Albinos butchered by witch-doctors

[panzerfaust]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/16/tanzania-humanrights

...told by her family to dress her {albino} baby entirely in black and to lay the little girl in a hut, alone. 'The mother didn't understand, but she obeyed the elders,' said Al-Shaymaa Kwegyir. 'Some hours later, unknown men arrived and went straight to the hut. They used a machete to cut off the child's legs. Then they slit her throat and poured the blood into a pot and drank it.'...

...The murders are the result of seemingly conflicting beliefs spread by witch doctors, who are still consulted by many of Tanzania's 40 million-strong population, that albinos are either cursed or have supernatural properties. Some fishermen believe that, if they weave the red hair from an albino into their nets, fish will be attracted by the golden glimmer. Miners for gold, rubies and tanzanite are reported to pay large sums for juju (magic) amulets, which they wear around their necks or strapped to their arms and which are made up with a potion mixed from albino body parts. Others are said to bury the bones of albinos in the ground they are digging...

Ah, the power of the supernatural - to being freed from the bonds of 'linear thinking', to live in a society where quaint ideas such as logic, reason, and individual rights do not constrain the workings of magic, religion, and the ever-so-important 'traditional cultural practices.'

The Demon Haunted World, as Carl Sagan called it in his book of that name, has been the reality for most of our existence. It is so sad to see how many in this country seem anxious to return us to it.

Transubstantiation ... 1Cor:11:23-26:
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.

[Flubadubya]

1. Is that you Reverend Muthee?

:shrug:

[KittyWampus]

2. Carl Sagan was a fucking idiot on the subject of Religion and Spirituality. Your Sarcasm

simply highlights YOUR total ignorance.

Some religious pathways and spiritual paths function primarily on a psychic and/or material level.

They do not rise to the spiritual level where our Higher Brain takes control of our Reptilian Brain. And where Rational Mind works in conjunction with our Emotional/Psychic Mind.

[panzerfaust]

3. John 6:53-56

Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

[TWiley]

6. Yeah, Christian door knockers wanted my soul and said I needed to drink blood

Then, I was supposed to eat human flesh. What exactly is the basis of the "higher moral plane" of cannibalism anyway?

[acmavm]

10. Ever been inside a Catholic Church? If so, tell me which one(s) are

practicing canibalism.

The body/blood of Christ is symbolic. Unless you have some info that authorities need on actual cases of something other than bread and wine being in those chalices.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. No, not just symbolic; it is a 'Real Presence'

according to official Catholic doctrine:

Pope Paul VI reaffirmed in the Encyclical Letter Mysterium Fidei that the Mass is always the action of Christ and the Church, even in the exceptional case of being celebrated in private, that is, by the priest alone. Christ is present not in a spiritual or symbolic way, but in a real manner in the Eucharist, as the source of the unity of the Church, his Body.<83> According to the faith which the Church has professed from the beginning, the Eucharist, unlike the other sacraments, is “the flesh of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins and whom the Father in his goodness has raised from the dead.”<84> Concerning the transubstantiation of the species, Paul VI, in both the Encyclical and the Profession of Faith, again emphasized the causal link with the Real Presence. Christ makes himself present in the Eucharist through a transformation of the entire substance of the two species.<85>

The teaching of Pope Paul VI develops the subject of transubstantiation insofar as he declared that, after this substantial change, the two species “acquire new meaning and a new end in that they contain a new reality which justly is defined as ontological.”<86>

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20040528_lineamenta-xi-assembly_en.html

What officially happens is a miracle, every time a priest says mass. Bread (wafers) and wine have their substance transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus, although their physical characteristics still appear as they did before. But in their ultimate reality, communicants are literally eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ.

How many Catholics actually believe that, I don't know. But the church has decided that it looks less stupid by sticking by its claims of magic, than by admitting it was wrong earlier; so Roman Catholics are all supposed to believe the real substance of the bread and wine changes.

[PassingFair]

14. Took my children to a 1st communion for their cousin...

because their little cousin BEGGED them to go.

My kids (during the service): "Do we HAVE to have the blood?"

Me: "No, tell them you're vegetarians."

Seriously, it was an HOUR and a HALF about BLOOD
and FLESH. FLESH and BLOOD. BLOOD and FLESH.

If you hadn't heard it your whole life, you'd be
shocked by it, too.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Most scholars believe that the book of John is not a literal biography

but a philosophical discourse written for a Hellenistic audience.

Besides, unless you've been asleep for the past 2,000 years, you know that the Eucharist is a reinterpretation of a Passover Seder, not a literal invitation to cannibalism.

Honestly, sometimes the compulsively oppositional types of atheists are more literalist than any fundie.

[TWiley]

5. Wrong .... they are all based in emotionalism

They evolve into organized superstition.

[Marr]

11. Some religions favor symbols-- that's all.

The religious differences you describe are not between the rational mind and the reptilian brain. Your religion is not inherently superior to any other belief system. Communion is no more rational than the hideous act described in this article. It's just more socially acceptable.

The only real difference between this and more mainstream religion is the level of symbolism. They're all equally irrational.

[meow2u3]

4. Racism in the name of religion

Institutional racism and/or bigotry based on skin color that is different from the majority is an unfortunate human evil that's not limited to any one race or color of people. All you need is fear; ignorance, either from lack of access to education or rampant misuse of religion, better known as superstition; and either latent or manifest aggression; and you have a recipe for for the most vile types of violence against the "other."

In the United States and Europe, this shows up typically as white supremacy simply because light-skinned people predominate (but not for long the way it's trending), and tend to demonize darker-skinned persons. In sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world where dark-skinned people predominate, it's the white- or light-skinned person who's automatically regarded as the "bad guy"--and that can even be an infant! In east Asia, it's the so-called "yellow race" (why they called them yellow I don't know, possibly becasue of a yellow tint; most Asians' skin color is brown) who looks down at non-Asians.

This is the real reason that poor little albino kid was butchered: institutional racism, defined as the tendency of the majority race to look down on, patronize, or even demonize minority races or colors.

[HamdenRice]

7. 'the white- or light-skinned person who's automatically regarded as the "bad guy"' =terrible analogy

First of all, racism in the west consisted of discrimination against whole families and communities. Being "black" in America is an inherited identity in the context of an entire community.

As deplorable as the fear of albinos is in some parts of Africa, albinism is a rare, mostly random, affliction which is why it appears to the superstitious to be supernatural. There are no communities of albinos in Africa.

There are communities of white people, such as in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, and while resentment over white control of farmland remains a serious problem in Zimbabwe, there is little "reverse racism" in Africa even where white colonials behaved abominably.

Moreover, this kind of fear of albinism is rare. When I lived in West Africa (Liberia before the war), there was an albino school headmaster in the neighboring village who was loved and respected. I'm somewhat surprised that the event in the OP happened in Tanzania which had a strong push toward education and secularism under its first president Julius Nyerere.

What's much more difficult for albinos in sub-Saharan Africa is their health issues. It is extremely sunny (being near the equator), and albinos, including the man I knew in Liberia, lacking all protective pigment in their skin and eyes, suffer horribly from sun burn and sun induced blindness.

I would not be surprised if some of the original and lingering superstition and violence is somehow related to the health problems that rural people see albinos suffer, and having a witchcraft based understanding of disease they would see albinos as having bad juju.

[Morning Dew]

8. Albino magic! Courtesy of Erskine Caldwell - God's Little Acre

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSFb_bUTOsE

[Azooz]

9. Aljazeera - Africa Uncovered - Murder & Myth - 28 Jul 08

It's not fun watching, but explains it a bit more:

Africa Uncovered - Murder & Myth - 28 Jul 08 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W23rqCzVYzM

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsfWvnE4njs

[zonmoy]

15. I wonder if this isn't an old superstition that came out of the fact that

an albino not being able to be out in the sun would probably end up either not surviving long or being a burden on the village since he wouldn't be able to work outdoors.

[elshiva]

16. Weren't albinoes thought to be "evil" in ancient christian society, too?

:shrug:

Humanity's curse, to hate and hurt those who are "different."