Why This and Not That?

Occasionally in Christendom we run across people who are just stark raving mad. Some examples are Martin Madan who, during the eighteenth century, wrote a 900 page book in defense of biblically based "Christian polygamy," Gregori Rasputin or the Romanian Orthodox priest/monk in this story:BBC NEWS World Europe Crucified nun dies in 'exorcism' . A poor woman in psychological and spiritual pain dies because of a case of hysteria among a few nuns and a monk. The story makes the BBC news and the IOL South African news service. An evil has been done in the name of Christianity by people who are not so much religious as they are superstitious.

Western news services love stories like this because they show, by way of guilt by association, that any Christian who believes that Satan is real is no more advanced than an Aztec pulling out hearts at the top of a pyramid in Mexico. There are usually one or too stories like this per year and they always take place in locations that are either primitive or primitive settlements within modern countries. I can, offhand, think of two stories from the Philippines and one from Koreatown in Los Angeles that have taken place within the past two years.

Now, Korea is not exactly a primitive country, but some of what is purported to be Christianity that is practiced in Korea is shot through with Confucianism, Buddhism and animism. The result of such attempts at religious synchronisity are like alchemism; the nobler element is debased by the attempted alloying of the baser elements. Instead of gold one ends up with deadly poisons.

But note that we, in the US at least, get about two or three such stories reported per year. They are reported because they are oddities and they involve "those kooky Christians."

On the other hand, the following story was only reported in a Pakistani newspaper:Gates of Vienna: The Pain is Etched in Her Face (Tip o' the lid to Dymphna). Pakistan is a Mohammedan nation. It was established as such. Much of the country is, in fact, ruled by Islamic clerics and by Islamic law. There are approximately 4,000 such incidents per year in Pakistan. And yet I have never read an account of this crime nor any like it in Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, the LA Times or the New York Times. I've never seen nor heard stories such as this on CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS or BBC.

Why?

Could it be because such news organizations hold Christianity to a higher standard than Mohammedism. Are husbands in Pakistan excused from killing their wives with acid because they are "little brown babies," to quote the missionary in Murder on the Orient Express, and are just too damned primitive to know any better? Is it a case of rare Christian cruelty bad, normal Islamic cruelty no story?

The monk/priest in Romania should be publically hanged and the nuns who helped him should be jailed. And all the husbands in Pakistan who killed their wives because their wives refuse to accept a co-wife, should be publically hanged.

Bad actions are bad actions. But at least the monk/priest in Romania is apparently suffering from some sort of religious mania. The men in Pakistan are just hungry for a new shot of leg.