Moral sleight of hand

Magicians excel at misdirection and sleight of hand.  They can seemingly do the impossible, when in fact their shtick is simply a combination of manual dexterity and the ability to get you to look somewhere else besides the place where the actual trickery is happening.  No criticism intended; to be an excellent magician takes years of practice.  But the whole thing boils down to drawing your attention away from where you should be looking.

There are a lot of religious leaders who excel at the same thing.

We're seeing it in bucket loads at the moment, due to the Ashley Madison hack, wherein a site dedicated to finding married people partners to cheat with was broken into, and thousands of names and addresses made public.  The ones who hit the news were, of course, the public figures, but the hypocrisy factor made the religious ones stand out even more.  To no one's particular surprise, alleged pedophile and general lowlife Josh Duggar had an Ashley Madison account, and he and his family are now scrambling to do damage control despite his having a reputation by this point that is probably past salvaging.  

But no sidestepping was quite as comical as the dance done by British Islamist leader Hamza Tzortzis, whose name was also released in the leak.  Confronted by his having a paid subscription to the infidelity site despite his constantly preaching about the evils of sexual immorality, Tzortzis had what may be the weakest defense I've ever seen.

Tzortzis was lambasted by a follower on his Facebook page who wrote, "So Hamza, you are claiming that some guy knew all of your private information and wanted to screw with you so he created a fake account on Ashley Madison.  This guy then paid hundreds of dollars to maintain the account for 9 months.  This account was then used to make transactions at locations where you were also present at the time.  Then the ultimate plan was to hack the Ashley Madison database and release 40 million users so you could be exposed.  Am I getting this right?"

And Tzortzis replied, in toto, "You’re an idiot. Read the post before you write.  The amount was 15 pounds a month, not hundreds."

So okay, maybe not all of 'em are skilled at misdirection.

But not all of the sleight of hand has to do with infidelity.  Recently Mehmet Görmez, the head of the Diyanet (the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs), called on Islamic religious authorities throughout the Middle East to unite to fight ISIS.

Such a move, of course, would be deeply controversial in a region where sect loyalty and arguments about the interpretation of religious texts routinely lead to violence.  So in response to Görmez's statement, Bilal Yorulmaz, professor of religion at Marmara University, said that what the Islamic world really needs to be worried about is...

... the Jedi.

"Jediism … is spreading today in Christian societies," Yorulmaz said.  "Around 70,000 people in Australia and 390,000 people in England currently define themselves as Jedis."

He then went on to describe how Hollywood is the real problem, presumably because the movie industry so frequently blows up priceless archeological sites and beheads researchers who are trying to protect them.

Okay, I know confronting your personal failings isn't easy, and it must be even more devastating to own up to the evils committed in the name of your deeply-held ideology.  But setting up straw men as a way of deflecting blame only makes your own culpability in things that much clearer.

You have to wonder, however, how long people will go on defending a position that is, at its basis, indefensible.  Are they hoping that sooner or later, the short attention span of their followers will kick in, and all will be forgiven and/or forgotten?  Hell, it worked for Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard --  both of whom were caught in ongoing infidelity despite their continual harping on sexual purity.  Haggard, in fact, was not only caught cheating, but caught cheating with a male prostitute.  And both are now back to preaching the gospel to standing-room-only crowds, and making money hand over fist doing it.

Funny what time and pious misdirection can do.

I've always felt that honesty and integrity were about the most important character traits out there, so the whole thing is pretty repulsive.  To be able to stand up in front of a crowd and make utterances that are deliberately designed to steer people away from your own failings, indiscretions, and immorality is as dishonest as simply lying about it.

The sad thing is that for some reason, it works.  Just like with stage magic, people get fooled, again and again.  But far from entertaining, this sleight of hand just leaves me feeling a little sick.

Obi-wan... has taught you well.

Try and guess what the seventh-largest claimed religion in England is.

Go ahead, try.  I bet you'll be wrong.

Ready for the answer?  It's "Jediism."

Yes, you read that right.  Jedi.  As in Star Wars.  People around the world are, in increasing numbers, claiming to be Jedi Knights.

(photograph courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)

According to a recent investigation by Details' Benjamin Svetkey, there are now Jedi training camps springing up around the world.  He knows because he visited one, in Norris, Texas, where he witnessed a "knighting" of a former "padawon" named Ally Thompson.  Thompson, a 28-year-old Iraqi war veteran, has been studying for years to achieve her knighthood.

"No, we don't worship Yoda," she told Svetkey.  "And telekinesis is not something that we necessarily do - at least not like in the movies.  But I won't deny that the Force is very present in our teachings. Some people call it magic.  Some call it Ashe.  The scientific community calls it energy.  But it's everywhere.  You can find it in the Bible.  When Moses parted the Red Sea - how did he do that?  With energy.  With the Force."

According to Svetkey, there are 175,000 self-proclaimed Jedi in England, making it the seventh-largest religion in the country.  There are 15,000 Jedi in the Czech Republic, 9,000 in Canada, and 65,000 in Australia.

Oddly, given our penchant for embracing bizarre belief systems, there are only 5,000 Jedi in the United States.  I'm not sure if I should be happy or upset about that.  But I will say that one of the most popular training programs for Jedi, The Temple of the Jedi Order, is located in Beaumont, Texas.

If you visit their website (which I highly recommend), you can learn what they're about.  Their mission statement (as it were) runs as follows:

Jedi Believe:

In the Force, and in the inherent worth of all life within it.
In the sanctity of the human person. We oppose the use of torture and cruel or unusual punishment, including the death penalty.
In a society governed by laws grounded in reason and compassion, not in fear or prejudice.
In a society that does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or circumstances of birth such as gender, ethnicity and national origin.
In the ethic of reciprocity, and how moral concepts are not absolute but vary by culture, religion, and over time.
In the positive influence of spiritual growth and awareness on society.
In the importance of freedom of conscience and self-determination within religious, political and other structures.
In the separation of religion and government and the freedoms of speech, association, and expression.

And I can't honestly argue with any of that.  Frankly, I'd be willing to accept a belief in the Force in exchange for everybody in the world abiding by those rules.

Still, I can't help but find the whole thing a little... silly.  It's kind of like what happens when Civil War reenactors and members of the Society for Creative Anachronism let their fantasy life take over.  I mean, the people who created Star Wars were up front that it was fiction -- not just the story, but the Jedi Order and the religious trappings and all.  So sorry, but I don't think I'll be donning brown robes and trying to learn how to handle a light saber any time soon.

On the other hand, it's not the first time that a religion has sprung from science fiction.  I'm lookin' at you, Scientologists.  And I'll take the Jedis over those wackos in a heartbeat, given the latter's history of coercion, secrecy, abuse, and fraud.  (And lest you think I'm overstating my case by the use of the last word, the French government delivered a serious blow to the Church of Scientology just last week, when a court upheld a 2009 fraud conviction for victimizing vulnerable followers.)

And since I'm an atheist, it's no surprise that I pretty much have the attitude that all religions were, originally, human inventions, so honestly, Jediism is no worse than the rest of 'em (and a damn site better than a good many). 

So my general response is: let the Jedis have their fun.  It doesn't seem to be harming anyone.  And who knows?  If a Death Star shows up one day and a deep, booming voice threatens to vaporize planet Earth, the Jedis may well be Our Only Hope.