08 April 2013

Homeschooling Terrorists?

I am currently reading Don Carson's remarkable book, The Intolerance of Tolerance (2012). He shares many examples of how tolerance has gone awry and how Christianity is uniquely targeted.

Consider this example:

In 2004, in the Russian city of Beslan, Islamic terrorists took 1200 people hostage in a public school. They ultimately slaughtered 344 people, 186 of them students. On a smaller scale, but still horrific, two disturbed students massacred 13 people at Columbine High School. [One could certainly add the more recent episodes of violence that have occurred as well]. In the wake of such events, it is not surprising that many schools have run drills so that teachers and students alike will have some idea how to react if such violence breaks out in their schools--locking classroom doors, staying below window level, and so forth while coordinating the work of police and other public safety officials. In New Jersey in April 2007, one such drill was run by the Burlington Police Department. And who were the mock terrorists supposed to be? Homeschooling Christian fundamentalists. Three years earlier, a similar drill in Muskegon County, Michigan, featured homeschooling wackos who detonate a bomb on a school bus. 

Some local exasperation followed. But can you imaging what would have happened if the mock terrorists had been depicted as turban-wearing Islamic jihadists? Can one think of a single instance of organized Christian homeschoolers threatening, let alone carrying out, terrorist violence? (p. 41)

Unbelievable.

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