zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron aka hipbonegamer — shall we file this under religion, or politics? ]
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Let’s see, now: religiously speaking, you can support a murderous dictator on a rampage against his own people, or the rebels who oppose him who take video selfies of themselves eating their deceased enemies’ hearts — or abstain from taking sides and let the two parties shoot and rape it out among themselves…

Sheikh Youself al-Qaradawi is an Egyptian cleric with a following in the tens of millions, while Roman Silantyev is a “religious expert and head of the Human Rights Center of the World Russian People’s Council” and staff member of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations.

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Sources:

• Top cleric Qaradawi calls for Jihad against Hezbollah, Assad in Syria
• Religious expert suggests to send the Russian volunteer corps to Syria

[ by Charles Cameron — most likely a “foolish virgin” (Matthew 25) — I had no idea today was the day until today ]
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According to Pravda, which I believe means Truth:

August 23, 2013 is the day, for which the infamous Grigory Rasputin predicted the end of the world in the beginning of the last century. Rasputin predicted a “terrible storm” in which fire would swallow all life on land, and then life would die on the whole planet. He also said that Jesus Christ would come down to Earth to comfort people in distress.

I would be remiss if I did not attempt to warn you…

[ by Charles Cameron — a quick glimpse into the secular afterlives of spooks ]
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Putin himself is living the afterlife of a spook, of course, but in his case shooting tranquilizer and identification darts at tigers, polar bears and whales — not to mention leading endangered Siberian cranes along their migration routes on a motorized hang glider — would appear to be avocations: his full time paid employment is in the sphere of politics.

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Sources:

Anna Chapman

Snowden

[ Charles Cameron — no further comment ]
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[ by Charles Cameron — beheadings and the questions they raise ]
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Tim Furnish, friend of this blog, had a piece titled Beheading in the Name of Islam in the Middle East Quarterly back in 2005, in which he wrote:

The February 2002 decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, true to its intention, horrified the Western audience. Chechen rebels, egged on by Islamist benefactors, had adopted the practice four years earlier, but the absence of widely broadcast videos limited the psychological impact of hostage decapitation. The Pearl murder and video catalyzed the resurgence of this historical Islamic practice. In Iraq, terrorists filmed the beheadings of Americans Nicholas Berg, Jack Hensley, and Eugene Armstrong. Other victims include Turks, an Egyptian, a Korean, Bulgarians, a British businessman, and a Nepalese. Scores of Iraqis, both Kurds and Arabs, have also fallen victim to Islamist terrorists’ knives. The new fad in terrorist brutality has extended to Saudi Arabia where Islamist terrorists murdered American businessman Paul Johnson, whose head was later discovered in a freezer in an Al-Qaeda hideout.

For myself, convinced as I am that perceived, preached or proclaimed divine endorsement for such killings plays a major role in facilitating them, the existence of what are overtly at least non-religious examples of the same brutal behavior are valuable, albeit humanly distressing, for the questions they raise:

is the brutal behavior in question a bestial aspect of human nature in general, and religion merely a thin veneer with which it sometimes conveniently clothes itself?

or are sports in some way alternative modalities of group transcendence — and thus effectively religious in their essence?

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Bryan Alexander, another friend, comments today on a related story at his gothic-themed blog, Infocult, under the heading When sports fans attack, Russian remix.

DoubleQuote Sources:

Seventeen Afghan partygoers beheaded

Brazilian referee beheaded