Over the past 24 hours my outrage over the firing of Deon Maas by the Rapport newspaper over his comments on Satanism has grown. I previously reported the story here, and Moonflake did a very good job here.
I’ve been pointed to the original article and, having read it, I believe that it is an excellent commentary and a fine example of objective thinking. I have produced the following English translation for the enjoyment of uitlanders, Satanists, objective thinkers and other undesirables.
New! The Deon Maas Page (Deon Maas – 3 November 2007)
Somewhere in Pretoria North is a young lady who has run into the strong arm of the law. She has clearly upset somebody. When the police say that she was arrested after “following up on a lead” it means that her neighbours, someone that she flipped off, or one of her friends that needed to make a deal, ratted her out. She was detained for the possession of heroin and cocaine.
It’s good to see that the police still make successful arrests in this day and age. If one of the policemen doesn’t use or sell the evidence himself, and nobody loses, sells or destroys the docket, we may just see a successful prosecution for the possession of drugs.
So far, so good.
What is disturbing is the fact that the police, after searching her bedroom, are also investigating her for Satanism. They confiscated satanic documentation that is written in blood, candles, human hair, DVDs, blood samples, black clothes and Bibles that have been vandalised and smeared with blood.
This, then, is a very serious situation. It is especially the seizure of black clothes and candles that bothers me.
Bad planning
I also have candles in my house. They help when Eskom decides that it is my suburb’s turn to suffer under their bad planning. We also have rather a lot of black clothes because, when I am occasionally invited to a smart place, black is usually the easiest solution.
What someone obviously forgot to tell police spokesman Inspector Paul Ramaloko, is that Satanism is a religion and that our Constitution guarantees everyone the freedom to practise the religion of their choice. If Muslims think they have a hard time, they just need to consider Satanism. They really get a bum deal. Satanism still makes a better headline than Islam, even though they blow less stuff up and do more damage to themselves than to those around them.
I am not personally a great believer in organised religion. Irrespective of the form in which it is offered, mass hysteria has never been my thing. If you held a gun to my head in an attempt to make me visit some sort of church, Satanism would be the last option on my list.
It seems like too much trouble to me. The slaughtering of innocent pets, the tearing up of Bibles, the general oppressiveness that you have to live with, black painted fingernails and the fact that you generally have to be awake after midnight to practise your faith are all factors that make Anton LaVey’s philosophy somewhat unacceptable to me.
Every time I try to make a pentagram it comes out crooked. For some reason, I just cannot master the symmetry of the thing. Perhaps it’s just because I was bad at maths, or perhaps I just don’t care enough.
At the same time, it is a religion that has the right to be practised.
Satan does not necessarily represent evil, its just another philosophy. You still pray but just to a different god.
Just like any other faith, Satanism has rules. Instead of ten commandments, they have nine. Their nine commandments don’t tell you what to do, but rather how you should not behave.
Stupidity: For them, this is like the big brother of all sins. They encourage you to look at the story behind the story, so that you can understand what is really going on rather than just accepting that is fed to you with a spoon. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.
Then there is pretentiousness. Be who you are and don’t pretend to be something or someone that you are not. That makes sense.
Solipsism: Do unto others what they do, or are going to do, to you. Perhaps this is a bit hectic if you come from any other faith’s position of turn the other cheek, but it sounds to me like standard practice in Johannesburg’s business world.
Self delusion: Don’t lead yourself around by your own nose. Sounds good again.
Herd mentality: Be your own person, make your own decisions and don’t allow other people to force you into doing things that you don’t want to do. If you put this idea into practise, it means that teenagers won’t give in to peer pressure to smoke, take drugs or lose their virginity just because they feel that it needs to happen. It encourages free thinking and supports the striving for opinions that are based on knowledge that has been earned. There are more of them, but I’m sure that you can see the point I am trying to make.
As far as religion goes, Satanism has always had the short end of the stick in the media. At the same time it is the best friend the Christians have ever had, since it is the devil that keeps the church in business. Its seductiveness, especially for teenagers, is that it naturally provides the head-to-head collision with the ideas propagated by their parents.
The Roman Catholics who don’t prosecute priests that molest children, but rather pay out millions in compensation, still opposes birth control and discourages the use of condoms in the era of AIDS. The Anglicans decision to accept homosexual priests threatens their unity, our own sister denominations are struggling to find their feet in the new dispensation and some Apostolic churches refuse to accept black people in their congregations. The Christian churches continue to change the rules in order to adapt to a society that is moving forward, in the hope of keeping their members. The people who go to church are getting older and attempts to keep young people in the fold meet with the same success that small towns get when they try to stop their children from moving to the big cities. If churches had to pay tax, very few of them would have survived.
Does this article encourage Satanism? No. However, if we want other people to understand and respect our views, we must understand and respect their views. To understand someone, you do not have to agree with them.
That means that you listen to what they have to say, and then you can agree to disagree with them. That means that you learn what is going on in other peoples’ heads and allow them the same freedoms that you expect from them. It sounds to me like a win-win situation, and one that can contribute towards peaceful co-existence.
