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American Muslims, Bannon, Barbara Streisand, Daech Terrorism in France, Mexicans in the U.S., Perigee Full Moon, Rednecks, Trump's America, Visas for New Zealand
Thousands of Americans applying for visas permitting them to live in New Zealand apparently prefer the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to living in Trump’s America. Barbara Streisand is wondering whether she should move to Australia or Canada. French people are conscious of the fact that over the last fifteen years the number of mosques and other Muslim prayer-centers has more than doubled (1000 to 2500, of which 140 are Salafist !). From January 2015 to July 2016, France has had more than a thousand victims of Daech terrorism (238 dead, nearly 900 wounded). American Muslims are wondering whether they will be among the three million Trump is promising to expel. Rednecks are putting up signs in their front yards warning Mexicans that they will be shot at sight if they trespass their property at night. Darkness is covering the world we live in (in spite of tonight’s Perigee Full Moon). Fear is immediately evident on both sides of the Atlantic when a law-abiding Muslim boards a bus, a train or the metro. Our gut-reaction is to wonder what he has in that bag he is carrying. It is indeed a Mad, Mad, Mad world.
We know that prayer is pointless, that military victory over Daech is not the panacea, that dialogue with radical Islam is virtually impossible. Our only hope is the courageous determination to use our solidarity to protect our lives, our freedom and our way of life, to refuse submission, capitulation and the paralysis that fear engenders, and to continue to search for ways to convince religious fanatics that no God could want them to destroy fellow human beings whom they blindly label as infidels.
Trump and the threats he presents, and above all the people who support him – especially his just-appointed chief advisor Bannon – together constitute a further challenge we could have done without.
Our values, our resilience and our intelligence will be sorely tested in the years ahead of us. We will learn to live dangerously – in a double jeopardy – until we overcome, as overcome we shall.
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Australia’s near neighbour Indonesia with a Muslim population of more than 200 million is presently witnessing a very modern yet quaintly ancient religious legal drama. An accusation has been made against an influential citizen and aspiring politician of Chinese descent and a Christian that he has insulted the Prophet Mohamed and the Muslim’s holy book the Koran by suggesting that particular verses in the Koran which state, or so it is said, that Muslims cannot be ruled over by non-Muslims should not be taken literally.
Riots have occurred in the streets. The lynch mobs are out and demonstrating.
This epitomizes the problem when a book written a millennia and a half ago is taken to be the word of God – literally.
The world is indeed in for a rough time.
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How can religious believers all claim that their contradictory “sacred” writings, The Book of Leviticus, the Gospel of Mark, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, are all the word of God ? They all share the same unfounded certitude. People who do not agree with them are simply wrong. What if they all were ? What if all these books were no more inspired by God than mine ? What if their sacred writings were no more the word of God than the words of this Blog ? Mind you, some readers tell me they think that what Thom writes is “divine” !
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