“In scenes reminiscent of medieval witchhunts, Catholic pilgrims in Glastonbury have attacked pagans and threatened to “cleanse” them from the town.

Local pagans were pelted with salt and branded witches who “would burn in hell” during a procession organised by Youth 2000, a conservative Catholic lay group. The Magick Box, a pagan shop on the route of the march, was also singled out and attacked.

Maya Pinder, the owner of the shop, said: “We’ve had to hear comments such as ‘burn the witches’, we’ve had salt thrown in our faces and at our shop, people were openly saying they were ‘cleansing Glastonbury of paganism’.”

“”It was as if we had returned to the dark ages. This is hugely damaging to Glastonbury … it is hard enough to trade in Glastonbury as it is, if you were to take away the pagan element it would be a dead town.” The Somerset town is known for having a large population of resident and visiting pagans.”

From The Guardian >

This isn’t a current news story (it’s actually from November of 2006) but I couldn’t resist posting it simply because it is stupefyingly medieval what happened here. We really haven’t progressed much intellectually as a species over the last thousand thousand years if people can still say things like “burn the witches” and not be laughed at as they are hauled away to the mental hospital.

“Cairo - Fifty years ago, no Egyptian would have believed that a fight between two children - a Muslim and a Christian - could ignite violence requiring the presence of truckloads of heavily-armed riot police to contain it.

But this happened last month in the once cosmopolitan Mediterranean city of Alexandria, albeit in one of the city’s poorer districts. There, a fist fight between two boys in front of a church turned into a full-blown sectarian clash between Muslims and Christians.

As religious zealots and angry mobs fanned the flames, the incident could have escalated had it not been for police which arrived quickly on the scene and contained the clash.

‘This situation is not unique to Alexandria. The tension is everywhere,’ says Father Yohanna Naseef, a Christian Coptic priest and an Alexandrine.”

“Claims of discrimination and even religious persecution against Copts are on the rise. Egyptian authorities claim radical Coptic communities resident abroad, especially in the United States, are fanning the flames, and asking foreign powers to intervene to empower Egypt’s Christian minority.”

From Monsters and Critics >