Dead Wild Roses

   I was going to preface this post with a Captain Stupid character but I found that the outright level of stupid going on here required a (much) higher rank in the Hurr-Durr Legion to properly accommodate the conditions being described.  The leaders of the ulta-orthodox Belz sect in North London eminently qualify for Admiralty in the Legion.  These antediluvian bags of douche recently deployed a fatwah against women who have the audacity to drive cars with the “immodest” goal of… it is almost nigh unspeakable… yet intone it I must… (*screwing courage to the sticking place*) – taking their children to school!!!! (!). 

“The Belz, who originated in Ukraine in the early 19th Century, are an ultra-Orthodox sect who follow Haredi Judaism.

Leaders of the ultra-Orthodox Belz sect in north London wrote to parents saying “no child will be allowed to learn in our school” if their mother drives.

Women driving “goes against the laws of modesty within our society”, it said.”

Furthermore:

“The letter, which was signed from the “spiritual management” of Belz institutions, said: “There has been an increase in incidences of mothers of our students who have begun driving cars, something that goes against the laws of modesty within our society.”

Well, well, well.  Here we have, once again, patriarchal religious bullshit fucking up women’s lives.  Ostensibly in the pursuit of modesty women, already tasked with raising their children and domestic duties because it is their god mandated role, can’t do the car thing because that might give them airs about independence or freedom; certainly anything that detracts from their roles as broodmares and domestic servants must be against God.

I knew this was going to be a pithy article when I saw the Ultra-Orthodox in the title because as soon as the religious attach the word ‘Orthodox’ to their particular school of magic – you know horrendous things are on the way.  On the downside, treating women as chattel is only Level One in their quest to construct a broken religious society.

These regressive dolts embrace ignorance with the mightiest of aplomb.

“An emphasis on studying the Torah has led to concerns that Haredi boys are leaving school with few qualifications.

Men often continue with their prayer studies after marriage, rather than seek work, and those who do have employment have been affected by changes in traditional occupations, like textiles.

As a result, poverty and deprivation tend to hit Haredi households hard, and there’s evidence that Haredi areas in Hackney, for example, receive higher than average rates of means-tested benefits.”

So the focus of their education for dudes is to think-fap on their magic book until they are useless to themselves and the rest of society.  Care to guess who has to work in the real world and make real money aaaaand still be the domestic servant?  And of course, living in a secular society means that the rest of the population has to pay for their religious bridge-to-nowhere-educmacational-bollocks-regime.  Never, not even for one minute, should you consider religion to be a positive force in society, these yahoos exemplify the bulk-stupid that most religions bring to the societal table.

“[…] from the Belz community, a spokesman said it never intended to “stigmatise or discriminate against children or their parents”.

It said: “We are proud of what we stand for and we do not feel the need to excuse ourselves for our deeply held beliefs and staunchly maintained way of life.

“It has withstood the test of time and is not prone to the vagaries of passing fads.”

Counterexample time!

It was not our intent to stigmatize colour children by giving them their own drinking fountain and forbidding them to use the one labelled ‘Whites Only’ – because intent, like their religiously-addled ‘declarations’, are fucking magical.

I cast a cynical eye toward a belief system that is evaluated and venerated on the single condition of being ‘long-lived’.  The Bubonic plague has withstood the test of time as well – checkmarks of goodness to be dispensed for all…

The extra-sad take away from this is that these religious misogynists, by enforcing the ban on women driving their kids to school, has created a what is essentially a nightmare scenario for British legislators.

“This goes to the heart of what is a fantastically difficult problem now facing the government in drafting a counter-extremism bill that protects against extremism, but also safeguards religious freedom.

Earlier this year, Home Secretary Theresa May defined extremism as “the vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

It throws up the question, is a religious ban on women driving active opposition to the British value of individual liberty? And how do you square that with the other British value of mutual respect and tolerance for different faiths and beliefs?”

The above is worth an entire post unto itself just to document the outrageous pretzel-bends secular lawmakers are undertaking in attempting to deal with this religious foolishness.  Invoking the religious tolerance idea for misogynistic practices that are clearly antithetical to a secular society seems misguided to me.  But that, as stated, is another debate.

Let’s close instead with a statement from the high-admiral shitlords themselves:

“The statement continued: “In an effort to formulate these guidelines the issue of women driving cars became conflated with broader issues which we intended to address. “

They know.

You don’t release baffle-gab press releases like the above without not knowing.

How could they not know that the stupid shit they are imposing on women and children stinks all the way up to their imaginary heaven.  Once their nuclear-grade stupid hit the Press and the rest of secular society, it was rightly called out for being pure Dumbonium, their only recourse is to hide behind the thin mantle of ‘religious tolerance’ and hope the attention of the public wanes from their self-created sewer of misguided religious tomfoolery.

And there we have it folks – religion once again attempting to lead society away from civilization and modernity.

[Source 1, 2]

Many thanks to Intransigentia for bringing this lovely story to my attention.