Jennifer Kim, in her letter of May 16, seems to be doing a bit of an Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto special. She appears to be suggesting that the mass murder of heretics [Cathars] was necessary at the time. She seems to take the apparent wrongness of their teaching — which supposedly took the anti-life bias of Christianity a little too far — as justification for a "crusade."

On several occasions I have heard Christians justify the extermination of the Canaanites [clans mentioned in the Old Testament] in a similar way. They were a depraved people with barbaric customs; therefore, it was absolutely right to "dash their little ones' heads against the rocks."

The fact is that Christians are quite entitled to believe in killing heretics if they want to. However, they ask too much when they then expect to be taken seriously as the inventors of human rights. This holds true no matter how many times they bounce back with tedious lists to prove they're right.

jim makin
chiba

The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.