Still banging on about the veil

Firstly, OUR RUTH has found a brilliant blog entry about the original reason for the wearing of the veil by Muslim women. It's entitled UNVEILING THE ISLAMIC VEIL and is it is a real eye-opener. But, Christians, do not get arrogant. If you look at the trimmings of our religion you find many of the things we now hold sacrosanct actually have very mundane beginnings, from what a priest wears to why Roman Catholic priests are required to be celibate.

Secondly, my own half-penneth. If I walk down Northumberland Street in Newcastle on a busy Saturday morning, I probably pass a thousand women. Making a conservative guess, I would say about fifty of them register in my brain as being sexy (to put it bluntly I fancy having sex with them). However, never do I consider even approaching them let alone think of following them home and raping them. It is the same with the paintings in our art galleries. Some of them I really would like to see on a wall in my hose, but I don't even think about stealing them. Even if it wasn't against the law I wouldn't steel them and, yes this is true, even if it wasn't against the law to rape women, I wouldn't rape a woman.

I think this is true for most men in my culture. Certainly, Northumberland Street is not an orgy of abusive sexual activity on a Saturday morning. There are some men in my culture who do abuse women - we call them criminals and lock them up for a long time if we catch them.

So, if Muslim women have to wear a veil to protect themselves from predatory men does this mean that Muslim men are all a bunch of potential rapists? No, of course it bloody doesn't. I expect the percentage of Muslim men who literally cannot stop their lustful thoughts becoming abusive actions is exactly the same as the number of Christian men with the same pathology. So the idea that men want to have sex with every attractive women they see is true, no doubt about it. That more than a very small number of them would go beyond the thought to actually physical abuse a woman is a ridiculous idea. In fact, because of the way the minds of some sickos work a woman wearing a veil is probably in more danger of being sexually attacked than a woman in revealing clothing.

Have you ever noticed how easy both gay people and women are when talking about the attractiveness of other people. Sometimes being a man who finds women attractive is so boring because you can't turn to your mate and say "Cor, luck at the bum at that!" If you do you risk being labelled as a potential rapist. But women chat about men's bums loads and quite openly. Gay men like nothing better than sitting down in a cafe on a sunny day and watching the boys go by. AND WHY NOT? People are beautiful.

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL IS DUALISM. It infects everything in our society and particularly in our religions. Its insistence that we don't look at beauty turns us all into neurotic, guilt ridden "less than humans" and makes us bad in bed. How can we "make love, not war" when we are not allowed to look at sexy people but are allowed to look at heavy weaponry (of the metallic variety) whenever we want. The fact that violence gets passed the film censor far more easily than just plain, ordinary sex (especially in America) is a perfect example of the real perversion that is endemic in almost every society in the world.