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Subject:
Polytheists
David Blue
11/12/2002 8:38:17 AM
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Hi.
Partly as a holdover from my days as a no-nukes peace-marcher, I know a bunch of polytheists.
They fall into three classes, none of them capable of defending themselves against Islam.
(1) Wiccans, and other magic-workers. In my experience, these warlocks and witches are likely to do things like work spells and offer prayers to the great motherly nature goddess, to appeal to the great roach spirit to keep her babies away, so that the magician need not to resort to (gasp!) lethal (to roaches) poison! It stands to reason that not much can be expected in a military sense from people who can't summon up enough ruthlessness to kill a roach.
(2) Northern Heathens. These I meet only on the Internet. They worship the gods their (distant) ancestors did: Thor, various Celtic gods etc.. These are a tougher lot, and many have time in the military. But Europe is their sun and their moon, which means that America is in the wrong in fighting Islam now, and the form of religious oppression that concerns them is American style multiculturalism. Islam is not on their radar screen, as it is neither American, nor capitalist/consumerist/multiculturalist. Yep, not even self-identified modern Viking want to fight, or not on America's side anyway.
(3) Other "serious" neo-pagans etc., mostly interested in reconstructing and reliving pre-Christian religions like Hellenismos (the religion of Classical Greece). These generally feel that in a religious sense "something serious has gone wrong" (and they care very much about that), so they have backtracked across the history of religion to bits of history where they feel things made more sense. Quite a bright and sincere crowd in a lot of ways, they get their opinions on religion and much else from respected academic authorities. If the universities say it, it's true, and if not, not. So while the ancient religions themselves were noted for tough and ruthless people, for the modernists this is filtered through academic political correctness. (Islam can only mean "diversity", and encouraging "diversity" is always right, because we don't want to be RACIST, do we? Etc..) If academia would tell them it was all right to defend yourself, they probably might, but in reality, that won't happen.
In America, all these people are free to worship Wodem, Hermes or empty beer bottles if they so choose: the constitution guarantees it. In Australia, Canada and the UK, a tolerant culture offers polytheists similar protection in practice. And why not? They're colourful, often interested in good works (like animal shelters), and they hurt nobody. If you can live with the Amish, you can live with some of these. Of course many of them are also extremely annoying, like true believers of any stripe. The witless, dogmatic teen witches can get pretty snotty. But where I live that's no crime.)
Now let's discuss how they will or would all do under Sharia (Muslim holy law). They won't fight or flee, and couldn't really hope to make it another country with another language etc. if they tried. The Northern Heathens of various stripes practically can't, for "blood and soil" religious reasons. Though others may mock their religions, most of these polytheists seem very genuine about doing what they think is right: they won't convert.
Given that they are who they are, and there they stay, what are their rights, under pure, strict, militant Islam? How will they stand, in a future Muslim Europe, or a future Muslim World?
David Blue
Riyadh delenda est! |
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