Friday, January 13, 2006

Pilgrims Trampled

What a strange business I work in. If 350 Arabs get killed by a U.S. military offensive against an insurgent stronghold, it blares around the globe and stops the world in its tracks.

If those same 350, in an alternate reality, cross into Saudi Arabia and get trampled to death while trying to perform a bizarre religious rite that they believe God demands of them, it's a mere curiosity, an inside page filler.

I suppose it's the same mentality that regards the death of 3,000 Americans in terrorist attacks as historic and the death of 3,000 in inner-city street crimes over a month a mere statistic.

If Jesus had died of typhus instead of execution, would there be a religion of Christianity?

I can write like this on Friday because no one pays attention.