The Veil Debate

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Should all religious education be banned in schools?

Yes
4
44%
No
1
11%
Yes and my reasons for coming to this conclusion are posted on this thread.
1
11%
No and my reasons for coming to this conclusion are posted on this thread.
3
33%
 
Total votes: 9

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The Veil Debate

Post by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh »

Is classroom worker Aishah Azmi entitled to wear her veil in the workplace?

Image

Does it create a block between her and the rest of the community?

Should any religion have this level of control over its pratitioners or their work environments?

Does wearing a veil have a negative effect of the whole process of teaching, which in her case is English?

If you're a parent, would you have problems with a veil wearing teacher or class assistant teaching your children?

Do you think it promotes any notions she's a terrorist or terrorist sympathiser?

Does this form of extremely orthodox religious expression alarm you?

What are your opinions on this?

I have edited this thread to correct mispelling of 'religious' and tighten up grammar in all of my posts.

Image hyperlink;
BBC
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4 ... ess203.jpg
Last edited by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh on Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:44 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Catherine Edmunds
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Post by Catherine Edmunds »

There is nothing in the Koran that says women should cover up to this extent. The prophet never advocated this. Dress with modesty, yes, but not the full veil. This is simply the choice of a small number of religious extremists.

Now, you must be careful not to distort the facts. As far as I am aware, this lady has said she is happy to remove the veil when she is teaching the children, so long as there are no men present. That is an important point. Let's not demonise this poor woman and say that she refuses to teach without the veil; because that is simply not true. She has very strong feelings about modesty, and feels that it is immodest to be seen by men unveiled.

I wonder happens if she is teaching her class, and some are hard of hearing and really have to see her lips move, but perhaps there is an OFSTED inspection going on and there is a male inspector in her class.

Before I go off at a complete tangent, I'll address Lugh's points.

Is she entitled to wear the veil in the workplace? Yes. There's no law saying she can't.

Does it create a block between her and the rest of the community? Yes. Undoubtedly. But not as big a block as the tabloids would lead us to believe. After a while, you stop seeing veils, just as after a while, you stop seeing colour, or age, or any other defining feature that actually has little to do with the 'real' person. We are all the same, under the veil, under the wig, under the saffron robes, or whatever.

Should any religion have this level of control? It's not her religion doing this. Islam doesn't demand it. Only one small sect. And anyway, it's her own choice. The veil tends to be worn by working class women; the middle classes, with greater education and freedom, tend to reject it. Teaching is, in many societies, a traditionally working class career. Also, first generation immigrant Muslim women are far more likely to wear it than their daughters.

Does wearing the veil have a negative effect on the whole process of teaching? Yes, it would if she wore it to teach, but as I understand, she doesn't unless a male is present.

As a parent, would I have problems with a veil wearing teacher? No. It's completely irrelevent for my own kids, as they don't have hearing problems. Perhaps, as they wouldn't be able to see facial expressions, they'd actually learn to listen more closely to what the teacher was saying. If she's a good teacher, it's not an issue, as far as I'm concerned.

Does it promote any notions that she's a terrorist? Only in the minds of Sun readers etc. It's an absolutely absurd idea.

Does this form of extremely orthodox religious expression alarm you? Yes. All religion alarms me. All religions with dress codes alarm me, and that goes across the board. Orthodox Jewish women, who won't leave the house without wearing a wig because no man other than their husband is allowed to see their hair. Plymouth Brethren women who are not allowed to wear trousers because it's unfeminine/immodest. Nuns and monks. Extreme religious expression suggests intolerance of those who do not have the same beliefs. It suggests that there is only one acceptable way to dress, and those that do not dress in this way are savages, barbarians, the unclean, the unchosen ones, beneath contempt.

What are my opinions on this? Err... just gave them. :D
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Post by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh »

Nice one Delph. All points addressed :) ...

For me, religion is a complete waste of time. The assumption used to be that it gave people a firm grounding in morality but this has, in my opinion, eroded over the years and ugly fanaticism has surfaced. I see religion as an expression of intolerance geared to creating divides among humanity and serving a select few leaders at any one time only.

The woman at the centre of this debate, Aishah Azmi is holding onto a faith that is dogmatic in the eyes of the vast majority of people who reside in the country she chooses to live in. There are unwritten laws governing how she interacts with society and in particular with men.

I believe it is ridiculous to think anyone will learn anything from practitioners of such a blind faith. Education is all about accommodating the growth of intellect, not stunting it with fear of gods or punishments. The faith that this woman follows would openly stone her to death / persecute her for interacting with anyone on friendly terms should that person be male...

Another thing that springs to mind is that her class may be made up of young males. What lessons are they learning here? Children are inquisitive by nature. They would ask questions about why their teacher / class assistant has her face covered. The only explanation anyone could offer them, would be a continuation of the lies that are at the core of all religion...

I hate to keep referring back to Ireland, but think about it this way:- When the Catholic church maintained its firm control over people it was because they had got at them, when they were young. They intimidated young people with notions of a punishing god who damned anyone who defied them to an eternity in hell... Absolute bullshit and possibly used as a device to carry out other forms of abuse...

I reckon I'm lucky. I come from a mixed parentage background and was schooled for the most part in experimental, state run / mixed religion schools. By the time I got to secondary school I had enough wit to realise religion was the practice of fools and that it offered nothing but a lifetime in confusion.

The Catholic priests in Derry boycotted the school I went to and when others were getting religious education, I was bunged into the library with a few Baptists, Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists. I ignored them all and read books. Books and the written word remain one of the only things I still keep faith in... Through education and the encouragement to learn, young people will advance.

Religion should be banned in schools if not society as a whole and pratitioners of a faith should do so only in the privacy of their own homes if at all. It is the root of all sectarian thinking... I believe the woman; Aishah Azmi, at the centre of this current debate should wise up and get with the programme or be fired. If this were a school in an Islamic country, would Christianity* be acknowledged or encouraged?

*Another pointless notion based on the life and travels of a Hebrew anarchist opposed to the then 'powers that be' - the Romans...

I have edited this thread to correct mispelling of 'religious' and tighten up grammar in all of my posts.
Last edited by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh on Sat Oct 21, 2006 8:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Catherine Edmunds
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Post by Catherine Edmunds »

I've just voted in the poll, saying that I think there should be religious education. Here are my reasons.

I don't think religious education should be banned in schools. Far from it. The history of civilisation is to a large extent the history of religions. A huge proportion of wars have been, and are being fought because of religion. It is essential, in my view, that children have some understanding of religion in order for them to understand why these wars happen. If they are never taught about religion, they will never see the traps. Forewarned is forearmed.

Also, there is culture. The best in western music, and western art, for many centuries was sponsored by the church. Young people need to know how and why these great pieces of art came into being, and what the beliefs were behind them. If you don't teach religion, you are effectively censoring that knowledge. That is wrong.

What should not be taught, is that any one religion is the only true religion. That means there should not, in my opinion, be any faith schools at all. That is horrendously divisive, and causes the worst sort of brain washing in impressionable youngsters.

I remember when I was picking a secondary school for one of my daughters, we visited the local Catholic school, which was in effect the local grammar school, with a very good reputation for a high academic standards. I asked the RE teacher about what was taught, and he went to great lengths to explain that all religions were taught, and there was no necessity to go to mass every day. However, each classroom had a crucifix in it. The crucifix was used historically as a means to torture and kill prisoners. I didn't want my daughter being taught every day in a classroom that used such a symbol as a matter of course; where they would be told that actually this was a symbol of resurrection and everlasting life. You see one thing, but you're told it's something completely different... that seems to me to be at the heart of many faiths, a mass of contradictions where your head tells you one thing but your faith insists on telling you the opposite. Too many young people are pressurised in faith schools to let their faith override their intellect, and that is why education in these faiths, in a non-biased way, is so important, so that young people can understand why and how these symbols are used. They should not be allowed to remain in ignorance.

Needless to say, my daughter didn't go to that school. She went to the local comp instead and got the best results in her year, going on to get a first in her degree, so the lack of 'firm moral guidance' didn't do her any harm.

However, despite being non-Christian, I encouraged my children to go to Sunday school, because it was the only way they were going to learn Bible stories, which are such an important aspect of our culture, whether you take them as truth of fables.

So yes, you need religious education. It should never be banned. Religion has created our culture. You can't pretend it doesn't exist, so you need to learn about how it came into being, what function it has in society, why people believe what they do, and so on. That way, so long as the subject is taught in an open and honest way, youngsters will grow up with greater understanding and respect for others, and are less likely to follow the blind example of those who swear black is white; who swear an instrument of torture is actually a means of salvation.

The main problem is with received religions, ie those that are purported to be the word of God, but are written down by man. Their beliefs have gone through the filter of the prejudices of their times. A few universal truths manage to seep through, but also a load of stuff that seems frankly silly. All those laws about what you can and cannot eat. They are historical, they are not sacred. Pork used to go off quickly, so it was advisable not to eat it. Sensible enough. But not God's word; not in my opinion. On the other hand, 'Love one another' is a principle that would do us all a world of good.

You need education; you need to be able to sift through holy writings and see where the message is good, and where it's garbled or quite simply wrong. You need education to understand that the Romans did a hefty censorship job on the Bible. You need education to understand that the Da Vinci code is an amiable load of old tosh. If you have no learning, if you've never been taught, how on earth are you to know?
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Post by spacecadet »

This recent debate has been quite educational for me. Up until recently I thought Muslim women wore veils because they were bloody ugly, very hairy, or bloody ugly and very hairy. Now I find out it's a religious thing. Maybe if I hadn't gone to a Christian/Jewish school I would have known this.

As for religious education in schools, I'm all for it. My religious education classes (or "Divinity" as it was called) were given by the school Chaplain, who used to tell us great stories of jungle warfare, and how he lost a lung building the Bridge over the river Kwai. They were the best lessons of all.
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Post by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh »

Some very interesting reasons posted for why religion should remain on the school syllabus.

Maybe it's just me and the life I live / choices I make, some of which have led to my getting a few seriously bad kickings from the 'morally correct' and 'religiously decent' in society. You know.., good Christians..? Not to mention that many believe that gays or bisexuals should be burned at the stake or stoned to death for the 'sins' they deem our lifestyle to be...

I have nothing but utter contempt for any religion that endorses this hatred and all of them seem to do so. I watched a show recently where a young, British born, Muslim woman who couldn't string two words together coherently, openly stated that homosexuality was sick and anyone 'doin' it' should be punished. At the time I thought 'she'd look nice with a strap-on bomb around her chest and no target to take out. She was also wearing a veil. Why are imbeciles like these being encouraged?

What I have to say next might seem odd for an Irish rebel to point out but seriously; what about all the people who died for Britain during the 1st and 2nd World Wars? Didn't they fight to remove fascism from the planet? It makes absolutely no sense that a diseased individual like Hitler was fought, if we're now going to allow even more condescending, judgmental morons access to call the shots.

I understand fully that religion has played a major part in the development of history, but most horrific scenes from history where thousands of people have been killed to further a message of 'love' is completely screwed up. Isn't it time that humanity faced up to the fact that there is no god? We are here on the planet due to evolution and if we don't wipe ourselves out in religious wars, we might yet see a time when everyone is equal and the mistakes of history are not repeated...

Take a look at just one significant story from the bible; Christ's death. Like Delph pointed out, the whole symbol of 'the cross' can only be viewed as an implement of suffering and torture. Yet the tale of his death is glorified as something to look upon with wonder... 'The Ressurection' to me was a story made up to protect the emotions of the weakened who bought into it all in the first place. All I see when I read about the death of Christ is a reason to view martyrdom as acceptable and we all know where martyrdom leads. Yip, suicide bombers and American Baptist soldiers, bombing and killing in the name of their gods...

Christ, if he existed, fought the Roman Empire on idealogical grounds. He also supposedly took on the might of conventional Judean preachers. He endorsed equality and got murdered for daring to speak out. So did Mahatma Ghandhi and Martin Luther King. I'm sure there are loads more. It would appear that anyone campaigning for a more harmonious world is targeted by the 'morally correct' at any given time. They are normally the people spouting pious religious beliefs.

That is what has to be stopped. This is why I believe religion should not be taught to the young and impressionable minds of children in our schools and anyone campaigning for the right to wear veils and practice even more dogmatic faith should be told to piss off. Like I asked earlier; would the faiths of the Western World be accepted in the homelands of veil-wearing religions?
John Lennon wrote: IMAGINE

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one
.
I have edited this thread to correct mispelling of 'religious' and tighten up grammar in all of my posts.
Last edited by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh on Sat Oct 21, 2006 8:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Catherine Edmunds
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Post by Catherine Edmunds »

Lugh, your arguments are precisely the reason why there should be religious education. Remember; the word is education, not indoctrination.

The stupid, ignorant and bigoted will always be with us. The only effective weapon against their views is education.

The argument about the existence or not of God is a red herring here. If people are educated, rather than indoctrinated, then they are empowered to make up their own minds on that one. I don't for one moment think the removal of the concept of 'God' would solve all the ills of the world, but that is an argument for another day.

When I was little, I thought that the people my parents referred to as 'natives' were only just out of the jungle, and that 'we' were far more advanced. Without education, maybe that view would have stayed with me. Maybe I'd now be the worst kind of racist. Luckily for me, I became educated, so that years later when my next door neighbour was a kindly Jamaican lady, I didn't avoid her in fear and hatred. Unfortunately for her, when I moved away, her new neighbour was a fascist pig with a couple of vicious alsatians, whose education had clearly been lacking. (The pig, that is. The alsatians were probably bright enough.)

Bigotry of all kinds can only be fought with education. It is based, after all, on misinformation. Give people unbiased information, and teach them the sense of what the Jesus who is depicted in the Bible was trying to get across (or the Prophet, or any other great religious leaders) and you're half way to removing bigotry. Teach them nothing of these matters, and their bigotry is free to flourish.

That's why you need religious education.

Oh yeah, and Lugh, 'religious' has two 'i's and one 'e'... :wink:
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Post by spacecadet »

The reaction to the Pope pretty much summed up the situation for me. It was along the lines of "Anyone who says Muslims are violent should be killed". What more can you add to the debate?
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Post by spacecadet »

....and don't get me started on John "Lennin".

He wasn't a working class hero. He was brought up in a nice area and went to art college. If he was working class he would have been slinging crates down the docks.

As for Imagine........ well it's easy to imagine no possessions when your flitting between your New York penthouse and your pad in L.A..

Fantasatic musician he was and the simplistic beauty of his music almost reminds me of the likes of Mozart. He was a genius. Until he opened his gob.
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Post by Catherine Edmunds »

What more? You can add that it is vital to remember that these views are those of a small minority of militant extremists, and are not even remotely the views of the ordinary Muslim in the street.

Look, Muslims are ordinary people, same as Christians, Hindus, Jews, Wiccans, Sikhs, atheists, or anyone else. Some of them are total nutters - same as Christians, Hindus, etc. Most of them are just ordinary folks getting on with their lives and wondering why the hell they're supposed to be upset about a nativity play in a school, or an easter egg, or anything else. They're not upset about those things; but they are upset about the way they're being demonised; about the way a minority in their midst is making life so bloody hard for them.

They need more people to speak up for them in order to prevent this creeping bigotry, and I, for one, am quite happy to do so.
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Post by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh »

Hi folks :) ...

I'm going to respond to these replies one at a time because each are highly deserving of healthy debate. So if I screw up with the quote/reply thing on here, please bear with me. Thanks.
delph_ambi wrote:Lugh, your arguments are precisely the reason why there should be religious education. Remember; the word is education, not indoctrination.

The stupid, ignorant and bigoted will always be with us. The only effective weapon against their views is education.
Ok, but if it is taught in a way that is free of all dogmatism e.g; 'Class, today we are going to discuss the role Jesus Christ's story played in history. Christ was a Hebrew who rebelled against the hatred going on at his time. Some say he was the son of God, put here on earth to provide enlightenment and a message of universal respect for everyone else', then yes, that might work. Likewise for Mohammad. Mind you, I believe the first question kids would ask would be 'What is god?' Or, 'what is Hebrew?' Already it's going down the path of teaching the history of seperatism. Dangerous stuff religion, even if taught without dogma...

Above you say "the word is education not indoctrination" and I agree, but letting someone who wishes to acknowledge her subjugation through a faith that sees women as inferior/unequal really shouldn't be encouraged in such an environment or anywhere for that matter. Seriously Delph; who is going to listen to a teacher talk about religion and its history in a positive way if that teacher's assistant puts on a veil everytime a man walks into the room because the branch / sect of her religion that she follows instructs her to do so?

Image

The image above is really quite ridiculous if in a placement where freedom to advance through learning or questioning is supposedly the order of the day. By the same token, if a Catholic priest wanted to sprinkle holy water all over anyone who took the lord's name in vein or spread the notions of demons or guilt, or an evangelican preacher wanted to lay her/his hands on the masses to heal them in the name of Jesus, I would take issue.
delph_ambi wrote:The argument about the existence or not of God is a red herring here. If people are educated, rather than indoctrinated, then they are empowered to make up their own minds on that one. I don't for one moment think the removal of the concept of 'God' would solve all the ills of the world, but that is an argument for another day.
Yes, but it is part of the whole 'God' or 'no God' scenario. Are all the advantages of living in Britain / Europe where the art of conversation has been hard fought for, going to be allowed to fall by the wayside because of a few dogmatic faiths, followed by uneducated people who believe it is wrong to have an alternative opinion or freedom of speech?

This is what I am talking about. For most of our lives we have been encouraged to rationalise and come to our own conclusions about gods. Some people see advantage in teaching morality through the medium of a fairytale like the bible but moderation steps in when it becomes fanatical.

If fanatics who follow these faiths blindly are allowed anymore leverage, then we will all take a few steps backwards in our progress and their dogma will become even more mainstream. We will allow ourselves to become as subjugated as the woman campaigning to wear her veil in the classroom. We would openly acknowledge that homophobia was ok because 'God / Allah' disapproves and if we dared speak out, we would find ourselves on the recieving end of extremist violence.

I'll lighten the atmosphere a bit here and say that we are a cluster of countries that believed 35 to 40 years ago that war was wrong, governments were corrupt and peaceful co-existence was on the agenda. This was known as the time of the 'Hippie'. Stop The War (in Vietnam), Long hair, colourful clothing, smoking pot, dropping acid, writing music and songs, painting pictures and coming to our own idealogical conclusions based on or gained through meaningful conversation and freedom of expression, were the things people campaigned for.

Then there was the Punk generation who directly confronted all notions of unreasonable order and in my opinion very healthily spat in the face of government. Are their beliefs, now so much a part of the culture we live in, to be thrown aside to accommodate people who haven't risen above extremist violence in the name of their god or their sectarianism / sexism?

I know you to be a highly talented artist and writer Delph. Hypothetically, if you painted a picture depicting the times we are living in now and it offended a few Christians, Jews or Muslims so much so that they damaged either your work, lifestyle or reputation, would you not take issue? It is the 'veil - wearing' or 'demonising preachers and priests' among us who police art with perverse notions of morality. Giving them anymore openings in our advancing society would be a form of intellectual mass suicide.
delph_ambi wrote:When I was little, I thought that the people my parents referred to as 'natives' were only just out of the jungle, and that 'we' were far more advanced. Without education, maybe that view would have stayed with me. Maybe I'd now be the worst kind of racist. Luckily for me, I became educated, so that years later when my next door neighbour was a kindly Jamaican lady, I didn't avoid her in fear and hatred. Unfortunately for her, when I moved away, her new neighbour was a fascist pig with a couple of vicious alsatians, whose education had clearly been lacking. (The pig, that is. The alsatians were probably bright enough.)

Bigotry of all kinds can only be fought with education. It is based, after all, on misinformation. Give people unbiased information, and teach them the sense of what the Jesus who is depicted in the Bible was trying to get across (or the Prophet, or any other great religious leaders) and you're half way to removing bigotry. Teach them nothing of these matters, and their bigotry is free to flourish.
The woman wishing to wear her veil in the classroom and further the notions of a seperate identity, or her right to practice a faith that is opposed to the civil liberties we have come to expect, is a bigot. She was most probably schooled through fear of men and in a cultural enclave that inflicts violence on anyone opposed to her religion.

However, and it must not be forgotten, she is a European / UK resident with the right to take issue with the environment she lives in. Realistically, if she were in the homeland of her religion and expressing what she thought were her rights, she would be ostracised or stoned to death for having an opinion. Women in the homelands of her faith are not allowed opinions. That is clearly condoned by the males who preach her religion. She is attempting to advance the notion that they are right. That is a form of bigotry.
delph_ambi wrote:That's why you need religious education.
If it is taught in an equal environment, free of separatism and as part of the Social Studies / World History syllabus then yes, but is it possible to forward any religious education without causing or exacerbating tensions borne from all the ignorance it generates?
delph_ambi wrote:Oh yeah, and Lugh, 'religious' has two 'i's and one 'e'... :wink:
Would you believe if I told you I used to spell 'religious' the right way but was corrected on MSN The Pleasure Dome one day by a member who said it was spelled 'religeous'?

I have edited this thread to correct mispelling of 'religious' and tighten up grammar in all of my posts.
Last edited by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh on Sat Oct 21, 2006 8:40 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Louis P. Burns aka Lugh
Administrator, editor & owner of the Sensitize © online community of forums and domain for artists, e-poets, filmmakers, media/music producers and writers working through here. To buy the Kindle book of Illustrated Poetry, Sensitize © - Volume One / Poems that could be Films if they were Funded by myself with illustrations by Welsh filmmaker and graphic artist; Norris Nuvo click here for N. Ireland and UK sales. If purchasing in the U.S.A. or internationally then please click here.

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My writing is not covered by Creative Commons policy and may not be republished without permission. All rights reserved. All Sensitize © Arts sponsorship donations and postal inquiries to:

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Post by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh »

spacecadet wrote:The reaction to the Pope pretty much summed up the situation for me. It was along the lines of "Anyone who says Muslims are violent should be killed". What more can you add to the debate?
All the Pope needs is a good man to love him :P ...
spacecadet wrote:....and don't get me started on John "Lennin".

He wasn't a working class hero. He was brought up in a nice area and went to art college. If he was working class he would have been slinging crates down the docks.

As for Imagine........ well it's easy to imagine no possessions when your flitting between your New York penthouse and your pad in L.A..

Fantasatic musician he was and the simplistic beauty of his music almost reminds me of the likes of Mozart. He was a genius. Until he opened his gob.
Fair enough, but he earned the money to buy his different houses legitimately. He worked in both countries and practically speaking it was wiser to own properties in both.

Maybe he went to art school so he could avoid working down at the docks slinging crates. Aren't we all educating ourselves out of slave labour jobs?

He was an exceptional musician with a keen mind and critical eye on the powers governing us all. He spread a message of tolerance and campaigned against New World Order by singing about equality. He was opposed to religion and felt compelled to share his belief through the mediums of music and song.

If he hadn't been shot dead by that retarded fuckwit; Mark David Chapman, then the Ayatullah, Pope or President would most probably have had him stiffed to maintain their hate agendas.

Let's not forget he also managed in his brief time on the planet to annoy the white supremacists / Ku Klux Klan and send his OBE back to the Queen. Anyone who can do that earns my unwavering support and undying affection...

He could have just as easily become an art student / singer/songwriter without a conscience and allowed bigots to tear him apart. He didn't. He took a stand.

Salute...

I have edited this thread to correct mispelling of 'religious' and tighten up grammar in all of my posts.
Last edited by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh on Sun Oct 22, 2006 12:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh »

delph_ambi wrote:What more? You can add that it is vital to remember that these views are those of a small minority of militant extremists, and are not even remotely the views of the ordinary Muslim in the street.

Look, Muslims are ordinary people, same as Christians, Hindus, Jews, Wiccans, Sikhs, atheists, or anyone else. Some of them are total nutters - same as Christians, Hindus, etc. Most of them are just ordinary folks getting on with their lives and wondering why the hell they're supposed to be upset about a nativity play in a school, or an easter egg, or anything else. They're not upset about those things; but they are upset about the way they're being demonised; about the way a minority in their midst is making life so bloody hard for them.
I agree with you entirely Delph but people like Aishah Azmi (the veil - wearing fanatic) are a threat to us all.
delph_ambi wrote:They need more people to speak up for them in order to prevent this creeping bigotry, and I, for one, am quite happy to do so.
So am I mate, but only if they get off their knees and prayer mats and explore their individuality and personal space. I'm most certainly not going to waste any time 'getting in there' to fix them. They would kill me for that...

I have edited this thread to correct mispelling of 'religious' and tighten up grammar in all of my posts.
Louis P. Burns aka Lugh
Administrator, editor & owner of the Sensitize © online community of forums and domain for artists, e-poets, filmmakers, media/music producers and writers working through here. To buy the Kindle book of Illustrated Poetry, Sensitize © - Volume One / Poems that could be Films if they were Funded by myself with illustrations by Welsh filmmaker and graphic artist; Norris Nuvo click here for N. Ireland and UK sales. If purchasing in the U.S.A. or internationally then please click here.

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Post by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh »

It would appear this could get a whole lot worse before it gets better, according to Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality.

I still think there is much more tolerance in Europe, Ireland and the UK for these religious sects than there would be for anyone of a differing faith in the homelands of these religions.

Hyperlink is to The Guardian Online;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/stor ... 45,00.html
Louis P. Burns aka Lugh
Administrator, editor & owner of the Sensitize © online community of forums and domain for artists, e-poets, filmmakers, media/music producers and writers working through here. To buy the Kindle book of Illustrated Poetry, Sensitize © - Volume One / Poems that could be Films if they were Funded by myself with illustrations by Welsh filmmaker and graphic artist; Norris Nuvo click here for N. Ireland and UK sales. If purchasing in the U.S.A. or internationally then please click here.

ASIN B00L1RS0UI

My writing is not covered by Creative Commons policy and may not be republished without permission. All rights reserved. All Sensitize © Arts sponsorship donations and postal inquiries to:

Louis P. Burns
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DERRY
N. Ireland.
BT48 0RS
Telephone (UK): 028 71219225


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Post by spacecadet »

Lugh wrote: I still think there is much more tolerance in Europe, Ireland and the UK for these religious sects than there would be for anyone of a differing faith in the homelands of these religions.
My point exactly.
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