Last year, when she was five, my daughter announced that she was going to become a Muslim. ‘It’s an awful lot of washing,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, I am able to reach the sink with my feet.’ She went up to her room and stuck six sheets of paper together to make a prayer mat. It was time, I decided, to send her to Catholic Instruction. This is an after-school class that, besides fulfilling her tribal spiritual needs, provides a solid half-hour of free childcare, every Monday. It is conducted by a catechetics expert in lace-up shoes who looks like she means business. When I drove my daughter home after her first class, she was quite unhinged.The rest of the article is about how weird and funny it is when your kids become religious. Proving that even when people go through motions of doing something sensible (i.e. moving your kid off a path that will end up with her in a burka), you can still sound like an idiot. There's even a charming little passage where the author writes "I can't tell you how much I hate Catholicism". Hey, you know what would be really brave? If the LRB published someone who wrote "I can't tell you how much I hate Islam". Wouldn't that be something?
In England today, converting to Hinduism doesn't disqualify you from being an Anglican priest. Although given the recent creep of sharia law in Britain, converting away from Islam may mean that you have to die.
[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]
No comments:
Post a Comment