The world’s wackiest religion has its share of detractors, but the “libertarians” at Digg have taken the reviling of Hubbardarianism to a whole ‘nother level, petitioning the British government to discredit Scientology. You know, because it’s such an important issue.
The actual petition to ensure that Scientology doesn’t get recognized as a religion in the United Kingdom isn’t just some crappy AdSense scam site like the petition sites here in the good old U.S. of A. No, this site is put up by the English government with the sole purpose of ensuring that lazy British armchair activists don’t have to get off their tax payer financed sofas to encourage the government there to encroach on even more of the basic freedoms to which all people are entitled.

An anti-Scamitology petition is funny enough on its own, but in a move sure to please anyone with a semi-functioning sense of irony the author of the petition includes this brief explanation of his position:

Without compromise to freedom of thought or expression, the teachings and beliefs of Scientology, Dianetics and science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard must never be legally be accepted as a religion – regardless of any recent EU decision to the contrary.

We consider the ‘Church’ of Scientology is an exclusive business venture that by prohibiting access to scientifically-proven psychiatric therapy and medicine is effectively enslaving its believers.

No, that doesn’t seem to compromise freedom of thought or expression at all. I mean just because you’re asking the government to regulate the legitimacy of religious expression, favoring those that are acceptable and penalizing those that are able to organize themselves well enough as to seem like a threat to rabid leftists, well that’s not Marxist at all. One wonders if the author realizes that there are several other religions in the U.K. that prohibit access to psychiatric therapy, or that Scientologists peddling copies of Dianetics to people who think they can get their spirituality ala carte is the least of England’s problems.

Scientology is a scam. We get it. But it thrives because people want to be Scientologists. It’s easier than being a Christian, it’s hipper now than Wicca and until recently it didn’t get all the awful press Satanism did. Of course, it does now, as there’s a movement afoot to recycle the Satanic Ritual Abuse stories of “mind control” to whip up an anti-Scientology hysteria. No doubt the author and the Diggers supportive of his petition (over 2000 and counting) are caught up in the frenzy.

But when was the last time you saw Scientologists forcibly convert Hindu girls (sometimes after rapes) or commit a hate crime? Have Scientologists threatened to behead those who insult their “prophet,” do they travel to Africa and murder Black Christians and Animists?

Muslims do all those things, but will there be a petition circulating on Digg attacking Islam? Of course not, and that’s the point. Scientologists are an easy target for British “activists” because ultimately they won’t fight back. Oh, I hear they’ll sue you in a hot minute, but they won’t blow up your subways or crash airliners into your skyscrapers. They’ll just take it. So bravo Digg community for your brave stand, I know England can sleep better at night now knowing that somebody is protecting them from those evil, book-peddling Scientologists.