Hint: It’s not Christianity, and it’s not Judaism.

Remember: Political Correctness means only celebrating religions when they’re not Judeo-Christian, which are of course offensive.

I’m currently working on a job that requires me to spend all day knocking on doors in Stamford Hill, Hackney.

Stamford Hill is home to Europe’s largest community of Hasidic Jews. This makes it quite an interesting place to spend all day walking around. I’ve been reading up on the origins of Hasidic dress to try to get some idea of why they wear such crazy clothes.

Hackney’s Hasidics obviously want to keep themselves culturally distinct, but in some of the streets in the neighbourhood residents of other religious persuasions can be found. There surely aren’t that many areas in Britain where most of the doors have either Talmudic or Koranic texts stuck onto them, where there’s a synagogue twenty metres away from a Muslim Community Centre, and where all the women are wearing Tichels or niqabs!

Anyways, I’d better get back to work before Sabbath-o-clock.

Shalom!

(…) Un marito può picchiare la moglie nei seguenti casi:

1) Se rifiuta di farsi bella per lui.

2) Se rifiuta i rapporti sessuali.

3) Se esce di casa senza il suo consenso.

4) Se non prega o non fa l’abluzione. qui

More details of the case of the 27 year-old Malaysian woman have been revealed. Banggarma Subramaniam, also known as Siti Hasnah Vangarama Abdullah is not only trying to prove that she’s not a Muslim, but that she’s never been Muslim, so as not to be charged with apostasy considered an an offense in the state. But since she’s classified as a Muslim, her case is tried a Shariah court, who has apparently chosen to disregard her verbal profession of faith to another religion. According to a conversion certificate in 1989, she supposedly converted when she was a child of seven, which is actually impossible because she had not reached the age of puberty yet at the time.
I do wonder what argument the Shariah court is going to present to counter this. Her lawyer states that under Penang Islamic laws, minors below 18 cannot be converted to Islam without the consent of their parents. Since she was an orphan, it seems that she’s virtually unprotected by an guardian or laws. In this way, non-Muslim orphans are therefore susceptible to similar treatment, if the system is left unchecked.
Evidently, she has not even been able to register her marriage to her Hindu husband, or even list him as the father of her two children, as the state doesn’t allow marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims.
I was struck by one line in the article.

“In interfaith disputes involving Islam, the Shariah courts typically get the last word, which has upset non-Muslims who fear they cannot get justice in such courts.”

What is the rationale behind this for people who professed to be non-Muslims?
I find the case fascinating because of the ways the Shariah court in Malaysia could impose its own particular view of religious identity, as the case unfolds.

Society: A group of humans distinguished by mutual interests, shared relationships and shared institutions, unified by a common culture.

Every day, students show up for school from disparate backgrounds and cultures, with a range of personal experiences as varied as the clouds in the sky. They arrive to a common location, to share in an experience of education and community.

As adults, our job is to teach them what they need to learn so they can grow up to be successful, intelligent, reasonably content contributing members of society. And so we set about the task, in our various roles, day in and day out, to the best of our ability.

Yet… something seems to be missing from the equation. Why do so many kids feel left out, unheard and unseen, within the school environment and society in general? And more to the point, what can be done about it?

A community is not simply the gathering of human bodies in a confined space. A community happens when individuals feel a kinship with one another based on mutual respect, empathy and compassion. School is one of the primary ways we experience and form ideas about community.

If we can build school communities that actively celebrate cultural and individual diversity we will create a template for a more inclusive society. A more inclusive society means a stronger community; a stronger community means more support for the individuals within that community.

A supported individual has a greater chance of being a successful, intelligent, reasonably content contributing members of society…

The seeds for positive social change, thus planted in the formative years, can quickly blossom into positive social progress. Being inclusive, everyone benefits.

Therein lies hope for the future. We are never more than one generation away from significant positive change. With all the global and societal challenges we currently face, with more coming down the pike, I find it helpful to keep this in mind.

Just as every person has their story to tell, every culture has stories, art, music, dance, food and positive values to share. Diversity is something we all have in common. Therefore, let us find ways to celebrate those diverse qualities. In so doing, we will rediscover the very qualities that makes for successful individuals, and a more inclusive and supportive community.

- Matthew Giffin

When was the last time a certain Robert Spencer or Daniel Pipes, the latest target of LoonWatch.com ever declared it was okay to go beat up average Muslims?  Even a Muslim who was possibly an allege terror suspect?  That’s what these two men are charged with a likely hate crime indeed.

Please, when was the last time Spencer or Pipes, or Pamela Gella ever acted like neo-Nazis and encouraged violence upon average Muslims?  Please, could the loons from LoonWatch.com or possibly their ally Charles Johnson care to mention?  When was the last time they encouraged something like what the two men are charged with doing?

There are about 200 million people working abroad, which is a stable 3% of the world’s population. The money that these people send home is called remittances. Remittances can be viewed as a kind of development aid and is a very important bonus for the families that stayed behind in often impoverished countries. In fact, the total amount of remittances exceeds the value of official development aid (see a graph here).

However, remittances aren’t entirely positive, generally speaking. They are of course beneficial for those receiving them, but one shouldn’t overestimate their effectiveness in the fight against global poverty.

Disadvantages of remittances

• Most of the remittances do not go to the most needy. Poland and Mexico receive large chunks of total remittances; African countries much less.

remittances by destination

(source)

• Even the remittances that are sent to the poorest countries don’t necessarily benefit the poorest people in those countries. You need money to emigrate, hence migrants tend not to come from the poorest families.
• It’s impossible to target remittances towards development priorities.
• The emigration that is presupposed by remittances is often a brain drain, although not necessarily. Some groups of immigrants are above average in education, some are below.

Advantages of remittances

• The money goes directly and almost completely to the beneficiaries (minus the commission taken for the international payment by remittance agencies). This is not the case with official development aid where there’s always a margin taken by the overhead of aid agencies or NGOs.
• Similarly, there’s no part of the money deviated by corrupt officials, also contrary to official development aid which is often easier to steal.

All in all, remittances are a powerful, if not very accurate weapon in the fight against poverty. There is therefore a strong case in favor of allowing more migration and lowering the restrictions on the free movement of labor (see here). Migration can of course create problems (especially when it leads to cultural friction), but it is also a solution. The migrants themselves often have a better life. Around 75% of them go to countries with a higher score on the Human Development Index. Their families at home obviously benefit as well. And if we believe in trickle down economics (which we should to a limited extent) then we can assume that when these families have more money, the economy around them also benefits to some degree.

But there’s not only the money. There are also knowledge transfers, and we can reasonably hope that migration promotes intercultural understanding. It’s often easier to fear and hate what you don’t know. The countries of origin, which are often less free and democratic than the countries of destination, may also learn the benefits of freedom.

More on remittances. Some statistics and maps. More on migration. Something on the strange case of reverse remittances is here.

«(…) Aspettando, inshaAllah, la riconquista islamica dell’Andalusia… Aspettando Fathu-r-Rûm (conquista islamica di Roma, ndUC) . Non c’è forza né potenza se non in Allah!» qui

Rutelli: «Una nuova legge sulla cittadinanza deve contenere l’obbligo per chi voglia diventare italiano, o voglia ottenere il diritto di voto, di una dichiarazione-giuramento che coinvolga anche la separazione tra religione e Stato. Non basta un riferimento generale ai principi costituzionali».

Amartya Sen is the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics and has for decades been a sane, patient and sapient voice in applying academic ideas to the real world – which is a trait from which more economists could benefit and which can also be seen in the recent winner Paul Krugman. His various books have argued for the need for peace and democracy as a means of ending not just misery but poverty and starvation, while his understanding of the multivalent complexity of human society has let him argue for tolerance and understanding in place of the violence and confrontation that now characterise “political discourse” in so many places.

Read the full review here.

The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt has touched on one or two issues that have come up at the CEJI course – how different do we want to be from each other?  How similar do we want or need to be?  How important is a shared language, or an agreed commitment to universal human rights?

Developments such as the upcoming vote in Switzerland on minarets and citizenship tests (UK) or training (parts of Belgium) seem to be on the rise.

One exercise in our training today involved putting togther a timeline of faith traditions/value systems and I was surprised to find something called laïcité in amongst Judaism and the Baha’i faith.  Based on a strong commitment to the separation of religion and the state, it is popular in France (where it originated) and in Turkey.

Being in the company of people from Holland, Austria, Romania, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain and Belgium makes for wide-ranging conversations and a steep learning curve for me, but a fascinating one.  And I like finding philosophy monthlies in the newsagents here, next to the gardening, computer and lifestyle mags.

You know how sometimes you have a belief in something, a something so basic it helps you make sense of the world…

Well don’t count on it.

The awful truth…

I’ve just had a tiny faith ripped away, a belief so set-in-concrete I took it for granted, something that needed no champion because it was so blindingly obvious.

Or at least, I thought it was.

This thing was my belief in the global love of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.

***Never heard of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie?
Read on because you’re missing out!

I have always assumed that everyone must know of May Gibbs‘ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Such a fabulous wondrous storybook must surely have sailed through the hurdles of culture and language to be loved all over the world.

This was certainly the case for us. My sisters and I grew up on a green New Zealand farm, far from the sunburnt country of my Australian mother’s childhood.

But never too far: Mum always read to us of naughty koalas, bad-tempered puddings and, of course, brave and hilarious and exciting and utterly delightful gumnut babies.

Snugglepot and Cuddle-who?

But…at a writers’ event in the UK, I realised (right in the middle of my talk) that when I spoke of big bad Banksia Men and Little Ragged Blossom, no one had the foggiest idea what I was talking about.

And the attendees weren’t just ordinary people; they were librarians! And still they had never heard of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie!?!

Surely not???

I was dumbstruck, dumbfounded, open-mouthed, gob-smacked.
What’s going on!?!?!

As kids, alongside our Australian and New Zealand adventures we’d also read of Paddington Bear and Peter Rabbit and Ratty and Mole and Winnie the Pooh; surely British kids must have been reading of the Muddle-headed Wombat and Mrs Snake and Mr Lizard and Bunyip Bluegum and the Noble Society of Puddin’ Owners?

And so the question:

What’s with this one-way flow of stories, UK people? I thought we were part of the glorious Commonwealth, and that having the Queen on the back of my pocket money meant she was looking our way, at least occasionally.  (What’s it like in the US? Anyone there heard of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie?)

When our kids grow up and get backpacks and working holiday visas, they’ll be cruising the world and experiencing new places and meeting new people. Why make them wait till then?

I saw an interesting BBC documentary about Gypsies in Europe last night. Since Romania became a member of EU, their large Gypsy minority can move freely between the different countries. As a consequence they show up in large numbers in metropolitan areas to steal and beg.

The way they do it is by training their children to steal for them. That way no one has to go to jail. When the children are caught they are sent to social services that release them after a few hours. The children typically hang around ATMs or follow people with backpacks or shopping bags. They can get pretty aggressive at times, probably because they never get punished.

A well meaning liberal might argue that they do this because of poverty, and that other groups in a similar social situation act just the same. But this argument doesn’t hold up. According to the police a full third of all juvenile delinquents in Madrid are Gypsies while, according to Wikipedia, Gypsies are only 1.6 percent of the population. (It’s also a big problem in Italy where they constitute 0.2 percent of the population.) So if there really are other minorities coaching their children this way they must be completely outcompeted by the Gypsies. And, as the film clearly shows, they are kind of sloppy and get caught all the time.

The film also shows how stealing is integrated in their way of life as well as other unpleasant aspects of their culture. At a marriage one man comments that the bride, aged 13, cost 7000 euro because she is such a good thief as well as being a virgin. The next day the marriage is consummated.

Not all Gypsies are like in the film of course. But the statistics don’t lie; there is something rotten in their culture. The authorities, politicians and public figures of the liberal persuasion are also responsible for this situation. By constantly calling anyone who states the obvious a racist, they enable Gypsies to continue to make their living as thieves. And thus they fuel the conflict between Gypsies and the rest of the community.

As far as I can see there is only one solution to this problem. The law needs to make the parents responsible for what their children do. If a crime doesn’t come with a penalty they will keep doing this indefinitely. Only if they are made to pay for their actions, will they (hopefully) realize that their way of living doesn’t work anymore and give it up.

“Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.” Arnold Toynbee

“A great civilization is not destroyed from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Will Durant

“Suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization.”
—James Burnham, Suicide of the West, p. 25

Samuel P. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations?” which appeared in Foreign Affairs in Summer 1993, is considered to be one of the most important works on the Post-Cold War world situation. Contrary to Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992), Huntington did not prognosticate that the world would accept liberal democracy and thus bring conflict, and hence history, to an end. Obviously, even if the world should end tomorrow, 9/11 and the events that followed would give the lie to Fukuyama’s thesis: the world has not reached a “consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government.” In the above mentioned essay, Huntington argued that the global conflicts of the future will not be between ideologies, but rather between cultures, or civilizations. He delineated the following cultures in his analysis: “Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilization.” Several of his candidates represent religions (Confucian, Islamic, Hindu, Orthodox), while the rest represent ethnic or geographical entities, with the exception of the West, which includes not only Europe, but those areas of the world that were formerly colonized by Europe and continue to identify as descendents of European civilization. It is to Huntington’s credit that he recognized the future importance of Western-Islamic conflicts despite that fact that the nations of Islam do not include a major, central world power, and lack both dominant economic and military power, the major exception being their control of petroleum reserves. Huntington stated: “Muslims increasingly see America as their enemy. If that is a fate Americans cannot avoid, their only alternative is to accept it and to take measures necessary to cope with it.” (Remember, Huntington wrote his essay in 1993.)

James Kurth’s 1994 article in the National Interest, “The Real Clash”, however, takes exception to Huntington’s thesis, basically arguing that the West no longer represents a coherent culture and has been superseded by the post-West: “The real clash of civilizations, the one most pregnant with significance, will not be between the West and the rest, but one that is already underway within the West itself, particularly within its central power, the United States. This is a clash between Western civilization and a different grand alliance, one composed of the multicultural and the feminist movements. [I believe Kurth is here referring to radical feminism, with a Marxist basis, and not the feminism of equal opportunity.] It is, in short, a clash between Western and post-Western civilizations.” Huntington was essentially in agreement that multiculturalism was “basically an anti-western ideology.”

John Fonte’s 1997 National Review article, “Post-West Syndrome,” takes up Kurth’s theme about the post-West, arguing that the American intellectual class looks askance at patriotism and nationalism, in favor of more humanitarian and universal values: “This critique of patriotism, nationalism, and the nation-state is advanced in the name of universal ideals such as humanitarianism, egalitarianism, and democracy.” But according to Fonte, “just below the surface of the claims of universality we find the specific political agenda of an influential group of progressive activists. Instead of philosophy we find ideology; instead of cosmopolitanism we find the parochialism of the Western progressive elite.” He concludes:

Liberal democracy and liberal democratic nationalism are phenomena of the modern age, whereas the alternative progressive vision smacks of the pre-modern and post-modern. Instead of individual rights and national citizenship there is an emphasis on group rights and multiculturalism; instead of majority rule there is proportional representation for ascribed groups; instead of patriotic affection for one’s own nation, multiple loyalties to subnational and supranational groups are emphasized.

Similar themes and criticisms about the changes in modern liberalism were voiced by James Burnham in Suicide of the West as far back as 1964. Burnham stated: “Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide” (p. 297). Burnham’s statement can be brought up to date by replacing the term Liberalism with Multiculturalism. In the above work, Burhnam described how classical liberalism, with its belief in individual liberty, had been transformed (or morphed) into modern liberalism, with its primary principle of egalitarian social justice (and hence influenced by Marxism and other socialist doctrines), as follows:

This difference in human character type corresponds to a theoretical conflict within the ideology of modern liberalism: the conflict between the principles of free speech and the other individual freedoms on the one hand, and the principle of egalitarian social justice on the other. Essentially, it is a conflict between individualism and regimentation: the individualism that the liberal ideology derives from its past and the regimentation it has absorbed in the present. This conflict is real, and can be hidden but not solved by discussion, negotiation and compromise. It is a fact that liberalism’s inherited principles correspond to individualism, and a highly atomistic individualism at that. It is equally a fact that the Welfare State and plebiscitary democracy mean a good deal and an increasing deal of regimentation. One or the other must give way; and, on the evidence of the past generation, there is little doubt which is the tottering horn of that particular dilemma. (p. 171)

Multiculturalism as a political ideology can only be understood in its relation to that which gave it birth, Political Correctness, which has its roots in the cultural Marxism of the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, with his theory that to be successful and dominant in the West, Marxism needed to “march through [take over] the [cultural] institutions” of the West. Georg Lukacs of Hungary was the other great progenitor of this doctrine. In 1923, Lukacs and other fellow Communist Party intellectuals founded the Frankfurt School in Germany. After the Nazis took power in 1933, most members of the Frankfurt School fled to the United States.  Included in this group were Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Writing on the “Historical Roots of ‘Political Correctness,’” Raymond V. Raehn contended:

America is today dominated by an alien system of beliefs, attitudes and values that we have come to know as ‘Political Correctness.’ Political Correctness seeks to impose a uniformity of thought and behavior on all Americans and is therefore totalitarian in nature. Its roots lie in a version of Marxism which seeks a radical inversion of the traditional culture in order to create a social revolution.

Although Multiculturalism claims to promote diversity (of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender), what it does not promote is diversity in thought. Instead, it promotes a New Left, Marxian version of race, class, and gender warfare against America and the West; a new left wing monoculture that excludes, prohibits (when able to), and condemns all opposing view points. As this ideology, through Political Correctness or the idea that one must conform to its tenants or be ostracized, has become dominant in American universities, schools, media, government, and even businesses, one could argue with some confidence that while America won the Cold War with the Soviet Union, she lost the war at home with Marxism.

Influenced by Burnham, Pat Buchanan wrote The Death of the West in 2002. According to Buchanan, who had been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration for many years, the most significant dangers faced by America and the West are the following: 1) Depopulation – declining birthrate below the 2.1 children per couple replacement rate: Europe is dying (see below); 2) massive immigration from the third world; 3) dominance of an anti-Western culture in the West (Post-West); and 4) the break up of nations and the defection of the West’s ruling elites to a world government. (p. 228).

I will address each of the dangers cited by Buchanan below with the exception of 3): In reviewing Kurth’s and Fonte’s articles, I have already written about the “dominance of an anti-Western culture in the West (Post-West).”

Canadian journalist Mark Steyn, who wrote America Alone and the article, It’s the demography, stupid, which originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of The New Criterion, has written extensively about the demographic issue of the depopulation of Western democracies and the threat of Islamic Fascism. While the media in America and the West has the public in a lather about global warming, in the above article, Steyn wrote: “Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.” While the United States is “hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman,” most Western industrialized nations, and including Japan, have birth rates well below 2.1 children per woman. For example, “Canada’s fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That’s to say, Spain’s population is halving every generation.” So much for Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb. Meanwhile, many Islamic nations have fertility rates over 6 children per woman. As Steyn notes, “A society that has no children has no future.” Pope Benedict has stated: “Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as if they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen as a liability rather than as a source of hope.”

“But unlike us,” Steyn continued, “the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they’re flying planes into buildings for they’re likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock ‘em over?” With current trends, it is easy to forecast what the future holds for the European Union: Europe will have no choice but to continue allowing massive Muslim immigration to maintain an adequate workforce to sustain their welfare states for a declining and aging population. As Steyn wrote: “The idea that progressive Euro-welfarism is the permanent resting place of human development was always foolish; we now know that it’s suicidally so. To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants at a rate no stable society has ever attempted.”

I won’t belabor the issue of massive immigration from the third world, except to say that such immigration of peoples who often have no tradition of liberal democracy and often don’t speak English (in the case of the U.S. or Britain) poses a real threat to our liberal and democratic institutions. (Lest one think that only conservatives have such concerns, former Senator Eugene McCarthy wrote a book entitled A Colony of the World in 1992, on this very issue, and former Democratic Governor of Colorado, Richard Lamm, vociferously expressed his concerns about both Multiculturalism and massive illegal immigration at a conference on immigration in January 2005.)

Finally, regarding the last danger, “the break up of nations and the defection of the West’s ruling elites to a world government,” Fonte quoted from “a little-noticed article five years ago,” by Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, written when he was a senior editor at Time (1992?). Talbott wrote: “All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary.” Fonte continued, “Talbott predicted that by the end of the twenty-first century ‘nationhood as we know it will be obsolete: all states will recognize a single global authority.’ Moreover, he described the weakening of sovereignty as a ‘basically positive phenomenon.’”

Use your imagination for a simple thought experiment: Currently, if you live in the U.S.A., in our federalist system, you experience at least three levels of government: The local level of county government (and maybe city government also if you live in an incorporated area); state government; and the Federal Government in Washington, DC. By any stretch of the imagination, do you think that adding another tier of government, say the United Nations in New York, will increase your freedom and ability to participate in self-government? Considering the current make up of the United Nations, a more appropriate name would perhaps be the League of Dictatorships. And how long do you think our Constitution and Bill of Rights will last if we relinquish U.S. sovereignty to the U.N.?

The conclusion is warranted from the above analysis that if current trends continue, Europe will continue in its precipitous decline in native European population and Muslims will eventually constitute a sizable minority, if not a majority. Even with minority populations in most European countries, the Muslim Cartoon incident of February 2006 should give ample cause for concern for the fate of free speech and press in a Europe with large Muslim populations. Instead of championing the rights of a free press and speech, most authorities buckled under pressure from Islamist extremist groups. Robert Sibley in “The Dark Side of Multiculturalism” (The Ottawa Citizen, September 10, 2006) has quoted Australian philosopher David Stove, who explained the problem of Muslim intolerance as follows: The contemporary liberal West has attempted “to achieve a society which would be maximally tolerant. But that resolve not only gives maximum scope to the activities of those who have set themselves to achieve the maximally intolerant society. It also, and more importantly, paralyses our powers of resistance to them.”’ Europe appears to have given up resistance without a fight. For example, with only 8.5 percent of the population of London Muslim, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated that accommodation to Sharia law in Britain is “unavoidable,” as the following article appearing in Christian Today (February 7, 2008) indicates:

LONDON – Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, said on Thursday the introduction in Britain of some aspects of sharia, Islamic law, was unavoidable.

His unexpected comments were welcomed by some Muslim groups, but the government was quick to distance itself from them, saying it was out of the question that the principles of sharia could be used in British civil courts.

Williams, speaking to the BBC, said other religions enjoyed tolerance of their laws in Britain and he called for a “constructive accommodation” with Muslim practice in areas such as marital disputes.

Asked if the adoption of sharia was necessary for community cohesion, Williams said: “It seems unavoidable.

“Certain conditions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are bringing in an alien and rival system.”

One can only wonder what the response will be when Muslims constitute 15 %, or 30% of London’s population. I’m certainly not contending that all Muslims are intolerant, but there is a large vocal group of Islamist extremists in most European countries that is practicing a sort of reverse cultural imperialism on their host nations, which they are able to do because their host’s multicultural ideology leaves them impotent to respond.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who emigrated to the Netherlands to escape the fate of an arranged Muslim marriage, eventually was elected to the Dutch Parliament. After making a short film about the plight of Muslim women, Submission, with Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim fanatic. Hirsi Ali eventually left politics and fled the Netherlands, after the Dutch government decided that it could no longer afford to grant her the around-the-clock protection she needed, due to all the death threats that had been made against her by Muslim extremists. Hirsi Ali recounted her story in the 2007 New York Times bestseller, Infidel. Her main issue as a Dutch parliamentarian was the fact that the government was turning a blind eye to the plight of Muslim women in the Netherlands, who, according to Sharia law, were beaten and even murdered (honor killings) by family members for adultery, rape (yes, a Muslim woman can be killed by her family if she’s dishonored by being a victim of rape), and other offenses against Islamic law. Apparently, these crimes went unreported because the Dutch government feared giving offense to Holland’s Muslim minority.

While the left constantly criticizes the right for practicing a so-called “politics of fear” about the Islamist threat, the left, with assistance from an immense campaign of media hype, practices the same thing in an even grander scale about man-made global warming. For ourselves and our children’s generation, the suicide of the West is more of a threat than global warming, the collapsing economy, and any number of other future disasters, because it may well portend the end of a free and democratic civilization. While many experts estimate that the irreversible effects of climate change may take well over one hundred years, the effects of the depopulation of the West (and Western industrial production is considered to be the main cause of increased carbon dioxide emissions) will, if current trends continue, occur well before that, within the next fifty years. As Mark Steyn has argued: “By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria’s by 36%, Estonia’s by 52%.” Although a depopulated Europe will present a decreased threat to global warming – reduced populations is not in and of itself a bad thing, as long as birthrates are high enough to sustain a high quality civilization – the Islamification of Europe does present a clear and present danger to Western Civilization, including the United States. If you do find any value in your current lifestyle for yourself and your children, and its continuation in some semblance of its current state, then you might consider this important. Certainly an Islamified Europe will be intolerant of feminism, secularism, women’s rights, abortion, and gay marriage, to say the least.

So why is there not more concern about this? I think the answer lays in the fact that the politically correct multiculturalists have the Western political elite fearful of being labeled racist if they don’t embrace Islam and all it stands for as a religion.  If they don’t accept Islam’s right to live by its own Sharia laws, Muslim leaders will claim that they are being victimized and discriminated against by the dominant Western culture. The leaders of Islamist Jihad well understand the West’s credo of multicultural tolerance and use it against the West. Shelby Steele has made similar claims about “white guilt” towards blacks in America (Content of Our Character, pp. 77 – 92). Of course, as Kurth, Fonte, Sibley, and Steyn have argued, the politically correct multiculturalists are now largely the Western political elite. Once the Islamist position is dominant, however, the Islamists will not tolerate dissension, or even the existence of those whom they consider to be infidels. As the nineteenth-century French writer, Louis Veuillot, wrote: “When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle” (Quoted in Burnham, Suicide of the West, p. 237). Lee Harris has written:

[A] tolerant society needs more than citizens who are themselves personally committed to tolerance: It needs to produce citizens who, in addition to being tolerant themselves, feel that they have an unconditional duty to insist that everyone else in their society be tolerant as well. Somewhat paradoxically, in order to secure a tolerant society, you must teach the young that there are times when they have a civic duty to be intolerant, namely, when dealing with those who refuse to play by the rules that are necessary for the creation of a tolerant society. If you teach the young that they should never be intolerant themselves, because intolerance is always wrong, then you will be making your society immensely vulnerable to those who themselves practice intolerance. (The Suicide of Reason, pp. 198 – 99)

Where to draw the line with intolerance? Certainly not where advocates of Political Correctness have drawn the line, limiting the free speech of American citizens on campus and in the media, which is a form of Orwellian thought control. Rather, I think the point of Harris’s comment is to resist and limit the ability of those who advocate, promote, and conspire to kill those American citizens who disagree with them, in addition to those who fund such enterprises. I would argue that it is the very effects of the thought control of political correctness that leaves us (the U.S. and the West) defenseless against the totalitarian ideologies of Islamic fascism, and that in fact, we already live in a semi-totalitarian society ourselves, at least in respect to free thought and speech, when any argument in our defense is slandered as racist. For example, in Maureen Corrigan’s review of Gary Gerstle’s American Crucible for NPR, she stated: ‘Gerstle explores how our country has contended with two contradictory ideas of itself: a racial nationalism that conceived of America as “a people held together by common blood and skin color and by an inherited fitness for self-government,” versus a far more inclusive “civic nationalism” in which the melting-pot promise of full citizenship is open to all.’ This is an old tactic: smear the opposition with an extreme example of guilt by association (because some people who are opposed to unlimited immigration are racists, all who oppose unlimited immigration, must be racists). I suppose one could use the same tactic with socialism, and argue that because some socialists are communists, therefore all socialists must be communists. (By the way Corrigan, what “melting pot”?) Buchanan offered the following example of how the Stalinist Soviet Union dealt with critics and dissenters:

From the Moscow Central Committee in 1943:

Members and front organizations must continually embarrass, discredit and degrade our critics. When obstructionists become too irritating, label them as fascists, or Nazi or anti-Semitic. . . The association will, after enough repetition, become “fact” in the public mind. (Quoted Buchanan, The Death of the West, p. 82)

The point of this essay is not to extol the current War on Terror, because in fact, I think that the Iraq War has served to take our eye off the ball of the real threat, which is the proliferation of terrorist cells in Europe and America, and the impotence of the politically correct European and American establishments to resist. As Melanie Phillips has indicated in Londonistan (2006), the real center of Islamist terrorism is in the mosques and madrassahs of London and the rest of Europe. So while I agree with Bush’s critics that invading Iraq was a mistake – in my opinion, a strategic mistake for an overextended U.S. military, but certainly not the moral equivalent of Nazism as claimed in the frenzied rhetoric of the far left – the threat from Islamic fascism is very real, especially in Europe. Although nothing is inevitable, if current trends continue and Europe is lost to Islam, as in the title of Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone, America will be truly alone, with the possible exceptions of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. To assume that once third world nations are supreme and that Europeans and Americans are in the minority at home as well as abroad, that our children will be treated fairly by their new masters, makes about as much sense as the belief that if there are other intelligent beings in the universe they will necessarily be beneficent and not predatory.  

Our children, with the politically correct dogmas of multiculturalism, have been taught, or rather indoctrinated, to believe that all cultural traditions are equal and to be preserved with respect, except their own. They have been indoctrinated to believe that America, and Western Civilization, are the main sources of political oppression in the world today, instead of a beacon of liberty and democracy for the world to respect, and sometimes emulate. Thus, they are deprived of the very will to survive as a civilization, which is essential for the survival of any civilization, and for the individuals and progeny of those individuals who make up that civilization. Jean-Francois Revel has written, “Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.” Yet, while enjoying all the abundant benefits of our civilization, the multiculturalists continue to denigrate it and to advocate its destruction so that it can be replaced by a new, untried and untested, multicultural utopia.

As Nietzsche wrote about the death of God (The Gay Science,1882) in the hearts of his contemporaries, that Christian morality as a set of shared cultural beliefs was destroyed by rationalism and science, so we might now ask: Is Western Civilization dead? Has it been destroyed by multiculturalism? Or do we still have a set of shared cultural beliefs that could even be described as a civilization?

Thanksgiving and Christmas are fast approaching and there is much to do & much that I want to say over this next week.  One thing I realized is that I have not blogged much about the books that I am reading at the moment, partly because there are so many that I get a little behind with writing them up.  However I realize that this is the time that most of us are putting together our Christmas lists (unless you are determined to make this a buy nothing Christmas)  so I thought I would give you my suggestions.

The approach of Christmas seems a good time however to reflect on some the boundary breaking books that I am reading – those books that push my thinking outside the boundaries of the usual ways I think about faith

Top of the list is The Boundary Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise, by Danielle Shroyer.  I think that this is a must read for all of us who are grappling with what it really means to be a follower of Christ in today’s world.  God’s people were always those being pushed to the margins – the outsiders who are moving towards an unknown yet hopeful future.  I love the way that Danielle stretches our thinking beyond the familiar ways of interpreting bible stories.

I love her telling of the story of the Magi – “these very un-Jewish, pagan astrologers” far from home yet acknowledging Christ as king.  Danielle’s comments seem very appropriate at this season.

“Though God’s activity in the world began with one family, Jesus’ kingship begins with one world.  Christ’s birth marks the beginning of the promised Kingdom of God on earth.  And that Kingdom as we see in Epiphany reaches far beyond Jerusalem.

From the very beginning of jesus life on earth, God makes it clear this Messiah is going to muddy the lines between who is in and who is out.  The story of the astrologers is the story of God’s expanding love from the viewpoint of the unexpected outsiders.

The second book I want to recommend is a new bible that arrived in the mail a few days ago.  It is called Mosaic and combines the New Living Translation with reflections for the seasons of the church year.  Tyndale has drawn together authors from a rich array of backgrounds and cultures to share reflections, poetry and art.  The trouble is that I wanted to read all the reflections on the first day.

I love the New Living Translation – it is very readable but as a translation not a paraphrase which is great.  I also love that proceeds from the bible go to support the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators.  So again this is a gift that I would heartily recommend – and with that feel good sense that you are doing something to spread the word of God into other cultures too.

The third book I want to recommend is one that I actually have not read as yet (I am expecting to receive a review copy in the next couple of days).  It is Samir Selmanovic’s: It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian. Even the title is enough to make my mouth water. I will probably blog more about this after I get into the book but here are some reviews that are definitely enticing me to want more.

His aim is to embrace the diversities and even the mutually exclusive mysteries of the three Abrahamic faiths and atheism to gain a new perspective that is not about ourselves but about God.  Read the entire review here

Through his personal stories and engagement with the stories of  Christians, Muslims, Pagans, Atheists and more, author Samir Selmanovic points the way to a life with God and each other that is bigger and better than most of us have ever dared to dream.  Read the entire review

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

In Shusako Endo’s absolutely-must-read novel, Silence, Fr. Rodrigues, an initially idealistic Portuguese monk, goes to Japan with his companion in search of a highly-respected monk thought to have committed apostasy. From his arrival in Japan to his reunion with the apostate monk, Rodrigues experiences a serious loss of the long-held notions of his faith as he witnesses the torture, suffering, and death of Japanese Christians who barely had a life to begin with. The triumphant, glorious, and powerful Christ does not provide him respite from all this, despite his pleas for help. This Christ is absolutely silent.

The Japanese leaders demand one thing to save these Christians from oppression. They demand Rodrigues to step on a picture of Jesus. Rodrigues is horrified by the thought of committing such an act before his Lord. However, it is the Christ of weakness, and not strength, that tells Rodrigues, “Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here.”

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[This was a very difficult post for me to write. I am passionately opinionated, at times quick to denigrate, and ungracious with regards to those opinions, theologies, and ideas I find abhorrent. Thus, this post (like many posts) acts like a mirror, exposing my sin. Please keep this in mind, and please forgive my hypocrisy. Kyrie Eleison...]

This will most likely be the 5235th post on Deadly Viper since its birth in the consciousness of already self-aware Asian American Christians. And it was this controversy that birthed a new consciousness about being self-aware Asian American Christians for the first time. Even the flaws of gender stereotyping (an equal problem in this mess) quickly surfaced as an issue. And so began a power discourse.

This incident was necessary for Asian Americans. For much of our modern American existence we were (and still are) seen as the passive, obedient, and over-achieving patch in our multi-colored quilt. If the DV incident did one thing, it made known the fact that Asian American Christians need to be taken seriously as a contingent of the American Christian fabric (no, I don’t quilt). No longer would it be assumed that we would brush off–or even accept–stereotyping or generalizing of our complex cultures by the dominant majority. Or this is what we hope.

There is a fine line between power struggle and reconciliation when it comes to Christian dialogue. And Christians need to be uncomfortable with it. Christians on the left look at the Christians on the right with disgust. I am self-admittedly a left-leaning Christian. And I have looked at a bumper sticker that reads, “The Christian right is neither.” with some level of haughty amusement. But when Christians on the left are saying that Jesus would endorse the public option, are we not playing the same game as our siblings on the right? Let’s face it. Christians on either side want a theocracy. The liberal Christians just deny it, while the conservative Christians would love one (which would ironically look like Islamic states). Let’s move a step further. Evangelism could be a discourse of power. Monthly session meetings to determine how to attract more parishioners could be a discourse of power. Zondervan’s marketing strategies could be a discourse of power. In fact, Christian marketing IS a discourse of power… and wealth!

What would Michel Foucault think of this?? I’ll stop lest my cynicism of truly believing “power equals knowledge” kicks in.

Looking back, I couldn’t help but think that Asian Americans, even in our need for this to happen, have won a battle for power, while Mike and Jud patch their wounds. But what else could’ve been done? Was this an exchange of power that needed to occur? I say, emphatically, ‘yes’ because we needed to fight back our stereotypes. But what stereotype of Christianity does this perpetuate? Do we say ‘Jesus is our glorious king!’? Could we say, “Jesus is silent like the silenced, impoverished like the poor, and stereotyped like us”? My emphatic yes finishes off with a wince, like a cheap scotch whiskey.

The call from our fellow brothers and sister is clear. Let’s move forward to reconcile with Mike Foster, Jud Wilhite, and Zondervan. And not only reconcile, but partner in the kingdom. But if and when we do partner, let’s do it for the broken and silenced Christ. Because our attempts to correct our siblings may end up with a Christ that commanded the angels to destroy his enemies.

This entry is a power discourse.

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The Jews insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer.

L’inserzione per la colletta su un sito web cattolico

(…) L’idea di pubblicizzare su un sito web collegato alla Diocesi il numero del conto corrente ban­cario della «Rahma», dove chi ne ha voglia può ancora sostene­re finanziariamente l’acquisto da parte dell’associazione mu­sulmana di un capannone di­smesso in via dell’Ippodromo (pronto a diventare una grande ed accogliente moschea), è sta­ta di don Giuliano Zatti, respon­sabile di «Padova islam». Che, però, era irreperibile. Non così don Giovanni Bruse­gan, delegato diocesano per l’Ecumenismo e il Dialogo. «Co­sa c’è di male ad aiutare i fedeli islamici? Nulla. Anzi, mi sembra un’iniziativa molto bella». qui

«(…) La verità che spesso viene nascosta dai “musulmani della lingua” e che non c’è compatibilità tra la nostra Fede, il nostro benedetto Islam con le pratiche perverse e la ignobile vita quotidiana dei negatori, a meno che noi si imponga loro i nostri obblighi religiosi e cioè i diritti che Allah (SWT) vanta sulle creature, senza desideri di compromessi e debolezze, tanto deboli e compromessi sono i loro cuori coperti di ruggine» lui qui

«Per i “crimini come omicidio, adulterio, fornicazione, furto ecc ecc” la testimonianza della donna deve essere sostenuta da “un’altra donna con lei affinche la sua testimonianza venga considerata come la testimonianza dell’uomo“. Dalla sura Al Baqarà 282. ………. Chiamate a testimoni due dei vostri uomini o in mancanza di due uomini, un uomo e due donne, tra coloro di cui accettate la testimonianza, in maniera che, se una sbagliasse, l’altra possa rammentarle. …….. E’ accettata la testimonianza della donna, sola, quando si giudica su argometi delle donne, tipo il parto, l’allattamento, le mestruazioni.» qui

Perché l’islam vede la donna come un individuo con pieni diritti.

]]> http://stackblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/the-manhattan-declaration-a-waste-of-everybodys-time/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:44:17 +0000 John Stackhouse http://stackblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/the-manhattan-declaration-a-waste-of-everybodys-time/

Friends and students have asked what I think about The Manhattan Declaration. Not all friends or students have asked, to be sure! Indeed, many readers of this blog won’t know what I’m talking about. But some will know that it is the recently released statement of a range of conservative American Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic Christians.

It’s a strange document, this Declaration. Indeed, it seems to me to be strangely useless. Here’s why.

1. The original signers include some Big Names among evangelical popular culture, a few eminent Catholic intellectuals, some institutional presidents, and assorted others. Missing are heavyweight evangelical scholars or prominent Christian politicians. Missing also is almost anyone to the left of the Religious Right, with a few conspicuous exceptions, such as  the estimable evangelical activist Dr. Ron Sider. As such, it is difficult to take the document seriously as representing the best Christian thinking available on matters of ethics and politics.

2. Given the provenance of the document being the American Religious Right, therefore, it will surprise precisely no one that the document declares that such people are (still) prolife, (still) pro-traditional marriage, and (still) desirous that their way of seeing things is put into American law. It’s not evident to me that anyone needed a big declaration that such people still feel this way.

3. The document gives no clear direction about what anyone is supposed to do once they have read it–besides sign it, I suppose. Is anyone now going to campaign for prolife positions any differently than he or she did before? Is anyone going to change his or her mind about homosexual marriage? Is anyone going to seek new legislation or, if the law swings against conservative Christians, engage in civil disobedience of some unspecified sort? Who knows?

4. Finally, the document seems philosophically and politically incoherent. It argues for religious liberty for Christians to dissent from views they don’t like (and this point, alas, needs increasing emphasis in America as well as here in Canada). But it also argues that these particular Christian views of abortion, euthanasia, marriage, and more should be enshrined in American law. It says nothing about the liberty of those who would dissent from those views except to assert that because these Christian views are right, they should be the law of the land. What, then, happened to religious liberty on these important matters? The document doesn’t say.

I’m conservatively prolife and have traditional Christian views of marriage also. But just because I think those views are right doesn’t entail that I believe they should be law. Deciding what ought to be law in a pluralistic, democratic society that welcomes immigrants from, and seeks to influence helpfully, countries all over the world, requires careful political theory. Indeed, it requires fundamental and detailed consideration of a variety of related subjects, including the nature and intentions of divine providence over nations, what God expects of human beings individually and corporately short of the return of Christ, what is politically feasible in a given situation, and more. There is none of that sort of thinking evident in this declaration, but rather a strong sense—common enough among conservative evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox around the world—that particular Christian convictions are simply right and therefore ought to be law.

Furthermore, America is not an officially Christian nation, but rather a Christian-majority one. So if we apply the same logic elsewhere, then Muslim-majority countries should enshrine shari’ah as their laws, since Muslims are equally convinced that shari’ah is right, and should brook no exceptions for non-Muslims. The same would go for Hindu- or Buddhist-majority countries. Then what happens then to religious liberty? Or is liberty important only if your views are correct—namely, Christian?

I note that the three drafters are Timothy George, an evangelical historian of theology and academic administrator who shows up frequently in such projects; Robert George, a distinguished Princeton University scholar who is a stalwart defender of Roman Catholic conservative social policy; and Charles Colson, another evangelical whose impressive Prison Fellowship ministry arose out of his previous political career, a career that by any account was extremist and ended in the extremes of Watergate disgrace and a prison term (and therefore not the political expertise one might hope for behind such a document). Such authorship confirms the sense that the project of building a “Christian America” according to the values of the Religious Right, rather than building the best possible pluralist and free society, is the agenda guiding such a declaration.

Others of us, however, will think that God’s will might run to greater liberty for all, greater tolerance for ambiguity and dissent, greater pluralism of belief and practice, and perhaps paradoxically therefore greater opportunity for the Gospel. For it is not clear to us that such declarations, and the outlook that prompts them, really increase non-Christian willingness to respect conservative Christian concerns, let alone to seriously entertain any proclamation of the Gospel. It certainly is not clear that they move anyone closer to prolife, pro-traditional marriage, or pro-religious liberty views.

Indeed, it’s not clear to some of us what good they do at all.