Welcome friends!
Maybe you haven’t noticed but I often seem to find myself commenting on news of people fined, imprisoned, beaten, and sometimes even murdered for expressing their views on religious matters. The stories usually come out of the Middle East or Africa for one reason or another. Sometimes they involve the straightforward if comically archaic religious / legal transgression of blasphemy, as bald an affront to free speech and personal liberty as one could ever hope to find, but sometimes they involve a slightly more evolved version in which the generally laudable goal of maintaining social order is thought to require preventing people commenting upon religious matters to avoid “insulting” religious people. (In its most fanciful form the charge involves avoiding insulting not people but religions themselves. Who knew religions were so sensitive? I knew a little girl like that in grade school. Religions must just get quite distressed when people criticize them. When religions talk we should probably all just shut up and listen in awed silence to whatever they have to say. We can straighten it all out later when they step out of the room to freshen up. Hey, I’m just playing around. If only I were so passive and intellectually feeble. I wouldn’t have to write blog at all. Think of the time I would save.) Anyway, I’m always a little concerned readers may think I’m suggesting this phenomenon is unique to the Islamic religion because that’s the religion usually implicated in stories involving the Middle East and Africa. I’ve tried to set the record straight before but I guess it doesn’t hurt to do it again from time to time lest anyone forget... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website. All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee. Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right? If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then. Thank you my friends!
