I spoke too soon, and it makes me feel like Major Gowan. If you remember, when the American accuses Fawlty Towers of being the worst hotel he’d ever been in, the Major snaps. “No! No!” he protests. “There’s a place in Eastbourne…”
The charging of Gillian Gibbons is a disgrace not just to Sudan, but to Islamic legal systems all over the world. I’m afraid that, until legal systems like this, and like the Saudi one, are abolished, nothing that calls itself Islamic law can really be taken seriously as a fit system for any society to live by. Strong words, perhaps: but I think moderate, liberal-minded Muslims need to wake up, and http://www.lependart.com realise that this kind of thing – Islamist terror too, of course, but this website focuses on things legal – deprives the whole idea of Islamic law of any credibility at all, just as “really existing socialism” made it impossible to be taken seriously as a communist after, at the latest, 1956.
Really existing Islamic law seems to be doing its best to reveal itself as silly, small, nasty and misogynistic. I could thing of lots of other bad adjectives if I wanted.
I could think of a few too, but I’ll leave it to a quote from Arthur C Clarke. When asked what is the greatest threat humanity faces he answered:
“Organised religion polluting our minds as it pretends to deliver morality and spiritual salvation. It’s spreading the most malevolent mind virus of all. I hope our race can one day outgrow this primitive notion.”
That’s a cool quote, John! Thanks. You’re as atheistic as me, by the sounds… Actually, didn’t we discuss that when we met? I’ve got a memory of that conversation somehow, though it could be age.