Should We Tolerate Intolerance?

The Muslim religion seems to me to be an extremely intolerant one. Any religion that cannot tolerate a foreigner, who does not live in a Muslim-ruled country, who lives in a nation that is tolerant of diverse views, that makes a cartoon about the Muslim prophet, Mohamed, is a religion that should not be tolerated. Wake up and smell the coffee. We are in the 21st Century.

Muslim writers who write books that criticize or hold an unorthodox view of the Muslim religion get death threats...officially, by religious/legal representatives of the Muslim faith. These fatwas claim the named person to be a heretic and criminal and therefore, by Muslim religion, they can be killed by any "good" Muslim anywhere in the world. A few years ago a Danish cartoonist had a death fatwa proclaimed against him for merely drawing a representation of Mohamed. Now a Swedish cartoonist is in a similar position.

Listen to me, all you good people who want a modern, not medieval, world, one in which we can criticize anything and tolerate the different beliefs that exist among us. It is time to declare bounties (the equivalent of a fatwa) on those Muslim leaders who issue these proclamations of ignorance and intolerance. May all those evil people burn in Hell forever.

If only it were so. But there just is no Hell, nor is there a Heaven. Do you think that a rational God would create a world like this, populate it with defectively created people like us, then say if you don't say "mother may I" and take two steps forward, one backwards, and three to the right, that I will torment you forever in Hell? That sounds like one hell of an irrational being. I wouldn't want that thing to be God of anything, let alone the universe.

(Geez! I'm just a little guy, and no one reads my blogs, but if some Muslim fascist should happen to, he could instigate a mullah somewhere to issue a fatwa against me because I'm criticizing the Muslim religion and possible also because I'm not a "believer." That, of course, would be illogical, but then, all religions are based on emotion, not logic.)

Moving on. More intolerance: the Jena 6 issue. Now I don't hold for violence except for defense of self, loved ones, and innocent others. But when I found out that they had been harassed for sitting under the "reserved for whites" tree on the school grounds, I could understand their rage, especially when nooses were found hanging in that tree the next day. They live in the deep South. There is a long and horrible tradition of intolerance in the South. A black man was dragged to death behind a pick-up truck in Texas not all that long ago. Countless black men have been lynched in the last 100 years. And don't think it won't happen again.

How could the school allow, or not be aware of the "for whites only" tree and why did the school principle and administration allow it to go on? They claimed that there was no such thing, that all students could sit anywhere on the campus that they wanted to. Obviously not. And I blame the intentionally blind teachers and school administrators at the high school.

This is just more intolerant b.s. like the emotionally-minded Muslims. If there was such a thing as Hell and Jesus Christ was the Son of a just God, then those intolerant whites and the Muslims would have fun trying to find extra ways to torture each other when they ended up there...which, in a logic universe, they would. And I'm not letting off the quiet bigots and intolerant ones among us; the ones who do nothing, maybe even say nothing, but quietly cheer on the intolerance that destroys a town, a society, eventually the world. And there are many of those--Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and atheists alike.

Oh my, the human race! What an emotional, illogical mess you are.