Mastodawn

"Offensive" Security Engineer

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫

Little Englanders foaming at the mouth about Islam in Britain, you sound like a 75 year old pished guy in a bowler hat and orange sash ranting in the pub about the looming threat of the papacy.

Ordinary Muslims you'd encounter in the UK are no more sinister and alien than ordinary Catholics. One day a week they maybe (or not) go to a fancy building to talk about God in a way that you don't connect with. Please try to be normal about that rather than let it eat your whole identity.

WellsiteGeo 1d ago

@petealexharris It's not a fancy building, it's an ex-lamp shop in a quite nice 1930s art deco office block.

I assume the chip-shop 2 doors along has come up with some new recipes. Sales opportunity to follow up.

#perfectly_normal_island

Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 1d ago

@WellsiteGeo @petealexharris #Cambridge used to have a couple of back street houses knocked together, but does have a fancy building these days.

https://www.cibsejournal.com/case-studies/case-study-cambridge-central-mosque/

Case study: Cambridge Central Mosque - CIBSE Journal

Cambridge’s elegant new mosque has comfort and sustainability at its heart thanks to the involvement of the environmental engineer at the project’s inception. Andy Pearson looks at how Skelly & Couch’s creative design worked with the grand scale of the prayer hall to provide natural ventilation and daylighting for more than 1,000 worshippers

CIBSE Journal

u0421793 1d ago

@petealexharris it’s so bad in Britain we all had to learn Arabic numerals when I was at school!

Fazal Majid 1d ago

@petealexharris There are more practicing Catholics than Anglicans in England today. You don't hear them spouting this bile. Though to be fair, white nationalists are really Mammonists, not Christians of any stripe.

minentromaxinfo 1d ago

@petealexharris There is something so rich about Brits complaining about immigrants - we basically invented mass immigration and only used it one half the planet.

Phosphenes 1d ago

@petealexharris

Immigrants have simply invented a new kind of Englishman who can tan and handle spicy food. Long overdue upgrades.

Robin Barton 1d ago

@petealexharris Well said

@petealexharris when I was a kid I happened to read The Religions of Man by Huston Smith. As the title indicates it was typical mid 20th c Western academic writing, but he had a gift for sharing something of the interior reason why people value their religions as a practitioner. After each religion was covered I would feel a bit of regret that I hadn’t been brought up in the covered religion. 1/2

@petealexharris It shifted my default for talking about religion to seeking to understand the good people experience from their path to the ultimate, away from arguing over the differences from my path. (As a confirmed Episoscopalian with liturgical opinions that shift helps every week at church, much less when talking to my neighbors or traveling). 2/2

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 1d ago

@petealexharris I find all religious people rather sinister!
For example, all the weird stuff they claim actually exists, their subservience to a patriarchal hierarchy, or the way they "other" people who aren't members of their particular hallucination club.
I find them all equally creepy.

Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC 1d ago

@LillyHerself @petealexharris It all depends on the religion. For example, there are some neopagans who actively work against the patriarchy.

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 1d ago

@LordCaramac An Austrian couple I am friends with say they are "pagans" and deny ferociously that it is a religion, but take part in weird rituals all of which have a distinct "woman as sex object" aspect.
I find anything with rituals, mythologies and cosplay very creepy.
@petealexharris

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫1d ago

@LillyHerself
That's a point of view.

But most people who are culturally part of a religion that's been around long enough to have settled in properly are completely normal and you wouldn't be able to identify any such behaviour relative to other similar religions, agnosticism or atheism in their everyday life.

Their decency and morality is a matter of personal character and understanding, only their explanations for why and how are different, and we're all wrong about a lot of stuff.

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 1d ago

@petealexharris My own brother, plus one of my close childhood friends both converted to catholicism because of the "honey trap" that ideology imposes - catholic females won't marry you unless you convert.
I have had decades to observe what were once two open and progressive young men slowly adopt typical catholic materialism, a judgemental patriarchal attitude, gender stereotyping and prejudice against people perceived as outsiders.
It is very sad indeed.

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia 1d ago

@petealexharris Another thing I've noticed when having to deal with catholics is their fixation on what you do for a living. They don't look at people as individuals, they like to compartmentalise people according to profession. They like to place you in their little patriarchal hierarchical world view.
This is particularly annoying in healthcare settings. When someone is taking a medical history and suddenly you get asked what you do for a living and you can see them mentally ticking some box.

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫1d ago

@LillyHerself
That's pretty odd, and not, as far as I can tell, anything to do with any of the doctrines of Roman Catholicism. For sure, cultures that occur alongside religious beliefs can be weird in their own ways too.

Kerplunk 1d ago

@petealexharris

Little Englanders foaming at the mouth about Islam in Britain,

Goated by millionair shit like Farage and Jacob Reese Mog

Frustrated by Starmers Labour

Remember Starmers Island of Strangers speech

He gets stranger by the day