Friday, March 29, 2024

WILD COOT – Intraspection

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Mr Bulbulia, peace. If you look in the dictionary, you will find that “coot” means “any of various widely distributed swimming and diving birds of the genus Fulica”. There is also a secondary meaning, “a stupid or foolish person, often old’. Please feel free to choose the meaning you prefer to use. Your assertion that I am xenophobic, again I say, is a red herring, meant to sidestep the issue of “culture of the various countries at risk”. Your assurance that you are not to be feared is welcome and timely and the census of 2010 can put paid to any idea of proliferation in fertility or as you put it “rabbit’’ nestling as is sedulously the case in Europe. The apparent smallness in number in Barbados is a source of comfort just as it was in Trinidad.Take winnings, Mr Balbulia, and peace be unto you and your community but I made a point and am reluctant to continue an argument which hundreds of scholars more learned than the wild coot engaged in for centuries. The direction of the argument is beyond the intended scope of the article and can raise issues that Barbadians in an effort at cohesiveness tend only to discuss in private.My apparent ignorance (meaning I hope, lack of particular facts) may be caused by too diligent research in books and on the Internet, not having lived in an Islamic country and experienced people’s degree of tolerance and equality of gender. I am required to take up a lady’s challenge. She invited me to study Sharia laws. I started to surf the Net and would appreciate if my readers would follow me. Turn to Sharia Law Women on Google (one may say that it is totally biased). But I say that one should be very thankful one is born and living in Barbados for now.Next, on the same Google, scroll up, “American thinkers” – the top ten reasons why Sharia is bad for all societies. Two laws struck me. Execute homosexuals (as opposed to elevating them to the priesthood) and Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death. (Well you know nearly the whole of Barbados gone through the eddoes, men and women.) Look up under Sharia law, Islam Governing Under Sharia. Mr Balbulia,  check http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=6-3X5hlFXYU that has misled me.When consulted about the rewards of the afterlife, the Bishop told me “that’s none of your business”. I wanted to know the various attributes that would entitle me to a free passage to heaven. The day will soon come, and I need to make things right since I do not believe that I will return as a monkey – despite déjà-vu. A friend of mine told me that there are many roads to hell and that they are paved with good intentions and fanatics. Well, well! Buddha, Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Rastafarian, Pilgrim Holiness, Witnesses and the in-betweens, all think theirs is the one and only path.“Religion is the opium of the people,” says Karl Mark.I am going to heed the Bishop’s advice and stop questioning. But that is unfair, my tutor always taught me to question and make my point even if it got me banished from the classroom. “Do not be afraid Harry, even if you are like Macauley’s Horatius. Gird yourself with sword and shield and stand alone even if you could have saved yourself when the bridge ‘hang tottering over the boiling tide’.”    And so, my friend, I come not to bury Caesar or even to praise him. I make my point and like the moving finger, I move on. Done with that! You could talk “hoosey”.“But Harry you can’t do that. If you start an argument you can’t just say you done with that. You have to stay the course. You remember the labours of Hercules. He did not shirk the trials. He consulted the oracle at Delphi (the Net) and got good advice.”These are days of sadness and prayer in our country.

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