Alayna Wyland is 7 months old, and she is suffering.

The area started swelling, and the fast-growing mass of blood vessels, known as a hemangioma, eventually caused her eye to swell shut and pushed the eyeball down and outward and started eroding the eye socket bone around the eye.

There are pictures at the link. It’s not pretty. I know if my babies had a growth that was almost the size of a tennis ball that was destroying their face, I’d have been camped out at the hospital. But not Alayna’s parents! They have a special treatment plan.

The Wylands and their church reject medical care in favor of faith-healing — anointing with oil, laying on of hands, prayer and fasting. The parents testified at a juvenile court hearing last week that they never considered getting medical attention for Alayna.

According to court documents, Rebecca Wyland anointed Alayna with oil each time she changed the girl’s diaper and wiped away the yellow discharge that seeped daily from the baby’s left eye.

There they go with the magic anointing oil again! Does that stuff do anything? If we can waste time with homeopathy, maybe it’s about time someone did some clinical trials with anointing oil and put that crap to rest (not that it would make a bit of difference…).

The Wylands are rather vile, but at least this is taking place in Oregon, where “it is a crime for parents to intentionally and knowingly withhold necessary and adequate medical attention from their children”. Alayna has been placed in state custody for treatment, and both parents have been charged with first degree criminal mistreatment.

But wait, there’s more! The father was previously married.

Wyland’s first wife, Monique, died of breast cancer in 2006. She had not sought or received medical treatment for the condition, said Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner who signed the death certificate.

She died of untreated breast cancer? That poor woman — that’s a hard death, an agonizing death, and often, an unnecessary death — can that entire wretched cult be indicted for torture-murder? They seem to be leaving quite a pile of dead women and children.

This is a horrific story out of India, and the weird thing is that everyone is condemning the bloody, violent end of the story, but treating the preliminaries as a matter of course. Here’s the outline, as near as I can extract from a scattering of stories, often in poor English.

In March, TJ Joseph, a professor at a private Catholic college in Kerala, gave an exam that apparently offended Muslim students. Here’s the only description of the awful exam question I could find:

The indicted questionnaire however did not include anything that could be construed as against the Muslim religion. The authorities of Newman College, told AsiaNews that in the test, Prof. Joseph tells the story of a fishmonger who, despite hard work, becomes increasingly poor. The monger’s name is Mohammad In his desperation, he spoke to God and also asked his brother why his fortunes were dwindling. His brother told Mohammed: “Why are you calling God, God, God….” Students were asked to specify the punctuation of the narrative.

He was an instructor in Malayalam, one of the many languages of India, so this was an exercise in reading and punctuation. But the Muslim community took offense, for some indecipherable reason, and some bloggers even called the question a “blunder” and “disgraceful”, to my complete bafflement.

It gets worse. He was suspended from his job. He was arrested. One account says his son was also arrested and tortured. He got out on bail, and apparently went into hiding because of the ongoing death threats…so the police put up a wanted poster for his arrest.

This is already insane. Apparently this kind of harrassment is taken for granted in Kerala, and the police are willing to assist in it.

Could it get worse? Of course it can.

In a horrific instance of Talibanism, Muslim fanatics in Kerala on Sunday chopped off the right hand of a college lecturer, accusing him of setting a question paper with a derogatory reference to the Prophet.

Lecturer T J Joseph was returning home from church with his mother and sister around 8.30 am in Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam district when he was accosted by the attackers. “We had just got into our car when a van pulled up in front. Around eight people armed with swords and knives emerged and pulled out Joseph after smashing the windscreen.

They then chopped off his right hand and stabbed him in the left thigh,” said Joseph’s sister, Mary Stella, a nun.

Jebus. Karen Armstrong was just complaining that we want to “marginalise religion”. Damned straight we do.

Bill Donohue will be so relieved. Here’s a story about a youn girl being raped, her assailant protected by the church, and the girl herself getting all the blame…and it’s the Baptists! Tina Anderson was raped by Ernest Willis, a Trinity Baptist Church member, when she was 15, and got pregnant. She accused Willis in the church, and here’s what happened:

When the pastor heard Anderson’s allegations, he told her that if she had “lived in the Old Testament,” she would have been stoned to death for not reporting the attack sooner.

“He also said I had ‘allowed myself to be put in a compromising situation,’ Anderson said. The pastor decided she needed to be “church-disciplined.”

“I was completely humiliated,” Anderson said, her voice quavering at the memory. “I hoped it was a nightmare I’d wake up from, and it wouldn’t be true anymore.”

“Church discipline” apparently means sending the victim out of state and asking all church members silent, not bringing the matter to secular authorities. They stayed quiet for 13 years.

Meanwhile, Tina Anderson went on with her life, got married, had kids, and took a job as a music teacher at a Baptist college. When she was contacted by investigators tracking down the case, though, she did something remarkable: she woke up to how she’d been abused.

“I was kind of in shock, but I just answered his questions,” Anderson said. “Everything is changing because I’m seeing the things I was taught for so many years are not necessarily correct. It’s almost like I had blinders on, believing all of this was my fault.”

This is beautiful; this is what it is like to free yourself of religion.

“If they’re not dealt with, the cycle will continue,” said Anderson, who resigned from the Baptist college the day before Willis was arrested. “I do not, anymore, unquestioningly obey authority, which is what they would teach.“