I know that Parsees worship fire but...

Smoking ban leads to new religion

Café owners in the Netherlands are joining religious movement known as the One and Universal Smokers Church of God, the Telegraaf reports on Wednesday.

‘We stand firmly behind the church’s teachings and that is smoking,’ Cor Busch, owner of the former Lindeboom café in Alkmaar told the paper. ‘Smokers are being discriminated against… but a beer and a cigarette belong together.’

Now that is just silly.

People who join the church get a membership card entitling them to smoke inside the building. Worshippers believe in the trinity of smoke, fire and ash and honour their god by smoking.

Church founder Michiel Eijsbouts says café owners who are trying to get round the ban on smoking will not be allowed to join. The church, he says, takes smoking very seriously.

‘It has ritual aspects, it is something you experience and we follow our faith very strictly,’ he told the Telegraaf.