The Civilizing Effect of Religion

by Jim Washburn

Back in Nazi Germany, some prominent Nazis thought Christianity was just a Jewish trick, designed to make the Aryan race docile and weak with all that compassion and turning-the-other-cheek stuff, not to mention the example of Jesus letting himself get crucified. By contrast, the Nordic god Thor tended to solve all problems with a mallet, and when Conan, the northern barbarian of Robert E. Howard’s 1930s pulp novels, was crucified in one story, he promptly tore his hands free from the nails and slew everyone in the vicinity. Now there’s a savior that zealots could really love.

Maybe those Nazis had a point: While Muslim extremists routinely blow up entire marketplaces, it seems to be all their crazy Christian counterparts can do to murder a lone abortion doctor in church. And our nutty “God’s punishing Haiti for making a deal with Satan” wackos and “family values” killjoys pale beside the Muslim world’s kooks.

Consider: The worst Sarah Palin and others could fling at Barack Obama was that he “palled around with terrorists” and that his preacher gave them the white willies; meanwhile, in Iran, two opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been charged with being “enemies of God.” Top that! Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani are accused of being fixtures behind last year’s post election opposition protests, even though Rahmanipour was already under arrest at the time.

I suppose you can guess what the sentence is for being an enemy of God. There is no question but that they’ll be executed, as protesters in Iran have been for lesser charges. There’s at least some mystery in how they’ll be executed, as firing squads, hanging, and stoning are all accepted methods there. You can also be executed for homosexuality in Iran, plus they lead the world in executing juveniles. Sorry, Texas.

I just read on Wikipedia that in 2004 a 16-year-old Iranian girl was executed after being tried for adultery and “crimes against chastity,” to which she confessed under torture. The judge in the case, who was also the prosecutor, put the noose around her neck personally, telling her “This will teach you to disobey!” And then she was hung from a crane in public.

There were numerous irregularities in her case—not the least of them being that the judge was later charged with having raped her—plus Iran had signed an international treaty agreeing not to execute anyone under 18, so the nation’s Supreme Court issued an order to free her, after it knew she was dead.

There’s a good account of the case you can read on Wikipedia.

Pretty insane, yes? Though insanity is somewhat relative given that our Supreme Court contains at least one justice, Scalia, who believes that proof of innocence is not a valid cause to issue a convict’s stay of execution. And, of course, until a slightly less crazy lineup in the Supreme Court invalidated such laws in 2003, several of America’s favorite sex acts were punishable in 14 states, carrying up to a life sentence in two of them. (And wouldn’t you know that the justices who ruled against overturning the sex statutes included Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who both recently ruled that corporations have the unrestricted right to buttfuck our elections.)

Even so, that’s still a ways from accusing citizens being an “enemy of God” or of committing “crimes against chastity.”

Do they have cheatin’ songs in Iran? If not, I’ve penned a little number for them:

Unclean woman, you vile temptress I don’t need,

Unclean woman, unfit vessel for my seed,

Seek you not to climb upon my rod,

You’re a rank offense in the nostrils of my god,

Unclean woman, you visit shame upon our house.

 

Unclean woman, I don’t like it when you vote

Unclean woman, I should trade you for a goat,

Don’t you know you’re driving me berserka,

With what you got lurking ‘neath your burka,

Unclean woman, I will not associate with your unchaste type.

Remember me writing not long ago about our staunch ally Saudi Arabia stepping up its prosecutions of people on sorcery charges? Evidently the Saudi religious police aren’t so beset by sorcerers that they don’t also have time to go after candy hearts. According to an Associated Press story, Valentine’s Day is a banned Western celebration in that country, and a nationwide crackdown was underway last week targeting anyone who dared to sell heart-shaped items, red roses, or anything else that might conceivably be associated with Valentine’s. Probably not a good week to need heart surgery in the kingdom.

In other Muslim legal news this week, some U.S.-based Muslim groups have issued a fatwa against airport body scanners, supporting Muslim scholars who assert that “It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women,” unless it is necessary in the practice of hot oil wrestling.

Most of us infidels also consider it a violation of our privacy to be subjected to body scans. But I went through one recently at SFO, and it wasn’t nearly as intrusive as the chip the aliens put in my brain. It’s no big deal: you stand in a Star Trek-looking thing with your hands over your head, while a low-paid employee gets a gauzy view of you in the altogether. Though I had no idea I was going to be subjected to this, I had just moments before been thinking about that scene in Boy on a Dolphin where the young Sophia Loren climbs out of the sea with her clothes all clingy wet, so I was at least fairly presentable.

Though one is only being rendered immodest via three seconds of high frequency radio beams—and the scan doesn’t include your head, and the person viewing the scan is in another room and never actually sees you to associate you with the ghostly image on her screen—and even though scholars’ efforts might be better spent reflecting upon the aspects of their religions that make some of the faithful want to crash planes into buildings, I can see where such techno-nudity could pose a dilemma for the pious of all religions. “Oh my, they’ve seen into my darkest underpants. Whatever shall I do now?” Well, I can only see three solutions: stoning, hanging, or firing squad.

I guess the theme today is religion, so let me go out with another heartwarming tale: An image of Jesus has been spotted in a big, righteous bud of chocolope marijuana in El Paso, Texas, and the faithful have been lining up to view it.

“Christ, would you look at how tight that bud is, and all the red hairs!” remarked Monsignor Charles O’Huffley, one of the first on the scene.

Whoops, sorry, I was reading that story upside down: CNN has reported that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have impounded 30 pounds of marijuana that was being smuggled across the border from Mexico, hidden in framed portraits of Jesus. The stash was found in a jeep at the El Paso border crossing by a federal drug-sniffing dog, not named Judas. The confiscated drugs will be incinerated. And Jesus wept.

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