let us not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long.... May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God.

 
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On the website www.godhatesamerica.com, was a short note, titled, "Thank God for Katrina". It said,

New Orleans, symbol of America, seen for what it is: a putrid, toxic, stinking cesspool of fag fecal matter.

Pray for more dead bodies floating on the fag-semen-rancid waters of New Orleans.

Lovely! How compassionate!

On the online forum http://fcnforums.christianity.com/, someone using the nick "Shinedupon" wrote:

I know the One True God had used water in the past to spew out sin. My heart goes out to those poor people there but their culture itself has turned away from God.

Also isn't San Francisco the home and culture of homosexuality and thats where the big earthquake was a few years ago? 

While another, with the nick "BlessedHope" wrote:

I think it may be a warning to the whole nation to turn back to him and repent. In his mercy, I believe he is giving us more time to turn around, but will we? This nation has drifted quite a ways in the other direction, and I'm afraid many don't see the signs on the wall. If something even bigger happens, we can't say he didn't try to warn us. 

I feel for the victims and I'm not trying to point fingers, but I don't think we should just shrug this off either. Look at the bible, God often used natural disasters to get people's attention and it also says these things would increase near Christ's return. 

 
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Anyway, as I said, none of the above was a surprise. Muslim clerics had said similar things when the tsunami struck 8 months earlier (more below). 

Instead, what really threw me was a mention in the Australian newspaper The Age, on 3 September 2005, that Katrina had something to do with Gaza [2].

In news releases and internet chat rooms, some fundamentalists said the hurricane was sent to punish New Orleans, a city known for Mardi Gras and other raucous festivals.

Others said the disaster, which may have killed thousands in Louisiana and Mississippi, was revenge for the United States' support of the removal of Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip.

"Whenever this country encourages Israel to give up any part of their rightful God-given land we have suffered the consequences," wrote a discussion-board participant on the website of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

In a similar vein, Christian journalist Stan Goodenough writing from Israel, said he was struck by the juxtaposition in recent days of Jewish settlers being removed from their homes in the Gaza Strip and Americans being forced out of their homes in New Orleans. In a column he wrote for the website Jerusalem Newswire (as reported by the Washington Post, 4 Sep 2005), he said

Is this some sort of bizarre coincidence? Not for those who believe in the God of the Bible ... What America is about to experience is the lifting of God's hand of protection; the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel.

* * * * *

These fundamentalists conceive of a vengeful god. Secondly, they rely on a very literal interpretation of scripture to decide right from wrong, even to the extent of taking their holy book at its word and becoming blinkeredly Zionist (since the origin of that holy book was essentially a Jewish founding story). 

They conceive of a cosmic order where if a society does "wrong", then the entire society will be punished through the wrath of their deity. 

If this reminds you of how in primitive societies, when a person violated some code of conduct, the entire tribe to which he belonged could be punished or made liable for compensation, it is no coincidence. These bigots' frame of mind is just as primitive.

In name, they may call theirs the God of Love, but every indication from their words and deeds suggest that theirs is a God of Punishment.

In a sense, their ideas of religiousity and morality are little evolved from that of a 3 year-old. What is right or wrong depends starkly on what will get you rewarded or punished by daddy and mommy.

Except that there is a twist: whereas punishment by daddy and mommy can be objectively verified, Katrina as punishment by an almighty is no more than a figment of these fundamentalists' imagination. The entire confection, about natural disasters as punishment, and what particular human behaviour had merited that supposed punishment, is an elaborate construct.

Many people may hold the (completely erroneous) view that homosexuality is bad, and therefore they can't see that the supposedly bad behaviour ("homosexual sin and wickedness") is just as entirely cooked up by feverish human minds.

This is where the Gaza angle, I thought, was unusually illuminating. You really have to belong to a tiny obsessed minority to think that evicting the Jewish settlers and quitting the ungovernable Gaza strip ("give up any part of their rightful God-given land") was "against the will of God." You really have to be blind to human suffering to ignore the plight of the Palestinians and their perfectly legitimate desire for their own nation-state (legitimate to the extent that a reasonable compromise with Israel may allow).

The absurdity of this claim -- that Katrina was the deity's punishment for America abandoning Israel such that Israel could not but leave the Gaza strip -- shows up equally the absurdity of the parallel claim that Katrina was punishment for Southern Decadence and its associated "evils".

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the Muslim Palestinians were praising their God and thanking Him for delivering them from the Israelis. But let me be evenhanded in aiming my guns at all fanatics, whatever the religion.

Mere days after the Boxing Day tsunami struck and killed over 200,000 people around the shores of the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004, a leading cleric from Saudi Arabia, Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan, said,

These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities and even entire countries, are Allah's punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims.

We know that at these resorts, which unfortunately exist in Islamic and other countries in South Asia, and especially at Christmas, fornication and sexual perversion of all kinds are rampant.

The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion. 

That's when this tragedy took place, striking them all and destroyed everything. It turned the land into wasteland, where only the cries of the ravens are heard. I say this is a great sign and punishment on which Muslims should reflect.

Other Muslim clerics chimed in. Maulana Shafayat Mohammed, from Trinidad said on his website, www.alhikmat.com,

I have been pondering over the reasons for the recent Tsunami, ever since the incident took place on December 27th 2004. A time when thousands would have been enjoying themselves during the holidays in the "GAY PARADISE" or the no.1 in the world for SEX TOURISM.

He then quoted research by Peter Cordingley and Alison Dakota Gee (his reference was Asiaweek magazine) which said, "Southeast Asia is now the No. 1 world destination for tourists looking for sex."

Maulana Shafayat Mohammed went on to make specific mention of child sex tourism in Sri Lanka,  how there was no sharp divide between heterosexuality and homosexuality in Thailand -- is that bad? he seemed to think so -- and how Bangkok and other Thai cities had a thriving gay scene.

The Qu'ran, he reminded his readers, enjoined homosexuality through the story of Lut. And then he attempted to seal his argument by saying that the Bible and the Torah too had proscriptions against homosexuality. (But he forgot to mention that all three are really the same source speaking in different voices, so instead of getting corroboration, he just revealed how weak his case was). But what did he care? It didn't stop him from saying, 

Based on the references from the scriptures, I call on religious leaders and politicians, who believe in God, to take this Tsunami as a WARNING. If religious leaders and politicians do not do their job to enjoin good and forbid evil, it is my strong belief that God may just begin to destroy nations as He did with Sodom and Gomorrah, as He did with Pharoah and as He did with the people of Noah. ( God's peace and blessings be upon the prophets).

"God" here refers to the the deity known as Jehovah, Yahweh or Allah. Those who pay homage to Hindu, Taoist, Inca, Greek or other Gods need not apply... you do not, by his definition, believe in God.

From London, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, issued a sermon (as reported by The Times and on BBC TV News on 11 January 2005) which was broadcast over Qatar TV. al-Qaradawi said, 

People must ask themselves why this earthquake occurred in this area and not others…Whoever examines these areas discovers that they are tourism areas….where the forbidden acts are widespread, as well as alcohol consumption, drug use and acts of abomination…Don’t they deserve punishment from Allah?

 
* * * * *

Obviously, with so much reference to tourism, they were all thinking of the beach resorts of Phuket (about 7,500 dead and missing) and Sri Lanka (about 35,000 dead and missing). Somehow, the long stretches of the Southeast Indian coast (about 9,000 dead and missing) where there was hardly any tourism, was forgotten by these clerics. As was the Andaman and Nicobar islands (another 7,500 dead or missing).

More significantly, the 165,000 dead and missing (far surpassing the toll from anywhere else) in Aceh, Indonesia, didn't figure in their minds either. Aceh is an unusually devout Muslim province, and if anyone had suggested it as a centre of sex tourism, or any kind of tourism for that matter, he would have been treated as a fool.

But inconvenient facts cannot be allowed to stand in the way of such a seductive story of almighty wrath, can it?

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

1. See pakcik's guest article Southern Decadence - are we truly accepted? 
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2. In late August and early September 2005, Israel uprooted its 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip, pulled out its troops and ended its military occupation of the territory that it had ruled since the June 1967 war.
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3. See also the article Tsunami reveals fanatics of all stripes

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