Application to establish a new religion

Dear Sir

I hope you will look favourably at my application to start a new religion. I am sure you will be pleased to hear that like all religions mine has a deity, a prophet, a holy book and a set of guiding principles; they are:

• The right to distribute a deadly disease by denial of the use of contraceptive devices
  
• The right to mutilate the genitalia of all male offspring
  
• The right to kill animals for food by letting them bleed to death
  
• The right to deny our wives and daughters the opportunity to take part in any activities that we deem improper
  
• The right for us to deal sympathetically with our shamans that have been involved in sexual activities with children
  
• The right to advance the truth revealed in the holy book that our deity made the earth in a few days and that any so called science that refutes this is blasphemous and cannot be tolerated.
  
• The right to severely discipline our own believers if they contradict the teaching of our prophet
  
• The right to encourage the terminally ill and severely disabled to visit any of our conveniently situated shrines in order that they may be miraculously cured. And that our success rates will not need to be published in our annual accounts as this could produce a misleading impression.
  
• The right to wear our traditional costume even when it contravenes regulations that non-believers are required to obey

Once my application has been approved I understand that my new religion will receive the following advantages:

• The right to nominate our top shamans for automatic entry to the legislative chamber known as the House of Lords, so we may influence policies that may be in conflict with our own belief system.
  
• The right to exploit all the advantages received when the head of state also becomes head of our religion
  
• The right to receive tax breaks and charitable status.
  
• The right to insist on a daily act of worship in all state schools
  

I know that you will appreciate that if my new religion is ridiculed by non believers that grave offence will have been suffered and that this incitement to religious hatred will be subject to full rigor of the criminal law.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sivad Maharg

“You never ask questions when God’s on your side”

When Bob Dylan penned these words in 1963, we were in the midst of the cold war, now forty years on we are told that we are engaged in another war, the “war on terror”. Bush and Blair have characterised “our” opponents as evil, a word heavy with religious connotation. They have both claimed guidance from the “almighty”, an unfortunate irony as so do “our” opponents, the suicide bombers and beheaders.

We all know the origins of 9/11; it is the US support of Israel. When the PLO instigated their terror campaign against Israel in the 1970’s, there we no references to “jihad” or even to Islam. They saw themselves as freedom fighters struggling against political oppression, just as the Israelis did in their earlier conflict with the British.

The Islamification of the conflict can be directly paralleled with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity in the USA. The unfortunate use of the word Crusade by George Bush at the beginning of the conflict reinforced the notion held by Moslems that they are under threat from Christian/Western domination.

Religion always puts faith at the top of the list for true believers and faith is incompatible with reason. Faith is impervious to the notion that all human acts should be subjected to rational scrutiny in order to assess their validity.

In the UK even the timid Anglicans are becoming emboldened by demonstrations of their co-religionists Islamic and Sikh muscle. The UK population has always had a healthy scepticism, particularly of politicians, our problem is that the creeping desecularisation of our society may proceed unnoticed and unchallenged; the spread of faith schools is just one example.

In the US the problem is far worse. A majority of the population profess to be Christian, for a politician to acknowledge their atheism it is tantamount to an admission of eating babies, so even those “social” Christian politicians are loath to oppose the religiously motivated policies for fear of being outed. There are signs of a modest intellectual backlash but what is really needed is a respected public figure to declare their atheism and kick start a debate. Previously held prejudices can sometimes be overturned, as attitudes towards blacks, women and gays demonstrate.

Dylan got it about right, though I doubt that even he could have foreseen where we are now, forty years on