Having been diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic I have regular fasting blood tests to check my sugar level. Just another burden of advancing years though, of course, it strikes people of all ages. I don’t mind; it does not interfere with my daily intake of red wine. Anyway, I called into the medical clinic on Thursday. The regular nurse was away and a locum was in her place. She was a Muslim.
We had a very good chat about Islam. She was eager to share her views. I said that I was a Christian. Women are not allowed to speak in a mosque she explained, in the course of our discussion. The sound of a woman’s voice might distract men. I acknowledged the point, wondering whether that was, at least in part, behind St Paul’s injunction about women speaking in church. A thought which had not crossed my mind before.
She was a very pleasant lady and inserted the needle in a way which I felt not at all. Ten out of ten I gave her. It is good to have reminders that we are all God’s children. And we should treat each other as such. Unfortunately, there is no getting away from it, the toxic creed of Islam has a corrupting influence on Muslims who otherwise would be people like any other. Incidentally, I am not saying that most Muslims exhibit untoward behaviour in the normal course. Of course not. But when the rubber hits the road, one suspects that the imams would call the shots and the rest would fall into line.
I wondered if I were Jewish would I have been as relaxed walking into room and seeing a Muslim nurse. Would those two awful nurses in the news, expressing such malevolence on that video, have had me doing a quick about-turn? I don’t know. When I had my emergency operation a couple of years ago, I contemplated the risk of incompetence on the part of medical personnel, but not for a moment of being harmed deliberately. When President Reagan, having been shot, expressed a hope that the doctors treating him were Republicans, he was most definitely joking, while boosting his reputation at the same time. This ain’t that situation.
What now if I were Jewish? How nervous would I feel? To me that is the real cost of doctors and nurses weaponizing their political-cum-religious allegiances. The trust which glues societies together disappears. And once trust disappears it is a devil of task to ever get it back.
I was in hospital a few months ago, and one of my nurses was muslim. At one point she recited the ‘From the river to the sea’ trope. I pointed out that this was a way of demanding the extermination of Jews, and she was shocked at this interpretation and had never thought of it in those terms. She was a kindly woman, but not over bright. I think she would have been horrified at the idea of treating jewish patients badly.
But I’m not sure. One can’t be. One instinctively assumes other people are decent and civilised. Until one has doubts.
T2DM can be cured with the carnivore diet