Do Unto Others

Warning: here's my Easter sermon, a bit early...

 

Some bat-shit crazy freak is getting a rally together in Dearborn this weekend. Apparently he's a fundamentalist Christian pastor (yeah the same one from Florida who tried to organize a Koran-burning day on 9/11 last year) who thinks that Dearborn is shackled under the iron grip of Shari'a law and wants to...well, nobody is sure what he wants to do except get international attention for himself. Apparently he'd be ok with hanging the Ten Commandments in all our public buildings but would have an issue with any other religion imposing a similar breach of church-state separation. It's all relative I guess.

 

And he's not the only freak that thinks this. Both Newt Gingrich (remember that pompous asshole? Yeah, he's still alive) and Mike Huckabee (another bigot intolerant to any beliefs but his own - where do they find these dinosaurs?) think the same thing...that the Muslim religion will supplant Christianity in the US and start making us all pray five times a day and avoid eating swine. This is one of the big reasons I am averse to organized religion on general principle...it does nothing but promote division in society. I can't think of a single good thing it does for humanity in any case.

 

First off, if you know anything about Dearborn (and since I have spent at least 8 hours there every weekday for the last 18 years, and even have a Dearborn library card I think I qualify) you would know this dope's premise is laughable. If Dearborn (which has an Irish-American mayor by the way - O'Reilly, who replaced the previous Italian-American mayor Guido in 2006) was under Shari'a law, there would be no establishments selling alcohol. There would be no topless bars. And believe me, Dearborn has many, many of both of those (or so I've heard ;) Also, one of Dearborn's most famous and successful businesses is the Dearborn Ham and Sausage Company, which is not, if you'll pardon the mixed-religion joke, very "Kosher" when it comes to Shari'a law.

 

So what evidence do these bigots put forth to prove their conjectures? Um...well... U of M Dearborn has installed footbaths to aid their many Muslim students in their prayer rituals. The fact that U of M Ann Arbor has had a chapel for their Christian students since 1841 doesn't seem to factor into this for Terry Jones and his ilk.

 

And then there was the incident last year when some extremist Christian agitators were arrested trying to provoke a riot while "defending the gospel of Jesus" in the middle of an Arab-American festival. Hmm...doesn't really sound like Shari'a law to me. Sounds more like a bunch of jackasses trying their hardest to get beat up while crashing a party and eventually being saved by the police. How exactly does one go about "defending the gospel of Jesus" in the middle of an Arab-American festival anyhow? That festival by the way, is awesome, I've been to it several times.

 

I know, this guy Terry Jones is a crazy freak. Yes. We should just ignore him. But it's not that he's an idiot that bothers me. It's that his whole ideology is built on the premise that people who are not of his religion are somehow not as good as him. That really drives me nuts. It's the classic case - people who have views different from his are not to be tolerated...exactly what he's accusing Dearborn of doing. Yes, very true, most Christians are not that radical or bigoted, but the fact is "normal" Christians are not coming out in droves to denounce this guy and that means that they are all enablers. They provide cover for these radicals via implicit agreement. The same thing happens in Islam and every other religion of course. If anyone from the outside tries to stomp this guy down they become the intolerant ones. These crazies can only be restrained from inside their faith and that's not happening.

 

Dearborn is classier than he is though. There is a counter-protest planned. It's perfect too, done as a joke so as not to give him any validation, they're holding a rally to impose "Shawarma Law" on Dearborn and it's residents, forcing everyone in Dearborn to eat at least one Shawarma sandwich every day.

 

Fight bigotry with humor. I like it. And it's tasty too!

 

Oh, Happy Easter, peeps.

 

Peace out.