[Statesideowl]

https://genius.com/Christopher-hitchens-...-annotated

Whether you love him or hate him.. He nailed it about 'Islamophobia' and this is almost 15yrs ago.


"Now, I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of it. I'm glad that you applaud because it's a very great problem for those that oppose this motion isn't it? How are they going to ban religion? How are they going to stop the expression of religious loathing, hatred and bigotry? I speak as someone who is a fairly regular target of this, and not just in rhetorical form. I have been the target of many death threats. I know within a short distance of where I'm currently living in Washington I can name two or three people whose names you probably know who can't go anywhere now without a security detail because of the criticisms they've made of one monotheism in particular and this is in the capital city of the United States. So I know what I'm talking about and I also have to notice that the sort of people who ring me up and say they know where my children go to school, and they say that they know what my home number is and where I live, and what they're going to do to them and my wife and me and who, I have to take seriously because they have done it to people I know, are just the people who are going to seek the protection of the hate speech law if I say what I think about their religion which I'm now going to do. I don't have any, what you call, ethnic bias. No grudge of that sort. I can rub along with pretty much anyone of any, as it were, origin or sexual orientation or language group except people from Yorkshire of course who are completely untakable.

I'm beginning to resent the confusion that's being imposed on us now and there was some of it this evening between religious belief, blasphemy, ethnicity, profanity and what one might call multicultural etiquette. It's quite common now for people to use the expression, for example, anti-Islamic racism as if an attack on a religion was an attack on an Ethnic group. The word Islamophobia, in fact, is beginning to acquire the opprobrium of what was once reserved for racial prejudice. This is a subtle and very nasty insinuation that needs to met head on. Who said what if Falwell said he hates fags? What if people act upon that? The bible says you have to hate fags. If Falwell says it, he's saying it because the Bible says it so he's right, yes it might make people go out and use violence. What are you going to do about that? You're up against a group of people who will say "You put your hands on my Bible and we'll call the hate speech police!" Now what are you going to do when you've dug that trap for yourself? Somebody said that anti-Semitism and Kristallnacht was the result of ten years of Jew-bating. Ten years? You must be joking, it's the result of 2000 years of Christianity based on one verse of one chapter of St. John's gospel which led to a pogrom after every Eastern sermon, every year for hundreds of years because it claims that the Jews demanded the blood of Christ beyond the heads of themselves and all their children to the remotest generation. That's the warrant and license for and incitement to anti-Jewish pogroms. What are you going to do about that? Where's your piddling sub-section now? Does it say St. John's gospel must be censored? Do I, who've read Freud and know what the future of an illusion really is and know that religious belief is ineradicable as long as we remain a stupid poorly evolved mammalian species, think that some Canadian law is going to solve this problem? Please, no our problem this: our pre-frontal lobes are too small and our adrenaline glands are too big and our thumb-finger proposition isn't all that it might be and we're afraid of the dark and we're afraid to die and we believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can, and all children do as you can tell by their questions, actually see through them and I think it should be with religion, treated with ridicule and hatred and contempt and I claim that right.

Now, let's not dance around - not all monotheisms are exactly the same at the moment. They're all based on the same illusion they're all plagiarisms of each other, but there's one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace to not just freedom of speech but freedom of expression but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. This is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I'm talking about militant Islam. Globally it's a gigantic power. Globally it's a gigantic power. It controls; an enormous amount of oil; wealth; several large countries and states; with an enormous fortune. It's pumping the ideology of Wahhabism and Salafism around the world; poisoning societies everywhere it goes; ruining the minds of children; stultifying the young in it's madrassas; training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That's what it does globally, its quite strong. In our societies as a cringing minority whose faith he might offend, which deserves all protection that the small and vulnerable group might need.

Now it makes quite large claims for itself doesn't it? It says its the final revelation. It says that God spoke to one illiterate businessman in the Arabian peninsula three times through an archangel and that the resulting material, as you can see when you read it, is largely plagiarised from the old and the new testament. Almost all of it actually ineptly from the old and the new testament. It is to be accepted as a divine revelation and as the final and unalterable word and unalterable one and that those who don't accept this revelation are to be treated as cattle, infidels, slaves Victims, I'll tell you what I don't think Muhammad ever heard those voices, I don't believe it. The likelihood that I'm right as opposed to the likelihood that a shepherd who couldn't read had bits of the old and new testament re-dictated to him by an archangel I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct. But who is the one under threat? The person who promulgates this and says "I better listen because if I don't I'm in danger" or me, who thinks this is so silly you can even publish a cartoon about it. And up go the placards and up go the yells and the howls and the screams, "Behead those!" This is in London... this is in Toronto.... this is in New York.... It's right in our midst now, "Behead those!" "Behead those who cartoon Islam!" Do they get arrested for hate speech? No.. Might I get in trouble for what I've just said about the prophet Muhammad? Yes I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You're giving away what's most precious in your own society and you're giving it away without a fight and you're even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you while you do this. Make the best use of the time you've got left. This is really serious."

Chris Hitchens


A mere morsal for the mental!