A Father's Anger

Assailants wearing black veils beheaded three Christian schoolgirls and seriously wounded a fourth in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi. The girls were among a group of students from a private Christian high school who were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation in Poso Kota subdistrict on their way to class, police Major Riky Naldo said. The heads of three victims were found several kilometres from their bodies. Two were left near a police station and another in front of a newly built Christian church.

On several blogs more eloquent than mine, extreme anger has been expressed at these killings of religious motivation. That's right, not senseless killings, but killings of religious motivation. Get used to it. They are fighting a jihad whether we are willing or not.

I will not speak any of my religious or political anger over this act of barbarism, although it is ample. I will speak as a father. These girls no doubt had fathers and mothers who loved them very much. Parents who worked to afford to send them to school. As a father, my anger is righteous and to the core of my being. It does not matter to me what religion these girls practiced. It does not matter to me where they were traveling, or what the motivations of their killers were. The killers of these girls are savages. They do not qualify even as animals. Do not dismiss these killings as religiously motivated. They were motivated by hate, not a peaceful religion. When the killers are caught, they will no doubt plead religious motivations. If that is accpetable, then a rational man must also accept that the religion involved is one of hate and intolerance. Once that is accepted, reality has arrived.

But beside all that, if my little girl were among these innocents slaughtered and desecrated under the mantle of religous righteousness, I would hunt down the killers myself, and take great pride and great pleasure in sending them to hell. Regardless of the consequences. If these children's fathers do the same, who can blame them?

UPDATE

"I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," Prince Charles stated, "I will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week." Chuck, you just might want to keep your limey butt at home. Who the hell do you think you are anyway? The King of England?