Here’s an idea: let’s stop calling it “faith”
The blogosphere is picking up on a story that started coming in over the wires last week: religious vigilantes in Basra have murdered at least 40 women in the past year for various infractions of Islamic law. Typically the victim’s body is mutilated and dumped with a note pinned to it explaining whatever monumental death-worthy crime against the universe the woman had committed (wearing lipstick, not wearing a headscarf, etc.)
The Washington Post first ran this story last week, and here’s what the page looked like:
Okay, see the internal banner ad up there above the article? The one that’s floating context-sensitively over a story about batshit crazy god-botherers who are on a killing spree against women in the name of religion? Here’s what it says, in case the type is too small for you to read:
“On Faith | Join Two Nobel Prize winners, Iran’s former president, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life” and others in a dynamic conversation about faith and its impact on the world.”
Click on that banner ad and you’ll be whisked to a soft, gooey, bluish page with padded walls where the Washington Post is hosting a tasteful symposium on “faith.” Contributors include Rick Warren, he of the purpose driven life, a particularly piquant presence in this instance since Warren is basically the modern American corporocraptastic Ray Kroc billions-and-billions-served version of the serial killers in Basra. Theocracy in a Hawaiian shirt with a side order of fries.
Here’s my contribution to this oh-so-dynamic paid endorsement of horseshit: let’s stop calling it “faith.” Let’s call it something else, something more accurate. How about “rationale for the most evil bloodthirsty shit ever committed in the history of the world”? Or “age-old excuse to persecute women”? Or just “festering brain sickness”?
It would put a different spin on things, wouldn’t it?
President Jesus would deliver faux-earnest sound bites about the importance of Festering Brain Sickness-Based Initiatives. Wanna-Be President Romney would give a speech on “Festering Brain Sickness in America” (money quote: “Festering brain sickness requires freedom, but freedom also requires festering brain sickness”). The Washington Post would lure readers to its blue padded room with a banner urging them to “Join Two Nobel Prize winners and others in a dynamic conversation about festering brain sickness and its impact on the world.” Once there, readers would find a selection of articles on “choosing a festering brain sickness” that’s right for them.
I like it.
6 Responses to “Here’s an idea: let’s stop calling it “faith””
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Aunti Disestablishmentarian says:
It’s always been a festering mess Out There, but “out there” is getting preciously close to “in here.” I predict some serious Zombie sightings any moment.
I gotta go. Someone’s knocking at the front door.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:54 am EST -
Bruce says:
Let’s call it something else, something more accurate. How about “rationale for the most evil bloodthirsty shit ever committed in the history of the world”? Or “age-old excuse to persecute women”? Or just “festering brain sickness”?
I love this blog!
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Crowlie says:
Heh. Having suffered for ten years in one of those religious hell-holes and later studied the theology and psychology involved, I’d say rampant misogynist or even misanthropic psychopathology is pretty accurate. It’s going on twelve years now and I’m still trying to get my mind and body back together.
The thing that seriously freaks me out is that people are not being taken to psychiatric wards for treatment of this pathology, but using it and it’s language of abuse and manipulation in order to get elected to the highest offices in Western nations. A person or people who are seriously deluded into the belief that the end of the world is nigh are sitting there with their fingers on the buttons. What the fuck?
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simply wondered says:
be fair – it’s not just women for whom they have a violent and irrational hatred. all kinds of people who are clearly defective in some way like us atheists, communists, homosexuals, adherents of any other religion – anyone not them, really.
i guess the christians hate women first because of that wicked eve character and her collusion with satan – who was a snake and apples were a bad thing (not part of our five a day?). makes sense when you explain it like that i suppose. -
No one of consequence says:
guess the christians hate women first because of that wicked eve character and her collusion with satan
I expect the misogyny is so strong, relative to hatred of “atheists, communists, homosexuals” because women are never a minority — they are always half the population. Keeping half the population in quasi-confinement (such as Saudi Arabia) is hard work.
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B. Dagger Lee says:
Is your faith strong enough to murder for God?
