Thoughts and happenings from a life on Malta

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When does the passing of wind by an obscure pastor in Florida result in a bad case of global diarrhoea? It's when the head of a 50-strong(!) religious community - Terry Jones - threatens to burn some books which have 'Koran' for a title.

As one who grew up in an environment where censorship was, and to a lesser degree still is, endemic, I hesitate to censor his burning of the books. He has an opinion to express and though we might want to shout our opposition, we shouldn't shut him up. On the other hand, I have a visceral dislike to seeing the ink of a printed word melting in a bonfire because even this is an attempt at censoring ideas, albeit in a symbolic way. Over the millennia, too many temporal and spiritual dictators have used the element of fire in an attempt to control the minds of the people.

A congregation of fifty speaks and a religion of one billion feels threatened enough to take to the streets and issue counter-threats.

A congregation of fifty speaks and leaders of nations of millions who have far more serious matters to deal with feel obliged to join in the debate.

I've never been one for mathematics so could someone please help me reconcile this unbalanced equation?

This related article might interest you: Religion of Division

"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