Thoughts and happenings from a life on Malta

"Christian Europe will never allow Muslim Turkey to join the European Union." These words, spoken by a client of mine during a discussion, clearly illustrate the division arising from the strict adherence to religion.

While religion is a spiritual matter, the leaders of the various beliefs have, over the centuries, been too concerned with the material world. I ask:

• How exactly does abstaining from pork but eating fish improve my chances of meeting the creator of both pig and fish?
• Does wrapping up the human form in a chador show greater appreciation of the supreme being’s work?
• How does the use or non-use of a condom improve my chances of slipping into heaven?
• Why should a religion be led solely by the male half of humankind if god breathed live into men and women?

Religions today are akin to football supporters' clubs, more intent on increasing membership than on the edification of mankind’s spirit. This is so evident in their willingness to resort to the numbers game when trying to justify the validity of their belief: X hundreds of millions believe in “our” god, or, believers of “our” faith are growing by Y percent annually. With so many zeros in the statistics, there must be one hell of a gridlock on the road to heaven.

Some more maths. Take the thousands of religious rules that exist worldwide, multiply them by the billions of adherents and the result is an equation of extreme complexity.

This related article might interest you: Burning of the Books

The State first moved against Mark Camilleri, the editor of the student newspaper Ir-Realta’, for publishing a piece of fiction - Li Tkisser Sewwi - deemed injurious to an adult readership.

The State has now gone for the author of the story, Alex Vella Gera, because the explicit language used is apparently considered alien to the Maltese public and corrupts our morals.

The State must now prosecute all those who have read this controversial piece of literature, if only to maintain its credibility as the persecutor of free thought and expression.

In this respect, I confess that I, Sandro Bugeja, holder of ID 0272264M, have voluntarily read the complete story. Furthermore, in connection with the charge of “injuring public morals or decency”, I am ready to take an affidavit confirming that as a member of the public, I did not feel injured in any way after having read it.

(This letter was published in The Times of 22 March 2010)

Government and opposition have agreed, in a rare show of national unity, to set an example to all workers during these times of economic hardship.

While workers’ holidays have been reduced in recent years on the pretext of making Malta more competitive in the international markets and more attractive to foreign investors, our elected members of parliament have decided to grant themselves additional vacation leave stretching from February 10^th to March 01^st;  this, of course, without a concomitant reduction in salary.

While regretting this forced leave of absence from parliamentary duties, Foreign affairs Minister Tonio Borg, on behalf of all the MPs, explained that this was actually a case of force majeure, as a casual election was to be held to fill the seat vacated by John Dalli. It appears that the sorrow generated by his departure and the tangible void of his vacant seat will lead to a gloomy environment in parliament, thus breaching the Health and Safety Regulations that cover places of work.  A psychiatrist was reported as saying:  “Unhappiness in one’s workplace can lead to chronic depression, which can easily be avoided by the therapeutic benefits of being out in the open.” In view of this advice, our MPs might prefer to relax on the benches of a refurbished St George’s Square just outside the palace doors – I now cannot but admire the foresight of this administration when it undertook the upgrading of the square.