Do as you are told and all will be well, Part the Second

Via the Dali Mail, another lump of proposterous steaming cowshit:

Fanatics from a banned Islamic hate group have launched a nationwide poster campaign denouncing Christmas as evil.

Organisers plan to put up thousands of placards around the UK claiming the season of goodwill is responsible for rape, teenage pregnancies, abortion, promiscuity, crime and paedophilia.

They hope the campaign will help 'destroy Christmas' in this country and lead to Britons converting to Islam instead.

And a new, must-see website, Xmas Is Evil. Heh.

Thing is, they have a point. Western society is in a crisis. We do have too much selfish and self-indulgent behaviour, people in thrall to mindless and vacuous 'entertainment', unsustainable debt, nasty and preventable social diseases, and a lack of respect for the integrity of others, as evidenced in the prevalence of rape and child abuse. We may disagree on the causes of these things, and on how and even whether they can be controlled, but they are the things that cause me great unease. In this respect, count me among those who are concerned, and who would like to see things done differently.

And then we get this, in the list of things that are wrong with Western society:

• Claiming that God has a son
• Blasphemy
  

Ah, right. My sky fairy is better than your sky fairy. My invented and evidence-free version of the nature of reality is RIGHT, and your invented and evidence-free version of the nature of reality is WRONG, and because of this you deserve to die. At this juncture, we part company.

Regular readers will know that I have little patience with any organised religion, and regard them as equally silly. But I do know one thing: the message of Christianity is love (however imperfectly translated into action), and that applies to believers, the 'us', as well as to everyone else, the 'them'. From what I have seen in my society over the last ten years, the religion being promoted by these posters is one of repression, intolerance, hatred of the 'other', and lethal violence. Christians might disagree on homosexuality, and opinions range from complete acceptance to an explicit and quite nasty disapproval, but no-one (as far as I am aware) is advocating stoning them to death. And it's a long time since Christians advocated a man's right to throw acid in his daughter's face for having the wrong kind of boyfriend. Count me as a non-Christian, but don't assume I am neutral on the matter.

This poster is a sign of growing confidence amongst the militant Islamic community, and I expect to see more things like this as time goes by. And some people will say it's all OK. The posters don't offend me (and it wouldn't matter if they did), but they worry me.

But that line about 'claiming that God has a son' - straight out of Monty Python.

Cardinal Fang - The Comfy Chair!