Open Letter to Julia Irwin MHR

The Hon Ms Irwin,

Federal Member for Fowler

Dear Ms Irwin,

I read your ′Religious Tolerance′ speech, delivered in Parliament on November 28, with great interest. As a student of comparative religions I felt it contained some intriguing ideas.

Those who refer to Muslim fundamentalists may choose to quote from the Holy Koran, and there are passages that might be taken to show a vengeful God. But when it comes to good old-fashioned violence, the Judaeo-Christian God is hard to beat. I will take one example from the Bible story of the Exodus. In that story, God first hardens the heart of Pharaoh to make sure that the Egyptian ruler will not be moved by the pleas of Moses to let his people go. Then, because Pharoah’s heart is hardened, God turns the Nile into blood so that people cannot drink its water and will suffer from thirst. Not satisfied, God sends swarms of locusts and flies, rains hail, fire and thunder on them and destroys all the trees and plants until nothing green remains. God orders every firstborn male child to be slaughtered. The massacre continues until there is not one house where one is not dead. Then, while the Egyptian families are mourning their dead, God orders Moses to loot from their houses all their gold and silver and clothing. Finally, God’s thirst for blood is satisfied and God pauses to rest and boasts, ‘I have made sport of the Egyptians.’

If that is not enough, the story continues as Moses heads into the Promised Land. There he is urged to hack women and children to death, rip unborn babies from their mother’s womb and level the cities. The virgins are taken at God’s command for the pleasure of his holy warriors and, when his holy warriors spare the lives of 50,000 captives, God sends Moses back to finish the job saying:

And when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them; and show no mercy to them ... and your eyes shall not pity them.

1. You write of Christians who have refused to condemn the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia. Can you give me a reference for these Christians? Were they perhaps the Americans who refused to intervene in Bosnia on behalf of the Muslims?
2. I have been attempting to follow up some of the other material you refer to, but have found some difficulties.

I wonder, could you help me find the Bible verses which say the following things:

• "while the Egyptian families are mourning their dead, God orders Moses to loot from their houses all their gold and silver and clothing."
• Moses "is urged to ... rip unborn babies from their mother′s wombs"
• "The virgins are taken at God′s command for the pleasure of his holy warriors". (Even a reference to the Biblical expression ′holy warrior" would be most welcome.)

You write ′If I were to take those verses as written ..." Where were these verses written? Are they from the Bible?

I noticed textual similarities between your speech and an article "9/11 and the Sport of God" published by Bill Moyer on www.commondreams.org. Is it possible that he may have plagiarised your material? Or should I be asking him for the sources of these claims?

Is it possible that you did not check your Biblical references before you spoke these inflamatory words in Parliament, because you had taken your paragraphs, without checking the material, from Bill Moyer′s article? If this is the case, would you consider apologizing to the Jews and Christians in Australia for defaming their Holy Book, and misleading the parliament about what the Bible actuallly says?

Alternatively, would you be able to issue a public statement giving the verse references for your speech? And would you be able to assure the Australia people that these words were your own, and not lifted selectively and without critical evaluation, from the speech of an American Christian?

With thanks, in advance for your assistance,

Mark Durie