This latest atrocity,
the beheading of Alan Henning by the Islamic State, is another
example of concentrated barbarism carried out under a religious
banner.
The fact that world
leaders have condemned it is good. The fact that religious leaders
have condemned it is also good. However, the way some of these
religious leaders have condemned the killing is, in my opinion, not
so good.
To say this act is
“contrary to the teachings of the Qur'an/Bible/Torah/Vedas/etc and
that it is a crime against religion x, y or z is not so good.
If you need to go
scrabbling through an ancient text to find out whether beheading
someone is a moral or immoral act, then there is something seriously,
seriously wrong with you.
I am sure the IS would
argue that they are only following the words of their religious book
whereas other religious leaders are interpreting these words
differently or incorrectly.
And this is the problem
when you tie your moral values to some “infallible” sacred text
of yours. You are going to be confronted by stuff you don't like and
so you have to start interpreting the text, but then there are other
people who see that text in another way - and then there are people
who hold a completely different text to be holy and infallible and
who think yours is just a load of tosh.
We humans know
intrinsically that killing others is wrong, that killing others in a
barbaric way is..well, barbaric. We don't need a fucking book to tell
us this.
As a first step, how
would it be if we consigned all these conflicting, holy, sacred,
infallible religious texts to the literature bookshelf and started
accepting that we need to derive our moral code from our own basic
common human values...?
