[Acrylic-bob]

There are several things that disturb me about all this religious clap-trap. If the Deity is as we are expected to believe, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. I find it monstrously arrogant that anyone could dare to stand up and say that they knew what the deity intended, or that they are “doing God’s work”. There seem to be an apalling number of folk prepared to force on us their own narrow interpretation of scripture.

If the Deity is the author of scripture, and cares so much about the reality it created. Then why are there no updates to scripture to take account of the changes in human society over the last couple of thousand years? Why must we rely on laws, strictures and commandments that were formulated when men still believed that the earth was flat and that if you sailed too close to the edge you might fall off?

The old testament, which supposedly unites Jew, Christian and Muslim as “the people of the book”, permits the most appalling abuses as well as forbidding the most ridiculous of things, look at the book of Leviticus. How can any sane rational person living in the 21st century believe that this nonsense is still pertinent to the way that the world is constituted now? I can accept that the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses form a reasonable set of ethics by which, even today, a person might order his or her life. But I have real difficulty with the idea that the biological necessity of menstruation invalidates half the population, and renders any man who touches a menstruating woman ritually unclean. The further you think that stricture through, the more ridiculous it becomes.

We live in a secular, pluralist society, that is tolerant of belief and unbelief, which is why we permit the practise of different faiths in what is, historically and nominally, a Christian country. Were we as restrictive as the Old Testament demands, then we would live in a country roughly analogous to Afghanistan under the Taliban. That we do not live under such a regime is due to the free flow of ideas and influences from outside the country. It is due to our preparedness to question what we believe and why we believe it. And it is due to our refusal to be slavishly bound to outdated, outmoded and restrictive prescriptions on the use and meaning of life.

While I accept that belief in any deity is, and must always be, available to all, I do not, or will not accept that the restrictions imposed by that belief should be applied to all. The limitations imposed by belief are self-imposed limitations, and it is unreasonable and arrogant to expect that society should afford the believer a status above that accorded to any other citizen.

Until Islam and its adherents accept this fact of life there will always be strife between it and the rest of the world.

It is all very well for people to start quoting scripture in support of the manifestly insupportable. Anyone can do that. Scripture, like statistics, can be manipulated to suit the occasion. What is more difficult and requires moral courage is to speak first from the heart, ally that speech with the intellect and then stand by your words.