This morning I was having one of my regular early morning chats with the family capitalist brother (who likes to chat to me a from his car as he does the morning rounds of his empire) and he was chiding me for not blogging about the recent UN condemnation of the Holy see for not doing more about clerics who sexually abused children. Well I have thought about it and as serious as I think the issue of clerical abuse is I also think that the UN body involved has more than a few axes to grind and as a consequence their criticism is itself somewhat flawed, not that I am saying that any  sexual abuse of children can or should be ignored its just that I can’t help but think that   ANYTHING  that comes out of the UN is dodgy and that we should suspect hidden agendas in almost all cases. Further to some extent I buy the argument that the individual elements of the church have a certain level of individual autonomy that has not been considered or understood by the UN. That said I don’t really want to talk about abuse within the Catholic Church  or even the arguable worse revelations about abuse within boys homes run by the Salvation Army that have been aired in the royal commission recently either. No, my attention today is  on this story as reported in today’s Fairfax press

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Cue the apologists from the left for anything done in the name of Allah, after all they may argue that Ahmad Chamma, 26 was just being a good and devout Muslim who is following the example of the Prophet in marrying a young  prepubescent girl. It even appears that the man in question has  waited till the girl is older than  was the case with Mohammad and his child bride. But what horrifies me is that this unacceptable situation appears to have been endorsed by his mosque, and despite the disclaimer in the quote above I doubt that there was a lack of consent or even active endorsement of the union  from the girl’s parents either.

Now I’m going to ask you, dear reader, to consider this; which is ethically worse, that individuals with in an religion act counter to its teachings and use their position with its power structure to find, groom, and exploit children or individuals within a religion who follow the example of its founder to exploit and sexually abuse children?

To be frank I don’t think there is much in it between the two, but on balance I tend to think that the latter is worse because it has made such abuse more blatant , “culturally defensible”and more immune to any possibility that the vile practice can be extinguished.

Cue Richard Ryan Comrades

check out the source of these clever cartoons by clicking the image