Remember my one loyal reader, Archie? Well he has asked me real
questions about two very important matters:-
1. Can
anyone insult God?
2. The
blight cast by the so called Islamic State or Daesh?
The question is, can anyone or anything insult God?
Certainly one can insult someone’s belief in God and they may be rightfully
offended. We can offend each other. But insult the Creator of all things? I
doubt that He would consider the scribbling of, say, someone like myself as
anything but a childish prank – that is if what I write sufficiently interested
such an August Being. We are his children after all.
How could anything I say or write insult the Almighty? The
very idea that the Great Artificer, the maker of all things; The Progenitor of
Mankind; The Source of All; The Origin of all that shall happen, that is all
things –Time, and the Eternal Present, Fame, Fortune, Speech, Memory, Intellect,
Constancy and Forgiveness; the very idea that puny me may be guilty of
insulting such an August Power and that such a One should be at all concerned
is beyond, certainly, my comprehension. That is if such a Supreme Power is bothered
with it at all. But insulted? Never!
As I say I may be guilty (if that is the correct word to
use) of possibly insulting someone’s idea or belief in God. This has apparently
happened to some poor sod in Saudi Arabia, one Raef Badawi who is to receive
1000 lashes for insulting Islam! Not God but Islam! He apparently wrote a Blog
criticising the Saudi Religious Police.
Now in relation to this barbaric concept of flogging – how,
in the name of the Creator, how will flogging this poor man to death (which is
what 1000 lashes will do) make him a better Muslim and how would such
punishment please the Creator of all things??
Certainly such action insults MY idea of God and offends me!!
Regarding the Saudi Religious Police (Committee for
the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) – what Charter
or Law do they claim to uphold and enforce? Sharia Law is the answer. What are
their qualifications? And who are they anyway? Is this “Police Force” being staffed by "ex-convicts whose only
job qualification was that they had memorized the Qur'an
in order to reduce their sentences" as has been claimed?
And who checks the checkers? Who oversees the activities of
such a “virtuous” Committee?
They are merely officers of the State – the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia – no more and no less.
I wonder what the Creator of All Things would think of that? Such
activities just diminish the perpetrators and diminish Saudi Arabia and, most
importantly, diminish Islam in the eyes of many “non-believers”. Who is now
insulting and offending whom?
More than anything else – one needs to reflect on whether
the World is a better place because of the activities of the “Committee for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice”?
The next question related to the obscene and profane
assemblage of people calling themselves the Islamic State or as they are
pejoratively known, Daesh.
When will the Saudi’s or in fact any “strict” Muslim realise
that there has to be a division between religion, the law and the legislator? I
am not questioning what Mohammad said or did – he never wrote anything down. In fact it
has been suggested that he was illiterate - as, probably, was Jesus. Not that I set much store by this.
Many great and wonderful people are not well educated and Islam is one of the
great religions.
My concerns are about what we (non-Muslims) are supposed to
think about this profanity calling itself a Caliphate? My concerns are about
what they want us (non-Muslims) to agree to – under intense coercion?
I cannot conceive that anything the Daesh do, or believe in,
is spiritual in nature. It is profane, pure and simple. As I understand it,
according to their avowed intention, every non-Muslim must convert to Islam or
be killed or enslaved. Would not God, the Creator of all things – and all
people - be insulted and offended by this?
They (the Daesh) want us, non-Muslims, to tolerate them and
allow them to exist, but they do not tolerate us.
It is worth recalling that whenever social conditions – as promoted
by Daesh – develop on a large scale the road to tyranny is wide open and the
freedom of the individual turns into physical slavery – individual choices or
decisions are met with the harshest punishments. Since tyranny, by its very
nature, is immoral and ruthless, it has the freedom to indulge in any method of
oppression it chooses.
The real problem arises when such a tyrannous assemblage
is in conflict with those people and those States which still recognise the
rights of the individual. In such situations the rights of individuals is
eroded by the State to counteract the amoral conduct of tyranny which it cannot
defeat without availing itself of the same methods used by its opponents.
The inherent danger in this course of action lies in the
strong possibility of the States which recognise individual rights being “infected”
in this manner. This is compounded when decisive importance is attached to
large numbers and statistical values. Thus
the individual is “seduced” by the policies of the State –“are you with us or
against us?” Free opinion is stifled and moral decisions ruthlessly suppressed
on the (false) plea that the end justifies the means – “whatever it takes” – no
matter how dishonourable or illegal the tactics.
Tyranny begets tyranny. God, if thoughts of God where ever
in the minds of such people, is now banished. Power; control; money now consume
them and a steep inclined plane is in place under the feet of the tyrannous
which propel all involved lower and lower into ever more profane and despicable
acts.
Thus am I insulted and my idea and belief in God is insulted
and I am offended – deeply offended.
And what about God?
