Poor, poor religion!

So religion is under threat from “militant secularisation”, is it? It’s being “sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere”, according to the Conservative co-chair Baroness Warsi, in an article in the Daily Telegraph.

This Muslim peer is off to La-La Land – sorry, the Vatican – to give a speech there. I bet she’s happy to be meeting the Pope, coming, as she does, from a religion that eschews any other religion and considers all but Muslims to be infidels.

But what’s this nonsense about religion being under threat? How? Well, obviously, she means its special status is under threat. Secularism is no threat to religion itself. It just wants to see it kicked out of privileged positions.

The only threat to religion is that it’s had its day and is in its death throes in many areas, because people don’t believe the fairy stories. So don’t worry your pretty little head about it, dearie. Go and find another plaything.

She says in her Telegraph piece: “I will be arguing [in the Vatican meeting] that to create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds.”

Illogical. That implies that, without religion, society cannot become more just.

Try taking from society the rampant capitalism you and your party and every other mainstream party espouse to the detriment of ordinary people and a just society, and you might just get that just society.

She gives examples of what she calls “militant secularisation”: “when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won’t fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere”.

But that’s just putting religion in its place, dear. Why should religious schools be funded by the taxpayer? Why should government buildings favour one religion over another in what they display for all visitors to see?

As for what people are allowed to wear, this seems to vary from one situation to another. A nurse was told a couple of years ago to remove a cross or crucifix hanging from her neck by a chain. It wasn’t because it was a religions symbol but because it could represent a danger if a desperate patient made a grab for it during a sudden spasm or movement. There are dress codes in some jobs, and it wouldn’t just be a Christian cross or an Islamic crescent (do they wear that sort of thing?) that would be banned, but any form of bling pinned to one’s dress or jacket.

Nope. It’s just the same old bleatings of religionists with an axe to grind. Poor ickle “faiths”! Are the big bully-wullies of secularism defeating them with rational argument, then? Aw, diddums!

It’s time these people got a life. If they exerted half as much energy to make the world a better place as they do trying to push fantasy into the mainstream, they might earn their huge salaries and expense accounts.