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June 22, 2005
A quick detour into religious hatred
Hunter S. Thompson regularly quoted the Book of Revelation in his columns, a) because hotel rooms tend to have bibles in them and b) because it contains some of the most incendiary language ever written down, or spoken for that matter. Not even the man himself attacked Nixon like the Good Book attacks unbelievers.
Our own impossibly cool columnist, Boris Johnson, used some holy words on his blog yesterday in order to make a very salient point: "this bill is bad, ill-thought out, and likely to do far more harm than good."
There's plenty of good stuff in the speech he would have made if the Speaker had chosen him, but the most important bit goes thusly:
Here is the Koran on those with a lack of correct religious belief
22.9 As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods.
...But I would like the minister to explain to us all, here and now, why and how he thinks the repetition of those words, in a public or a private place, does not amount to an incitement to religious hatred of exactly the kind that this bill is supposed to ban.
My point is that if this bill makes any sense at all, it must mean banning the reading - in public or private - of a great many passages of the Koran itself
Which is absurd and paradoxical, given that the measure is intended to be a protection against Islamophobia
Random quotes don't really do the argument justice, so go and read the lot.
On a simpler note, religious zealots are the only people with more hatred inside them than tied-to-the-mast political ideologues. Mixing the two is quite obviously a very silly idea.
Posted by pauldavies on June 22, 2005
