suburbanmusings

If with wine you are drunk, be happy,
If seated with a moon-faced beauty, be happy,
Since the end purpose of the universe is nothingness;
Hence picture your nothingness, then while you are, be happy!

It is a thousand years since the great Persian philosopher Omar Khayyam wrote those words (or something along those lines), so why are they still taboo in mainstream Islamic society? Sure there are plenty of individual Muslims who profess their faith in public and drink and fornicate in private but they are outnumbered and out shouted by the zealots, and the radicals and the hardliners. When Salman Rushdie published his rather mild criticism of Islam in 1989 there were popular riots from Bangalore to Bradford. Why has free thought and public criticism disappeared from mainstream Islam over the last millennium? Where is today’s Omar Khayyam? Is he shackled in an Iranian prison? Or was he butchered in the street like Theo Van Gough?

After witnessing the uprising of the Sudanese Wahhabists in 1898, Winston Churchill wrote a withering critique of Islam, declaring that “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world at this time”. He was wrong about many things but he was right about appeasement and I concur with his views on Islam and, perhaps, by extension all organised religion. I’ll reconsider my views if I hear the following sentiments freely discussed in Tehran, Riyadh and Kabul.

O Mullah, We do much more work than you,
Even when we are drunk, we are still more sober than you,
You drink people's blood and we drink the grape's blood,
Let's be fair, which one of us is more immoral?

P.S. I'm sure it rhymes better in classical Persian.

What is it about the Royal Family that makes otherwise normal British people lose all sense of reason and principle? Today it was revealed that Prince William had used an RAF Chinook, (at £15,000 an hour), to transport him and his brother to a stag party on the Isle of Wight. And what was the reaction of the press? – ‘LOL Oh Wills what are you like? Chortle, you’ve done it again, remember when your brother dressed up as a Nazi? He he he’. Well something along those lines anyway.

In September 2006 Corporal Mark Wright of the Parachute Regiment spent 6 hours bleeding to death in Helmand, Afghanistan, because the RAF didn’t have enough properly equipped Chinooks to rescue him from a minefield. Now is it just me or is there absolutely nothing amusing about the millionaire princes expropriating a valuable Chinook to go on a bender?

The argument for the abolition of the monarchy is such a no-brainer that I don’t feel the need to present it in detail. There’s no point anyway, after executing one King we have spent the last four hundred years indulging the Royal Family like a spoilt child. If the French Revolution had spread to England it would have failed; the masses would have gathered at the palace, pitchforks and flaming torches in hand, the Queen (whichever one it was) would have appeared at the balcony and declared ‘Let them it cake’, and the revolutionaries would have collapsed in hysterics. ‘LOL, Oh what is she like? – Let them eat cake – snigger, I just love her impish sense of humour. Chortle. Why don’t people leave the Royals alone anyway? Let them eat cake, ha ha ha.’ And with that the revolution would be over.