I'm walking along a suburban back alley, all fences and trees, with an American woman who says "I just don't understand Islam. How can they all follow such strict rules? Praying five times a day when some guy in a tower says to!"

I laugh and say "Oh, Islam's closer to home than you think. Think of the Muslim world as a big company town, with a factory whistle--that's the muezzin. Muslims Christians and Jews all worship their daddy in the sky, and complain that unbelievers just worship money. So? Both submit to an elite of experts who claim to know the way to paradise. Consumer paradise, or pie in the sky when you die--what's the difference? Carrots to lure the donkeys along..."

A NOTE ON WAKING UP

Well... it's true, isn't it?

The two driving forces of the early 21st century, corporate capitalism and religious fundamentalism (whether Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Animist, whatever...), posing and glaring and squaring off like two TV wrestlers, are really not that different, if you squint at them to blur their costumes and masks.

Just a couple of butch guys fighting over whose rulebook we all have to obey.

And those of us who reject rules can just shut up... or they both turn to stamp us out.

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