1 Million Muslims!!!

I have been monitoring the Atheist Foundation of Australia’s “I will be marking No Religion on the 2011 Australian Census” Facebook group over the past few days, and fielding questions from a number of sectors.

A number of people have asked about marking themselves down as “atheist” or “agnostic”, which are both subsections of the “no religion” category (codes 7012 and 7011 respectively).  There are some who post all sort of nonsense in order to appear smart, or just troll members (and I have taken this opportunity to block such morons from my Facebook feed).  But the most common post by far is still this nonsense, which I have posted about before:

My stock reply to this has become:

All Muslims *should* tick “Muslim”, all Chrsitians *should* tick “Christian”, and alll those who think talking donkeys, virgin births, healing blindness with spit, casting demons into pigs, rising from the dead, and flying into Heaven is bat shit crazy should write “no religion”.

The source of the idiotic garbage seems to be the brain dead members of the One Nation Party.  So in the interests of educating the unwashed sheeple who continually spew this crap, I humbly ask you to consider the following:

1,000,000 Muslims?

In the last census 340,400 people identified themselves as Muslim.  That’s a measly 1.7% of the Australian population.  Are we to believe Muslims have managed to increase their numbers 3 fold in 5 years?  In any case, how can you possibly know there are 1,000,000 Muslims in the country when the census hasn’t been bloody conducted yet?

Furthermore, in the 2006 census 12,700,000 Australians identified themselves as one of the many flavours of Christian.  That’s 64% of the population!  I can see why the vast majority is seriously worried about this 1.7%, who worship the same freaking god (yeah, I looked it up) [1].

“No religion” means the numbers of Muslims will increase?

Those self identifying as Muslim should do so if they honesty believe the tenets of the faith.  If not, they should mark themselves down as “no religion” or whatever religion they have converted to (provided they have not been killed as apostates in the process). The campaign is aimed at getting people to consider the question seriously and answer the official government form honestly.  What is so evil and terrifying about that?

No difference between Mosques, Cathedrals, and Temples.

All the same mumbo jumbo voodoo witch doctor bullshit to me, but whatever floats your boat.  If people want to get together and thank their sky wizard for letting them live another day – knock yourself out.  I think you’re stupid, but that’s another topic.  It’s a free country and you should be allowed to do what you like so long as your not harming others or infringing on their rights.

On a positive, a few minor memes highlighting the stupidity of this sentiment have surfaced, notably:

“If you don’t tick Jedi in the census, the Sith will build a Death Star in your street.”

and

“Of you don’t tick Christian, the Pastafarians will build an Italian restaurant in your street.”

Sweet!

What’s so bad about a Mosque anyway?

The entire premise of this slimy chain mail is to foster fear, mistrust, and hatred of Muslims.  What a despicable basis for a campaign – especially from a political party aiming for a single united nation, assumedly based on the Christian values of tolerance and acceptance. The same freedoms Christians have enjoyed for decades must also apply to every other faith in a modern, progressive secular society such as Australia.  Section 116 of the Australian Constitution guarantees the government cannot make laws promoting or prohibiting and religion.  Don’t believe me?  Read it yourself:

116. The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

What we are seeing is deep rooted primal fear from the Christian Right.  They are scared of anything different, whether it be Muslims or those dirty unbelievers.  At least the Muslims believe in a god, those atheists don’t believe in anything! [2] The Christian Right and their unthinking followers recoil from anything remotely alien and desire to homogenise our culture, beliefs, and values. [3]

One Nation indeed.  Conform, or be driven out of town by yokels with pick forks and torches.

Footnotes

[1] Figures are from the Australian Bureau of Statistics media fact sheet, issued June 27, 2007.

[2] Of course, that’s bollocks.  Atheists simply reject the theists claims because they have not supplied sufficient evidence to support their outrageous claims.

[3] Yeah, I used a word with “homo” in it.  See what I did there?

Tagged with: Census, Islam, Muslim, Trolls

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