12 May 2008
Oops ... the health and safety police have gotten to this topic before I did!
Honestly, do we really not trust the intelligence of our readers to make their own minds whether throwing a baby 50 feet is a good idea to try at home or not!?! I am not sure about deleting but may be move it to a topic called, "Crazy things sects do that makes the Brahma Kumaris look reasonable, liberal and evolved" and send in a couple of tough ShivShakti matajis to sort the Mullahs out? Maybe some Dad just got sick of it crying all the time and thought that if they did so, then maybe they would have some boggyman to shut it up with. "Its back up the tower for you, son!"
I am reminded of a Jewish moral tale. A Father places a small child on the large mantelpiece of his fireplace and says to the child, "If you trust me, jump into my arms!". The child cries, "No, no, please don't!". The Father says, "I am your Father, can you not trust me of all people?". The child cries again asking him not to. Eventually, the child does put sense aside and jumps, only for the Father to take a step back and let the child fall painfully to the floor. The Father says, "Let that be a lesson to you in life ... never trust anyone's word alone!"
If, as Maimonides argued, the circumcision of Jewish male infants by the Rabbis was a cause and reliable indicator of their Jewish identity because it was painful and suppressed a source of temptation (enhancing capacities for spirituality by reducing the incentive to sin), perhaps an opposite exists here where by casting the infant to a sure death, only for it to be saved from harm by the elder males, is a similarly primitive technique of imbuing the children with an absolute sense of trust in their community? Writing as the pseudo social scientist, I would want to see 3 generations worth of data before I jumped to any conclusions. Or jumped myself off the tower.
It the West, we have a better way. We mollycoddle them until they are 16 with all sort of rights and protection ... and then give them access unlimited to guns, alcohol and heavy motor vehicles.