The 21 surviving Koreans who were held hostage by the Taliban recently returned home and are now speaking about their ordeal. What they are saying shows the dark side of Islam, but also highlights the sort of contradictions that are prevalent in every religion.
One of the hostages describes how they were repeatedly beaten by their captors in order to force them to convert to Islam:
“We were beaten by them many times, being forced to convert to Islam,” Je Chang-hee told a news conference with 20 other fellow ex-hostages at a hospital south of Seoul, where the Christian volunteers have been receiving medical treatment since they returned home 10 days ago.
“They kicked us and beat us with guns and tree branches. Sometimes, they aimed their bayonet-topped rifles at our necks,” Je said, adding that he had been held in a mountain cave with three other hostages. Je said he and the others pretended to recite Islamic conversion prayers by muttering some Korean words.
I suppose it says a lot about a religion when you have to beat people senseless and threaten them with death before they will agree to convert to it. But this goes to the heart of all religious belief, not just that of Islam. All people of faith believe that their way is the one true way. Modern fundamentalist Christians tend to try and convert people peacefully, though they do use a lot of backhanded trickery and double talk to do so. In past times, however, they were just as likely to kill non-Christians as to try and convert them. Islam, on the other hand, has a long history of violence toward those of other faiths, a tradition which too many of them all to happily have not abandoned.
The hostages contrast the beatings with the kindness showed them by some of their captors:
“Some Taliban were friendly, as they asked what our names were and gave us Afghan names. They played with mobile phones and later allowed me to make a telephone call to South Korea so I talked with my husband,” said Suh Myung-hwa, 29, whose younger brother, Kyung-seok, 27, was also among the hostages. She also was able to exchange notes with her brother.
Ko Se-hun said one Taliban bought him Korean-made sneakers a day after he saw his sandals were worn out.
Does it really matter that some of them were friendly? Do simple kindnesses offset the horror of captivity and the constant fear of death?
In debates with Christians about their religion, particularly those involving their holy scripture, they love to point out all of the great deeds carried out by Christians around the world and throughout history. They delight in quoting biblical passages which teach all sorts of goodness. None of that, and I mean none of it, offsets the absolute vileness and hatred that so many of them display toward homosexuals, atheists, and others who don’t conform to their view of the world. What’s more, not a single bit of any of their “Christian morality” is dependent upon Christianity.
The 23 Koreans who headed to Afghanistan were foolish for going in the first place. They were even more foolish for wandering around the countryside without taking the proper precautions. Two of them paid the ultimate price for their folly. Even so, those who put them through such a horrible ordeal are barbaric scum. It doesn’t matter that some of them showed signs of friendliness. Their participation makes them just as evil as those who murdered two of the hostages. Then again, no one said that one of the friendly ones wasn’t also one of the murderers.
Moderate Muslims share the blame for the current state of the world with their insane brethren and the United States’ incompetent leaders. They have failed to contain the radicalism that is spreading like a cancer among themselves. The West may have fanned the flames of the radical ideology of terrorism, but moderate Muslims have let them burn higher and stronger. One could be inclined to believe that, deep down, they, too, want to see a world living under Islam. I rather believe that they are just powerless against the zeal of the nutjob extremists. After all, moderate Christians seem to be just as powerless against their overzealous brothers and sisters.
Ultimately, this whole hostage situation is a strong case against religion. The hostages went to Afghanistan in the first place, blatantly ignoring all of the warnings they received from that country’s government as well as their own, because of their blind faith in an invisible sky man. Had they gone there of their own volition, they might have been more inclined to put their safety in the hands of, you know, real people, rather than the invisible dude on high. They were captured, and two of them killed, because extremists from another religion have a chip on their shoulders and love to chop off heads and wallow in blood — traditions going way, way back in their “peaceful” religion.
Are we ever going to flush all of this religious nonsense down the drain and be done with it?
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