Your article caught my eye because I am currently reading the book “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirshi Ali, who criticizes Islam at her own peril yet nonetheless provides the non-Muslim world a glimse of what life was like for her as a girl and woman growing up in Somalia, Kenya, and Saudi Arabia. A painfully revealing glimpse backward.

If you haven’t heard of her, she is a woman who was formerly devoutly Islamic, but she began questioning the low status of women during her teens as she sought an education. She was severely punished for asking reasonable questions about Muslim faith and practice (as well as eventually denouncing the barbaric methods of genital mutilation she herself was traumatized by at an early age). A friend of hers was murdered in Amsterdam for his collaberaton with her on a film about this subject. Muslims can be very touchy about their world image…as we’ve all noticed….remember the Dutch cartoon incident?

Anyway, Hirshi Ali asks the daring, controversial (and enlightened) question: “If the Quran is the spoken word of Allah, and Allah is a just God, why would the Quran promote activities like husbands beating their wives, women being worth half a man, and the killing of infidels (Christians, Jews, non-believers, alike)? Because men are weak? Because women must submit to the will of Allah as an example for men to follow? Suffering is strength?

What keeps striking me as so alarming and disturbing as I continue to read this book is the fact that hating and demonizing an enemy (even the opposite sex) can take on the entire basis for a religious movement. Whatever enemy a group decides to pick…be it “dangerous, wanton women”, “Zionists”, “infidels”, etc etc, a feeling of hatred can just simmer and cook up the very violent activism we see in so many fundamentalist religious sects. The offshots of the “legitimate” more moderate religions becoming militant in their quest for the “truth”…seeking the truest religion, the straightest path, even if vengeance and violence are part of it.

And who is the most offended and persecuted group? Does this measure the “chosen people” the best: The people that can prove to be the most victimized?? If God/Allah/Supreme Being punishes you and makes you suffer, it means you are truly loved??

This makes me recall a line in a song by Depeche Mode called “Blasphemous Rumours”…maybe you’re familiar with it, too:

“I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours but I think that God has a sick sense of humour”.

Now THAT’S powerful and enlighening….when you get to the point of starting up a “Good Athiest” soundtrack, be sure to include THAT little number. ha Where’s your “gift store” area….we need merchandise with shock value!