Religious chats often escalate, but to killing? (murdered man's screen name was 'I love Jesus')

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ) ^ | 1/27/05 | BRIAN DONOHUE

[shhrubbery!]

On the popular Internet chat room service PalTalk.com, people from all corners of the globe gather to discuss everything from salsa music to life after divorce.

But what has been true at dinner parties is proving true also in Internet chat rooms: When the topic turns to religion, things can get ugly.

Amateur theologians in several of PalTalk's religion chat rooms can be heard denouncing each others' faiths and swapping insults. There are Muslims calling Jews murderers, Christians calling Islam a disease and everything in between.

Three to four times a week, Hossam Armanious, 47, an Egyptian Coptic immigrant, logged onto PalTalk to discuss his views on Christianity.

Now, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office and FBI are probing a possible death threat made against Armanious on PalTalk as one of several possible motives in the murder of the 47-year-old waiter and his family. Armanious and his wife, Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, were found bound and stabbed to death inside their Jersey City home two weeks ago.

[shhrubbery!]

Searched, but could not find this article already posted.

...[conservative host of an Israel National Radio show simulcast on PalTalk..Tovia] Singer remembers an unusual call he received six months ago from a PalTalk user with the nickname "I Love Jesus." That was Armanious' nickname, friends said.

This was news to me.

I suspect that part of the intent of this reporter is to show that people of other religions make death threats too.

I'd like the reporter to take that notion a step further and research it: Precisely how many death threats made by professed Christians or Jews have been carried out in this country? How many by Muslims?

[shhrubbery!]

You might be interested in this.

[JFK_Lib]

Lord...killing in the Name of the Prince of Peace.

[7.62 x 51mm]

"...stabbed to death..."

WTF? Their throats were cut. Now the police and media are criminally-downplaying the crime, IMO.

[shhrubbery!]

I've noticed that police and media often downplay the gruesomeness of some murders by using the word "stabbed," rather than saying "their throats were slit."

I guess stabbing sounds less alarming than ritual mutilating murder.

[nmh]

Muslims specialize in sawing peoples heads off and torturing them to convert to their vile religion.

[7.62 x 51mm]

When this story first came out on the 16th, the Joisey paper used "throats slit" or "throats cut"; now they've softened the slaughter description and analysis of the scene, to cover for the murderous muslim garbage.

[shhrubbery!]

Those early reports also mentioned "cuts" to 15-year old Sylvia Armanious's wrist and neck, where she wore Christian religious symbols.

Later reports soft-pedaled those "cuts" into mere "defensive wounds."

[velocityguy]

I think the Prosecutor's office and the Jersey City PD are real scum bags for not having the balls to do an aggressive, just investigation to provide Justice to this family. They are afraid of Muslums and CAIR. This is sad. I do not have any trust or faith in JCPD.

[Selkie]

Bump

[Selkie]

They were partially decapitated.