New Bank Holiday

All

Yes indeed. All the more reason not to re-import it via the practces of probably the most oppressive, homophobic and misogynistic religious culture on the planet.
So your message for the remaining communities of nuns in Ireland who wear similar headgear is? Do you get outraged every time RTE show the nuns going out to vote at election time?
 
So your message for the remaining communities of nuns in Ireland who wear similar headgear is? Do you get outraged every time RTE show the nuns going out to vote at election time?
They were brainwashed into dedicating their lives to an invisible sky fairy so it's a shame to see such wasted potential but if they leave they won't be beaten by their families of ostracised and they weren't forced into it in the first place. That said Christianity, after it was taken over and turned into the State religion of Rome, was extremely oppressive of women and minorities. When it was able it was far more oppressive than Islam ever was. It is only as society has become more secular that Christianity has had to adapt to a more enlightened and moral world view.
 
We have Muslim nuns?
Oh, I get it now. It's not actually about wearing a scarf that you have a problem. It's just with any representation of Muslim religion as a normal choice, which it obviously is for millions of people around the world, and many people in ireland.
 
Oh, I get it now. It's not actually about wearing a scarf that you have a problem. It's just with any representation of Muslim religion as a normal choice, which it obviously is for millions of people around the world, and many people in ireland.
Religion generally is more than a bit foolish so the more silly habits to add to it (see what I did there), the more foolish it becomes.

Teaching women to be submissive to men from the time they are children and then presenting their submissiveness as a choice is, to me, more than a bit distasteful.
Given the stance of every Abrahamic religion on things like divorce and homosexuality I find it hard to understand how anyone with an iota of morality can be involved with any of them.

I'm all for a new Bank Holiday but I won't be calling it after the mythical makey-up appropriation of a Celtic Goddess by a oppressive cult that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, burned people alive and more recently facilitated the rape and abuse of children and is still an advocate for the oppression of women and minorities.
 
I'd broadly agree with you, though if people want to make personal choices to practice any religion, that's up to them. If they want to wear a habit or a hijab, that's up to them. I don't see anything wrong with RTE covering the perspective of some of those who wear it.
 
Oh, I get it now. It's not actually about wearing a scarf that you have a problem. It's just with any representation of Muslim religion as a normal choice, which it obviously is for millions of people around the world, and many people in ireland.
Nonsense. If people want to believe in deities appearing to an illiterate desert warlord and disclosing the one true faith to him, and paradise, and djinns, and winged horses ascending into heaven, well fair enough. It's on a similar level of objective implausibility as the virgin birth, the Assumption, Joseph Smith's golden book of Mormon (now conveniently lost), Hindu reincarnation, the tenets of ancient sun worshipping civilization and those Pacific Islanders who thought Britain's Prince Philip was a God. (BTW what do they make of his recent death, I wonder?)

Religious beliefs, as such, are relatively harmless and are essentially a private matter. Problem is when religions start dictating to everyone else how society should be organised and what you are allowed do, say and even believe. At various times in history, different religions have topped the oppression charts. A few centuries ago it was Christianity and the Inquisition. Things have moved on however!

It's equivalent today is political Islam. Death penalty for homosexuals and apostates. Severe penalties for blasphemers. Intolerance of or outlawing public profession of other religions. Savage oppression of women including the imposition of severe restrictions on their choice of dress. The hijab is emblematic of this oppression - imposed by force of law in many Islamic societies, and by force of patriarchal coercion and societal expectations elsewhere. Why RTE would want to "normalise" this, yet alone celebrate it as some sort of free choice is absolutely beyond me.

It is equally beyond me why many on the left who regard themselves as "progressive" and who get stuck into Catholicism at the slightest opportunity, will totally ignore the far more oppressive nature of political Islam.
 
Ireland only has 4 canonised saints, Malachy, Oliver Plunket, Lawerence O'Toole and Charles of Mount Argus.

All the rest are not "official" saints
How very Catholic of you.

The Orthodox Church recognises many other Irish Saints, including, Columba, Columbanus and indeed Brigid of Kildare.
 

I don't know what exactly is meant by 'political Islam'. I didn't hear those schoolgirls on RTE calling for death penalty for homosexuals and apostates, or severe penalties for blasphemers or outlawing public profession of other religions. They certainly didn't come across as savagely oppressed to me. They seemed quite confident, literate and clear about why they choose to wear a hijab.

Do you explode in rage every time the Angelus appears on RTE?
 
I don't know what exactly is meant by 'political Islam'.
Political Islam is the attempted application of Islam in civil laws.
In that it is no different from any other Religion attempting to influence the laws of any land to align them with their rules.
Christianity did it for 1500 years in Europe. It caused the destruction of Rome, the loss of Greco-Roman civilisation and over 90% of all of their science, philosophy and other teachings and plunged us into the Dark Ages.

It would be nice to avoid doing that again.

Secularised Islam is as safe as secularised Christianity, just as fundamentalist Islam is just as dangerous as fundamentals Christianity.

Do you explode in rage every time the Angelus appears on RTE?
I strongly object to the Angelus on RTE (or "The Bongs" as we call it in my house) but I rarely watch RTE so I avoid seeing it. If it comes on the TV or radio I change the channel. If they played the Islamic call to prayer I'd also object.
 
I don't know what exactly is meant by 'political Islam'.
Ever heard of the concepts of Islamic Republic or (the) Caliphate? That's political Islam for you.


I didn't hear those schoolgirls on RTE calling for death penalty for homosexuals and apostates, or severe penalties for blasphemers or outlawing public profession of other religions. They certainly didn't come across as savagely oppressed to me.
Imagine never feeling the wind in your hair. Never able to cycle at speed downhill or dive in the sea on a hot summer day. And wearing your permanent badge of second class citizenship because your freeflowing hair might inflame the passions of men. And you think this is an ok thing? Right, I see.

They seemed quite confident, literate and clear about why they choose to wear a hijab.
Yes, choice, eh? Wonder what familial, community or religious pressures combined to produce that choice? And what might be the consequences if they "chose" not to wear hijab. Not perhaps a savage beating from the religious police as would befall their sisters in Iran, but severe disapproval from family and community nonetheless.

Do you explode in rage every time the Angelus appears on RTE?
If there was somebody trying to force me to get on my knees and pray the Angelus, yeah, I would to be sure. But there isn't, so I'll just grab 60 seconds of headlines on another channel and switch to RTE at 6:01 - problem solved.
 
If there was somebody trying to force me to get on my knees and pray the Angelus, yeah, I would to be sure. But there isn't, so I'll just grab 60 seconds of headlines on another channel and switch to RTE at 6:01 - problem solved.
You didn't think about switching channel when the National Hijab Day clip came on RTE, no?

Dunno where you got the idea that you can't swim or cycle in a hijab?
 
Ever heard of the concepts of Islamic Republic or (the) Caliphate? That's political Islam for you.
If people want to know what Europe was like in the Middle Ages they should read up on how ISIS ruled.
Brainwashing is a terrible thing. I remember my Grandmother bitterly recalling how she had to be "Churched" after giving birth before she could receive Communion. Christianity also treats women as second class people.
Timothy 1:12 "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence". It's probably a mistranslation but, as I said before, the takeover of Christianity by Rome took Rome's misogyny and made it even worse.

My daughter was friends with a lovely kid through most of Primary School but now that she's 13 and "a woman" (in that she's menstruated) she is all covered up and doesn't play with her non Muslim friends any more.
I wonder how happy those girls on RTE would be if they fell in love with a Catholic boy?... or a Catholic girl? Would they be smiling then?
If there was somebody trying to force me to get on my knees and pray the Angelus, yeah, I would to be sure. But there isn't, so I'll just grab 60 seconds of headlines on another channel and switch to RTE at 6:01 - problem solved.
Or just get the headlines from your phone and avoid the slow monotone painful formulaic predictable style from RTE.
 
Dunno where you got the idea that you can't swim or cycle in a hijab?
Women can also do both in long skirts and corsets but thankfully they aren't expected to do so any more because requiring that sort of thing is disgustingly oppressive.