…Or, “My god can beat up your god.”
Bush is falling apart in front of the White House press corps now, looking a lot more and more like a three-year-old who’s up past his bedtime and told he can’t have one last cookie before it’s lights out. Spoiled and petulant, the “leader” of the “free world” is no longer capable of coming up with remarks that are not rooted deeply in anger — or, more likely, frustration.
Have you ever had the experience of saying the same thing more than once to someone who doesn’t seem to get it? People like that are truly annoying, aren’t they? How can they be so stupid as to not understand what’s so obviously true…
Well, probably at least half the time, the fault isn’t with the other person; it’s with you. You’re the one incapable of making a cogent case for yourself, you’re the one incapable of bridging the communication gap, you’re the one who might be inflexible and set in your ways.
I don’t think that’s the case with Bush.
I’m pretty sure he’s an idiot. And I’m absolutely certain he’s wrong.
But then you get other disputes that just seem to get stupid so fast there’s no way to keep them down. Islam is a notoriously thin-skinned little group given their certainty that some god or other is on their side; you’d think they didn’t have an all-powerful champion backing them for all the fuss they make when a cartoonist draws a sketch or some ex-Nazi in a dorky hat opens his mouth.
The backstory is that Ratzi the Nazi driveled some ancient criticism of Islam, quoting a musty source (not that this should be surprising, given the Catholic church is pretty much built up entirely on musty text sources) and inflaming a wound that’s been around for more than half a dozen centuries. Ratzi seems to be genuinely baffled that his comments would have pissed anyone off. Did no one stop to remind him of the history between Muslims and Catholics? It’s not exactly a mutual stroke-fest.
Well, now we’ve got Iran’s religious leadership claiming Ratzi’s comments are ‘the “latest link” in “the chain of a conspiracy to set in train a crusade”‘. Khomeini seems to believe that cartoons depicting Mohammed and inane drivel being spouted by some doddering old fool somehow are part of a larger plot to discredit Islam, perhaps, or possibly even to turn it into a whipping boy for the 21st Century.
Hey, Ayatollah: We really don’t need to do anything to your PR; the extremists who call themselves Muslim are doing that quite well on their own.
CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida militants in Iraq vowed war on “worshippers of the cross” and protesters burned a papal effigy on Monday over Pope Benedict’s comments on Islam, while Western churchmen and statesmen tried to calm passions.
Yet, interestingly, it’s not the Qaeda that get slammed by Islamic leaders; it’s the West. Unfortunately while the Koran contains passages that clearly state judgment of the unbelievers is to be left to god, such as
And those who disbelieve shall be driven to hell in companies; until, when they come to it, its doors shall be opened, and the keepers of it shall say to them: Did not there come to you apostles from among you reciting to you the communications of your Lord and warning you of the meeting of this day of yours? They shall say: Yea! But the sentence of punishment was due against the unbelievers.
(Koran 39:71, from “The Companions“, which I think might also have been a Star Trek episode)
there still seem to be calls among Islamic extremists for revenge, here and now, in this life. Fundamentalism like this isn’t new, of course; we’ve had it here in Christian America for decades. (And, in fact, in the UK too — anyone remember the little tiff that was going on in Ireland for a while?)
For his part Ratzi is just as clueless as ever, apologizing for the problems his comments caused, but not for the comments themselves.
Speaking to pilgrims at Castelgandolfo, his summer estate, he said he is “deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address . . . which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.”
Well, then, why the hell did you repeat them, you old idiot?
But before we snigger too much at the broadside swappage and other general foolishness here, let’s remember that this is pretty much the history of all religion in a nutshell. Spew mindless hate and dogma, foment as much loathing, fear and terror as possible, get the sheep good and angry, and then start beating down your opponents. Whether they’re Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Protestants, gays, lesbians, atheists, anarchists, liberals, Communists, Socialists, royalists, Democrats, some Republicans, biologists, paleontologists, geologists, astronomers — actually, anyone who has an evidence-based perspective on life — Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, employees of women’s health centers, abortion clinics, or anyone else who can possibly be labeled, vilified or identified as being even remotely different and therefore dangerous, religion (and here I’m obviously targeting Christianity by its bugaboos, but every religion is guilty of this in one way or another, including Buddhism) is the primary source of grief, strife and loathing for those who dare to not conform to the strictures of the dominant resident cult.
Sinéad O’Connor was right. The Pope is full of shit.
But then again, so is Khomeini. Let’s not forget that. The real enemy, the real breeder of intolerance, is religion.
All religion.
Abolish the source and end the strife.
