Secularity Of Science

ISN’T Science wonderful? And the wonders of science keep coming. Only the other week Satiricus had discovered the scientific truth that a full bladder makes for a good liar. Now, believe it or not, he has discovered a still more amazing scientific secret—that a man with a beard can be a good thief. Satiricus is not joking. A recent survey “to determine attitude towards facial hair” has found that 40 per cent of men with beards admitted to have stolen something as compared to 17 per cent who preferred a close shave, literally, and 47 per cent of men with facial hair had cheated as compared to 20 per cent clean-shaven men. Well, now, what does Satiricus have to say to that? He says science has come up with a good device for the good of the society. For if the government wants to cut down crimes all it has to do is to make it compulsory for men to cut down their beards, and if it wants to transform every cheat into a Mr. Clean, all it needs to do is to force him to be clean-shaven.

But what about those for whom their beard and their religion go together? Satiricus recalls that once, when Pakistan’s air force chief ordered his pilots to trim their beards, pak Pak parliamentarians had condemned the anti-beard move as anti-Islam, and had learnedly discussed the exact length of a beard as an adequate index of Islam. Oh well, the hirsuit pursuit of Islam is beyond the scope of secular science.