Stinking fish

There's always a stench about politics.
But there's something particularly putrescent about the current crusade against Islam.
One of our national newspapers devoted many column inches over the weekend to a solemn explanation of how terrorism may be justified in the teachings of this fine human creed.
Islam, therefore, stands condemned as explicitly condoning violence.
Right.
Given that Islam postdates Christianity and Judaism both, but shares some of the same scriptures, let's unpack that one a bit.
The teachings of Christianity have been used to justify:
the ruthless extirpation of old religions by the burning of 'witches' and the torture of infidels and pagans;
the Crusades
the protection of orthodoxy by the painful execution of heretics and the damning of 'free' thought - Galileo and company;
pogroms against the Jews in Poland, Russia and - yes - the excrescences of Nazi Germany at Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Oswiecim and the countless prisons of the regime;
the spread of imperialism and capitalism, with the cross following the sword and the cash register to bring 'civilisation' to the world; and
institutionalised racism in contemporary America, Australia and other countries.
The New Testament isn't quite all airy-fairy sweetness and light, but it pales beside the blood asnd thunder of the Old.
The moral of the story is that people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones or demonising.
In Australia, this kind of demonisation has taken on a new twist.
The discovery of child sexual abuse in Aboriginal 'communities' (places set up for the administrative convenience of government and religion) has opened the way for the more rabid of our conservative politicians and their lickspittle kommentariat to condemn Aboriginal cultures as condoning it.
This has opened the way for a power grab and a return to paternalism; stricter controls on accountability and restrictions on funding.
You set up zoos which have no relation to the way Aboriginal people want to live and then blame them for behaving worse than animals
It's one of the smellier episodes in our contemporary politicial life, consistent with our conservatives accusing illegal immigrants of throwing their children overboard from refugee boats to prop up an unconscionably inhumane immigration policy.
Yes, there's something very smelly around our political scene.
And it's not just rotting fish.
The very cheapest populism rules and it ain't OK, particualrly when they 'find' a basis in religion to support it.