Asks musician / horror writer Mick Farren about the Saudi gang-rape victim being sentenced to being whipped and the Sudan teacher being jailed and getting death threats for allowing a teddy bear to be named Muhammed.
“This global religious fundamentalism thing they’ve all got going on…maybe a bridge too far?”
I can only shake my head and agree as we attempt rapport with these horrible 12th century maniacs.
To make things worse, such religious fanaticism is deliberately stoked and encouraged by their respective governments for political gain, control, and to keep the populace from thinking about other things. Not that they are the only governments to do this or that zealot religious fanatics don’t exist elsewhere, but grotesqueries like this need to be challenged wherever they happen.
Update: Sudan has pardoned the teacher, so at least in one country, calmer heads prevailed.
Religious fundamentalism isn’t limited to Muslims. Buddhist extremism is the root of the ongoing war in Sri Lanka. Hindu extremism has worsened inter-religious relations in India. And of course, we’ve got our own brand of hate-filled religious extremism at home– of which some high-level politicians and military leaders are believers. One Pentagin genera called the Iraq occupation a “holy war.” Yikes!
As to injustice, when a teenage boy got sentenced to 10 years in prison for performing consensual oral sex on a teenage girl, people rightly protested the severity of the sentence. But no one protested that the law had been applied unequally– the girl was not charged for engaging in the same behavior to him. I think the law itself is over the top, criminalizing sex between consenting teenagers. But for prosecutors to apply it unequally to only one participant is worse, a manifestation of the fundamentalist religious belief that sex is evil and women are subject to their men and therefore not real persons.