A Policy of “Back-Lash” (The 2014 View)

GAY or LGBTQI+

(Written as a 2014 Dispatch, it thus reflects 2014 views)

Chapter One

I

JUST AS I think things are getting easier, I see an article that brings me harshly down to earth.

I speak of the superbly written, but distressing, article by Andrew Frazer in the June 2014 Issue of ATTITUDE and the homophobic laws now being enacted in Brunei, Uganda, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Other nations, too, undertake a policy of backlash.

II

The Sultan of Brunei will decide shortly whether two of his citizens shall be stoned to death if they are found guilty of engaging in sexual acts against the order of nature, to you and me - two people of the same sex having sex together.

The sultanate is to introduce Sharia law.

What is this law?

III

Sharia Law is religious law.

It is Islamic. It is as far from Christianity as the east is from the west, as distant from the Star of David and the Crucifixion of Judaeo-Christianity is from the Crescent of Islam. Any proven text will define the noun ‘sharia’ as literally meaning "the clear, well-trodden path to water".

This quaint, innocently refreshing definition has become the under-pin for a code of behavioural conduct by which all Muslims are required to live. It requires prayer, it requires fasting, it requires donations to those are without, ‘the poor’.

Its aim, its Imams teach, is to help Muslims understand that every aspect of their lives must be lived in accordance with God’s wishes.

I see none of the laudable principles in play by the Taliban, by isis/Daesh or by Al Queda.

IV

I have two questions to these Imams.

1 who is God?

2 how are you qualified to answer that question?

The question is unanswerable.

It reminds me of strict fundamentalist Christianity a few centuries back. As with any religion, it starts off with laudable intent. In reality, it is the means by which people are controlled.

Some path! Some water!!

The priests tried the same trick! They too took that clear, well-trodden path to water.

In the 21st Century Rabbis, Imams, Priests and Pastors are all still taking this well-trodden path to water.

You can follow the trail quite easily. Look behind you. It is strewn with those who have, according to these learned people, sinned against G-D.

V

Last week, the UK national newspaper Independent reported a case in Sudan of a woman sentenced to death by public hanging.

Her crime?

1 the lady had offended Sharia Law. How had this lady offended?

2 the lady had refused to recant as a Christian

In Western democracy, we find it difficult to comprehend a public hanging. In Western democracy, we do not demand oaths on sacred texts or by apparently sacred names. We have affirmations. I speak as a lawyer. I have administered many oaths and affirmations in my time.

VI

This Imam - this so-called legal and religious judge - granted the lady three days in which to consider her position …

What an incredible man he must be. What generosity! What warmth and love must ooze from him!!

Alas, as with so many Muslim men, (and quite a few Christians too, on the quiet), the lady dared to defy him, dared not recant, and thus, he rent his clothes so to speak, for she had forced his hand to have the lady’s back lashed a hundred times.

VII

The lashing done, this Imam then pronounced that the death sentence would be suspended for two years on account of the lady being eight months pregnant and that this was in accordance with Sharia Law - thereby enabling the child to be weaned for the first two years of its life by its mother.

VIII

At this point, it is fair to say, my day fell apart. My heart became ice cold, and I realised the depth of evil in this screwed-up religion.

This turd, this boil on a hairy backside had had a woman beaten up knowing that she is eight months pregnant?

This is the man whose idea of paradise is to endlessly …k seventy-four vestal virgins.

IX

It defies logic and description.

So to any Muslim, no matter how well you have embedded yourself into the luxury of life in Britain, I say this. Do not let your shadow even touch me. Do not even dare to speak. You are anathema to me. You are as stupid as your idiotic Ramadan.

Away with you. Scuttle back into the gutters of fifteen hundred years ago where you seem so desirous to live and have us all live with you too.

X

I thus repost the poems written to highlight the gross perversions of hate-filled men, and, yes, stupid women who bow down to them, who walk paces behind them, and dare not speak in public; who have the absurdity of bigamy that sees the elder woman deposed and become the servant of the younger woman, and then the next one, and the next one, and so on. [i]

Chapter Two

I

Why the Backlash? 

As the LGBT activist rightly points out - there is always a backlash from the narrow-minded and the bigoted when they realise that they are losing ground, losing their arguments, and unable to shake themselves free of the barbaric thinking of closed and narrow minds that would seek to turn the clock back fifteen hundred years.

The countries above are backward in their thinking.

They lack the education that enables them to put their religious beliefs in perspective.

Their choice of extremism is not the choice, for example, of the vast majority of fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians living here in the United Kingdom.

II

We live in dangerous times. We live in exciting times too.

But let us be under no illusion that all is lovely in the garden now. It most certainly is not.

We have a long way to go before we reach ‘the broad sunlit uplands’ that Churchill naively spoke of in 1940.

III

This is why I so passionately believe in multiculturalism and the need to enable our children to be bilingual at the very least. This enables dialogue. It also enables us to see each others' cultures and to gain new perspectives, and new insights. 

Those who do not have an education are not at fault.

It is those who deny them their education who are at fault.

If someone has the mindset and logic of barbarity from fifteen hundred years ago, and it is because they have been taught that there is no other way, indeed that were they to travel they would find it the same the world over, then surely we are heading for another catastrophe.

30 January 2021
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LIVERPOOL

© 2023 Kenneth Thomas Webb

First published 2014

[i] A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (first published 2007)