If It Is the Crucifix Today Then What Might It Be Tomorrow?

In which our intrepid hero ponders a world in which we are no longer able to worship as we choose; and ruminates upon the consequences of barging into places where we are not wanted.

By Charley Brady

Here is a question for you. Before you answer it don't just think that mad Brady is having a go again. Really think about it.

You are working in a Muslim country. You are doing your level best to fit into their insane lifestyle; and then one day you complain to the authorities there that you are not happy with the fact that you see the flag of Islam flying every day in a country that is theirs and that you have been invited to work in. You also don't like their Islamic symbols and you sure as hell don't like their Koran.

So what do you do? You tell the leaders of that country that you feel that your human rights are being violated, and you want these symbols of a country in which you are a guest to be removed immediately

Do the Muslims:
(a) wet themselves laughing while saying "these Westerners, Allah, they are so funny!"
(b) tell you that if you don't like the bloody place to take a hike.
(c) have you banged up in one of their hell-holes for not fitting in and showing enough respect.

If you chose the first then you get one point; if you chose the second then you get two points and if you chose the third then you are a winner (kind of) because you get ten points and a life sentence, possible beheading and crucifixion.

Here's another one for you: You are caught wandering around a Muslim training camp for their soldiers while wearing full American combat fatigues and having a history of saying that you do not agree with their war against the West.

Do the Muslims:
(a) say that this is your prerogative because they respect your human rights and don't wish to be called "racist"?
(b) offer you an all-expenses paid flight out of the country, while wishing you the very best in your future life.
(c) shoot you on sight, then have you beheaded before crucifying what's left of you.

If you chose the first one then you get one point for being such an optimistic horse's ass; if you chose the second then you get no points and, let's be honest, deserve to be shot and if you answered "yes" on the final one then you get a very impressive ten points.

You are a winner. Dead, mind you, but a winner just the same.

I am confused; but then living in a mad world that puts the rights of nutcases before the rights of victims who happen to be in the wrong shooting gallery at the wrong time will do that to you.

I am and always will be a person who does not believe in God or any sort of nonsensical afterlife.

Yet I live in the country of Ireland that in the Dark Ages was one of the great keepers of Light in Europe at a time when much of Western civilisation was crumbling.

I feel honoured to be a Celt and to live in a land that I love.

For that reason I don't care that my peers revere a man who was hideously mutilated and nailed to a tree of death some 2000 years ago.

Of course I don't like it, but it is also a symbol - and in many peoples lives more than just a symbol - but that is their right, just as it is my right not to believe.

This is a Catholic country and for that reason alone I abide with the beliefs of this country that I am privileged to live in.

Let's be honest, the Ten Commandments aren't that hard to live by unless you are an unreconstructed sociopath.

You don't steal, you don't murder, you don't shag your neighbour's wife and you try to respect the people who brought you into this world.

As to the rest of the commandments, well, what is so hard to deal with?

I don't see them in any way religious, just as parameters that we as humans don't need to cross the line from.

For crying out loud it's just your conscience speaking.

Yet in the one week we get one bit of ridiculous legislation and one pure and simple atrocity, both in the name of God - or something.

In Italy the courts rejected the arguments of a Finnish lady who felt that her child was being violated by having to see the symbol of the crucifix in the classroom.

Of course they were absolutely correct to reject this. Yet she chased it to the European Court of Human Rights where they decided that she was quite correct: the sight of the crucifix had traumatised her (obviously sensitive) child.

As a result, crucifixes will have to be removed from the classrooms of Italy.

In one fit of hubris this woman has managed to remove a part of the culture of a country that made her at home.

Man, bad as some correspondents think I am, I would never be so damned presumptuous as to do such a thing to the culture of a country that has welcomed me.

I was talking with an acquaintance today who assured me that this would never happen in Ireland.

He was a little bit put out to hear that it is already being mooted that this ruling should apply Europe-wide.

That means that in the not-so-distant future we may just have to take the symbol of the cross from Irish classrooms.

Well, why not? He was one of the ones that voted our rights away when he signed up for the "Yes" vote on the Lisbon Treaty.

Of course it could happen here, you eejit! It's only last year that we began taking away nativity scenes from our hospitals because they were offending Muslim patients.

Could never happen in Ireland? It's already happening here, you gobshites! Did you think for one second that it could ever happen in Italy?

As my friend Damien Foley of Dublin says: "If it's the cross today then what is it tomorrow?"

And by the way, Foley, I still do fancy your wife - not that it gets me anywhere since she's inexplicably still in love with you. No accounting for taste, I guess.

And there's a commandment broken already.

Still, nice to be able to say something positive about Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi for a change (other than "that guy likes the Bold Thing more than Colin Farell does"): he is as angry as the rest of his country at what he sees as a nonsensical attempt to deny Europe's Christian foundation. "This is not acceptable for us Italians" he said and went on to point out that there are so many churches in Italy that "you only have to walk 200 metres forwards, backwards, to the right or to the left to find a symbol of Christianity."

Which brings me reluctantly to this:

By the time you read this there may be more answers but I doubt it.

I have to ask though, why did nobody find it strange that this obviously disturbed dude called Major Nidal Malik Hasan was wandering around a Texan military basis in full Muslim regalia?

Are we now so afraid of the "R" word that we can't even ask basic questions any more?

He had stated in the past that he was not born in America but in a Muslim country. No offence, guys, but somebody who denies his birth place is one jackass that I would never trust.

So what do you do? You put him in charge of counselling (and by Allah is that a word that I hate! Who did he train under? Doctor Phil?).

So let me see if I have this right: a disturbed psychiatrist who would make Dr. Lecter look like the voice of sanity is looking after truly traumatised soldiers who have been sent to a war that isn't even theirs to fight in the first place? Have I got this right?

Then when these poor devils come back they are sent to be "counselled" by a man who is not only on the edge but is KNOWN TO BE ON THE EDGE?

I don't want to hear about how he was cracking up. I don't want to know if he had an awful childhood. I simply, being the dopey thick that I am want to know how this aberration of a human being felt that because he was having a tough time of it that he had to take the lives of people that he didn't know and to destroy the lives of their families that he also didn't know.

Christ, we've all had s*** thrown at us in our lives. We don't all pick up our handguns and go on a rampage.

No sympathy for this bastard. No sympathy at all.

I'll have to listen to, in days to come, how he went through "hell on earth" (that's always the one, isn't it?). Well, how about the perpetual Hell that he has sentenced the families of the dead to?

You know what? I don't care what his story was.

To hell with him.

I was completely against going into Iraq and Afghanistan but it is done now and we had better get real about the people that we are dealing with.

They are serious operators who don't care about human rights. We are the enemy and we better toughen up.

We're making things worse than ever in Iraq as it is. We shouldn't even be in the damned place but of course Bush Junior just had to finish his daddy's business. The lucrative contracts didn't hurt either.

And would people stop trotting out that tired old line: "It's like Vietnam all over again." It is NOT like bloody Vietnam!

That waste of lives and time was - apart from slimy Nobel Peace prize-winning Kissinger and his buddy Nixon's adventuring into Cambodia - pretty much contained. That's not so with Iraq. All of the Western world is now a target. Bombs can go off in London, Paris, New York, Madrid - anywhere.

We didn't make the world safer, friends. We made it far more dangerous than it has ever been.

In the meantime, whatever God you believe in, I hope he watches out for you until next week, when I hope to see you all again.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net