It would be stretching it a bit to say that some of my best friends were muslims but I have known a few in my time. I went to school with a muslim, I’ve worked with muslims and even went to the pub with one for a few years, although he never drank a drop. They always seemed pretty reasonable folk to me and they weren’t a problem in my life. They got on with their lives, I got on with mine. I even visited a mosque in my previous job where I forgot to remove my shoes at first and then swore. No one batted an eyelid.
I still don’t believe that muslims are a problem in the world. Most of them are like us, with one or two exceptions, and they don’t bother me anymore than I bother them. I have a few issues with them, like the way they kill their animals and the way they treat their women. But I have always got on well with people of religion, even though I don’t understand it. But if muslims aren’t the problem, what is? I’d say islam is the problem.
Every time I switch on the radio, there is a story about something connected with islam. The terrible hostage situation in Sydney, the mass murder of children in Pakistan, the ongoing mess in the middle east, Anjem Choudary – oh, the list goes on forever. We are told that the terrorists have a perverted interpretation of the Quran but whilst I haven’t read it in its entirety, it’s as bloodthirsty as the Old Testament, if not worse. Many of the atrocities carried out in the name of islam are in the Quran so the protagonists claim they were only following the word of Allah. So, you could argue, as they do, that they are the real believers.
I have the same issue with those of many religions. Richard Dawkins summed things up very well when he said, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Much of the Old Testament is absurd, totally bonkers, but of course the godwhackers pick out the bits they like when they are all over the BBC thoughts for the day and forget the bad bits.
The murder of the children in Pakistan today was an act of sheer evil, islamic fascists with suicide vests committing mass murder of the innocents, believing, thanks to religious superstition that Allah will rebuild the bits of them that have been blown to smithereens and welcome them to the virgins in paradise. Let’s hope he finds their cocks in that case. It will have been a wasted journey if he didn’t.
I am glad I am still shocked by it all because it seems these evil bastards are trying to make each successive murder even more sickening than the one before. Beheading aid workers, the killing of Lee Rigby, 7/7, 9/11, Madrid, the murder of Theo van Gogh; what is it with this religion?
We don’t help matters much, mind you, with the yellow-bellied appeasement that followed the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, with even Norman Tebbit condemning the author and then the media hanging him out to dry. We – well, I don’t – encourage separatism in schooling by encouraging those with religious superstition to open their own schools, proselytising those who attend (what’s the point of a ‘faith’ school’ otherwise?) and then complaining when you have a divided society.
The problem is islam, the problem is religion. The problem isn’t muslims and everyone else with supernatural beliefs because most of them live ordinary lives, just getting by.
The pews in the churches have been emptying for years and belief in a god is declining. We have learned through science how we got here – the fact of evolution, the Big Bang – and whilst some people use god to fill in the gaps that science hasn’t yet worked out, most of us realise that there is no evidence to suggest that a celestial dictator has been actively influencing life on earth, or indeed in the billions of galaxies in the universe. What a busy chap he would have been had he existed.
I’m afraid god isn’t great and the influence of a superior being, who probably never existed, is harming the world and may ultimately destroy it. Pakistan is a nuclear nation for fuck’s sake.
The poor children of Pakistan, murdered in the most horrible of circumstances, ultimately in the name of islamic fascism. My heart aches for you.
