Thought for today

Share the paths

The Lawrey and Lole cartoon The Little Things published in last Friday’s Nelson Mail (April 5) really caught my attention. This wasn’t because it was good, but because I couldn’t decide whether it was being ironic or hypocritical. It was titled ‘‘Having the words taken out of your mouth’’, and showed a man and his dog blocking a shared pathway while being watched and commented on by two cyclists, who were also blocking the pathway. Nobody was sharing! Hilary Drake

Nelson, April 8

Muslims and Islam

Hong Xiuquan’s atrocities were no more ‘‘Christian’’ than Hitler’s. Paul Bieleski (Letters, April 8) doubles actual Deir Yassin casualties, exaggerates Ariel Sharon’s Chatila culpability, and is wrong to treat all Christianity as a monolithic entity. It is not. He ignores 100 years of Christianity’s scholarly higher criticism, and ecumenical movements. These have taught all but a few fundamentalists that not all the Bible bears the equal imprint of Christ’s higher ethics and humanitarian, ultimate values taught in the context of surviving under a brutal, militaristic imperialism.

Islam has yet to undergo a similar internal scholarly critique. Interfaith dialogue teaches one to distinguish which Islam one is addressing. Most Muslims may be secular, ‘‘cultural’’ Muslims who seek the same as most Christians – to live peaceful, valuable, progressive lives. Their Islam may be peaceful. But Saudi-led Salafi and Wahabi Sunni, and Iranian-led Shia Muslim are not. They teach a militant, pure Islam from the Q’uran’s darker, Mecca-era pages and the hadiths’ traditions of Mohammed’s life, which produces radicalised Islamists like al Qaeda, Isis and Boko Haram.

I don’t defend so-called ‘‘Christian’’ or ‘‘Jewish’’ atrocities, and will never accept sharia law’s brutal medieval treatment of women, gays, and Jewish and Christian citizens as jizya-taxed dhimmis.