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| Spot the idiot | |
Some people do stupid things - really stupid things. And in the modern age,
the rest of us get to watch many of those stupid things from our lounge
rooms. The bizarre suicidal practices of running with the
bulls in Pamplona and the Muslim stoning of
the devil at the Hajj have been noted before on this column but, after
recent events, it seems appropriate to compare them. At Pamplona, young men stand around until bulls are released into the
streets and then run away. It has something to do with 'machismo' and
impressing the opposite sex. Generally the best way to impress the opposite sex
is by demonstrating that you are intelligent and brave. Except they are neither
intelligent nor brave. If they were intelligent they would run away
before the bulls are released, and if they were brave they
wouldn't run away at all. While this is not strictly a Christian ritual, in a
country with a 94% Catholic membership, most of them probably are. And in Mecca, some 362 people
were crushed in a stampede as Muslims gather around a black
rock (which symbolizes the devil, or George W Bush or something) and stone it,
while kaffir all over the
world get stoned in front of their televisions watching it. And giggling. Going to the Hajj is "a duty for every able-bodied Muslim at least once. a
lifetime." With over a billion Muslims in the world, that's gotta be two
million souls at the Hajj each year. That's a lot of people to get within
stoning distance of a black rock. But it's very important. Important enough to
crush a few of your fellow Muslims to get to. Allah works in mysterious ways.
Apparently killing Christians is not the only way to gates of Heaven. Killing a
few fellow Muslims works too, in the right circumstances. In both Mecca and Pamplona, people put themselves in a position where (if
history is any judge), they have a good chance of being severely injured or
killed. Competition between Muslims and Christians takes many forms - some of
them downright stupid. If there is a prize in this competition, it must be the Darwin Award. The Darwin Awards, for the uninitiated
"salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove
themselves from it in really stupid ways". There's no sincerer sacrifice
to the collective good of the gene pool than pruning yourself off the evolutionary tree. And what
better candidates for the prize than the bull runners and the Hajj stoners? Ironically, in this competition between idiot Muslims and idiot Christians,
the one with the last laugh is Charles Darwin.
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