At the Risk of Bringing the Salafis Howling After Me....

Though I would never support Muslims in this country being discriminated against in any way, and though I wouldn't protest even if a mosque were to be built right next door to me (Muslim architecture, after all, is second to none in the world, even if often wasted on somewhat doubtful activities), I still see nothing at all bigoted about saying how glad I am that instead of being in an Islamic setting, I live in a country that professes to be Christian, though it's decidedly half-ass about that at best. Yes, at best. (You heard it here first.)

It's easy to think that all those countries in North Africa and in the Middle East are blighted in their beliefs and practices, lightly in the cases of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt and gradually darkening down toward those rock bottom pits known as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, and a big part of the blame for this sad state of affairs has to rest in the ways that religion is practiced in all those places.

I've been moved to say these things by current events in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and also in Israel with its tendency, in the form of not only its endlessly snarling, war-hungry, imbecilic pit bull of a prime minister but also its fast-multiplying Ultra-Orthodoxers to ape the worst of the Islamic countries even while professmg to be absolutely unlike Muslims and instead claiming to be superior to them in every respect. These events remind me of how Islam has these rings of extremists whose big thing is to take offense at any perceived insult from the West toward their religion and to pick up firearms and carry out threats of violence against those nearest at hand whom they see as connected with the perpetrators of these unforgivable affronts.

Christianity in all its forms is noticeably lacking in those thuggish, vengeful outliers, and it is not because of a lack of pride in its presumptive belief system. Instead the reason must be that over its long history of interdenominational wars and other melees, all the Christian variants have grown used to slights and slurs, and they let it all go by like water off a duck's back -- a much more civilized way to be, I would say. Consider, for instance, the attacks that the Catholics have to endure because of a large number of their practices and priestly misdeeds, yet the Church shows no signs of crumbling nor does it issue fatwas or tolerate men who go out with AK-47's to avenge the insults at random or in any other respect.

But I am relieved at not living in an Islamic country for other, more personal reasons as well, the first of those being the intense dismay I would feel if I were expected to drop everything five times a day, unfold a rug on the ground, and start praying. At any time of the day or night there are always much better things to do.

Then there is the habit of saying, "God willing" in every other sentence. It seems to me that this has to foster an extremely weak sense of personal responsibility among Muslim men, if they can get away with leaving everything up to Allah. Plus it must cause the same sort of lasting damage to their conversational skills as the constant references to others as being either sexual partners of their mothers or two-legged rectums that numerous American male speakers of many ethnic groups inflict on their own verbal proficiency.

Worst of all is the Islamic and Ultra-Orthodox Israeli criminal mistreatment of those greatest glories of humankind: women (when they can be clearly identified as being women and not mobile tents, or, in the West, walking paper knives). Among other travesties, the drive of the Orthodoxers to prevent mere pictures of women from being displayed anywhere is exactly mirrored in the Islamic desire to drape women from head to foot inside dark, concealing sacks whenever they go out into public.

Women are the most inspiring forces that can be imagined, even to each other. Idiotically depriving themselves of that nicety on purpose could be the main reason why you hear of men in that part of the world accomplishing so little that makes them a credit to anything.

But maybe it's a good thing that their severely crippled outlooks on the better things in life give them so few occasions to rejoice and to congratulate themselves, when they've found no better way to celebrate than to rush outside in a body and wildly fire weapons of every type up toward the Sun. It must never occur to them that all those non-benign lumps of lead have to come back down somewhere on this planet, including right where they're wobbling.


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