ISIS and Freedom and fundamentalism

As a country we are forever tying ourselves up in knots, working out how to deal with the behaviour of people who sit at the extremes of religious fundamentalism. I was reminded of this today as BBC London featured a story where an ultra orthadox Rabbi has stated that women shouldn't drive and those that do, and drive their children to school, should be turned away at the gate. Whilst I personally cannot for a second fathom who anyone in this day and age would even want to follow such an ultra orthadox path, it is a free country. I do take the view that if you sign up to a club (or a religious education for your kids), then you sign up to their rulebook however ridiculous. If the women in question don't think that the school is setting a good example for their kids in the year 2015, then take your kids out of the school. If the Rabbi is simply expressing his opinion, fine, so what. You don't have to attend his Shul and there are plenty of sensible Rabbi's in London who run eminently sensible organisations. The way to change attitudes in such hard line communities is to vote with your feet. Of course there are some women who may feel that they can't oppose their husbands views and must stick with this nonsense, but surely if the husband has bought them a car, there is a need for a sensible family conversation.

Perhaps the worst example of extremism we see is ISIS. This organisation is rampaging across Syria and Iraq and perhaps more disturbing, hundreds of Western Muslims are attracted to join its Jihad. Western governments are at a loss to deal with this. I personally believe that we've approached the issue from completely the wrong angle. If I were in David Camerons shoes, I'd take a completely different approach. In a free country, we can't stop people joining ISIS. We can't stop them getting training and participating in military activity in foreign countries. So what can we do? Well I take the view that it is their choice to join an organisation committed to destroy everything we beleive in. Until they've actually committed a crime, they've done nothing wrong. Just thinking about it is a perfectly legal activity. So what we need to do is help them with their thought process. Where they pose a threat to us is not with the thinking about joing ISIS or even going to Syria to sign up. It is when they come back. We send a small fortune on trying to police this. The solution, as far as I am concerned is far more simple. We simply say "If you are planning to join ISIS, give us back your British Passport and we'll pay for a one way ticket to Syria. As you clearly hate our society and values, you won't be coming back though". I wonder how many of those who have gone, would have done so if they'd realised that it was a one way ticket?  As far as I am concerned, we are better off without such dangerous people. I am sure many will say "but what about impressionable teenagers, who have made a terrible mistake?" Teenagers make life changing terrible mistakes all the time. Some injure themselves, some kill themselves in acts of high stupidity. They do not however pose a risk to society at large. I don't believe in forcible deportation of British Citizens, but if they really hate our country and our way of life, then good riddance. I am sure that such a hard line policy would focus minds. Of course some will still go. Some will realise they've made a terrible mistake. There will be heart renching TV documentaries about how unfair the system is. But the bottom line is that if they feel they are old enough to make such a decision, they are old enough to live with the repercussions.

Like anyone who joins any fundamentalist religion and signs up to the rule book, they don't have to. If they sign up to one which simply has potty rules like women not driving, that only inconveniences them and is none of our business. If they sign up to one which sees our destruction, then that is a different matter. Then it becomes our business and we have to manage the risk as best we can. To me burying our heads in the sand is not managing the risk properly.

Daily Mail Special Offer : A free lobotomy for every femail reader !!!!!

I don't always find the Daily Mail revolting, nope not by a long chalk. I only ever find it revolting and repulsive when I read it. Most of the time, I just pretend that it doesn't exist. That way I can delude myself that this horrible rag isn't an insidious poison in our society. The thing I find most revolting is its crusade to stifle female ambition. To me, the Femail section of the horrible rag is tantamount to a cross between heroin addiction and brain cancer. I don't say that lightly. It proselatises for the creed of zero ambition, zero life choices and zero intelligence for its women readers. If you want to be happy, get a crap job or even better no job at all. Find a nice man to make all of your decisions, fund your pension, pay for your hairdos.

In short, the Daily Mail is the propoganda rag for the advocates for stepford wives.I read one of the most offensive articles ever in the awful rag today.  Here's a few choice quotes from this article in the Femail section :-

'Sure, you might have a gold card, but you've maxed it out buying things you can't afford and that you don't even need, trying to fill a void that just can't be filled. You numb your discontentment every night with gin and tonics.'

'I was living the dream. The word "senior" was emblazoned on my business card, my passport was full of stamps and I had a designer wardrobe and matching appliances. All this was supposed to make me happy, but I'd lost my passion, purpose and sense of meaning.'

'far from fuelling our ambition, it seems that the current economic crisis is only compounding our sense that status, success and money are a fool's gold.'

As ever, the Mail is peddling a myth that the only way a woman can be truly happy is to be entirely free of ambition. Sure, there are plenty of women who this may make happy, but there are plenty who it doesn't. There are plenty trapped in dead end jobs or in dead end relationships, who  buy this crap and miss the boat on a successful career, only to find later in life, they've been conned and they are desperately unfulfilled. 

When was the last time the Daily Mail ran a story about a woman turning her life around, taking an open university degree and making something of herself? This horrible story was in the "real issues" section. Todays other real issues in the Daily Mail Femail section? 

Four in five Britons have given up on New Year resolutions - even the one about having more sex

Jean Simmons: The beauty who said no to Howard Hughes - and sabotaged her Hollywood career

 Are these real issues for you?

How about the main story in the Advice column?

Rowan Pelling's sex advice column: 'How can I learn to flirt when I can't even look a man in the eye?'

Rowan Pelling advises :-

Most effective of all is the woman who can make her eyes convey a smile with a certain sparkle. The expression ‘come-to-bed eyes’ doesn’t come from nowhere!

Rog T's advice is somewhat different. "Get some self esteem. Think what you want to do with your life and start doing it, be it work or pleasure. Once you start feeling confident with yourself, you'll be happy to look anyone in the eye and say "This is me". If they like what they see they'll be interested. It's all a load of old cobblers really. Get out and start living. Go and see that band you really like, have that holiday in Tuscany, take up powerboat racing, enroll in the Open University and study something you find interesting. All conversations need to start somewhere and a common interest is a great place." Why doesn't the Mail ever encourage women to have aspiration and ambition? Doing something with your life, having fun and feeling fulfilled isn't unfeminine, quite the opposite.

So why, you may ask, does a red blooded male, get so worked up about this issue? Simple really. I've two daughters and I want them to be happy. I want them to live their life without false boundaries. I want them to feel they can achieve whatever they want, if they work hard. I don't want my daughters to think like semi lobotomised vegetables. That is why we don't buy the Daily Mail. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see an advert for the Mail pronouncing "Be happy, a free lobotomy for all Femail readers in todays Mail on Sunday". What truly baffles me is how the Daily Mail can rant about the wearing of Burkas whilst at the same time seeking to impose a mental burka on the way the women of Great Britain think. I suspect that on this, like many issues such as capital punishment, corporal punishment, censorship, pornography to name a few, the Daily Mail is far closer to the views of Osama Bin Laden and all of the rest of the worlds fundamentalist nut cases than it would have us believe.

Are you scared by the truth?

"Jesus died for somebodies sins but not mine" This is how Patti Smith starts "Gloria" on her fantastic rendition of Van Morrison's Gloria. The clip above is taken from a gig in Germany in 1979. This is one of my favourite tracks. Now given that I'm a practising Roman Catholic, this may surprise you. How can I like a track which seems to contradict a basic tenent of faith? It's easy. It doesn't. Signing up to follow Jesus is a matter of choice. If Patti Smith decides that Jesus didn't die for her sins and she wants to keep them, thats her free will and her choice. It doesn't stop the song being a great track. What it does do is it challenges my own relationship with my behaviour. As such it can only be a positive thing. You see, I'm not scared of the truth.

One of the things which I can't get my head around as someone who believes in something after this life is "how interventionist is God". Does prayer actually work? Do only believers get miracles? When I was a kid, one of our teachers told me that the reason certain football teams were more successful than others, was because they had more Catholic supporters praying for them to win. He also explained that was why Brzil won the World cup and USSR hadn't. If you look at the list of World Cup winners, there is definately a tendency for teams from strongly Roman Catholic countries to do well. Sadly I can't buy into the theory that it's devine intervention (hand of God or not). Another teacher told me you should never pray for a football team to win, as you'd use up your allocation of miracles. That would seem extraordinarily cruel. Can you imagine having just prayed for Arsenal to score the winning penalty in the FA Cup final, and getting home to find your wife has cancer and you've used up your supply of miracles.

One of the blogs I follow is Blurred Clarity, by Daniel Hoffman-Gill. Daniel is an Athiest who regularly writes believer bashing blogs. I suspect that Daniels distate for religion is driven by the neocon fundamentalist Christian Right. I suspect that if most Christians were left wing proponents of Liberation Theology, who sought to right the worlds wrongs and used their faith as the driving force, he'd probably have less "bash the Christian" blogs and more gardening tips or whatever. I suspect he'd still be an athiest, but his well written pieces, which generally highlight the stupidity of the religious right, wouldn't find the fuel they need. I doubt that he'd have much inspiration if he had to write blogs about why William Wilberforce christian morality was a bad thing. I enjoy Daniels blogs because they are challenging, funny and well written.  He says many things I actually 100% agree with as well as a few things I disagree with. If I had the choice of having to change Daniel's view of the world or a "God hates Fags" American bible basher, I'd change the bible basher every time. You see I think they are revolting and obnoxious and do more damage than just about anything. I'm quite happy to indulge in rational debate. You can have that with Daniel, but sadly you can't with the neocon right.

Ultimately it all comes down to this question. Are you scared by the truth? The Catholic Church has had many problems and alienated many people because it has sought to hide the truth. A few examples - paedophile priests, The earth going around the sun, to name a few. I strongly believe in the power of the truth. I believe that my faith makes me a better person. I go to church to be reminded how lucky I am and to do my bit to fight injustice. Yes I do need reminding. It has made me a better person, thats why I persist with the institution for all it's faults. All I really want is a "better church". One that spends more time fighting injustice in the world and a bit less time indulging stupid neocons.

We started this blog with Patti Smith singing "Gloria". We'll end it with a clip of "Liars Beware" by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Whenever I wonder about whether I should tell a few porkies to get on I listen to this track. Here's the lyrics to help you understand.


LIARS BEWARE
by Richard Hell and the Voidoids

Look out liars and you highlife scum
who gotta keep your victims poor and dumb--
Your motives and your methods are not disguised
by your silk, soap, sex, or your smiling lies.

Look out here
you pompous jerk
Look out here
I go berserk

Well I guess you put me in my place
but I won't forget your stupid face

They gave you power cuz they knew your needs--
soprano boys get talent when you shoot your seeds.
Well you laugh to hear what your best friends say--
Old man they laugh when you walk away.

Look out chief
ridiculous creep
Look out thief
you'll lose your teeth

Well you got power, now there's competition
and your blind side's turned to the boys with a mission.

You were sixty-five when you wiggled out--
your mind all twisted and your mom all shout.
I'm a man with his share of excess nice
but it can't be spared for drooling lice.

Look out jerk
you ancient slut
I can't endure
Your smirking smut

Well life is short so don't even try
to bother waving as we pass you by.