Holy smoke and mirrors

If people weren’t bleeding and dying because of it, the current embarrassment of our kind—the human race—by Islamist fundamentalist idiots taking place in the Middle East and North Africa (and coming soon to a cinema or skyscraper near you) would be laughable; but they are, and it’s not. We live in interesting times. We are looking at, and living through, the start of World War III, live and in colour. And it really will be fought, all over the world, not just in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific. Car bombs will blow up American and other Western embassies in our own Caribbean. Our mimic mussulmen will kill their fellow citizens in the name of a foreign God. WWIII will come home to you, and yours, in what could be called a very fundamental way. And WWIII will not be between Muslims and everyone else, as a lot of Western bigots currently suggest, probably hopefully, but between all believers on the one hand and all the infidels united by reason on the other. The Muslim idiots are the ones who are reacting now, but the Christian and Jewish idiots will soon join them—and all of us will have to depend more and more on the rational Muslim, Christian and Jew.

 

God help us if such persons do not exist, or are not willing to do God’s work in abandoning man’s religions. The Holy World War will separate good and evil; and the religious may find it difficult to tell, in the early days, that they are on the wrong side. And, the really, really funny thing is that, years from now, in the same way historians pointed to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo as the flashpoint of WWI, and to the invasion of Poland as the start of WWII, future historians will trace Unholy WWIII back to an Ed Wood movie. The proximate cause of the murder, bombings, arson and terror the supposedly holy criminals of the Middle East and North Africa are perpetrating is a dreadfully made, no-budget hate film. Even more embarrassing to them, The Innocence of Muslims was a deliberate attempt to rile up the morons of Islam, and it succeeded more spectacularly than the bigots behind it could have hoped. No doubt they believe they have God on their side. Both sides. It’s probably apocryphal but I’ve often heard that, in Chinese (no dialect is ever specified, just the generic, “Chinese”), the word for “crisis” and “opportunity” is the same; it could be said of Arabic this week, because the genuinely, literally ignorant Muslims who have been rioting in Allah’s name this last fortnight have put a stark question to humanity: is someone’s belief to be respected, simply because it is fervently, indeed, fanatically, held? The ignorant Muslim answer is clear: if anyone even mentions anything we consider holy in a way we decide we don’t like, we will kill people. Sadly, the world must conclude that the informed Muslim answer appears to be the same, because the supposed “good” Muslims are not preventing these actions by madmen. 

 

Because even the most rational of believers is totally irrational about his faith; he must be, or he would not have it. And the conservative, non-rioting-over-a-bad-movie Muslim is as bad as his fanatical believer brother. Because both agree that what is holy should be respected. And this is where the world will divide: into two groups. The first, the unreligious one, and the one into which I throw myself wholeheartedly, will advocate the organisation of man’s affairs using reason, morals, ethics, a sense of duty and consideration for others; the other will rely on one or another supposedly holy book, and try to solve severe modern challenges by referral to them. It will not work in the future just as it has not worked in the past. (It is no accident that no church or faith ever survives unchanged; every “one true way” to God invariably splits again and again—because they are never one path to God but as many ways of organising societies to benefit old men as they can devise.) One group will put premium value on frank, open debate; the other will prevent all discussion by the repeated screaming of single words, such as, “haram”. One group will respect all individuals, regardless of whether they have kinky hair or clitorises; the other will reduce whole genders, races and sexual orientations to total subjugation (to effect God’s will, of course). One group will search for the truth; the other is already satisfied that it has found it. One group will rely on scientific research; the other will believe children’s fairy stories. And everything humanity has gained through the work of the first group will be destroyed by the second; proudly; in God’s name. If we allow it. In this new, unholy war, everyone is going to be forced to take a side. And God knows we need everyone who considers him or herself to be religious to take the side of reason, and abandon their faith, or at least that rigid form of it that says that what they believe alone is right, and the equally fervently held beliefs of others do not matter. The truth is, we haven’t a prayer. But, as long as we have reason, we have hope. History has shown that the forces of love and light will never be defeated by those of bigotry and darkness. Thank God.

 

 

BC Pires is doing his father’s work. E-mail your Revelation quotes to him @ [email protected]