The year of dressing dangerously

Over the years there were probably many isolated incidences around the world where a person’s dress, appearance and style of living attracted unwanted attention from a few loons, mostly from one type of religious persuasion or the other. But in 2013, these incidences started making the news.

In January, the same religious extremists who had earlier banned women from wearing jeans and tight trousers, inspired the mayor of Aceh, Indonesia, to propose a ban on women straddling bicycles and motorcycles when riding pillion. Then in February a Saudi cleric raged about forcing babies and young woman to wear burkas, which he claimed would prevent rape.

In March Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood opposed a UN Declaration on Woman’s Rights saying that granting them any basic rights would destroy society. They  proposed among other more absurd things that woman should not be allowed to travel freely, work, use contraception and control the household finances.

Earlier this month Hamas, the ultra-conservative government of Gaza passed an education bill mandating separate classrooms for boys and girls. This week in another act of pure madness Hamas lap-dogs who pass for Policemen were reported pulling young men off the streets, loading them into jeeps, insulting them and then cutting off or shaving their long or gel-styled spiky hair.

Now lest you think I’m singling out a particular religion by exposing this insanity, let me assure you that I’m not. If an adherent of [place your religion or political organization of choice here] compels me to dress or behave in a certain way, or inhibits me from exercising certain basic human rights, because it infringes some stupid law from their archaic religious texts, then I’m most certainly going to tell them to kiss my ass.

It’s not so much the religion that concerns me, as the jackasses that try to impose their understanding of it.

No religionist (or political organization) will ever prescribe to me how to dress, what to eat, how to live or what to believe.

*****

This just in…

Seems the madness has spread to Uganda too. Simon Lokodo an ex-Catholic priest, a misogynist and homophobe who is now masquerading as the Ethics Minister [fancy that?] is proposing legislation that will govern what women wear in public, including on television.

This same government-appointed keeper of the public’s morals was at the forefront of persecution and discriminatory laws against Uganda’s homosexual community not so long ago.

New Year already tainted by religious madness

We’re barely into the second week of 2013 and already people who are inspired by religion (men usually) are showing how utterly insane it all is.

A mayor from Aceh, Indonesia is proposing a ban on women straddling bicycles and motorcycles when riding pillion. The idiot from Lhokseumawe by the name of Suaidi Yahya believes that it will save [*cough] the virtue of women and prevent them from breaking Islamic Sharia law [*grrrrrr]. This asshole still thinks that woman are “delicate creatures,” and require protection from the men, religious one’s off course.

In 2009, the neanderthals from Aceh also banned woman from wearing jeans and tight trousers. What a bunch of silly tossers, defending archaic religious laws pulled out their ass by other silly tossers.

Staying on this silly side of the world, another religiously inspired cretin, a self-styled Indian guru from India caused an uproar when he made a statement partly blaming the young female student who was gang-raped, for the atrocious incident. The imbecilic guru who goes by the name of Bapu, believes that the drunken bastards who raped this woman, would not have gone through with it, if the woman had begged for mercy and pleaded with god [*Bapu’s personal flavour of god no doubt] for help.

If that is not the most patriarchal, misogynist, religiously vile claptrap I have ever heard, I don’t know what is. Bapu should be put on trial with rest of the male scum who perpetrated this vile act on the woman, who eventually succumbed to the horrendous wounds she received.

And while the murderous madness involving religious groups continues in Africa with the Malian Ansar Dine, the Nigerian Boko Haram, and al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and Ansar al-Sharia of Somalia, there was a faint glimmer of hope from Cameroon, with the release of two men who spent a year in jail after being convicted of homosexuality. Apparently they were convicted on appalling evidence: they were seen wearing women’s clothes and make-up.

Yeah, only someone inspired by antiquated religious texts could condemn another human being for something so utterly trivial.

I wonder what these pious prats have in store for us for the rest of the year.