I sacrificed myself

South Africa’s Apartheid-era Law and Order Minister, Adriaan Vlok, washed the feet of Rev. Frank Chikane, a man Vlok tried to have assassinated in 1989 by poisoning his clothes. Vlok said that if Jesus could do it (the foot-washing, not the clothes-poisoning), so could he. “I sacrificed myself,” Vlok says of the incident, adding, “I give up my pride, my own self, my superiority, my uncharitable attitude, and my selfishness.” If I were Chikane, I’d begin to feel like my feet were being insulted. Actually, if I were Chikane, I would have walked through some dog shit first. Which is probably why I’m not a reverend.

The kidnappers of the two Fox reporters forced them to convert to Islam, or else. I can’t imagine what they thought they were accomplishing.

Or the Islamists in Malaysia who are obstructing the attempts to marry of a woman who converted to Christianity. She’s being refused permission by the sharia courts, which she thinks that, no longer being a Muslim, shouldn’t have jurisdiction over her. The constitution of Malaysia, however, defines Malays (that’s an ethnic group, as distinct from Malaysians) as Muslim.

The group in Gaza holding the Fox reporters, by the way, calls itself the Holy Jihad Brigades. Which is redundant and trying just a little too hard.

As long as we’re doing Muslims Behaving Badly stories, Islamist legislators in Pakistan went on a minor rampage in Parliament a few days ago when the government tried to reform rape laws, which make it almost impossible to convict rapists, and then leave the victims in failed cases vulnerable to adultery charges.

In other news: elsewhere, various Muslims were nice to each other, kind to animals, and were perfectly pleasant people you’d be glad to know.