Interfaith Dialogue Rears Its Ugly Head

King Abdullah Dips Hands into Muddled Waters, Advocates Inter-faith Dialogs

Quite sometime back in 2007, I wrote about the sinister reasons (link here) behind inter-faith dialogs and why, as a religiously-slanted mafia session, religious leaders could, in reality, be using just such a political and public platform to propagate their freedom hating, gay-bashing and atheist-killing activities.

On hindsight, I was kind of shocked at my particular clairvoyance with regards to this religiously-inspired phenomenon, even though I couldn't have foretold or predicted that besides the blundering Tony Blair, even the King of Saudi Arabia has wheeled himself into this increasingly massive, driven propaganda which, on the surface, looks like a harmless tea party between, bishops, imams and the pork-eating infidels.

Saudi Arabia Leader Calls for Interfaith Dialogue

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called for a dialogue among monotheistic religions Monday, marking a first for the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

"I ask representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith," Abdullah told delegates to a seminar on "Dialogue Among Civilizations between Japan and the Islamic World," according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

“If God wills it, we will then meet with our brothers from other religions, including those of the Torah and the Gospel... to come up with ways to safeguard humanity," he added.

Abdullah said the country’s top clerics have given him approval to pursue his idea and that he plans to get the opinion of Muslim leaders from other countries.

According to SPA, the Saudi king also intends to address the United Nations on the subject.

"We have lost sincerity, morals, fidelity and attachment to our religions and to humanity," Abdullah said Monday, deploring "the disintegration of the family and the rise of atheism in the world – a frightening phenomenon that all religions must confront and vanquish."

Vanquishing Secular Humanism In Favor of Theocracy and Human Rights Abuse?

As a sectarian religion, Islam is perversely myopic in a way that all Judaism-inspired faiths share: These religions harbor the same, unabashed animosity against all forms of religions, plus ideas that do not fit into their respective religious world views.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, in which our indefatigable Saudi King, Abdullah, rules as a hereditary king, I honestly can't even begin to fathom how humanity even exists in his misogynistic kingdom, unless, of course, his version of "humanity" doesn't quite fit into our evil, secular, and yes, demon-inspired "humanity" of secular folks.

Consider this:

1. The Basic Law of Government (Adopted in 1992) in the oil-rich monarchy mandates that only the first king, Abd Al Aziz Al Saud, and his sons and grandsons to be legitimate rulers of the kingdom.

2. The Quran is the Constitution of Saudi Arabia (Hence, the stoning of women and so on.)

3. According to The Economist's Democracy Index (2007), the opulent Saudi government is the 9th most authoritarian regime in the world. Not bad, considering that the evil, Godless commies in China lie a full 21 places behind. Makes you wonder why the Bush Administration is cuddling up to the rich oil barons, eh? If anything else, it certainly isn't because of the House of Saud's impeccable human rights record!

4. Women are banned from appearing in almost all forms of public life: Women are banned from driving, and a severe, misogynistic apartheid against women meant that widespread discrimination against women that the average Bedouin woman can hardly expect herself to find a decent job in a male-dominated workforce, not to mention the fact that women should only be seen in drab, ugly, Martian-styled fashion known as burkhas, as mandated by the sick and depraved House of Saud.

5. According to Amnesty International, other archaic, ancient tortures, such as flogging, are employed on a variety of "criminals", ranging from dissenters to "inappropriate behavior", in accordance to the strict (and strange) tenets of Islam.

But Mr Abdullah doesn't speak from statistics: He doesn't want to dabble in the specifics! He simply equates his obnoxiously theocratic, abusive regime as the standard barometer for humanity!

& finally, of course, he reviews his true intentions: Atheism, in the little warped mind of this despotic monarch, is a "frightening phenomenon that all must confront and vanquish". That kind of explains why every time a secular newspaper, say in Denmark, begins to publish photos of Muhammad with his bomb-laden turbans, these car-burning, riotous folks of Islam tend to start going amok and incinerate the latest Danish pastry they can lay their filthy hands upon. In their religious ecstasy to get rid of all that is hedonistic, King Abdullah has given us a sneak preview of the insecurities and the siege mentality employed by religious leaders and rioters alike: Any encroachment of their archaic, stone age belief system is a direct threat to their sensibilities, lifestyle and finally, their Deity in question.

Interfaith Dialogs: A Great Pretense to Spread Bigotry On a Grandiose Scale

It is difficult for secular folks like myself not to feel skeptical when reading bigoted propaganda and other religious nonsense: It seems, at this point of time, that certain sections of the Islamic community feel disenchanted enough to petition for patch-up alliance, clobbered together in the hope that secular humanism and other more rational-thinking philosophies can be quashed under the sheer weight of religious tyranny.

The sheer hypocrisy of such gatherings aside, we might just be witnessing a backlash against the rising secularism in a global setting, and the burkha-obsessed Saudi King is practically feeling the heat (with or without the burkha) of those evil, pork munching infidels.

-"It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages."

Wendy Kaminer