Virtual Methodist

A few days ago a facebook friend posted a video of Brigitte Gabriel of "ACT! for America" verbally eviscerating a young Muslim woman who asked a question of her and other panellists at Heritage Foundation event. I won't post the video myself as I won't give either organisation easy hits as they are both highly media-savvy right wing institutions that, like our own insidious Britain First, frequently use hit counts as a measure of their reach... If you are interested you can do a bit of googling... The video produced the usual range of people praising her forthrightness and dismissal of political correctness... And it chimed well with some of the negative things that were said here recently about Islam... But there was little in it that I hadn't heard before... Dressing up general prejudice in righteous indignation. And to be fair, if Ms. Gabriel's life story as a Lebanese Maronite Christian is to be believed, she has good reason to be, at very least, wary...

I took an extra day off this week in lieu of the couple I missed in Easter week due to one thing or another, and by the time I got back to work and the world of facebook I discovered that a self-described "progressive" political party had pressed the self-destruct button, probably jaundicing young political activists of that ilk for a generation, and that Pastor James McConnell had lit the blue touchpaper on a whole heap of inter-faith fun and games . I had intimations of the latter before my couple of days off, when I got one of those closing "what do you think of...?" questions at our midweek Bible study, but not having heard/read the Pastor's comments or seen/heard the Nolan Show (given that I avoid it like the plague for the sake of my health), I was relatively circumspect in my comments, at that point. Some of those in the room had serious concerns about aspects of Islam in the light of the recent story regarding Meriam Ibrahim , the pregnant woman sen...