Religion is dangerous
Posted in Old blogger by Twenty Major on January 13th, 2006
Stampeding Muslims. I ask you. No doubt somebody else will make the comparison with cattle but it’s quite crazy to think that 350 people were killed stampeding during a religious festival.
This would never have happened if the Catholic Church had managed to convert the Middle East instead of Africa. Then religious festivals become about drinking as much booze as possible and not trampling your fellow devotees to death.
Christ is born - booze. Christ has died - booze. Christ has risen again - booze.
Anyway, in Ireland you couldn’t have a stampede at a religious festival. We’ve made all our religious monuments stampede friendly since the terrible Newgrange crush of 1745 when 14 druids, some serfs and an unknown number of wenches crushed themselves to death during the winter solstice.
Take Croagh Patrick for example. This is a mountain in County Mayo and it is said that Saint Patrick himself climbed to the top, fasted for 40 days and then built a church there before throwing a bell down the mountain to banish all the snakes. He’s some fucking man. Doesn’t eat a thing for 40 days and then lashes out a church without a hardware store anywhere in site; beams, naves, altars, pulpits, sacristies, transepts and apses, the whole fucking lot. Then, with his stomach still rumbling, he gets rid of snakes before he goes to get a good fried breakfast.
Anyway, on the last Sunday of July pilgrims climb the mountain to give worship to … erm … God I think and I can guarantee you that if Joe Dolan himself was at the top waiting for them there wouldn’t be a stampede.
Why? Because they’re supposed to climb barefoot (if they want to be proper holy) and the path up the summit is littered with ankle breaking rocks. Try and stampede and you’d give up in seconds as you watched your ankle bone sticking out like in the Deer Hunter except that wasn’t an ankle bone but you know what I mean.
Muslims need to make their holy sites less accessible, perhaps taking away the wheelchair ramps would be a start or moving them underwater. It’s hard to stampede with 40lbs of oxygen on your back.