Reverend Manny and The Twilight Empire

Very rarely do I take blogs/articles/posts as personally as the one.

I live in a multicultural neighborhood in brooklyn. I’m a damn proud New Yorker and urbanite, and it has a great deal to do with the way the city brings ppl from all over the planet together. In my neighborhood, the hegemony belongs to the old italian, german, nordic families of bay ridge, and more recently they’re being joined by the yuppies. The underclasses are essentially the eastern european immigrants (which i am), the mexicans, the ecuadorians and five to seven different types of arabs. The interchange of these more than dozen cultures is what gives the neighborhood its flavor (which, btw, thanks to these soulless yuppies is quickly being diluted into the same bland meaninglesness they’ve turned the village, williamsburg, park slope and dumbo into)…

And I love living among various ethnicities, races, nationalities and faiths. I was raised that way, as many of us urbanites were, and what’s more, I find it personally edifying and refreshing.

That being said…

I have a cute girlfriend. We walk up and down bay ridge ave and colonial at least a few times a day. One of the most fundamentally disturbing things is the way male members of the fundamentalist Muslim community stare at her. This is as explicit and direct as I can say it without using cusswords.

I mean outright staring at her body the whole time while smoking a cigarette outside OF THE MOSQUE. Hold the fucking train… WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?

Here’s the FUNDAMENTAL thing I hate about FUNDAMENTALISTS: they are LYING hypocrites who proclaim their faith, while living according to different terms.

For example, a pack of arab kids were biking down bay ridge ave., after harassing an old lady down the street (mind you–I saw the whole scene and sincerely wish it would’ve played out otherwise). They zoom through another crowd yelling threats and obscenities, including, “i’m a suicide bomber”.

For example, (just to give the X-ians some lovedy love too) when a massive worldwide church teaches humility in property and in relation to authority for all ppl. This group “all ppl” does not include: the rich, the nazis (check your history book, dumb dumb, the pope supported the “final solution”) or the church itself. Hmm

For example, middle eastern men who have shouted me down in conversation, insisting that all women are genetically, spiritually and morally inferior to men. On the flip end, they insist that women should be covered from head to toe. Why? Why is it that men need to hide the very form of their gender counterpart? Originally (and yes tardo, once again you should actually FIND OUT about history) the head to toe covering was for the richest classes of women in the arab world–to protect them from the elements and eyes of the outside world. Now, it is enforced, it seems to me, because of the stupidity, backwardness and utter weakness of males–fear of rape, of staring eyes…. Go to jersey city, and you’ll see the same men, who enslave their wives to enforced domesticity, UNABLE to drive!! Whoa!! Wait, the woman is so stupid she has to walk behind you, but she’s capable enough to drives, raise the kids and handles the finances of the home? Surely you jest! Perhaps you’re just a fucking child… who insists the rules apply when it benefits them and insist they don’t, when the rules inconvenience them. This is hypocrisy of the lowest, dumbest and most shameful kind. It renders us all lower and more base.

Now, i’m a 20something, and an editor of an alternative magazine. I don’t consider myself Mr. Fringe or Avante in the least, but I’m a pretty open minded dude. I have christian friends and muslim friends, asian friends, black friends, arab friends, desi friends, african friends, haitian friends, white friends, slavic friends, russian friends and croatian friends. I have my own hypocricies and too many moral failings to count. I don’t claim to be the ideal human in the least.

So don’t take this for some better-than-thou speech. It isn’t. Rather, I’m begging, literally BEGGING (PLEASE!), the adults in the religious world to take charge. These hateful hypocritical bastards that have taken over two of the four major world-religions, are gonna lead us all down a horrible and destructive path.

I’m an atheist. If I’m wrong, pray for me and forgive me. But don’t you fucking dare insinuate that because you believe in an invisible force that I don’t believe in–this somehow makes you better than me. If you really are “better” than me, than show it in your actions, in your comportment with other humans, in your empathetic and caring involvement in OUR community.

Saying you’re better than me, because of your faith, all the time, is a lot like a teenage boy ALWAYS insisting his dick is big. If you need to say it that often–IT’S PROBABLY NOT TRUE!!!

Munch the Porons (and learn to forgive),

Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire

ps… happy early ramadan to my muslim readers (good luck, guys, the days are extra long this year)

pps…. thank god for immortal technique

ppps…. let’s free ourselves already