Ji...hawg?

Sun: 05'Cancer
Moon: 22'Aquarius

You know, I've spoken about spiritual warfare before.  Last time it was in the context of what Pagans face from some of the more determined religious fanatics of the Christian Right here at home. 

Conscience forces me to address it, however, when I see another ethnicity being attacked for their beliefs - quite literally.  So it was with great disgust that I noticed an article on the HuffPo about "Ji-hawg" bullets - bullets painted with pork-laced paint, meant specifically for use against Muslims.

I am obviously not Muslim.  And, being military, a good many of my friends have gone "downrange" to Afghanistan and Iraq.  We don't talk about it often - I have not been to the active war zones, though I've been close enough to earn the hazard pay, so I don't have the same experiences and I am loathe to reopen old war wounds.  Some of them suffer from PTSD induced by their experiences there.  Some will struggle with it for the rest of their lives.

That being said, I have no personal animosity towards Muslims.  I hold a strong philosophical and religious contention with the more extremist sects over their treatment of women - however, I hold that same point of contention towards anyone who would willingly subject half their population to second-class status and brainwash them into accepting as their "God-given lot in life."  On the occasions when I have spoken with some of my friends about their experiences downrange, I have called them out for the second-nature use of the racist, demeaning, dehumanizing language used to describe the local Muslims that came from their time there and reminded them that they are no longer in a war zone - it is not necessary to remain psychologically ready to kill.

Under no circumstances, no matter how extreme the rhetoric on either side, can I condone or even silently accept the use of a peoples' unique beliefs to demonize them, or to inflict a sense of harm upon them.  Yes, it seems silly on the surface - "contact with pigs + death before ritual cleansing = going to hell" - though I would like to believe that Allah is a little more forgiving with His followers than that (particularly if He actually validates the radical belief about martyrdom - which seems equally silly to me).  Still - these people take their religion as seriously as I have ever seen anyone take anything.  I guess one must, to be willing to stop whatever it is one is doing or plan one's days around the muezzin's call.  Even an erroneous interpretation of one passage in the Qu'ran may be taken as a great and intentional insult to all of Islam, with the history America has in that region of the world.

The company making these bullets claims that they are for "peace."  I am sorry, but no weapon ever invented has ever ensured peace - not even nuclear ones - and peace enforced at gunpoint is a cease-fire only, just waiting for the next outrage to flare up even worse than before.  I think it represents a dangerous, and desperate, escalation in the already-high level of violence willingly embraced by those who hate and fear all Muslims because of the acts of a few, and while I foresee these bullets remaining a relatively "niche" market restricted only to a few die-hard, bigoted survivalists holed up in their concrete bunkers in the middle of nowhere (the military will not purchase them - the backlash over the Biblically-inscribed rifles was bad enough), there is absolutely nothing positive that can come of deliberate sacrilege and blasphemy of another person's sincerely-held religious beliefs.  Many Arabs, in particular the more extremist Muslim Arabs, still subscribe to the doctrine of "an eye for an eye" and this can only inflame them to still-greater acts of violence.

Let me make it clear, if I have not already: I do not in any way condone holy war from ANY side here.  I consider it to be the ultimate in oxymorons and the height of hypocrisy, when both sides claim to value life. 

Using matters of the spirit - belief and prayer - to attack the mind and spirit of another person is what Witches would call "black magick."  To bring religion into the already-brutal business of war is to take the highest ideals of religion, philosophy and spirituality and drag them through the worst mix of mud and blood imaginable.  It does not bless the conflict, it only stains the ideals beyond recovery.  "Crusade," "jihad" - is matters not what the word is, the concept itself is beyond hideous.  I can only think that these people allow their hatred and their fear to act for them, and cover themselves with the trappings of faith and piety to cover the cognitive dissonance within: if Jesus was indeed the "Prince of Peace" as the Christians claim, then the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" must be a tremendous insult to Him.

These pork-infused bullets take the very (ugly) concept of "spiritual warfare" and warp it into something far more sinister... and potentially deadly.