Willothewisp

Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

Dogma over common sense

I went into town during the week to deal with paperwork regarding our oldest two children and their respective disabilities. I will not tell you which particular arm of government department  I was dealing with because I have lodged a formal complaint, so until that is dealt with I think giving specifics would not be fair.

With Hilke and Nicholas off to school, Mariaske in playgroup in Looierstraat I put Joost into his pram, harnessed up Sissi and trekked into town. Upon finding the building I wanted I went up to the front desk in the lobby. The young man there was very helpful, recognising immediately from Sissi’s uniformed presence that I was deaf and partly sighted. Instead of just directing me to correct part of the building he made a phone call, got a large print floor plan out and marked on it where I would need to go and also very thoughtfully marked out the baby facilities and the lady’s wc and also where we could go for refreshments and gave me the map. By this time a colleague had arrived and she took over his position so that he could escort us to where we had to go. He always took care to speak to my face, he controlled his hands using them to make only meaningful gestures, he was at no time condescending or belittling, in short he was a perfect model of help and assistance to a person with impaired senses.

After a going through many corridors and up an couple of floors we arrived at the right department. My escort explained my needs to the girl at the recption desk before departing with my grateful and sincere thanks. The young lady directed me to take a seat in the waiting area, along with about a dozen people. She informed me where the baby facilities were and the wc and asked me if my guide dog need anything. She was not as careful as the young man had been in talking to my face but her heart was in the right place and she was considerate.

So far so good. After almost an hour the number on the large TV screen in the waiting area finally matched my little ticket and directed me to room four so rounding up Sissi and securing Joost off I went.

Now I should explain that despite being lesbian, despite having a few disabilities, even despite being a woman, that I am not into all this politically correct silliness. I am deaf so call me deaf, not “hearing impaired” for goodness sake ! As long as people are not out rightly insulting I really do not mind how I am described. There is nothing more likely to get me annoyed than having to watch someone tying themselves into knots trying to work out how they should be speaking to this deaf, partly sighted lesbian mother of children with disabilities of their own. Just have a little thought, like the young man above because that is wonderful, don’t play the game of PC linguistics invented by middle class sociology degree graduates with no real role in life.

So I sit us down in the interview room and just as I am settling down a woman comes in. I say a woman but in fact it could have been anything underneath all that idiotic black clothing. From head to floor it was covered in shapeless black islamic dress, all that was visible was a little slit with two eyes showing. My heart sank.

How do you like talking to the back of my head ? Well that is what talking to a veiled face is like for me

I can of course see the funny side, lips, face and entire body hidden behind a black mask interviewing a lip reader, pretty comical really, but when you are dealing with your children’s welfare I prefer to leave the comdey out. I asked her to remove her head covering, explaining that I was deaf and needed to see her face and read her lips. I do not know if she said anything, I imagine she did, but the negative shake of her head provided her answer. Holding onto my irritation I repeated myself, and again there was a nod of her head and this time she waved a little book at me. I looked at the book and sure enough it was a copy of the quran, she was waving it like it was some sort of get out of jail free card from Monopoly. Rather than get annoyed any further I just asked her to get her supervisor in here.

After a few minutes another woman comes in, clearly not a muslim this time. I told her that I was deaf and had to lip read and had therefore asked the lady to remove her head covering and that she had refused thus rendering her useless to me and unable to do her job effectively. The supervisor looked uncomfortable and told me that she could not ask her colleague to remove any of her attire because it was part of her religious belief. I asked her to show me the part in the quran that specified where it said that she had to be covered head to toe, thus cutting her off from the outside world and normal interaction with human beings. I pointed out that her colleague kept a copy of the quran under the folds of her clothing as she had been waving it in my face a few minutes earlier, now she looked very, very uncomfortable, and so she should. She told me that she had to respect the beliefs  of her colleague, clearly thinking that would in some way shield her from any further comment from me. She was wrong, very wrong, it was an approach that was not going to fly with me.

I got out the map the nice young man had given me earlier along with a broacher about service offered by this government department. While waiting for an hour to be seen I had looked through it, including the part that proudly stated that their charter required them to  ”strive to meet the needs of their clients regardless of age, ability, gender or race”.  Giving a deaf lip reader an interviewer who insisted on hiding like some coward behind layers of cloth was not going to help them meet the noble goals of their charter. Her solution was to ask me to go back to the waiting area for a different member of staff to be available. I refused, pointing out I had already been waiting over an hour and that I was not prepared to be penalised just because of the selfish actions of one of her staff. I wanted to have my interview and I could be having it if she were doing her job properly and demanding that her idiot colleague remove her head gear and DO HER BLOODY JOB. Instead I was now faced with two government employees who were refusing to do their jobs, one because she had chosen to imprison herself behind a mask and hide behind a religion that really has no place in European society and the other who was too much of a coward to stand up to an irrational religion.

The supervisor than said that she could call security to escort me from the building. I agreed that she certainly could do that, except for two points; 1. I had not done anything wrong, but she and her colleague had.

2. Throwing a deaf, partly sighted mother with baby and guide dog out by force for merely asking that she be able to lip read her interviewer was not going to look good on the local TV news that evening, and it would make my lawyer very happy as she liked nothing more than suing for a civil rights breach.

It was the tipping point, that moment when she could do something sensible or do something incredibly stupid. She chose sensible, in other words she interviewed me herself and sent her colleague away. Finally I could get down to business and go through the paperwork. I could read her face and lips as she took care to speak at a normal pace to my face and so in just twenty minutes we had completed all that was required. I thanked her for the assistance that she had given, and added that I would be making a formal complaint about the incident as soon as the rage I was currently experiencing subsided.

In the end my letter consisted of two parts, one praising the consideration of the two receptionists and one damning the stupidity of the muslim woman and levelling a charge of cowardice at her supervisor. I also left a card and a gift of handmade chocolates to the front desk because good actions need to be encouraged. I am now awaiting the response to my complaint, I will let you know how it goes.

Footnote: Oddly enough this little incident did not worsen my general level of anxiety. It had been a big mental effort to overcome my worries over being out and on unfamiliar ground but the dispute of the idiocy of the muslim woman did not worsen matters as I feared it might. In fact I think my anger may have been something of a counterweight to the anxiety, and so I wonder if perhaps I have found a tool I can use to regain some of my lost ground.

Author: Judith

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

So another idiot, one Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was known to US and British authorities – whose brain has been eaten away by the delusion inherent in religion has tried to destroy an airliner and it’s passengers. The law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the USA must be jumping up and down with glee at the opportunity to justify the introduction of yet more powers over the lives of the public, despite the fact that this incident should be putting the spot light on their own utter incompetence despite being in possession of what twenty years ago would have been considered draconian powers.

We all have to understand a simple fact – that complete security is a chimera. It’s a monster that emerges only after all our liberties have been lost, we must wake up to this and understand that freedom carries with it some risk, we cannot be risk free and still travel.

If he had suucced Abdulmutallab could have killed some three hundred people and devastate the lives of relatives of his victims, perhaps an additional five thousand people. It would have been appalling for those involved but the pain would one day ease. The real damage to society will be done not by Abdulmutallab but by those politicians, intelligence and law enforcement officials who will use this failed attack as yet another excuse to further erode civil liberties and bring in yet more laws and regulations, handing them even more rights to control and oppress ordinary people, you and me. They will use it to further expand their numbers and their empire, which in turn will increase their influence and their ability to remove yet more of our rights. It is happening right now, before our very eyes.

Despite the fact that Abdulmutallab’s OWN father had reported their son to the US authorities in person his trouble son was still able to gain a US visa and travel, showing very clearly that security is not being tackled at the correct level. In my opinion Abdulmutallab’s parents were very, very brave people in reporting their own child to a government known to use torture and imprisonment without trial, they are the real heroes here.

Airport security is in fact a mirage. You could publicly strip search every passenger, force them to wear paper jumps suits issued to them at the boarding gate and remove every item of personal property, handcuff each one to their seat and still it would not work. It would not work because flying is a business and business wants to make money so they will continue to employ the cheapest labor to handle baggage and ground duties. For years we have seen airport staff turning out to be illegal immigrants, criminals and others with motivation enough to be a security risk and yet these security risks fail to be addressed, clearly the authorities do not wish to really address the issue so airport security is just a mirage, a gloss to impress, then subdue, control and oppress the travelling public.

In late August this year Abdullah al-Asiri passed through many security checks, searches and even airport style body scanners to gain an audience with Prince Muhammed bin Nayef, a Saudi anti-terror chief in Jeddah. Al-Asiri then detonated a bomb consisting of about half a kilogram of high explosives hidden inside his rectum. The prince escaped with very minor injuries as the blast vented largely downwards rendering the bomb ineffective. On the surface it was a bizarre incident, even more so when you consider the rampant homophobia of islam but as any Western woman who has spent time online will tell you a great many muslim men do seem to have a never ending fascination with that area of human anatomy !

Of course it goes deeper than this. If you really wanted to address to terrorist threats you would tackle the problems that cause it at their roots. You would be serious about addressing the grinding poverty and inequality around the world, you would stop corporations exploiting the poor and most important of all you would tackle the ideology of religions and demand that they adjust to the times we live in and not remain rooted in the fourteenth century. But as we know few have the true courage required to even raise their voice on these issues, let alone actually try and do something about them. It much easier to hide behind the politicians ability to legislate and the law enforcement officer’s gun than really act to address the problem, in the mean time we are slowly loosing our civil rights to those originally tasked with protecting us.

Cowardice in the face of religions and the self interested pursuit of power by politicians and law enforcement bodies are the real threats to us.

Author: Nonke