Our old friend Anjem Choudary is in the news again, this time to inform us all that voting is a “sin” against islam. It turns out that Allah is “the only legislator”. What a blow! There was me thinking that parliament was our legislator.
Allah is going to be a very busy boy, then, enacting all the legislation that is normally carried out by civil servants on behalf of elected politicians. And with the help of my old friend Mr Google, I have managed to find out the legislative programme from the last 12 months which will certainly give any god plenty to think about:
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill
Childcare Payments Bill
Infrastructure Bill
Modern Slavery Bill
National Insurance Contributions Bill
Private Pensions Bill
Pensions Tax Bill
Recall of MPs Bill
Serious Crime Bill
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill
Who would have thought any celestial dictator, albeit one with supernatural powers who never actually uses them, would be interested in such a varied and, generally, dull series of measures? I cannot pretend to be an expert on the bible or q’uran, but I have my doubts as to whether there are texts concerning National Insurance contributions or indeed the Infrastructure bill (whatever that is) but good grief, he is going to busy, isn’t he?
Many of these Bills are extremely complex, which I suppose won’t be too much of a problem for an all-knowing god, especially now that George Osborne has said he will be abolishing Class 2 National Insurance contributions which will give him, the merciful one, a lesser headache.
Choudary goes further, though, referring to muslims who vote and run for election as “apostates”, which means they have abandoned their beliefs. Now given that apostasy is regarded in many places as deserving of the death penalty, this is serious stuff from everyone’s favourite “hate preacher”, although that doesn’t include people like me who are already in trouble for not believing in anyone at all. The great man regards someone like me as a “kaafir”. Nice.
We are used to Choudary’s outpourings and mostly they are rightly ignored by most people, including I suspect most muslims, but I did read the other day that he would like to go to Syria to see for himself how things are under his pals from ISIS, if he was granted safe passage. Well, I am not sure if we should grant him safe passage because surely that’s a matter for him to sort out, not the British government and taxpayer (he does very well out of us already), but if he really thinks he would have a better life in Syria, then can’t we just escort him to Turkish/Syrian border, take his passport back and let him take his chances?
