Free Zones ~ Back-Lash
LGBTQ
Liverpool
Free Zones ~ Back-Lash
I
IN WRITING of the plight of two men in 2014 who faced being stoned to death, the Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah, despite international condemnation, took five years to reach his decision, and even then, only after a meeting in Brussels with the European Union, following yet another verdict of sentence of death by stoning handed down by that Sultan’s imams in April 2019.
II
On May 6, 2019, the Sultan of Brunei concluded that his way forward was to extend the moratorium on his country’s death penalty, so that the moratorium would finally also cover laws that punish a person, of either sex, for homosexual acts and adultery with death by stoning.
a moratorium is defined as :
a temporary prohibition of an activity
In this case, Brunei was temporarily curtailing its use of capital punishment for acts of adultery, and sexual acts between homosexuals.
The United Nations confirms that Brunei last carried out a legally sanctioned execution in 1957.
Why we were in this situation at all?
I had gained the impression that Brunei was a liberal state, an affirmed democracy.
III
Why has a country decided to enact such laws at all?
What makes a man decide to enact barbaric, hateful, merciless, cruel and vengeful laws?
What makes a woman support their enactment in a society in which she is, by religious definition, unequal, subordinate, a second-class citizen, one who must not be seen by other men, one who must walk behind the man she has been contracted to marry by an older generation? A woman who is a chattel to that man she is required to call her husband, a man who, when he grows tired of her, will then enter into further marriage contracts.
What makes people support such changes?
What silly superstitions and old-wives-tales do they harbour, and insist that fairy-tale is truth?
What is the motivation for those ‘laws’?
How long will this moratorium hold?
Brunei - Poland
Brunei is, for most, a far distant country, tiny, resting on its oil wealth, a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Poland is not far away. Poland is a member of the European Union.
When I look at the human rights record of Poland, Hungary, of Turkey, I simply conclude thank goodness we are no longer a member of the European Union, even though I voted to remain.
Why mention Poland in the same breath as Brunei? How can the two be possibly connected?
Simply this. Religion.
Extreme, narrow-minded, Islam in the case of Brunei, and extreme, narrow-minded, Catholicism in the case of Poland.
IV
The Rule of Law or Religious Diktat?
When religion seeks to impose religious laws on a country; when priests, imams, ayatollahs, seek to rule by medieval decree, violence and horror - all, apparently, in the name of a god that is a will-of-the wisp-in-the-wind then all hell will let loose.
In Brunei, the Syariah Penal Code Order demands to implement:
death by stoning,
the severing of hands for people convicted of theft, and
flogging of women convicted of having sex with each other
death by stoning of men having sex with each other
Brunei subscribes to the precedent, for those who follow Islam, that religious law is superior to the common law.
It is not! I say again:
It is not!
V
It is, at best, a local ordinance suited to ancient tribal set-ups that even when they were written down 1,500-1,600 years ago, were worthless, bigoted, and vicious.
Petty tribal chieftains, each and every one of them believing they were ruling the world. A world confined to the horizons they could physically gaze upon. These simpletons had no comprehension of what lay beyond those horizons they stared at daily.
We see their descendants today.
The Taliban. Minds crooked, hooked into a way of life of almost 2,000 years ago.
A creed that insists that its sacred text - the Koran - forbids that girls shall not be educated beyond the age of eight years.
VI
About a decade ago, some bellicose tin-pot religious dictators over here in the United Kingdom - who plainly believed they were the centre of their twisted world - wanted to impose Islamic sharia law in precedence to English Common Law in what they called their parts of their country because they argued, there are more Muslims living in the area than who are not Muslim; so, therefore, their religious laws must take precedence over the UK Parliament.
To make their point, they went a step further with their self-appointed and ridiculous Muslim Parliament of Great Britain! The British People put that odious genie very firmly back in its bottle!
Get into the real world.
VII
Their manifesto, amongst other things, states:
“The Muslim Manifesto made it clear that ‘Political and cultural subservience goes against their grain’ because at its inception Islam created a political platform from which Muslims were to launch themselves on a global role as founders of great states, empires and a world civilization and culture.”
What utter rubbish. In a well-known British phrase … on yer Bike
VIII
This is a world of make-believe.
If ever there was an instance of attempting to bring into a thriving 21st Century democracy a set-up designed to propagate petty chieftains and warlords … drugs and corruption, then here was the lighted taper.
To such idiotic, self-opinionated, bellicose imams, and their followers: go back to your room, roll out your carpets, raise your bums, and give your flatulence a chance to air.
IX
Misguided Christianity
To those in the church who wake up thinking that biblical or canonical law should take precedence over Common Law and Statute Law? On your bikes. All of you!
Look at our history in the British Isles.
Look at what religious division and strife has done in every century since the time of Christ!
Look at what religious division and strife has done in every century since before the time of Christ!
Wars. Massacres. Pogroms. And - still - silly denominations reading from identical texts argue over whether to say, ‘lead us not into temptation’ or lead us away from temptation.’ For crying out loud! It’s obvious!!
The church may appear to have quite a role to play in governance but it’s not unlike the monarch; the church can advise and warn. Governance is through Parliament, not through archbishops. Priests are that healing balm within their local communities, so long as they understand what they are supposed to be doing in this present century and with this century’s perspective.
X
Poland?
In Poland, things are more serious.
The man seeking re-election is a right-wing conservative, for which read, populist … Andrzej Duda.
Mr Duda presides over a country that has allowed a nation of just under 38 million (2019) to create LGBT Free Zones that cover a third of the country, which Claudia Ciobanu in REPORTING DEMOCRACY writes is ‘greater than the size of Hungary.’
Supporting the LGBT community in Poland means that one is automatically regarded as being against the concept of family. In the old language, the LGBT community is outlawed from one-third of their homeland.
Being against the LGBT community, therefore, suggests one is automatically regarded as being pro-family.
If a person supports the LGBT community in Poland, as was reported on BBC News 24 on July 9, 2020, it then renders that supporter by definition, a paedophile.
XI
In the past, we would look at the evil spectre of Nazi Germany as that all-time low benchmark to liberal democracies on how not to do things.
How strange, that so many of the very countries attacked, occupied and destroyed by Nazism, actually now turn to populism i.e. fascism, which is as potentially dangerous, ugly and repugnant and - by its very nature - as evil, as Nazism.
Poland saw what Hitler did in 1939. It was shocking and beyond belief. The horrendous game-bets by the Wehrmacht on how many people a flame-thrower could force to flee each home as a live flaming torch! And when I say people, I speak of the civilian population, of all ages.
We came to your aid. It was we, the British People, who declared war on Germany and sowed the seeds of that megalomaniac’s downfall.
We, you, you especially so, and the world, paid a terrifying price.
And now you do this!
29 June 2022
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
First Written August 28, 2020
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
