When Jesus Meets the Muslims.

Among the plethora of idiotic nonsense uploaded to YouTube, the following one caught my eye. It purports to come from a man who claims to have had a near death experience and went to heaven (as all NDEs do.) The video reporting his encounter is titled:

Jesus told me what he does with all the Muslims

I doubt it was a happy and accommodating experience for them, although there are several reasons why I didn’t waste my time watching it.

It raises several contentious points, of course, most of which should be obvious. But the first thing that occurred to me was how Jesus would know who is Muslim and who isn’t. Anybody can claim to be or not to be Muslim, just as anybody can claim to be or not to be Christian or Buddhist (Hindu and Jewish are different because bloodline comes into the picture with those.) Would a woman wearing a hijab, for example, be unable to contest the accusation of being Muslim?

And that leads me to a wholly unconnected question: There are several states in which the wearing of Muslim traditional dress is forbidden by law, and that includes the hijab. How would they respond, I wonder, if some major fashion designer set about popularising the hijab – presumably in gay colours and patterns – until it became a popular fashion statement? I truly wish somebody would do so just to find out.

And a second issue raises its head: I’ve noticed that there are a lot of anti-Islam videos appearing on YouTube lately. Given the high sensitivity to anything which can be viewed as being in any way prejudiced in the modern world, I’m surprised that Google aren’t being pressured to remove them on the grounds of ‘hate speech’ or ‘inciting racial or religious intolerance.’ I’m not suggesting they should, just surprised that it isn’t happening.

My own position is simple: I detest the excesses of Islamism for obvious reasons, as all reasonable people do, and I would object most strongly to the imposition of shariah law in what is effectively a secular state. But if someone chooses be Muslim and follow its dress code, I really don’t give a hoot. (Some people might remember my effusive praise of a student nurse called Sabs back around the period of my kidney operation. She wore a black hijab. It suited her.)