The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The Law and the Prophets

The threatened religious hatred law has prompted some of God's noisier children to go bleating to Caesar. The evangelical kindergarten Christian Voice, which earlier this year tried to protect Britain's collective soul from the ravages of Jerry Springer: The Opera, objects to the proposed law on the sensible if non-cheek-turning grounds that it may prevent them excoriating their enemies in appropriately unforgiving terms: "It is not just Islam which is the problem. If a preacher is explaining the horrors of Hinduism ... a charge of stirring up religious hatred would be almost inevitable."

The freedom to explain the horrors of Hinduism or the Problem of Islam is, according to Christian Voice, "our freedom to preach the gospel". Perhaps someone better acquainted with the gospel than I am will be good enough to point out where the horrors of Hinduism or Islam are mentioned.

In a sublime access of moral fervour, Christian Voice has said that it will use the religious hatred law to prosecute bookshops selling the Koran. Thus shall the evil law which was intended to censor the gospels' home truths about Hinduism be used for the glory of God and the routing of the Mussulman hordes. "If the Qur'an is not hate speech, I don't know what is," fulminates the director of Christian Voice, Stephen Green. "Nowhere in the Bible does it say that unbelievers must be killed."

Like too many of God's children, the Reverend Green does not appear to have paid very close attention to his Father's speeches. The notorious commandment at Exodus 22 xviii is merely a single example, unless God and the Reverend Green intend us to believe that all witches are Christians. Another charming example may be found at Exodus 31 xiv-xv, where God explicitly states that anyone who works on the Sabbath "shall be cut off from among his people" and hence, presumably, no longer fit to be called a true believer.

There also seems a touch of paradox in mounting "a 1,000-strong demonstration" against a law, while simultaneously threatening to hit others over the head with the same law; but no doubt, as always, the gospels have made appropriate dispensations in advance.

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