How many more times will I read about people becoming radicalised?
The people concerned are all muslims. We must do something about it.
Many of the people who condemn radicalisation are worshippers themselves, sometimes of the same God (there is always a God involved) and sometimes of another. Those of us who don’t worship any god presumably must get radicalised some other way.
Surely it can’t be all that difficult to become radicalised if one reads any of the sacred texts? As Richard Dawkins put it, “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.”
In the bible, God kills at least 2,476,633 people, which is a huge underestimate given the deaths caused by the floods that inspired Noah to build his ark at the age of 480. Satan by contrast killed 10 people and even they were as a result of a bet with God.
The thing is a lot of people believe all this, despite the complete lack of evidence. And the reason many of them believe it is they get taught it as fact when they are children. With the exceptions of those who are born again believers, often thought not always as a result of tragic circumstances, we learn this stuff as children.
Although the churches are largely deserted these days as attendances plummet, there are still a good number of people who believe in a God.
My family has a low level belief in the great man in the sky. I remember my grandmother telling me that if I kept saying ‘Blimey’ I would be struck blind. A few years later, my eyesight deteriorated to the point where I needed glasses. Whether this was as a result of my blasphemy or other things that happen in adolescence, well, who knows? I was worried that God might be listening in whilst I watched the wrestling on telly with my grandfather and said, ‘Blimey, that Mick McManus is a dirty old so and so’ and God sitting on his cloud, fuming, and decreeing that he would make my eyesight worse as a result.
It’s quite easy to get people to believe in God. Pretty well everyone I know who believes in a celestial dictator has done so since they were too young to really know what they were being told. I doubt that they were taught the basics of Keynesian economics and grew up to worship it every Sunday.
So they catch you while you’re young and they’ve got you for life.
And when they’ve got you for life, I guess anything can happen from then on. Religious folk are very good at picking and choosing the bits they like from holy texts and ignoring the unpleasant awkward bits. God/Allah is love except when he is executing people or killing their children. Take all that stuff literally – and why shouldn’t you if that’s what your book says? – and you might feel you have free license to do pretty well anything you like.
I am wasting my time arguing this stuff because all the major politicians support religion in this country in one way or another. Cameron says one week his religion comes and goes, like the reception for Magic FM but later proclaims his deep ‘faith.’ Miliband is an atheist but is the first to ‘respect’ anyone with ‘faith’ and shows no signs of opposing schools whose entry policies depend on which religious superstition you hold. And Clegg, as befits this gutless and chinless wonder, doesn’t believe in God but is happy to have his roman catholic wife send their children to a catholic only school where children learn about, er, the catholic religion.
You have one type of ‘faith’ schools and you have to have the lot. CofE, Catholic, Islamic, Sikh – you all think you’re the best: have your own school and guess what? The great British public will pay for it.
It is much harder to radicalise someone who has no faith or someone who has gained their faith as they head through life, making up their own mind when they are old enough.
I am very much of the live and live brigade and I have no problem with ‘faith’ as long as people keep it personal, keep it to themselves. Don’t tell me how to live my life. If you don’t like abortion, then don’t have one. Just don’t tell anyone else it’s your business. It isn’t.
Radicalism starts with indoctrination and what else can you call religious education at a very early age?
By all means allow religion to be taught. It is a part of our history. But let the young make up their own minds, let them seek out the science if they want to. Let them question what they are being taught.
I hear from some that their religion gives them comfort. Especially when they are old and sick, it gives them some kind of hope that people might survive their own deaths and meet up with their loved ones once again. Fair enough: believe that if you like, but it doesn’t make it true.
