When it comes to sheer savagery in the name of religion Muslims do not have a total monopoly as this story illustrates:
BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - The high court of Orissa on Thursday cancelled the death sentence handed to Hindu extremist Dara Singh for the killing of an Australian missionary and his two sons six years ago, and instead ordered life imprisonment, lawyers said.
The high court also acquitted 11 people sentenced to a life term by a lower court for burning alive Graham Staines and his two children in a remote village in the state.
Judges Sujit Burmon Roy and Laxmikant Mohapatra gave no reason for commuting the death sentence on Dara Singh and the acquittal of the others. The judges retained the life sentence on another man convicted of involvement in the killings in 1999.
A mob attacked Staines and his sons Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, as they slept in their jeep in a remote village in Orissa. They torched the vehicle and killed all three.
Singh pleaded innocent and appealed against the lower court's decision to hang him and sentence 12 other men to life imprisonment.
The Staines' killings followed a wave of attacks on Christians blamed on Hindu radicals fighting conversions, and underscored tension between India's Hindu majority and religious minorities.
What ever happened to the spirit of Mahatma Ghandi?
One of the amazing things about stories like this is that Christian young people are lining up to go to places like Orissa despite the violence and danger they'll face. They're incredibly courageous and the contrast they create with those who are willing to die only if they can kill others is stark.
Indeed, this is the essential difference between Christianity and many other religions. Christianity enjoins us to love people into the Kingdom of God, other religions enjoin their votaries to kill people who resist accepting their "truth".
