Religious people have got all sorts of epithets for those who belong to different religions or who simply choose not to be religious like me.
Pagans! Infidels! Apostates! Sinners! The condemned! Heathens! All these are among some of the choice invective persistently spewed from pulpits and podiums week in week out. It shows that the religious have obsolutely no qualms insulting or even threatening those who do not hold the same views as themselves.
Author Salman Rushdie had to live much of his life under protection after he penned a book mildly critical of Islam. The history of Christianity is littered with burnings are the stake, beheadings and other forms of murder of those who dared disagree with the demagogues of the time.
Recently, during the attack at Westgate Mall in Kenya, people were specifically targeted and cruelly butchered for not belonging to a specific religion.
The world is overflowing with art and drawings depicting us the non-religious being fried by a red man with horns, hoofed feet, a pointed tail and a three pronged pitchfork. Even more depict us in all sorts of inglorious situations, often associating us with evil.
Yet there is absolutely no single fact that links atheism to evil. If anything non-religious people are often the most prepared to accept others. They are often humanist who value people for simply being human not according to what views they hold, or background they come from.
Just this week one of my favourite cartoonists, Zapiro was taken to task for 'insulting' the Hindu religion. I fail to understand how his cartoon, which was merely criticical of India bullying South Africa in the cricket sphere, could have been deemed to be insulting to Hinduism.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of geography and current affairs will associate Hinduism with India. So what better way is there of symbolising India than using a Hindu symbol. To me that does not in any way amount to any sort of afront or insult to Hinduism.
There is absolutely no reason, to try and impinge on Zapiro's freedom of expression over it.
The question I want to ask religious people is, if you have the right to mock and insult us non-religious people, why can't you afford us the right to do exactly the same back to you. If you have the right to express yourself any way you want, surely you should have no trouble understanding the simple common sense that others have got exactly the same right as well.
If you have got the right to be critical of things not associated with you, others have got the same right to be critical of things not associated with them, which might mean you.
Wednesday 30 October 2013
Friday 25 October 2013
Insulting!
If the Kenyans give themselves as much dignity and pride as a goat tied to the roof of a matatu, they are very welcome to go ahead and have their head of state and deputy tossed around by the ICC.
According to these new colonial lords of all African rulers, they have decided to allow Uhuru Kenyata not to appear before them as and when they wish. The same applies to Ruto.
I would like to ask Kenyatta and Ruto, is the Kenya constitution subordinate to the ICC?
What if a situation arises when Kenya needs to move quickly to protect its president. For example consider what happened on September 11, 2001. The USA had to move Dubya from bunker to bunker quickly and in secret until they understood what was going on.
Crises do not announce themselves. Al Shahaab did not announce their intention to attack Westgate. What if war is declared upon Kenya or a situation requiring declaration of war arises while the President of Kenya as at the ICC on one of those supposedly few, but deliberately vague and unspecified occasions that some non-Kenyans want him to be there.
The bottom line is that Kenya has to ask the ICC for permission to protect its interests. I personally find that idea insulting not just for Kenya but for any African country.
Yes some leaders are warm to it, because it gives them a tool to beat political rivals with. That tool is a double edged sword. One day it will bounce back and cut with the other side.
If Uhuru considers the votes of Kenyans to be as worthless as chicken droppings, fine he can go ahead and do the biding of anyone other than the Kenyan constitution and people.
If he has as much pride as I have, he would not set foot in Europe even if they promised him a 100 tonnes of gold.
Yes Africa needs justice. But not at the price of its dignity. I am not an advocate of impunity by African leaders. Let us not forget that African leaders are acting the way they do largely because they learnt from and inherited the bad ruling habits and impunity of colonial masters. An impunity which is still intact to this day.
Let us start by dealing decisively with those past infractions. As long as we leave those infractions unpunished we are promoting the idea, that there is different kinds of justice for different groups of people.
Take for example the notion that Wouter Basson suggests that there is nothing wrong with what he did during apartheid and he should be left alone to practise as a heart surgeon. The crimes against humanity committed by him and his apartheid masters, and in other places like Rhodesia, are largely considered forgiveable because they are perpetrated by whites.
Even today, white kids with mothers milk still smelling on their noses are allowed to drone bomb villagers in non-white countries with total impunity. Other youngsters such as the grandchildren of Elizabeth Windsor-Mountbatten are allowed to prove their manhood by going to take potshots at the same villagers.
If people cannot see the racial double standard, then they are too blind to see an elephant standing in the doorway.
If the ICC would put Germany on trial for the genocide of the Herero and Nama in Namibia. If the ICC would put 'Dr Death' Wouter Basson on trial for experimenting on blacks with lethal chemicals. If the ICC would put CIA operatives, and their commanders, busy lobbying Hellfire missiles at Pakistani and Yemeni villagers, while nonchalantly seeping coffee and cold drinks and tweaking at joysticks from the cowardly comfort and safety of bunkers, then I would consider it a court worthy of being called a court of justice.
These people are just lazy cowards not willing to do the donkey work or take the risk of making sure that they get the right terrorist and spare the innocent. Yet the ICC allows them to enjoy unprecedented impunity.
The idea of international justice is good. However if that justice is as selective as the ICC makes it, then it is not justice at all. A system that allows those with military power to allocate themselves impunity is not a system of justice. Not by a polar bear's chances in the Gobi.
Not only does the ICC system allow those with great military power to allocate themselves, their allies and their sponsored stooges (such as the Syrian rebels and current Libyan rulers) impunity at will. It also allows them to manipulate the due process.
Often the actions of the ICC are in sync with the pronouncements of Western foreign ministers and media. That surely cannot just be by mere coincidence.
I wish I had the money to put a 10km high speaker on top of 10km high Mt Everest and loudly inform the ICC exactly what I think of their mothers' private parts.
According to these new colonial lords of all African rulers, they have decided to allow Uhuru Kenyata not to appear before them as and when they wish. The same applies to Ruto.
I would like to ask Kenyatta and Ruto, is the Kenya constitution subordinate to the ICC?
What if a situation arises when Kenya needs to move quickly to protect its president. For example consider what happened on September 11, 2001. The USA had to move Dubya from bunker to bunker quickly and in secret until they understood what was going on.
Crises do not announce themselves. Al Shahaab did not announce their intention to attack Westgate. What if war is declared upon Kenya or a situation requiring declaration of war arises while the President of Kenya as at the ICC on one of those supposedly few, but deliberately vague and unspecified occasions that some non-Kenyans want him to be there.
The bottom line is that Kenya has to ask the ICC for permission to protect its interests. I personally find that idea insulting not just for Kenya but for any African country.
Yes some leaders are warm to it, because it gives them a tool to beat political rivals with. That tool is a double edged sword. One day it will bounce back and cut with the other side.
If Uhuru considers the votes of Kenyans to be as worthless as chicken droppings, fine he can go ahead and do the biding of anyone other than the Kenyan constitution and people.
If he has as much pride as I have, he would not set foot in Europe even if they promised him a 100 tonnes of gold.
Yes Africa needs justice. But not at the price of its dignity. I am not an advocate of impunity by African leaders. Let us not forget that African leaders are acting the way they do largely because they learnt from and inherited the bad ruling habits and impunity of colonial masters. An impunity which is still intact to this day.
Let us start by dealing decisively with those past infractions. As long as we leave those infractions unpunished we are promoting the idea, that there is different kinds of justice for different groups of people.
Take for example the notion that Wouter Basson suggests that there is nothing wrong with what he did during apartheid and he should be left alone to practise as a heart surgeon. The crimes against humanity committed by him and his apartheid masters, and in other places like Rhodesia, are largely considered forgiveable because they are perpetrated by whites.
Even today, white kids with mothers milk still smelling on their noses are allowed to drone bomb villagers in non-white countries with total impunity. Other youngsters such as the grandchildren of Elizabeth Windsor-Mountbatten are allowed to prove their manhood by going to take potshots at the same villagers.
If people cannot see the racial double standard, then they are too blind to see an elephant standing in the doorway.
If the ICC would put Germany on trial for the genocide of the Herero and Nama in Namibia. If the ICC would put 'Dr Death' Wouter Basson on trial for experimenting on blacks with lethal chemicals. If the ICC would put CIA operatives, and their commanders, busy lobbying Hellfire missiles at Pakistani and Yemeni villagers, while nonchalantly seeping coffee and cold drinks and tweaking at joysticks from the cowardly comfort and safety of bunkers, then I would consider it a court worthy of being called a court of justice.
These people are just lazy cowards not willing to do the donkey work or take the risk of making sure that they get the right terrorist and spare the innocent. Yet the ICC allows them to enjoy unprecedented impunity.
The idea of international justice is good. However if that justice is as selective as the ICC makes it, then it is not justice at all. A system that allows those with military power to allocate themselves impunity is not a system of justice. Not by a polar bear's chances in the Gobi.
Not only does the ICC system allow those with great military power to allocate themselves, their allies and their sponsored stooges (such as the Syrian rebels and current Libyan rulers) impunity at will. It also allows them to manipulate the due process.
Often the actions of the ICC are in sync with the pronouncements of Western foreign ministers and media. That surely cannot just be by mere coincidence.
I wish I had the money to put a 10km high speaker on top of 10km high Mt Everest and loudly inform the ICC exactly what I think of their mothers' private parts.
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