Religious Law

PZ Meyer points to another troubling story.

This one from Pakistan.

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a "fanatic", who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said today.

Ms Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

This is sick. Beyond the pale. He saw her, and decided it was his place to go up and MURDER her.

Mr Sarwar appeared relaxed and calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God's order to kill women who sinned. "I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah's commandment," he said, adding that Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. "I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again," he said.

Sadly,many fundamentalist fanatics have said this. From Gaza, to London, these men have stood up and decryed "their own women" for not following their edicts. Then they scream about "our women". How "we" don't keep them in place, dress them right, and...yeah, we aren't muslim. It's sad that their are people out there that are even more off kilter than Ann Coulter. That takes some work.

But analysts said that the murder of the female minister highlighted the failure of his government in curbing Islamic extremism. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a recent report said that violence against women had increased alarmingly, with some of the incidents incited by Mullahs opposed to women's emancipation.

PZ Meyer:

Executed for not having a piece of cloth on top of her head; what god looks down on our world from his cosmic perspective and thinks that is an important concern for humanity? Allah, apparently; I can find commandments in the Bible that make similar demands.

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I'm sure religion's defenders will shout long and loud that this guy Sarwar is simply an isolated lunatic, and that if he'd been an atheist he would still have been a monster. True enough; one asshole might be an exception, and godlessness is no guarantee of goodness, but a series of incidents is a pattern, and we have to look at who is inciting it.

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Face it, everyone. Religion is not a source of moral behavior. It's a source of tribalism and obedience to authority, which sometimes coincides with respectable morality, but isn't necessarily associated with it. We have to find our virtue in one true thing, our common humanity, and these ancient superstitions actually interfere with instruction in how to be good by encrusting it with nonsense.

And, as PZ Meyer points, out this is not exclusive to Muslims. Among the most noted would be Honor Killings, in a number of faiths. Sisters, strangled with a phone cord, hunted down on a back road a macheted! PLEASE, talk to me about piety.

Then in Israel, you have fundamentalist. They even have their OWN city buses. Why? Because women are impure and yucky, they need to go to the BACK OF THE BUS. Did you read that right? Women, to the back! And if you don't do this? The men on the bus will beat you to the ground and kick the tar out of you. How holy.

The point of pointing out all of these other bits of misogamy, is to hopefully point out the how sad it is to put faith and religious doctrine on pedestals. When we come across antiquated and bigoted facets of society, it is interesting. Interesting, in the sense of viewing a relic of the past. But it does not deserve fawning over. A culture that would still segrate women during mentration is a cultural oddity, but doesn't deserve respect for this, or becasue of it.

Starve yourself. Wear special accessories, and outfits (YOU wear them.). Have festivals. But DON'T push it on me. DON'T push it on the people around you. DON'T mutilate your kids genitals. DON'T declare your nation/continent a [INSERT RELIGION] nation/continent.

Is it so hard.