VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Steve|DATE|1367313018|CONTENT|Human history has tended to agree with the general sentiment of Indarjit’s TFTD. Individuals became villages became clans became rose-coloured factions became countries. As time has gone on, our “patriotism” has tended towards ever larger groups. We are still at the country stage – 200 or so separate entities that we see as being “fundamental” to our very essence. But this might slowly be changing. Countries are members of larger bodies, some of which inspire no great loyalty right now (EU, UN), some of which do have a more sentimental feeling about them (the Commonwealth, maybe? Anglo-Americanism to some, certainly).

But there is another movement in the world that seeks to shift a person’s loyalty away from a country and towards a larger, no less artificial, club – that is, of course, religion. Islamism tries to find loyal citizens in any country and recruit them for a war against the other. Very many of the TFTDers have been keen to point out the injustices faced by their coreligionists, ignoring that the same injustices are also faced by others of different faiths. Indarjit’s mentioning of the 87,000 Sikhs who died in WW1 just made me think of the 103,000 left-handers who fought at the Somme, or the terrible casualties among those with a passing interest in macramé.

If we are, as a species, moving towards the breaking down of artificial lines of difference for us to fight over, religion has to be included in the project. This will not happen until we can have Indarjit Singh come on to TFTD to tell us about how many Muslims died in the trenches, or Jonathan Sacks do an entire Holocaust TFTD on the persecution of homosexuals.|IP-ADDRESS|10.0.119.138, 217.36.222.79, 10.37.46.201|MODERATIONFLAG|