Really? REALLY?

I am sitting here, my head in my hands - you know the move, when you just can't comprehend something so horrible.

And I can comprehend lots of horrible things. I understand perversion and crimes of passion. I know people do hideous things to each other. I don't excuse it - but I get it. Dar and I always remember these nasty monkeys we saw on Animal Planet or Discovery Channel. They were genetically closest to humans and they were so gross. They did all of this kinky sex stuff with each other, even with the little ones. And they were violent with each other. Oooh - we watched them just viciously shred this lost chimpanzee that wandered onto their turf.

So when we hear about people doing vile and disgusting things to each other, we always nod and say, "Just like those nasty monkeys..."

But, this latest news item (coming from a place I'm so gald I wasn't born unto) - well, I just can't wrap my head around it. It's religious in nature, of course. You know I don't understand any of that crazy shit. It's one thing I can't nod and say "Those darn disgusting monkeys and their creepy god". Because even the lecherous, murderous monkeys aren't this stupid.

In Saudi Arabia (one W.'s closest Middle East allies, it would seem), a woman has been convicted of being a witch and is awaiting her decapitation execution.

It's just too much.

I can't stop thinking about it. I can't believe, that on this planet, along with all of the music and art and medicine and literature and foie gras there is also such powerfully retarded superstition. Against women.

In the Muslim world, women are the targets of most of the violence. And unjust punishments. Why? Are we really witches?

We are. Most of us don't know it - but we are. The woman about to get her head lopped off probably didn't know she was a witch. It's as ancient as the dirt, this witchcraft. And, it's a vagina thing. It's best summed up in that distasteful joke that I actually find very telling: Never trust anything that bleeds for 7 days and doesn't die. Think about it.

We bleed. And I'm pretty it's this blood that gives us this mystical gift/curse. The magic is in the menses. It alligns us with the moon, it heightens our already intact intuition, it makes us cranky (which equals evil).

Most men, I think, can handle this. I had a boyfriend who'd fuck me while I was bleeding - he wasn't scared.

But when dealing with the Muslim world, we're not talking about most men. They're already a bunch of spooky fucks, towing Allah's line.

Imagine this: Jim from accounting, a normal seeming guy, comes into the break room one afternoon and says, "I just found out my wife's cousin is a witch. We're going to chop her head off this coming Friday. Y'all can come if you're free."

Wouldn't you call the police? But in Saudi Arabia it was the police (the religious police) who took her in. In their opinion, a witch is a bad thing. They don't want to know about what a woman can do - they only want to tell her what she can't do and torture her no matter what.

I do not practice religious tolerance. Should I? Should I be tolerant of this? I will not. I will tell you how I think this Muslim fanaticism is disgusting. And frightening. And I know there's some Evangelical in Missouri who wishes he could turn his neighbor in for being a witch. Where are his religious police, he laments? Religious fanatics do not deserve my tolerance.

Anyway, most religions are not tolerant of me, a woman. A bloody, witchy, scary broad.

And one last thing: God-fucking-bless America. With all of the shit going down in the world, this is still quite a nice, safe place for me to be a female Orthodox Atheist. I'm appreciating it more than usual right now while my illiterate Saudi sister awaits her fate.