Godless And Free (9 page)

25.
More Demands from Islam

October 9, 2007

Well, it’s a gloomy rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse – I could be in Saudi Arabia, where men are men and women are cattle. Can I say that?

The Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission, now there’s a collection of words to boggle the mind, but apparently this organisation does actually exist, and they intend to complain later this month at an event in Copenhagen that Muslims living in Europe are denied human rights and are not allowed to freely practise their faith.

How about that? Being lectured in human rights by Saudi Arabia. What’s next, animal welfare from the Koreans? Does it get much more surreal? you ask. Well, yes, apparently it does. Because they also want us to stop linking Islam with terrorism, which is pretty rich coming from the guardians of Islam and the guardians of terrorism.

In a sane society, the guy who actually stands up to make this speech would be bum-rushed out the door the moment he opened his mouth. Or even better, run out of town on a rail and dumped in the river.

But this is Europe, so instead we’ll probably listen to what he’s got to say and take it all on board, and then change our way of doing things, as usual.

Just this week in the UK we’ve been told that a leading supermarket chain is now allowing Muslim checkout staff not to handle alcohol if they don’t want to. So you can bet your life they’ll now be lining up around the block to not want to. We’ve had a pharmacist refusing to sell birth control because of religion; we’ve had a Muslim dentist who refused to treat a woman because she wasn’t wearing a headscarf, and now we’ve been told that some Muslim doctors are refusing to treat certain people because of their precious faith.

Well, here in the UK we have a technical term for this kind of behaviour. We call it taking the piss. And we don’t like people taking the piss. It gets up our nose, and it gives us the right hump. (It’s a cultural thing.)

If Muslims are really as downtrodden as the Saudis would like us to believe, why are there currently plans for a Saudi funded gigantic mosque to be built right here in London? The largest mosque in Europe, no less. (Eat your heart out, Denmark; we know you’d love to have it, but we’re getting it instead.) And it’s going to be built right next to the site for the 2012 Olympic Games, if they can get planning permission.

Even some local Muslims have been protesting about this plan. They say they’ll be marginalised because this mosque will be run by extremists for extremists, which means it’s pretty much guaranteed to get the go ahead, and the London Olympics will doubtless be dominated by a mosque the size of a football stadium.

I don’t know if the marathon will be interrupted for prayers, or if female athletes will be required to compete wearing a tent, though I’m sure if the mad mullah of multiculturalism, Ken Livingstone,* the mayor of London, has anything to do with it, that won’t be too far off the agenda.

The fact that the Saudis feel they can get away with this cynical bullshit just shows how far we’ve already allowed ourselves to be pushed here in Europe.

Radical Islam has seen us for what we are, a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can’t stop injecting, even though we know it’s going to kill us. And they’re taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities.

And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn’t want to be agreed with. It wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone. And some of us, frankly, think that’s a little bit too much to ask. And if you think that’s unreasonable, all I can say is my freedom is more important than your faith. Much, much more important.

And besides, I just have this natural aversion to being bullied and pushed around by bigoted misogynistic ignoramuses, and I say that with all due respect.

And before somebody accuses me again of insulting Islam, please grow up. I don’t need to insult Islam when there are already so many Muslims willing to do it for me every time they strap on a suicide belt or stone somebody to death for the crime of having a private life. These are the people who insult Islam, not people like me.

Of course I realise Islamofascists take pretty much every criticism as an insult by default. But to be fair to them, it would be difficult to think of a compliment, wouldn’t it? What do you say? “Nice jihad. Like the dogma. Way to go with the bigotry and hate.” There’s not much scope really, is there?

But these are the people who are actually insulting Islam. And these are the true enemies of Muslims.

And the biggest enemy of all is the royal family of Saudi Arabia, because it’s thanks to their activities, funding and encouraging cold blooded murder in the name of religious dogma, that Islam is feared and resented all over the civilised world, not because of people like me. And the Muslim population needs to take that fact on board and recognise it.

As for us in the West, well, our good friends the Saudis are waging war against us, and we’re so fat and complacent we don’t even know it. So maybe we deserve everything we get.

People have said to me: “You know, you’re pronouncing that wrong. It’s not Sordi, it’s Sowdi.”

Well, OK, fair enough, I’m happy to pronounce it Sowdi. I’d be even happier if the country was just called Arabia, and the medieval wackos who currently run it were back in the desert living in their tents with their livestock where they belong.

In fact, I’m looking forward to the day when we finally wean ourselves off oil altogether and pull out of the Middle East, and then Sordi and Sowdi Arabia can quietly revert back into the Stone Age, unless they manage to exploit their other great natural resource and start exporting egg timers.

Now that might even be something worth praying for. Peace.

* Thankfully, he was voted out in 2008.

26.
What’s Good About Religion?

October 23, 2007

If you believe, as I do, that the purpose of religion is to suck all the pleasure out of life and spit it in your eye, then you might have trouble thinking of anything positive to say about it. But I think it’s important to try, if just for a sense of balance, so that’s why I’ve decided to think of one or two nice things that I can say about each of the main religions, in particular the three monotheistic dogmas which have plagued… I mean enriched, our civilisation for so many centuries. The three desert dogmas, as I like to think of them, because between them they’ve done so much to make a desert of the human soul.

Let’s begin with Islam. Now in the current climate of intimidation and special pleading you might think it would be hard to say anything nice about Islam, but I can think of a couple of things. Firstly, I like their symbol, the crescent moon. I find it much more attractive than the cross, possibly because it doesn’t have anybody nailed to it.

Also, whenever you see film of a large mosque full of worshippers praying together, I like the synchronised bowing. I think that’s always very well done.

Also, of course, we have radical Islam to thank for showing us so graphically what a huge problem religion can become. If not for all the hysterical self-righteous bullying that we’ve been subjected to in recent years, many of us might still be labouring under the illusion that religion is relatively harmless. So thanks to radical Islam for the heads up on that one.

What I like most about Christianity is that it’s not Islam, which is a major bonus in my opinion. Unfortunately it is Christianity, which kind of takes most of the shine off it for me.

I like the fact that the Inquisition is over, and that Christian history is no longer being written in blood. I think that’s quite a positive development

And recently the Vatican hosted a conference on astronomy, which is quite remarkable, given their track record in that area. I mean it was only a few years ago that the Catholic Church finally got around to admitting that Galileo may be right after all about the earth travelling around the sun.

And that, too, was a very positive thing, because they didn’t have to say anything. They could have just kept it quiet, and then millions of Catholics would have been none the wiser.

And of course you can understand why it took them five hundred years to get around to it. With a question of that importance they wouldn’t want to rush into any hasty judgments and risk making fools of themselves.

What do I like about Judaism? Well, not a great deal, to be perfectly honest, except for the fact that it doesn’t preach itself into your face every chance it gets, which I think is a very underrated quality, and one which should be widely imitated.

Also of course the Jews have got the oldest of the three dogmas, yet they’re the ones who are still waiting for their messiah. And you just know damn well that if he did turn up they’d nail him up for blasphemy again, which is an idea that has always quite amused me, because one thing we should remember is that religion can be a source of great humour, as well as great tragedy, guilt, self-loathing, fear, misery, cruelty, and pain.

Outside of the Abrahamic triangle of insanity, what I like about Hinduism is that they’re vegetarians, which I think is a very civilised way to be. (I think they go a little overboard with the cows, but that’s their business.) But mainly because Hinduism is not actively trying to take over the world in the way Islam is, and I think that’s a very attractive quality in any religion that’s nine hundred million strong.

As for Buddhism, well what can I say? A religion with no god. Magnificent. Like a prison with no walls.

So you see, there are plenty of positive things that you can find to say about religion if you look for them.

Now you can say to me: “Well, OK, this is all well and good; you’re clearly making an effort to be positive here,but the fact remains that religion is really just a hedge against death. It’s an expensive insurance policy which will disappear in a puff of smoke the moment you try to claim on it.” And yes, you may well be right about that.

In fact, you might even further argue that anyone who gets their morals unquestioningly from some ancient text might as well get their personality from a microchip. And again I’d find it hard to argue with that point of view.

Religion, you tell me, doesn’t have any answers because it doesn’t ask any questions; you’ve rejected it time and time again but it won’t take no for an answer, and you don’t want to be nice about it any more. You’re sick to your back teeth of hearing about people’s beliefs and their gods and their scriptures and their precious goddam faith, and you wish that they would take their ridiculous superstitions, and all their cruel and petty stupid little rules and regulations and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. Some kind of black hole, perhaps, is what you’ve got in mind. And I can certainly relate to that.

I don’t like the arrogant way they try to force their narrow prejudices into other people’s lives any more than you do, but come on, this is supposed to be a positive video, and I don’t want to ruin it by dwelling on the negative things – the selective reasoning, the wishful thinking, and the shameless abandonment of personal responsibility that religious belief embraces in such a self-deceptive and cowardly way. I’d rather focus on the positive.

And the most positive thing I can think of to say, and this is something many believers have said to me as well, is that religion gives people hope; it gives them optimism for the future.

And that is definitely a very good thing. In fact it’s something I can certainly relate to, because even after centuries of repression and bigotry and downright bloody minded stupidity, I’m still optimistic enough to believe that religion is just too absurd to last forever, and that sooner or later humanity’s collective intelligence will rise just enough for us to see it for what it actually is, a cruel and manipulative hoax which sustains itself, not by exalting the human spirit, but by breaking it.

And I just hope that when that day arrives we’re big enough to laugh at ourselves, because laughter is the best medicine, as we know, even according to the Bible:

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” Proverbs 17 verse 22.

Peace, especially to everybody with dry bones.

27.
Was Jesus Gay?

November 2, 2007

I’ve had a couple of e-mails from people who want my opinion as to how they should break the news to their fundamentalist Christian parents that they don’t believe in God.

Well, the obvious answer is tell them you’re gay, and then when they’ve recovered from the fainting fit and you’ve administered the smelling salts you can tell them you were only joking, you’re not gay, you’re just an atheist. And they’ll be so relieved they’lling hallelujah.

Religion doesn’t much like gay people, does it? But then of course religion doesn’t much like anything. And if we listed all the things religion disapproves of we’d probably still be here next Tuesday. However, it does seem to hold a special place of condemnation in its hard little heart for homosexuals.

To the religious mind, if you’re gay, then you’ve got something wrong with you. Whereas to my mind, if you think it’s some kind of insult to call somebody gay, well that’s when you’ve actually got something wrong with you.

It is one of the most common insults I get, and it’s also one of the most puzzling, because if I was gay I wouldn’t think it was anything to be ashamed of, and even though I’m not, I don’t feel in the least bit insulted at being called gay, so what the hell, go ahead and knock yourselves out.

I realise that this is a sensitive subject to some people. Here in the UK we recently had Catholic adoption agencies actually threatening to close themselves down rather than place children with gay parents. Although, given the Catholic Church’s record with children, I’d have thought gay parents would be the least of the kids’ worries.

The Anglican Church is on the verge of splitting over this issue, because some people don’t want gay clergy. And I can understand that. I don’t want them either, but then I don’t want any kind of clergy.

In America there’s a well known televangelist who apparently hates gay people so much he couldn’t wait to get his hands on one of them, even paying money for the privilege. Of course he kept it quiet for as long as he could because Christianity and homosexuality make uneasy bedfellows, if you’ll pardon the expression, because of course it is an abomination unto the Lord, isn’t it? Homosexuality, I mean, not Christianity, obviously. You wouldn’t call that an abomination, would you? A laughable parody of Christ’s message, perhaps, and a tasteless burlesque of everything he ever stood for, certainly, but an abomination? Oh all right, you’ve talked me into it. It’s an abomination. I was just trying to be nice.

I’ve heard it suggested from some people that Christians are so irrationally obsessed with this subject because deep down they’re terrified that Jesus himself might have been gay.

There’s no real evidence for it, but then there’s no real evidence for anything to do with religion, so yeah, I’ll buy it. Well, keep an open mind, that’s what I always say. What do you always say?

To be fair, according to some accounts like the Gospels of Philip or Thomas, it’s probable that Jesus wasn’t gay, because he got married and had a child. But unfortunately those Gospels never actually made it into the New Testament, so they can’t possibly be true.

If we take the actual Gospels as gospel, then what we’ve got is a man in his thirties, unmarried in a culture where it’s almost unheard of for a man of thirty to be unmarried. Plus, come on, you can’t ignore the twelve boyfriends, especially when there’s a missing passage from the Gospel of Mark that actually describes Jesus spending a night with a naked youth. We’re told that the youth came to Jesus wearing a linen cloth over his naked body, and he stayed with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. I be did, along with one or two other little mysteries while he was at it. Well, why not? He was only human.

The apostle John repeatedly refers to himself as the one who Jesus specially loved. I don’t know whether he meant it in the Greek manner, so to speak, but what would it matter if he did? This is the point. If Jesus was gay, would it negate the teachings and the parables? Would the Sermon on the Mount lose its authority if preached by the queen of queens rather than the king of kings?

And if somebody could prove historically beyond all doubt that Jesus was in fact homosexual, would Christians then reject Jesus, or would they reject the evidence as usual? Your guess is as good as mine.

From what I’ve read in the Gospels I think Jesus was a pretty common sense sort of person, and I don’t think he would have had a problem with anybody being who they are. I do think, though, that he had a problem with people who pretend to be one thing, while being another.

So if you are a closet homosexual family man with your own ministry, as I know some of you are, don’t be ashamed. God knows you’ve got enough to be ashamed of without adding imaginary crimes to the list.

It’s not a sin to be gay. It’s a sin, if anything, to be a liar and a hypocrite about it. So why not do yourself and everyone around you a favour, step out of that closet and show a little pride in who you really are.

Some people won’t like it, of course they won’t, but you know how bigoted they are. You know that better than anybody.

And anyway you can ignore their opinion because now you’ll have the kind of strength that only comes from being true to yourself, and who knows, it might even help to enhance your faith if you take comfort from the real possibility that your messiah, Mr Jesus Christ, was a normal healthy homosexual just like you. Everyone’s a winner.

Peace to all Christians, especially the secretly queer ones.