Religious tolerance ? Not a hope in hell !
Posted by Big John on September 17, 2006
Blimey! They’re at it again.
Last time they were threatening holy war over some silly cartoons of the Prophet and now they are burning bloody effigies of the Pope because he has quoted some 14th century geezer who spent most of his time fighting off invading Muslims who were hell bent on killing everyone or converting them to Islam. Sounds a bit like the Christian crusaders’ methods to me.
Surely in this day and age we all have a right to scrutinize and criticise any faith without being threatened with ‘fatwas’ and ‘jihads’ or even a smack in the mouth come to that.
I know that most religions like to ‘bump off’ each others followers once in a while and that history is full of holy slayings. If the Bible is to be believed even the Almighty helped out with the occasional massacre, and the Catholic Church’s Holy Inquisition could always be sure of a good crowd turning out for it’s ‘autos da fe’. Even today you only have to turn on the TV news to see the bloody aftermath of some fanatic’s attack on someone who believed in the ‘wrong kind’ of religion.
This idea that a bit of religious death and destruction is somehow OK with whoever your god happens to be is one of the reasons why I am an atheist, and as an atheist I’m happy for people to follow whatever religion they choose provided that they do no harm to others and leave me alone.
I expect that someone will soon be knocking on my door, waving a book and wanting to convert me to their beliefs. As a non-believer I might gently tell them to piss off … but …
…… at least I won’t get violent.
bigjohn 
gawilli said
Very well said.
Willi said
I agree. No the best you can for people all the time. It doesn’t matter to me their religion. But, like you I sure wished it did not matter to the religious.
Libertine said
I think it’s funny that they get all bent out of shape that the Pope’s comments implied that Islam is a violent religion. They insist that this isn’t so; that Islam is really a peaceful and non-violent religion.
How did they prove it in reaction to the Pope’s comments? Why, going out and killing a nun, destroying several churches, and threatening to cut off the Pope’s head, of course!
frisby said
be quite nice if they found the genocide in Darfur and the atrocities by the Muslim Janjaweed offensive!
mick in the uk said
At least they also protest about their own honour killings, enforced female circumcision, halal slaughter, Muslim on Muslim beheadings/slaughter in Iraq, enforced marriage of minors and suicide bombers…oh hang on, I think I got somethig wrong here.