Saturday 6 July 2013

The Savage Beneath the Skin.

I decided not to make the post about the curse of intelligence. It seemed trivial and likely to send out the wrong message.

Instead, I thought of making a post about a story involving a football match in Brazil, the denouement to which was that a referee was bound, beaten and quartered, before his head was stuck on a spike in the middle of the pitch. But I was confused by the fact that, in spite of the obvious horror, there was a suggestion of the very blackest humour about it. And so it seemed shameful to continue.

But then I found another story which contained no trace of humour at all, only the very blackest horror. It told of the attack on a school in Nigeria by Islamists, during which some of the children were burned alive. Such things arrest my breathing for a second, and then arrest the normal flow of my mental processes for rather longer. It confused the hell out of me, and prompted three questions:

1) Can I believe that it really happened?

2) How far beneath the veneer of civilised behaviour does such savagery lurk in all of us?

3) Can there possibly be a Muslim anywhere in the world who believes that such an act could be the will of Allah? (And just for the sake of balance, let’s not forget that similar atrocities have been committed by Christians in the name of God.)

I don’t know how to end this post. The mental processes aren’t quite flowing again yet.

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