{"id":343,"date":"2006-07-07T15:39:20","date_gmt":"2006-07-07T14:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.branedy.net\/?p=343"},"modified":"2006-07-07T16:56:57","modified_gmt":"2006-07-07T15:56:57","slug":"religious-control-an-exercise-in-secular-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Religious Control, an exercise in secular power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not that I didn&#8217;t know this before, but if there is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mg.co.za\/articlepage.aspx?area=\/breaking_news\/breaking_news__africa\/&#038;articleid=276425\">Death for Somali Muslims who shirk prayers<\/a> they must not believe in Islam, or they would not need to enforce prayers. Aren&#8217;t we glad that George Bush and his Christian fundamentalists do not incorporate this into the U.S. constitution. Oh, wait that&#8217;s why they want Intelligent Design and prayers back into schools. But in reality, prayers of this type are just a secular demonstration of power. Not unlike what kings expected from their followers, a belief that some men are gods. After all, if you control their lives and their death, you are gods. Islamic and Christian clerics alike relish this power on earth. All religion is more or less a power trip to the practitioner. Why should anyone be surprised when religious law is the law of the land, it only substitutes one form of secular control with another. <\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t you think god could enforce their own religious laws? Why would a cleric need to? <b>Power!<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Must be a really weak god.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not that I didn&#8217;t know this before, but if there is Death for Somali Muslims who shirk prayers they must not believe in Islam, or they would not need to enforce prayers. Aren&#8217;t we glad that George Bush and his<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/?p=343\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Religious Control, an exercise in secular power<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\"> &#8250;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom","category-religion","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.branedy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}