“The Vice Chancellor of City University London, Julius Weinberg, should resign. He is refusing to take any action after the Islamic Society hosted a fundamentalist preacher, Abu Usamah, who advocates the murder of gay people and of Muslims who give up their faith,” said human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.
Abu Usamah was recorded on Channel Four’s television documentary, Undercover Mosque, as saying: “Do you practice homosexuality with men? Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain....”
Another speaker given a platform at the same City University event on 4 November, Murthadah Khan, was also caught on the Undercover Mosque documentary calling Jews and Christians “enemies” and “filthy”.
[For the full article, see here
I strongly urge you to read the full article, as it not only shows the vile hatred that is spewed in the public arena but, more to the point of this post, shows the moral cowardice of people like the Vice Chancellor of City University London.
Having been a professor, and serving in assorted administrative capacities, for forty years, I've never ceased to be amazed at the moral cowardice of most faculty and administrators who inhabit universities!
As we see in the above cited article, even the most egregious, hateful, rhetoric is spewed without the Vice Chancellor condemning that rhetoric that affirms both hatred and hateful acts perpetrated against others in the name of "free speech."
As Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes succinctly stated, free speech does not entitle one to shout "fire" in a crowded theater!
"Fire" is being shouted by assorted homophobic (and other xenophobic) clergy who are given a platform that enhances their undeserved credibility to help cause untold harm, suffering, and even deaths to others, and they do so in the name of God, no less!
If we don't confront this hatred, be be that hatred expressed in rhetorical form or in actions, the bullies win!
As every schoolchild knows, when a bully confronts you, if you tolerate that confrontation, he/she will escalate his/her bullying. If you fight back, he/she is likely to climb back under the rock from which he/she emerged.
Bullies are basically cowards! So, in this case, we have one coward allowing other cowards to have their way, and the bullies win because of this lack of confrontation!
It is unfortunate that Christians are expected to be milquetoasts! We are, indeed, called upon to suffer all types of indignities for the sake of God!
The tragedy is that if we stand for the bullying of others, we are behaving diametrically opposite to what God expects of each of God's disciples, because we are allowing evil to prosper at the expense of others' well-being.
Turning the other cheek is relevant to one's own cheek! It is not up to us to turn the cheek of those who are being victimized, and that is what we precisely do when we keep silent amidst hate-speech and discrimination directed against others!
It is moral cowards like Weinberg seems to be who have allowed hate to prosper; discrimination to endure; suffering to escalate; suicides, assaults, and murders to occur!
I imagine Weinberg is not a Christian, but his silence amidst this atrocity mimics so much of what I have seen within universities and by clergy and their followers within churches that comprise most of the institutional Church!
Those who remain silent amidst the oppression of others leave a hateful legacy that further erodes the civility of society; escalates the hatred evinced by the bullies among us; terribly hurts our fellow human beings; despite rhetoric to the contrary, defames God!
2 comments:
Jerry,
Let me introduce you to the Ladies Who Lunch, if you don't know them already: Miss Anti-Semitism, Miss Racism, Mrs. Ageism, Mrs. Sexism, Miss Xenophobia, and Madame Heterosexism. These girls simply adore one another's company; where you find one, the others are never far behind!
You hit the nail on the head, Don Charles! That's one of the reasons why a member of one minority group discriminating against a member of another minority group is so ridiculous. We're all in this together, and xenophobes are aligning themselves with people who would turn on them in a second, because if a person is homophobic there's a good chance he/she is anti-semitic and/or sexist and/or hates immigrants and/or.... Best wishes, Jerry.
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