Nastier Ali’s twin evils

It’s just as well few people will take that idiotic Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, seriously. He’s an arch homophobe, for one thing – quite a nasty piece of work.

He’s sounding off now – well, again – about secularists, but he’s put us up there with radical Islamists.

Bishop of Rochester: Church of England must do more to counter twin threats of secularism and radical Islam, says a headline in Saturday’s UK Daily Telegraph.

The intro talks not just of secularism but “aggressive secularism”, whatever that is. I suppose it’s just secularism, but, since that is anathema to Mr Nastier Ali, it’s aggressive.

Many Jesus fans would agree with him, but, thankfully, many are sensible enough not to, and there are even secularists among religionists. Nothing wrong with religion per se: it’s when it gets organised that it’s dangerous, and begins to spawn evil pillocks like Michael Nazir-Ali.

As for radical Islamism, yes, no one wants that, but it's sleight of mouth in the extreme to associate that particular evil in people’s minds with a wish not to want Nazir-Ali and his control-freak cohort to run the country. Prat!

Two tracks for narrow minds

Gene Robinson, the first out gay bishop in the Anglican communion, has been having a go at the Church of England and the Archwizard of Cant, Rowan Williams.

Williams has been talking of a “two-track” model of the church in response to the split in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of gay clergy, the elevation to the episcopate of gay candidates, gay people in general, more gay people, people who like gay people, people who support gay people, people who think gay people are, you know, OK.

Robinson has been giving interview to Britain’s Guardian, and in an earlier story, heralding the interview, the Guardian says:

Gene Robinson, the Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire, criticised the policy of the Church of England towards gay and lesbian clergy. Alluding to the significant number of clergy who are gay, he said: “I think gay clergy in the Church of England are thought of as a problem to be solved or at least lived with, rather than a gift from God.”

Robinson, who is in Britain to speak at the Greenbelt festival at Cheltenham Racecourse this weekend, added that he could not accept the archbishop’s recent comments that if the Episcopal church refused to uphold the current moratorium on consecrating actively gay bishops or blessing civil unions, the communion might have to be reorganised into a two-tier, or “two-track” model. “I can’t imagine anything that would be more abhorrent to Jesus than a two-tier church,” he said. “Either we are children of God and brothers and sisters in Christ, or we aren’t. There are not preferred children and second-class children. There are just children of God.”

Why don’t those who oppose everything gay just grow up and get real instead of acting like spoiled schoolchildren poking fingers at the playground poofter? Those who oppose gay people in the church, same-sex marriage and blessings for same-sex couples really are immature, ignorant, unpleasant individuals who ought to be put out of everyone else’s misery.

Global warming? It's the atheist's fault, of course

So Pope Ratzinger thinks that ignoring God is leading to environmental degradation. Yes, it's the fault of the atheist once again.

In his general address from his retreat Castel Gandolfo this week, Ratzo talks of creation and how environmental catastrophes “remind us of the urgency of the respect owed to nature, recovering and appreciating, in everyday life, a correct relation with the environment”.

Quite right, Herr Ratzinger. So far, so good. We are out of balance with nature, and we’re reaping the consequences. But then he goes on:

The earth is a precious gift of the Creator, who has designed its intrinsic order, thus giving us guidelines to which we must hold ourselves as stewards of his creation. From this awareness, the Church considers questions linked to the environment and its safeguarding as profoundly linked with the topic of integral human development.

Have you spotted the sly link? He goes on:

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalised or also where his existence is denied?

Ah, right. So atheists are responsible for environmental catastrophe.

He fails to acknowledge that environmental catastrophe began with the Industrial Revolution, when God-fearing folk built smoke-belching factories. Yes, the process of environmental ruin has accelerated with the use of mass personal transport, deforestation and much else, but it was those mainly religious, God-fearing folk in the days before Darwin, the ones who gave us the industrial world and left the agrarian world behind, who set it in motion.

Terry Sanderson, president of the UK’s National Secular Society, says, “This is rich coming from the leader of an organisation that has plundered the world to enrich itself. As he sits in his golden palaces, surrounded by unimaginable luxury and material wealth, he lectures the rest of us about restraint and greed. We have nothing to learn about environmentalism from this hypocrite.”

Face-off

There’s to be a lawsuit in Michigan that seeks to prevent judges in courts from requiring women to reveal their faces when taking part in proceedings.

“The lawsuit seeks an order declaring the practice of ‘forcing Muslim women to remove their hijab as a precondition to appearing in court’ unconstitutional and illegal. It asks that the judge and Wayne County not be allowed to ‘take similar unconstitutional actions’,” says a story on the CNN website.

This came about when a woman – Raneen Albaghdady, of Wayne County – said she’d sue a judge for making her take off her face covering. Some details of the case can be gleaned from the link, but the important thing here is, surely, that we in the West are in danger of allowing people to appear in court with no visual cue as to who they are.

Even if something is enshrined into law to say they can do it only if their religion forbids them to take off the garb – which would, anyway, be entirely wrong – there is surely a security issue here.

All the more reason for getting religion out of the public sphere altogether. If someone has to be identified in court, before a customs officer, in a passport photograph, whatever, then, quite simply, religion should have no say. If you and I have to show our faces in certain circumstances for purposes of ID, then so should everyone.

However, a statement from the judge and his circuit officials says he would have allowed the garb had he been told it was for the purposes of religious delusions. Or, as CNN quotes the statement:

“Judge Callahan and the court have the greatest respect for spiritual practices and all religious preferences. Had he been informed that the head covering had some religious significance, the judge would have permitted Ms Albaghdady to continue wearing it in court,” it [the statement] said.

So much for a separation of state and religion.

Death to the apostate!

Interfax tells us that Chechen separatists have sentenced to death their emissary, Ahmed Zakayev, because “they believe he renounced Islamic laws”.

Interfax quotes the separatists’ website: “Zakayev’s public speeches prove that he gave up Islam religion.” It points out that Zakayev adheres to “democratic religion, promotes secularism and prefers human laws to Shariah”.

All very sensible, really, of coure. But, if they really do believe that their sky-fairy law beats any other and the Islam is the wisest and best of religions, why do they give a monkey’s arsehole what this guy thinks? But there you go: the Religion of Peace™ is so dim-witted and brainless.

Way past the days when it may have made some sense from the point of view of tribal security for someone to leave the “faith”, they’re still backward enough in this benighted belief system to think things haven’t changed, or they just go blindly on without thinking anything through.

That’s prepackaged answers for you.

How to make a Christian cross

They don’t want Madonna in Bulgaria. Well, a certain faction of deluded nutcases are against her, anyway.

The 51-year-old superstar is due to do a concert in Sofia this weekend, but the Catholic Church is accusing her of showing disrespect to Christianity and has urged Bulgarians to stay away from the show, says Christian Today.

“We express our Christian support and approval for the art of singing, which influences the moral development of people and promotes universal moral values,” the church is quoted as saying in a statement.

“In some of her choreography and stage scenarios, this singer sends impressive messages which, however, run contrary to Christian morality,” the statement said.

The church also accused Madonna of displaying “a disrespectful and intolerant attitude” to the feelings of Christians during her ongoing Sticky and Sweet tour.

Christian Today continues:

It also deplores the fact that August 29 is a day of lent for Orthodox Christians marking the beheading of John the Baptist, the biblical preacher who baptised Jesus Christ and an important figure in the Orthodox faith.

Madonna will arrive in Sofia after a concert on Wednesday in neighbouring Romania.

According to the 2001 census of Bulgaria, Christians constitute 83 per cent of the country’s nearly eight million people and the Orthodox Church continues to play an important role in the day to day life of many Bulgarians.

Madonna has faced strong criticism on previous tours when she crucified herself on a mirrored cross during her concerts. The pop diva wore a crown of thorns and sang while hanging from a cross on her “Confessions” world tour in 2006.

So has Madge got to rearrange her tour to suit the sensibilities of religious folk? And does not belief belong to us all? It’s a point we’ve made before. It’s amazing how people can claim history for themselves to celebrate as they wish. If someone comes along with some of the images from that allegedly historical period in history, they jump up and down and rend their garments and indulge in much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The easy option?

Christian Today tells us that “Last week's publication of A-level results marks the sixth year in a row that the number of students taking Religious Studies A-level has risen, with an increase of 4.7 per cent over 2008.”

The received wisdom on this – I don’t have anything to cite but you hear it said every year – is that RE (or religious education) is an easy option. A young person wishing to make up the numbers and ensure they have enough A-level subjects for university will opt for RE.

So how does Christian Today justify the following?

Church educationalists point to the subject’s popularity as a vivid sign that young people are interested in exploring religious and spiritual perspectives of the world, and in studying the moral and cultural frameworks people share across diverse globalised societies.

How do they know that? What is a vivid sign? This suggests that it’s a sign of this over possible signs of just about all other possibilities. Can people who make such sweeping statements based on the number of RE A-levels taken – without quizzing every candidate on their motives and getting straight answers – call themselves educationalists?

If teenagers are so interested in religion, how come the numbers of worshippers in Christian churches is in decline?

Christian Today even puts a link to some prayers young people can use. Here’s an example, set out like verse:

Heavenly Father
We thank you that you love us
Whatever qualifications we hold, or whatever path we take.
Help us, wherever we can,
To follow in the footsteps of your son,
Jesus Christ.
Amen.

In other words:

Heavenly Father,
We’re guessing that you love us no matter how shit we are;
We know you don’t mind whether we pass or fail, whether we’re good or crap
And that an RE qualification will be no practical good in the real world anyway,
So help us to be a nomadic preacher and go fish for some, ah, men!
Oh, yes!

Rantings of a schizophrenic? Well, on second thoughts . . .

Perhaps we spoke too soon when we queried “wot, no fatwa?” in our post of yesterday, after the author Sebastian Faulks had said naughty things about the Koran.

We now learn that he’s distanced himself from his own remarks.

He said the Koran had “no ethical dimension” and that the words of Mohammed were the “rantings of a schizophrenic”.

“He said the Islamic holy scripture was a ‘one-dimensional book’ that has little literary value,” wrote Lucy Cockcroft in a story, since pulled, in the UK’s Telegraph, “and added that when compared with the Bible its message seemed ‘barren’.”

Now, the Guardian has a tale saying Faulks has apologised:

“While I believe the voice-hearing of many Old Testament prophets and of John the Baptist in the New might well raise psychiatric eyebrows today, it is absurd to suggest that the Prophet, who achieved so much in military and political – quite apart from religious – terms, can have suffered from any acute illness.

“Only a fully cogent and healthy person could have done what he did,” Faulks told the Guardian today. He went on to offer “a simple but unqualified apology to my Muslim friends and readers for anything that has come out sounding crude or intolerant. Happily, there is more to the book than that.”

Hmm.
__________
NOTE: Faulks has also penned his own piece in the Telegraph, under the headline The book I really can’t put down.

Marriage is undermined – again!

“The spiritual leader of Ireland’s Roman Catholics has said that civil partnerships undermine marriage,” Pink News tells us.

The story continues:

Cardinal Sean Brady has expressed his disapproval of partnerships before.

Civil partnerships are already legal in Northern Ireland and there is legislation before the Republic of Ireland’s parliament to introduce them. The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has said it may support a legal challenge to new legislation.

Come off it, Cardinal. You’re just being an evil, bigoted old bastard. How do civil partnerships undermine marriage? Even if they were an alternative to marriage and therefore meant fewer “traditional” marriages in proportion to the number of civil partnerships, you’d just be a bigoted old bastard for complaining.

But they’re not. Same-sex people can’t marry, anyway. How do they undermine marriage, if there are still the same number of marriages happening with or without civil partnerships?

We can see through your arguments, old chum. Why don’t you just wrap yourself in a rubber johnny and chuck yourself in the Liffey?

The rantings of a schizophrenic

“Wot, no fatwa?” asks one of our Gaytheist discussion group members (see sidebar), after the UK’s Telegraph printed a story saying that the author Sebastian Faulks “risks Muslim anger after calling Koran the ‘rantings of a schizophrenic’ ”

Faulks says the Koran has “no ethical dimension” and that the words of Mohammed the “rantings of a schizophrenic”.

“He said the Islamic holy scripture was a ‘one-dimensional book’ that has little literary value,” writes Lucy Cockcroft, “and added that when compared with the Bible its message seemed ‘barren’.”

She continues, “Faulks, who is known for his meticulous research, has recently read a translation of the Koran to help him write his latest novel, A Week in December, to be published in September.”

Of the Koran, Faulks says, “It’s a depressing book. It really is. It’s just the rantings of a schizophrenic. It’s very one-dimensional, and people talk about the beauty of the Arabic and so on, but the English translation I read was, from a literary point of view, very disappointing.”
__________
UPDATE: Mysteriously, the link to this story given by the Telegraph itself if you search on “Koran” now gives an error message. Has the story been pulled? You can, however, read a version in the Express

Religious discrimination? You can bank on it!

Pssst! Wanna know how you can go into the red at your bank without much of a penalty, while most people are being shafted right, left and centre?

Easy. Convert to Islam.

Here’s how.

Religious discrimination? You bet!

Old Nick and Professor Dick

If you want to see some biased reporting from a publication that calls itself the Inquirer, take a look at this.

Writer Nick Farrell reports how the biologist and celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins’s website has been hacked.

Farrell talks of “Dawkin’s [sic] forum, where people pat themselves on the back about the non-existence of watchmakers”, and goes on to say, “Dawkins manages to miff almost everyone who has not accepted atheism into their hearts. He even attacks fellow scientists if they do not believe his vigorous nihilistic faith.”

Does he? Or does he challenge them in a scientific way? I haven’t read everything that Dawkins has put out here and there, in books, on the Net, in articles, in interviews, so I can’t say.

I doubt, though, somehow, that the good professor would champion scientific enquiry on the one hand and then, on the other, piss off fellow scientists in an unscientific way.

However, given that there’s an invitation under the article not merely to comment, but to “flame the author”, one suspects a bit of tongue firmly in cheek.

On the other hand, the man dabbles in the occult. Perhaps Old Nick is at home in the fire . . .

Talking McRubbish

People who misbehave in Scotland had better watch out in future. If secular justice doesn’t get them, a “higher power” might just be waiting in the wings – well, in the clouds.

This is the fate that, according to a man in a position that ought to dictate that he not talk such rubbish, that awaits the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, whom the Scottish authorities have, to the amazement of half the world, let go.

They refused Libya a straight prisoner transfer, but released al Megrahi on compassionate grounds, because he has terminal cancer.

And why are people so exercised? Well, the 270 people who died of terminal death got no compassion, that’s why.

It was nothing to do with the British government, and the British Foreign Secretary has been heard on radio today bemoaning the hero’s welcome al Megrahi has received. The Americans aren’t too pleased about Scotland’s decision to release him, either.

But it’s the fatuous comment by the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, that’s just as annoying as Libya’s welcome for the man accused of mass murder on and beneath Pan Am flight 103 back in 1988.

“With Scotland about to be put under intense scrutiny by Christian Americans and Muslims around the world,” says a story in Scotland’s Herald, “the Justice Secretary said: ‘Those who have been bereaved cannot be expected to forget, let alone forgive. Their pain runs deep and the wounds remain.

“ ‘However, Mr al Megrahi now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power. It is one that no court, in any jurisdiction, in any land, could revoke or overrule. It is terminal, final and irrevocable. He is going to die.’ ”

What a prat!

Does that sort of thinking influence such decisions? That al Megrahi’s imminent death has been “imposed” by some “higher power”? Does Kenny MacAskill believe that al Megrahi will also go on to be judged by this “higher power”? Which power will it be: the Allah version or the God version? Or even the Yahweh version?

Whatever you think of the decision to release him, and whether he deserved compassion when he was in a state whose custodial institutions, while maybe not ideal, are among the most humane in the world – and well able to look after someone with a terminal illness – the fact remains that it was a crime by human beings against human beings, on Earth, and all we should be considering is secular justice.

There’s no higher power, Mr MacAskill. Don’t talk tripe.

Gaytheist – get discussing!

Pink Triangle and Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine now have a discussion group to add to the mix.

Called Gaytheist, it’s one of the famous Yahoo! Groups, and you can join by adding your email address to the link on the sidebar or below this post. You’ll get an email to ask you to confirm that you own that address, and you click on a link. Easy-peasy.

Unlike some groups in the atheist/humanist/LGBT community – and I’m thinking of one in particular – Gaytheist does not believe in censoring your posts. What it does do is respect you as a mature person who will be responsible in your posts, and one who will not break the law by libelling other people, or will not be gratuitously offensive.

Gaytheist expects you to post appropriate material (be that an alert to the latest relevant story in a newspaper or magazine or on a blog or website); to alert other members to events; to ask questions; to comment on matters in the news that are relevant to the discussion group; comment on any other matters relevant to being gay and/or a nonbeliever.

It expects you to adopt other self-regulating qualities, such as not being racist, but, if you are suspected of being, expect other members to jump in and put you right. What is and isn’t racism is often open to debate, and people have been accused of racism when they’re talking about religious groups, such as Muslims and Buddhists, religions that boast members of all races – black, brown, yellow and white.

You don’t even need to be gay. The top-of-the-page description at the Yahoo! Groups site reads:

An uncensored discussion group for LGBT and straight gay-friendly atheists, agnostics and freethinkers that encourages free debate on all subjects loosely related to being gay and/or being a nonbeliever.”

To reiterate, to join Gaytheist, add your email address to the link below (or on the sidebar opposite). You’ll get an email to ask you to confirm that you own that address, and you click on a link to say yes.

Subscribe to Gaytheist

Alan Turing campaign

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, author and prominent atheist, has thrown his support behind a campaign to win an official apology for Alan Turing. The Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) supports this campaign and welcomes Dawkins’s decision. Accordingly, in my capacity as secretary of the PTT, I’ve issued a press release (below).

Gay Humanists welcome support for Alan Turing campaign

The gay Humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) has warmly welcomed the decision of Richard Dawkins to back the campaign to win an official apology for Alan Turing, the code-breaking genius and father of the modern computer who committed suicide in 1954 after being prosecuted for being homosexual.

More than 2,500 people have now added their name to the on-line petition calling for the Government to recognise the “consequences of prejudice” that ended the life of the scientist, aged just 41.

Professor Dawkins said that an apology would “send a signal to the world which needs to be sent”, and that Turing would still be alive today if it were not for the repressive, religion-influenced laws which drove him to despair.

The author of The God Delusion, who is due to present a forthcoming television programme for Channel 4 on Turing, said the impact of the mathematician’s war work could not be overstated. “Turing arguably made a greater contribution to defeating the Nazis than Eisenhower or Churchill. Thanks to Turing and his ‘Ultra’ colleagues at Bletchley Park, Allied generals in the field were consistently, over long periods of the war, privy to detailed German plans before the German generals had time to implement them.

“After the war, when Turing’s role was no longer top-secret, he should have been knighted and fêted as a saviour of his nation. Instead, this gentle, stammering, eccentric genius was destroyed, for a ‘crime’, committed in private, which harmed nobody,” he said. Professor Dawkins also called for a permanent financial endowment to support Bletchley Park, where Turing helped break the Nazi Enigma code.

The PTT secretary George Broadhead commented: “It is great to have such a prominent atheist and humanist as Richard Dawkins add his weight to the campaign. As a gay atheist himself, Alan Turing is a humanist hero and an apology for the appalling way he was treated for being gay is long overdue.”

Alan Turing took his own life in 1954. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death, on Monday, 7 June 2004, a commemorative blue plaque was unveiled by the British mathematician and politician Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, during a ceremony at the house in Wilmslow where he had lived during the last four years of his life.


Also to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Turing’s untimely death, the Summer 2004 issue of Gay & Lesbian Humanist carried a special three-article feature. Turing – mathematician, codebreaker, engineer, philosopher, and freethinker par excellence – is one of Britain’s most celebrated gay atheists.

Alan Turing campaign

The campaign was launched by John Graham-Cumming, a leading British computer expert and author of The Geek Atlas.

To sign the petition, click here.

Displeasures of the flesh

Some common sense can be made to prevail, it seems, in our overenthusiasm to appease Muslims at the expense of British cultural norms.

A London council has backtracked on its original rule that, while Muslim sessions are going on in a swimming pool, non-Muslims should dress in goodness knows what in order to cover up as much flesh as possible.

The nonsense of this is that a local mosque, while praising the original guidelines, says it wouldn’t have actually asked for them.

So this is council employees and councillors bending over backwards to appease religious sensibilities, to the ire of the host culture, when it’s not even been asked for.

Is that not political correctness gone truly mad?

The story doesn’t make it clear why non-Muslims are allowed into Muslim sessions, unless it’s just that these sessions are those to which Muslims are merely particuarly encouraged to come.

Mosque trustee Shuaib Yusaf said, “If it was designated as a Muslim session to encourage Muslim women to come along, to that extent I could see a degree of merit in it.”

Even so, a public pool is a public pool. If Muslims are prepared to pay for staff to hold special sessions when the pool would normally be closed, and that extra use did not impinge on maintenance or other practical considerations, then there is probably no harm in having Muslim-only sessions or nudist-only sessions or special sessions for devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Turning back the pilgrims

There’s an almighty row in Egypt about the fact that the authorities want to ban people in certain age groups from going on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca for fear of bringing swine flu home.

“Hundreds staged a sit-in on Sunday when the Egyptian authorities implemented a plan to prevent anyone over 65 and under 25 from travelling to Mecca,” says WorldWide Religious News, citing the BBC.

“The people banned from leaving are those over 65 and those under 25 because they are the most at risk of being contaminated by swine flu,” an official is quoted as saying.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding was that these age groups were more likely to contract the illness. Could they not carry the H1N1 virus but simply not succumb, yet nonetheless bring it back to their home country? Should not all pilgrimages be stopped?

And why stop at pilgrimages? Shouldn’t all foreign travel be stopped on these grounds? People don’t travel to foreign lands and stay in the middle of a wilderness, on their own, remote from other people. They mix among many other people in holiday villages, cities, bars (well, maybe not bars in Mecca), festivals.

But the main Muslim pilgrimage – which this year takes place in November – is a huge one, so maybe they’re just doing a numbers game.

Vile affections

Street preacher faces arrest after reading Bible in public, screams a headline in Christian Today.

No, no, no. He’s facing arrest for reading stuff out that could offend because it was deemed homophobic. It doesn’t matter that it’s the bloody Bible, you blithering, oversensitive idiots. It could have been anything.

I’m not entirely sure that people shouldn’t be allowed to read any passage they wish, assuming they’re allowed to read stuff in public anyway (and that’s another argument), because we can expect our own freedom of speech to be stamped on once we start going down that road.

If he wasn’t actually inciting people to go out and kill a gay, it should be OK – as long as he’s prepared for people to heckle and put their points. (Not that he would have a decent argument if he’s relying on prepackaged answers instead of thinking for himself.)

But the law is as it is, and it was the homophobia of the piece – by my reading of this tale, anyhow – that was likely to cause offence. Perhaps the police interpreted it as likely to cause a breach of the peace, who knows? And what had he said before reading the passage? He’s called a preacher, not a reader, so had he been spouting inflammatory stuff before that?

Whatever, it seems he wasn’t facing arrest for reading from the Bible, but for reading offensive material in a public place that just happened to be from the Bible.

One of the passages he was reading out – presumably the one that got the cops twitching – was from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in which he speaks of men who, “leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly”. Vile affections and all that.

Mind you, had be been reading the stuff from Leviticus, he’d have had to add that the culprits in this most heinous act of filth must be put to death. That might be considered a bit inciteful!

The story tells us that Miguel Hayworth, 29, who’s been a street preacher in Manchester, UK, for the last five years, has sought help from the Christian Legal Centre, and a human-rights barrister is to represent him.

Chances are that nothing will come of it. But he’s had his collar felt. If gay people went into the streets and slagged off Christians and Muslims by reading loudly from texts, there’d be hell to pay.

When religions rule

If you want to see just what an almighty shitty mess religion can make of society, you need look no further than this story from WorldWide Religious News.

Singapore’s prime minister has warned how “aggressive preaching” and attempts to convert people can threaten the city-state’s stability.

The story goes on:

Singapore’s majority Buddhist Chinese, Malay Muslims and Indian Hindus have largely avoided conflict since race riots between Chinese and Malays left about 40 dead in the 1960s.

“Christians can’t expect this to be a Christian society,” he said. “Muslims can’t expect this to be a Muslim society, ditto with the Buddhists, the Hindus and the other groups.”

In the most recent census in 2000, 43 percent of Singaporeans said they were Buddhist, 15 percent Muslim, 15 percent Christian, 8.5 percent Taoist and 4 percent Hindu.

Lee cited the case of a Christian couple who were jailed earlier this year for distributing religious pamphlets deemed offensive to adherents to other faiths, and he condemned those who try to convert ailing hospital patients “who don’t want to be converted.”

“You push your religion on others, you cause nuisance and offense,” he said.

Just what secularists have been saying since time immemorial.

Lee also cited a group from an evangelical Christian church “who briefly took control of a women’s association in April and said they opposed what they claimed was the association’s advocacy of homosexuality. They were voted out soon after.”

He clearly didn’t like what they were trying to do: “This was an attempt by a religiously motivated group to enter civil space, take over an NGO they don’t approve of and impose their agenda. This risked a broader spillover into relations between different religions.”

He says by advocating the “live and let live” principle. Try telling that to obdurate and arrogant religionists the world over. Since organised religion is a system of control, it wants to control. That’s what it does.

Democracy? Don’t be silly!

“Millions of Afghan women will be denied their chance to vote in presidential elections this week because there aren’t enough female officials to staff the women-only polling stations,” the UK’s Independent tells us.

“A desperate shortage of female staff is threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the elections, which are the pinnacle of western-led efforts to build a peaceful democracy. Strict cultural norms mean women can’t vote in male-run stations.”

Well, what do you expect? Belief in a vicious, misogynistic sky fairy comes before the democratic rights of real people here on Earth. It is an Islamic country, after all. What do you want: a modern attitude to things? Don’t be silly!