Don’t worry, two more posts of film reviews are on their way to complete the picture being painted of the recent Leeds International Film Festival. In the meantime however this post presented itself to me on a plate and I just couldn’t resist.
Sometimes three nice neat points just roll along and pile up in my head. These kinds posts almost write themselves really, though I wish they actually would as there are about a million other things I ‘should’ be writing instead.
So anyway, here we go, here’s your three:
First up the whole BA, cross wearing extravaganza. It’s been a long time since such an irritating story has been kicking about. The fact that almost all of the arguments AND coverage are so deeply flawed, thus rendering the whole thing a nonsensical waste of breath, time and ink, serves to truly infuriate me, when I let it.
So let’s clear a few things up:
I’ve noticed various media outlets referring to the offending piece of jewellery as a crucifix. The item shown in the various photographs etc is NOT a crucifix, it’s a cross.
There’s a big difference(1) which, given that the whole beef about this is story respecting other people’s religions, you might have thought would have been recognised.
Secondly, and most importantly, the comparison between the cross and the hijab or turban is simply NOT valid.
As I understand it BA forbid the wearing of any jewellery outside uniforms, religious symbol or otherwise, to avoid giving violent passengers something to grab hold of.
Headgear is a completely different category of dress and if Christians had traditional headgear they’d be allowed to wear it, ie. everyone IS being treated equally.
This woman’s real complaint, though she doesn’t seem to realise it, is that Christians don’t have their own brand of silly hat(2). Now whose fault is that? No-one’s but their own I say.
And here we have hit upon the central artery of this post: Christian jealously of other religions, but we’ll come back to this with a vengeance soon enough.
The third and final point on this particular issue is to mention the response of the Church of England.
The Arch Bishop of Canterbury, who I normally find to be pretty reasonable, has thoroughly disappointed me by throwing a world class hissy fit.
It has been ‘suggested’ that BA rethink it’s policy, which is shown above to be perfectly reasonable and fair, on pain of the CoE selling the tens of millions of pounds worth of BA shares it owns and introducing an Anglican boycott.
As much as the church loves to give itself airs and grace, to set itself above the rest of society as being divine and of a higher purpose, in the end it wields a big financial stick just like any other professional gang of elitists.
Despite winning the initial court case and an appeal, BA has committed to review its policy in fear of such divine retribution. To be fair to them however, their suggestion that religious symbols may be allowed as pin badges on lapels does seem like a sensible solution.
The second news item that rolled on up to fit in nicely did so a few weeks back when the government were considering legislation that would force faith schools to include 25% of ‘non believers’ among their student body.
Again, let’s start with the horrendously misleading media coverage. This whole issue was presented in terms of ‘integration’ and ‘multiculturalism’, the suggested aim being to stop ‘certain communities’ isolating themselves from wider, secular society.
In the current climate it’s hard not be drawn by these vibes towards the assumption that the problem being addressed here is that of Muslim radicalisation and of trying to build better relationships between Muslim communities and ‘mainstream society’.(3)
A brief, throwaway statistic I happened to catch towards the end of one report on this issue however, puts this assumption right on its arse.
Apparently Muslim schools already take 25% non believers, they do it voluntarily and have done for a long time.
The problem here is actually with the Catholic schools, ie. it’s not so much a problem of the fringes not wanting to come to the centre but actually the centre resisting such attempts and integration.(4)
As you may or may not be aware this legislation was actually ditched at the last minute, supposedly because a voluntary agreement had been reached among all faiths.
What wasn’t admitted to was that the Government had actually just forgotten what it meant to fuck with the Catholic church.
Again the guys in silly hats and sillier dresses flexed their muscle and the suits bent right over. You can have your democratic systems and rational procedures for the most part, but when we don’t like what you’re doing then you’ll do what (we say) god says bitch!
Let’s not forget that, for a long time, these religious nutters held absolute power over most of the planet and despite the march of technology, capitalism and secular society, they won’t give up their grip on power without a dirty and bloody fight.
Finally let’s turn away from the petty, decadent religious morays of the west. If you want to get to the heart of religious madness, to the real blood-in-the-streets faith, where better to turn than the good old Middle East?
The recent assassination of Christian government minister in Lebanon has served to pour petrol on an already raging fire. Outraged by what they see as the hijacking of their country by Muslim extremists, Christian militias are now arming and organising in Lebanon.
The next time the Muslims decide to take their country to war with the Jews, they say, we’ll be there to stop them.
Yes overall it seems to me that Christians are getting well and truly fed up with Islam and Judaism getting all the attention.
They’re seeing much passion, press coverage and public interest go to their rivals while they watch the cancer of apathy spread from the secular world into their flock.
Time to up the ante, time to get tough, time for the servants of Christ to jump in and kick some ass!
It’s funny, in a dead children kind of way, but when I usually write about the three great elitist menaces to humanity, religion, politics and economics, I tend to think of them as past, present and future respectively.
Looking back over this post however it seems like the latter two could potentially be swallowed up by a global holy war.
Choose your sides, there’s a few millennia of history to tell you which you’re on, and if you’re not on any then you’re in the middle, getting fucked.
The US already slaughters millions ostensibly in the name of god, if the Christians pick this ‘persecution’ riff up and run with it things could get even uglier very quickly.
Now to wrap up I’d like to be a smug little bastard and refer back to one of my favourite chains of thought, summarise by the somewhat flippant sounding mantra:
religion is the only evil
The thinking runs thus:
the abstract concepts of pure good and pure evil are religious constructs, ie. they only exist thanks to religion, eg. personified as god = good, devil = evil,
these concepts cause no end of pain and suffering by enabling people to believe that there are fundamental differences between themselves and others, eg. us vs the evildoers, and that they have some ultimate justification for whatever they choose to do, ie. god’s work,
this blinding of people to empathy and reason is the closest thing to actual evil that there is and so:
religion is the only evil
Outraged? Offended? Well don’t worry, if you’re right and I’m wrong then I’ll burn in agony for all eternity while you blissfully gloat over my suffering from on high that is, after all, what it’s all about right?
footnotes
(1) a crucifix is a cross with an image of the Christ nailed to it, this is the symbol of Catholicism as it represents Jesus’s great pain and sacrifice for which we should all feel eternally guilty; an empty cross is the symbol of Anglicanism as it represents the miracle of the resurrection, ie. the ‘proof’ the Jesus was the Christ for which we should all feel eternally smug,
(2) is it just me or is the entire history of the human world dominated by silly hats? think about it, tribal leaders / monarchies, religions, militaries, the common denominator is the enforcing of respect for silly hats, what’s that all about? maybe there’s actually an archaic global conspiracy among the hatters, was Lewis Carroll trying to tell us something? hmmm...
(3) spot the racist, it’s a game I like to pay when listening to political leaders and public figures talk about Muslims, intentional or otherwise talking about a singular Muslim community or making the assumption that Muslims are, by definition, outside the mainstream of society is inherently racist,
(4) cf. the myth of ethnic minorities ‘taking over’ urban areas and ‘driving out’ the local residents when what actually happens is that the white people choose to move out because they only want to live next to people who look like they do,
