| It has been a busy month for God, what with so many of His followers here on Earth going completely barking mad. It’s gotten to the point where God’s current inactivity is being touted as proof of His non-existence: surely if God existed and could see the way that we were carrying on, He would decide that now would be a good time for another Flood.
Then you read about global warming, and you realise that He may just be taking a moment to make sure He does it right this time.
Arise, Sir Salman
The particular religion making waves at the moment is, of course, Islam. Back in June, it was announced that Salman Rushdie was going to be awarded a knighthood. This was taken as a direct insult by certain sections of the worldwide Islamic community, who haven’t forgotten Rushdie’s 1987 novel The Satanic Verses, a book which earned Rushdie a fatwah from Iran’s Ayatollah Kohmeni.
The debacle was compared to the infamous Cartoon Wars of last year, when Muslims were similarly outraged by some disrespectful cartoon of the prophet Mohammed. One important difference this time, however, was the reaction of the West. While there was a belligerent defiance and a strong defence of free speech when the cartoons were the issue, the knighting of Sir Salman was generally greeted with a lowering of the eyes, a shuffling of the feet and a mumbling of, “well, that is a bit insensitive”.
This reaction was pretty much universal across the board, from the far left to the Muslim-hating right. Few people were willing to speak out in favour of Rushdie. It’s hard to understand why. Rushdie was born into a Muslim family, and his novel (which, by the way, is a bloody good book) is a very honest and thoughtful attempt to examine the character of Indian Muslims, especially those who have relocated to the West. It may have broken a few taboos, but it was an earnest and important book.
The Danish cartoons, on the other hand, were ultimately boorish and racist. Yes, perhaps, we have a duty to stand up for freedom of speech and the right of the cartoonists to speak, but nobody could like what they were actually saying, unless they really believe that all Muslims are terrorists.
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Salman Rushdie is, besides anything else, one of the greatest British novelists of the latter half of the 20th century. He’s a genuine literary heavyweight, one of the few surviving in the wild, and he deserves to be recognised as such, no matter who objects. That seems to me to be a real freedom of speech issue.
We could go on from here to find some connection between the lack of people sticking up for Salman and the colour of his skin, but let’s get back to the person that we’re feeling sorry for right now: God.
The War On Haggis
God created the heaven and the earth (apparently). God created man (allegedly) and gave him free will (we’re told). He then gave us some sacred books telling us how he would like us to live our lives, and then vanished off the scene for a couple of thousand years.
Imagine how surprised He would be if he comes back right now and finds that a small group of people have interpreted his sacred word as meaning, “I want you to blow up Scotland”.
But it’s true. The UK has had a wave of terror alerts over the last few weeks linked to Al Qaida. Personally, I normally ignore these things, because I assume it’s just the government trying to scare everyone into signing away a few more of our civil liberties. After all, if they can’t tell whether Saddam Hussein has huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, how could they possibly tell if a couple of guys in Tooting Bec have a nail-bomb?
But these latest alerts appear to be for real, if the burning 4 X 4 that was driven into Glasgow airport is anything to go by. Fortunately, the attack was a failure, which means that we can now laugh at how inept the would-be terrorists are. One of them was incapacitated by a very unusual method, which inspired Daily Record to run its greatest ever headline: “I KICKED BURNING TERRORIST IN BALLS”.
It is worrying though, that a group of people who have made their homes in the UK feel compelled to attack it. We may criticise the ex-pats in Spain occasionally, but they have so far refrained from blowing any of it up. It’s also extremely worrying that the perpetrators were doctors, people sworn for life to protect and heal. Their oath to do no harm was over-ridden by their belief in their religion, despite the fact that their religion explicitly states that killing, especially of innocents, is forbidden. How could these intelligent people so badly misunderstand their own faith?
Latin Fever
We might gain some insight into that issue by looking a little closer to home. The new Pope has, over the past month, gone completely bollocks crazy. First he reintroduces the Latin Mass, including its section where Catholics pray that Jews may be forgiven for their sins, and then he goes and re-asserts the primacy of the Catholic faith. In layman’s terms, that means that he said that Catholics are right and Protestants are all going to hell.
To be fair, he’s only restating the position the Church has held for the past 500 years, but now is a really bad time to bring it up (in fact, it coincided with the Orange marches in Belfast, one of the last major battlefields of the two faiths). So, why is he doing this, at a time when religion is such a hot topic?
Perhaps it’s divine inspiration. Perhaps he genuinely has lost his mind. But it’s likely that it’s the same reason certain Muslim leaders are pushing their followers towards violence: power.
While Catholicism wanes in Europe, the base in South America and Africa is growing, and in the face of the increasing popularity of Islam, the Catholic Church seems to be taking a very robust, macho, aggressive stance on a number of issues. All of these issues will play well in these target areas, and ensure more bums on pews.
Of course, it doesn’t have much to do with God. Makes you feel kind of sorry for Him. Maybe we should give him a knight-hood. |
