Sunday, April 13, 2008

On judgement, on prejudgement and prejudice...

TF has recently posted on the subject of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I make no criticism of his statement, in fact it is interesting and to the point.

I am using it (abusing TF?) to make an much wider point.

TF outlines briefly the difference between FLDS and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and then branches into the matters of belief and difference with particular reference to Oprah Winfrey and her support of Obama. What that has to do with the FLDS escapes me, but it makes for an interesting read.

The FLDS has hit the news (again) as a result of their support for polygamy and hence TF's need to distinguish between that and the LDS as the "true" belief.

My mind turns in a different direction, turning more on the impact that a small, extreme group can have on a much wider community. There are probably so many examples that might be chosen; the Asian populations in Auckland about whom Winnie the Pooh has already been beating his electoral drum.

There is one very big example that I want to turn to - one which potentially involves some 1/3 of the global population.

As the consequence of the actions of one small group, numbering at that time no more than perhaps 100,000, the whole of the Islam belief and culture has been promoted, castigated, labelled, and criticised as "terrorists". Exclude the "Palestinians" from this as they pre-existed the actions of AlQaeda by a long way in both distance and time.

As a result of that, Islam is now degraded in the minds of much of the Western world to the status of cultural and religious pariahs irrespective of their beliefs.

That, dear friends, differs not at all from judging the LDS on the basis of the beliefs and actions of the few nutters who make up the FLDS.

1 comment:

T. F. Stern said...

I think you got it, the fact remains that the average person has no idea of the differences between, say a person who is Jewish and one who is Orthodox Jew. Without a much deeper interest, they both are Jewish and so they are both the same. As you say, how unfortunate that a small percentage of folks cast a shadow on others.

I joked with one fellow that if he had any questions he should talk with one of my wives. I'm not sure if he understood that as a joke. Shame on me for having a sense of humor and a warped mind.