President overrules Mohammed

President Mullah

This gets absurd and cannot approach farce faster than a shooting star zips past the world.

The President of Sudan as the military dictator who took power by overthrowing a democratically elected government in 1989, had two British Muslim peers of the realm in audience today.

Marshal Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir, you should read that again, the President of Sudan is not a religious leader; he gained power through the barrel of the gun. Sudan has been in conflict for decades first between the Muslim North and Christian/Animist South and now the genocide perpetrated by the Arabs on the darker skinned of the West of Sudan in Darfur.

The only religious authority the President can call upon can be as trivial as the fact that he is a practising Muslim though he made alliances that have boosted his power and status by allying himself to Islamist causes and making the North of Sudan an Islamic state governed by Sharia Law.

Power to forgive

As I write, the peers of the realm seem to have secured the pardon of Gillian Gibbons as it appears once her sentence was given there was no right of appeal apart from a commutation or pardon by the President who appears to have supreme authority to overturn or revoke the force of religious law.

It is welcoming at least to see that political power wields that much influence over religious excess and if this means that the President can exercise compassion and has elements of humanity rather than pandering to expediency it is time to stop the genocide in Darfur immediate – call the Janjaweed back to the mosques in Khartoum.

Beyond this all, it means that there are men on earth who can receive tribute on behalf of Islam, receive apologies on behalf of Allah and Mohammed the Prophet and commute any sentence zealous Islamic clerics can pronounce in scapegoating others and exercising enough fear, terror, trembling and loathing to keep the locals in line.

As for Teddy Bear, one wonders if there would be a renaming ceremony as Sudan showcases everything that is just not so about the “religion of peace” and at one time in the courts of Suleiman the Magnificent, the religion of great enlightenment.

Religion for bitter or better people

Left as kids and lost as adults

In the light of recent events, let us examine the matter of crime, punishment, rehabilitation and social consequence.

Our liberalising values have consigned the heretofore corporal punishment as a deterrent to children and juveniles to the moniker of barbarism as we try to reason with toddlers and attempt to bribe adolescents to be socially responsible.

Certain commentators would opine that discipline in our youth is a big problem and as we have come up with innovative ways of curtailing their freedoms they have likewise come up with more bizarre ways of thumbing their noses at society. The growing prevalence of gun and knife crime as well as social ills like juvenile drunkenness, pregnancy and anti-social demeanour has its roots in things we have left undone in the formative years.

Doing the law with flaws

One then questions the fairness of meting out strict, strong and extreme punishments for crimes committed as adults when as children the issues of actions, consequences and responsibility had been deprecated in favour of rights of the child over any other important aspect of upbringing.

The result is, we end up with bitter people rather than better people; this concept turns on the application of religious laws enacted in times when men were illiterate, living in feudal societies, subject to the whims of those in power who acted with impunity, when not much value was placed on life and self-respect was about knowing your place in society – a position from which you never saw promotion.

I worry about the gap between religious adherence and social consequence; one law would require that the hands of thief be cut off as punishment, another would suggest that he who steals should steal no more and engage in work – one executes wrath whilst the other embraces mercy – it should not take a social scientist to determine who would end up the bitter person and who would end up the better person.

Irreversible punishments

The person who has his hands cut off becomes a social misfit, unable to work as the law applied does not cater for rehabilitation to re-enter society, whilst the person is a sign; a deterrent – making examples of people without the recourse for possible reversal or correction is both barbaric and unjust.

There are however societies that remain backward and unprogressive, shackled to religious tenets that prevent the people from becoming part of the more emancipated global village.

No doubt public flogging is meant to humiliate, but having exacted grievous bodily harm in keeping with the letter of the law one wonders if there is a social element that help the punished nurse the wounds and regain self-confidence before they are caught in a downward spiral of infection, shame, depression, seclusion and isolation.

Leniency and mercy

There must be an element of mercy in the administration of punishments; not so much the leniency of cutting off one hand instead of both hands or reducing the number of floggings but total exculpation, with the person realising that they have been spared horrors and given another chance.

Unfortunately, some belief systems excel at punishment, manage aspects of leniency, grudgingly attempt mercy, fail woefully at forgiveness and know nothing of absolution. They make no provision for rehabilitation and do not accommodate societal changes that would entertain another perspective, they in fact, do much to make bitter men than better men.

Old teachings in new times

We need to check as see if the teachings we received of old have become out-dated in these civilised and modern times. The consequences of certain punishments may in the eyes of the conservatives look like justice but to observers might appear as mean, unpersuadable, illiberal, intemperate and usually quite immature.

If I got upset every time I was called names and sought to mete out the most severe revenge in the name of some perverse form of justice, I would be considered an impossible person without self-control – contrast that with being able to rise above it all – that is a sign of maturity and in some cases a high self-esteem.

Adherents really need to review their perception of their religious dogma and the laws they so fervently espouse more to visiting violence on others than stepping forward and boldly owning up to their own misdeeds.

In essence, one wonders if religious laws have a civilising effect on society or they just suspend endearing qualities of humanity which include reason, analysis and thought in the selfish need to maintain a strangle-hold on the people and keeping them in the dark from other humane perspectives

As a point to ponder, if there were better prosthetics, would the person whose hands were cut off be allowed to take that therapy?

Don't name the teddy bear

Emotional religious agitation

This is sometimes a minefield in which a minesweeper would be blown to smithereens. The standards and rules that govern the interpretation of religious norms or in this case whims.

So suddenly in the last few years the sensibilities of certain old Middle-Eastern religions have been so easily bruised that our modern and civilised world is dragged back to the middle-ages of hysteria and histrionics fuelled by unscrupulous leaders of thought who test their influence by inflaming the mob.

This was evidenced in the cartoon riots of last year where I wrote a series of blogs starting with one which seeks a humorous God, a God that can laugh and sometimes laughs at the delusions of puny human-beings.

Flags in wrong places?

One nation belies a readiness for controversy and contempt by having symbols of God on its flag; they condone the trampling and burning of other nation’s flags and it would be unthinkable the outrage that would be mustered if the same action is meted out on their flag.

The mob was then gathered to protest the presence of the Saudi Arabian flag amongst all other world flags painted on footballs donated to Afghan kids. One would think the anger should have been directed at the Saudis for creating a situation where the symbols of faith might be denigrated in unintended and benign circumstances.

Naming a teddy

However, nowhere has this religiosity taken on a more bizarre twist than when a teddy bear named after a child in a class which by happenstance is the name of the prophet – the teacher of that class is now in danger of a fine, corporal punishment and jail.

The charge sheet reads like we have a terrorist on the loose; insulting religion – in the 21^st Century? Showing contempt for religious beliefs – one wonders what is more contemptible the reaction or the lack of a global authority on the core elements of Islam apart from reading the biorhythms of the local imam who feels to excite his people to insurrection rather than exhort them to peaceful co-existence in a global village?

Obviously, we can ignore the sentiment that the said teacher had left the enlightenment of the West to help children in a war-torn region realise a place in our global village – but that is of no significance – enlightenment in an educational setting takes second-place to religious temperament which is never subject to logic, common-sense or reason – it is the supreme fount of discord.

Taking apologies for God

Whilst international condemnation has been made of this absurd tendency to be offended in general without being essentially committed to the real tenets of the faith, the idea that an apology can be made to assuage tension is interesting.

Someone somewhere seems to be able to take apologies for God or the prophet – it reminds me of one story in the Bible where the people took so much offence at the breaking down of the altar to their symbol of worship; reason seeped into the reckoning and the people were persuaded that if that god was so angered, the god might as well visit wrath on the offender - thereby people can still be at peace with each other and that very powerful god can show strength that would bring enemies to their knees in worship and obeisance.

It might be so easy to say that these mobs are technically taking on themselves personification of God or the prophet for the self-aggrandisement – it does nothing to promote their religion; rather it heaps opprobrium from possible adherents on their faith, beliefs, convictions, integrity and allows all to question their sanity.

The NOT dogma

What we have is a simplistic dogma codified in – see not, touch not, feel not, hear not, read not, think not, write not, draw not and speak not – obviously, this means no one gets offended and surely no progress in humanity and we recede to the stone age from whence we came – it does not augur well at all.

Are we on the path to true religion when we pander to such dark-age inquisitions masquerading as holy anger that simply is public insurrection by those too idle to do worthwhile things in their communities and for humanity at large?

Addendum

That Bible story (Judges 6:28-32) The Message version.

28 Early in the morning, the people in town were shocked to find Baal's altar torn down, the Asherah pole beside it chopped down, and the prime bull burning away on the altar that had been built.

29 They kept asking, "Who did this?"

Questions and more questions, and then the answer: "Gideon son of Joash did it."

30 The men of the town demanded of Joash: "Bring out your son! He must die! Why, he tore down the Baal altar and chopped down the Asherah tree!"

31 But Joash stood up to the crowd pressing in on him, "Are you going to fight Baal's battles for him? Are you going to save him? Anyone who takes Baal's side will be dead by morning. If Baal is a god in fact, let him fight his own battles and defend his own altar."

32 They nicknamed Gideon that day Jerub-Baal because after he had torn down the Baal altar, he had said, "Let Baal fight his own battles."

My reading of this is simple, someone caused great religious offence that the adherents were ready to go out and kill the offender - reason intervened – let that religious entity fight its own battles if it feels so offended.

Sometimes, we need to let God, Mohammed, Jesus or whoever else we dare to worship fight their own battles rather than allow ourselves to become instruments of riot, death and discord.