Bible guarantees! Wow, it must be true then.

Unclear on whether that’s Greenwich mean time or whether it’ll be a rolling event as the day tracks around the globe. So as an Australian I won’t get a chance to repent but those in later time zones will presumably get a bit of lead time, perhaps to arrange for their pets to be looked after by some left behind atheists.

So let’s look on the bright side of the rapture
Let’s assume that all the religious believers are taken up for processing with just the dirty non-believers left behind. Unlike each of those religions, I’ll assume they’re all going to be treated the same: you believe in god/gods then hey – you won the irrational thinking bonus of a lifetime.

Chaplains out of schools
It will get NSCP Chaplains out of our supposed-to-be secular public education system in Australia (so we’d save $222m from the budget recently announced) and stop me from having to complain about the dodgy NSCP mobs (e.g. Scripture Union, Access Ministries) that run this tax funded religious racket.

School time would be more ethical and less bronze age
The only option in SRE time in NSW would be the Primary Ethics course or “non scripture” (I dubbed the trial The first useful scripture lesson in NSW history). So ethics teachers still need to turn up to teach the kiddies next week as they’d be left behind having shunned the nuns. It’s possible other ethics teachers would need to be covered by the Atheists as it is a secular course after all and makes no religious claims.

Public education would no longer be playing second fiddle to private religious schools and would have billions of dollars to spend on much needed facilities, materials, staff and land acquisitions in cramped schools.

Special treatment at all levels. (Image from SMH)

The calls for creationism to be taught in science class would stop.

No more door to door
There’ll be no one knocking on doors in cheap white short sleeve shirts and black ties while you’re trying to get a sleep in. The plus side is that there’ll be little piles of exactly that sort of clothing left around the streets in the post rapture world. Might want to discard their magic Mormon underwear.

Style repellent too.

Peace and quiet
No church bells on Sunday.
No more ridiculously early morning call to prayer in Muslim countries.
No more wailing at the wailing wall.
No more batshitcrazy types picketing funerals.
No more rioting mobs any time a holy book is destroyed.

London's finest out in force.

Discrimination laws will have less exemptions
No religious run businesses/schools left with ridiculous exemptions from the discrimination laws (e.g. allowing the expelling gays or single mothers from schools).

Less nonsense in healthcare
All hospitals left running would offer IVF, abortion services, post rape medical treatment, contraception advice etc. Chemists/pharmacists would all give out medication based on medical need and wouldn’t veto for their own personal reasons.

No nut-cases like this lady picketing female health clinics.

Crazy old bat that pickets a clinic in Surry Hills

No people thinking that scraps of Mary Mackillop miracle placebo items are miraculous. HIV/AIDS treatment and vaccinations could move forward instead of having ridiculous religious leaders impeding the flow of medical aid and advice.

Business and property
The tax system would have a massive amount of money to spend on things as it would stop handouts to the tune of billions to religious organisations.

Sanitarium would have to start paying taxes on its weetbix profits, meaning the tax free status it uses to compete with other cereal companies would evaporate. A slew of other for profit religious owned businesses would no longer be rorting an unfair tax advantage to put normal businesses out of the market.

There’d be lots of prime real estate that could be turned into useful spaces rather than just sitting empty except for an hour a week when a few people get up on a Sunday to do work. The new users of those buildings would pay council rates like everyone else.

Politics and equality would improve a bit
We’d have no more Fred Nile in parliament so someone else would get a chance at the dumbest minister award (plenty of candidates, but Abbott will be gone so the position is open).

Top priorities for Fred.

Gays could get married and have equal rights… you know, like they should have always had.

Child safety
The world’s largest paedophile cover-up group would cease to exist meaning thousands of children would not be exposed to predatory Catholic priests and crimes not covered up then simply shuffled on to new areas. Previous victims could be given free right to loot some of the gold that the Catholic church loves to hoard.

Women’s rights
We’d no longer have clerichead bearded Islamic morons telling us how to beat wives or rape them in a Sharia compliant way and brave Muslim women having to stand up and tell them they’re dickheads.

There's nothing real funny about this, but it makes a point.

Environment and Science
A whole bunch of trees cut down to produce uninspiring religious texts would be saved or used to make more interesting or enlightened books. There’d be slightly more storage room in bedside tables in hotels without the Gideon minions doing their work.

We’d (sadly) lose the learned Cardinal Pell and his climate science denial ways (because as a person who reads the bible he knows better than scientists).

Atheists/Agnostics and secularists can get back to adult matters
And finally Atheists, although they’d have been wrong if the rapture happens would finally get that evidence after thousands of years of waiting.
Secularists will get their separation of church and state they’ve been asking for..

Any others?

I won’t spoil it for you, but just watch as she not only demonstrates that the guy’s just plain wrong about the content of the show but also the inconsistency within the guy’s religion. Of all the problems in Pakistan that twit decides to complain about he picks an actress appearing on a TV show as a huge sin.

Islam has bigger issues than an Actress going on TV

But hey, these types pop up all over the world (including Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali from Australia), divinely inspired by the Qu’ran’s unenlightened views on women unfortunately.

It really speaks volumes when I posted this up on facebook a little while back that someone made the comment that “You do realise she’d be killed within a month right….”. I certainly hope not and hope that she inspires the wider community to examine and question the filthy moral lessons people like this cleric put out there.

First up the denouncements and excuses:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Islamic leaders have condemned a Melbourne Muslim cleric who told followers it was permissible to hit their wives and force them to have sex.

But Coburg mosque cleric Samir Abu Hamza has told a confidant his message has been taken out of context and that he was referring to hitting wives in a metaphorical sense.

So let’s tick off the standard excuses, as per numerous earlier times. Like former top clerichead of Australia Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali comparing women to uncovered meat.

I’m starting to see a consistent pattern here, how about I save the newspapers some time:

Prime minister [Insert current PM here] and Islamic leaders have [condemned/strongly condemned] [remarks/footage/comments made by] [insert offending Muslim cleric name here] who told followers it was [insert misogynistic “right” or absolution of guilt of men here].

Cleric [insert Muslim cleric name here] claims his comments were taken out of context and [were not meant to refer to all women/were a metaphor].

[… body of article here ..]

[Insert other Muslim person name here] said [insert offending Muslim cleric name here] remarks were [inaccurate/not representative of Muslims/not representative of Islam] and upsetting to the Muslim community.

That should just about cover all the stories to do with idiots given mosque audience to spout their primitive philosophy on life. We can also re-use this template for other religious fools like Fred Nile etc.

The latest divinely inspired dickhead cleric clerichead was evidently too busy with his nose in the Qur’an to notice the government campaigns in the past and present in Australia (see my old blog post) meant to educate anyone with screwed up enough morals to not inherently know that women are not punching bags, that violence or forcing a wife to have sex is unacceptable. That’s regardless what the Qur’an says or you think it says. The law does not respect religious beliefs when they contradict the real laws of the country.

He says:

“In this country if the husband wants to sleep with his wife and she does not want to and she hasn’t got a sickness or whatever, there is nothing wrong with her she just does not feel like it, and he ends up sleeping with her by force … it is known to be as rape.

“Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?”

What really amazes me is that the crowd doesn’t say something. If ever this was an opportunity for the great Aussie heckler or piss-take put down to be inserted it’s when some twit is vomiting up this garbage.

By the way, this guy was giving a lecture titled “The Keys to a Successful Marriage”. A spokesperson for the latest round:

“In regards to hitting your wife, his position is that it has always been metaphorical – it’s not a whack, it’s not a slap, it’s a wake-up call.”

Yes, the millions of battered wives worldwide can take comfort in knowing that their latest black eye, broken jaw or murder by spouse is all just a metaphor for a “wake-up call”.

“First of all advise them [then] you beat them … but this is the last resort,” he says.

“After you have advised them for a long, long time then you smack them, you beat them and, please, brothers, calm down — the beating the Mohammed showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth.

“You are not allowed to bruise them, you are not allowed to make them bleed.”

So, the question has to be asked: is the brave Samir Abu Hamza happy if a bunch of previous domestic violence victims inflict a bit of smacking, beating that doesn’t leave bruises for educational purposes. You know: perhaps some blows to the back of the head, or chin (since he’s got a big ol’ cleric beard that will hide any bruises, just like virtuous women should have a big old veil to cover theirs). There’s someone in need of a wakeup call and it isn’t the pesky independent minded woman folk.

A nameless source chimes in with a denial:

“We do not hit our women, you can ask any Muslim woman and she will tell you that, it’s not part of Islam,” the male staff member, who did not want to be named, said.

and if she says they do, just give her a metaphorical punch in the face until she says it right eh? I mean what fucking planet are these guys on: by that reckoning we should find that there’s no domestic violence at all in Muslim communities? Well that’s just bullshit, it’s an across the board issue that Islam has to acknowledge a part in and no one is saying ALL Muslim men beat their wives (although if they regard the Qur’an as the only law: then they’re well within their rights.. As would they be able to have slaves too). I’d hope that a large majority (large large!) choose (as most sane people do) to just ignore the Qur’an and people like Hamza and obey the law and good morals.

Source in the Qur’an

So where do all these cericheads get their inspiration from? It’s always been a passage in the Qur’an that I go back to time and time again to show just how incorrect, irrelevant, backward and ignorant Islamic teaching is. Succinctly and elegantly destroys the notion that the Qur’an is a perfect book. I speak of the Qur’an 4:34 and it reads like so (in PowerPoint bullets for brevity):

• Men are superior to and in charge of women because god made them that way and they’re the breadwinners in the family
• Good women should know their place and don’t sleep around or flash their girl bits around when the man is out of town
• For disobedient women (or ones you fear are disobedient) you can “admonish” them, kick them out of the bed and then beat (or scourge) them

One translator tried to act as editor for the obviously insane Mohammed and put in “(lightly)” in front of “beat”. The clerichead in this latest fit of stupidity claims insanity via metaphor. But it seems the message hasn’t really been very clear for a perfect book if we’re supposed to not do what it says:

I really feel sorry for the host of this TV program having to let this twit spout his nonsense. As she says “What do you mean by light beatings? I’d really like to know”:

An improvement to the perfect word of god

The web is full of people trying to make sense of this nonsense passage in the Qur’an or exposing similar types of ignorant Islamic speakers. Ultimately the conclusion is that the Qur’an isn’t anything divine, or perfect or useful in today’s world. I, a mere mortal, could improve the “perfect” word of god in a very easy fashion: throw away 4:34 and read it thus:

Men and women are created equal and should have equal opportunities and responsibilities. Neither has the right to force the other to do something against their will. Neither should ever be violent towards the other.

Seems like my version would be a lot less open to interpretation. But who am I to question the perfect word of god eh?

Just like Qur’anic justification of slavery this line and others expose the source for the Qur’an as purely of men on this Earth and typical of a time when the minds of those writing it couldn’t comprehend a future where things were different. Sure: at the time perhaps having a multistep process to disciplining your wife was a step better than just taking her out and killing her, but we’ve moved on quite a bit since those days (at least in the developed world). The problems of domestic violence and rape are by no means restricted to religious reasons, but it sure doesn’t help when people take up these teachings as divine justification for barbaric actions.