Iraq...Just gets better all the time

[rpannier]

Despite the chaos and sectarian violence raging across Baghdad, Farouq Mansour felt relatively safe as a Christian living in a multiethnic neighborhood in the capital.

Then, two months ago, al Qaeda gunmen kidnapped him and demanded that his family convert to Islam or pay a $30,000 ransom. Two weeks later, he paid up, was released and immediately fled to Syria, joining a mass exodus of Iraq's increasingly threatened Christian minority.

snip

Although Islamic extremists have targeted Iraqi Christians before, bombing churches and threatening religious leaders, the latest attacks have taken on a far more personal tone. Many Christians are being expelled from their homes and forced to leave their possessions behind, police, human rights groups and residents said.

snip

In the recent violence, residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora said gunmen knocked on the doors of Christian families, demanding they either pay jizya — a special tax traditionally levied on non-Muslims — or leave. The jizya has not been imposed in Muslim nations in about 100 years.

full story:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/07/iraq/main2766003.shtml

[Duer 157099]

1. What?? Convert or pay? I swear, I've never heard that one.

I'd say these guys aren't very ideologically pure. Wow. For a religion they're willing to die and kill for, they sure do sell out cheap.

So utterly bizarre.

[izzie]

2. And I am sure they see no wrong in it. Odd how people reason

I used to belong to a co-op and the 'born agains' used to start off the meeting with a pray to JC that they made money. I had trouble as I kept laughing and sure got some odd looks. Money seems to win even in the so called place that tells us they are fighting for their God. Course one only has to look back to how the royals and the churches used the pop. for their own results to see this goes on every place and in all times.

[ClintonTyree]

5. I've heard of "convert or die".......

courtesy of the catholic church during the inquisition, but never heard of holding someone ransomed until they converted or paid up. I'll tell 'ya, those fundamentalist religious types are always thinking of new ways to bond with the common man. :eyes:

[USA_1]

3. Bush's Jungle 'Paradise'

dunno if this has been posted before but here it is ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F48xNhqzQiA

[liam_laddie]

4. How about Spain ca. 1500's?

More than vaguely familiar...as a recovering Catholic, I remind us that Jews and other "non-believers" in Spain suffered such persecution and death at the hands and swords of Papal emissaries for a couple hundred years. What IS it about religious madness? :banghead: