Sacranie Values?
![god-wants[1]](https://annaraccoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/god-wants1.jpg)
I heard an interesting interview by the BBC’s Nicky Campbell last week with Sir Iqbal Sacranie (OBE) this week. Despite working for the BBC, and particularly its light news and sport channel 5Live, Campbell is no fool; he can be a shrewd and penetrating interviewer, rather more subtle than the argumentative style which turned me off from Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme long ago. I also commend him for his campaigning against animal cruelty and against poaching of elephants, rhinos and such.
Sir Iqbal Sacranie (OBE) served as Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) until June 2006. He was honoured with an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1999, and was knighted by the Queen in 2005. During the controversy over Salman Rushdie, shortly after the fatwa by Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini for his book ‘The Satanic Verses’, he famously stated: “Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him his mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness to Almighty Allah.” Sacranie states that this quotation was misinterpreted and that he merely wanted to convince Muslims that they should not kill Rushdie. On January 3, 2006, Sacranie told BBC Radio 4‘s ‘PM’ programme that he believed homosexuality is “not acceptable”, and denounced same-sex civil partnerships as “harmful”. He said that bringing in gay marriage did “not augur well” for building the foundations of society.
Gently probed by Campbell, Sir Iqbal squirmed around, in an intellectually muddled way and saying no, ‘Charlie Hebdo’ shouldn’t have been published the cartoons, because someone (it was not clear whether it was God or Muslims or both) would be offended. Free speech, of course, but not on that issue – because it was somehow different. Gabbling away, eventually, he came to make a statement along the following lines: he loved Allah/God, more than his family, more than his sons and daughters, more than anything. Really? Now, there is a problem with this which goes a good part of the way to explaining the problem with so-called Radical Islam.
I want to analyse this statement from two perspectives. The first one is from a humanist and secular position. From that position the statement and sentiments behind it are utter nonsense, because there is no God, no supernatural Sky Pixie, looking down from above. It is a belief based on superstition bred from a primitive time when mankind was not able to understand the world without invoking some mythical deity to offer an explanation of the laws of nature. I would agree. The second perspective is from what I will call for shorthand a higher spiritual perspective. From this perspective the statement is again utter nonsense, because it misunderstands the nature of the Universe, or of what I will call ‘God’.
I don’t want to go on at great length about this, but in a nutshell here is why. In many times and in many religions, God has been and is worshipped as a sort of celestial vending machine, granting favours for those who did the right number of prayers (or paid the right amount in tribute to the Church), or a Zeus-like father figure and intervening to favour those who worshipped in the ‘right’ way or who did what He told them to do, and to punish the bad guys. This is all nonsense. I will advance three propositions which a ‘religionist’ with a closed mind (like Sir Iqbal) would never grasp. First, there is no Sky Pixie, looking down and giving us orders as to how he wants us to behave and punishing us if we disagree. Second, I use the word God as shorthand for an intelligent creative power underlying the Universe, which we cannot fully know because we are human and finite. This sees the Universe as emerging from thought. In that sense, it is clearly linked to aspects quantum physics. This underpinning cosmic force does not favour the good, or the bad: if he/she/it did, then bad people would not prosper as they so often do, and good people would not suffer, as they in turn so often do. It is entirely unaffected by such thoughts or constructs. It is just doing its stuff, you know, creating galaxies, and stuff like that. Like gravity, you can’t offend it. It just is, doing what it does.
Third, there is an apparently inconsistent description of God expressed in the following simple phrase. God is the love within us, for our fellow-man, the natural world, and just as importantly, ourselves. The two statements are not, in my view, contradictory, but that is part of an eternal paradox of how the Universe works. I am a little uncomfortable with the word ‘love’ because it has connotations which are both romantic and also rather namby pamby. It is the sort of word soppy vicars who wear anoraks and know sod-all talk about while singing along to tambourines. I would prefer to say ‘compassion’. Compassion is a word I feel easier with. Think ‘Schindler’s List’. Schindler was a brave, brave man. I have no idea whether he was ‘religious’ or not, and it does not matter. What matters is that he was a good man. The Muslim shop assistant who helped Jewish customers in the siege in Paris was a brave, good man. That’s all that matters. Or as the great Chinese philosopher Loa Tzu (and the Dalai Lama) said: “My religion is kindness”. And that’s the be all and end all.
This is an extremely sophisticated intellectual position and you either get it or you don’t. And it is not compulsory for you to get it either. It doesn’t matter, because ‘God’ doesn’t give a flying f**k. What Iqbal and many, if not most, religionists do is consciously or otherwise worship the Sky Pixie, the nonexistent God on a nonexistent throne, separate from and above ourselves, judgmental and offended if someone draws a silly picture of them. What is so dangerous and misguided about Sir Iqbal’s belief and statement is that it is but one half (half ?) step from there to say: (i) God has told me what to do in this or that set of rules: (ii) people don’t matter compared to ‘God’ and ‘God’s Laws’ (usually as interpreted by some nut job); and (iii) therefore I am entitled to destroy people if this promotes respect for or the will of God as I and the said nut job understands it. People are second class citizens compared to God; the untermensch, as someone else in another context once said. And we know where that led.
When you couple this with a philosophy which combines rote learning by methods which seem pretty close to brainwashing and a distinct hostility to intellectual or cultural curiosity and diversity it is potent stuff. In the hands of the ‘true believer’, it gives licence to murder and oppress, and indeed the imperative to wage war. It is a closed ideology re-enforced by a neat hook. Waging Holy War for God is good, and if you get killed, that’s even better, because you get the well-known rewards. In the hands of a psychopath and/or lost, alienated and dim, it offers a vicious and fatal cocktail of idealism, glamorous violence, and self-righteousness. It gives you Hell on Earth – which is the only Hell there is. In my view, and according to my understanding, any ‘religion’ which says that it is this way and no other is false, misconceived and capable of causing great evil, as we have seen throughout all history.
Finally, one of my favourite tweets of the week was along the following lines.
“Your reaction to a cartoon which mocks your prophet is to kill. My reaction to the crucifixion of my prophet is to buy a homeless man a meal. Get it?”
Quite.
Gildas the Monk
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January 14, 2015 at 10:05 am -
wiki:
Most Sunni Muslims believe that visual depictions of all the prophets of Islam should be prohibited and are particularly averse to visual representations of Muhammad. The key concern is that the use of images can encourage idolatry. In Shia Islam, however, images of Muhammad are quite common nowadays.-
January 14, 2015 at 10:47 am -
Is that why they hate each other?
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January 14, 2015 at 10:56 am -
God knows.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:07 am -
“God knows.”
God no doubt spends much of eternity banging his head against his celestial desk.
Or as a wise old Rabbi once said: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Then ha-Schem looked again and thought a better name would be ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’.
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January 14, 2015 at 4:49 pm -
I think your point would better made with this analogy
“God made man in his own image- but we insist on making him in our own image”My God is big enough and strong enough to fight his own battles. He will have the final say.
Jesus prophesied a time when men would kill him and his followers, thinking they are doing God a service.
I believe that we are living in those times.Another quote- “Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”
Blaise Pascal-
January 14, 2015 at 4:53 pm -
“I think your point would better made with this analogy
“God made man in his own image- but we insist on making him in our own image”You’re right but I used that quote here only yesterday I think and variety is important.
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January 14, 2015 at 5:44 pm -
Nostradamus is a bit neglected on the Prophecy circuit these days.
So, it remains for us to summarize and generalize forecasts for 2015. What is expected:
1. There remains a small probability of a major war in the middle East in the first place, with the participation of Syria, Israel, Palestine. (quatrain III-XXI )
2. There remains a small probability of failure of a large country. (quatrain III-XXI )
3. Possible dramatic events with a large number of victims (quatrain I-X)
4. There remains a significant probability of hostilities in the middle East. Perhaps they will involve Egypt and other Islamic countries. (quatrain I-X )
5. Significant probability hesitation a leader (according to one version of the President of Ukraine) in situations involving fleet and the two armies (presumably army Donetsk and Lugansk PR). (quatrain I-LXXV)
6. A significant probability of participation of France in the war or in the planning of the murder of a famous person.
http://michelnostradamus.narod.ru/ENG/2015_eng.htmNo 6 is neat huh?
1-4 seem pretty generic and 5 might seem a mite opportunistic seeing as its a dot-ru site.-
January 14, 2015 at 6:26 pm -
“So, it remains for us to summarize and generalize forecasts for 2015”
…or in précis; “Same shit, different year” .
Was never impressed by Nostradamus ‘prophecies’, I mean, yeah OK they were nicely vague and had some good imagery but they were still far too specific. If you want ‘prophecy’ done proper then read the Revelation Of St John…now there was a kiddy who knew how to spell ‘vague’….Any idea how many cities were , at some point, named ‘Babylon’? How many cities perched upon 7 hills?
I reckon the old ‘Great Whore’ will be drinking the blood of the martyrs and riding around on her bestial mobility scooter long after the last quatrain of @MrLate2ThePropheticPartyNosedrool is reincarnated as Tesco Value Everyday toilet paper.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:45 am -
Which God should I ask? Or rather, which God’s answer should I believe?
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January 14, 2015 at 12:10 pm -
“Which God should I ask? Or rather, which God’s answer should I believe?”
Yer pays yer money an’ yer makes yer choice. Pro-tip, some of them offer really good ‘fringe benefits’…out of this world fringe benefits…
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January 14, 2015 at 10:08 am -
Personally I find depictions of Jesus as a blond, blue eyed, ‘fit’ , 6ft Aryan ‘offensive’ (what ‘evidence’ there is suggests he was short, crippled/deformed and Semitic). Personally it offends me when Mary is depicted as a serene, beautiful, adult (again the evidence, such as there is, would have The Almighty up on charges these days…and Gabriel too for grooming). It offends me even more that certain branches of Xianity ‘worship’ such images.
So I can get why Mohammed/early muslims felt that making images of him should be prohibited. No believer should make an image of their prophet lest it become an idol. Fair enough.
What I don’t ‘get’ is why a large chunk of Musselmanism thinks that a prohibition on Believers should apply to the rest of us….and how muslims can find images made by Infidels ‘offensive’, want them banned as ‘rascist’ or even compare them to the cartoons in ‘Der Stürmer’ as one Muslim did last night on Radio 4, is an even greater mystery to me.
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January 14, 2015 at 10:16 am -
The irony that all of this shit started with that old bastard Khomeini being harboured by the French all those years is almost cripplingly sad. That the British government and legal Establishment harboured old Hooky and his ilk for so long demonstrates that History is regarded as bunk by the Intelligentsia in charge.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:07 am -
I think that is mystery to most non-Muslims. Within a religious sect, one would expect its followers to adhere to the rules laid down; that’s part of the deal and anyone entering that world is aware of it from the off. But these rules should no more apply to those beyond the sect as not eating pork should apply to non-Jews or anti-abortion should apply to non-Catholics. Mohammed means no more to me than the Pope, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to consciously ridicule or offend anyone’s beliefs as long as they try not to impose them on non-believers. When they do, however, the gloves are off. As Basil Fawlty said to the Germans when they denied they started it – ‘Yes, you did; you invaded Poland.’
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January 14, 2015 at 11:19 am -
Yeah, but this is hardly “Germany” is it, it’s more like the “Baader-Meinhof Gang”. Two Frenchmen have slaughtered 12 other Frenchmen. If it had happened in America questions would be being asked about lax Gun Laws.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:32 am -
“Two Frenchmen have slaughtered 12 other Frenchmen.”
A disingenous reply. There are continual atrocities being carried out by Moslem terrorists all over the world, and this has been going on for centuries.
And as for the point about guns, if a few law-abiding people who were there had had guns, the outcome might have been different.-
January 14, 2015 at 11:44 am -
“And as for the point about guns, if a few law-abiding people who were there had had guns, the outcome might have been different.”
That’s a cracking *Starter for 10*, but seriously off topic so I will resist. (At least for as long as I can.)
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January 14, 2015 at 11:50 am -
If they were americans with guns, every terrorist would have been shot dead, some falling dramatically off rooftops, some literally exploding with the force of superior US armaments, one American would have been ‘winged’ (but heroically shrugged it off as ‘nothing’), the black guy would have saved the entire population of the supermarket, but the woman would hold the key to it all and hack into the [whatever the latest technology is] messages telling the others where to find the key players (and rescued the child, thus showing her feminine side….)
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January 14, 2015 at 1:05 pm -
Not sure what it says about me but I would much prefer that outcome to the reality.
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January 14, 2015 at 2:45 pm -
All hail the great god Oscar….or Emmy….or maybe Netflix…
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January 15, 2015 at 10:24 am -
And the dog would have got away unscathed!
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January 14, 2015 at 11:21 am -
“When they do, however, the gloves are off.”
Absolutely spot on.
In the absence of any rules *to live by* I would always fall back on the one that suggests, ‘no-one has the right to adversely effect the quality of life of another’. That isn’t to suggest that it is possible to live to this rule, rather that it isn’t a bad place to start from.
Now if only all those of religious persuasion could start from that point they might be less difficult to live with, as their own particular faith obsession convinces them only their way is good. Some do of course, but they aren’t the problem.
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January 14, 2015 at 3:46 pm -
As far as Islam is concerned we are all Muslim just ready to be converted “back” or subdued. Islam is the creation of a ruthless warlord determined to conquer and rule over as many people and as much land as possible using the motivating and authoritarian power of religion. His words are deemed unalterable and inviolable however much sugar-coating to con the infidel might go on. It is not the “religion of peace” it it literally the religion of submission. Lying to the non-believer is specifically approved of in the Koran.
It really isn’t like other mainstream religions, certainly as practiced these days.The price for apostasy is death so there is hardly any such thing as a lapsed Muslim. Those that are, are brave, dead or fearful for their lives.
That means that there are a lot of Muslims who would have lapsed given the choice but instead they form a large proportion of the so-called liberal Muslims we are always being pointed towards as an example of how peaceful and benign Islam can be. This is disingenuous rubbish, they are simply not very Muslim at all.
Many may not be dissimilar to the “Christians” who boost the numbers by thoughtlessly ticking a box in a survey but who never go to church apart from weddings and funerals and who never think about “their” religion from one year to the next. Of course the barely-Muslims have to do a lot more Allah-bothering to pass muster than the barely-Christians but their sheer numbers boost the influence of the real Muslims and spuriously make the whole religion look less authoritarian and intolerant.For anyone who thinks I might be being mean – here is a taste of some of the intolerance in the Koran.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/int/long.html
(Don’t forget, this is being revered and taught in a mosque near you, probably by a recently-imported Imam who doesn’t give a flying for tolerant liberal democracy)
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January 14, 2015 at 11:22 am -
I am not religious at all and have a particular distaste for that pious Christianity which looks upon you as if you are wrong but, poor dear, you can’t really help it, and don’t worry, we’ll pray for you.
That said, I am in awe of the art and music that Christianity has inspired in praise of it’s God. The religious works of the Renaissance, the illuminations on scrolls by toiling monks, the songs of Thomas Tallis (right up to Gorecki)… there’s so much beauty that religious belief can inspire that can be appreciated by the non-religious. I think Muslims are missing out on this one.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:29 am -
The Alhambra’s pretty nice. I went there once when I was on hols. I’ve also read good reports about the Blue Mosque.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:52 am -
Yes, Al Hambta is beautiful and so are the mosques and madrassas on the three sides of a square in Samarkand (I was there when the USSR was in control so have a few pictures from them which would be considered quite blasphemous)- but they are all decorated with geometric art – no depictions of anything made by “God” allowed. I’m not sure if he invented geometry?
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January 14, 2015 at 12:13 pm -
January 14, 2015 at 2:09 pm -
Makes sense.
Maths (with an “s” please!) is a universal language, separate from but defining physical realities. In distant galaxies where the life-forms might have 2 or 23 digits, 2 plus 2 is still four (in base 10). Geometry is similarly universal in a four dimensional (3+time) universe. And “the light which passeth all understanding”, seen by mystics and acid-heads, is pretty much geometrical too.-
January 14, 2015 at 2:23 pm -
“And “the light which passeth all understanding”, seen by mystics and acid-heads, is pretty much geometrical too.”
Thank goodness you wrote that because up until I read it I was beginning to get delusions of grandeur and thinking I actually understood any of this discussion(?). Now I know better, if you see what I mean.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:30 am -
” that pious Christianity which looks upon you as if you are wrong but, poor dear, you can’t really help it, and don’t worry, we’ll pray for you.”
With you on that one Brother. The toughest thing about being a Xian is OTHER CHRISTIANS! My Lord commands me to love them, he didn’t say I had to like the f**kers though! My particular pet hate is those Xians who say things to me, as a fellow believer, like : “When you grow in faith, when you mature as a Christian you will realise that XYZ in the bible ACTUALLY means…” . To which I used to retort something along the lines of ‘the Koine is perfectly clear and all the evidence suggests that the words on the page are what the author intended to write. Funny how he really meant to say something completely different…when you consider he was divinely inspired and all’
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January 14, 2015 at 2:01 pm -
Also, almost all of the Christian myth is a direct lift from the Romans’ god Mithras (including the desert sojourn, miracles, crucifixion & waking up again).
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January 14, 2015 at 2:09 pm -
“almost all of the Christian myth is a direct lift from the Romans’ god Mithras”
Indeed it is. Not that hard historical fact has ever bothered Xians.
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January 26, 2015 at 6:40 pm -
“It offends me even more that certain branches of Xianity ‘worship’ such images.”
Do Christians really do that? The two oldest branches, the Orthodox and Roman Catholics don’t.
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January 14, 2015 at 11:21 am -
‘Yes, you did; you invaded Poland.’
O/T but as every conflict ever has illustrated since Cain first smote his vegan hippy of a brother, it is almost always impossible to say who ‘started’ what shit. Crimea being a perfect current example…who started that? The Czar? The British (have we apologised for that yet?) ? But we can say who ‘declared’ WW2 and that was the British. And like unto Crimea , Germany didn’t ‘invade’ Poland -according to the Nazi reading of history (which Putin seems to have gotten a rare copy of).
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January 14, 2015 at 11:44 am -
Sir Iqbal squirmed around, in an intellectually muddled way and saying no, ‘Charlie Hebdo’ shouldn’t have been published the cartoons, because someone (it was not clear whether it was God or Muslims or both) would be offended.
That’s tantamount to expressing understanding for the killers and thus the killings themselves. They can’t have it both ways. Muslim leaders should either publicly endorse freedom of speech including irreverence towards their faith or resign.They should be talking like this: http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2015/01/12/intv-amanpour-paris-grand-mosque-dalil-boubakeur-islam.cnn
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January 14, 2015 at 12:51 pm -
I couldn’t agree more. The primitive, anthropomorphic nature of the Abrahamic religions fills this panentheist with sorrow and foreboding. I think it was Fred Hoyle who said that once a society achieves advanced technology, it has only a small window of opportunity in which to avert self-destruction. That spectre is certainly in view now. How long will it be, I wonder, before some demented fundamentalist tries to spread Ebola to our cities or, even worse, acquires a nuclear device? If only the unutterable splendour of the universe we live in, which western science continues to reveal to us, could become more widely perceived, or at least if extraterrestrial life were shown to exist, perhaps the blinkered outlook of organised religions would change. But I don’t hold my breath.
One can deplore the “jihardist” atrocities in Paris and elsewhere while also feeling uneasy about the deliberate disparagement of icons that many millions of ordinary, decent people revere, which thereby provokes much hurt and resentment. Isn’t that, at best, simply bad manners?
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January 14, 2015 at 1:11 pm -
Many Christians would regard as nonsense your idea of a ‘mystical force’ type god. Indeed, I cannot see many Christians (or Moslems or Jews) being attracted by the idea of such a thing. Why pray to such a non-being? If my life fell to bits and sought spiritual succour that didn’t pour from a bottle, am I going be impressed with a god who will forgive me and send me to heaven when I die, or some sort of spiritual force that ‘doesn’t favour the good or the bad’?
More to the point, it is also not at all consistent with a god who sent his son to die on the cross, or one who had Mohammed be his chief messenger on earth.
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January 14, 2015 at 1:29 pm -
” some sort of spiritual force that ‘doesn’t favour the good or the bad’?”
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Pretty much the entire book of Ecclesiastes explores it. So yes, it does impress some Believers…although I will grant that the majority prefer the ‘Vending Machine’ image of God.
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January 14, 2015 at 1:49 pm -
That pretty much explains the appeal of God and the obvious fact that many, many people need one, or another, but it doesn’t of course add anything to whether or not there is one to meet their needs. That being relevant to the argument of what justification is there for religiously derived ‘acts of terror’. (That surely is a contradiction so gross as to negate any further attempt at legitimising said actions)
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January 14, 2015 at 2:05 pm -
“but it doesn’t of course add anything to whether or not there is one to meet their needs.”
Indeed it doesn’t. But, as I said to AR earlier on, that is something everyone has to ‘know’ (gnosis) for themselves….thats the trouble (from a Divine point of view) with that whole pesky ‘free will’ thang and why letting women decide on meal plans a bad move.
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January 14, 2015 at 2:15 pm -
“gnosis”
That there Lord Of The Rings thingy (Trilogy?) has got a lot to answer for, but by heck I loved it. No sexism, racism, ageism, dwarfism, uglyness-ism, what’s not to like?
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January 14, 2015 at 4:04 pm -
Gildas, I think you’re spot on.
Islam (and some adherents of the other religions) is far too hooked up on ritual, process and doctrine. Until it realises that what religion boils down to is trying to be Godly by doing good rather than evil, it will carry on being a problem.
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January 14, 2015 at 4:27 pm -
“by doing good rather than evil”
Unfortunately the terrorists did believe, deeply and truly, that they were doing ‘good’. ‘Good’ is far too subjective a term, everybody has their own definition. To put it in engineering terms, we stopped using ‘ells’ and ‘spans’ as a form of measurement despite their being perfectly serviceable and all the great ancient monuments were built using them. Pilate might have well have asked ‘what is good?’ instead of truth and even Jesus remarked ” Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.”
Gildas’ choice of ‘compassion’ is better but there were nazi’s who genuinely believed that they were showing compassion by euthanasing cripples (‘murder’ would be a better word IMO). Tomás de Torquemada genuinely believed that by burning heretics he was showing compassion – for the sake of their eternal souls. I’m pretty sure Mark Williams Tomás de Talkshow genuinely believes he is showing compassion for the VICTIMS…
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January 14, 2015 at 5:58 pm -
‘Doctrine’ comes into it as well. Set aside the doctrine that it is blasphemous to make images of humans or the Prophet (why should it be blasphemous?), and then consider ‘good’ and ‘evil’ with respect to recent events.
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January 14, 2015 at 6:00 pm -
…..with respect to recent events, and the examples you mentioned.
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January 14, 2015 at 6:27 pm -
This is a difficult area. I am not saying I am right. But I have read and listened as widely as any person I know. And I know – or believe – that what those bastards did in Paris was evil, wicked and cruel.
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January 14, 2015 at 6:42 pm -
“what those bastards did in Paris was evil, wicked and cruel.”
Of course it was, to anyone still possessing a modicum of common humanity. But those terms are still relative, the Scum who carried out the CH attack would probably have felt that shooting was actually quite ‘humane’ as opposed to , say, sawing off heads with a poor quality knife. Not just ‘humane’ but probably ‘compassionate’….along with ‘good’, ‘righteous’ etc
Or maybe, we could try ‘neighbourly love’ (agape) as a better word for ‘god’ than ‘love’ or ‘compassion’? But I think someone already tried out that definition some 2000 years ago and it didn’t really catch on.
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January 14, 2015 at 6:49 pm -
To be fair to the man the Roman Catholic priests at my school constantly drilled into us that we should love God more than our families. I think that is not a belief that is unique to Islam.
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