Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Alton Nolen, the Muslim ex-con accused of an ex-colleague’s brutal beheading in Moore, Oklahoma on Thursday, identified strongly with the violent ways of his extremist foreign brethren. In March, Nolen took to his Facebook page, where he calls himself Jah’Keem Yisrael, and posted an image of a beheading by Islamic fundies, captioned with a verse from the Qur’an: I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off of them. Read more
(Warning: Several links in the second half of this post lead to web pages with extremely violent, NSFW visual content.) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= A bit of flimflam that’s been spreading like wildfire in Australia plays expertly on Christians’ never-ending persecution complex: New South Wales police have been moved to reassure Australians that text messages claiming members of Islamic State (Isis) are knocking on people’s doors and marking Christian houses are a hoax, as concerns grow about the threat the extremist group poses. Read more
A Pennsylvania priest is behind bars this weekend — and possibly for as many as 40 years — on suspicion that he frequently traveled to Honduras for mission trips with the actual purpose of having sex with local children. The Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr., 69, was arrested Thursday and will remain in custody until a hearing Monday before a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh. [Federal agents] learned Maurizio made regular trips of two to three weeks each to the Central American country from 1999 to 2009…… Read more
What kind of a person do you have to be to get taken in and abused by a religious cult? According to a piece in The Jerusalem Post that cites Britain’s Cult Information Center, [P]eople in cults tend to be “intelligent, idealistic, well-educated, economically advantaged, intellectually or spiritually curious, and any age.” Then again (in a bit of a contradiction), Cult recruitment techniques work equally effectively on PhD holders or high-school drop-outs. The paper also notes that The Haredi world, with its emphasis on belief in a charismatic leader, complete obedience and discipline, leaves many of those searching for a deeper religious experience particularly susceptible. As an example, there’s the incredible case of Goel Ratzon, a serial sex abuser who recently got his comeuppance. Read more
You’d think that El Al, the Israeli national airline, would know how to accommodate religious flyers, including the ultra-Orthodox. But the crazy (and the over-entitled) was strong on this flight: An El-Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv was turned into an “11-hour nightmare” after hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish passengers refused to sit next to women. According to those on board the flight descended into chaos because of their demands. The flight was full with Israelis, secular, orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews — known as Haredim — flying home to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Even though the passengers had been pre-assigned seats before boarding, the ultra-Orthodox Jews refused to accept the arrangements because their beliefs required that men and women were segregated. Read more
