Let's end the weekend with some good old fashioned religious buffoonery.
First up, the chief Catholic exorcist has condemned Harry Potter.
For God's Sake. Have any of these people even READ the books?
"Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil," says Father Gabriele Amorth, the Pope's "caster-out of demons".
Ahuh.
The books contained numerous positive references to the satanic art, falsely drawing a distinction between black and white magic, he told the Daily Mail in London. In the same interview, Father Amorth said he was convinced that Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were possessed by the devil.
Moving right along....we get this
Pinocchio, Tom Sawyer and other characters have been converted to Islam in new versions of 100 classic stories on the Turkish school curriculum.
"Give me some bread, for Allah's sake," Pinocchio says to Geppetto, his maker, in a book stamped with the crest of the ministry of education.
In The Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan is told he cannot visit Aramis. The reason would make the author, Alexandre Dumas, turn in his grave. An old woman explains: "He is surrounded by men of religion. He converted to Islam after his illness."
Tom Sawyer may have shirked his homework, but he is more conscientious with his Islamic prayers. He is given a "special treat" for learning Arabic words.
Other books altered include Johanna Spyri's Heidi and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
The clumsy insertions by Islamic publishing houses have caused controversy in Turkey, which has been a strongly secular state since the 1920s.
I don't know what's more pathetic - not having enough "Islamic" literature for your children to read that you have to alter non-Islamic stuff, or just the fact that you can't bear to have your children read something that might introduce them to ideas outside the religion they were born into.
And to think, Ataturk tried to get Turkey to find an identity outside Islam - nice to see his work seems to be being undone.
Posted by Quentin George at September 1, 2006 07:36 PM