A Story Immortal

An outsider hikes up into the hills. Distraught, ostracized, spiritually lost in a city he calls both home and stranger. Staring at the far cave wall, he meditates. Thinks, reflects, wonders, and manages to tap into some sort of divinity. And the divinity answers.

At first the spirit stares in surprise upon this forlorn man. Then the man starts asking questions. And the spirit can’t help but to say yes. Are you an angel? Yes, I guess I am. Do you bring word from God? I suppose I do. Am I to be his prophet? I guess you are.

And before the spirit knows it, the man walks back out of the cave with his projected revelation in hand. Back down to his Mecca to preach his appropriated holy word.

This is the story that set the Muslim world against its author, the Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, as Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author in 1989. A “divine” kill order. With both spiritual and monetary incentive attached to goad the faithful to murder a human being.

Rushdie’s life has been in jeopardy since. One of the most heavily guarded writers in history, his life has been threatened for over thirty years. And now, this past Friday, someone finally got to him with a knife.

Do you know what sacred means? Hallowed, holy, consecrated, associated with divinity, all these things; sure. But back in the day, it also meant something fragile worth protecting. Something precious that might, if the chosen do not protect it, become desecrated. Defiled. Sullied and soiled ’till there’s nothing precious left to treasure.

That makes me wonder, always, when someone defends a thing based on the grounds that it is sacred; why is it so fragile? What is so fragile about the myth of The (Latest) Prophet that brings people to ward the depiction of the man with the pain of death? Forgoing religious fervour for a moment, it is almost enough to make you believe that the founders of Islam wanted to make damn sure that no one ever took a closer look at the myth of The Prophet. Almost as if he weren’t nearly half as cool as the religion wants to make him out to be.

The Satanic Verses isn’t just a controversial book. It is a great book. A great book that luckily, despite what the Ayatollah’s of Iran believe, is much more resilient than its author. Because you can’t stab a book. With media proliferation being what it is, you can barely burn it. It will stay around, far longer than Salman himself will. There are not knives, not guns, not bombs, not flame enough in the world for you to erase his work. And fuck you for trying.

/Sebastian Lindberg 16/8-2022

A Parental Scapegoat

Here’s a hot take: It’s not the government’s job to teach your children not to want to run away to cult to murder people in the name of a 1400-year dead Arabic misogynist. It’s yours.

This week, I read a heart-rending report about how the Swedish government “failed” the parents of our some 300 exported ISIS-jihadists. These parents, along with a doctor from the border, supposedly pleaded with the Swedish government, the police, to do something about the young men and women that were on the brink of travelling to a Middle Eastern civil war back in the mid 2010’s to fight for a hostile foreign nation. And yet, the government did nothing. The police arrested no one. The young extremists left. Some returned for free health care and a vacation from war and death, only to go back and do it all over again. Some never returned at all. Some may still be down there.

The report was explicit in placing the blame. Through an interview with a doctor on the Iraq side of the Caliphate, the blame was squarely placed at the feet of the Swedish government. Why they didn’t do anything. Why they didn’t stop anyone from going. Why they didn’t heed the call from parents across the country to stop their sons and daughters from falling under the spell of this death cult nation.

Only… that’s not the government’s job. At least not ours. The government is sorely inept at raising children. Most often when it tries, it fucks it up. So much so that the government goes to extremes not to do that any more. Which is completely fair. Despite Sweden’s many socialist turns, it is not yet an absolute provider and authority on every single matter pertaining to the human existence. We have not yet devolved into a communist hive mind, where the individual human, the parent, only needs to breathe, eat, shit, generate taxes, and squeeze out a fresh new work force.

Long rant run short; it is still the responsibility of parents to raise their children. Not the government’s.

That’s not to say that all parents are capable of doing so. I frequently work as an upper elementary school teacher. I encounter parents that probably shouldn’t have been put in charge of childrearing on a daily basis. But just because you’re incompetent at your biological imperative, just because you fail to generate productive members of society and instead spawn violent hooligans, doesn’t mean that the responsibility isn’t still yours. It’s your fault. It’s your mess. If you didn’t raise your sons and daughters better than to run away to enslave, murder, and die in a foreign civil war, then that’s quite simply the bed you’ve made for yourself. No sympathy for the self-inflicted.

Naturally, it’s not just the parents and families that suffer from the radicalization of their young. All of society suffers for it. Not to mention all the people that suffered at the hand of our (should state “former”) citizens. And even though there’s much to be said about the alternatives of ramifications to coming back from a sojourn of fighting for a hostile foreign government, no democratic government should be in the business of pre-emptive judgement. It shouldn’t be illegal to travel. It shouldn’t be illegal to hold to a creed, even though a murderous one. And it shouldn’t be illegal to degenerate to a fundamentalist. Judgement in a democratic society has to wait until actionable crimes have been committed.

To turn my condemnation into something a little bit more productive; considering how many parents fail to raise their children, just about the only bit of government involvement that I wouldn’t mind seeing in the process would be to introduce a child-having licence. If you prove too irresponsible to care for a new human being, maybe you shouldn’t have children. Because no: Having a child isn’t some universal right as much as it is (perhaps) the greatest responsibility that a human being can shoulder. Most mess up a little bit, but it’s not a particularly high bar to pass to not raise mass murderers (or as they’re called in IS-returnee interviews; “ambulance drivers”).

The onus isn’t on the government in this case. It’s on you, the parents. It wasn’t from the government’s care that these misguided 300 escaped; it was from yours. It’s easy to shift the blame and expect the government to pick up all your shit, but that’s not what this government is meant to do. It’s not what this government is equipped to do. Because even though I often disagree with this government, and it’s laws, it’s still a government of law. I would be absolutely horrified if this government introduced legislation that allowed them to judge and sentence people prior to the act. I would be absolutely horrified if this government introduced legislation that shifted jurisdiction over children away from the child’s parents. Because that’s not the sort of government I would want. And I don’t really think that’s the sort of government you’d want either.

Suck it up. Don’t shift the blame. It’s entirely on you that your children turned into fundamentalist murderers. Don’t compound your sins with cowardice and intellectual dishonesty. Get your own fucking shit together and stop expecting your government to do your parenting for you.

/Sebastian Lindberg 18/5-2021

What a Difference A Word Makes

To absolutely no one’s surprise, the tragedy of Samuel Paty’s brutal murder has taken on ludicrous proportions and dimensions in the past week. Just as we expected it would. The tragedy and affront to decency and secular values was quickly picked up by political interests, gutted for diplomatic gains.

Needless to say, France hasn’t been happy about the murder of the school teacher. But in lieu of the French nationalists making noise, the centre-liberal president Macron decided to go on the offensive and declare that “islamists want our future”, and held fast that France would not cede their freedom of expression in the face of terrorism. Needless to say, the Muslim world got miffed, with his Turkish rival Erdogan going so far as to tell Marcon to get his head checked.

Now; French goods are being pulled from stores across the Muslim world in a knee-jerk reaction to not just Macron’s statements, but almost also in opposition to criticism of the murder. And an already acrid relationship between the NATO-allied Turkey and France has taken a sharp turn for the worse.

Last week, I said my piece of what place I think religion should have in a developed society. I made it clear what sanctity I think religion should have in the public discourse. Which is to say, as a tl;dr, none. France, and in large parts all of Europe, have no laws against blasphemy. If you can’t accept that, or think that your particular religion deserves special treatment, I’m sorry to say that I think you can fuck right off. And if you think you should try and enforce your make-believe laws through violence in a nation that doesn’t respect them, then I think you can fuck right off with a lead slug rattling around in your brain cavity.

But there is a choice of word (assuming it’s not just a twist in translation) from the French president, who battled the nationalist and xenophobe Le Pen with tooth and nail just three years ago, that I find highly problematic. Namely, the word “islamist”.

What is that? What is an islamist? According to definitions far and wide, it’s someone who supports a Muslim political agenda. Someone who promotes Muslim values and laws as part of the public framework of a country. A fundamentalist, one might say. In essence, an acronym of “Islamic fundamentalist”.

So what’s my problem? Well, take a look at how that term “islamist” has been used. By whom it has been popularized. By European nationalists. By Orange Hydra supporters world-wide. By the likes of Netanyahu and Benny Gantz to promote their subjugation and occupation and militarization of whatever’s left of Palestine. By the BJP in India to rally antagonism against the Muslim minority in the supposedly secular country. By people that labour to demonize the Muslim population any- and everywhere.

Who cares! It’s just a word, right! What harm can a word do? I’ll tell you, a simple word can make or break anything. And in the simple shortening of the dual concept of “Islamic” and “fundamentalist”, into a single cohesive unit; the “islamist”, political interests have quite literally bridged that divide. In an effort to erase it. To ignore it. To remove whatever distinction there is between being a Muslim and being a fundamentalist. Which, I will have you know, is not necessarily the same thing. Plenty of Muslims should not be considered fundamentalists. Just as a whole lot of fundamentalists out there aren’t Muslim. As previously mentioned, just look at India’s BJP or the galvanized evangelicals of the USA. And yet “Bhuddist-ists” or “Christianists” aren’t words.

Maybe that is not how the word was intended once. Maybe that’s not even what Macron intended in his heated speech. But it is definitely how many, many people will interpret it. How many people have interpreted it. How people will imagine it. How people will internalize it.

At the end of the day, the term “islamist” is intended to cast every Muslim under the same wheel. Whether an agitated user, like Macron, is aware of it or not. It is a popular acronym that has sort of gotten away from the decent discourse and grown into a beast that ignores and obfuscates a very important distinction. A distinction that I think we should be very careful to observe. Because if we do not, we will inevitably bundle a wide spectrum of people together under a unified and vilified umbrella. We will equate the violent fundamentalist and terrorist with the simply old-fashioned and inflexible, that have a hard time adjusting to new social norms, and even with the non-religious who share a culture and ethnic identity with the archaic believers. By disregarding this very important distinction, we will treat them all as enemies of secularism in secular states. And in so treating them, we shall inevitably also make them all the enemies of secularism. And it is utterly inconceivable to me how anyone who truly believes in “liberté, egalité, fraternité” would want that.

/Sebastian Lindberg 27/10-2020

An Apocalyptic Appetite

As the Wuhan Virus, aka. Corona Virus, aka. Covid-19, is shutting down production lines, putting billions of people into self-isolation, and thousands into body-bags, the second-worst part of the disease is people’s hysteria about it. Granted; the contagion can be dangerous to a slim minority of the world’s population (a minority that still equates to some millions of people mind you!), but by and large it’s not a Spanish Flu or a Bubonic Plague. Not yet, at least. But that hasn’t stopped people from treating it like the end of days, stockpiling toilet paper and flour and other amenities as if this spring will be last they’ll see of modern comforts.

So, if the virus isn’t all that dangerous, and people’s hysteria is causing more havoc than the actual disease, why do people insist on acting like it’s doomsday-o’clock? Would it surprise you terribly to learn that a sizeable chunk of the world’s population actually want to the world to end?

Sound controversial? It ain’t. Not really. For about a decade, apocalypse media has been some of the most popular art that’s around. With zombie invasions and nuclear holocausts to vampire parasites and desert road trip rock concerts crowding our sensoriums, it really shouldn’t be controversial to say that people love a good World’s End.

You might think this is a modern predilection. That dissatisfaction with the state of the world, with market economics run rampant, with haves and have-nots escalating have somehow manufactured a desire for things to end. But you’d be wrong. Because if you’d have thought as much, you mustn’t have taken into the account the religious aspect. Because as it turns out, a majority of people on this earth pay homage to the Doomsday cults of Christianity and Islam. The Book of Revelations is basically the origins of modern apocalypse myth, and the Muslim tenets of Yawm al-Qiyamah is just more of the same. Hellfire and brimstone for the unfaithful; the Rapture and eternal salvation for the gullible.

And yet we let Christians and Muslims have a say in matters of sustainability. Funny, innit?

It’s not that “some people just want to see the world burn”. It’s that a whole fucking lot of people want to see the world burn.

Oh, you think I’m making mountains out of mole hills? You think people are just hunkering down to weather a storm? Then why, for fuck’s heavenly sake, are people stockpiling guns and ammo along with toilet paper and hand sanitizer? Because you sure as shining shit can’t shoot a viral infection away with magazine of .45 ACP!

We can see it in almost every facet of human society. In our continued reliance on fossil fuels, even though we’ve known for decades that its usage is a death sentence to our world. In our media and fantasy habits, glorifying and romanticising the end of order and the rise of cannibalism and moral ambiguity. In our religions, with seemingly harmonious and saintly folk openly praying for a cessation of God’s little experiment. Just look at how we’ve developed our world. How we have sickened it. How we continuously ignore pleads for sustainability. We, collectively, as a species, want the world to end. Preferably with a bang.

But I don’t judge. Well, I don’t judge a lot. I get it, I do. Every tale needs an end, and ours is desperately overdue one. I just wish people were more honest about it. I wish our fantasies weren’t so cruel. And more than anything, I wish people could imagine an end that was also a beginning of something else, rather than the hard stop, the short drop, and the long silence that most seem to gun for.

/Sebastian Lindberg 30/3-2020

A Hijab State of Mind

I think that it could be a good idea to legislate against wearing a hijab, khimar, shayla or niqab (or the burqa and chador for that matter).

And this is where, in a theatre production, there would be a pause in the delivery. To let the notion sink in. To let the audience come to grips with what’s been said. To let them find their emotional response. Be it cultural anger, religious outrage, or racist glee.

And to let the deliverer get comfortable with the very hot potato they’ve just picked up.

The permittance of the hijab (and the other derivates) has been a hotly debated subject in western countries for years. Usually espoused by racists and nationalists as a method of forcefully integrating an immigrant population into the general cultural zeitgeist. Alternatively to take a stance against an ethnic group to make the country in question an even more hostile and uninviting environment to the Muslim demography. And as such, the subject has become stigmatized by Islamophobia.

Which is a shame. It usually is. Just like when a subcontinental good luck charm became the symbol of ethnic cleansing, or a Norse symbol of justice became the logo for Nordic xenophobia.

You gotta hate it when that happens…

So, if it’s not out of racism or a phobia for foreign cultures, what’s my problem with a head scarf?

I usually don’t like litigation. I usually don’t care for nation states deciding what I (or anyone else) can and cannot do. And I certainly don’t take a supportive stance on clothing regulation in general. So what’s so different now?

Well, to get to my point, we should examine why people wear the hijab. Why women wear the hijab. There are many reasons, if you ask around. Some may say that it’s a religious thing. Some, that it’s a cultural thing. An ethnic thing. An identity thing. Or simply that they’d catch absolute hell from parents, family, or friends, if they didn’t. Some, we know, might even risk their lives if they didn’t wear it.

And yet, many more, may just not have thought much about it at all. It’s just how they dress. How someone like them is supposed to dress.

There’s a long laundry list of reasons why people wear the hijab (which is the most common Muslim garb in western countries, and will thusly act as a conceptual stand-in for all of them in this piece). All of which can be traced, in essence, to one source: The Quran.

The Quran states in a dozen or so verses that it is important to preserve the modesty of mankind. Not just women, but men as well. Modesty is a key virtue. And in preserving it, one should cover themselves as to not show one’s beauty. Scholars are in disagreement about just how, or who, the guidelines are meant for. Some say this was just a house rule for the Prophet’s personal harem. But Surah An-Nur 31:24 makes perhaps the clearest case for the general female population to cover themselves up:

“And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their head-covers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sisters’ sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. And let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed.”

What this passage of the Muslim holy text portrays is, basically, how to avoid the male gaze. And not to jiggle their tits? Which, I guess, was very forward thinking by 600 BCE standards?

But there’s an important note to make. Notice how the woman should hide herself away from the male gaze, except from her family. And extended family. Where her husband, her husband’s brothers, father, male cousins, you get the theme here, should have free reign to gaze however they see fit. Suddenly, this remarkable armour against the male gaze becomes not a tool for the woman, but a tool for all the men in her life.

It says that her body, her beauty, is not hers to command. It is for the men close to her to command. To hide or flaunt as they see fit. This tool to avoid harassment turns also into a tool of control. Of domination.

And before any of you get started; no! This sort of misogynistic bullshit is not exclusive to Islam! Plenty of religions have old passages that are absolutely abhorrent by modern standards, not the least of which Judaism or Christianity. Take a look at Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (where a rapist can buy his victim to avoid punishment), First Timothy 1:9 (where women should dress modestly, not braid their hair, or wear jewelry), Proverbs 23:27-28 (where we are warned about whores’ ”deep ditches” and strange women’s ”narrow pits”), or just Peter 3:1 (where wives are told to subject themselves to their husbands).

It is almost as if organized religions are afraid of women and want to instil control over them with any means necessary…

Which should bring us back to the hijab, designed and legitimized as a way to control a woman’s body, and why legislation against it might not be a bad idea.

As previously mentioned, I am as a general rule against legislating away individual freedoms. And creating laws that would prevent people from wearing certain garments is particularly draconian in my point of view. It is not the place of the State to decide what I wear, or indeed if I chose to wear anything at all! Fuck ’em – Not their call to make.

But what we have here is a particularly seedy problem. If a woman’s reasons to wear a hijab is that she fears retribution, acid attack, being shipped off, beaten, killed, demeaned, exiled from her family, or just scorned, then that’s unacceptable. Just plain and simple unacceptable. Then she lives under a tyranny that needs to be ripped up by the root in any liberal society.

But what if she wants to wear the hijab? What if she wants, of her own accord, to follow a religion’s misogynistic tenets? What if she identifies with the head scarf, and considers that piece of clothing as fundamental to her being as someone might consider their hair or eyes? What if the woman considers the hijab a part of her culture? Her heritage and ancestry? Or what if, as was recently related to me, that the hijab is a comfort? A protection against an ever more judgemental and jeering world? What then? Would it not be wrong to forcefully take that part of her away?

Yes. Yes it would be. But let’s flip that around on its head. The hijab is a symbol of subjugation. It is intended to take away a woman’s power over her own body. That much is clear from the Quran. It is also undeniable that many women wear covers not by their own choice, but by someone else’s. Most often a man’s. So even if you wear the garment, not as an obligation or shackle, you do in some sense legitimize its intended function. You legitimize domination, tyranny, misogyny. You show to the world, to the women that suffer the hijab on pain of punishment, that it’s okay. That it’s right that women should hide themselves away. Or that men should hide away “their” women. Right now, in this time of human civilization, a person that wears a hijab by their own choice, communicates, whether intended or not, to the world that women should be hidden away. That modesty and subjugation is the correct path for a woman to live.

And that is not a very good message…

It could be fine, you know? Many many years ago, Christian countries legislated against selling off your daughters for a few pennies, or that rapists could get away with their dirty deed by paying off the woman’s father. And Christianity is still alive today. Christian culture is still alive today. For good or ill. Islam will not suddenly die off just because it relents a little bit in its draconian control of its female demographic. Syrian, or Egyptian, or Iraqi, or whatever’s culture will not just die off if it lets its women soar free. Free of shackles of divinely mandated modesty or subjugation. Free of masculine domination.

But people are a fearful bunch. They fear change. And they are very protective of what they consider their culture, or identity, or their rights. Even if those imagined rights include something so distasteful as owning their wives and daughters. Which is where legislation can step in. For governments, or cultures, to decide to put their feet down and say; “that boat don’t float here”.

And I, for one, do not think that the cultural and religious subjugation of women is a boat that deserves to float in a just society.

/Sebastian Lindberg 26/11-2019

‘Till Salvation Does Us Part

”Will the suffering end?”, they asked on their billboard. A billboard offering pamphlets and guidance in the name of Jehova’s Witnesses. Those illustrious 8.45 million people, out of which only exactly 144’000 will have a seat in Paradise. Those Christian fundamentalists that won’t even celebrate Christmas because of its pagan roots. Those that do not just believe that Armageddon, the Final Judgement, is imminent; they also long for it.

It’s a death cult. A cult that celebrates the end of everything. The end of every human, every blade of grass, every humpback whale and screaming eagle. But you know what? In that regard, in their reverence for the death and destruction of everything, they are no different from any other religion.

Most every religion has an end-game. A story to end all stories. A final judgement where the ardent and devoted will be raised up and spared the wanton annihilation sown by the grand creator. The Christians have the Book of Revelations and the Jews have the Book of Daniel. The Muslim have Yawm al-Qiyãmah, the Buddhists the Maitreya, and the Hindu have Kalki. All prophesies and promises of an end time.

So fucking what? The end of days makes for great storytelling. Why wouldn’t it be included in myths of creation? And fair dues, I myself don’t mind a good apocalypse story. Sometimes, you just wanna imagine the world burning. But the kink is that to the faithful, these aren’t just stories. These are promises. They’re sales-pitches. To them, in accordance to their sacred texts, the world will end. And not only that, but the religion generally offers tips and tricks as how to avoid this fate. How to meet ultimate judgement, and not be found wanting.

And it is not just the destruction of the earth that religion sells. It also peddles that a new age will come. Where the faithful shall be rewarded. The pagan and heretic punished. So, not only does religion offer a way to escape destruction; it also offers a promise of Paradise once the gavel falls.

Which leads us back to my original point. All religions are death-cults. Every believer, every practitioner, every disciple. Every Christian and every Muslim. They all celebrate the coming end, and every faithful believe themselves to be among those to be spared. Combined, they form a collective congregation of mutually assured destruction. All headed not just for war with each other, but the supplantation of all life on earth. Nay, not just on earth, but in all of creation if but they had the power to.

And do you know what the real kick in the pants is? Why wouldn’t every self-proclaimed devotee that expects the Rapture with glee, seek the end of the earth? Why would not churches seek to fulfil their creators desire to hit the reset button? Why would not someone, who truly believed themselves destined to be lifted up for paradise, want to see the end come all the sooner?

So why the fuck do we let these fundamentalist cretins, these agents of world destruction, involve themselves in the effort of creating a sustainable world…

/Sebastian Lindberg 15/6-2018

Not Gods, but Faith

China has expressed concern about their Muslim minorities. Concern about radicalisation. About violence. About religion conflicting with secular living. About spreading halal custom. About certain mosques not being built ”Chinese” enough.

According to The Party, modern China allows for freedom of religion. A claim that rings hollow in the wake of so many Chinese initiatives in homogenizing their populations’ cultures and identities. They’ve tried to wash their lands clean of gods many times over, and apparently not quite succeeded yet.

And in a statement to Reuters, a spokesperson for the Chinese government said that “some people set greater store in religious rule and much less on national law, only knowing what it is to be a believer and not what it is to be a citizen”. Which is a galling statement coming from the mouth of the Chinese political juggernaut.

Because it is not Gods that maketh religion, but blind faith. And the Communist has blind faith in spades.

Because no matter how many states have failed under the Red yoke, the Communist still believes. No matter how many people get systematically slaughtered as part of the progress of the Great State, the Communist has faith. And no matter how many despots and dictators that the Great Equality fosters, the Communist still waves the flag.

Those are not only the characteristics of political idealism. Those are the signatures of a religion. And while free market acolytes occasionally admit that they just plain don’t give a shit about the plagues and disasters that hide behind growth and profit, the Communist sticks their heads in the sand when the horrors of their ideology are brought up.

The holy symbols of the Chinese Church is the red star, along with minor reverence for the hammer and the sickle. Their messiah is Mao, and their current prophet is the emperor-for-life Xi Jinping. And it would surprise me greatly if there’s any indigenous room there for the crescent or the cross. Because the great ideology of sharing will not share space with any other. You are either with it or against it, as we see ever so often with political dissidents in Great Red States.

A good citizen criticizes its government. Makes demands and shakes the boat. A good citizen doesn’t fear its government, but the government should fear the good citizen. A good citizen is not, as The Party puts it, a loyal subject to the Great State. What China demands of their people is not good citizenship. They demand the subjugated, indoctrinated fanatic and flagellant. The religious serf.

And of course they don’t want competition from Mohammed…

/Sebastian Lindberg 12/3-2018