Mere Rhetoric: British Toddler Announces She Wants To Be Muslim. Mom Yucks It Up About How Much She Hates Catholicism.

From the most recent LRB, isn't this so funny? Kids say the darnest things:

Last year, when she was five, my daughter announced that she was going to become a Muslim. ‘It’s an awful lot of washing,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, I am able to reach the sink with my feet.’ She went up to her room and stuck six sheets of paper together to make a prayer mat. It was time, I decided, to send her to Catholic Instruction.

This is an after-school class that, besides fulfilling her tribal spiritual needs, provides a solid half-hour of free childcare, every Monday. It is conducted by a catechetics expert in lace-up shoes who looks like she means business. When I drove my daughter home after her first class, she was quite unhinged, muttering like an old gossip and quietly raving in the back of the car. ‘I didn’t know he was arrested,’ she said... ‘I knew they killed him all right. I just didn’t know they arrested him first.’ Hot news. It is still a great story, it seems.

The rest of the article is about how weird and funny it is when your kids become religious. Proving that even when people go through motions of doing something sensible (i.e. moving your kid off a path that will end up with her in a burka), you can still sound like an idiot. There's even a charming little passage where the author writes "I can't tell you how much I hate Catholicism" - all in the indignant tone of someone pretending to say something offensive that they know they'll be lauded for. This is just like people who stand up on college campuses and spew vicious anti-Zionist invective, which is just so brave given how rare it is.

Hey, you know what would be really brave? If the LRB published someone who wrote "I can't tell you how much I hate Islam". Wouldn't that be something?

In other news: hating Catholicism is still a rather poor substitute for actually believing in something. In England today, converting to Hinduism doesn't disqualify you from being an Anglican priest. Although given the recent creep of sharia law in Britain, converting away from Islam may mean that you have to die.

References:
* Diary Anne Enright [LRB]
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - Slippery Slope, Church of England Edition [MR]
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - Sharia Courts Established In Britain [MR]

Previously:
* Believing Too Little and Believing Too Much (Plus: Surprise! Pope Benedict Doesn't Hate Gays)
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - Moral Equivalence, Gender Specific Edition
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - Slippery Slope, Church of England Edition

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers