Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

'Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said bibles translated into Dari had been found.

'"Yesterday at around 0800 (0330 GMT), one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all," he told the AFP news agency.'

I'm more or less at a loss for words over this. The BBC lives down to expectations: you have to get past the headline and the first four paragraphs before you find a hint that this is a story of religious intolerance (whether the Taliban actually fired the shots is virtually irrelevant in this respect - they want to claim the credit).

One word I hope I won't hear today is "Islamophobia". I won't be answerable for the consequences if I do.

With eyes wide open

'Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these [Muslim] dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.'

- Phyllis Chesler writes in the Times, recalling the experience of two years as a bride in Afghanistan. Read it all.

Some massacres you may have missed

'Seventeen civilians who had taken shelter in a school died on Thursday after it was hit by shells.'

- mentioned in passing half way down a BBC report. Why so reticent? Because it happened in Sri Lanka.

'The army and the Tigers have blamed each other for the incident.'

Whoever it was, I suspect they may not have given a warning first. But who gives a monkey's, anyway? There's not much chance of blaming this one on the Israelis.

Oh yes, and then there's the Taliban. When they kill kids it's rarely accidental. But you can't be too fussy when you're resisting imperialism, can you?

Abdul Rahman

Scots blogger Indefatigathingummy has the text of a letter he has sent to the Afghan ambassador asking him to intercede on behalf of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan threatened with execution for becoming a Christian. I urge readers to take a minute or two to do likewise.

Rib-tickler

Happened to look at the Steve Bell cartoon in today's Guardian. Was he always this bad? Is it just me that's changed?

Is he trying to tell us:-

A. the people of Afghanistan are sick and tired of having an elected government and just want the Taliban back?

B. the Afghans should get the Taliban back whether they like it or not?

or

C. he doesn't give two hoots what happens in Afghanistan so long as it's something that makes Bush and Blair very unhappy?

Evil Empire

Christian Aid News No. 23 (Winter 2004)

It makes a pleasant change to admit that I can’t find too much to object to in this issue’s coverage of Israel and Palestine. A short article accompanies a photo of artist John Keane in Gaza, promoting his Christian Aid-sponsored exhibition of paintings from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It refers to “key issues – ever-worsening poverty, as well as terrorism, military closures, clampdowns and violence”, and of Israeli missile attacks on Yasser Arafat’s compound it says “each new strike in retaliation for an attack on Israeli citizens by Palestinian suicide bombers”. One could argue as to whether an invalid moral equivalence is being implied between terrorism and responses to terrorism, but at least the existence of the terrorism has been properly acknowledged.

I have my usual concern about the way this one conflict is emphasised. There’s nothing at all on Africa’s conflicts, and certainly no art exhibition. On the other hand no less than four pages are devoted to Afghanistan. “Revival – An Afghan ghost town returns to life” is the main headline, and the accompanying feature makes plain the misery inflicted on the country by the Taliban regime, and the new hope that has been created by their overthrow.

Revealingly, however, Christian Aid can’t quite bring themselves to acknowledge that the Taliban were ousted by American military action. Accusing the Americans of embezzling Iraqi oil revenues (a news item in this issue) is a lot more ideologically congenial, it seems.

Christian Aid is basically tagging along here with the pervasive anti-Americanism of the secular Left – you can’t pick up a copy of the Guardian without encountering it. Does this matter? Isn’t it just a natural reflection of the fact that you don’t get to be the most powerful nation in human history without rubbing a few people up the wrong way, and aren’t the Americans big enough and ugly enough (note to American readers: please don’t take this British idiom literally!) to take a bit of flak?

I think it matters in the general sense that knee-jerk anti-Americanism creates a climate of hysteria in which it becomes all but impossible to have a rational discussion about the rights and wrongs of American policy (and yes, of course there are plenty of the latter). That’s not the particular concern of this blog, but it matters also in the more specific sense that anti-Americanism very easily spills over into anti-Israeli attitudes. It is after all undeniable that Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East, and the recipient of a large slice of the US overseas aid budget. Demonize one and it will come naturally to demonize the other – and you will all too easily find yourself in the company of those who believe that a Jewish conspiracy underpins the relationship.