It’s hard to avoid the religious aspect of the current war, and its roots in thousand-year disputes over how best to suck up to the deity at the heart of it all. The deity who, for a chuckle, put vast quantities of petroleum under the Middle Eastern lands, added geographical pinch points and political instability, and seeded three fightin’ religions that are basically fairly minor variations on each other. What a guy!
When Pete Hegseth has Crusader symbology tattooed on his pecs (though I thought at first it was a German Iron Cross) and Deus Vult on his arm; when Trump hosts those (fucking weird) performative anointing sessions in the Oval Office, I wonder what non-mad Christians – and Jews – make of all this.
I always understood Christianity to be a peaceful, neighbourly religion. Thou shalt not kill, love thy neighbour, that sort of thing. “The religion of peace” is the eye-rolling sneer directed at Muslims following some atrocity. We’re the good guys. But this administration is exulting in – essentially – state-sponsored, religiously-inspired, terrorism.
Don’t get me wrong; Islam has a massive image problem. When some dickhead blows himself up on a bus or at a pop concert, I share the revulsion of my in-group. They do far more harm than good to their cause. I don’t understand the brutality. But Muslims are no more responsible for these actions than the Archbishop of Canterbury is responsible for Pete Hegseth.
These religions are, as I say, variations on a theme. Their holy books contain similar moral strictures, similarly ignored by fanatics, along with some dubiously contradictory aggression and brutality. They pick consecutive days to represent God’s Seventh Day Off, they all start with Adam and Eve. Mary appears seventy times in the Quran. They all have weird dietary restrictions (God looks favourably on people who make life unnecessarily hard for themselves). But those guys over there – they’ve got it wrong. Though entered largely by accident of birth. my religion is the right one. What a stroke of luck.
Muslim Medics at a hospital in Barrow, half an hour down the road, got together and initiated a faith centre in nearby Dalton. I can hear the howls from here. “We’re a Christian country!” from people who only see the inside of a church at weddings and funerals. Numerous protests have taken place, with more to come as right-wing figures attach themselves. People have suddenly developed an interest in the minutiae of planning regulations, and building aesthetics. Local papers looking for a bit of online engagement post ‘what do you think?” clickbait as commenters hilariously suggest they will go down and wave bacon sandwiches, or smear pig shit on the doors (forgetting that Jews, with whom we are temporarily allied, also reject pork products). Disappointingly, several friends have indicated, by ‘like’, support for the campaign. The hospital, meanwhile, is struggling to recruit and retain staff, and closing departments. A place of worship would not hurt recruitment, but the hatred being poured out might. I trust protestors will enjoy, or at least survive, the trip to Preston to sort out their bacon-clogged arteries.
Mike Huckabee (US ambassador to Israel) on Israel’s right to ownership of the entire Middle East, because the Bible says so:
It would be fine if they took it all
Those anointing sessions were definitely there with Reagan, and televised since W.
The American variety of Christianity always, since colonial days, had strong elements of prosperity gospel and manifest destiny conquista frenzy combined with last days rapture theology.
Christians did those things before Islam even existed. And Jews did it before Christians existed. And Hollywood movies showed it as a heroic thing to do long before Taliban and ISIS were a thing.
Who do you think they learned it all from? Every Brit should know that having Arabia as a Saudi family ranch ruled with their specific theology was a UK colonial project.
Erik,
It’s true; Christianity is full of brutality too. Particularly that part of the Venn Diagram shared with Judaism: the OT. Perhaps they just have better PR.
Here’s some reporting on what Peter Thiel thinks about Antichrist as opposed to what the Roman Catholic Church thinks. We regular folks may know Peter Thiel primarily as a moghul in software tech, but he sees himself as a prophet tasked with replacing the world’s secular institutions by the divine matrix. In the process, he’d flush the bulk of the world’s ordinary inhabitants into hell as an acceptable collateral damage.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/thiels-secretive-rome-conference-draws-church-attention-2026-03-15/
Unfortunately the Iran regime is also prepared to flush its own citizens down the toilet, and the rest of the world if that’s what it takes. That’s what “5D chess” Trump fails to account for in his calculus. It’s a stare-down between religious nutjobs.
I happen to be in London; took a bus that happened to pass the Iranian Embassy. Massive security of course, but the pavement opposite has a big semipermanent demo against the regime by Iranian exiles/migrants. “Thank you Donald John Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu”.
I do not care what people believe.
I care when it becomes criminal to challenge belief or to criticize the behavior of believers. Or criminal openly to be a nonbeliever.
I had the same stance when the belief was creationism.
This is not about belief. It is about how people treat each other.
petrushka:
How people treat each other is influenced by their beliefs. For an example, see my Huckabee comment above. Religion (and other ideologies) can do great harm that way.
petrushka,
‘The Crusades were not about belief”…
I think isms are rationalizations of propensities to act.
It’s kind of interesting that practices like stoning can be abandoned without rewriting the scripture that prescribed them.
I take this to mean that the scripture evolved to codify practice.
In my lifetime, religious observance has declined dramatically, from mandatory, to fringe. Churchgoing is seldom mentioned in movies or television.
So it is somewhat jarring to see de facto blasphemy laws emerge in countries that have all but abandoned public displays of religion.
The idea that Iran was any sort of threat even to its immediate neighbours is absolutely ludicrous.
You mean USA, right? Because which other such country is emerging?
Erik,
Well, there is clearly ‘some sort’ of threat, otherwise the attacks on neighbours would not be happening. The extent of that threat was exaggerated, but it’s clear that the regime will do anything to cling to power, no matter the cost.
Not a fan of rap or the Iranian regime, but this is a remarkably high-quality piece of propaganda.
These events are so recent that you should not need Google (or worse, AI) to recall the sequence of them. Namely, Trump shot a missile to kill Soleimani. Iran did not retaliate. Last year Iran was attacked in 12-day war. Iran only shot back at Israel. Now Trump brought an “armada” to the coasts of Iran and promised proper invasion (because this is what “help is on the way” to protestors meant).
Did you not notice who attacked first – in fact, who always without a single exception attacks first? Is it somehow unclear to you who the aggressor is? Why is it unclear?
Erik,
I am aware who the aggressors were. The aggressors were not neighbouring Gulf states.
Hypothetically, any country whose government actively opposes Islamophobia.
Harry Enten reacting in typical Harry Enten fashion to Trump’s abysmal approval rating on Iran:
A net approval of -58 is pretty astonishing. From Fox, no less.
Bill, are you with the independents on this one, or does your cult membership win out, as usual?
Those hypothetical countries are the worst.
Trump, at today’s Cabinet meeting:
Sure, Donald. It doesn’t affect us at all. That’s why everyone’s happy and no one is complaining about the price of gas.
Allan:
Compare that to the crap the White House is putting out.
keiths,
US President and economic genius fails to understand global fuel markets shock.
If I follow your “logic” correctly, if religious wars suck, evolution must gain the stinking link… finally…. lol
Can’t make sense of this. If this is modal logic, the initial premise is too vague. Religious wars can benefit some groups and individuals at the expense of others, at least temporarily. The initial premise of “evolution” is that things change over time, depending on what things are and what time is and how one measures time.
What are you trying to make sense of? Religion, Science or the world? It’s ALL corrupt and those who realize it sooner rather than later may take advantage. You won’t. Because your whole belief system has been based on so called science…
It’s all bs..
Your comment, J-Mac; specifically, whether you are trying to make a link between war and evolution or not.
All wars suck. I’m not sure anyone ever took up arms over the relative contributions of selection and drift, the rate of the molecular clock or the correct phylogeny of the Ptilonorhynchidae, though.
Are you saying that the neighbouring Gulf states are neutral countries? Having American bases on their soil makes them definitionally not neutral. Also, having American bases on their soil makes them definitionally legitimate targets when the aggressor is USA.
So, what were you saying?
I am disputing your claim that “The idea that Iran was any sort of threat even to its immediate neighbours is absolutely ludicrous.”. That they have lashed out in all directions is evidence against that claim. Of course, there are reasons for their targeting; it’s not completely out of the blue, but they seem to have needed little excuse, just as Israel did to start pummelling Beirut.
Allan, to J-Mac:
I guess you didn’t read to the end of the Wedge Document:
Now if they could just make it out of Phase I…
ETA: According to the document, all of this was supposed to happen by 2003:
They’re running a little late.
What’s missing from the discussion is the Catholic/Protestant dynamic.
Subspecies on the religious cladogram.
petrushka:
Speaking of which, is it just me, or have a lot of evangelicals converted to Catholicism lately? Even Candace Owens is now a Catholic.
ETA: From a 2024 Christianity Today article:
Allan:
Not yet, but the DI is in training:
Gemini is terrific. They’re all perfectly recognizable.
Traditionalist religions seem to be growing. That would include Islam.
But they did not lash out in all directions. For example nothing is happening in the Afghanistan direction.
The evidence for that it’s ludicrous to say that Iran was any sort of threat is that last year during the 12-day war Iran only threw rockets at Israel (who of course attacked first) and did nothing against American attacks. This year, too, there was no threat, except from USA/Israel’s side to Iran, nothing in the other direction.
Erik,
Sigh. They lashed out in sufficient directions to undermine the claim that they were no threat to neighbours. Neighbours without ties to the US were, of course, less likely targets.
Pretexts for war are an old game.
Gulf of Tonkin.
Utterly false.
First, to get into your head that Iran was a threat to its neighbours, Iran should have been a threat to neighbours before the war started. Of course Iran was no threat.
Second, to be able to claim right now that Iran is a threat to its neighbours, Iran should be attacking its neighbours disproportionately compared to the attacks that land in Iran. You know, disproportionately as in 1,195 Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, but two months later Israel had retaliated by a hundredfold, and thus had already earned the title of perpetrator of genocide from UN. Is Iran’s response disproportionate and genocidal like that? No. Iran’s response is on the weak side, does not measure up to its own casualties. So, you fail on this point too.
Iran was no threat to its neighbours and is not a threat to its neighbours right now either.
Iran is Shiite. Most of the Muslim world is Sunni.
Rational evaluations of threats are not relevant.
This Iran war has little to do with Muslims, be they Shiite or Sunni. Muslims did not start it.
USA, a theocratic crusading Christian Nationalist regime, and Israel, an apartheid Zionist regime, started the war. Edit: Both are also nuclear weapons countries, by the way, different from all other countries in the warzone.
Well, there was this little war between Iran and Iraq.
I forget what it was about.
What appeals to me is the “new way of scientific crusades”. In this scenario people who control the government convince the masses to get injected with bs to save others with products that were never designed to do so in the first place..
Unfortunately, people who bought into the crusades tend to believe the bs because they couldn’t care less about you, me or the truth…
How did you end up here? You cat clicked it?
Erik,
As I have said, attacks on uninvolved neighbours undermine this claim. Hosting US bases did not suddenly become an issue because the US attacked; it was always an issue. I am not saying in any way that the attack on Iran was justified. But the claim “it is laughable to say Iran was a threat to its neighbours’ is undermined by the extent of attacks on neighbours. Iran hates the US; by extension, it hates countries aligned with it.
Of course, we can continue to say “yes it is no it isn’t” till the end if time; it is simply a contest of opinion.
J-Mac,
Funnily enough (since you are obsessed by vaccination and want to make every thread be about it, while avoiding those threads that actually are), sowing mistrust of vaccines and ‘official narratives’ has been carried out by foreign powers with an interest in destabilosation. You fell for it, of course. That’s what I’d do if I wanted to undermine a country. Get suckers to believe the government wants you dead and viruses are a lie, leading to increase in preventable infectious diseases. That’s the real psyop.
What you have not said is which countries specifically are “uninvolved”. I submit that the reason why you have not said this is because there are no uninvolved countries.
It is ridiculous to pretend that among the countries that Iran attacked there is a single uninvolved country. You’ll see it as soon as you try in earnest to find one.
Erik,
They have US bases, and are allied to America more broadly. But until this attack, this was a situation that caused Iran no threat? They only just noticed all these allies of a country they have long felt threatened by? A country that bombed them only last year?
That US bases and US history of wars against Afghanistan and Iraq are a threat to Iran goes without saying. But this is the opposite of your original claim that Iran was a threat to its neighbours in all directions and to uninvolved countries.
I do not believe in belief, but I make exceptions.
I believe Islamophobia exists because people are afraid of Muslims.
I’m sure for much of the last millennium, there was Christophobia, for the same reason.
They sure as hell are winning the propaganda war
Every war ever is religious or ideological. What’s the difference?
One set of beliefs over another.
You think religion is bad and then you have no replacement for the people who must to believe.
Do you really “believe” mRNA “technology s going to save the humanity and you ?