On The Wings of Angels

They didn’t have any angels at the country park near me so this pic I took of a swan will have to do.

Religion, for better or worse, and often worse, has been a significant driver of human history. If we include the atheistic ‘religions’ of Communism or Wokeism in that list we can probably encompass so much human misery within that single label of ‘religion’.

Mixed in amongst the wars, the bloodshed, the control-freakery and the sanctimonious twaddle there has also been a considerable amount of good. Trying to decide whether religion has been a net negative or net positive for the world is therefore not an easy task. It’s not one I’m even going to attempt. With my woeful lack of historical knowledge it would be like getting a child, or an Ed Millibrain, to design one’s energy policy.

I’ve gotten so used to calling this semi-sentient walking bag of custard ‘millibrain’ that I’ve temporarily forgotten what his real name is. It’s this guy, the UK’s energy minister

Perhaps I should have included ‘climate change’ as a religion too. It has many of the same features; the zealotry, the refusal to entertain doubt, the authoritarianism and pontificating.

The key feature is that people have ideas and these ideas become so enmeshed with their ‘identities’ that they can conceive of no other ‘truth’ and those who do not share the same beliefs are threats and dangers who, often, must be eliminated or otherwise controlled.

If God exists - a reasonably sizeable ‘if’ here - then what we’ve had is a bunch of humans¹ throughout history claiming to know the mind or will of God. Then we have wars because some people’s idea of what God is differs from some other people’s idea of what God is.

It’s all so farcical and would be comical if the consequences hadn’t been so tragic.

It’s a bit like the taunt in a kids’ playground: “my dad can beat up your dad any day”.

If I asked someone which religion causes the most problems in the world today you can be reasonably certain of getting one of two answers. You could meet someone who’s gone full retard and get “the evil Jews control the world”

Or there’s the other one.

And there isn’t a single reader of this article that doesn’t know which one I’m talking about.

That says something in and of itself.

Wherever and whenever they appear, followers of this religion cause problems² - sometimes very grave ones. There’s no other religion like this³.

It is a religion, a colonialist religion, whose slave trade dwarfed the transatlantic one.

Even just a cursory breakdown of terrorist attacks over the last few decades will reveal there’s one religion completely dominating that list.

And therein lies the first major problem. I know hundreds, if not thousands, of followers of that religion who are definitely in the “NOT ALL” group. They’re great people, and just like most of the rest of us - kind, hard-working, decent, family-oriented etc etc.

I’ll come onto why I think even the “NOT ALL” version of the religion is not something we would want, but those concerns are secondary to the threat the ‘extreme’ version of their religion poses - and it isn’t a minor threat.

We definitely don’t want to hate someone just because they’re a follower of this particular religion, but what are we supposed to do with the clear evidence and data we have that there’s more than an insignificant minority of its adherents whose beliefs and behaviours, fuelled by their more extreme interpretations, need to be consigned to the great porcelain bowl of history and flushed out like the rancid turds they are?

When does the size of a minority become too significant? A minority of men with appalling behaviours are sufficient to warrant limits on all men entering spaces for women. It’s why we needed single-sex spaces in the first place. At what point do we reason that the behaviours of a minority require some limitation on the majority?

This religion seems particularly vulnerable to a creeping kind of extremism. We’ve seen something similar with the ‘left’ where an ideology once rooted in concern for those at the bottom of the heap morphed into something unrecognizable to ‘old lefties’, like me.

We should be allowed to discriminate

Although the word discriminate has come to mean something quite different today its original usage was simply about making a choice. We discriminate when we choose to go see an opera rather than some metal⁴. Someone who was said to have ‘good’ taste was said to be discriminating.

The English, in their eternal quest to perfect culinary malfeasance, took the marrowfat pea, boiled it to oblivion, mashed it up and called it ‘food’. Thus the epicurean abomination known as ‘mushy peas’ was created. The Scots took the bits of sheep that their lairds didn’t want, added some grains and flavourings and actually made something tasty. I’ll discriminate against mushy peas in favour of haggis any day of the week.

You see, we are (or should be) able to say what we like and what we don’t like. And that’s fine. It should also be fine when it comes to religion. It’s OK not to like Christianity, or Islam, or Scientology, or whatever. If grating parmesan onto your pasta dish is your thing to pay homage to The Flying Spaghetti Monster - then go for it.

Same for cultures. Same for cultural ‘appropriation’. If you really dig sisig (a great Filipino dish made from pig’s ears and other bits. It is, as they say, masarap) it doesn’t mean you have to like that other Filipino delicacy; balut.

Look away if you’re squeamish

Cultures should be free to ‘mix and match’ as they see fit. None of it is ‘appropriation’.

What might be more accurately described as appropriation is Christianity’s appropriation of Judaism and Islam’s subsequent appropriation of them both.

The idea has arisen, and we call it something like ‘multiculturism’, that all cultures are broadly equivalent - that you get more or less the same results whichever one you choose. It’s emotive twaddle, of course. It arises from the desire not to offend - or if you’re more conspiratorial it arises from the desire to globalize the crap out of everything and create a kind of mushy pea world.

If we take just one of the issues with Islam that I have then we can see how there are some cultures, or at least some aspects of it, that are completely unacceptable to our culture. In our (current) culture there is no context, none whatsoever, in which we would ever say slavery was acceptable⁵. Not so in Islam. There are some contexts in which slavery is entirely acceptable within Islam - even though most would argue those contexts no longer pertain to today’s world⁶.

Do I want to entertain a religion or culture that has such a notion, however specialized the contexts are in which it is permissible? No, I do not. I want a religion, if I have to have one at all, that says it’s always wrong and has always been wrong. Full stop. No contexts, no excuses, no special cases - just plain fucking evil and wrong.

There’s a bit of a problem here, though. You can find interpretations of Islam which suggest that, today, slavery is always wrong. Unfortunately, you then have to look back to the early Muslims and explain why they weren’t wrong to have slaves. You’re left with the uncomfortable paradox that it was OK back then, but not OK now. Not a great look for Mr Always Right, God Himself, is it? He seems to be quite prepared to say eating pork was a no-no, but slaves? Ah well, you see, that might be right sometimes!

It indicates to me that there’s something a bit rotten at the core, at the heart. If you can even think slavery could be acceptable in certain specialized circumstances then that’s a religion I’m going to have very strong reservations about.

A similar criticism could, indeed, be levelled at Jesus who did not explicitly condemn slavery either. Jesus’ entire teaching, however, is antithetical to the notion of slavery even though he might have accepted it as a regrettable part of his world at the time. I still think Jesus should have explicitly condemned the practice, though. Slavery is an outright abomination - and far, far worse than many of the things Jesus did explicitly condemn.

I mean both the Christian and Muslim versions of God seriously dropped the ball here. How much would things have been different if He’d just made Himself clear?

So, yes, we should be free to discriminate between religions, or none at all, without being accused of some kind of ‘bigotry’.

I have what I think are good reasons for disliking some aspects of Muslim culture and they, doubtless, have reasons that seem good to them for disliking aspects of my culture. And all of that is OK and neither ‘side’ should be accused of ‘hatred’.

However, if you try to lop off someone’s head for drawing a picture of your prophet then I think we have a problem. It seems there is only one religion from which this kind of threat routinely emanates. If you’re a schoolteacher in Batley you may have to hide for the rest of your life⁷ from the followers of the religion of peace.

Despite it being claimed that Jesus is Islam’s 2nd most revered prophet, there is little danger in posting an ‘offensive’ Jesus meme that would lead to a similar level of threat. Presumably, Jesus is way down the list; a distant 2nd place.

The message is clear. Offend Christians - no worries - they just do the tut-tut thing and pray for you. Offend Muslims and you’re in real danger. What does that say about the difference between the two faiths?

And, of course, we have to do the execrable “NOT ALL” thing again for the retards who might be reading but, seriously, at what point does the nutty minority become too much of a problem for us to tolerate?

Despite all media claims to the contrary there’s a very clear difference, on average⁸, between the behaviours and attitudes of Christians and Muslims. Is it “Islamophobia” to suggest this? It’s something we can all see and relate to, however much the ‘authorities’ want to try to convince you otherwise. Trend-wise, if you had to choose between being ruled by Christians or Muslims, it’s fairly clear which one most of us would pick. Christian extremism does not seem to occur in anything like the same proportion as Islamic extremism - even though both sets of extremists could legitimately be described as minorities.

We should be able to choose. We should be able to discriminate. We should be able to say “actually, I really don’t think a UK run on ‘Islamic’ principles would be better than what we have now (even with its flaws and the current government’s lunacy). In fact I think it would be a lot worse”. To say something like this is not “Islamophobic”.

In the same way, saying that you don’t want the UK to be run on Communist principles isn’t hateful, or “commiephobic”. Islam is a set of ideas, like Communism is a set of ideas. Ideas are not ‘sacred’ and challenging an idea is not hateful. And it’s perfectly acceptable to expect limitations on people who cleave to some ideas we deem to be too harmful. None of us (I hope) would wish to see the re-emergence of Nazism, for example. I mean genuine Nazism and not the ‘woke’ version of ‘Nazism’ which sees anyone who questions things like child mutilation in the service of gender ideology as a ‘Nazi’.

Is ‘moderate’ Islam OK then?

I’ve argued that Islam has an extremist problem. It’s not an insignificant one and that’s clear from the colossal number of terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims over the years which dominate the league table of absolute terroristic bell-ends. It’s a minority of Muslims, to be sure, but it’s enough of a minority to cause untold grief and misery to millions.

So if Islam can rid itself of the wingnuts would everything be just tickety-boo?

I don’t think so.

It is a foundational principle within Islam that the Qur’an is the perfect word of God. It is the ‘blueprint’, if you like, for how to conduct human affairs and it encompasses the personal and the political. It’s not just about personal morality but gives instructions on how society is supposed to be run. It cannot, it is said, be improved upon.

Right away we have the first problem. Saying that you have some sacred text from God is all well and good, but which human has the perfect interpretation of it?

Is God somewhere ‘up there’ looking down on us thinking “Not again! That’s not what I meant, you idiots”?

The notion that the perfect blueprint for all people and societies in the entire globe emerged from a 7th century Middle Eastern desert and that this blueprint is true for all time and cannot be altered or adapted is, shall we say, somewhat hard to swallow.

I’m OK with principles derived from religion being used to inspire society and legislative frameworks. We have some of those; do not murder, do not steal, treat others how you’d like to be treated, and so on and so forth. I’m definitely not OK with having to live by the whole schtick and to have religious leaders create laws based around supernatural beliefs I do not share.

I’ve read 3 different English translations of the Qur’an, quite a long time ago now. I was searching for a translation that came close to the claimed beauty and perfection of the Arabic. In English the Qur’an is a fairly dull and tedious read. It’s got some good stuff in it - rules and moral considerations most of us might agree with. It also has quite a lot of stuff that’s more difficult to understand and seems quite brutal.

As in all religions there are schisms and arguments and different schools of thought about what it all means. If you’re going to construct an entire world based on your religion then perhaps you’d better make damned sure you’ve got the correct interpretation of it.

This is why I think secular society and secular culture is superior to any religious counterpart (at least in principle). Once you’ve got the mad mullahs in power they’re very difficult to shift because of their essentially authoritarian nature and their ‘one size fits all’ approach to things. Sounds like any totalitarian or authoritarian system, religious or otherwise.

It’s mostly why I think some form of liberalism is the right way forward because it’s based around the recognition that people are different and definitely not perfect and doesn’t try to force everyone into the same straitjacket. It is ‘designed’ from the outset to accommodate difference.

Communism fails because it doesn’t take human nature into account. Instead of harnessing that nature in a positive way, as ‘capitalism’ does, it tries to force people to act in a way that goes against their nature. The original writings of Marx had this view of the evolution of the ‘perfect’ human - an evolution that could be achieved by revolution and communism. It’s rather childish.

Systems based on religion are very much the same - they don’t really work with people ‘as they are’ but on how the religious elite think people ought to be.

I don’t want the UK to be captured by any religion. I don’t want the ‘rules’ to be decided by people who think they know the mind of God.

The central ‘paradox’

I know that ‘Islam’ can produce great people. I’ve met some of them. I’m friends with some of them. We share a lot of common values. They’re kind, generous, thoughtful, family-oriented, and great people to be around. It’s also quite possible to have vigorous debate and arguments about their faith with them without worrying whether my head is going to end up in a different room. If they represented the only ‘product’ of Islam then I wouldn’t have too many complaints.

So how is it that a religion can produce such vastly different behaviours amongst its adherents and lead to so much violence? It’s not really enough merely to say “oh, that bunch of people aren’t following ‘true’ Islam”. That may be true, but that bunch of people think you’re the one whose interpretation is messed up.

We could argue that Islam hasn’t had quite as much time as Christianity to ‘grow up’. After all, there was rather a lot of religious disagreement amongst Christians in history - disagreements that led to wars and bloodshed. Maybe that’s true, but how much longer are we going to have to wait?

There’s a consultation exercise currently going on in the UK, a private one, in which the UK government is seeking to define “Islamophobia”. Presumably with an eye towards constructing legislation to criminalize it. This is very dangerous. It may well end up re-introducing a de-facto blasphemy law. And for only one religion. Well, isn’t that just peachy.

It will almost certainly also link ‘Islamophobia’ with racism - for reasons, I guess. We’ll end up having to walk on eggshells around Muslims, yet again. Only this time not because a significant minority of them are immature violent sensitive bell-ends, but because the law will tell us we can’t criticize their beliefs.

I don’t care how ‘deeply’ one feels about one’s beliefs - there’s absolutely no reason why they should be immune from mockery or attack. There’s no reason why they should be ‘respected’ by those who do not share those beliefs.

Christians seem to manage being slandered, disrespected, mocked and all the rest without trying to chop someone’s head off or blowing the shit out of stuff. Islam does rather seem to have within its ranks something of a ‘sensitivity’ issue.

We’re still waiting for these folk to grow up - and that’s why we need to take steps to prevent the ‘sensitive wing’ of Islam from ever gaining a foothold. What those steps ought to be, I’m not sure - but criminalizing dissent will have the opposite effect to that intended and will only embolden the nutters.

We’ll end up, God forbid, with localized mini civil wars if we’re not careful. None of us want that. At least none of us who are relatively sane.

1. Which is an absurdity in itself. The author of the universe, the Great One who designed the galaxies, the subtle and complex microscopic dance of energies, and the impossible intricacies of life, and you, YOU, some goat-herder from the back-end of beyond, know what this being, this cosmic force, is thinking?

2. Do I really have to say “NOT ALL” here? In the same way that we would recognize that men’s propensity for violence quite clearly does not apply to ALL men, we have to admit that there’s enough of the violent ones to cause significant problems

3. If you want to include Communism in that list of religions, then we have a contender for top spot for misery, death and destruction

4. Do you fancy going to see The Marriage of Figaro or Satan’s Hairy Left Bollock tonight, love?

5. However, we have to remember that it wasn’t all that long ago when ‘we’ did view slavery as acceptable - much to our shame. Thankfully, the current interpretations that dominate both Islam and Christianity reject slavery (see the next footnote). The difference is that in Islam there are specific verses and Hadith which directly say that slavery was not only acceptable but OK with God (at least at the time the verses were penned).

6. The more moderate interpretations of the Qur’an suggest that slavery is abhorrent to Allah, but that, for practical reasons, it was permitted early on, as was the practice of enforced concubinage as a result of war. The idea is that Muslims were supposed to be moving in the direction of abolishing slavery altogether, it just couldn’t happen right away, and that those verses in the Qur’an that support the practice no longer apply today. It’s as if God was saying “sorry mate, can’t do much about this shit right now - come back in a few hundred years”.

It seems pretty clear from the Qur’an and the Hadith that when Muslims conquered a place they were allowed to indulge themselves with the captured women. Apparently this was for the women’s own good because, it is argued, the alternative was much worse. Better to be a sex slave for the early Muslims than to have to fend for yourself.

The problem here is that there is an awful lot of revisionism that goes on in the historical interpretation of the problematic Qur’anic texts. They suggest things like slavery/ownership was intended only to last until the conflict had ended and that you could have sex with those you owned (right-hand possesses) if you married them. The mental gymnastics are quite incredible when we all know the insufferable pressure that these captured women must have been under. To suggest such a ‘rosy’ picture of perfectly ‘humane’ treatment of such captives is an absurdity.

The issue, of course, is that it’s a projection of a modern interpretation of Islam back into the past. The key question is how the Muslims at the time interpreted those verses. I think they were entirely OK with slavery and having forced/coerced sex with those they had captured and saw nothing wrong with it. Despite having Muhammad himself, supposedly the person who knew and interpreted the Qur’an the best, on hand to guide them

7. This is referring to the schoolteacher in the UK who showed a picture of Muhammad during a class to spark a discussion (about religious tolerance perhaps?). The media describe it as a ‘caricature’ with no details about the actual content of the image but it’s doubtful that it was explicitly offensive. The teacher has been in hiding for 4 years because of the threats emanating from a certain section of the ‘community’ who are childish enough to get enraged by such things

8. The existence of a not insignificant proportion of extremists within Islam, albeit a minority, pushes this ‘average’ towards the not-so-nice. Both the Christian and Muslim religions have extremists, but Islamic extremists make up a significantly higher percentage of their overall religion than do Christian extremists. This is very clear from the data and the number of nutjob adherents like the Taliban, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, The Muslim Brotherhood, etc (not to mention those awfully nice folk who run Iran). None of this extremism would be able to gain a foothold if it was at something like the 1% level. More moderate Muslim countries are really harsh with Islamic extremists, far harsher than we are, because they don’t want these nutters either