Terrorism in Bible - Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy:

2.25 – God makes people fear the Israelites. He makes the people tremble and be in anguish because of the Israelites.

2.32 to 2.36 – The entire population of Heshbon (men, women and children) were killed when God delivered them to the Israelites. Every city of that country was utterly destroyed.

4.3 – God destroyed everyone who followed Baalpeor.

4.25 to 27 – If the Israelites made an image, God shall punish them by utterly destroying them and scattering them among the nations and make them few in number among the heathens.

5.7 – The Israelites shall not have any God beside Jehovah.

5.9 – God says that He is a jealous God who punishes the future generations of the people who worship images.

6.14, 6.15 – God is jealous. If you worship some other deity, he will destroy you.

7.2 – God commands the Israelites to utterly destroy the population of the seven nations that God will deliver unto Israel.

7.5 – God commands the Israelites that they shall destroy the altars, break down the images and cut down the groves and burn the images of their enemies with fire.
7.10 – If you hate God, He will not slack, He will destroy you completely.

7.16 – God commands the Israelites not to have pity on those people whom he delivers to the Israelites (to kill them).

7.20 – God will send hornets into the lands of other nations and destroy their people.

7.23 – God will deliver those people to Israelites and destroy them with mighty destruction.

7.25 – God commands Israelites to burn the images and utterly destroy them.

8.19 – If you forget your Lord and go after other Gods, then you shall surely perish.

12.2, 12.3 – God orders you to destroy completely others’ places of worship.

12.30 – God orders the Israelites that they must not enquire about the other Gods after they destroy their followers and temples. If they learn about other Gods, God shall be forced to kill them.

13.1 to 13.5 – If a prophet or dreamer prophesies or dreams about other Gods and asks the Israelites to follow those Gods, the said prophrt or dreamer shall be pt to death.

13.6 to 13.10 – If a family member or friend tries to get you to worship other Gods, you should kill them by stoning them to death.

13.12 to 13.15 – If in any of your cities, people worship other Gods then such cities shall be completely destroyed including the cattle.

17.2 to 17.5 – If anyone worships other Gods, then you shall stone him/her to death.

17.12 – If a person does not hear to the priest or the judge, he shall be killed.

18.20 to 18.22 – If a person claiming as prophet speaks on the behalf of other Gods, then you shall execute him. You can identify him as not a prophet of God, when you see that his prophecy shall not come to pass.

25.19 – God orders the Israelites that they shall remember to blot out the Amalekites under the heaven when God had delivered all the lands promised to them.

28.16 to 28.68 – If you do not follow the laws laid down in Old Testament, God will punish you and his ‘punishments’ are laid out in these verses. (Remember that these laws include killing of non-believers.)

29.18 to 29.20 – If you serve other Gods, God will destroy your existence from under heaven (earth).

30.7 – God will put the curses on the enemies of the Israelites. (For a list of curses, read chapter 28)

31.3 – Moses conveys to his people that God will destroy other nations and let the Israelites possess those lands.

32.19 to 32.26 – God hates those who don’t worship Him. He will punish them by setting on fire the foundations of mountains (?), by shooting arrows at them, by burning them with hunger and heat, by sending beasts and serpents upon them, by killing young men and virgins, by killing both old and new borns.

Terrorism in Bible - Leviticus and Numbers

Leviticus (20.27) - Any person with a familiar spirit / a wizard shall be stoned to death.
Leviticus (25.44 - 46) - Buy heathens as slaves and they shall remain as your slaves for eternity (their descendants shall be the slaves of slave owners’ descendants).
Leviticus (26.16 - 39) - Severe punishments for those who do not follow God’s orders. This includes God sending beasts to kill the children of such people. Other punishments include plague, fever, defeat by enemies, punishing seven times more for the sins etc. (whatever did the children do to suffer such a horrible death?). Also God shall make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. He will destroy their cities and they will be left to suffer among heathens.
Numbers (11.1) - People complained to God. God did not like it and so He burned those who complained.
Numbers (14.36-37) - People murmured against God (or perhaps Moses) and so God sends a plague among them to destroy them.
Numbers (16.30-35) - Korah and those who supported him, along with their families and wealth, were swallowed by the earth. Also, God sent a fire to kill 250 people who offered incense (why kill them?). Korah did not believe Moses.
Numbers (16.41-49) - People criticize Moses saying that he killed the people of the Lord. God does not like this and hence sends a plague that kills 14,700 persons. (No freedom of speech or thought? Then why provide humans with a rational mind?)
Numbers (21.3) - Israelites vow to God that they will destroy the entire cities of Canaan if God delivered the Canaanites unto their hands. God did so and the Canaan cities were completely destroyed. Bloodthirsty God?
Numbers (21.34-35) - With the help of God, Moses kills all the Amorites and Bashan people(including children) such that no one was left alive among them.
Numbers (25.1-9) - Israelites commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab and participate in their festivals. So God orders Moses to kill them and hang their bodies before the sun so that the anger of the Lord be turned away from Israel. But still plague came upon Israel. But a man brings a Midian (non-Israeli) woman to the congregation and Aaron’s grandson kills both the woman and the man. God is pleased by this act and stops the plague. But the plague had already killed 24,000 people. It seems God has nothing to do but kill.
Numbers (chapter 31): All the males among Midianites including children are killed. All women who were not virgins were killed as well. The Israelites got 32000 virgins from this bloody campaign. The booty including virgins was then split among them. Even God receives a share.
Numbers (33.50-52) - God orders Moses to destroy Canaan, drive out the inhabitants of the land and also destroy their places of worship. (religious intolerance)
Numbers (33.55-56) - God says that if the Israelites don’t do so, He will make the remaining Canaanites as pricks in their eyes and thorns in their sides. He will do to the Israelites what He wants to do to the Canaanites (utter destruction). God threatens the Israelites that if they show mercy to Canaanites, He will destroy them. It seems that God does not like human values.

Terrorism in Bible - Exodus

Exodus (11.4 - 11.7) - God kills all the firstborn children of Egyptians and he kills the firstborn of animals as well (whatever the animals did to ‘God’?). Killing innocent children does not appear to be the way of a God more like that of a demon.
Exodus (16.8) - Moses says that the murmurings of the people were not against him but against God. This tactic has been used by Popes since early times.
Exodus (22.18) - ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live’ - has lead to the death of thousands of innocent women who were degraded before being burnt to death.
Exodus (22.20) - The person who sacrifices to any God other than the Biblical one shall be utterly destroyed. Gives death sentence to about two-thirds of world population.
Exodus (23.24) - The images of the other Gods shall be broken. This is an order. As such a divine order encouraging iconoclasm.
Exodus (23.27) - God shall destroy everyone against whom the Israelites march. Birth of terrorism.
Exodus (32.27-28) - God ordered Levi’s sons to kill those who danced naked around the golden calf. 3000 men were killed.
Exodus (34.11-14) - God orders the Israelites to destroy the neighboring pagan nations, destroy their altars, break their images and cut down their groves for He is a jealous God. Once again it seems like the words of a demon. God orders his followers to indulge in terrorism.

Religious Persecution in India

This is a collection of my musings on the matter of religious persecution in India. The number of instances in which the Muslims and Christians persecuted those of the other religions is numerous.
Some ‘historians’ like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib etc try to justify these actions by saying that even the Hindu kings indulged in these activities and that this was the normal situation then. Considering their statements to be true, it appears that these ‘egalitarian’ religions were also nothing short of barbarism. They do not deny that Muslims did indulge in religious persecution but claim that Hindus also normally indulged in it. Even if their claim is true, it does not condone the Muslim rulers' actions. But the real question is: did Hindus indulge in large scale religious persecution? Some local skirmishes are possible in this huge country. I do not deny that such skirmishes could have occurred. But was there any persistent religious persecution? The answer shall be formed in the following paragraphs.
Some instances of religious intolerance that I know are: King Harsha of Kashmir, Emperor Kulottunga II of Chola country and the killing of Jain monks in Pandya country. Other than these things, there can be a handful of other cases in the 1500 years of Hindu dominance. It shows a remarkably peaceful society. Certainly not a society of religious persecution. No Hindu text says that killing a non-believer brings merit and paves way for heaven (unlike what Islam guarantees for a Ghazi). The only places [very few in number - like one stanza in the Divya Prabandham - Tirumaalai (a compilation of 4000 stanzas)] where the author speaks about killing other religionists is when such a person speaks foul of the author’s religion / deity. But no one has ever cited this stanza as an authority to kill non - Vaishnavites. Not even the author has called this as an act of merit leading to moksha. This shows that even such few instances were mere statements of anguish not a call for blood (very similar to what some people feel like killing corrupt officials during times of anguish caused by them but will never indulge in manslaughter.)
Therefore, we find this comparison of systematic religious persecution employed by Muslims with a few instances (which are deviations from the normal trend) of Hindu history as totally irresponsible, unacceptable and unethical. The Hindus gave shelter to Parsis and Jews. They gave shelter to the Syrian Christians. These people were not persecuted. They were allowed to freely practice their religion. To think that such Hindus indulged in systematic religious persecution appears senseless.
Now, let us take a look at the few instances of religious persecution done by Hindus mentioned above:
1. King Harsha of Kashmir was an atheist. He was not a Hindu. Kalhana calls him ‘Turushka’. His activities were seen as very similar to that of Muslims by him. He cannot be called a Hindu in any sense.
2. The action of Kulottunga II at Chidambaram was isolated. He removed Vishnu murti from only one temple (at Chidambaram) in his entire empire. He did not indulge in large scale destruction of Vishnu temples. The temple at Chidambaram was home to both Vishnu and Shiva cult with both the deities being worshipped by their respective devotees. As one of the primary seats of Shaiva cult, Kulottunga II wanted to make the temple completely Shaivite and that is why he removed the Vishnu murti from the temple. Thus, it was merely a case of a single instance not a wholesale occurrence.
3. The third instance is that of the impaling of Jain monks in Pandya country. The story is found only in Shaiva texts. It is found that there was a debate between Jnanasambandar and the Jain monks. The Jain monks were defeated in the debate. The monks were impaled as agreed earlier that whoever loses will be impaled. Also it is found that the Tamils suffered a lot at the hands of some narrow minded Digambara Jain monks (who were non-Tamil Kalabhras). The agraharas of the Brahmins were confiscated. Some Shaiva and Vaishnava places of worship were forcibly taken over. When the new rulers converted to Shaivism, a nationalist reaction set in the society by which we see that a few Jain places of worship were converted on the plea that they were Shiva temples in the earlier period. But we can see that the Vaishnavas never indulged in such activities though they were also persecuted by the previous regime. Also, the said acts do not reflect Shaivism nor is it based on Shaiva texts but a normal nationalist reaction. [M. Arunachalam’s ‘The Kalabharas in the Pandiya Country and Their Impact on the Life and Letters There’ , University of Madras, 1979].
The Buddhists were never persecuted in Tamil Nadu as the Buddhists never hurt the Shaivites or Vaishnavites. Though both the ‘Naastika’ traditions were condemned by the ‘Saatvik’ traditions, only the Jains were persecuted and that too only in Pandya country which was due to the fact that some narrow minded Jain monks started such a persecution in the first place. Even then, it can be seen that it was not a wholesale persecution per se. Only those monks who debated with Jnanasambandar were impaled. Others were not killed. Similarly only those temples which were previously that of Shiva were forcibly occupied by the Shaivites. This is mostly a case of nationalism (Tamil vs. non-Tamil) and throwing away the yolk of forceful religious domination. This was not a case of active religious persecution started for the sake of religious persecution as the means and end of itself.
Some people try to find a Buddhist/Jain structure under every Hindu temple which is ridiculous. No Buddhist/Jain tradition ever says that Hindus indulged in large scale destruction of their temples/monasteries. Such fanciful imagination of these self proclaimed ‘historians’ give us good laughter at the time of depression. Though at times, it hurts us that people make such baseless allegations against Hinduism.
It seems that these ‘historians’ who want to degrade the ancient religion of India are unable to digest the fact that Hinduism is a tolerant religion. So they try to degrade it by making false and baseless allegations against this ancient religion.

As such, we could see that religious persecution on wholesale basis was brought to this land by the Muslim and Christian fanatics. It was never practised in India before that. The inhuman nature of these religions in that they actively encourage persecution of other religionists (non-believers) show their innate barbarism. A post giving quotes from their 'holy books' encouraging the persecution of non-believers will be given later.