Are California’s infidel schools promoting pork?
flockwoodThere’s a strange claim in a New York Times story about California Muslims who home school their children that raises red flags for me as a reporter. Can you spot it? Here’s what the Times writes: “Hina Khan-Mukhtar decided to tutor her three sons at home and to send them to a small Muslim school cooperative established by some 15 Bay Area families for subjects like Arabic, science and carpentry. She made up her mind after visiting her oldest son’s prospective public school kindergarten, where each pupil had assembled a scrapbook titled ‘Why I Like Pigs.’ Khan-Mukhtar read with dismay what the children had written about the delicious taste of pork, barred by Islam. ‘I remembered at that age how important it was to fit in,’ she said.”
I attended kindergarten. I sent my two kids to kindergarten. And it’s hard for me to imagine kindergartners writing anything of substance — let alone paeans to pork. And I grew up in Red State America, not the politically correct Bay area. That said, I’d hardly be dismayed to learn that American children like the taste of The Other White Meat. Most Americans schools still serve pork, don’t they?
March 26th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Most “Christian” Americans don’t have any visceral understanding of just how anti-pork the Semitic religions are. In the bad old days, when other “Christians,” mainly of the Orthodox variety, engaged in pogroms against the Jews, one of their favorite “sports” was forcing Jews to eat pork. My local Kroger put up a big display of hams around Christmas, and above it they had a paper sleigh with Santa being pulled by . . . pigs. They were kind of cute, with little curly pipe cleaner tails, but right there beside the hams was a bunch of Hebrew National kosher beef hot dogs. I started laughing when I saw it, and tried to explain to the baffled assistant manager why I thought it was funny. I suspect she was Baptist, and never gave it a second thought.
March 26th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Well, it depends on the degree of observance one wishes to maintain, Caleb. I can remember the first Jewish friend I ever made as an eighteen year-old greenhorn college freshman back in the Stone Age of the Carter administration. One day we went through the breakfast line in the cafeteria together, and he loaded up on bacon the same as I did. When I asked him what he was doing, thinking that Jews just simply didn’t eat pork at all, he good-naturedly told me, “I’m raisin’ the price of bacon, what are YOU doin’?” So was he a bad Jew, or was I (as Frank would phrase it) a young Appalachian “Bubba” guilty of a stereotype?
March 26th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Only a minority of American Jews are observant of dietary restrictions. Both of my parents were raised in Orthodox homes, but joined a Reform synagogue. We never had ham or pork in the house, but my mother would sometimes cook bacon. Why? Because she liked bacon. But she would never have thought of serving ham or pork. This is not consistent, but that’s how it is. We also never had shellfish, but my father liked shrimp and would sometimes order it in a restaurant.
Caleb’s anecdote reminds me of an incident from my youth. There was a good delicatessen in my home town of Washington, D.C. One time we were in the store when a couple of black guys on their lunch break asked for ham sandwiches at the counter. They were told that the store didn’t have ham. The customers couldn’t make sense of how a lunch counter wasn’t stocked to make a ham sandwich.
One last anecdote. This winter I was in the Miami area visiting a friend. We went to a popular breakfast spot with a very Jewish clientele. My friend said, “Do you see something strange about the menu?” I said, “They serve bacon.” He said, “You got it.”
March 26th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Islam is a filthy religion! President Bush says that it is a great religion and one of peace. He says that we must treat the Koran with respect. He has sent the order down the chain of command that any soldier mistreating this filthy book will be punished. No such protection exists for the Holy Bible. Yes, Bush has gotten down on his knobby knees and kissed Mohammad square on his ass! Then they want to worry about Obama’s schooling!
The Jews killed the Lord Jesus. They killed early Christians. They would kill every Christian in the world today if they didn’t need us to protect them. At least the Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet! The Jews believe that it is an sin to say that Christ was God in the flesh!
Yet these goofy preachers get on there and cry and say that we have to bow down to every whim of Israel.
This spring I intend to purchase a pet Pot Bellied Pig and name him Mohammad! Now put that in your Jihad and smoke it!
March 26th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Bart, so nice of you to take time off from writing about gay sex to contribute to this thread.
In all your Bible reading, perhaps you didn’t notice that Jesus was a Jew. The early Christians were also Jews. The people who killed them were Romans, who were not Jews.
I realize that your goal in life is to annoy people, but your hate-filled rants only corrode yourself. Get some counseling. Seriously. Hanging out with lunatics like Fred Phelps isn’t doing you any good.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
That’s funny, Larry. Not long ago, I fixed, as Prester John would say, a big bait of soup beans, and being from up in the country, put the requisite country ham in it. Some of my son’s friends stopped by, and I warned one of them, who was Jewish, that country ham was in it. “Yep,” he said, “That’s how my parents make it, too.” He even knew how to crumble the cornbread in it. So, Prester John, perhaps that rebubbafication movement is afoot after all.
Most people go to law school to study law, but I ended up learning to cook. In those days, Julia Child still toddled around Harvard Square, and Joyce Chen’s Chinese grocery was awfully exotic. My cooking partner and best friend was an Orthodox Jew whose parents had fled Russia. He bent the rules sufficiently to allow him to cook in my kitchen and eat what we cooked, but he didn’t eat pork or shellfish. He loved to tell about going with another of our classmates down to North Georgia, where he was unable to exactly explain to the guy’s older relatives why he couldn’t even eat the vegetables at the church dinner they went to.
When my son was born, I asked my buddy to be a godparent, so my son may be the only Episcopalian in Lexington to have an Orthodox Jew as a godfather. Before the baptism, the priest told him that if there was anything in the liturgy he wasn’t comfortable with, just not to say it. Not a bad practice if you ask me, a little tolerance right here in Bubbaland . . .
March 26th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Bart, you get your Biblical guidance from Fred Phelps, who is a disbarred lawyer, a coward, and a cretin. And since he’s not paying the millions he owes from the lawsuit he lost, we can add “deadbeat.” Some mentor you’ve chosen. Is that the best you could do?
March 26th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Caleb, as I’m sure you know, strictly following the dietary rules means not only avoiding certain food, but avoiding anything which touches them, such as dinnerware. In a kosher home, there are two sets of dishes, one for dairy and one for meat, and two other sets of dishes for Passover.
Needless to say, most people bend the rules somewhere. My father used to take me to Opening Day of the baseball season, which sometimes fell during Passover. His interpretation of the rule about not eating unleavened bread was that it didn’t apply to ballpark food.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
You know, Bart, we were having a little chat here, a little cross cultural dialogue, tell a story, laugh a little bit. No one insulting anyone, no one sending anyone to hell, even for eating pork. And you come in and condemn everyone to hell, plus repeat the most anti-semitic statement in history, a statement that resulted in pogroms and anti-Jewish violence throughout history, that the Jews killed Jesus.
Larry is absolutely right. Even if you believe the texts of the New Testament (which I generally don’t), they don’t say that the Jews killed Jesus, they say that the Romans did. As Larry points out, the Romans weren’t Jewish. In her book “The Origin of Satan,” Elaine Pagels shows that the Gospel of Mark is essentially an anti-Semitic text, meant to drive a wedge between Christian and Jew. And that’s the basis of the gospels in the New Testament.
Bart, I’m going to lay it on the line. I kind of like you, if only because you’re often funny, and I like funny. But this is going too far. Every one of us has a conscience, and we’re called upon by God to use it. I don’t believe that God expects us to follow rules that we don’t morally agree with. If I truly believed that God really truly would send one person to hell and another to heaven solely because the one called him Allah and the other Jesus, without regard to anything else in the people’s hearts, I wouldn’t worship that God. Period. And if you choose to worship this God, not because he’s morally right, but solely to avoid being sent to hell yourself, then you’re a moral coward.
If I thought God was condemning people to hell just because they’re Jews, or gay, or lesbian, or Moslem, or atheist, I’d be the first to sign up to go with them, and we’d all scream throughout eternity together, in endless protest to an unjust God. But I don’t believe that. If you do, then there’s something seriously wrong with your moral compass.
So, which is it, Bart? Do you agree with the statements you attribute to God, or are you just a coward?
March 26th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Bart, what you wrote about Jesus and the early Christians is historically inaccurate. What you wrote about the verdict being overturned is nothing more than a hopeful guess on your part.
But speaking about not responding, you didn’t counter my calling Phelps a coward and a cretin. So, by the force of your own argument, you agree with those assessments.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
On the subject of the damage award, Bart, did Bro. Fred post a supersedeas bond to secure the judgment while he appeals, or is he just dodging service? There are lots of things you can BS me about, Bart, but appellate practice is not one of them.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
No, Bart, I got it quite well the first time. You quote anti-Semitic texts. Fine; I’d suggest moving on to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion next; at least it’s a little bit newer. My question wasn’t what the King James Version of the Bible says, but what YOU believe. Which is it? Do you believe this garbage is morally correct, or are you just a coward trying to avoid being sent to hell by parroting the party line?
March 26th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Bart, if you didn’t already know that the New Testament was generally considered an anti-Semitic text, you’re the last person in America who didn’t. Every serious biblical scholar for the last hundred years has said that.
And, by your answer, you just admitted that you believe in this anti-semitic garbage as well. If you were just a coward, I’d be inclined to give you a break, but you appear to have drunk the Kool Ade. I’m sorry.
And what about that supersedeas bond? Is it posted yet?
March 26th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
That’s fine, Bart. If your God really is in control, and really will send me to hell because I’d rather believe a hundred years of serious scholarship than an anti-semitic Baptist preacher, I’m okay with that. I’d be proud to go, as would every other right thinking person, just as many right thinking Germans followed the Jews into the gas chambers rather than participate in the Holocaust.
Threats are inherently immoral. If the only reason that you believe and say what you do is to avoid being sent to hell by some vengeful God, then you’re no better than the concentration camp guards who were only “following orders.”
March 26th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Then by your definition, Bart, I’m not a Christian. Luckily, though, the majority of Christendom doesn’t require you to check your brain at the door, or to believe things that you consider to be immoral. And God knows I wouldn’t want to be put in the same category as Fred Phelps, the Baptist preacher in question. As far as what anyone else thinks of my ideas, I’m sure they’re capable of expressing themselves. My ideas have never been popular, and I don’t imagine they will become so just because they don’t agree with yours.
March 26th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
That’s right, Bart. You and Bro. Fred are the last two Christians in America.
March 26th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
In all the exchanges, Bart never contradicted the assertion that Fred Phelps is a coward and a cretin. It’s indisputable that he’s a disbarred lawyer, and from the way Bart is ducking and weaving, it’s a good guess that Phelps never posted a bond and is a deadbeat.
What kind of a sick individual pickets funerals? And how warped do you have to be to follow someone like that?
March 26th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Oh, Bart, here’s something else for you. You love “Star Trek”, but there’s bad news! William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk, is a Jew! Yes, a certifiable heathen. And it gets worse. Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock (whom you once called Dr. Spock), is also a Jew! And yet it gets worse. The creators of the show were also Jews.
Now go out in your backyard and burn your Star Trek dolls, preferably without damaging the lawn.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Larry, I once saw an interview with Nimoy in which he told a story that one time a woman ran up to him and said, “You’re Dr. Spock! I raised four children with your book!” Ya reckon they turned out to be Vulcans?
March 26th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Bart, you should definitely stop using the Internet. As for the corn, that’s up to you.
But your line of it’s being “just silly”… “Just silly”? In any case, you were the one who originally brought up “Star Trek.” But we can always switch to professional wrestling. Did you use steroids? Are you suffering from “roid rage” (speaking of raging)? Or is that a “silly” question?
March 26th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Bart, I notice that you still haven’t denied that Fred Phelps is a coward, cretin, and deadbeat, and that people who picket funerals are sick and warped. So we’ll just assume that you agree.
Your analogy to Lot is weak. If Lot had partaken in the entertainments of Sodom, I imagine that he would have been in trouble. What would Fred Phelps say about your worship of graven images, and images created by Jews, no less? Your master would not be pleased. Why are you watching Jew-created images, probably rife with dangerous subliminal messages, when you should be reading the Bible? And then you even collected these images. Is that interacting with the world, or buying into its wickedness? Why would you have to interact in this way? Obviously, you don’t have to, but you have made this choice.
Down, down, down into the pit of eternal fire goes the silly soul of Bart McQueary, chokeslammed for all eternity.
March 26th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Bart, I don’t want further response from you, now or at any time.
March 26th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Bart, since you promised no further response, we can now add “liar” to your list of attributes.
Now kiss your Captain Kirk doll good night and go to sleep.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
The comments section of each of Frank’s blog entries seems destined to become another episode of “The Bart Show”
I struggle at times, as I am sure many others do as well, with the choice between “not feeding the troll” and “come on, throw him some kibble- it’ll be funny!”
Now seriously, this stuff is funny. Not really engaging, helpful, enlightening, or germane to the thread- but very amusing nonetheless.
However, I think the general tone and disruption to otherwise intelligent exchange has gotten out of hand. As witty as this banter can be, I do wonder if it really does a quality religion blog like this justice.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Jesus was from the Tribe of Judah- the Jews-Luke 3:33. They were all collectively called Hebrews. Just as those who live in Kentucky are called Kentuckians, but all are collectively called Americans. Ironically the Muslims are also collectively Hebrews as they are descendants of Abraham-see Genesis 14:13.
Jesus was historically killed by Jews and gentiles alike-hence the name King of the Jews written above his head on the cross -Matthew 27:35. Also note that Jesus, before dying, ask God to forgive them-for they know not what they do. Luke 23:24–we should all be as forgiving for someone trying to kill our spirit.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Take for instance Lot. He lived in Sodom. He interacted with the people there presumably buying and selling. Yet he was a good man. 3-26-06 7:34
Lot was actually a business man-of the world-this is why he moved from the luscious plains to wicked Sodom. This is also why he Lingered and had to be forcibly removed from the city by the angels in Genesis 1916. it was only through the intercessory prayer of Abraham that Lot was spared.
March 29th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Lot a good man? He who offered his two virgin daughters for the men of Sodom to do with as they liked, if only they’d leave his angel guests alone? He who got drunk and…well, you can read the rest of it in the Bible. For God’s sake though, just don’t hold up Lot as an example to anybody. I don’t care if he was as drunk as a fool, anybody that could do what he did was/is no good. Which brings us back to the questions Caleb and Larry’s dialogue inspire: do you reckon that Genesis account of Lot is literal history, or the ancient Israelites’ folk tale about how their warring neighbor Moabites and Ammonites were established in the region?
March 30th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Bro John: I am sure that is why bachelor bart feels that lot was a righteous man-women are beneath him, and not worthy of being in bart’s elect program-version.
March 30th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Bachelor Bart: Your are beginning to contradict your own version–A righteous man never drinks-according to your scorecard-much less get drunk; then you compare yourself with Lot of all people.
Do read the rest of the story-God wanted Lot to go to the mountains-Lot wanted to stay in a city called Zoar-so God ’spared’ that city from destruction also. Lot finally ended up in a cave-probably fearing those towns people also. Lot was totally out of God’s will the whole time. Had he not been related to Abraham in the first place-he too would have perished.
March 30th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Okay, so god hates “fags” and loves an incestuous pedophile? Wonder if there’s anything we should read into that idea for anybody who’d support it. Your god sounds as arbitrary and angry as you and Fred Phelps, Bart, which just might mean he’s an extension of your own embittered, Harrodsburg-hating imagination and whatever preconceived notion that you want to read into the Bible. Your Thessalonians argument won’t hold water either, since even if Paul wrote it, he was a witness to the stoning of Stephen, not the crucifixion of Jesus, and all four Gospels agree that Pilate signed the order for that and his soldiers carried the order out. And even the Thessalonians sentiment contradicts what Paul wrote later in Romans, although both Romans and Thessalonians have been responsible for a lot of unrighteous violence over many centuries. Go watch Star Trek, I very much doubt it’ll get you into as much trouble as Fred’s reading of Scripture.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:59 am
The story of Lot is told in Genesis chapters 18-19. God wanted him to go to the mountains, Lot wanted to settle in the City of Zoar (Gen 19:22) finally settling in the mountains (Gen 19:30). The girls seduced him on wine to “preserve” the seed of their father. This custom was not ‘outlawed ‘ until Leviticus chapter 18; which was well after the Exodus. It is not a ’sin’ until after the law given.-else none of us would be here for Cain and Abel both had to marry sisters-for Eve to be the mother of all living to be true (Genesis 3:20). This custom was still being practiced in Jesus time-hence the pharisee trying to trip him up in Matthew 22:25-33.
As far as the thought that Lot did not know what he was doing-well the old saying that if he were that drunk, and given his age, he would not have been able to father a child hold true-to put it in nice terms.
Matthew 15:11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
This is the scripture that both Jews and gentiles alike understand that God decides what corrupts-not man, therefore all foods are made ‘clean’ by Jesus and God’s righteousness.
Matthew 15:14 Let them alone; they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.