Golden Rule, Leaden Heart

My regular readers know that I have a deep and fundamental problem with excessive and obsessive religious faith. Not a problem with religion or religious belief per se, but with those whose mindless adherence to literal interpretation of religious texts leads them to do terrible things. From the self-styled True Christian who bombs family planning clinics and murders doctors to the Islamist radical who straps on vests packed with explosives and blows himself up in a crowd, twisted faith has brought untold misery to people and nations everywhere.

Consider two items in the recent news:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of political Islam and of Islamist extremism, has been routinely threatened with death by those against whom she speaks out. Since 2004 she has been one of six people provided with protection by the government of the Netherlands, and she may lose that. Read the story here.

A magazine for children (Al-Fateh) published by Hamas (in London, no less) regularly features stories which encourage the murder of "infidels" (any non-Muslim) and glorify murder by suicide (cynically and euphemistically called "martyrdom"). The latest issue of the magazine continues this outrageous and despicable attempt to poison the hearts of the young. You can read a translated version of excerpts from the magazine, and see the illustrations, here.

Mosques and Islamic study centers are springing up in Europe and America like toadstools after a summer rain. But it is illegal to build a church in a Muslim country, and in many places the penalty for encouraging a Muslim to convert to any other religion is death.

I was raised in the Catholic faith, and never recall any priest, monsignor, bishop, cardinal, or Pope encouraging me to go out and kill people who aren't Catholics. Instead, they taught me The Golden Rule. The King James version of the Bible (in Matthew 7:12) tells us, Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. In modern English: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

If there's an equivalent expression in Islam, no one seems to be preaching it. The Golden Rule has given way to the Leaden Heart, hard and cold, unfeeling and unyielding in its hatred of and disdain for all who do not worship God as interpreted by clerics whose thinking has not changed in more than thirteen hundred years. And this belief stretches beyond the grave: there are actually people who spend their time worrying about whether or not Muslims can visit the Pyramids of Egypt because they are the tombs of "infidels." You can read more about this here.

In a world consumed by social and economic inequality, violence, and hatred, much of it inspired or stoked by religious beliefs, we have a choice. We can follow the way of the Golden Rule or the way of the Leaden Heart. Sadly, many of the hundreds of millions of people who follow the Islamic faith have chosen the latter way...not, perhaps, because they are themselves bad people, but because by their silence and their inability to adapt the lessons of the 7th century to the utterly different world of the 21st, they encourage those whose contemptible actions make the world a worse place to live.

The Golden Rule encourages us to treat each other in a way that leads to a peaceful and prosperous life for all; the Leaden Heart encourages intolerance and violence now in the expectation of an imagined paradise beyond this life.

I live in the here and now. My children and grandchildren live in the here and now. My faith, such as it is, lies in the Golden Rule. Sadly, there are all too many who embrace the Leaden Heart instead.

And all too many who encourage them.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo