Halaal cross buns and Christian hypersensitivity

That Sheffield-refugee 6000 has beaten me to the draw on this one (and also on Red Bull pulling their blasphemous ad) – both posts are worth a read. Errol Naidoo’s outraged newsletter regarding Woolworth’s latest offence against women, children, God, Naidoo, decency and family values hasn’t arrived yet, so we can’t be sure just how much offence Woolworths have caused, but it seems to be quite a lot. You see, they had the unfathomably insensitive idea of putting a Halaal certification on hot cross buns.

Yes, hot cross buns – those delicacies eaten over Easter, a religious festival that some Christians refuse to celebrate because of its pagan origins. But no matter how offensive it might be to have the obvious pointed out to you (and it often is), these buns have always been halaal. And kosher. And the relevant stamps have been on the packaging for years now. From next year, you’ll be able to buy the buns without the relevant stamps, but they will be the same buns as before – still kosher, still halaal. But the hypersensitive Christians among us will at least then be able to go back to burying their heads in the sand, and forget about this full-scale assault on all they hold dear.

But since when have hot cross buns been considered a religious food, in any case? For quite a while, at least according to Wikipedia, which tells us that they were “eaten by Saxons in honour of the goddess Eostre”. We should certainly boycott those blasphemous Saxons, then. And how is this worthy of a boycott threat to Woolworths in any case (not to mention a front-page story in The Mercury), when all Woolworths are doing is reminding a significant proportion of their client-base that these buns won’t result in whatever damnation the eating of something without a halaal stamp is supposed to cause?

There are more serious things to worry about. Not only genuinely outrageous things, like the occasional evils committed in the name of religion (like the girl who recently died during an attempted exorcism) , but also (less serious, of course) things like consistency. These buns are sold year-round, and again, have been for years (with the halaal stamp). If hot cross buns have special significance to Christians, I’d imagine that significance to be strongly linked to Easter. So, if you want an extra thing to hyperventilate about, dear Christians, consider boycotting Woolworths until they also agree to only sell hot cross buns between certain dates, specified by you (or God, if you can get her on the line).

The fact that Woolworths have capitulated to this hypersensitivity is absurd. The complainants should simply have been told to grow up and remember that they live in a multicultural society, where they can’t demand special respect for grievances such as these. Judging by the jokes and mockery from other Christians on Woolworth’s Facebook page and on Twitter, this threatened boycott would probably have resulted in approximately a dozen fewer hot cross buns being sold, and surely that’s a worthwhile price for Woolworths to pay to avoid lowering the bar on what counts as significant offence even further?

On a related (albeit tangential) note, consider this billboard I spotted in Camps Bay recently:

We probably won’t see any claims of copyright infringement emerging from Tiger Brands, because of the default respect that is afforded to religion. Perhaps if the Laugh it Off folk had used this logo on a t-shirt there would be some complaint from the copyright holders, but here it would no doubt simply be considered a light-hearted and excusable appropriation of their logo. They wouldn’t mind this usage, in other words, because the association with this church is by default a positive association. Well, seeing as I’m an anti-natalist as well as an atheist, I’ll henceforth boycott All Gold until they sue that damn church. Perhaps.

Of course I won’t, partly because I don’t care, and because I might have done the same thing if I were involved in the billboard’s planning, and the same (no-) thing if representing Tiger Brands. It’s not worth a fuss, and can only be considered offensive from a position of deep insecurity (and of course, the same sort of response can be found among atheists also). And if Christians want to boycott Woolworths over this, all they will achieve is diminishing their own credibility, as 6000 points out in the link above. As for me, this Easter I’ll hopefully be able to enjoy some hot question buns, as in previous years, thanks to my blasphemous wife:

Insha’Allah, of course.

Crazies gang up against god

In case you missed it, some Muslims, Jews and Christians gathered on the West Bank on November 11 to pray for rain. A curious aspect of these rituals is of course that god (all three of them, or 5, depending on how you understand the trinity-voodoo) already knows that it’s raining, and also knows about the drought that has apparently depleted Israel’s water supply by 25%. It’s all part of his plan, remember? God also knows that you want it to rain – he knew before you did, and certainly before you decided to arrange this group-prayer thing. But seeing as it hasn’t rained, he doesn’t want it to rain – and however much you plead, it won’t make a difference, because he also already knows why you want it to rain. See how this works?

It will rain when he’s damn well good and ready for it to rain. In the meanwhile, remember that he loves you. Or some of you, and wants the others to go to some place of damnation, for they are infidels. Or something – it’s sometimes difficult to keep it all straight in one’s head.

While it’s no doubt a good thing that people are setting aside their differences with respect to invisible people in the sky to engage with some common cause, it’s nevertheless sad that they can’t do so with respect to real, existing authorities like governments, terrorist groups, insane Mullah’s etc. Natural phenomena aren’t controllable by chanting – but other forms of noises, like those involved in rational and civilized conversation – can help to eliminate other forms of ill. Like people killing each other.

Woolworths offends the Christians

Those of you on Facebook can enjoy a few minutes of entertainment at the expense of some frothing at the mouth fundumbentalists, who are incensed at Woolworths’ decision to pull some Christian magazines from their shelves. The very Christian homophobe Errol Naidoo was quick out of the starting blocks, sending out a newsletter headlined “Christianity Not Welcomed At Woolies!” while the story was breaking on News24 and TimesLive.

Naidoo is apparently suffering from some memory loss to accompany his dementia.

God cares how you dress

As is customary for omnipotent beings, the Christian god has a deep concern regarding what you wear, as John van Heerden reminds us on his News24 blog. Five crucial questions need to be asked and answered to god’s satisfaction before you can present yourself to the world with your virtue and dignity intact, and your soul unthreatened. As was recently the case with Frontline Fellowship, though, god doesn’t seem to care much about what us non-believers tend to think of as genuine moral issues, such as plagiarism or lying. This, at least, seems to be the message that John van Heerden is attempting to convey through presenting someone else’s article as his own – the advice on attire is entirely cut-and-pasted from Momof9’s place.