I'm not sure that coffee mornings will defeat beheadings

I'm not particularly religious. In some ways I'm anti-religion given that, in my view, religion is a man-made means of controlling people and of raising funds based on scare tactics: 'pay up now or you won't go to paradise in the hereafter'.

And yet, further down the chain of command, I have met some extremely good people in my life - people who have done some very good and selfless things and whose company is inspiring and uplifting and all in the name of religion. My kids went to a church school and to Sunday school on the basis, in my mind, of getting some 'independent' help on learning the values of right and wrong which I was of course trying to teach them in any case.

But if one thinks about it, kids are hard-wired to know what's right and fair. They don't have to be taught, they know instinctively. And by degrees we then teach them to exploit and take advantage of, and to lie and cheat themselves into a position of success whereupon they become successful and 'comfortable' enough to start telling everyone else how they should be fair to each other.

Politics. There you have it. You're welcome.

The Christian faith has not always been about coffee mornings with the vicar. It has been about crusades (money) and power and influence (money) and burning witches to keep the faithful in order (money) and having a monopoly on weddings and christenings and land ownership (money) and about the Pope raising money from people beyond his geographical area of influence and then paying kings to invade other countries to expand its money-gathering territory.

Cynical? Moi?

But that's almost OK, given that if it wasn't God doing this it would be governments and we'd still be pawns in the process. And we still are today of course. Except that God's business has declined a bit and His competitors (Governments, the EU, the UN etc) have grown and become more successful. Indeed they have grown in part by using their competitor's mantra, just diverting the money into their own coffers.

Not much we can do about it - it's not even worth trying in my opinion. It's just the way 'things' are.

But. (You knew this was coming didn't you?). There is a big difference between a relatively benign body fleecing us for its own ends and another different, competitive, body killing us to achieve the same result. 

And it is the same result. It's about money, power and influence. And it is in that order.

Islam is not about belief, or 'peace', it's about domination and control and money. Just as Christianity once was. What happened with Christianity was that it grew up and a groundswell of people used its 'love thy neighbour' mantra to nullify it. To take away the control of it's senior people. You can't advocate tolerance and equality while maintaining the brutal suppression of people when those people are educated, informed and 'free'. It just won't work. It's self defeating.

So where are we with Islam? Where we are is that it hasn't yet grown up (it's 700 years younger than Christianity - think where we were 700 years ago, burning witches etc) and its followers are not. generally speaking, as educated, informed and free as Christians have been in order to drag their faith into modern times. I'm not saying their followers are stupid, just that they are controlled, denied education, brainwashed into believing a medieval doctrine - and that's why we are where we are today.

In the face of this 'movement' we cannot afford to wait 700 years for them to 'grow up'. We need to help them of course, but from a position of strength. We need to educate them in the ways of the modern world and to make it clear that the behaviour of 'radical Islam' is not acceptable in our modern world.

And this may well mean the use of force to short-circuit the 'growing up' process. Otherwise we'll be dragged back into the middle ages in terms of our governance and belief systems.

Don't know about you, but I don't think that coffee mornings will defeat beheadings as a tactic anytime soon.

So it's time we stood up to this barbarity once and for all. For the good not just of our modern way of life, but also for the good of Muslims whose lives are being destroyed buy this evil, medieval, terrifying nonsense.

Thanks for reading.