From The Archive: Kylie and Ayaan

From The Archive is a special Friday feature. It features posts from my earlier (now-deleted) blog: Stuff & Nonsense and a few items from previous versions of A Tangled Rope that I feel deserve reprinting here, mainly as a way of archiving them. The dates are only approximate, I’m afraid, and there is a possibility that some links may no longer work (although, I will try to remember to test the links before republishing the piece).

Kylie and Ayaan - 19/05/05

Yesterday the one of the biggest news stories around was this. This - as far as I can see was picked up by most - if not all - the UK media. I am no fan of Kylie, I have little or no interest in her doings, and I don't think her bottom is as great as many have suggested. However, it goes without saying that it is a great shame for Kylie - and I do wish her well, of course. But, I also noticed this in The Grauniad, and I couldn't help contrasting the two stories.

On the one hand, we have Kylie who has had the sheer misfortune to contract a serious illness. Just one of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, be it accident, injury, illness or disease through the blind indifference of chance, luck, hazard or whatever you want to call it.

Whereas, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is under a death threat bought about by sheer human malice towards others just because they dare to question. Dare to question those who set themselves up in power over others through exploiting the tribal loyalty inherent in religion or politics.

The case of Kylie shows just how tenuous is our grip on life, on health. Just how narrow the line is between life and death and how easy it is to fall over it. It is bad enough that we all could, on any one day, be struck down by disease or illness, suffer some accident or misfortune that leaves us injured, dying or dead.

But what is truly horrific, insane, sick, disgusting and - just plain - wrong is that there are some people out there who earnestly believe that the ideas in their minds are far important than the lives of other people, and - in some cases - their own lives. The way that people will value something like religion notions above a human life, makes it seem as though such ideologies - in some people - are like a cancer that eats away their fellow-feeling, their awareness of a common humanity, their joy in life and happiness. Replacing them all with a growth in paranoia, fear, hatred and a need to control, and kill. Of course, another current example is the way people have died because others have prized one mere copy of a book far more than they value the lives of their fellow humans. Human life is short and fragile, the last thing anyone should even consider taking it from someone else for such paltry reasons.

Kylie should think herself lucky, lucky, lucky that those who would wish to silence Ayaan Hirsi Ali are not in power. Because she would not be in the position she is in, able to sing, dance, act - live the life of a free and privileged woman if they were. She should also bear in mind that the scientific and technological advances which may just save her life also could be denied to her if other anti-science religious fundamentalists, anti-rationalists and their fellow travellers are also allowed to triumph.

The way that humanity - through science and technology - has struggled long and hard to overcome disease, illness and accident - and has, so often, had a great deal success - enables Kylie, and those in a similar position to her, to hope for their future. Of course, it is a journey that is far from over, if it ever will be over. There is still much for us to learn. But it has achieved so much that even a Pope can be kept alive long after he would otherwise have died (who really, if there is anything to religion and its gods at all, ought to be the last one ever to need such earthly assistance). While still - after all these millennia - people are still dying unnecessarily through religion, either through war between religions or within religions, or failing foul of some religious rule or edict, or even through doing things some members of one religion or another take exception to, in the name of that religion.

I suppose it is one reason why I can be confident in my knowledge that there is not a god. For not only do I know that if there was such a being , he could not - in all conscience - allow such a thing as cancer to make the sentient beings he created to go through such misery. I also know that he could not allow his followers to do such things as kill another human being in his name, or for his greater glory, because if he did he most certainly would not be worth worshiping.

So, Kylie and Ayaan - good luck and a long life to both of you.