Conversion

Attempts have been made to convert me on several occasions.

The first attempt, within memory, was by a group of Christians I had out of curiosity attached myself to. They used every opportunity to convince me of the error of my ways and the wonders of Jesus. Apparently their version of Christ was just waiting to pounce upon me and fill me with-well, I guess the holy spirit. They gave me books about gangsters who had accepted Jesus and turned their lives around. I found the narratives simple and superficial.

The worst part perhaps was their right-wing politics.

Most of their stories fitted in with my hypothesis on fabrication. Celebrities who had embraced Christianity, which I knew were untrue tales of conversion. Atheists who on their death beds had embraced the Lord, assented to by clerics who had pushed themselves towards the death bed and were alone when they heard the apparent turnarounds, or who made such claims years latter.

Their doubts niggle to such a degree that they cannot believe people may not believe and have thereby to fabricate conversions!

Mostly I remember the kind of playground bullying to make me convert and the silliness of their arguments.

Two Moslems have attempted the same. Both employed the same arguments, no doubt picked up in Mosques. There is no contradiction in the Koran (there is plenty but anyway such an assertion proves nothing), the words of the Koran cannot be found elsewhere (they can, in the Torah, but such an assertion proves nothing), and present day Science can be found in the Koran-just of course both obscurely narrated and difficult to find.

Like the Christians, they tried to beat me down and bully me until I submitted. One used insults and highly dubious frames of reference which in hindsight made me understand why some people give in and convert. The process can be very intimidating, using verifiable brainwashing techniques, falsifications and aggression.

LOVER

She came into my bedroom

one winter's day

silhouetted by the moon

and chose to stay.

 

By summer she was gone

a figment or fey

I wait for her return all autumn long

wondering why she went away.

Falsification and Christ

The connection between falsification and religion can be seen in the Christian narratives. These function on several levels. They usually reflects other falsifications or myths.

1) Beginnings-usually involving supernatural beings.
2) Connections to previous spiritual or holy figures.
3) preparation
4) significance and drama of death
5) significance and drama after death


Christianity fits into Egyptian and Greek myths.

The mother and son intimacy is Egyptian. Christ's perfection of character, expressed through his relationship with others, combines Greek and other ancient myths. Christ's story revolves upon the principles of Greek drama-involving two births (beginnings), a chorus and an end.

All ancient societies engaged in falsification, perceiving it as a kind of reality.

islamaphobia

I question the term Islamaphobia as the religion poses ideological differences of a fundamental nature. Would we classify Nazism in a similar fashion? Islam is a political and economic phenomenon and not simply a religious one.

Is rejecting Islamic homophobia Islamaphobia?

Is rejecting the political use of the Koran Islamaphobia?

Is rejecting Islam, with its repetitive prohibitions, social spying, its profound negativity Islamaphobia?

bin Laden

There are a number of myths surrounding what bin Laden believed. In fact he wrote down or broadcast many of his beliefs.

He was incensed by the Palestinian matter only because he viewed Israel as a Western tool and because of his often expressed anti-Semitism. True Moslems, he held, must eradicate the Jews.  Otherwise, he rarely mentioned it. Many extreme imams share his views. A Moslem in a college I ran expressed such views to me.

Rightly, bin Laden was incensed by the USA's casual attitudes to the deaths of others, collateral damage, compared to their response if one of their own died. His bombing of the West was a response to this, sharing the USA's same attitude to collateral damage.

His real campaign against the West was a reaction to the First Gulf War and Western troops in the Holy Land, Arabia. This for him was an appalling religious transgression against the true faith.

Bin Laden wanted all Westerners, whom he likened to Crusaders, out of Moslem lands. That meant tourists as well as troops. In fact, the land he considered Moslem land was also the land of Christians, Jews and other faiths, but that did not bother him.

Bin Laden also claimed all the Indonesian islands for Islam and supported Indonesia's conquest of East Timor-a land of Christians and animists-where half the indigenous population has been murdered to be replaced by Indonesian Moslems. So, what is a crime in Palestine is not one in Indonesia. A crime for bin Laden, and many Moslems, was not a crime if perpetrated by Moslems. Expanding areas of the true faith went beyond right and wrong and as for Mohammad before him bin Laden accepted genocide if the true faith was triumphant.

Not a holy man perhaps but just another murderer like many of the politicians of the time-Bush, Blair, Putin.

Racialism

I work, or have worked, in a number of Moslem colleges/schools in the East End. In my most recent one. I resigned today, I was subjected to racial abuse by a number of male students. I was in Islamic territory. These young guys, the oldest no more than 16, are taught by parents and mosques that white people are inferior/at least those not of the faith. They are not taught about appropriate behaviour.

Issuu publication

issuu publications-stanley wilkin