North Koreans & Ohio Teachers Persecuted For Displaying Bibles
In North Korea... The regime is persecuting Christians.
Those caught with bibles are treated just like animalas according to a recent report.
Christian Persecution Blog reported:
According to a 48 page report called "Prison Without Bars" by the independent US Commission on International Religious Freedom, those in North Korea who confessed religious belief faced very harsh penalties inside the communist regime.Likewise in Ohio... Teachers are also persecuted if they are found with a bible.
Some of the refugees interviewed said that if they were sent back into North Korea from China and they were a person who had religious beliefs that they were treated "just like animals" and also even if they had a bible they could be arrested. Others could disappear as well as be murdered.
Mount Vernon News reported:
Hundreds of students, joined by some parents and community members, gathered at the Spirit Rock outside of Mount Vernon High School in a show of support for middle school teacher John Freshwater.The ACLU approved of the school district's decision.
Freshwater complied with requests from the school administration to take down a display of the Ten Commandments, but refuses to remove a Bible from his desk at school. Freshwater said the administration’s order is a violation of his First Amendment rights. The Bible is a source of personal inspiration to him, Freshwater said, and helps him get through the day.
Twenty sheets of paper with lines for 48 signatures each were being signed by the students, some from the high school and some from the middle school. The petition read: “By signing this petition I am showing my support for Mr. John Freshwater and his stance for displaying his Bible. He had all rights to do so, and we stand by his side.”
More-- Here.
posted by Gateway Pundit at 4/20/2008 10:52:00 AM
6 Comments:
RE: Likewise in Ohio
Separation of Church & State folks. If you need to express yourself wear a cross or pin. If I were a teacher and I displayed a small figurine of the Mother Goddess on my desk, maybe a small Pentacle or maybe (oh NO!!) a figurine of the Horned God, I ’d be fired immediately. Of course there would be a fabricated reason for the firing, don’t want the ACLU coming for a visit.
I still net nasty looks for the Pentacle I’ve been wearing for the past 25 years. I was even asked to remove it at one place of employ. Needless to say the answer was no as I walked out the door (it was retail sales).
If you have one you have to have them all.
Pagan and Proud
Inari
The obligatory "if the book on the teacher's desk had been the Koran, would this be an issue" post.
It's called separation of church and state, not eradication of church by the state.
I fail to see how a bible on a desk is an act of congress to establish a national religion.
Separation of church and state is a good thing. History proves this quite clearly. Look at all the theocracies in history. None ever brought forth something good.
But...
I wonder how the ACLU would handle someone running around in a burka... I'm sure that would be perfectly acceptable. After all... it's "cultural enrichment", something a couple of nazis like us won't stop (if you're "islamophob" in Europe, you're labelled "nazi" and "right-wing extremist). Because our leaders know what's good for us, whether we agree or not doesn't matter. We, the people, are not elite enough to decide ourselves.
If a teacher really needs his bible there, at his desk, fine. Let him be. I may not agree with him on his belief, but hell... As long as he's not shoving it into my or my children's face I don't really care.
++
"separation of church & state".. that is the same question i've been asking about schools accommodating Islam.. unfortunately, nothing new..
just a sample:
Spreading Islam in American Public Schools
Accommodation as an Islamist Political Instrument
excerpt:
[First, we heard about a large group of Somali Muslim airport cabbies in Minneapolis refusing to provide service to travelers carrying alcohol or using dogs. At first, the airport moved to accommodate, but then the Somalis lost the battle to impose coercive interpretations of sharia (Islamic law) upon airport travelers. We recently have also seen airports, schools and universities agreeing to install foot-washing stations for Muslim airport cabbies and students at a significant cost to taxpayers in the name of special accommodations for Muslims. In Lincoln Park, Michigan, a few Muslim women insisted that a co-ed health club to which they signed up provide them a women’s-only room for exercise. Fitness USA acquiesced under fears of litigation despite the fact that the Muslim women signed up for no such guarantee with their enrollment contract.
In the past few weeks we’ve seen the Islamist political agenda in the U.S. carry itself further bringing the debate to Carver Elementary School in Oak Park, California. A substitute teacher brought forth a complaint to the district’s school board that a 15 minute break in classroom teaching was carved out for Muslim prayers. The influx of over 100 Somali Muslim students from another failed school brought with it swift efforts by Carver administration to accommodate to their needs. The issue has since carried far beyond San Diego and simple personal accommodation. The debate centers on the limits to which accommodation can impose changes and obligations upon others and on the entire system. Some argue that religious freedom is secondary to classroom instruction time and the strict separation of religion and state. Others have contrarily taken the opportunity and suggested, in all fairness, that public schools have a more global “daily prayer time policy”.]
Slouching Toward Sharia
excerpt:
[To “accommodate,” “implement,” or seek to “apply” Sharia law, no matter which way it is massaged into place, is to skip entirely the internal debate for control, expression, and application of what Sharia is, and hand it over as is to the current Islamist infrastructure. To empower current Islamist jurists and benevolently seek an understanding of how British law can come to terms with it is to dangerously accept the financial, theocratic, and political underpinnings of this backward ideology, which has dominated the theological Muslim community for the past seven centuries or more, generating the body of law which is Sharia today.]
In War against Islamism, We Must Listen to the Words of Our Enemies
excerpts:
[Mr. President, your intentions of an ideological liberation of the Muslim world are on the mark. But an effective execution in this contest of ideas has yet to even begin. A national and, more importantly, a global, critical engagement of American ideas against Islamist ideas has yet to take place in any measurable fashion. How can we speak about bringing liberty and freedom to the Muslim world when the Islamist mindset remains effectively unchallenged by mainstream media and politicians in our public arena? How can we liberate ideas we never engaged?
Sadly, our nation was left Monday evening without a clue about the ideas which separate secular liberal democracies from Islamist movements. The core ideological conflict between Americanism and the militant Islamists remains inferred, rather than in front. It is time to bring it to the fore. It is time to expose Islamists – domestically and on foreign soil – who exploit our protections of religious freedom in exchange for the toxic advocacy of their own theocratic political agenda.]
[The tactic of terrorism is employed for the furtherance of radical political Islam. If radical political Islam is our enemy, non-violent political Islam is certainly not our friend. Muslims who believe in and advocate universal liberty, freedom, and pluralism should hear us honestly advocate for them and help them succeed against the Islamists. Playing both sides will further hurt our credibility and undermine our security. Muslims who believe in and advocate political Islam should hear us articulate a national strategy to discredit and disavow their ideas in the ideological market place of the Muslim world.
Will the candidates for leadership of the free world ever be tested on these questions going into Super Tuesday and into the conventions and beyond? Probably not.
Americans have not forgotten about terrorism. Quite to the contrary. It is still a primary concern among voters. But rather, the politics of victimization and the minority politics of political correctness have trumped reason in this most vital debate of the 21st Century.]
lots more here..
==
I'm a parent of a student in Mount Vernon City Schools, and I also contributed a couple of comments to the previous post about this topic.
Drawing a parallel here between North Korea and Mount Vernon is ridiculous and imflammatory and real wrong in more ways than I can readily enumerate. I do recognize the satirical intent. But equating a mostly well-meaning and sometimes unwise school board in rural America with the evil power that presides over one of the darkest corners of the world -- well, how could that be helpful?
On the contrary. I believe this sort of nonsense makes conservatives (a) stupider, because we refuse to make obvious moral distinctions, (b) meaner, because we become more willing to fling scurrilous stuff at undeserving folks, and (c) weaker, because uncommitted people who recognize (a) and (b) will want to have nothing to do with us. And this bothers me precisely because I am a conservative. I want to defend the values and faith of our civilization and to persuade others to defend them too. I've always thought we should (and mostly did) meet a higher rhetorical standard.
I'd be interested to hear from the proprietor about this.
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