WHILE Gwent council may have thought it fit to squander taxpayers’ money in an attempt, no doubt, to whitewash Islam – which is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig (see earlier post by Andy Armitage below) – the British gay magazine AXM has had no qualms this month in presenting this jack-ass religion in a much more realistic light.
The magazine carries an interview with Michael Lucas, in which the Russian-born Jewish porn star and gay rights activist says:
I hate Islam with all my heart. The fundamentalist Muslim community chooses to follow every ugly requirement of their bible – polygamy, the imposition of burquas on women, the decapitation of adulterous wives, the mutilation of thieves, wife beatings, arranged marriages, female circumcisions, and, of course, the killing of gays.
Asked how the world should deal with the homophobia of Islam, Lucas said:
We should publicise it, expose it and criticise it. Multicultural liberals keep Islam’s homophobia a secret. I despise the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for this. I have a huge respect for Arabs, it’s their religion I don’t like.
In the same issue of AXM, veteran human rights activist Peter Tatchell reveals that he gets death threat almost every day.
Right now, I have Islamic fundamentalists, allegedly from the Iranian government, after me because I embarrassed the country when I exposed the execution of two young gay boys in 2005. They ring me up at night and shout “you’ll be chopped up and destroyed” and “the punishment for sodomy is death.”
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 21st, 2007 at 9:25 am
So a porn star is a philosopher whose views on a religion that he can be expected to dislike almost by instinct are to be taken as normative are they? Let’s be a little realistic, please.
Hate is always a bad thing, and a lot of atheists need to learn this important lesson. Hate is corrosive to the hater and skews his thinking. I pity this man for his deep and unthinking hatred as much as I pity Muslims who evince the same unthinking hatred towards non-Muslims.
Some Muslims make death threats and do other very bad things. Yes, that is something we rightly deplore. Those brave souls who learn of abuses perpetrated in secret - whether by oppressive political regimes or by various religious or political groups - are right to expose them. They do us a good service and the light of publicity should be brought to bear on these things.
But do not enthrone hate as though it were a virtue. Surely hatred is exactly what we are condemning and combatting in others?
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Couldn’t agree with Silvertiger more: hardly normative opinion, and the fact that some muslims hold deplorable opinions isn’t news.
A lot of the language in the Freethinker has become very aggressive of late. “Lipstick on a pig” and “Jackass Religion” are hardly constructive phrases (and the latter is tautologous anyway).
How are we to progress the cause of secularism if we choose to depict ourselves as vicious demagogues?