According to the annual Minority Rights Group report published a few days ago, “religious intolerance is the new racism”. What that means, in a nutshell, is that people are no longer hating other people on the grounds of the colour of their skin, but by the kind of scarves they wear, what day of the week they choose not to work, and what name they have for the Invisible presence supposedly responsible for creating the universe and all that is in it.
Will worldwide holy wars become the trademark of this century?
In the good old days of the 20th century, people of one religious persuasion who wished to persuade people of another religious persuasion to switch sides, mostly used rather gentle forms of coercion. They went out in the streets and handed out religious pamphlets. They pitched massive tents and invited folk in with megaphones and banners. They offered free coffee and pancakes. They showered sinners with love and sheer persistence. At their worst, these folk have been a source of mild irritation. They had the annoying habit of ringing your front door bell at all hours of the day just to remind you there is only room for 144 000 in the kingdom. Some of them had a fanatical gleam in their eyes, most of them dressed funny, and almost all of them lacked a sense of humour. Many demanded money for their services in spite of not performing any specific service that we could see. It was always a bit difficult to get rid of them.
But as I said, those were the good old days of the previous century.
Now, they strap explosives to their bodies and blow one another to bits. They pass laws forbidding the wear of certain pieces of clothing. They put bombs in cars, in synagogues, at bus stops. They forbid the building of minarets. They fly airplanes into buildings. And, if they can’t manage to destroy the opposition by means of violence or silly laws, they use insults, they judge and condemn, they buy advertising space on the outside of buses, they harass, they threaten, they throw rocks and launch missiles, they create general mayhem.
All for the sake of a God who loves mankind, whatever his or her name may be.
I don’t know at exactly what point religious fanatics started becoming as bad, or worse than soccer hooligans. I suspect it started happening round about the time — was it the late eighties? — when Jimmy Swaggart exposed a fellow TV evangelist who had been cheating on his wife. Fortunately, God was quick to intervene, and Swaggart was severely humiliated shortly afterwards when it came to the shocked public’s attention that he himself had been engaging the services of a prostitute. That was the first time in recent history, as far as I can recall, that religious competition got really ugly. It still wasn’t a patch on the witchhunts of the Middle Ages, of course, but it was definitely one of the most tasteless media scandals of the eighties.
However, things went downhill swiftly after that, so much so that these days, God no longer bothers to intervene. If God is doing anything at all, I suspect he is speechless with horror. Or maybe he is just plain sulking. Do you blame him? I would certainly be speechless with horror, or sulking, if people committed such atrocities in my name.
Okay, to be fair, at this point, not all religious folk have morphed into murderous anarchists. But the signs are worrying. Religious violence is exponentially increasing all over the globe at a most alarming rate.
Soon, even normally peaceful religious groups may be drawn into the battle. How soon before we hear about Anglicans blowing up shopping malls, Seventh-day Adventists armed with hand grenades, Catholic priests molesting choirboys?
Oops, sorry about that last one. It just sort of slipped out, I’m afraid. Which just goes to show, certain trends which would have been unimaginable and unthinkable as recent as 20 years ago, have suddenly become commonplace.
God save us from religious thuggery! If religious intolerance is to increase at the rate it is currently increasing, I see bad times ahead.
By the way, when I say “religious thuggery” I include thuggery committed by atheists. Yes! For lately, atheism is no longer the philosophy of the disinterested, the supposedly sophisticated, modern, urbane folk! It has become a religion as much as any other religion, and of late, atheists have become as intolerant as the best of them. No longer are these faithless fanatics prepared to sit smugly on the sidelines of religious warfare like they used to, pointing their fingers and making clever-sounding though inoffensive statements like “well, um, so what?” or “an uninvestigated life isn’t worth living”, etc. Lately, they have become positively evangelical! Lucky for the believers, they’re not killing anybody yet — they’re still in the phase of tweeting vehemently on Twitter, publishing angry books, arguing their points logically, verbally condemning the competition and generally being rude — but, believe me, this may only be the beginning. People usually start out that way before they turn violent.
I foresee a future in which all places of worship will have to be protected by barbed wire and armed soldiers!
Imagine the following scenario. It is the year 2014. You are attending a church bazaar in your local school hall, organised by the Presbyterians. Your wife has sent you there to pick up some homemade scones. It had been difficult to get into the school hall in the first place, and the gun-toting guards at the front door had to send you back home twice before you got the compulsory Presbyterian dress code just right (a striped gray cardigan and woolen socks). But now, thank God, you are inside at last. You are surrounded by merry throngs of Presbyterian nuclear families and their children. At the raffle table you stop to admire the plastic toys and trinkets on display. Suddenly, you are alarmed by an eerie ticking noise. You put your ear closer to a tin of cookies with a picture of the Royal Family on the front. It must be a bomb! You dive underneath a table laden with dried fruit and assorted snacks.
Just in time! The bomb goes off, scattering raffle objects, jam rolls and jars of pickled stuff everywhere. Pandemonium is in the air, everyone is screaming. You crawl, besmirched by dirt and bits of treacle, towards an emergency exit. In the foyer, you meet the Presbyterian vicar, who is ashen-faced and suffering from shock. “It’s the damned Congregationalists,” he whispers in a conspiratory tone. “They contributed some of the raffle stuff yesterday. I should have known they’d slip a bomb in there somewhere!”
Outside the school hall, you are confronted by a group of fanatical protestors bearing placards bearing slogans saying things like “DOWN WITH PROTESTANTS!”. By their weird accents, and the way they throw everyone with pieces of falafel, you recognise them instantly as feared members of the famous Greek Orthodox mafia!
But lo and behold! Another group of protesters arrives, and they attempt to disperse the Greeks with sheer numbers. All of them are men, and they are armed with large potatoes. Angus Buchan’s crowd! The Greek Orthodox crowd is no match for them, and they run away, scattering sandals, robes and pieces of matching cloth in their wake.
Just as you think it is safe to cross the street and go home, a fanatical group of well-dressed though grim-faced middle-aged ladies — some of them knitting — barges into the crowd in a reinforced Kombi. On the ride of the Kombi you read “METHODIST SOCIETY FOR WOMEN”. You run for your life! Methodists have been known for their ghastly suicide bombings all over town! They believe that every Methodist who gives his life for the cause will go to heaven instantly and receive a free game of Scrabble. They are utterly ruthless!
At the corner, you hear a loud “BANG!” behind you, and you dare to look back. The Methodist ladies have driven right into the foyer of the school hall, now crowded with Angus supporters, and set off an explosive device! Hats, coats, limbs and gore, mashed potatoes and knitting needles are flying through the air. It is sheer hell!
The next moment — as an eerie, shocked silence quiet descends upon the killing field — you hear a roar of mighty engines, and the rumbling of giant iron wheels, coming from another direction.
Tanks! Cannons! Loaded missiles! Weapons of mass destruction!
“Oh, my God,” you hear someone whimper. “We are done for! It’s the guys from Rhema!”
“Run!! Run!!! Rhema’s here!!!”
“These guys have government connections,” the Presbyterian vicar explains, with a hint of envy, “they can afford all the latest technology”.
Only then does the terrifying realisation start dawning on you that you might not survive this jihad …
And that, even if you do survive, you will face the even greater horror of returning home to your wife without the homemade scones she asked you to buy!!
PS: All the scenes depicted in this blog post have been based on an overactive imagination, and no deliberate offence to any group, religious or otherwise, is intended.
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