Monday, September 24, 2007
Presidential Deniers
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a religious fundamentalist. Religious fundamentalists must deny historical & scientific facts to make "reality" correspond with literally inerrant scripture, so it's a small step to denying other stuff they consider unpleasant or inconvenient. We have plenty of them, too. Three are running for the Repug presidential nomination. Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, & the existance of homosexuals in a theocracy called the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was elected president by a landslide & the people of Iran are stuck with him until the next election. Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, & Tom Tancredo deny evolution. I suspect the latter two believe the Earth is about 6000 years old. This makes no sense to me. If one wants to believe in a Zap! Pow! God, the Big Bang is much more impressive & awe-inspiring than a combination of Zeus & Paul Bunyan deviously stashing marine fossils on mountaintops & pressing faked hominid footprints in ancient African mud.
Iran has no homosexuals because the law does not recognize their existence. Therefore Ahmadinejad states a legal fact. But homosexual acts carry the death penalty. Except perhaps for the extreme punishment, American fundamentalists want to reinstate those kinds of laws here: Refuse to legally acknowledge sexual orientation, strictly prohibit certain sexual activities (applying also to heterosexuals). The justifications for these laws are entirely religious.
Ahmadinejad is but one extreme example of a worldwide reactionary drift. If you haven't noticed, we have a reactionary president. George W. was put in office with the support of fundamentalist mullahs & their militarist allies. He's an expert denier, too. Watching these two demagogues face off is frightening, they are both so wrong-headed, so ignorant, so poorly prepared for their powerful positions. The Iranians made a terrible mistake electing Ahmadinejad, & Americans made a terrible mistake giving Bush constitutional legitimacy in 2004.
Iran has no homosexuals because the law does not recognize their existence. Therefore Ahmadinejad states a legal fact. But homosexual acts carry the death penalty. Except perhaps for the extreme punishment, American fundamentalists want to reinstate those kinds of laws here: Refuse to legally acknowledge sexual orientation, strictly prohibit certain sexual activities (applying also to heterosexuals). The justifications for these laws are entirely religious.
Ahmadinejad is but one extreme example of a worldwide reactionary drift. If you haven't noticed, we have a reactionary president. George W. was put in office with the support of fundamentalist mullahs & their militarist allies. He's an expert denier, too. Watching these two demagogues face off is frightening, they are both so wrong-headed, so ignorant, so poorly prepared for their powerful positions. The Iranians made a terrible mistake electing Ahmadinejad, & Americans made a terrible mistake giving Bush constitutional legitimacy in 2004.
Labels: blogging against theocracy, George W. Bush, religion
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an asshat. At Columbia, he appeared as an Iranian version of GWB: cocky, ignorant and giving misleading answers to simple questions. It found it ironic that a religious fundamentalist whose country sees the world in intolerant black & white told the Columbia audience "There's nothing known as absolute."
I missed that. You're right. The statement is apostasy for a Muslim. Even a liberal Christian wouldn't say it without adding one very important exception.
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