The Musings of Harry

My earlier post may have been light-hearted, but a small bit of analysis does leave one with a more sobering impression of the story.

The appalling behaviour of the religious police in Saudi Arabia is widely reported. They are essentially thugs: there is no accountability and no oversight. They are reported to drive around in large numbers with clubs and hassle people, mostly women, often violently and usually without provocation. These are, after all, the same people who prevented 15 girls from escaping from a burning building because they weren’t appropriately dressed.

It seems deeply unlikely that, having launched an unprovoked assault on two members of the religious police, anyone — let alone two women — would be released unscathed. It’s quite likely that they were acting in self-defence, and similarly likely that if they weren’t punished by the police, they probably will be by their families, since such public disobedience would bring the family into disrepute.

Saudi Arabia is a vicious, misogynist theocracy, perpetuated and reinforced by a delusional world view which is politely called “religion”, but which should accurately called “fantasy”. It is appalling that we call them friends. This is a nation that, but for its vast reserves of oil, would almost certainly long ago have been subject to UN security council resolutions and economic sanctions.

If there is indeed an Axis of Evil, Saudi Arabia is most certainly “on” it.

Via boingboing comes this marvellous story.

The article reports that two women were approached by the Saudi Religious Police and “politely advised” that their clothing was “inappropriate”. Given that the religious police’s official name is the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, this presumably amounts to calling them sluts, or some similarly sexist epithet. The women responded, entirely reasonably, with a torrent of verbal abuse. For the win, one woman then pepper sprayed the officers while the other filmed the incident on her mobile phone. Alas, a brief Googling has not supplied this blogger with a copy of the video. Had it done so, he would have sat and watched it, repeatedly, with considerable glee and much laughter. I’m quite sure that watching vile, sexist, oppressive, dictatorial, homicidal, deluded religious fanatics getting their comeuppance would be uniquely pleasurable.

It must be said, however, that the cherry on this pie is the wonderfully lax treatment they received subsequently. One might think that they would be publicly beaten for their outrageous disobedience — challenging the authority of men is, after all, a crime against nature — and perhaps mutilated in some fashion. After all, can it really be called punishment if you still possess all of your appendages after the event? Apparently it can. Having been carted off to the police station, they were made to apologise and subsequently released with a caution.

Harry hopes beyond hope that they had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

The India Times reports that two more cattle at Skanda Vale have tested positive for Bovine TB and will most likely be slaughtered. The monks, once again, have vowed to resist any attempt to take the animals.

I’m quite sure that the rule of law will prevail. What motivates me to blog about it is this interview with one of the monks, wherein the monk states that the death of Shambo is nothing to be sad about, that the cow’s death was the Lord’s will, that it would have “derived a lot of grace from God” because of the circumstances of its death, that Shambo “lives on” and may be reborn as a person or “liberated into the conciousness of God”.

I feel moved to ask: if the cow is an immortal soul that is merely “wearing” a body, then what does it matter if the body is now dead? To be quite frank, being liberated into the conciousness of God sounds rather more interesting than wandering around in a dank field, eating grass (it’s not tasty: I’ve had the pleasure) . If that’s what’s in store for the other infected animals, I don’t see why they’re complaining.

Finding holes in people’s bizarre superstitions is obviously not terribly hard, but — y’know — it’s just fun sometimes. For balance, I shall wrap this post up on a more serious note with this bang-on quote from the National Secular Society:

Shambo is dead and that is how it should be. Thousands of other animals have faced the same fate when they were found to be carriers of potentially catastrophic infections. The idea that this particular beast was “sacred” is a concept that exists only in the head of deluded people. The Bovine Tuberculosis, on the other hand, is a real and present danger that can be seen under a microscope. No contest.

*High-five*

Hot on the heels of the witches comes the saga of Shambo, the Hindu cow (I feel a childrens’ book coming on).

Some time ago, the decision was made that Shambo, the bovine-TB-infested ’sacred’ cow owned by Welsh Hindu monks, would be slaughtered, in accordance with DEFRA policy on the management of infectious disease in animals. The law, apparently, says that the animal must be destroyed, and if that is the case (I presume it is — legal challenges against the decision have failed) then that is what must be done.

Predictably, the monks disagreed. Their legal challenges having failed, they chose to obstruct the vets and police, who turned up at the temple with a court order to take the cow away for slaughter. The police were forced to remove them all by force before they could execute the warrant.

Religious tolerance is an excellent thing, insofar as people should be able to do as they please, as long as their activities are not injurious to others. Religious people, however, must be subject to the law as it stands. Belief does not make them special. They should not be accorded special treatment. Religious beliefs that are damaging to others should not be tolerated at all: homophobia springs immediately to mind, as does the refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to allow their children to receive blood transfusions, or of some Christian Scientists to deny all medial treatment.

Thankfully, the government seems, mostly, to agree.

A story Metro caught my eye yesterday.

The paper provided this account of an inquest which was told that the suicide of one Rejoice Chishava was due to her financial difficulties, which were exacerbated by her decision to contact a group of ‘witches’ who promised to ward off evil spirits, and in so doing, alleviate her pecuniary woe. The coroner’s comments were interesting:

“These people are garbage. They could well have contributed to what Rejoice did. […] These people were talking witchcraft and your wife was being conned by them. The people who did this were very cruel.”

Imagine that Ms Chishava had been a Christian. For the sake of a good comparison, let’s say she attended a church which levied a tithe. As a result of her financial problems, she sought counsel from a clergyman, who advised her to pray for God’s assistance. Unfortunately, as time went by, her situation did not improve and, as a result of her reduced means, paying the tithe became increasingly onerous. Eventually, it all become too much, and she took her own life.

Can you imagine, in that situation, that the Coroner would have made similar comments? I cannot. I should say at the outset that I think these two stories are roughly equivalent in principle, and that although the motives of the clergymen in question may be unimpeachable, they are no less culpable — morally if not legally.

Why is it that in our society religion is accorded such respect — except, of course, when it happens to be a set of beliefs with which we are unfamiliar? In almost all affairs, people are appropriately sceptical. We require that claims, if not proven, are at least plausible. When it comes to matters of religion, such caution evaporates. Regardless of our own beliefs, we are slow to criticise, and quick to accommodate, even when religious claims are manifestly unreasonable.

The proper advice to give a person in Chishava’s situation would have been to seek the services of a financial adviser, not to suggest that they supplicate themselves to the benevolent man in the sky/helpful witch in the coven.

The latter options would be equally ineffectual and are equally vacuous.

As I suppose we should all have foreseen, and as others have commented upon, other churches have joined the Catholics in voicing their opposition to the Equality Act.

This is sad, especially since the Church of England — unlike the Catholic Church — purport not to consider homosexuality to be a sin. Harry supposes that they seek to prevent a precident from being established. In any event, this further reinforces Harry’s view that dogma is a very strong influences against reason. It seems obvious that prejudice against homosexuals is equally as bad as prejudice against people of other races, women, the disabled and soforth. These, one might think, are not things that the Church would be likely to endorse (implicitly or otherwise). Then one reads things such as the following:

In legislating to protect and promote the rights of particular groups the government is faced with the delicate but important challenge of not thereby creating the conditions within which others feel their rights to have been ignored or sacrificed, or in which the dictates of personal conscience are put at risk.

It would be deeply regrettable if in seeking, quite properly, better to defend the rights of a particular group not to be discriminated against, a climate were to be created in which, for example, some feel free to argue that members of the government are not fit to hold public office on the grounds of their faith affiliation.

The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning

Imagine if this letter had been produced by the Christian Separatist Church Society in respect of non-white people, rather than the Church of England in respect of homosexuals? Would any reasonable person do anything other than condemn it as outrightly racist and unacceptable? Why is this homophobic claptrap even being considered by the Government, let along debated within it?

“Rights of conscience” is a synonym for “doing whatever the hell I like”. Secular, rational society must stand against this attempt by the religious to usurp the rights of a minority they happen not to like.

The Archbishop of Westminster (Catholic head honcho for England and Wales) has written to the Prime Minister threatening to shut down its adoption agencies if a special case, allowing its bigotry against homosexuals, is not created under the Equality Act.

The act, due to come into force in April, outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says that this represents unjust discrimination against Catholics:

We believe it would be unreasonable, unnecessary and unjust discrimination against Catholics for the government to insist that if they wish to continue to work with local authorities, Catholic adoption agencies must act against the teaching of the Church and their own consciences by being obliged in law to provide such a service.

Harry assumes that he is perfectly happy, on the other hand, to continue his unjust discrimination against homosexuals.

Religion cannot be allowed to provide a cloak for prejudice. If we as a society say that discriminating against homosexuals is wrong, and pass a law to that effect, then religious people must abide by it, just as the rest of us do. Nobody in their right mind would say that it would be permissible to ceremoniously whip drunken chavs if some religion’s doctrine called for it (although Harry thinks it might not be such a bad idea); in other words, nobody in their right mind would support an excemption for religious people to commit assault. Why should such an excemption be created to protect the arcane bigotry of the Catholic Church?