Meanderings

‘If my kingdom were of this world then would my servants fight for it.’  If Jesus and so his followers had adopted a violent response there would probably have been a Jewish uprising.  It would probably have ended with being brutally put down by the Romans, with lots of people being crucified, but it would not have ended as it did end. It is a little small-scale for Christians, somewhat less than giving one’s life for the sins of the world, but Jesus was no fool and had probably worked that one out too.   
 
 
It’s possible to imagine a spoof, some fucktard moves that what women wear in public must be bound by law.  Of course everyone laughs in his face, design burqas of transparent fabric appeared on the cat-walks, but no, not everyone would, some would point out that there are many dress-codes in places of work and play already, others than it is deeply distressing to devout Muslims to view women with few clothes on,  that religion must never be mocked, that it is disparaging to religious doctrine so to do.    The problem is no one will take the piss out of it all.  OK, we may not condemn, deride mock, or just ignore their ravings.  What is left?  The country is being kettled into a violent response
 
 
Anyone who wants a free country is going to have to fight for it, a country in which snowflakes, hysterics, psychopaths are a joke.   
 
 
One unknown to those under, what 50, who have grown up thinking corrupt garbage is the norm, of course you must never offend religion.  So the free world is supposed to quietly die off.  Though whether it will is quite another matter, there being many many millions of people under 50 who can read. 
 
 
Thus I subscribe to Anglo-American democracy in a country called England in which it is apparently the case that hardly anyone has even heard of and those who must have heard it work ruthlessly for its destruction, which is in itself farce.  Also of course I am the only person in England who has read Marx, Voltaire, Lenin, Paine and the New Testament, who is familiar with the gods and goddesses of the ancient world
 
 
Jesus said Love was absolute, not to be withdrawn in any circumstances.  Historically, notoriously the so-called Christian world has differed.  But people have worried about it, hence concepts such as a just war and the principle of the initiation of force and that absolute sits there.  It doesn’t do anything but it just sits there are it says you don’t hit people who haven’t hit you first, you don’t execute people who haven’t killed anyone. 
 
 
As do a lot of things, just sit there.  The jolly old British concept of fair play has fuck all to do with the jolly old British in particular and everything to do with Jesus’ injunctions to level the playing-field, remember you are not perfect, consider those motes and beams, judge not that ye be not judged, cast the first stone only  if you are without sin.
 
 
None of which essentially had anything to do with believing in God.  I have called them the post-its.  They were just there in the corner.  Its being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God never in 2000 years of Christian history stopped people becoming filthy rich, though I think that occasionally it meant they gave their wealth to religious foundations for the benefit of the poor and entered religious orders; on the whole not, that is not the sort of thing bloated capitalists do – but it was there in the corner, for all the opulence, conspicuous consumption, arse-licking, veneration, wealth is not that impressive.    The post-its sat there, on the standard-lamp, in the House of Commons, in barracks and churches, town halls and schools, how this society thinks you should behave, how ever far from it its usual conduct is
 
.
1Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. 6Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
Matthew 7:3
 
 
About not being a bumptious self-righteous little turd.  What was that again about casting pearls before swine?
 
 
About indeed not being a whited sepulchre
 
 
4Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. 25Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. 27Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 28Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
 
 
Oh, have I called you walking corpses, grinning skulls, bags of rotting flesh.  Oh how shocking.  Yawn.  Don’t think I’ve said anything about you that Jesus didn’t say about religious turd. 
 
 
They tore down the post-its, that we have no standards at all.  That’s an interesting one.  Bourgeois morality is of course one part of it.  Immigration is another one, conveniently eliding that these had nothing to do with what you believed about god or gods.  Post-its that by the way directly oppose racist behaviour.   So who was offended?  African and West Indian Christians who have arrived here?  Bwahaha.  Muslims in the Sufi tradition who are rather fond of Jesus, tell good stories about him?
 
 
Some Israelites reviled Jesus one day as he was walking through their part of the town.
                But he answered by repeating prayers in their name.
                Someone said to him:
                “You prayed for these men, did you not feel incensed against them?”
                He answered:
                “I could spend only of what I had in my purse.”
 
 
Guys like this?
 
 
Dr. Nurbakhsh presents here a wealth of stories and poems about Jesus, many of which are translated into English for the first time from the original Arabic and Persian Sufi sources. They represent the profound reverence that Sufis for centuries have felt for Jesus, regarding him as a symbol of love and the perfect master. The enthusiastic attitude towards Jesus extended to Christianity in general, major symbols of which are frequently used by poets such as Hafiz and Rumi, and this book explains for the first time the inner meanings of these Christian symbols as they appear in Sufi mystical writings. By explaining the importance of Jesus in the Sufi tradition, this book at the same time highlights the centrality of love and compassion for Sufis. https://www.nimatullahi.org/books/jesus-in-the-eyes-of-the-sufis
 
 
Anyone else with a tradition of holy men wandering around giving wise counsel?
 
The front page of Sikhnet carries a fond memory of an old victory
 
In 1831, Syed Ahmed Barelvi wanted to establish a Caliphate in Kashmir. Then, he ran into Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army.
 
 
A row blew up between a white Canadian member of the far right who wanted to drag Sikhs into her war against Islam and a Sikh politician who refused to play.  No, Sikhs have not been constantly fighting Islam, only oppressors. 
 
 
What is desperately important here, from which all western politicians could learn, is that Sikhs distinguish different kinds of Muslim.  Sikh Wiki is hardly flattering about Islam as a whole, a distinct withdrawing of the hem of the garment.  BUT
 
 
The ideal Muslim social order is a return to the state established by the Muhammed the Prophet, with all the world as Muslims, the remaining non-Muslims - zimmis – suitably subjugated and unable to promote their lies (i.e. their religion) or practice their faiths. This ideal may be seen in a range of states from Afghanistan (where Sikhs may no longer perform nagar keertans), to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. It looks to an ideal past. The result of this has been what is termed Islam’s bloody borders, struggles with all non-Muslims be they Hindu (India), Jews (Israel), Sikhs, Christians (Sudan, Indonesia, Balkans), Buddhists (Bhutan).
By contrast, for Sikhs it is an, as yet unrealized, one world (sabhe manas ko ik pachanbo = recognise all humankind as One), with pluralism in people’s approaches to the One Reality as a garden of many flowers, with an emphasis on the equal dignity of all, of which the langar is a microcosm.
This pluralistic, one world vision is guarded by an armed and active citizenry in this republic of joy and is captured in the opt-repeated slogan, “Degh Tegh Fateh” = Victory to the Cauldron and the Sword. This ideal is also captured in the name of the birthplace of the Khalsa, Anandpur Sahib, City of Bliss. This is a physical manifestation of the spiritual transformation explained by holy bhagat Ravidass in the hymn about Begumpura, a description of the Kingdom of God. By entering that Kingdom within our heart, Sikhs strive to manifest that Kingdom in this world as a vanguard of this revolution, Akaal Purkh Ki Fauj – army of the Eternal Spirit.
First, this manifests for the flourishing of all humanity irrespective of race, religion, or sex in changing human expressions of God’s Divine Order, an ever-changing, ever-fresh kaleidoscope of rainbow colors in front of the Light of God’s Word or Guru-Bani. God’s law is not an abstract system for self-defined ‘normal’ people, with the ‘abnormal’, the kafir to be changed or subjugated, but a growing personal development which manifests in all people. It is based on the growth of every single person with the law (hukm) the universal natural growth principle for each person as a unique plant in God’s Garden of Love and Life. Second, it is a vision which looks to the future manifestation of that Order on earth realizing that its success depends not on external coercion (law or sh’araih), but inner transformation through meditation (simran) and meditation in action (meeri-peeri). Finally, the victory of God’s Order is held to be part of God’s sovereignty so it will be. Trusting in this, Sikhs enjoy chardi kala, a dynamic optimism for the future, not looking to the past.
The Sufis
However, there are also those within the Islamic tradition who also seek a mystical communion with God, the sufis. Not surprisingly, the relations of Sikhs with some sufis were very close. The Qadiriya, Bahlol Shah, established one of the oldest Gurdwaras in the world in Baghdad, while another of that group, Saint Mian Mir was invited to lay the foundation stone of the Golden Temple, according to a persistent Sikh tradition. From the Chestiya, some writings of Baba Farid are included in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji and Pir Budhu Shah and his sons died as Martyrs when he learned that the Muslims who he had recommended to Guru Gobind Sing had broken their pledges to fight in the Sikh army and had joined the forces of the Hill Chiefs and their Mughal allies who had attacked Guru Gobind Singh.
After the death of Guru Gobind Singh, during the wars between the Sikhs and the later Mughal Emperors, many sufis fought alongside the Sikhs against the Mughal and Afgaani tyranny. The Durrani considered their invasions as a jihad and tried to eliminate the Sikhs in a series of holocausts, but as it was Daulat Khan, one of the noblemen of Ibrahim Lodi, who like many of subjects of Lodi ( the last Afgan Sultan of Delhi, who was so cruel to his subjects, killing and poisoning even his noblemen) who invited Babur to invade India, it was the Muslims merchants and citizenry of Lahore, who had long suffered under the oppressive heel of their Afgani rulers (their Muslim brothers) who opened the gates to the city of Lahore, inviting Maharaja Ranjit Singh to rule their city. It was the Maharaja who established the Sikh Kingdom in 1799. Under his rule the citizens of the kingdom were free to practice their religions, whether Hindu, Jain, Parse, Buddhist or Muslim without any oppression. Unfortunately the zeal of the Maharaja to take over all of the other Sikh kingdoms caused many of the other Maharajas to ask the British for protection, which effectively divied the Territories of the Sikhs into a East and West divided along the River Sutledge. The British learning that the Maharaja was intending to invade or annex the Sind quickly moved to sign a treaty with the Sikh ruler which precluded any southern expansion, but the Maharaja had free reign to annex Jammu and Kashmir. Unfortunately infighting in his court after his death weakened and divided the Sikhs, who after several rapid replacement of Rulers were soon defeated in the first Anglo-Sikh War. Jammu and Kashmir were dived off and sold to the Dogras and infighting in young Maharaja Duleep Singh's Court and saber rattling by different Sikhs militias of the old misl alliances brought about a second Anglo-Sikh war with treaties that allowed the British take control and effectively end the once proud Sikh Kingdom in 1849.
http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Sikhi_and_Islam
 
 
I am digressing, at which of course I am extremely good   I think it may fairly be said that every other religion that has come here loathes Salafism quite as much as an indigenous Brit.  The dull, dim, vicious and intolerant fail to be what the rest of the world regards as holy, unless of course they are adherents of the ‘Abrahamic faiths’, though naturally every belief-system has its share of plonkers.
 
I don’t know if there is among a British Sikhs an equivalent of the Synod or the Board of Deputies but it just might be very entertaining if the Labour Party resolved to speak only to those Muslims reckoned as sane by Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists. 
 
 
The Christian and post-Christian free world is overall, meaning its Christianity if it has any concentrated mostly or solely on the New Testament, not capable of being impressed by the sordid vicious violent death-cult of obedience that has pitched up here, however much attempt is made to browbeat and terrorize us into accepting it as wonderful, holy, sincere, whatever pervert filth is dribbled by a so-called Christian clergy. 
 
 
Many black people, though like everyone else they may not themselves be believers, have had a Christian background, though that of course may merely mean fascism, sexism, homophobia and psychosis.  ‘islamophobia’ is of course a propaganda triumph, intended to unite white and non-white  under the banner of anti-racism, has achieved precisely what it was intended to, preventing the isolation of Islamism.  Preventing anyone saying what must occur to people, that they spoil it for the rest of us; I do not suppose bearded turbaned Sikhs thrill to being attacked by fucktard mongols who think they’re Muslims.   The churches have done the rest with their phoney division between faith and disbelief instead of mad and sane, the constant harping on faith communities to which it is assumed all the non-indigenous belong, part I think of the inverted colonialist mentality of the western marginal Left.  Pick at random a guy or girl with brown or black skin and not wearing any outward sign of religious adherence and there is no reason to believe he or she believes in anything other than evolution and quantum theory; coming from or having parents/grandparents who came from religious societies doesn’t mean one is oneself religious.
 
 
One formerly Muslim woman recounts her arrival in the West at the forum of the Council of Ex-Muslims.  I do not think she and others at the forum figure in Labour’s fuckwit Guide to Modern England.
 
 
I was still living there when I finally did leave Islam. At that point, I did not dare remove it. I feared it would have meant not only losing my social circle, but risking my freedom and possibly my life if it led to the people around me discovering the truth about my apostasy. And so I continued to wear it for the longest four months of my life until I was able to leave the country.

A few weeks before I was to leave, I was contemplating how and when, if ever, I would tell my closest Muslim friends that I could no longer believe. I decided I could do a test run to see how they would react by admitting that I had thoughts of removing the hijab. Just as I suspected, they reacted with pretty much an intervention, and begged me to reconsider. One friend hastily forwarded a few links about hijab in an attempt to convince me it was obligatory. In her haste, she did not realize one of the links she sent me actually argued against the necessity of hijab. When I pointed it out, she frantically apologized, and proceeded to fling quote after quote from Quran, hadith, and various scholars in an attempt to prove that hijab is required, and then bullied me into obeying with statements like, {{Please remember, that any hadith is sunnah.  And we must follow the sunnah also.}}

With just days left in the country, I assured them they had convinced me and I would keep the hijab. They seemed satisfied.

On the day I finally left, I was wearing a long skirt and a thin t-shirt under a flowing black abaya with a black hijab wrapped lightly but securely around my head. I boarded the plane and sat quietly, anxiously yet nervously awaiting my stop in Amsterdam. I felt fine in my abaya and hijab. I knew by then how to wear them comfortably, so I was not physically bothered. But I was acutely aware of everyone who looked at me. {{I am on the plane now, I am home free. I do not have to wear this anymore. Can they tell? Do they see the real me under these shrouds?}} Because I could feel it sharply.

As soon as I arrived in Amsterdam, I headed straight for the restroom. My palms were sweaty and my heart was racing in anticipation of what I was about to do. I was a little shaky standing in the stall as I removed each piece one at a time, folding carefully so they would take up the least amount of room in my bag. I put on the jeans and tank top I had carried with me, and then I hesitated. This was it. The end of the old me.

I was about to have full possession of my freedom.

Even more acutely aware of every glance, I stepped out of the restroom. I had gone in quiet, somber, and shrouded. I came out tall, fresh, alive. Had anyone noticed? It did not matter. The air on my skin gave me goosebumps to the core and I gained confidence with every step. Before I knew it, the hijab was behind me. And I have not looked back.
 
 
Or this guy:
 

The insistence and demand among society in general that religious belief and ideas, however absurd, should be automatically especially respected and protected from criticism, scrutiny, questioning, mockery, ridicule and insult if need be, is a comfortable environment for extreme beliefs to take root.

While I am in no way claiming that religious people are directly responsible for what is happening in Iraq, and in other issues where religion plays a detrimental part, but I think religious people and those who promote faith as a virtue, and something to be encouraged, often with government and societal support,  need to take a long hard look at their religions.

Moderate and benign religious people in our comfortable democratic liberal societies, who are free to pick and chose what part of religion they want to follow, who I am sure are as horrified and appalled by what is happening in Iraq, Syria etc, as we are, must now begin to accept that by promoting faith they are unwittingly and unintentionally setting the scene for such extreme groups, to blossom.

The average religious person who claims to gain comfort from their religion as they think they will go to heaven and enjoy eternal youth with all their loved ones, MUST now realise that this same religion that they insist must be respected, is also simultaneously getting people beheaded, medical assistance refused, children killed for witchcraft, mass kidnappings, terrorism, other atrocities and injustices, and all sorts of messed up dangerous thinking, in other poorer, less educated, and unstable parts of the world.

So as the lucky religious people who live in 'the west' get to enjoy meeting grandma in the afterlife and lovely fables about nativities and magic angels to make us feel all soft and fluffy, many poor sods elsewhere are getting their heads detached, genetically mutilated, denied medical treatment, beaten and ostracised, lack education, and are psychologically traumatised.

The 'benefits' of religious faith (believing things without evidence) are  unproven and minimal AT BEST, whereas the disadvantages, are tragic, real and all too measurable.

Religious people and accommodationists need to get out of the idea as a society that faith is something to be encouraged.

Rant over
 
 
But the average female black Brit is no more modest in her attire, no more hostile to physical activity encompassing wearing very little, no more psycho-sexually crippled  than her white sisters., Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoists have not come here with a nasty vicious religion, intent on making it dominate, and it would be very surprising if any of them had any enthusiasm for Islamist rule, whether their grand-parents/great-grandparents came from British India or whether they come from the Republic of India.
 
 
I do not claim the slightest overall knowledge of what might have been in the heads of millions of individuals who set out to emigrate to England.  Except I think they would have thought they were coming to a Christian country not a Muslim one, and if you are going to emigrate from Africa or the Indian sub-continent, the Muslim world is much nearer if that is what you want..
 
 
I should rather suspect Hindus, if they think about these things, probably agree with Gandhi: “I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are not like your Christ.’ It is rather difficult to like our Christians.
 
 
I do not know of a culture that has not delved into the question of self and other, its being central to man’s relationship to man and so to society.
 
 
It is I think part of the myth of history that has taken hold that not only does England have no internal history distinct from colonial folly but no-one else does either. 
 
 
I don’t know enough about the history of the sub-continent to know which historical events are particularly significant to Indians, comparable say to the English Civil War, but I do know there was one hell of a lot of history.
 
The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE. In the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, and Buddhism and Jainism arose. Early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires; later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as Southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, and Sikhism emerged, all adding to the region's diverse culture. Much of the north fell to the Delhi Sultanate; the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal Empire. In the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British Crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance and led to India's independence in 1947…
 
The Sangam literature of the Tamil language reveals that, between 200 BCE and 200 CE, the southern peninsula was being ruled by the Cheras, the Cholas, and the Pandyas, dynasties that traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and South-East Asia.[49][50] In North India, Hinduism asserted patriarchal control within the family, leading to increased subordination of women.[51][44] By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had created in the greater Ganges Plain a complex system of administration and taxation that became a model for later Indian kingdoms.[52][53] Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion rather than the management of ritual began to assert itself.[54] The renewal was reflected in a flowering of sculpture and architecture, which found patrons among an urban elite.[53] Classical Sanskrit literature flowered as well, and Indian science, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics made significant advances.[53]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India
 
 
Across the entire political spectrum from far right to far left there is an obsession with the British Empire as though history began with it, is encompassed by it.  It is unknowable how many citizens of old countries  that have undergone or are undergoing upheaval take the long view: before 1917 there was Russia, before Mao there was China, before the British there was India, before the ayatollahs there was Persia.  Indeed before the empire there was England. Before the Greek Orthodox Church there was Athens.  Other things define us. 
 
 
What has pitched up here and started to throw its weight around is essentially Old Testament religion.  The fundy of the American Religious Right simply would not have the problems living in a Muslim country the rest of us would – well, unless her name were Palin.