SAUDI RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY SAYS GOD SENT THE TSUNAMI TO PUNISH GAYS AND OTHER SINNERS

According to a transcript released by the Middle East Media Research Institute,  a leading Saudi religious authority blamed the Tsunami on "homosexuality," "fornicators," "sexual perversions," and other sins and sinners in a declaration on Saudi Arabia's al-Majd TV December 31. In an undoubted reference to the famously gay-friendly Thai resort town of Phuket and other SouthEast Asian tourist resorts, the cleric said that "corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion." And, in words that could be read as incitement to attacks on the "perverts," the cleric added that "These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities, and even entire countries, are Allah's punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims."

These chilling words do not come from a run-of-the-mill cleric. SHEIK SALEH IBN FAWZAN AL-FAWZAN, the author of the Saudi kingdom's religious curriculum, is a member of the Council of Fatwa and Research, the Imam of Prince Mitaeb Mosque in Riyadh and a professor at Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia's main center of learning for the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. According to the independent Saudi Information Agency, "Al-Fawzan, a leading opponent of curriculum reform, opposes elections and demonstrations as Western influences, is against Arab women marrying non- Arab Muslims and has issued a fatwa forbidding the watching of television."

Al-Fawzan has "threatened to behead a Saudi writer and scholar, Sheik Hassan Al-Maliki, for his criticism of Wahhabism, according to SIA. Al-Maliki was fired from his position with the ministry of education after writing a 50- page paper criticizing Al-Fawzan's book 'Al-Tawheed.'"

MEANWHILE, THE AMERICAN TALIBAN are pushing hard in school districts across the country for the adoption of the anti-evolution, anti-Darwin "intelligent design" curriculum, as the Christers call it. This anti-scientific religious primitivism posits that all human life is directed by a higher intelligent being and denies the findings of 175 years of research demonstrating rather conclusively man's evolution from lower life forms. In Salon on January 10, Michelle Goldberg has a first-rate, on-the-ground report from Dover, Pa., "The New Monkey Trial," about one community's battle over imposition of an "intelligent design" curriculum. Goldberg's fine reporting shows how, "by persuading the Dover school board to teach creationism, Christian zealots have provoked a showdown over the status of not just evolutionary theory, but science itself." And theanti-science movement has prominent Republican allies, like Pennsylvania's Sen. Rick Santorum. This article will scare the pants off you--don't miss it....

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT AGREES WITH THE SAUDI SHEIK: According to an AP dispatch today, the number of U.S. government and Pentagon translators from Arabic and Farsi fired from their jobs for being gay is now up to 26. The Servicemembers' Legal Defense Network "contends the records show that the military - at a time when it and U.S. intelligence agencies don't have enough Arabic speakers - is putting its anti-gay stance ahead of national security," the AP goes on to report....At the same time, "The Pentagon tried to develop a bomb that would turn an opposing army 'gay,' according to newly declassified documents. The papers, obtained by the New Scientist and the Sunshine Project - an organization that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons - show that during the Clinton presidency the military attempted to create a series of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops." So reports 365gay.com. One weapon that the Pentagon worked on is described as an "aphrodisiac" that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other....

FALWELL DISCIPLE KIDNAPS TSUNAMI KID VICTIMS FOR CHRISTIAN EDUCATION: With reams of hysterical copy coming out of Southeast Asia speculating about children--orphaned by the Tsunami--being kidnapped for sexual slavery, here's an example of Tsunami-victim child abuse that isn't getting nearly as much attention. "Seems some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Last week the Indonesian Embassy tried to quell rumors among Singapore's Muslim population that Christian missionaries were about to adopt 300 tsunami orphans from the conflicted region of Aceh, and raise the Muslim children as Christians. This week, a missionary group from Virginia called WorldHelp (directed by the first-ever graduate from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University), has done just that, airlifting the 300 children out of Aceh to Jakarta, where they will be raised in a Christian orphanage that is yet to be built," says January 13 issue of The Revealer, the excellent daily news bulletin of New York University's Center for Religion and the Media, adding: "While large religious relief organizations have policies against proselytizing after catastrophes, smaller groups like WorldHelp have presented the tsunami as an opportunity to make converts in places that are normally 'closed to the gospel." On their website, WorldHelp appealed for donations by saying: 'These children are homeless, destitute, traumatized, orphaned, with nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. If we can place them in a Christian children's home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people.'" The full Washington Post repor on this is available by clicking here.