the mommedan author is going berserk.
tony blair's wife is catholic, and she loves to being one as are her
children. tony has don't care attitude, like many hindus, and is happy to
keep peace in the family and join the wife, like many hindus married to
kirastanis. if tony could convince many brits to vote for him, it seems odd
that he wouldn't be able to convert his wife to protestantism. at any rate,
look before you leap into marriage with a kirastanista.

www.mantra.com/jyotish (Dr. Jai Maharaj) posted:

TONY BLAIR AND THE HAWKING OF RELIGION

Forwarded message

Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Counterpunch - Dec 24, 2007

http://www.counterpunch.org/versey12242007.html

Where's Dante?

Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion

By Farzana Versey

Tony Blair has become a Catholic. Had it been seen as a
personal decision, it would be fine. However, it already
sounds like political canonization. According to a report,
Blair, now a Middle East peace envoy, said he had prayed to
God when deciding whether or not to send British troops
into Iraq.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster,
who led the service, said, "in another sense it's a
beginning, because when you become a Catholic, as so many
people who have become Catholics have said to me, it's like
coming home."

What is worrying is this: A Vatican spokesman said such an
"authoritative personality" choosing to join the Catholic
Church "could only give rise to joy and respect".

It brings us to the dilemma religion has always faced B-
how does it sell itself? The moment god images are used in
consumer advertising there is a hue and cry for abusing
religious symbols. What about the marketing of whole belief
systems?

Years ago, the Church of England decided to sell
Christianity like "beans and the banks". Seven thousand
pounds sterling were to be spent on 10 TV slots. One ad
showed a suited smiling man holding the Bible in one hand
while an angel B- female B- dangled on his other arm; the
copy promised: "An hour this Sunday will leave you feeling
good all week."

One is not sure whether the gods were amused or not, but
can advertising make religion more palatable? According to
one agency head, "The Church has to make itself a more
interesting, relevant and even a more entertaining
product."

Does all this bode well for our concept of religion? Is
faith not a matter of personal belief? Or are we only
fooling ourselves? After all, we believe because we have
been brought up in a certain faith, or as in Blair's case
it seems to be a gift to his wife and children who are all
Catholic, or because we have seen devotees throng to places
of worship and, like with everything else, the herd
mentality prevails: if everyone does it, then it must be
right.

In that sense religion does not need advertising. It is
advertising. It follows all the marketing rules. The brand
comparisons regarding which religion scores over which
other, whose product has greater appeal, which market can
be captured.

In fact, many of our superficial concepts have been sold to
us by constructed faith. Temptation, for example. Were it
not for Eve, the serpent, the apple, and the Garden of
Eden, we might have all succumbed to the worst and not been
held sinners for our trespasses.

Monotheistic religions come with an inbuilt mechanism that
is the super-ego. To those who often accuse outsiders of
misinterpreting Islam, I think greater injustice is done to
it by the so-called believers, who take every legend
literally and use it as their Unique Selling Proposition
(USP). Recently, the Islamic world celebrated Eid-al-adha
to understand the greatness of sacrifice, of how you must
be willing to give of your own. When Prophet Ibrahim
willingly agreed to sacrifice his son, the goat was
replaced by a holy injunction seeing the selflessness. It
ought to be taken as symbolism.

Today, it is just another occasion for a feast, for I do
not know what a Muslim can learn while watching an animal
bleed to death. Does touching the knife to the neck
gingerly teach about the virtue of readily parting with
something personally precious?

No. Quite the contrary. It is an event that is reminiscent
of early Islam. According to Alfred Guillaume, "Sacrifices,
which were for the most part communal feasts, were popular;
but at heart the Arab cared little for these things. He
was, as he still is, fundamentally an individualist, and if
a heathen god did not or could not help him to get what he
wanted in life, so much the worse for the god."

Among the five Pillars of Islam - prayer, fasting, alms-
giving, faith in Allah and the Prophet and pilgrimage -
animal sacrifice figures nowhere except in certain cases
when on Haj at Mina, where the 'stoning of the devil'
ceremony takes place animal sacrifices are made, though not
compulsory.

In this light it would be interesting to note that in the
original ritual of kissing the black stone, pilgrims were
required to be nude, but the Prophet ordered that two plain
sheets be used instead.

This itself proves that religion must perforce be amenable
to adaptation. The Quran, which is seen as an occurrence to
meet the various crises/occasions in the Prophet's life,
was in its entirety perhaps apt in the 7th century AD, but
was it destined to govern millions of lives so many
centuries later? Guillaume gives one example to highlight
the difficulty of following rules steadfastly, "How could a
Muslim keep the fast of Ramadan from sunrise to sunset in
the Arctic Circle where in the summer the sun never sets?"

In fact, many of the Quranic verses have been changed. Of
special note is one which refers to those who accept a
religion other than Islam as being the lost ones when
Prophet Mohammed himself believed that uncorrupted Judaism
and Christianity were early manifestations of Islam.

The problem is that devotion in contemporary society has
become a means of displaying status; the fatter the goat,
the more you can show off. Many of the early Muslims
practised asceticism, contrary to the image of Islam as an
indulgent religion. The Prophet himself belonged to an
impoverished family, which is why it is said that "his
subsequent success must be accounted the greater in that he
converted his opponents without help which prestige and a
high social position would have given him."

As the poet-philosopher Iqbal interpreted the story of the
fall of Adam as "man's rise from a primitive state of
instinctive appetite to the conscious possession of a free
self capable of doubt and disobedience and the emergence of
a finite ego which has the power to choose."

The point then is why does religion need to sell itself
when its task is to further sell other things? Is it only
about making a leap of faith? How different would this be
from converting people through missionaries and other old-
fashioned avenues? Would not the same subtle forces be at
work? Would not the hidden persuaders be upto the same
dirty tricks trying to reach the innermost recesses of our
consciousness to find areas of darkness deliberately in
order to lead us unto light? Would the Church truly find
its feet with so many lost souls that have drifted in
perchance, like in a shopping mall where you end up buying
things only because they are displayed so attractively and
strategically?

The Church of England is falling prey to celebrity
endorsement. Can you do so for selling a god whose
omnipotence and omniscience you believe in?

These things did not worry the Reverend Robert Ellis years
ago: "Our aim was to keep alive the rumour of god. It is
not about bums on pews." This does not speak too well about
god or his staunch advocates. If a rumour is all there is
to it, then why not sell Satan, or fairytales and myths?

Religion already has us by the collar. What more does it
need to sell? If advertising faith is to be a huge thing,
then one must pose the query applied to marketing
principles:

Would there be censorship code and how would it be
operative? Can the advertising council accept complaints
about people that have tried the 'product' but are
unsatisfied and feel cheated by the hype? And what about
issues like exploitation? In the advertisement mentioned
earlier, a female angel is dangling from the arm of a
devotee. Is this abuse of the female form? Why is the male
not shown to be seeking salvation and getting it? And what
about the copy: "An hour this Sunday will leave you feeling
good all week?" How different is it from a quick-fix or an
exercise regimen where you are urged to spend 30 minutes a
day to knock off a few pounds?

Even if one stops nitpicking, the crucial query remains.
How can the very home of god be sold as a product, which it
is not? Can you sell the Almighty as the Complete Man? Or
as Superman who drives away evil? These are not products
but the sentiments they wish to convey.

Religion is well and truly on its way on the billboards,
hoardings and shelves. There will be more brand wars and
consumer surveys. The soul has no choice but to wait to
play its role as the confused consumer.

[Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer-columnist. She can
be reached at