Religious Sense of Humour

This isn’t going to be a popular post, but going by the feedback so far, no-one’s been reading anyway…

This train of thought all started with that news item about the teacher’s assistant who was suspended and then dismissed for wearing a full shroud while at work. It’s not clear whether the children made complaints about being able to hear her or not, there are claims and counter claims. The woman at the centre, Aishah Azmi said that when asked to remove the veil durring English lessons, she would comply but would not remove it in front of male colleagues.

This lead to her suspension and eventually to her dismissal.

However, she did admit that she did not wear the veil when she was interviewed by a male governor, even though she had done in previous interviews.

Now she says that the children can understand hre just fine, and maybe that’s true, but I just have this quote from the film Hitch in my head:

‘60% of all human communication is nonverbal, body language; 30% is your tone, so that means 90% of what you’re saying ain’t coming out of your mouth.’

Now comes the controversial part of it. I think the problem lies in religion itself. It’s been said that the majority of Muslims have no sense of humour about their religion.

Three clergymen are playing golf and trying to decide how much money to give to charity. One says ‘I know, we draw a circle on the ground, throw all the money into the air and whatever lands inside the circle, we give to charity.’ The next one says ‘No, we draw a circle on the ground, throw all the money into the air and whatever lands outside the circle, we give to charity.’ The third says ‘No, no, we throw all the money into the air, and whatever God wants, he keeps.’

Try that joke, but replace the clergymen with muslim clerics and see how many laughs you get. Or watch a standup, because very few of them will try jokes about muslims.

Why is this important? Because laughter is one of the best communication methods we have. It says ‘Don’t mind me, I’m harmless.’ It helps build bridges and relax paople who are apprehensive about each other. And if someone can’t have a laugh about their religion, it makes everyone else deeply nervous, even though they would have difficulty rationalising it.

Religion itself seems to be the problem. It’s all a bunch of rules and regulations, that can get so complicated that it’s no wonder that people have difficulty seperating it from faith. It used to be simple. Take the ten commandments. Today they seem out-dated, but a thousand years ago, people living in small rural communities, these rules made for a good society; don’t kill, don’t steal, help out strangers.

And then came people willing to re-interpret these rules for a more modern society. Don’t kill, unless it’s your enemy. Don’t steal, unless you need it more. Help out strangers, as long as they’re the same race/religion as you.

In 3001, Arthur C Clarke described that deep religious feelings were a form of mental illness. In his vision of the distant future, everyone was either deist or theist. One group believe there’s at least one god. The others believe there’s at most one god.

It’s a nice way to look at the universe. Me? Well, that’s a topic for another blog…