I was surprised to find myself nodding along when listening to King Brian this morning as he called on people to stand united “against those who would seek to divide us”. I am no monarchist, to be sure, but nonetheless I welcomed his words. In Britain, we have Nigel Farage and his private company Reform UK Ltd, engaging in permanent campaigns of hatred, far right TV propaganda channel GB News pumping out more hatred 24/7 and of course this week’s Conservative party ‘leader’, the terminally arrogant Kemi Badenoch, sneering and smirking, while pumping up the culture wars. And the rest of the world offers further versions of evil as actual fascism in Russian and now the USA threatens to drag the world into further dangerous chaos. Yes, Brian: let’s stand united against those who would seek to divide us. I soon realised that Brian’s fine words weren’t actually about today’s fascists, but about the islamist fascists of 2005 who on 7th July 2005 murdered 52 innocent people in central London and injured hundreds more in a series of suicide murders.
It is right that the country remembers that dark day, one that I remember only too well. At first, the media was reporting on power outages on the London Underground, but it quickly emerged that it was a terror attack carried out by four islamist maniacs who blew themselves into millions of tiny pieces in order to inflict death and agony against ordinary folk going about their own business in peace.
The suicide murderers – I refuse to call them suicide bombers because that does go far enough in showing those four islamist maniacs for what they really are – did manage to achieve one thing, as did the 9/11 suicide murderers in the USA and that was to divide us. And in the following 20 years, we are arguably more divided than ever. I suspect that was exactly what the murderers wanted to happen.
One thing the murderers had in common is religion. They were all muslims and believed that they were acting on behalf of Allah. Well, the Qur’an, like the bible, is an extremely violent book. Click here to find out just how violent. There is more violence in the bible, but then it’s a much bigger book than the Qur’an. In percentage terms, the Qur’an is far more violent, but in a sense it doesn’t matter which is the more violent. What matters is whether people see that violence as the word of God/Allah and how they then behave.
It is worth me saying at this point that I find all religious texts to be nonsensical, all of which were written during times when no one knew what was going on. Just look at what the Qur’an said about going to the bathroom, the term our American cousins use for the bog. Allah, to be fair, doesn’t say too much about one’s bathroom habits but Muhammad is obsessed with them. But be very clear that if you are going to have what us westerners might call a number two, on no account read the Qur’an during the … er … business end. I apologise for the levity in this passage but I write in order to make the point about just how ridiculous these religious texts actually are.
Religious folk try to get round the many absurdities of their ‘faith’ by saying, ‘Well, you shouldn’t take the texts literally.” Why wouldn’t you? When I read a non-fiction book, I don’t expect the stories to be fictional and to pick and choose the bits I believe are literally true. If you believe in Noah’s Ark, for which no examples of its existence have ever been found. you will presumably also believe that Noah was 600 years old when he built it and he liked to get naked and pissed with his sons, as you do. Or that God sent fiery serpents down from Heaven – where did he keep them? – in order to punish the Israelites for whingeing and complaining. I suppose if you can believe that, you can understand why four islamist fascists and nutcases decided it would be a good idea to murder and maim innocent people. I imagine that they fully expected to end up in Paradise, to enjoy the rest of their lives with countless beautiful virgins. As they would now be worm food, it is difficult to understand how they might get any satisfaction, but God, as they say, moves in mysterious ways.
Today, we remember that terrible day in our history, with a combined sense of sadness and bewilderment. If the murderers committed these heinous crimes in order to please God, then what kind of God do they think he is? Perhaps, the same one as Richard Dawkins memorably described here? I know that here Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament, but was Allah very much different? The Christian God directly killed 2,391,421 people in the Old Testament. Satan, who is supposed to be the bad guy in the bible, only killed 10 and even they were in a bet with God. Do you think this is all a bit mad? I call it religion. And religion is how we arrived at 7/7.
Yes, I know that most believers are decent folk who wouldn’t dream of doing anything bad to anyone else, but there are more than enough people who certainly would. I am not saying that we should in any way ban religion or anything extreme like that but wouldn’t it be a better world if it was based on secular principles? That the state should be separated from the church/mosque/temple, that everyone would be free to worship their own God within the one law of the land? Here is what secularism means.
King Brian was right when he said that we should stand united “against those who would seek to divide us”. I happen to think that thanks to fascist dictators and religious nutcases all round the world, we are more divided than ever. In the end, we should be more kind and tolerant, including to those of ‘faith’. The Mad Mullahs of the east and the Christian nationalists of the west are our enemies and, you might argue, as I would, that they only exist because of so-called moderate theists. Yes, hold the services – unfortunately mainly religious – today in order to remember 7/7 but let’s remember how religion stokes division and often causes wars. May your God go with you, for sure, but please keep him away from me and my life.
RIP the 52.
