September

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Sept 1, 1894
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is born. He started the Hare Krishna movement in New York City in 1966. See a video on our blog.

Sept 4, 2007
A Belgian prosecutor recommended that the Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization.

Sept 5, 1065
Pope Benedict IX passed away. St. Peter Damian described him as "feasting on immorality" and "a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest" He was also accused by Bishop Benno of Piacenza of "many vile adulteries and murders." Pope Victor III wrote about "his rapes, murders and other unspeakable acts. His life as a Pope so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it." He was also accused of homosexuality and bestiality.

Sept 6, 2001 (publication date)
Mother Teresa underwent an exorcism in 1997 after a bout of insomnia was blamed on the devil.


Sept 7, 2006
Dozens of children fainted, apparently because of mass hysteria, after school authorities in Nepal killed a snake, considered as sacred by many Hindus.


Sept 10, 2006 (publication date)
Thirty-one percent of Americas agreed that if you give your money to God, God will bless you with more money. A full 61 percent believed that God wants people to be prosperous, according to a Time Magazine poll.

Sept 11, 1857
Mormon militia kill 120 to 140 unarmed members of an emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows, Utah.

Sept 11, 2001
Nineteen Muslims flew two jumbo jets into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth one crashed, leaving more than 3,000 dead.

Sept 13, 2001
Rev. Jerry Falwell (with Rev Pat Robertson) blames pagans, abortionist, feminists and gays & lesbians for the 911 attacks.

Sept 14, 2006
The Dalai Lama's (left) visit spotlights the fact that, with 1.5 million adherents, Buddhism is America's fourth-largest religion, after Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Sept 15, 1938 (Thomas Wolfe dies)
“A cult is a religion with no political power.” Thomas Wolfe

Sept 16 to Sept 18, 1982
Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon. Between 700 to 3,500 Palestinians were killed by Christian Phalangists.

Sept 17, 1787
The U.S. Constitution is signed. It the first significant governing charter in the history of mankind that does not invoke any deities for support.

Sept 18, 2006 (published)
Pope Benedict XVI sought to extinguish days of anger and protest among Muslims by issuing an extraordinary personal apology for having caused offense with a speech last week that cited a reference to Islam as “evil and inhuman.” Italian nun killed over pope's remarks.

Sept 19, 1692
Giles Corey was pressed to death in Salem (rather than hanged) because he failed to plead guilty or not guilty during the Salem Witch Trials.

Sept 21, 2005
Barbie dolls have all but disappeared from toy stores in the Middle East. In there place is Fulla, a dark-eyed doll with a pink prayer mat and, as her creator put it, "Muslim values." Here is a link to other Muslim toys (and to be fair a link to Jewish toys).


Sept 22, 1964
Fiddler on the Roof opens at the Imperial Theater. One of the main themes of the play is pogroms in Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in Russia and the Ukraine. See our blog for songs from the movie.

Sept 24, 2008 (date reported)
Religious violence in the southern Philippines between Catholics and Muslims left 100 people dead and 400,000 displaced in the past month.

Sept 25, 1994
Two sisters, who were practitioners of hoodoo, received a ten-year suspended sentence for blinding a third sister. All three sisters agree that the victim was possessed by a demon. Hoodoo is a cross between Haitian voodoo and Catholicism.

Sept 25 1996
The last Magdalene Asylum is closed in Ireland. It has been estimated that 30,000 women were admitted during the 150-year history of these institutions, often against their will. The majority were forced to work in laundries for no pay and were subjected to abuse by the Catholic nuns who ran the institutions. Our blog has a movie about the asylum.

Sept 26, 2006
An Ohio car dealership's ads was criticized as anti-Muslim and refused by several radio stations. The commercial called for a "jihad on the automotive market." It said salespeople would be wearing burqas, a traditional garment in some Muslim nations, and kids would get rubber swords on "fatwa Friday."

Sept 26, 1302
The Knights Templer's garrison on the island of Ruad was starved out by the Mamluks. Most of the garrison was executed. Dozens of the surviving Templar knights were taken as prisoners to Cairo, where they died of starvation after years of ill-treatment. Ruad was the last Christian settlement in the Holy Land. Read about the Templars and the Shroud of Turin on our blog.

Sept 27, 1480
The first two Spanish inquisitors, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin were appointed in the Diocese of Seville, Spain. Click here for a primer on inquisition torture devices.

Sept 28, 551 BC
Confucius is born. Confucianism is a moral, social, political, and philosophical system rather than religious. It's a good example of a moral system that does not require a belief in God.

Sept 29-30, 1941
German SS troops and Ukrainian police killed 33,771 Jewish civilians at Bari Yar in Kiev. It was the largest single massacre in the history of the holocaust. Anna Glinberg (left) was one of the victims.

Sept 30, 2002
In an interview given on September 30, 2002, for the October 6 edition of 60 minutes, American Christian Jerry Falwell said: "I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I read enough by both Muslims and non-Muslims, [to decide] that he was a violent man, a man of war."
The following Friday the spokesman for Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa for Falwell's death, saying that Falwell was a "mercenary and must be killed".

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