शान्ति This Ain't About, Yo

In aftermathismatic fervor over the satanic & diabolical massacre (please pardon my hyperbole for a moment) in Mumbai a few days back, some Muslims appear to have suddenly gotten balls. At least that's what you or I might get from the reportage in the most recent online edition of the Times of India
     The article, however, has only one quote from anyone Muslim saying that the Mumbai carnage was troubling. To wit:

"The occupation of the synagogue and killing people in hotels tarnishes the Muslim faith," said Kazim al-Muqdadi, a political science lecturer at Baghdad University. "Anyone who slaughters people and screams 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Great) is sick and ignorant."

     And meanwhile, back at the madrassa, a person named " Sheik Youssef al-Ayeri said the killings are in line with Islam.

'It's all right for Muslims to set the infidels' castles on fire, drown them with water .... and take some of them as prisoners, whether young or old, women or men, because it is one of many ways to beat them,' he wrote in the al-Fallujah forum."

     And as much as I am willing to take one quote against the carnage with one quote for the massacre, I'm still wondering, among other things, what took these few more vocal than your average sheep Muslims so long to get up about the inherent violence hidden in the untranslatable verses of their holy book.
     Or to put it simple: The massacre was one of a continuing list of atrocities perpetrated against civil society by a religion that preaches in text and pulpit & deed the annihilation of everything that goes against the creed. And that includes members of that creed's community. And here we are, seven years and some after the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers, Muslims are finally getting the idea that such madness might be harmful to the view of others toward their faith.
     Yeah, right.
     Fact is, somebody probably went fishing to find out how many Muslims might have something to say about it. Such a fishing expedition eventually led to the two quotes above ending up in a small article on a web site.
     Seven years after 9/11.
     Or some five hundred years after the reconquista
     Finally.

At the same time, after watching this madness for the past however many years that the show's been on the air, The Daily Show has also taken off the gloves in a more forthright way than they have since 9/11 knocked the entire television audience into holy-shit-mode seven and some years back.
     You check that response online here.

At which point we get down to the part where I reiterate once again (kinda like déjà vu all over again) my feeling that religion and the superstitious mind from which it springs will be the ruination of the species.
     Of course, I am now so far gone in my cynicism toward my species and my pessimism that there will never be a better reason for us all to just die out and let the processes of physics on the planet carry on blindly in our befuddled, cranky, lame, abusive, self-absorbed, self-centered, "screw-you-I-got-mine-every-crumb-for-himself-his-hair-stands-up-and-crackles" way of doing things absence.
     And yes, from time to time I see signs and portents that say much about the ability of our species to actually act like we have a rational brain in our heads or that we may just for one moment have worth more than the last roll of toilet paper the cats shredded up for me special over night. Sometimes it happens. People behave in ways more appropriate for what we presume to be the most rational & knowledgeable species in the whole goddamn universe.
     Sometimes I see that.
     Most of the time I don't, and most of those "most of the time" times I see that it is usually a handful of considerably addled and viscious (in ways that no wild or predatory animal would even begin to understand) humans going on a tear about an imaginary friend or some conception of having been dishonored or whatever silly puerile bullshit we dream up. Most of the time it's a couple loonies, truth up.
     Most of the time it's insanity.
     And that gives me another chance to reiterate once again (kinda like déjà vu all over again) my feeling that there are some six billion point 993 many of us; that we should just snuff it and let the processes of physics on the planet carry on blindly in our befuddled, cranky, lame, abusive, self-absorbed, self-centered, "screw-you-I-got-mine-every-crumb-for-himself-his-hair-stands-up-and-crackles" way of doing things absence.
     And if you think I'm getting boringly repetitious, stick it in yer heiny, hotshot.
     I think the entire species is getting repetitious. In act, word, thought and, best of all, conversations with imaginary friends for whom we are quite willing to kill many folks who otherwise ain't caused much more harm than making someone slow down at a crosswalk.
     These repeated killings and massacres in the name of a nonexistent entity are getting repetitious. Goddamn repetitious. F@%king repetitious, actually. And it's time for those who don't agree with the perpetrators of these horrible travesties of reason and intellect to pick up the stick and beat the living bejebus out of those who think that rape and pillage, piracy and murder, subjugation and pedophilia (among other brutalities) are the course of life.
     It's time to end the bloodshed and misery by giving to those who perpetrate bloodshed and misery the chance to kill themselves off before we get pissed off enough to do it for them.
     Which presents the conundrum of capital punishment, into which I will not now delve, since I've begun to become one of those who feels very strongly about the need for capital punishment, bitter old shit that I am. Even as my family tries to keep me from sitting in a chair Christmas morning, happy with what they gave me but still unable to smile a genuine smile 'cause there's peace on earth and all that happy shit.