Nun Gagged, Crucified, Killed by Fellow Believers

The acclaimed Romanian movie Beyond the Hills, which opened in New York this past weekend, is based on two “nonfiction novels” by Romanian writer Tatiana Niculescu Bran. The books offer a window onto a real-life tragedy that took place in a Romanian Orthodox monastery near the Moldovan border, eight years ago.

A 23-year-old novitiate nun began hearing voices, which she believed were the Devil talking to her. After efforts to solve her problem failed, her fellow believers bound her to a cross, gagged her with a towel and left her for three days without food in a damp and chilly room at the monastery, where she died of suffocation and dehydration.

The BBC reported at the time that the young woman, Maricica Irina Cornici, suffered from schizophrenia,

and the symptoms of her condition caused the priest at the convent and other nuns to believe she was possessed by the devil. “They all said she was possessed and they were trying to cast out the evil spirits,” police spokeswoman Michaela Straub said.

fatherdan

Father Daniel [Corogeanu, in photo], who is accused of orchestrating the crime, is said to be unrepentant. “God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil,” AFP quoted the priest as saying.

He was subsequently sentenced to 14 years in prison.

[image via radiolasi]

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Virginia pastor Haden Conrad was probably hoping to hear how his rod and his staff comforted the 14-year-old girl he thought he was propositioning (Psalms 23:4).

A Chesapeake pastor recently arrested for computer solicitation committed the crime at the church he worked at, according to deputies. In an affidavit obtained by WAVY.com, a Spotsylvania County sheriff’s deputy and detective conducted an undercover chat investigation July 18, 2012. The deputy went into a Yahoo! chat room and was messaged by a user with the screen name “chiefmojorisin420.”

Haden

At first, the chatting was not criminal, the affidavit said. The suspect, later identified as Haden Conrad, said he was a married man who lived about two hours away from the deputy, who was posing as a 14-year-old girl. The suspect was told he was speaking with a teen.

Later,

[Conrad] exposed himself via webcam and performed a sex act on himself…

before eventually trying to arrange to meet the fictitious 14-year-old for sex.

[image via WAVY]

Kind of a Shitty Thing To Do

Good thing the toilet-paper company didn’t use Koranic texts, or we’d see a million Muslims go through spasms of righteous rage right now.

paper1

A Finnish toilet paper maker has removed quotes from the Bible, including the words of Jesus, that it inadvertently placed on its rolls, after protests from some Norwegian church leaders. Metsa Tissue was trying to convey messages about love but accidentally included lines from the Gospel of Matthew and First Corinthians on toilet paper sold in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The firm selected the quotes from Facebook submissions, including one from Jesus: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It only realized its mistake when it received feedback.

“People like to read small, happy messages while sitting on the toilet,” Christina von Trampe, a spokeswoman for Metsa Tissue told Reuters. “The vast majority of the feedback has been positive. Our intention was to spread love and joy, not religious messages.”

I actually really love that last line. It probably wasn’t meant as a slap, but regardless — well put, Christina.

[image via bradleycorp]

Honor Killings? What ‘Honor’ Would That Be?

A young American woman named Samya fled an arranged marriage and a Muslim father who threatened to kill her if she ever brought non-Muslim friends home, male or female.

The biggest crime that Samya committed — in the eyes of her father, her uncle, and her brothers — wasn’t to leave home, but to leave Islam. She no longer believes in God, and now lives incognito in a big U.S. city:

In the two years since [she left], Samya has learned to drive, manage a checking account and hold a job as a restaurant hostess. She takes college courses when she can, and changed her name to shield her from her uncle or other family members who might try to find her. …

Samya has joined a local atheist group. The members embraced her immediately, raising $1,000 and taking her shopping for clothes and meals. One man donated the $1,500 it would require to legally change her name.

RNS-SAMYA-ATHEIST

Samya still lives in fear that her male relatives will track her down and murder her. Violent death is often the fate of women who “bring shame” upon Muslim families.

There were at least 5,000 honor killings in 2000, according to a U.N. report. In 2010, a British newspaper estimated the number as high as 20,000. Most honor killings involve the murder of one family member — usually a female — by other family members who believe the victim has somehow disgraced them.

In the U.S., where there have been at least five documented honor killings, teenaged sisters Sarah and Amina Said were shot and killed in 2008 by their Egyptian father, Yaser Said. He was reportedly upset that the girls had non-Muslim boyfriends. Said remains at large and authorities believe family members are helping to hide him.

Times five thousand. Or twenty thousand. No one knows.

[image via religionnews]

Message From Jesus: Wash Your Car

Evidently, Jesus is bored with appearing on toast and taco shells. Now he’s appearing in bird poop on windshields of believers.

jesuspoop

Jim Lawry insists this is a picture of Christ. I think it looks more someone wearing a novelty dog snout, but who am I to argue with the faithful?

“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and I shall poop on your windshield.”  – first draft of 2 Peter 3:10

Mormons Misbehaving

Bountiful, Utah:

A former employee of the Mormon church has been sentenced to two years in the Davis County Jail for sexual offenses involving two children. Timothy Bothell of Centerville drew the sentence Friday in 2nd District Court after earlier pleading guilty to one felony count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child and one misdemeanor count of lewdness involving a child. … The plea was part of a deal so the sisters, ages 11 and 13 at the time of the abuse, would not have to testify.

Parker, Colorado:

The investigation into [Mormon scoutmaster Brian] Robbins began in January. Cut to around noon on Tuesday, when detectives from the PPD, along with helpers from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office and the Douglas County Pattern Crimes Unit, executed a search warrant on Robbins’s home, on the 22000 block of Pensive Court in the Canterberry subdivision. The Parker cops [located] a slew of child-pornography images — reportedly hundreds of them. Shortly thereafter, Robbins was booked on two counts of sexual exploitation of a child; his bond was set at $50,000.

Mesa, AZ:

Arias

The murder trial of Jodi Arias has been filled with salacious details of phone sex, graphic text messages, and an erotic sexual relationship between her and her devout Mormon ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander. Arias, 32, converted to Mormonism when she began to date Alexander, then 29, in 2006. Though they were both outwardly devout, they immediately developed a sexual relationship. … Arias is on trial for murdering Alexander, whom she dated for a year and then continued to have sex with for a year after that. Prosecutors allege she killed him in a fit of jealousy in June 2008, after taking graphic sexual photos with him and having sex earlier in the day.

[image via Daily Beast]

Snake-Oil Charmers

Who better to advise the flock on investment opportunities than the same church-authorities-cum-businessmen who say you won’t go to heaven if you disobey them?

Two leaders of a Bay Area church with a controversial past are under investigation for an alleged real estate scheme, KPIX 5 has learned. Some members of the General Assembly Church, with congregations in Vallejo, Union City, Moreno Valley in Southern California and two other states said the promise of eternal life cost them dearly. “It was a nightmare,” said Horace Gill. He was the pastor of a former branch of the church in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Gill said in 2002, pastor Lacy Hawkins started preaching about a real-estate investment opportunity.

Members of the congregation, prodded by their then-pastor, put a fortune into real-estate deals run by Hawkins’ second-in-command under the business name ‘Daystar.’ Questions were not allowed. Recalls former church member Julio Ramirez,

“Anytime we used to ask questions we were told that you are in a bad spirit, what is wrong with you?”

God did, however, quietly perform a miracle, and made all the Daystar investors multi-millionaires.

Nah, just kidding.

Daystar suddenly closed its doors in 2006. Stunned church members asked for their money back, only to find out it was gone.

But that’s nothing compared to what a business-minded leader of a church with one million gospel lovers can do. Just think of the riches that so many faithful people can produce! David Yonggi-Cho sure did.

Cho

The founding pastor of the world’s largest Pentecostal congregation is being indicted on charges of breach of trust for costing the church more than $9 million in a stock scheme gone awry. South Korean news sources report that prosecutors have indicted David Yonggi Cho, founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church which has more than 1 million congregants, for a stock scheme in which he arranged for the church to buy his son Cho Hee-jun’s stock “at a rate three to four times [the] market value.”

Other church leaders, too, are having a spot of trouble with that whole Biblical values thing.

Joe

A former West Michigan church deacon accused of taking cash from the weekly offertory basket has pleaded guilty to larceny. Joseph Finnigan made the plea Friday in Ottawa County Circuit Court. The 73-year-old pleaded to two counts of larceny over $20,000.

Our favorite story in this roundup happened just yesterday, when

A meeting of church members at the New Covenant Baptist Church on East Beard Avenue on Syracuse’s South Side ended with police swarming the sanctuary. Church-goers on the street told CNY Central’s Ken Chapman that they were there to vote on whether or not to oust Pastor Colette Matthews, saying she has been having an affair with a married member of the church. …

Syracuse Police say things got out of hand when some members tried to stop others from entering the church. Officials say police responded to the church three times on Sunday. Two calls were for yelling and shouting. A third call was for a man with a gun, which was an unfounded claim. Eventually, Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler came to the church and ordered the assembly to clear out.

[David Yonggi-Cho photo via hani.co.kr; Joseph Finnigan photo via WGVU]

Peekin’ Deacon Loves Kids

He’ll take children exactly as God created them — in their birthday suits.

albaugh(sm)

A deacon at St. Joseph’s Church in Fullerton, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, was arrested last week for possession of child pornography after Verizon detected images and videos of children performing sexual acts.

William Steven Albaugh, a 67-year old retiree ordained as a Catholic deacon in 1996, was taken into custody by Baltimore County Police officers on March 1. He admitted to collecting child pornography since the 1970s.

[image via Arstechnica]

Religion’s Toll, Part 914,768,221 (Give or Take)

“Tragedy strikes again,” is the headline in the Pakistani paper The News — as if dozens of people died due to some whaddaya-gonna-do natural disaster, rather than at the hands of the ueber-religious.

At least 45 people died and another 70 were injured in a huge explosion that ripped through a Shia-majority neighbourhood in Karachi on Sunday evening. … The Bomb Disposal Squad was also called in at the hospital due to security threats at the mortuary. … Terrorists used a remote-controlled, vehicle-based improvised explosive device (VBIED) weighing about 150kgs [330 lbs], which also contained ball bearings. … The explosion left a crater four feet deep and 10 feet in diameter at the site causing destruction up to 700 metres away.

The [Inspector General of Police] suspected the involvement of banned outfits the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in collaboration with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).

Both organizations are known Islamist terrorist groups in Pakistan.

angry

In other news about the Religion of Pace:

Lybia:

Gunmen attacked an Egyptian Coptic church in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, assaulting two priests.

Bangladesh:

Bangladesh police arrested five students of an elite private university on Saturday on charges of murdering an anti-Islamist blogger whose death triggered nationwide turmoil. The students allegedly confessed to hacking to death Ahmed Rajib Haider, 35, on February 15, after he helped organize protests against leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami party on trial for war crimes.

Nigeria:

Radical islamic militants are preventing [polio vaccinations] by attacking clinics, health workers, and police who travel with vaccinators to orally administer the antidote to children. Earlier this month in northern Nigeria, armed men linked to Islamist extremist group Boko Haram killed nine people at a clinic after a local cleric denounced polio vaccination campaigns and local radio programs saying the campaigns are part of a foreign plot to sterilize Muslims.

Weekend Bonus

So that‘s how that works.

intolerantandhateful[source]

The Ten Commandments, with Hitchens, Colbert

À propos of yesterday’s post referencing the Ten Commandments, I thought I’d share this video of the late Christopher Hitchens proposing a rewrite of Christianity’s best-known moral code. The best bit starts at six minutes sixteen seconds.

Also, this: In 2008, Stephen Colbert met Georgia Congressman Lynn Westmoreland. Four minutes eighteen seconds into the video, Colbert asks the congressman about his ostensible love for the Ten Commandments. What follows is as staggering an act of political self-immolation as has ever been committed to tape — funny and mortifying at once.

Thanks for visiting — see you on Monday!

Like Diamonds, Fatwas Are Forever

Novelist Salman Rushdie has been living under Muslim death threats for almost a quarter century. But when you’re a jihadist, it’s good to have options, so the targeted-for-execution list has been steadily growing. The Al Qaeda recruitment magazine Inspire just published the names of its eleven most-wanted:

• Geert Wilders
• Ayaan Hirsi-Ali
• Kurt Westergaard
• Flemming Rose
• Carsten Juste
• Morris Sadek
• Lars Vilks
• Molly Norris
• Stephane Charbonnier
• Terry Jones
• Salman Rushdie

If not all of the names mean something to you, here are ultrabrief descriptions of what these people have done that Islamic fundies deem punishable by death. For the record, this blog supports each and every one of those listed — yes, even that detestable halfwit Terry Jones.

What’s astonishing about the current list is that none of the eleven people on it have ever committed violence. Their so-called crimes consist entirely of having produced words or pictures. Fully nine of the eleven targets are journalists, writers, and artists. None are Western heads of state, or military officials, or Marine snipers, or drone operators, or CIA operatives, or anyone else who’s ever ordered (or has otherwise had a direct hand in) actual bloodshed.

Published under the heading, “Wanted: Dead Or Alive for Crimes Against Islam,” [Inspire] magazine includes the [eleven] people they’ve targeted as their biggest enemies. In case you’re not clear on what they want, exactly, the list also includes an image of one of the wanted, Koran-hating pastor Terry Jones, being shot in the head. Beneath that is the caption, “Yes We Can: A Bullet A Day Keeps the Infidel Away.”

Like so:

large

Lest anyone thinks that jihadists’ calls for targeted murder are all Muslim machismo and no action, let’s think back to some actual and attempted assassinations. Here are just the ones that I remember, so it’s not even a complete list:

• 1991: Ettore Capriolo, Italy. Translator of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Stabbed multiple times. Badly wounded.

• 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, Japan. Translator of Rushdie’s book. Stabbed, murdered.

• 1993: William Nygaard, Norway. Publisher of the Norwegian edition of Rushdie’s book. Shot, wounded.

• 2004: Theo van Gogh, the Netherlands. Critic of radical Islam. Writer, filmmaker. Shot, stabbed, and slashed to death.

• 2008: Martin Rynja, England. Publisher of a novel about Mohammed. House and office firebombed. Rynja escaped unscathed.

• 2010: Kurt Westergaard, Denmark. Cartoonist. Home invasion by an assailant wielding an axe and a knife. Westergaard fled into his reinforced panic room. No injuries.

• 2013: Lars Hedegaard, Denmark. Critic of radical Islam. Writer and publisher. Assailant unsuccessfully fired a gun at him in his doorway.

It’s doubly sad that it takes very little to set these fundies off. For every act of willful desecration, such as Terry Jones’s Koran-burning shenanigans, there are multiple instances of comparatively mild-mannered protests, such as Molly Norris‘s Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, or Kurt Westergaard’s fairly plain-vanilla cartoon (below) of Islam’s warrior-prophet. No matter: they, too, draw fatwas marking them for death.

mohammed1

Much as I’d love to try, there’s simply no reasoning with the religiously insane.