Godless And Free

by Pat Condell

  I do find it difficult to take seriously this moral outrage in Pakistan, coming as it does from a country whose attitude to women degrades the entire human race.

  The real insult to Islam is the fact in Pakistan a woman can be murdered for the crime of being raped.

  The worst thing that can happen to anyone in Pakistan is to be born female. Every year thousands of women in Pakistan are murdered by members of their own family, yet nobody is insulted by that. Nobody is demanding an apology for that.

  Instead, what do we get? A deafening silence from Muslims – almost a miracle in itself.

  According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, eighty percent of Pakistani women are regularly beaten by their husbands. I mean come on guys, shape up. You can’t blame your culture for everything.

  And yet these are the people who have accused the British government of Islamophobia. And this must really sting the politically correct religious appeasers who run this country, because they’ve already done so much to accommodate Islamic sensibilities, even legitimising crackpot pressure groups like the Muslim Council of Britain, who recently issued a list of demands that would impose Islamic values on all children in British schools.

  The Muslim Council of Britain sounds like an official body, but in fact it’s just another extremist group of fanatics who want to turn Britain into an Islamic republic. They’d never admit this publicly, of course, any more than the British National Party would admit that they want to repatriate the blacks and gas the Jews, but we all know that’s where they’re really coming from.

  And they love accusing people of Islamophobia, a totally made up word, and a blatant lie.

  A phobia is defined as an irrational fear or dread of something, and it’s true that many people fear and dread the growth of Islam, but there’s nothing irrational about that when you look at the evidence. In countries where Islam has control there’s repression, there’s torture, there’s precious few human rights, and there’s no free speech. And if the Muslim Council of Britain had its way this would be one of those countries, and I’d be arrested and tortured for making this video. This is not a belief system that I want to see encouraged. But there’s nothing phobic about it. It’s just common sense.

  The real phobia lies with Islam itself, and all religions, with their pathological fear of reason, which they know can evaporate all their delusions in an instant, because reason to religion is like sunlight to a vampire. That’s where the real fear is. And that’s where the real hate is.

  Peace, especially to everyone in the religion of peace.

  * Salman Rushdie.

  17.

  What About the Jews?

  June 29, 2007

  Hi everybody. I’ve been asked by a few people why I criticise Muslims and Christians, but not Jews. Well, this is possibly because, of the three dogmas in the children of Abraham – Muslims, Jews and Christians – I like the Jews the best. When I say I like them, I think all three religions are an insult to humanity, but Jews don’t do quite as much complaining and privilege-seeking as the other two dogmas. And, more importantly, whereas Muslims and Christians want everybody to belive what they believe, Jews don’t give a damn what you believe as long as you leave them alone, and I like that.

  On the other hand, I have heard a rumour that Israel is secretly controlled by Jews, and I’m not sure I like the sound of that. I’m talking about proper Jews, obviously, not the ordinary everyday man in the street sort of Jew, but the ultra orthodox hardcore boys who still attack people for whistling or gathering sticks upon the Sabbath. You know, the guys who’d rather they were still living four thousand years ago, apart from a brief excursion into eighteenth-century Russia for some clothes.

  And this surprises me. I had always assumed that the Christians were really in charge because they control America, and America controls Israel.

  We know, for example, that not all Zionists are Jews. There are a number of influential Christian Zionists who would like nothing better than for the Jews to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem, because they believe that this will herald the second coming of Christ and, as an added bonus, the final destruction of those pesky Christ-killing Jews. That’s right, the ones who won’t convert, apparently Christ is going to come and show Hitler and the Catholic Church how it should have been done.

  Meanwhile the political situation in Israel is like a knotted rope. The harder they try to pull it apart, the tighter it gets. And this is because elements on both sides remain vigilant against any possible outbreak of peace. Islamists on one hand, settlement-building Jews on the other. In other words, the people motivated most strongly by their religious beliefs. What a surprise.

  Given the history of the Jews, it’s easy to understand why they would want their own autonomous Jewish state, but the problem is it’s in the wrong place, because if there was any justice in this world Israel would currently occupy half of Germany. But Israel is not really about justice, is it? It’s really about Jerusalem, which is really about scripture and prophecy, which as we know is really about insanity.

  Jerusalem, of course, is a sacred city to all three dogmas in the children of Abraham (which frankly is the best argument I’ve heard for bulldozing the place, pushing all the rubble into the sea, and then sowing salt in the ground so that nothing will grow there for a thousand years) but right now the Jews happen to control it, and the Christians are happy about this because they know how much this pisses off the Muslims.

  See, the Christians are taking this opportunity to help rub the Jews in the Muslims’ faces, because they haven’t forgotten the humiliation they suffered just eight hundred short years ago in the Crusades, and now it’s payback time.

  And the Jews, they know they’re being used like this, of course, but they also know how much the Muslims really hate them being there, and the whole thing presumably appeals to their famous Jewish sense of humour, which it looks like they’re going to need, because the president of Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad, appears to have committed himself, not to a mental hospital as you might expect, but to developing nuclear weapons.

  He claims his nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes. He doesn’t say whether this includes wiping Israel off the map, a desire he has expressed quite forcefully in the past, but I think the Israelis believe it does, and that’s really all that matters.

  We know Israel has nuclear weapons, and we’re pretty sure it would use them if its existence was seriously threatened. So I think we can all safely assume that Israel is not going to disappear any time soon without a nuclear war, which would be a disaster for the Middle East. It would turn the whole region into a desert.

  But if Iran is determined to get nuclear weapons, what can we do about it, realistically? I mean what do we do, invade Iran and get bogged down in a long bloody land war with them, when we already know from experience that they’ve got lots of cannon fodder, I mean people.

  And why should we even care, when Israel has ignored so many United Nations resolutions telling them to get out of the occupied territories, which they just can’t bring themselves to do because of Jerusalem and the temple and scripture and prophecy, and the fact that they’d have an awful lot of very angry religious Jews on their hands.

  Peace in the Middle East, it’s a lovely dream in theory, but, as people of the book, we have to live in the real world of miracles and divine revelation, unfortunately. It’s just reality, I’m afraid.

  I think the Jews would do themselves a huge favour if they came to their senses and let go of Jerusalem. It doesn’t belong to them, and they’re only holding on to it because of religion, which is the worst possible reason to do anything on this planet.

  They say the quickest route between two points is a straight line. Well, it’s a straight line between religious politics and bloodshed. Always has been, always will be.

  Keep the Jewish state, by all means. I like the Jewish state. I’ve been there, I like the place, I like the people. But you don’t need Jerusalem. You’re bigg
er than that.

  The Jewish state has proved itself. It’s not to be trifled with. We get that now.

  But Jerusalem is not a Jewish town, it’s an Arab town. And it’s time we all started to acknowledge that and live in reality before reality imposes itself on us in the most unpleasant way imaginable.

  So please, Jews, do us all a favour and give it back, and help put a stop to this madness. The whole world will thank you for it. And you know what? You’ll probably end up as the most popular people on the planet. And wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the books.

  Shalom. You know it makes sense.

  18.

  Politics and Religion

  July 10, 2007

  Somebody asked me this week: “Why do you only talk about religion, and not about other things?”

  Well, when you talk about religion you really are talking about other things in the modern world, if you’ll pardon that euphemism for what we’ve actually got.

  Indeed, some people even talk about religion now in terms of a clash of cultures, when they say that Islam and democracy don’t get along because, like hosals and health, or like justice and the law, or like Jesus and born again Christians, they’ve got nothing in common.

  I think that politics and religion is an extremely dangerous mixture, because, like sulphur and saltpetre, on their own they’re manageable enough, but put them together and you get gunpowder.

  And I think this is the reason why, for example, the fanatics who flew into the Twin Towers or the lunatics who blew themselves up in London, although they were politically motivated, they only went through with it because of what they believed about the afterlife, or more exactly, about the unknowable.

  And I think this is the danger of religion: it operates in this world of reason, but outside the bounds of reason, which is a polite way of saying outside the bounds of sanity.

  Some countries like Iran are governed by religious fundamentalist nutcases. Other countries like Israel and Pakistan owe their very existence to religion.

  And of course let’s not forget the Vatican, which has a seat at the United Nations because it has somehow managed to persuade people that it’s a legitimate country. All the better for stifling any birth control initiatives that may have slipped under the American government’s radar.

  Without religion, Pakistan and Israel wouldn’t exist, and what a sad loss that would be. It would be almost as bad as losing Nigeria, wouldn’t it? And there’s a country divided by fundamentalist religion. Muslims to the north, Christians to the south – maybe a few Jews in between, but not for long, I’ll bet.

  As for Pakistan, well that only exists because about sixty years ago in that part of the world Muslims and Hindus just couldn’t get along, and they couldn’t stop slaughtering each other with machetes for more than five seconds at a time, so the only solution was to start up a whole new country, which is as good as saying: “We can never live together, we’ll always be enemies. Let’s both build nuclear weapons and see how it goes.”

  I think it’s quite ironic that the first nuclear conflict on this planet could easily erupt between Muslims and Hindus, or between teetotallers and vegetarians.

  Clearly red meat and alcohol may be killers, but they’re nothing compared with human stupidity. And that’s never in short supply, especially where religion is concerned.

  For example, how long do we have to wait for a serious American presidential candidate to admit that they don’t believe in God. In other words, how long do we have to wait for American politics to grow up? Right now they’re all terrified of losing the ignorance vote, because that’s the vote that’s going to elect the president. And what a wonderful job it did last time.

  Of course we can’t crow too much in the United Kingdom, because our ex-prime minister, Mr Blair, a man with impeccable Christian credentials, now has a new job as Middle East peace envoy, which is going to mean a few slippery handshakes as he meets people with almost as much blood on their hands as he has.

  He’s not as popular as he was, Mr Blair, because, having lied as he did in order to invade Iraq with all the gung-ho enthusiasm of somebody who has never seen war and whose own son is nt in the firing line, he showed us basically who he is, and now of course he senses our contempt, so it’s no wonder he’s in denial. You can see it in his eyes. He can’t wait to move to America.

  Before he resigned, he criticised the British press and compared them to feral beasts. And it’s true that the British press can be very irresponsible, but not nearly as irresponsible as the cowardly American press which is so crawlingly supine and unwilling to criticise their stupid and criminal government for fear of appearing unpatriotic that they’ve literally become a laughing stock all over the world.

  I think the British press, though, were actually quite kind to Mr Blair, because any other head of state with his track record they’d be calling to have prosecuted for war crimes.

  So I suppose it’s grimly appropriate that he’s now decided to convert to that traditional friend of the war criminal, the Catholic faith, or the brotherhood of the damned, as I prefer to think it.

  No, all in all I think politics and religion are just too closely entwined, and I think we need to prise them apart if civilisation is going to remain on the agenda.

  Of course nobody knows what the future holds. You could say it’s in God’s hands, or Old Butterfingers, as I like to call him.

  But the way things are going it might not even get here, because right now we’re engaged in a tug of war with the past, and lately it’s been digging its heels in. And I think this is one that we really do need to win, because if we lose we’re going to find ourselves back in the Dark Ages, where knowledge is a crime and where free speech is blasphemy. And that’s really the reason why I talk about religion, and not other things.

  Peace and love to one and all, if that’s not wishful thinking.

  19.

  Why Does Faith Deserve Respect?

  July 19, 2007

  Why is faith worthy of so much respect? Would somebody show me the calculations, because I just don’t get it.

  People keep saying to me: “You should show a bit more respect. You don’t have to call people mentally ill just because they disagree with you.”

  Well, it’s not because they disagree with me that I call them mentally ill. It’s because of what they believe about reality, and more importantly what they want to do with those beliefs.

  If that’s all it was, just a belief, then I’d have no problem giving religion all the respect it wants, in the same way that I respect a person’s dress sense or the décor in their home. Even if I found it tasteless I would respect them enough not to say so.

  But religion is more than just a belief. Religion wants to impose a universal morality, which is why it has always attracted the kind of person who thinks other people’s private lives are their business. And giving respect to this mentality is exactly what has got us into the mess that we’re in.

  We’ve given religion ideas above its station, and we’ve persuaded it that it’s something it’s not, when the truth is that faith is nothing more than the deliberate suspension of disbelief. It’s an act of will. It’s not a state of grace. It’s a state of choice, because without evidence you’ve got no reason to believe, apart from your willingness to believe. So why is that worthy of respect, any more than your willingness to poke yourself in the eye with a pencil?

  And why is faith considered some kind of virtue? Is it because it implies a certain depth of contemplation and insight? I don’t think so. Faith, by definition, is unexamined, so in that sense, it has to be among the shallowest of experiences.

  And yet, if it could, it would regulate every action, word, and thought of every single person on this planet, because let’s not forget, even an impure thought is a sin.

  Well, I think that belief in God is an impure thought. It pollutes our understanding of reality. It gets in the way, and it brings out the worst in the best of us, so that we’re
even prepared to stoop so low as to poison the unformed minds of the people we love the most, our children. By the time they’re old enough to think for themselves it’s too late. They’ve been well and truly hypnotised.

  I’m sorry, but there’s no nice way to say this. If you fill your child’s mind with images of Satan and the horrors of hellfire, you’re a sick individual, and you are mentally ill.

  And the only reason you don’t know this is because you’ve been indulged for far too long by people and institutions that really ought to know better. The truth is your beliefs are infantile, your scriptures are lies, and your gods are illusions. And I can say that with all due respect, because no respect is actually due.

  Besides, anyone who has to demand respect automatically deserves ridicule. If you deserved respect you’d already have it. You’d be rolling around in it like a televangelist in other people’s money.

  No, what you deserve is mockery. But I’m a reasonable person and I want to make an effort, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll respect your beliefs for as long as I can keep a straight face while thinking about them, which should be about half a second, but beyond that I’m afraid I can’t promise anything.

  In the meantime I don’t believe that God exists, but if it turns out that I’m wrong about that, well fair enough. I don’t think much of his attitude, to be honest, and if he wants to show himself I’ll be happy to tell him that to his face, if he’s got one.

  But if God exists, I want him to tell me himself. I don’t want to hear it from anybody else. And in case you’re wondering, that includes you.

  So please don’t quote any more scripture at me. I’m really up to here with scripture, and frankly I don’t give a damn what the Bible or the Koran have to say about anything. You might as well be telling me about your dreams, which is essentially what you are doing.