The ugly face of religion
On the BBC TV programme QI recently I was slightly startled, but secretly pleased, to hear the host Stephen Fry declare that 'religion is shit!'. Two stories in today's Guardian suggest he was right, that whatever benefits religion might bring in terms of personal consolation, its wider social effects are often wholly negative. In the first article, about the worldwide eradication of polio, Jason Burke describes how 'in the late 1990s, (in India) local clerics began telling congregations that the (polio) vaccinations were part of a government plan, backed by the West, to make Muslim women infertile'. Burke goes on to explain that 'some religious leaders convinced the community otherwise', but the point surely remains that religious groups continue to wield a disproportionate influence in our post-Enlightenment world. Just consider, for example, the majority church leaders response to the idea of same-sex marriage in Scotland, which they were of course against. There followed an equally disturbing story from Afghanistan about the torture and imprisonment of a fourteen year-old girl by her husband and his family that involved her fingernails being ripped out by pliers and her ears burned. The roots of domestic violence against women, child marriage and the absence of basic legal rights for women are as much cultural as religious in Afghanistan, but given that Islam underpins so much of Afghan society it seems once again that the influence of religion can be as much pernicious as beneficial. The fact that it is delusional and based on a belief in supernatural beings renders it even more disturbing. And yet, it continues to prosper across the world and surely will continue to do so ad infinitum.
On the BBC TV programme QI recently I was slightly startled, but secretly pleased, to hear the host Stephen Fry declare that 'religion is shit!'. Two stories in today's Guardian suggest he was right, that whatever benefits religion might bring in terms of personal consolation, its wider social effects are often wholly negative. In the first article, about the worldwide eradication of polio, Jason Burke describes how 'in the late 1990s, (in India) local clerics began telling congregations that the (polio) vaccinations were part of a government plan, backed by the West, to make Muslim women infertile'. Burke goes on to explain that 'some religious leaders convinced the community otherwise', but the point surely remains that religious groups continue to wield a disproportionate influence in our post-Enlightenment world. Just consider, for example, the majority church leaders response to the idea of same-sex marriage in Scotland, which they were of course against. There followed an equally disturbing story from Afghanistan about the torture and imprisonment of a fourteen year-old girl by her husband and his family that involved her fingernails being ripped out by pliers and her ears burned. The roots of domestic violence against women, child marriage and the absence of basic legal rights for women are as much cultural as religious in Afghanistan, but given that Islam underpins so much of Afghan society it seems once again that the influence of religion can be as much pernicious as beneficial. The fact that it is delusional and based on a belief in supernatural beings renders it even more disturbing. And yet, it continues to prosper across the world and surely will continue to do so ad infinitum. 
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