The ‘Hizb ut Tahrir running faith schools’ scandal got big this week.

The Tories made a mess of things by getting the details wrong and embarrassing themselves in Parliament. More fool them. It is not quite a simple case of anti-extremism funds being given to a bunch of extremists.

However, it is still apparent that the state is willing to hand over money to religious organisations and entrust them with educating children even if officials have little idea what these groups’ religious beliefs are exactly or what political organisations (such as Hizb ut Tahrir) they share members with.

For instance, Newsnight dug up an article written by the headmistress of one of the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation schools (the ’charity’ given funds to run faith schools) in which she churns out the usual Isla-mentalist nonsense about the importance of hating democracy and refusing to integrate with Western culture.

How exactly does the screening process work when the Department for Children, Schools and Families is deciding which religious organisations should be allowed to set-up faith schools? How much effort are they putting into examining that fine line – that oh-so-delicate balance – between people who are very very sincerely religious and those who are ideological nuts?

The goal of the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation is to develop the “Islamic personality” of young British Muslims. Hizb ut Tahrir also likes to bang on about the “Islamic personality” and this shared outlook is being used as evidence that the schools are promoting dangerous Islamism.

But ultimately all faith schools seek to develop children with religious personalities – whether they are producing good little Christians, Jews, Muslims or whatever.  If we’re not comfortable with public funds going towards an organisation that sees education as a tool for creating Islamic personalities then why are we cool with other religious groups doing the same?

In my opinion the government’s support for faith schools is well-intentioned but misguided. It is hard to make judgements about religious groups and how appropriate it is for them to be involved in running state-funded schools. Much simpler and much fairer to have a system where all schools are run along secular lines.

Sadly, getting to such a situation from where we are at the moment would not be easy and I don’t think anyone has the political imagination or courage to call for the leap.

On a more positive note, it’s nice to see the media starting to get quotes from the excellent new group British Muslims for Secular Democracy when covering a story about Islam in Britain. For too long lazy journalists have just asked the Muslim Council of Britain for their views. Considering how many Islamists there are in the MCB it has been a mistake to present them as  representing British Muslims. Recognising that British Muslims do not form a homogenous block of opinion is progress.

Yea, religion sucks, worst thing ever invented by humans… yes its all made up.
The pope on the balcony of his golden palace… the clergy., all the religions and their imaginary “friends”, they are all fucking us over… starting with our children.

The Daily Telegraph has a wide-ranging interview with Archbishop Vincent Nichols today, in which he notes a growing “undercurrent” of interest in the Catholic faith.

Dragi cititori,
Vă recomand cu căldură un articol ce poate da naştere unor dezbateri interesante.

Este un articol ce atige puncte interesante şi sensibile in acelaşi timp:

1) Religia si scoala.

2) Preotii si functiile administrative ale statului.

3) Cooperarea intre stat si biserici privind diverse tipuri de ajutor social.

4)  Duminica si sarbatorile legale.

Este un articol ce invită la toleranţă.

M-aş bucura să vă exprimaţi opinia, oricare ar fi ea! Intraţi în dezbatere!

Religie si secularism

…

Simbolic, separarea Bisericii de Stat se naste ca principiu politic in zilele tumultoase ale Revolutiei franceze din 1789. Pina atunci, monarhul era privit ca reprezentantul, “unsul” lui Dumnezeu pe pamint. Daca Biserica era bratul spiritual al Fiintei Supreme, Statul si Monarhul reprezentau bratul politic. In consecinta, Statul si Biserica mergeau mina in mina: pentru a fi recunoscut, monarhul trebuia incoronat in biserica; pentru a-si intari domnia, biserica avea nevoie de puterea statului.

Odata cu asa-numita “Revolutie a ratiunii”, tot acest construct de prabuseste. Francezii anunta moartea lui Dumnezeu – si cum nu mai avem nici o Fiinta Suprema, evident ca monarhia isi pierde legitimitatea. Cetatenii sint liberi, sint egali, si fraternizeaza in lupta impotriva asupritorilor. Daca Dumnezeu si monarhia au fost aruncati in groapa istoriei, democratia renaste din ruinele Bastiliei.

Intre timp lucrurile s-au mai asezat, pasiunile s-au potolit, iar “domnia ratiunii” nu a demonstrat pea mare intelepciune. In urmatoarele doua secole si ceva am invatat ca principiul separarii bisericii de stat este unul puternic si legitim, dar si ca a elimina religia din viata publica este o incercare nu numai inutila, dar si indezirabila. Incerc sa explic mai jos aceasta afirmatie.

Pe de o parte, orice om cit-de-cit rational va intelege avantajele separarii sferelor de influenta ale bisericii si statului. Daca puterea politica este complet eliberata de influenta diverselor religii, evident ca statul laic poate sustine dezvoltarea neingradita nu numai a stiintei – dar si a unei largi sfere politico-ideologice in ceea ce priveste protejarea cetateanului si a indivizilor in general de puterile religioase si politice care ii reclama asentimentul. Nu cred ca are rost sa insist asupra acestui subiect.

Pe de alta parte, un divort total intre stat si biserica (sau, mai bine spus, intre stat si diversele culte religioase) este, cum am mai spus, deopotriva imposibil si indezirabil. Sint patru cazuri pe care doresc sa le supun atentiei:

Continuarea o veti găsi aici, pe Interactiuni.

At another blog, I posted the letter to the Financial Times where a college professor from India decried monotheism and declared the benevolent goodness of polytheism and its modern ally, secularism.  The letter struck me as provocative and worth mentioning in its own right.

But now I think I see a connection.

Polytheism, of course, was the norm in the Roman Empire.  The empire managed its many gods by uniting everyone in a common worship of the emperor.  Worship as many gods as you like as long as you also worship the apotheosis of the state.

Secularism is, indeed, like polytheism in this sense.  Have whatever religious sensibility you like as long as you recognize that your ultimate allegiance is to the secular state which is representative of the real world.  Don’t ever let your religion get between you and the state.  Keep it private.  Keep it in hobby status.

Score one for the man from India.

When it comes to this issue, I unapologetically encourage you to read The End of Secularism.  The more Christians (especially those of a pietistic bent who like to privatize their faith) who read it and understand it, the better equipped we will be to confront the creeping return of the rainbow assortment of gods frolicking beneath the banner of a state happy to tolerate them because they don’t count for much in the end.

The American Humanist Association is launching a national advertising campaign this weekend. This year’s slogan, a variation on last year’s theme, is:

The Washington Post/Newsweek had their On Faith panelists answer the following question:

What do you think of the American Humanist Association’s new “Godless Holiday” campaign? The ads, displayed on transit systems in five major U.S. cities, will say: “No God? . . . No Problem! Be good for goodness’ sake. Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God.” Is this another front on the so-called secular “war on Christmas”? Or is this another example of the pluralistic strength of America? And would you agree with the premise “No God, no problem”?

Daniel Dennett (who, as one of the so-called New Atheists, needs no introduction), said this:

I am delighted with the American Humanist Association’s campaign. It articulates a simple truth that should not even be considered controversial. OF COURSE you can be good without a belief in God….

We can all be good for goodness’ sake, and not because an imaginary God ‘commands’ it (who believes, literally, in such an anthropomorphic commander anyway?) or because we fear eternal torture if we don’t (what a vicious idea!), or because we crave the goodies in an afterlife (what an ignoble, childish myth!). Once we set aside, as beneath respect, those traditional themes of obedience to a supernatural monarch, fear of punishment, and covetousness of reward, religion turns out to have nothing to offer to morality except some inspiring examples of good and courageous behavior that can be appreciated by believers and non-believers alike.

I don’t share Dennett’s “delight” at the campaign (I’m more fer it than agin it, but my attitude is akin to Susan Jacoby’s: “I actually think that proselytizing transit ads for goodness without God are, well, a bit undignified….”), but I agree that the ad’s premise, that people can be good without gods, shouldn’t be controversial. I’m troubled by Dennett’s reference, in his closing sentence, to “inspiring examples of good and courageous behavior” on the part of religious exemplars. As I think about those exemplars and their deeds, I’m struck by how often these people fail(ed) to live up to their moral ideals:

• Jacob cheated his brother
• Abraham lied about his relationship with Sarah
• Jesus cursed a fig tree that didn’t bear fruit out of season
• Inquisitors tortured people they deemed as heretics and infidels
• Protestants and Catholics bled Europe dry during religious wars
• The Catholic Church still refuses to take full responsibility for pedophilia
• Muslims stone women for being unchaperoned when in the presence of males to whom they are not related

The list goes on and on. One could argue more persuasively that religions have provided enduring moral teachings than that they have provided moral role models. Of course, many non-religious philosophies have also provided enduring moral precepts, so the realm of morality is not, and never has been, exclusive to religions. On that point, Dennett and I agree.

Susan K. Smith, a pastor in the United Church of Christ, had this to say:

I cannot for the life of me understand why humanists don’t just leave people who believe in God alone….

Just like atheists don’t want God pushed down their throats, neither do those of us who believe in God want atheism pushed down ours. People like me who believe in God find comfort in the thought of an Almighty. Belief in that Almighty has been a mainstay of my life and of the life of my ancestors. I choose to continue to believe and will do so, and so I resent people telling me that I should not….

I wish humanists would just go on and believe like they want … and leave those of us who prefer to believe in God alone.

I cannot for the life of me understand how Smith got the idea that this ad is directed at her. I don’t see anything in it that urges her to give up her beliefs. Here’s a newsflash for Smith and other Christians of her ilk: it’s not all about you. Really. It’s not. This ad is not about belittling believers, it’s about encouraging nonbelievers. If you and your peers want to believe in God, go right ahead. Worship him/her/it in your homes and churches. Find all the comfort you want from your faith communities, your hymns and your rituals. While you’re at it, turn your own words around, aim them at yourselves, and keep your religion out of my community’s science curriculum (i.e., intelligent design/creationism). And out of my country’s medical agenda (i.e., stem cell research). And out of my country’s laws (i.e., abortion). Most humanists would be glad to “live and let live,” if Smith and her cohorts would let us do so. But, as long as Smith and Co. insist on pushing their religion into our lives, we have no choice but to push it right back out at them.

Michael Otterson (Mormon) had this interesting take on the issue:

This is a nation that has long cherished the basic, founding freedom to be religious or nonreligious. Members of the American Humanist Association have every right to believe as they do and to communicate those beliefs.

The potential for trouble lies in whether a message like theirs is allowed to descend into ridicule or condemnation of those who do profess a belief in God. Just as those who consider themselves nonreligious expect their lack of belief to be respected, religious Americans should also be able to safely assume their profession of faith will be respected and not just tolerated.

Unfortunately, there is a growing tide of anti-religious sentiment in America….

The American Humanist Association’s appeal for us to “be good for goodness’ sake” is timely and reasonable. I hope they take their own message to heart when it comes to respecting the rights of the rest of us to celebrate a religious holiday with religious language, symbols and special acts of goodness.

I’ll touch on two points. First, the notion that “religious Americans should also be able to safely assume their profession of faith will be respected” is vague and troubling. What does the phrase “profession of faith” mean? I respect the rights of religious Americans to hold and profess their beliefs. I will not, however, respect the contents of their beliefs. That battle has already been fought and the religious have lost it – humanists, atheists, etc., will not respect beliefs that we deem to be either ridiculous, or, in more worrisome cases, dangerous. Second, given the role that the Mormon Church in the USA has played in squelching gay rights, Otterson’s final sentence is rich. Humanists do respect the rights of religious people to celebrate their holidays with their unique language, symbols and rituals; we are not trying to take those things away from them. Otterson and Smith are arguing against a position that is not held by most, if any, humanists. Otterson wants us to respect his rights to practice his religion, while he and his buddies campaign to deny basic human rights to others. Can you spell i-r-o-n-y? I guess it’s never occurred to him that the “rising tide of anti-theism” may be due, at least in part, to the roles that theists play in suppressing human rights.

I’ll quickly touch on two more articles and leave you to read the rest on your own (there are nineteen articles in all).

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary left this brief, ostensibly cordial (but, actually, smug and self-righteous) message:

We evangelical types have paraded enough of our own in-your-face stuff in public places, so why should we complain when the unbelievers do the same? Nor should we get too worked up when those same folks insist that morality is possible without a belief in God. Actually, the Bible itself teaches that such is the case….

Ultimately, of course, the big question is what–or Whom–we are trusting in as we go about our efforts to “be good for goodness’ sake.” But, as for the Humanists wanting to run their anti-God ads: I say, “No problem”–at least in the short run.

Did you catch that? He ended with the trump card to trump all trump cards – the Threat of Hell! What a humble guy! His cup runneth over with Jesus’ love.

The person who most closely captures my attitude about the whole War on Christmas issue is Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, formerly of Chicago Theological Seminary and now a fellow at the Center for American Progress:

American public holidays are about consumption, not God. Even worse, the Christian faith has internalized this message of cultural Christmas. Christians themselves often forget what Christmas is really about. The humanists really can’t do any more harm to Christians about Christmas than we’ve already done to ourselves.

American holidays, particularly Christmas, are all about the economy. Economists track the health or weakness of the economy based on the purchasing habits of American consumers between now and Christmas….

We’ve set up our entire economy to depend on the sales generated by the hype of “holidays,” particularly Christmas. What could this possibly have to do with God?

The secularization of Christmas isn’t anything new and it can’t be pinned solely or even primarily on atheists, old or new (well, I’ll skip the part about the atheist songwriters who wrote all those great Christmas songs ). The secularization of Christmas has occurred, and often continues to occur, with the full cooperation of Christians. Here’s an example of how a Christian organization does its part to secularize Christmas: the American Family Association opposes the secularization of Christmas by rating “naughty” and “nice” retailers according to how vociferously their sales catalogs promote Christmas rather than a generic holiday season. Moreover, the association urges people to boycott the naughty merchants and do all of their Christmas shopping at the nice stores. See above for the word i-r-o-n-y. For an example of how individuals participate in the secularization of the season, consider this: last year, a friend of mine who bemoans people taking Christ out of Christmas didn’t just take her children to see Santa Claus and get their picture taken with the jolly old fella. Oh no, she went one better: she took her dog to see Santa and got his picture taken too. My suspicion is that Jesus only plays a marginally greater role in her Christmas than he plays in mine. Just don’t try telling her that.

I’ll leave it to others to fight faux religious wars, max out credit cards and do almost everything to excess in this season in which many seem to celebrate excess above all else. As for me, I’ll take consolation in this thought: No God? No problem.

– the chaplain

Is religious education a form of brainwashing? Should children be free to make their own decisions about fundamental matters of faith? These questions are provoked by the new poster sponsored by the British Humanist Association. [See it here.] Two gloriously happy children hold their hands in the air as if they are about to do a cartwheel. The main text reads: “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.” And floating in the background are the various labels under attack: “Buddhist child. Agnostic child. Protestant child. Humanist child. Catholic child. Atheist child…”

Religious education in Candelaria

First: The exercise of freedom requires some prior foundation. Children have to learn how to make choices: how to weigh things up, how to judge what is best, how to take responsibility. Any child psychologist knows this. Freedom doesn’t just happen. And an essential part of learning to choose is having some sense of the meaning of the world we inhabit, of the value of our actions, and of the significance of their consequences. In other words, freedom can’t be learnt outside a context of meaning and values.

Religious faith can help establish this context; so can a robust humanism. But to think that freedom can be learnt in a vacuum, without the sharing of any moral or philosophical convictions, is simply naïve. Children who are brought up without inherited values of any kind are actually less able to exercise their freedom and choose for themselves. Just as children who are brought up without boundaries will never be able to learn the significance of crossing them.

Second: If you believe something important to be true, then you shouldn’t pretend it is an open question. This goes for secular humanists as much as for religious believers. If, for example, you are a convinced atheist, and you think that belief in God is false at an intellectual level and damaging through its distorting effects on morality, then of course you would want to share this conviction with your children. It would be unjust to keep it from them. Similarly, if you believe in God, and you believe that this faith is not just a lifestyle choice or a cultural imperative but an objective truth with profound implications for human existence, how could you not share this conviction with your children? Yes, you want to nurture their freedom and you hope they will discover things for themselves. But if it is a question of truth – whether scientific or moral or spiritual – then you will inevitably want to guide your children along a certain path, knowing full well that they may one day choose to veer off in another direction.

Third: It’s a fantasy to imagine that children can be raised in a philosophically neutral environment without some dominant world-view. Theism – as much as atheism, materialism, or secular humanism (these terms are not synonymous) – provides a particular understanding of the meaning of the world and of human life, which will help structure a child’s understanding and values. But if you try to bring your children up in an environment which is indifferent to questions of ultimate meaning, then your purported neutrality will already have been lost. If, in effect, you say to your children, “I don’t care enough about these values or convictions to share them with you”, or “they are important to me but not important in themselves”, then you are presenting them with a very particular world-view. In this view, religious questions and all questions of ultimate meaning are relativised, and indifference is taken to be the predominant value.

To say to a child, “I don’t mind – you choose!” is to give the child the strongest possible impression that the available options are all equally significant, which is to say that none is uniquely significant. So this apparently ‘soft’ form of neutrality suggested in the poster is actually a ‘hard’ form of relativism which relegates religious and philosophical questions to the periphery of human interest.

Fourth: A strong notion of autonomy, which is essential to an individual’s freedom, requires an appreciation of one’s human dignity. Children need to know not just that they are loved but that their life has meaning and is valuable in itself. If this is not communicated in some way, then the love of the parents, however profound, will become distorted, because the children will see themselves as valuable to their parents but not valuable as persons in their own right. It doesn’t matter how this innate value is framed (‘human dignity’, ‘the sanctity of life’, etc.) as long as it is articulated somehow.

Human autonomy, rightly cherished by secular humanists, needs some notion of intrinsic human dignity to support it – otherwise it has no foundation and no meaning. So, paradoxically, in order to liberate children from the limited vision of their parents and culture, you have to imbue them with a strong sense of their own worth, of their dignity, of their significance in a framework of meaning. The humanism of the early Enlightenment held on to a strong notion of human dignity and human uniqueness, even as it became more secular. But as secular humanists have become more and more materialist in their outlook, and as materialism has failed to offer any satisfying accounts of human dignity, it has become almost impossible to avoid describing human nature in reductivist terms.

Contemporary secular humanists are largely unable to explain to children why their freedom and autonomy have any significance, why their life has any meaning – and this is why the exaltation of freedom proposed in this poster feels a bit hollow. If you really want your children to be free, you need to tell them why their freedom matters, and help them appreciate some of the values they might pursue. And to do that, you need to use at least a few labels

We’ve been having a rather intriguing series of back-and-forths on the issue of grace or blessings said at a meal such as Thanksgiving; exactly how should an Atheist/freethinker respond to such a situation?

Lisa started us out by describing a situation many of us go through; “At my family’s house, which is a tradition every year, we say the “Our Daily Bread” prayer. I have been biting my tongue for years now, giving in to my family’s belief and tradition.” I didn’t feel that this was fair unless the non-religious at the table were given the opportunity to offer their own blessing, and James suggested this:

“Michael gives me an idea you could try, if you are game. After you wait patiently for them to conclude their blessing or prayer, you can ask for their attention. You could then give a brief secular statement about what you are grateful for (i.e. the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the scientific method, tolerant society, etc…). If you are patient and tolerant enough to accommodate their beliefs, they should do the same for you. If they are so discourteous as to ignore your statement and not allow you to be heard, then make it clear that you feel you have been disrespected. I would let it stand there, for this year at least. Next year I would stand up and walk out until the prayer is done.

Of course this all depends on how confrontational you are willing to be.”

That last bit references the main issue that I have with grace; I don’t think that it is unreasonable to conclude that asking to give a secular humanist grace would be met with antipathy at best, hostility at worst, by the very people who expect to be allowed to give their religious blessing. I wasn’t alone in this thinking, and several other members chimed in that the best solution would be to grin and bear it; sometimes, picking a fight over religion just isn’t worth it, especially not on a day when we are supposed to be celebrating something.

Not everyone agreed, though, and Gary suggested that “I like the secular prayer idea, but don’t do it after theirs. That makes it so…I don’t know…contrived, unnecessary…. (“Oh, look, now our little girl wants to say something. How cute.”)

Instead, ask (ahead of time or as you sit down) if you could give the prayer. Be polite, be sincere, just don’t mention god. They may not even notice. (“Today, we are thankful to be surrounded by a loving, understanding family, and for all this food, etc, etc….”) Don’t even go into the tolerant society thing. Show them that you’re thankful for all the same things that they are, but, matter-of-factly-by-omission, that god has nothing to do with it.”

Roni offered her own version of a secular grace:
Today we are thankful for the joy and gladness in our lives,
For mirth and exultation, for pleasure and delight,
For love and friendship, peace and peoplehood.
May we all witness the day when the sounds throughout the world
Will be these sounds of happiness:
the voices of lovers, the sounds of feasting and singing
and the song of peace.

And then Jim R gave us my favorite secular blessing:

Given the opportunity I will share this prayer with my (very religious) family this year.

Today we give thanks not only for this wonderful feast but for the abundant life we enjoy. We are thankful for all that we have, for the love and support of family and friends and for the freedom to follow the courage of our convictions. On this Thanksgiving Day may we begin to show our gratitude by committing ourselves to the opportunity we have to use our compassion and our intelligence, our wealth and technology to provide an abundant life for every inhabitant of this planet.

(The last line comes from the late Carl Sagan in the last chapter of Cosmos)

I’m going to try this one out tonight.

Some may be wondering, why exactly is this such an issue? Why are Atheists fretting over grace? Why can’t we just bow our heads and take it?

Because we don’t want to offend our friends, family, colleagues and neighbors over something as small as grace; we don’t want to put an end to a tradition we have a disagreement with when we can find a suitable compromise that excludes no one; we do not want to compromise our own beliefs to accommodate those of someone else, but we do wish to retain the spirit that often accompanies the blessing. Most of all, and I say this as an observer only, I think most of us like the traditions whose origins lie in religion, and if we can preserve the positive elements of something as innocuous as grace, while updating and secularizing the actual language a bit, we will. Or at least I will.

MichaelV

The origin of this little essay is a conversation I had a few nights ago when I was asked, quite unexpectedly, what books I might recommend to students seeking a deeper understanding of the world. Without much thinking, I pointed to Heidegger. Reflecting afterward, I realized that for most people Heidegger is merely “difficult” and that for many analytical philosophers (Ayer comes to mind) his writing is “rubbish.” In the right hands however, Heidegger can change minds and change lives.

Martin Heidegger is never an easy read, but he becomes more difficult with every new claim to offer a proprietary interpretation of his thought. In 1947 Heidegger published his Brief ueber den Humanismus (“Letter on Humanism”) in which he sorts through some of the tangles left behind in his 1927 opus, Being and Time and a treatise usually translated as What is Metaphysics? To come at this essay without some notion of Heidegger’s technical vocabulary, especially his complex views on metaphysics, is quickly to sink into linguistic mud. It’s equally difficult to sort through the later work without approaching it problematically. By that I mean that for all its emulsion, Heidegger was working through a very specific set of problems and a level of despair that has occasionally occupied philosophers to such an extent that paradox, aphorism and obscurity have seemed the only way to express the intractability of the problems themselves. Nietzsche comes immediately to mind, but there are tempting if imperfect analogies between Heidegger’s views and those of the negative theologians Gregory of Nyssa, Catherine of Sienna and Meister Eckhart.

The style he preferred in responding to his admirers—like Sartre–as well as his critics, such as Hannah Arendt—was never unconditionally generous, leaving the impression that Heidegger saw his particular mode of expression as appropriate to the subjects he tackled and most interpretation as being either reductionist, or erroneous.

He was not unaware of the power of double-speak as a tool in both political and philosophical discourse. In a 1966 Der Spiegel interview concerning his alleged Nazi sympathies (which finally cost him his teaching career and diminished his reputation in Germany), Heidegger said that in 1935 he had counted on the power of words to convey different meanings to two constituencies (his cleverest students and determined Nazi informants) when he praised the “inner truth and greatness of our movement.”

Hannah Arendt

His sense of how words shape reality and can thus misshape perception and meaning is a constant prickle for anyone who wants to “interpret” Heidegger. It makes equally difficult the task of determining his influence on other thinkers, especially the French philosophers in whose eyes he found grace after 1967.

What makes the “Letter on Humanism” worth discussing is that he pulls no punches about his agenda: to locate in history the source of modernity’s ills. In the politically charged climate of postwar Europe, the easy answers focused on economic, religious, technological and social evils. The cure, it was often proposed, was to restore meaning to the term “humanism” as a category that rises above the particular expressions of modern culture.

In an important article, Gail Soffer notes that “What is peculiar to Heidegger and really questionable in his critique is his diagnosis of the cause of modernity’s ills: not capitalism and its greed; not Protestant religious beliefs; not even runaway technology or the Gestalt of the worker; but rather the humanism of the Western philosophical tradition. For Heidegger, “humanism lies at the root of the reification, technologization, and secularization characteristic of the modern world” (“Heidegger, Humanism and the Destruction of History,” Review of Metaphysics (49) 1996).

Heidegger was not, of course, unaware of the history of the term humanism in early Renaissance thought or even earlier glimmerings in Christian thinkers such as Abelard and Pico della Mirandola. But he was not especially interested in this history of discussion, or at least such discussion could only be useful in deconstruction (Destruktion).

In a strictly connative sense, humanism is that philosophy which either assigns a defined universal essence to man as “a rational animal,” characterized primarily by voluntary action, or it is the denial of essence—a position leading ultimately to Sartre’s conclusion that existentialism is a pure form of humanism. Man is what he is through choice and action. The political appeal of the latter position is that a non-essentialist view of humanism leaves open the possibility for human beings to create worthy social institutions, human rights, Bildung in the humanities and “true” sciences (as opposed to mere technological expertise), and also to reject unworthy ones—such as Nazism.

In none of his writings, however, does Heidegger suggest that “man has no essence.” His message in the “Letter” is that this essence has been misconstrued: that to say “Man is a rational animal” is to predetermine what the nature of man is at a metaphysical level, and that to do so shuts off discussion of the relationship between Being and being human.

To be a knowing subject in relation to known objects is, for Heidegger, to determine the essence of man “downward.” Out of a range of possible definitions, we have chosen the ones that equate science and reason with the sufficient definition—the essence—of humanity. In historical context, we have taken the historical determinants of humanism, which Heidegger sees as a set of familiar phenomena, as being the same as the underlying essence of these phenomena. Heidegger rejects the idea that humanism as we understand the term can provide an understanding of what it means to be thrown into a world of possibilities and others. It does not provide an “analytic” that can help us to understand authenticity, mortality, responsibility. Humanism can provide no escape from the “vulgarity of calculation” or a sense of the temporality of existence.

This leads to the question of God and the matter of Heidegger’s atheism. To an extent, we are playing with language in a way Heidegger would, approvingly, have found amusing. The a-theism he subscribes to is a rejection of God–literally being without the God of history and tradition–and a quest for a non-metaphysical God. It is this aspect of Heidegger’s thought and the subject of die Kehre or “turning” (biographical or procedural?) in his thinking about Dasein that frustrates interrogation—in spite of a small embarrassment of new sources published since his death.

Bultmann

In the world of poetry and technology, God remains the subliminal (literally, beneath the limit) problem. Theologians since Ebeling and Bultmann have exploited this aspect of Heidegger’s almost mystical argot on the topic, and Stuart Elden has analyzed the subject in a useful article (“To Say Nothing of God”, Heythrop Journal, 45/3, 2004, 344-48.). It has been frustrating to students of Heidegger that this “refusal of a theological voice” (Laurence Paul Hemming, 2002) tweaks the nose of theology rather than encourages theological speculation. But, as with humanism, any unconcealed definition of God would be trivialization, and it has been the role of historical theology to offer familiar formulas and definitions in place of concealment.

Thus Heidegger has theology precisely where he wants it: trying to figure him out. His challenge to humanism: that we cannot employ it to address questions of meaning, value and authenticity. His challenge to theology, that the discovery of God cannot be something as simple as forming objective images from subjective data, mainly historical. The possibility of a God without being must be considered. Aquinas considered it. But the axiom “There is no God” cannot be derived from the possibility.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/6659207/David-Suchet-Christianity-is-being-marginalised-in-Britain.html

The 63-year-old, most famous for playing the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, said Britain risks losing the importance of Christianity in our multi- cultural society.

Suchet, who has played the Agatha Christie character on ITV for 21 years, was confirmed as a Christian about two years ago.

In an interview for Woman’s Weekly magazine, he said: “I do feel that Christianity is being marginalised by other religions in Britain.

“I won’t tell you the name of it, but a charity I work for got turned down for Government funding recently, because it was a Christian charity, even though it had been funded by the Government for several years.

“Don’t misunderstand me. We should embrace all religions and marginalise none. But we seem more concerned with marginalising Christianity, and not offending other faiths.

“We are in danger of losing the importance of the Christian faith in our own country.”

“[The Liberhan Report] is a document of falsehood,” B. Satyanarayana, UP governor in 1992.

“The report is politically motivated and illogical. I have no regrets over the demolition of the desputed structure in Ayodhya,” Kalyan Singh, UP chief minister in 1992.

“The Babri Masjid demolition on Dec. 6, 1992 was a day of national pride,” Kalyan Singh

“Reports like that of the Liberhan Commission come and go. But the Hindu culture that takes pride in its heritage and protects its places of worship has been in place for ages and will remain so forever. Any symbolic structure left by an invader in Bharat is a national shame,” Praveen Togadia, VHP leader.

“Get lost. Are you challenging my character? Get lost from here!” Justice M.S. Liberhan the author of The Liberhan Ayodhya Commission Report.

Yes, Your “Honour”, we are challenging your character AND your credibility. It took 17 long years for you to write a lugubrious, dubious, and politically motivated 1000-page report that has cost the Indian taxpayer 8 crores of rupees. For what? For nothing! And as Indian judges are now revealing their assets, will you reveal how much of those taxpayer’s 8 crores got into your pocket in 17 very prosperous years? – IS

Ram Madhav: Giving the facts.

The Ramjanmabhoomi Movement reached a historic stage after the demolition of the non-mosque in 1992. It was a non-mosque because it was never used by Muslims after 1934. It was never registered as a Waqf property by any of the Sunni or Shia boards anywhere in UP or the country. There was no  Muttawalli/Imam attached to it. In effect, it ceased to be a mosque at least since 1934. And what is more, it was – and still is – a functioning temple at least since 1949.

The real India is waking up to a new, historical reality. This awakening is a result of the unfolding of a mighty creative genius of millions of unknown Indians whose names are not known and whose lives are nothing special to remember otherwise. It is they who can metaphorically be descried as the “Real Bharat”. They are charting a new course for the future of our country. The historic Ramjanmabhoomi Movement is but a symbol of that new awakening – a symbol that reminds the world that India, at last, is becoming alive to its history.

It is not just a movement for a temple. It manifests the innate yearning of people for self-respect and honour, an urge to unshackle themselves from the humiliating history heaped on them. It happens to every country; in fact it has happened several times in the history of several countries.

Russian Eastern Orthodox Cathedral in Warsaw: Demolished by the Roman Catholic Poles in the 1920s.

“As I have been speaking, some vivid visual memories have been flashing up in the mind’s eye. One of these is the picture of the principal square in the Polish city of Warsaw sometime in the late nineteen twenties. In the course of the first Russian occupation of Warsaw (1914-1915), the Russians had built an Eastern Orthodox Christian cathedral on this central spot in the city that had been the capital of the once independent Roman Catholic Christian country Poland. The Russians had done this to give the Poles a continuous ocular demonstration that the Russians were their masters. After re-establishment of Poland’s independence in 1918, the Poles pulled this cathedral down. The demolition had been completed just before the date of my visit. I do not greatly blame the Polish government for having pulled down that Russian church. The purpose for which the Russians had built it had been not religious but political, and the purpose had also been intentionally offensive,” says universally acclaimed
historian Sir Arnold Toynbee.

In Turkey, they turned the Church of Santa Sophia into a mosque. In Nicosia churches were converted into mosques. The Spaniards spent many centuries re-conquering their land from Muslim invaders.

About India this was what Toynbee had to say: “Aurangzeb’s purpose in building those three mosques (Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura) was the same intentionally offensive political purpose that moved the Russians to build their Orthodox cathedral in the city centre at Warsaw. Those mosques were intended to signify that an Islamic government was reigning supreme, even over Hinduism’s holiest of holy places. I must say that Aurangzeb had a veritable genius for picking out provocative sites. Aurangzeb and Philip II of Spain are a pair. They are incarnations of the gloomily fanatical vein in the Christian-Muslim-Jewish family of religions. Aurangzeb – poor wretched misguided bad man – spent a lifetime of hard labour in raising massive monuments to his own discredit. Perhaps the Poles were really kinder in destroying the Russians’  self-discrediting monument in Warsaw than you have been in sparing Aurangzeb’s mosques.” (One World and India; 1960; pp 59-60).

Medieval Indian history is replete with instances of wanton aggression on its holy places by Muslim hordes. Innumerable instances of defaced Hindu idols and destroyed Hindu/Jain/Buddhist holy places stare at us everywhere. These destructions were not done just for the sake of fun as some eminent Indian (read Marxist) historians would want us to believe. These were deliberate acts of religious vandalism perpetrated by intolerant Islamic invaders.

However, one would be grossly and sadly mistaken if he confuses the present day awakening in the form of the Ramjanmabhoomi Movement to an effort to “avenge the historic wrongs”. Many so-called liberal (euphemism for Marxist) intellectuals spread this canard either deliberately (most probable) or at times out of ignorance (rare).

The movement for the Ramjanmabhoomi is basically a movement for the self-assertion of a civilisation. It is a wounded civilisation trying to re-invent its roots. It has to be understood properly, instead of dismissed with contempt. That is what Sir Vidia Naipaul also says: “If people just acknowledged history, certain deep emotions of shame and defeat would not be driven underground and would not find this rather nasty and violent expression. As people become more secure in India, as a middle and lower middle class begins to grow, they will feel this emotion more and more. And it is in these people that deep things are stirred by what was, clearly, a very bad defeat. The guides who take people around the temples of Belur and Halebid are talking about this all the time. I do not think they were talking about it like that when I was there last, which is about 20 something years ago. So new people come up and they begin to look at their world and from being great acceptors, they have become questioners. And I think we should simply try to understand this passion. It is not an ignoble passion at all. It is men trying to understand themselves. Do not dismiss them. Treat them seriously.” (“The Truth Governs Writing”, an interview by Sadanand Menon, The Hindu, July 5, 1998).

The movement has reached a historic stage after the demolition of the non-mosque in 1992. It was a non-mosque because it was never used by Muslims after 1934. It was never registered as a Waqf property by any of the Sunni or Shia boards anywhere in UP or the country. There was no Muttawalli/Imam attached to it. In effect, it ceased to be a mosque at least since 1934. And what is more, it was-and still is-a functioning temple at least since 1949.

Mir Baqi's victory monument in Ayodhya being demolished on Dec. 6, 1992. The "masjid" was built in 1528 after demolishing a Vishnu temple and is named for the Turkic-Uzbec invader Babur who became India's first Mogul emperor. Babur is buried in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Hence, what was destroyed on December 6, 1992, was a non-mosque and a functioning temple only. The destruction was a result of the pent-up frustration caused by the inordinate delays and insensitive approach of a section of leaders.

The dispute reached the Supreme Court in 1993 when the government of the day referred to it the core question of whether a Hindu temple existed at the disputed site before the construction of the mosque or not. Declining to answer the core question, the five-member Supreme Court bench in its judgment in October 1994 said keeping aside the disputed land of 2.77 acres on which the make-shift Ram Temple stands today, the remaining land of about 67 acres may be returned to its owners if the government thinks such a step would not hamper the legal proceedings on the disputed site.

It is pertinent to note here that there is no dispute about the ownership of this land or its title in any court anywhere. This undisputed land was acquired by the Union government in 1993 along with the disputed land. There was a move by the central government in 2002 to hand over this undisputed land to its original owners including the Ram Janambhoomi Nyas. The Nyas on its part was willing to give an undertaking to the effect that it would provide a corridor to the disputed site as access in case the judgment on that site went the other way. However, a public interest litigation was filed by a Muslim individual acting upon which a three-member Supreme Court bench asked the Government of India to maintain the status quo on the 67 acres.

All that the leaders of the movement are asking at this point in time is that their part of the undisputed site be returned to them. It does in no way affect the judicial proceedings on the disputed site. The Government of India has moved an application in the Supreme Court seeking vacation of the status quo order so that it can implement the 1994 judgment.

While the facts of the matter clearly indicate the demand of the leaders of the movement is fully legal and constitutional – at no point in time are they demanding that the disputed site be handed over to them – a campaign of calumny full of falsehood and insinuation has been unleashed by a section of intellectuals.

It is a tragedy that these intellectuals fail to understand the movement in its entirety. This is what Sir Vidia had to say about them: “Indian intellectuals, who want to be secure in their liberal beliefs, may not understand what is going on, especially if these intellectuals happen to be in the United States. But every other Indian knows precisely what is happening: deep down he knows that a larger response is emerging even if at times this response appears in his eyes to be threatening.”

And this is the advice he has for those intellectuals: “It is not enough to abuse them or to use that fashionable word from Europe: fascism. There is a big, historical development going on in India. Wise men should understand it and ensure that it does not remain in the hands of fanatics. Rather they should use it for the intellectual transformation of India.” (“An Area of Awakening”, interview by Dileep Padgaonkar, The Times of India, July 18, 1993).

So much transformation has taken place in the intellectual world after 1993 that a large section of our intelligentsia understands and appreciates the significance of this movement today.

Let me end by quoting Dr Rajendra Prasad during the renovation of the historic Somnath temple in 1950, which was vandalised by a 11th century Muslim invader, Mohammad Ghazni.

“By rising from its ashes again, this temple of Somnath will proclaim to the world that no man and no power in the world can destroy that for which people have boundless faith and love in their hearts….  Today, our attempt is not to rectify history. Our only aim is to proclaim anew our attachment to the faith, convictions and to the values on which our religion has rested since immemorial ages.”

Just replace Somnath with Ayodhya.

Jai Ram! Jai Hind!

Föreläsning med Eva Hamberg. “Sekularisering och religionsblindhet i Sverige”.

• Onsdagen den 2 december kl. 15.15
• Sal 118 på Centrum för teologi och religionsvetenskap, Allhelgona kyrkogata 8, Lund.

Eva Hamberg är professor i migrationsvetenskap på Centrum för teologi och religionsvetenskap vid Lunds universitet.

Föreläsningen är ett led i ett samarbete mellan Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) vid Lunds universitet och Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity, and Welfare (MIM) på Malmö högskola för att skapa kontakter mellan religions- och samhällsvetare.

Efter föreläsningen bjuds på buffé.

RICKARD LAGERVALL

There is a growing trend  among those of us who practice faith to play the victim card during political debates.  Many, mostly in the conservative  school, feel that the liberal pinkos will overturn hundreds of  years of separating church and state in order to steal their right to faith.  Of course, any reasonably minded person will  dismiss this as alarmist propaganda because such an event would take a fundamental restructuring of America from the ground up, one that our backwards government could  never pull off.  The most recent resemblance of this hide-in-the-bunker-with-my-food-storage rhetoric comes from Joe Cannon on mormontimes.com.  The blue writing are direct quotes, the black writing is my mockery.

The secularists allow that the religious are free to believe and act on their beliefs, “just don’t impose your beliefs on the public.”

This sounds familiar… That’s right, homosexuals have the right to be gay as long as they keep to themselves.  If we all stay in our bunkers or gay bars, which ever you prefer, we can all live harmoniously and free.

Though this is the current received wisdom of the secularists, it reverses centuries of American history and millennia of Western history.

Is this the same millenia filled with monarchial absolutism, state religions, witch burnings, inquisitions and all other manners of religious warfare?  Sometimes, history needs to be reversed.  Let us not be fools, it was this growing secularism which created the America you’re fighting to save and the religion we practice.

Speaking of “hardball,” cable TV host Chris Matthews, red-faced, blasted the bishops for their involvement. “Well I’ll tell ya, the clergy should stay off Capitol Hill.” Law professors and others also questioned whether the bishops’ activities violated the First Amendment. This kind of thinking clearly stands on its head the plain meaning and intent of the First Amendment.

Again, where did I hear this before… Oh yeah, Matthews’ argument was used by conservatives to slander JFK.

The last  sentence makes quite a bit of sense, all Americans are entitled to believe what they’d like.  If those people are rank-in-file senators who follow their religious leaders to the fullest, good for them.  However, where this gets sticky is when religious institutions act as lobbyist institutions.  It  is then they go from a group of same-minded individual citizens working for a cause to lobbyists, thus making them subject to the republican “r” word… regulation.

the secularists eliminate the need to address religious arguments and are free to act as though their often faith-based and unprovable assumptions are rooted in reason and not in faith.

Which unprovable assumptions?  Marriage being a right?  Dinosaurs?

George counters, “Why does the value of women’s equality override the value of fetal life?” It is because the value of women’s equality is axiomatic and widely accepted (including by me). But the offsetting “right” at issue, the life of the unborn, is dismissed out of hand simply as a “moral and metaphysical” question.

Isn’t abortion legal?  The 1970s called, they want their debate back.  I don’t dismiss the rights of the unborn.  I would love to see a world without abortions.  That being said, it’d be more effective to lobby our youth from unprotected sex than to lobby congress to create bans.  There’s something to be said for government intervention; after all, meth is illegal and it still finds itself in the hands of our youth.

I’m not trying here to resolve this difficult issue, though I am strongly pro-life. Rather, I am demonstrating the unfairness of the secularist denial of the legitimacy of religious claims and how that hampers discussion in the public square.

Fail.

In his first year as the first President of the United States, George Washington signed a proclamation appointing a day of ‘General Thanksgiving’.  He signed it on October 3, 1789, and decreed that this day of thanksgiving would take place on Thursday, November 26 of that year.

Archiving Early America tells us:

While there were Thanksgiving observances in America both before and after Washington’s proclamation, this represents the first to be so designated by the new national government.

After their first harvest, the colonists of the Plymouth Plantation held a celebration of food and feasting in the fall of 1621. Indian chiefs Massassoit, Squanto and Samoset joined in the celebration with ninety of their men in the three-day event.

The first recorded Thanksgiving observance was held on June 29, 1671 at Charlestown, Massachusetts by proclamation of the town’s governing council.

During the 1700s, it was common practice for individual colonies to observe days of thanksgiving throughout each year. A Thanksgiving Day two hundred years ago was a day set aside for prayer and fasting, not a day marked by plentiful food and drink as is today’s custom. Later in the 18th century each of the states periodically would designate a day of thanksgiving in honor of a military victory, an adoption of a state constitution or an exceptionally bountiful crop.

Such a Thanksgiving Day celebration celebration was held in December of 1777 by the colonies nationwide, commemorating the surrender of British General Burgoyne at Saratoga. 

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln changed the day of Thanksgiving to the fourth Tuesday of November.  In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved it to the third Thursday of November, to extend the Christmas shopping season and stimulate the economy.  In 1941, he changed the date to the fourth Thursday of November, where it is today.

The full text of President Washington’s Proclamation of General Thanksgiving appeared in the Massachusetts Centinel of October 14, 1789.  Thanks again to Archiving Early America, you can view it in full on their site or read it below.  Note the number of times God is mentioned and how it reads like a prayer.  I hope that you will see fit to share it with your family on this blessed day:

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houfes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requefted me ‘to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablifh a form of government for their safety and happiness:’

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of thefe States to the fervice of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our fincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the fignal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpofitions of His providence in the courfe and conclufion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have fince enjoyed;– for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to eftablish Conftitutions of government for our fafety and happinefs, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;– for the civil and religious liberty with which we are bleffed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffufing useful knowledge;– and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleafed to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in moft humbly offering our prayers and fupplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and befeech Him to pardon our national and other tranfgreffions;– to enable us all, whether in publick or private ftations, to perform our feveral and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a bleffing to all the people by conftantly being a Government of wife, juft, and conftitutional laws, difcreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all fovereigns and nations (especially fuch as have shewn kindnefs unto us); and to blefs them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increafe of fcience among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind fuch a degree of temporal profperity as he alone knows to be beft.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand feven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Some of us will gather together in changing circumstances, but let’s remember and be thankful for the blessings that God has bestowed on us.  Let us also pray that the grace of the Holy Spirit transforms ungodly situations, whether personal or corporate. 

Wherever you as an American or American-to-be are reading this, have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION

Christian religious people have decided to get into the war the pagans have been waging against Western Civilization and Christianity for several centuries. Last Friday a significant number of Christian leaders threw down the gauntlet. The state and its pagan minority will no longer uproot our truths and our traditions without a fight.

They may be too late. The secularists, atheists and pagans despite being in the tiny minority have stolen the state and may have enough bayonets and guns to drive us into the catacombs, but thank God, we are finally going to make a fight of it.

The Declaration has finally decided that the truth has to be defended and the ‘yes but’ people forced into the open. Black and white do exist. In the moral and social world, they are in fact the norm. We can expect the worst. You can list the pejoratives without effort. We will be divisive, uncaring, antisocial, judgmental, throwbacks.

People whom we thought Christian will attack from within. The”I am a Christian but I have no right to decide for another his lifestyle or her decisions on bearing a child” The George Wills of the world will be resurrected to try to throw a wet blanket. But they will fail. The war is on. It is fifty years late, but we start from here and with the help of God will preserve what is left of civilization We might even shame some secularists into the fight.

Where do I go to enlist.

Let me start by quoting Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who doesn’t approve of punishing the Fort Hood terrorist with the death penalty.

She writes:

Major Nidal Hasan had his first hearing in the Ft. Hood murder case. The hearing was held in the hospital. His lawyer says he is paralyzed from the chest down, incontinent and in severe pain.

[...]How barbaric that the military will seek to kill a man with no sensation in his body from the chest down. He might prefer it (I certainly would) but it’s inexusable behavior for a civilized society and way beyond the pale of decency.

One wonders what she would say to the families of the victims.

The death penalty as a deterrent to future crimes

The trouble with Democrats is that they make decisions based on feelings and intentions, instead of based on knowledge and results. No one likes the death penalty, but that’s not the point of it. The point of the death penalty is that is deters future crimes.

The left-wing Washington Post reports on the latest research.

Excerpt:

“Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it,” said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. “The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.”

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don’t really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) – what am I going to do, hide them?”

Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory – if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).

[...]Among the conclusions:

- Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

- The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

- Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

So, removing the death penalty encourages criminals to commit more crime. And this also applies to terrorism. If you want to coddle captured terrorists by giving them civilian trials and life imprisonment, instead of military trials and death sentences, then you get more terrorism.

Navy SEALS face criminal charges after capturing terrorist

Now let’s turn to this story from Fox News. (via The Weekly Standard via Fausta’s Blog)

Excerpt:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Just consider the incentives being created by this prosecution of Navy SEALS. This is exactly what caused the Army and the FBI to keep silent when Major Nidal Hasan was giving all the warning signs of committing a terrorist attack, including communicating with terrorists. The Army and the FBI didn’t want to face the wrath of politically correct lawyers and judges.

So we have the left opposing the death penalty for terrorism on the one hand, and on the other hand the left is in favor of prosecuting Navy SEALs and CIA interrogators for their work in stopping terrorism.

How Modern Liberals Think

If you want to understand why people on the left call evil good and call good evil, be sure and watch Evan Sayet’s speech at the Heritage Foundation, entitled “How Modern Liberals Think”.

Here’s the lecture:

Democrats aren’t not serious about evil, and that disqualifies them from any office involving national security. In my opinion, they are not qualified to do anything of any importance.

A report and photos from the November 21st One Law For All rally are now online.

This is how to oppose Shari’ah:

And this, this, this, and this is how not to.

Review. What I Believe. Tariq Ramadan. Oxford University Press. 2009.

Tariq Ramadan is a “controversial intellectual”. He faces “many-sided opposition”. The soft-spoken supporter of “solidarity, human dignity, and justice” is accused of “doublespeak”. “Criticisms first of (and mainly in) France, then taken up by some French loving groups of some ideological currents, have built up a haze of controversy around me and my commitment.” He asks, “What are the “ideological and/or interests” of these groups?” Not too savoury, as we shall see. He, by contrast, tries to “build bridges between two universes of reference”, “Western and Islamic ‘civilisations’” “and “between citizens within Western societies themselves”. The book’s contribution to this “process of mediation”? It’s an “opportunity to read me in the original and simply get direct access to my thought”. To show that we “share many common principles and values”. That it is possible to ‘live together’” (all liberal English Anglian inverted commas Ramadan’s). That he belongs to a “reformist trend” within Islam. Which is? A “great and noble religion.” And what of the West’s achievements? “Freedom and democracy.” Its faults? “Murderous ‘civilising missions’, colonialisation, the destructive economic order racism, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings”. Ramadan is bold enough “to contradict accepted opinions” – even by raising these all-too often ignored features of the Western world. Particularly the “other failings”.

There is much in this pamphlet on the need for Muslims to engage in Western society. Its tone throughout is high ‘inverted comma’ clericalese. He pleads for Islam’s European future as part of a new ‘We’. “Western Islam is now a reality” – that is there are European populations with Muslim beliefs immersed in Western culture. So, “Islam is a Western religion”. Apparently this is a big plus. For bridge-builders this implies, Openness to Others (reciprocally), “Handling Fears” and “post-integration” pluralism. Up to, political engagement, and a commitment to worrying about the rights and oppressions of other groups than Muslims (why does this need to be said?). This has to be negotiated through “the fluctuating multiplicity of personal identities”.

Islam, in all its complexity, has to reach into the public domain. This will come about not by playing on “community feelings” and “community-oriented political logics”. A much more ambitious strategy is afoot. Much like the early Christian Christians the Muslim faithful need to integrate, to become part of the institutions of the state. Why? Muslim organisations would wield power and influence. As bearers that is, of a “consistent global vision”. This would be one that assembles a variety of interests in an effort to capture a position in society. Not just politics are important. There is ignorance of Islam’s intellectual richness. To counter this, he claims, the religion’s contribution deserves a larger place in the culture. Revised syllabi, he argues, may help. There needs more mention of Muslim thinkers, from al-Kindî (ninth century), al-Ghazâlî (twelfth century) to Ibn Khaldûm (fourteenth century) To rival no doubt the attention already given in Europe’s school trivium to Thomas Aquinas, Dun Scotus, and Anselm of Canterbury.

Not everyone from an Islamic background wants to span the division between Islam and the West. More shame them, apparently. Ramadan is forthcoming about his battles with Qu’ranic literalists – those who see in the Qur’an signs enough to justify their rigorist interpretation of the Sharia. Who, though he is fairly coy about this, do not exactly like non-Muslim societies, or indeed non-Muslims. Other distances are more tractable. There are Muslims soaked in traditional cultural practices that turn its pages to lend weight to “patriarchal reflexes, failure to respect women’s rights”, other customs “wrongly associated with religion (excision, forced marriages..)” These are wrong, but their reform has to be handled sensitively, by, for example, education – for which Ramadan’s services are graciously offered.

To start with he separates cultural accretion from religion. Why? That in “my Sharia” “all the laws that protect human life and dignity, promote justice and equality, enforce respect of Nature, and so on” are part of the “way to faithfulness to Islam’s objectives”. Take what is true to this, and, as for the rest, well we are not sure. Applied to law and jurisprudence he argues for “radical reform”. Of what? There are plenty of ‘controversial’ parts of the Sharia, throughout all the different schools of Islamic ‘law’. Quite a few subjects for a would-be reformer. Including the Hudud ‘claims of God’ – punishments against Theft, Highway Robbery, Extra-Martial Sex, Apostasy and so on. These – applied in many countries under what at least some scholars call the Sharia (many with as strong qualifications as Ramadan) are renowned for what we shall call in non-clericalese, obscenity and brutality. The laws categorised as Qisas, “eye for an eye” – (the law of the Talion) are not mild either. In this what exactly is a matter of custom and traditional and of divine law? Sometimes a particularly weaselly attempt is made to say that the Sharia will only really exist in a ‘pure’ Islamic society, with no penalties being carried out – presumably as there will be no theft, no sexual impropriety, no unbelief, and indeed no crime whatsoever. More modestly Ramadan once made a call for a ‘moratorium’ (not abolition) on many of the harshest Islamic penalties. This request doesn’t get a mention here. The idea was dropped without support. What happened on the Way? Did it not shine a light on Ramadan’s reforming path that others may follow? What are his proposals now?

What I Believe contains many similar cases of illumination smothered in obscurity. Anyone convinced that Ramadan is a ‘progressive’ will find it hard to dredge up any specific economic and social progressive ideas. Beyond condemnation of domination, marginalisation, discrimination, and other platitudes that would disgrace even a Social Forum sermon. As they say in the trade, the art of the publicist lies in spinning phrases broad enough for others to put their dreams in.

But we shall enter the murkiest area of all. What are Ramadan’s core principles? What exactly is his Islam? It is founded on the Qur’an. Is this a “shared universal”? As we find little details about his religious beliefs in What I Believe, to find out we have to cite from his other works. In the Messenger (2007) he states that this “revealed Book the written text, is made up signs (ayat), just as the universe, like a text spread before our eyes, is teeming with signs. When the heart’s intelligence, and not only analytical intelligence, reads the Qu’ran and the world, then the two texts address and echo each other, and each of them speaks of the other and of the One. The signs remind us of what it means to be born, to live, to think, to feel, and to die.”(P 41)

This doctrine, based on the “the oneness of God, the status of the Qur’an, prayer and life after death.”(P 39 – 40) is, for Ramadan, non-negotiable. Any critical reading and reasoning (ijihâd) rests on this block. As he says in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (2004) “The whole of creation, in its most natural state, is the most immediate expression of the order intended by the transcendent.”(P 12) In this sense there is, he has stated, no Islamic theology (in the manner of testing the road to the Divine). The existence and presence of God is just ‘there’ – it cannot be questioned, only recognised and accepted. Hardly much of a basis for a “shared We”. Now much of his call for mutual understanding, and gently reform makes a worthy Must-do list. But we would fain find a justification for the justification behind all this: that is, his religion is just affirmed. And affirmed. Islamic reformism is a matter of applying reason after having accepted unchanging principles, not on focusing reason to the principles themselves. In fact, then, Ramadan is trapped in the chains of absolute and pitiful religious dogmatism.

Where such rigidity is found, it can’t be kept underground. When God has shown himself so clearly, we can understand Ramadan’s ire at the “ideological currents”, and the ‘highly sectarian ideologues of secularism” who deny his presence. The “historical quarrel with “religion” – not just Catholicism by the way – is a source of endless irritation to someone who knows God is great, and that’s it. Ramadan has trouble accepting that we might want to prevent people with his faith, any faith, from laying down the ground rules of politics. French laïcité is only a model in this respect for the way it has drawn up the battle lines. That is a political declaration of the need for religious influence to be removed from the public administration, as the creator, the foundation stone of the public sphere.

 In reality the French state is as flawed as any Western democracy. Its secularism is riddled with compromises, from the host of subsidies for recognised religions, such as for Catholic education, to, strangely unmentioned by Ramadan, proposed subventions for what he calls the “free and autonomous practice of Islam”. While it has passed laws (highly progressive ones) against ostentatious religious symbols being used as a weapon for communalist and sexual apartheid, in education, under Sarkozy it risks reintroducing – and spreading – state support for religious institutions. From state funded religious representation (extended to Muslims), to state sponsored training (now spread outwards to Islam), there are material reasons to be wary about those who think that France, for all its advances, is a fully secular state. In other words, France, which has made progress in secularist terms, risks retreating. Faced with those with the certainties Ramadan pushes. Against secularism, for religious rights, and (unmentioned here) has made some distastestful coments about people with a  non-Christian background on the way – guess which one…

Ramadan avoids any discussion of this. He has met with some “top French specialists” whom he’s happy to name drop. He now accepts what “specialists of secularism” tell him, that “militant atheism” is a problem. That is, he is not happy that these people “try to spread their influence and find a number of supporters the world over, in the media as well as with some intellectual or some political parties”. Other threats to his plans for more influence for Islam? The far-Right gets a brief mention; apparently their principal baneful effect is to demonise Muslim in terms that used to be applied to Jews. The fact that the extreme right’s main thrust is against foreigners en bloc does not raise the possibility for him that this is their spring of action, and targeting Islam a mere offshoot.

But it is secularists who get the most stick. Ramadan painfully tries to separate out good feminists from bad, those who accept Muslim cultural difference from those with a “Western-centred view” who criticise Islam. He speculates, “some women might find liberation through Islam” (how, is left unspecific). Perhaps wisely he does not repeat his defence of the Veil in The Messenger. That Muslims have thereby “spiritual training and asserting a femininity that is not imprisoned in the mirror of men’s gaze or alienated within unhealthy relationships of power or seduction.”(P 213) Instead he claims, probably even more unwisely, that behind feminist criticisms of Islam “paternalism looms large”. For gays he promises respect, though not a moratorium on religious criticism of the “opinions and actions of homosexuals as to their sexuality”. Finding time to assail Pro-Israeli and neo Conservatives (Ramadan’s foes “are varied and diverse”), he ends by spitting out venom against ex-Muslims, “who gain recognition, fame, and some financial benefit.” One can only sigh with relief, as more than a hint of a threat looms, “I say ‘Peace’, with force, tranquillity, and dignity, to all the instigators of lies, hypocrisies, and wars.”

Some instigators have clearly stung Ramadan. It requires all his sense of “humanity, dignity and ethics” to stay patient. What I Believe was no doubt written too early to include a section justifying his appearances on the Iranian state propaganda outfit, Press TV – or the resulting “controversy” that saw him slung out of his Rotterdam sinecures. But, hey, let him smart.

To escape criticism it is not enough to accept the separation of religion and state, particularly when your strategy is to conquer positions of political influence. We remain ready to question the aim behind this march through the institutions. That this remains hitched to a dogmatic, intellectually sparse, doctrine is a problem. As one sympathetic specialist puts it in general terms Islam is the “putting one’s life and livelihood at the service of divine sovereignty which is the Qu’ran’s constant theme, to ensure that it is everywhere recognised.”* Ramadan’s appeal to divine sovereignty is a blatant falsehood. No post-secularist waffle can disguise this. Or reach an accommodation with him – for all the indulgence of the British religious establishment (from Oxford onwards), and its state sympathisers. The danger (amply documented) is that these authorities, while repressing, overzealously, violent Jihadists, are acceding to some of the pressure of Islamists – reformists if you will – in an effort to re-found the lost religious emprise over moral and political life.

Atheists are indeed secularists. Though not the only ones to want to have public institutions that have no basis in religion, that are neutral between all kinds of belief. From this follows efforts to fight attempts to affirm a religious influence on public life, such as Ramadan’s attempts to shore up the existing power of the faith establishment by joining it. This is one the things that democracy is about. As indeed are a host of issues, from socialism as opposed to capitalism, or social against private ownership, that no doubt divide unbelievers and believers alike. But there remains one common atheist claim. That all forms of religion, Islam included, are fundamental misconceptions of the world. At the heart of Ramadan’s failure to define what he really believes is a serpentine evasion of justifying his doctrine. Is this because his faith in God’s Messenger is that the message is not provably ‘there’ at all? That what he and the faithful follow cannot win an argument on its basic tenets? To answer this tolerance, pluralism, and acceptance are not enough. We know that believers, of all stripes, dislike their mythology and sublime feelings being tramped over by the hobnail boots of rationalists. Tough. For atheists, we would wish that at some point, that those trapped in religion come to recognise that their ideas are false. That they would come to the Light of a Godless reality. This part of the atheist message is non-negotiable.

* P 94. Daniel A. Madigan. The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an. Edited Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Cambridge. 2006.

What I Believe

Chabad-Labovitch rabbis in New York City. Their orthodox racist teachings have permeated every section of the Israeli government and has made Israel into a militaristic totalitarian state. Israel is a friend of India and the Chabad-Labovitch Movement has centers in India, but few Indians know anything about the modern Jewish state and the Zionist ideology that guides its policies. Jewish Halakha religious law is the source of Islamic Shariah law  – some historians believe Mohammad had a Jewish rabbi as a teacher – but Shariah law is almost humane compared to the rabid bigotry and racism of Jewish Halakha law. – IS

Chabad’s Lost Messiah: Did the Rebbe really believe he was the messiah? – Tomer Persico

Israel and Anti-Gentile Traditions – Ari Alexander

“Perhaps most disturbingly, Shahak cites a booklet published by the Central Regional Command of the Israeli Army which states that it is permissible, and even encouraged, to kill civilians encountered in war. “In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.” In a footnote, Shahak mentions that this booklet was withdrawn from circulation on the command of the Chief of Staff, but he nonetheless, believes that even the brief appearance of such a text can only be explained by an accurate assessment of the inequality in Jewish tradition between the lives of Jews and non-Jews.”

Despite its title, Israel Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994) is not your average intro-to-Judaism book. It is more likely to be found in a Muslim day school in Damascus than a Jewish day school in New York, more likely to be cited on a neo-Nazi website, than your local synagogue’s.

Shahak’s book is an overview of Judaism and Zionism, which focuses on Jewish anti-Gentile traditions. Though he recognizes that many of these teachings are no longer authoritative, Shahak believes that they have, nonetheless, had a profound influence on the development of Jewish identity over the centuries. Most importantly, he believes that they have seeped into Zionist ideology and have affected the way Israel interacts with its non-Jewish citizens and neighbors.

Shahak, a Holocaust survivor who died in 2001, was for many years a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also led the Israeli Civil Rights League from the mid-1970s until 1990. In Israel, he was a controversial figure, but he was revered by the international left as a tireless advocate for human rights.

Are Jewish Lives Worth More?

In Jewish History, Jewish Religion Shahak brings numerous texts and legal rulings to demonstrate Jewish antipathy to non-Jews. He mentions a passage from the Talmud that says that Jesus will be punished in hell by being immersed in boiling excrement. He relates that Jewish tradition teaches pious Jews to burn copies of the New Testament and curse the mothers of the dead when passing non-Jewish cemeteries. Shahak highlights the famous passage from Leviticus commanding Jews to “love thy neighbor as thyself” and mentions that, according to rabbinic interpretation, “thy neighbor” refers only to Jews.

Shahak further suggests that the Jewish tradition values Jewish life more than Gentile life. He cites Maimonides’ assertion that whereas one who murders a Jew is subject to the death penalty, one who murders a non-Jew is not (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 2:11). According to another leading commentator, indirectly causing the death of a non-Jew is no sin at all (Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, Bayit Hadash, commentary on Bet Yosef, Yoreh Deah 158).

Shahak reiterates the well-known Jewish teaching that the duty to save a life supersedes all other obligations and notes that the rabbis interpreted this to apply to Jews only. According to the Talmud, “Gentiles are neither to be lifted [out of a well] nor hauled down [into it]” (Tractate Avodah Zarah, 26b). Maimonides writes: “As for Gentiles with whom we are not at war…their death must not be caused, but it is forbidden to save them if they are at the point of death; if, for example, one of them is seen falling into the sea, he should not be rescued, for it is written: ‘neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy fellow’–but [a Gentile] is not thy fellow” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 4:11).

Indeed, Maimonides is the focus of much of Shahak’s analysis. Shahak believes that the 12th-century philosopher and talmudist was a Gentile-hater and racist. He quotes Maimonides’ statement that, “their [the Turks and the
blacks] nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings” (Guide For the Perplexed, Book III, Chapter 51).

Practical Ramifications

Shahak recognizes that many of these traditions are not followed in practice, but he believes that, in general, they have been covered up, instead of confronted. In support of this claim, he refers to another a violent passage from Maimonides that is not translated in the bilingual addition of the Guide published in Jerusalem in 1962. He sees this as a deliberate deception on the part of the editors to soften classical Jewish militancy. His own English translation of the passage, which discusses the command to kill Jewish infidels reads: “It is a duty to exterminate them with one’s own hands. Such as Jesus of Nazareth and his pupils, and Tzadoq and Baitos [the founders of the
Sadducees] and their pupils, may the name of the wicked rot.”

According to Shahak, Jewish “traditions of contempt” infiltrated Zionism and have affected Israeli policy towards its Arab citizens and the Palestinians. He cites three main areas where he believes this has occurred: residency rights, employment rights, and equality before the law.

As an example, he mentions that 92% of Israel’s land is legally restricted to Jews. While in other countries it would be labeled anti-Semitic if a policy excluded Jews from living on or owning land, in the Israeli context Jews tolerate it. He adds that based on the distinction in classical Judaism between reverence for Jewish cemeteries and not for non-Jewish ones, the state of Israel has destroyed hundreds of Muslim cemeteries, including one in order to build the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv.

Perhaps most disturbingly, Shahak cites a booklet published by the Central Regional Command of the Israeli Army which states that it is permissible, and even encouraged, to kill civilians encountered in war. “In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.” In a footnote, Shahak mentions that this booklet was withdrawn from circulation on the command of the Chief of Staff, but he nonetheless, believes that even the brief appearance of such a text can only be explained by an accurate assessment of the inequality in Jewish tradition between the lives of Jews and non-Jews.

Jews Have Ignored Shahak’s Work, Others Haven’t

Whatever your opinion of Shahak and his arguments, Jewish History, Jewish Religion should be taken seriously for a number of reasons.

For one, the texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak’s sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Oftentimes, the interpretation of these texts is debatable and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition and, therefore, cannot be ignored. And, indeed, they are not ignored. As alluded to above, Shahak’s work is very popular in both Arab and Muslim circles (Radio Islam contains the full text of Shahak’s work) as well as groups that are often openly anti-Semitic (David Duke and Bradley Smith include Shahak’s book on their websites).

Others use Shahak’s work in their presentation of Judaism, and that fact alone should make it relevant to contemporary Jews.

Shahak was an ardent secularist and anti-Zionist, but he wrote his book as a challenge to Jews to engage the chauvinist, dehumanizing elements of Jewish tradition and to help create a self-critical and sensitive modern Judaism. It’s true that he combed the rabbinic tradition in search of hateful passages, often–though by no means always–misinterpreting them and taking them out of context, but this may be beside the point.

Jewish texts exist that can be–and are–understood to be vehemently xenophobic. These texts must be openly and honestly grappled with, explained, and if necessary, repudiated.

Ari Alexander studies the modern Middle East at Oxford University.

• Halakha: Jewish biblical, talmudic & rabbinic law.

A Palestinian boy has his arm severed for throwing stones allegedly by Jewish West Bank settlers. These hate crimes are permitted under Jewish Halakha religious law. The Israeli “Ma’ariv” newspaper of Nov. 9, 2009 reports that a new book by two rabbis called “Torat ha-Melekh” (“The King’s Teaching”) contains 30 pages on these Halakha laws permitting Jews to kill and maim non-Jews. The book has received glowing endorsements from leading Israeli rabbis. The authors do not fear prosecution because Maimonides (1135-1204) and Nahmanides (1194-1270), Judaism’s traditional lawgivers after Moses, would also have to be put on trial. – IS

The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews

Updated Version of The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews

Coteret: What you can’t read in Haaretz

Israel Shahak 1933-2001 – Christopher Hitchens

Only the other day, I read some sanguinary proclamation from the rabbinical commander of the Shas party, Ovadia Yosef, himself much sought after by both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. It was a vulgar demand for the holy extermination of non-Jews; the vilest effusions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would have been hard-pressed to match it. The man wants a dictatorial theocracy for Jews and helotry or expulsion for the Palestinians, and he sees (as Shahak did in reverse) the connection. This is not a detail; Yosef’s government receives an enormous US subsidy, and his intended victims live (and die, every day) under a Pax Americana. Men like Shahak, who force us to face these responsibilities, are naturally rare. He was never interviewed by the New York Times, and its obituary pages have let pass the death of a great and serious man.

In early June I sat on a panel, in front of a large and mainly Arab audience, with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Our hosts, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, had asked for a discussion of contrasting images of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The general tempo of the meeting was encouragingly nontribal; there were many criticisms of Arab regimes and societies, and one of our co-panelists, Raghida Dergham, had recently been indicted in her absence by a Lebanese military prosecutor for the offense of sharing a panel discussion with an Israeli. However, it’s safe to say that most of those attending were aching for a chance to question Friedman in person. He was accused directly at one point of writing in a lofty and condescending manner about the Palestinian people. To this he replied hotly and eloquently, saying that he had always believed that “the Jewish people will never be at home in Palestine until the Palestinian people are at home there.”

That was well said, and I hadn’t at the time read his then-most-recent column, so I didn’t think to reply. But in that article he wrote that Chairman Arafat, by his endless double-dealing, had emptied the well of international sympathy for his cause. This is a very Times-ish rhetoric, of course. You have to think about it for a second. It suggests that rights, for Palestinians, are not something innate or inalienable. They are, instead, a reward for good behavior, or for getting a good press. It’s hard to get more patronizing than that. During the first intifada, in the late 1980s, the Palestinians denied themselves the recourse to arms, mounted a civil resistance, produced voices like Hanan Ashrawi and greatly stirred world opinion. For this they were offered some noncontiguous enclaves within an Israeli-controlled and Israeli-settled condominium. Better than nothing, you might say. But it’s the very deal the Israeli settlers reject in their own case, and they do not even live in Israel “proper.” (They just have the support of the armed forces of Israel “proper.”) So now things are not so nice and many Palestinians have turned violent and even–whatever next?–religious and fanatical. Naughty, naughty. No self-determination for you. And this from those who achieved statehood not by making nice but as a consequence of some very ruthless behavior indeed.

I am writing these lines in memoriam for my dear friend and comrade Dr. Israel Shahak, who died on July 2. His home on Bartenura Street in Jerusalem was a library of information about the human rights of the oppressed. The families of prisoners, the staff of closed and censored publications, the victims of eviction and confiscation–none were ever turned away. I have met influential “civil society” Palestinians alive today who were protected as students when Israel was a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to generalize about Jews. And they respected him not just for his consistent stand against discrimination but also because–he never condescended to them. He detested nationalism and religion and made no secret of his contempt for the grasping Arafat entourage. But, as he once put it to me, “I will now only meet with Palestinian spokesmen when we are out of the country. I have some severe criticisms to present to them. But I cannot do this while they are living under occupation and I can ‘visit’ them as a privileged citizen.” This apparently small point of ethical etiquette contains almost the whole dimension of what is missing from our present discourse: the element of elementary dignity and genuine mutual recognition.

Shahak’s childhood was spent in Nazified Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; at the end of the war he was the only male left in his family. He reached Palestine before statehood, in 1945. In 1956 he heard David Ben-Gurion make a demagogic speech about the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt, referring to this dirty war as a campaign for “the kingdom of David and Solomon.” That instilled in him the germinal feelings of opposition. By the end of his life, he had produced a scholarly body of work that showed the indissoluble connection between messianic delusions and racial and political ones. He had also, during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate.

He had no heroes and no dogmas and no party allegiances. If he admitted to any intellectual model, it would have been Spinoza. For Shahak, the liberation of the Jewish people was an aspect of the Enlightenment, and involved their own self-emancipation from ghetto life and from clerical control, no less than from ancient “Gentile” prejudice. It therefore naturally ensued that Jews should never traffic in superstitions or racial myths; they stood to lose the most from the toleration of such rubbish. And it went almost without saying that there could be no defensible Jewish excuse for denying the human rights of others. He was a brilliant and devoted student of the archeology of Jerusalem and Palestine: I would give anything for a videotape of the conducted tours of the city that he gave me, and of the confrontation in which he vanquished one of the propagandist guides on the heights of Masada. For him, the built and the written record made it plain that Palestine had never been the exclusive possession of any one people, let alone any one “faith.”

Only the other day, I read some sanguinary proclamation from the rabbinical commander of the Shas party, Ovadia Yosef, himself much sought after by both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. It was a vulgar demand for the holy extermination of non-Jews; the vilest effusions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would have been hard-pressed to match it. The man wants a dictatorial theocracy for Jews and helotry or expulsion for the Palestinians, and he sees (as Shahak did in reverse) the connection. This is not a detail; Yosef’s government receives an enormous US subsidy, and his intended victims live (and die, every day) under a Pax Americana. Men like Shahak, who force us to face these responsibilities, are naturally rare. He was never interviewed by the New York Times, and its obituary pages have let pass the death of a great and serious man.

Paul to Liberhan: How the Commission Reports work for corrupted Indian polity

26^th November Mania grips Indian Politicians: One Manmohan Singh has been out of India tactfully making another Manmohan Singh to run riot in India on the eve of November 26^th! As November 26 comes nearer, the secular Indian politicians want to exploit the emotional Indians to get excited and forget the real issues. Thus, they are made to forget about the rising prices of rice, vegetables, oils etc., but the rising temper. However, for some the past does not die soon. November 26^th has been a Black Day in Indian history, as on that day many atrocities, murders etc., have been taken place. As this period marks auspicious for Hindus and Mohammedans, the Mohammedans had taken opportunity to attack Hindus on that day[1]. In the context of comparing political events how Commissions have been reporting, two one-man Commission Reports are coming to mind because of striking similarities. As November 26^th comes nearer, obviously and consciously two politicians have been so worried – one Sonia and another Karunanidhi.

Sonia and Karunanadhi: These matured Machiavellian politicians of Secular India have been maneuvering and none can match them. On 26-11-1980 – “26^th November” Subramania Pillai Executive / Verification officer of Tiruchendur Murugan temple was found murdered mysteriously. On 26-11-2009, the Islamic Jihadi terrorists bombed, attacked and killed many innocent Indians in Mumbai, of course, including the fishermen on the boat. Sonia and Karunanidhi have been so worried about the widows of the victims, as they have been haunting and daunting them every day. While the widow Sonia herself is so worried about the coincidence, the wives of Karunanidhi are so worried.

Justice C. J. R. Paul Commission Report: Paul Commission was constituted to inquire into the cold blooded murder of a Hindu Religious & Endowment Board right inside the Tiruchendur Temple in Templenadu. Paul, the retired Judge had reportedly presented his report, but not only the report disappeared, but also Paul, as his whereabouts were not known since 1970. However, in 1999, Karunanidhi indicated to newspersons[2] that “he managed to get a copy containing Jayalalitha’s demands, the same way he had obtained the C J R Paul Commission’s report on the mysterious death of Tiruchendur Murugan temple executive officer Subramania Pillai in 1982 during the M G Ramachandran regime”. Thus, it is evident that “he managed to get a copy containing Jayalalitha’s demands, the same way he had obtained the C J R Paul Commission’s report”. Thus, for the people in power getting copy of Commission Reports is not at all a big thing. Here, the question is how it disappeared!

Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan Report: The Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan Commission of Inquiry was appointed on December 16, 1992, 10 days after the demolition of the Babri Masjid[3]. He was, then a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, was assigned the task of probing the sequence of events that led to the occurrences at the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid complex on December 6, 1992, resulting in the destruction of the structure. In a notification issued, the then Union Home Secretary, Madhav Godbole had said that the Commission would submit its report to the Central government “as soon as possible but not later than three months”.

17 years investigation -48 extensions-16½ hours presentation- 900 page Report: But with 48 extensions, the Liberhan panel became the longest Commission of Inquiry in the history of Independent India. The last extension was in March this year for three months. It took the Commission 16-and-a-half years to submit its 900-plus-page report. By June 30, 2009, when the report was submitted to Prime Minsiter Manmohan Singh, the Union Government had spent over Rs eight crore on the commission, making it the most costliest ever. Most of the expenses was spent on salary and perks of the supporting staff.  As part of its brief, the Liberhan Commission had been asked to look into the role played by the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Kalyan Singh and his ministerial colleagues, officials of the UP Government, central leaders and by individuals, agencies concerned and organisations in bringing down the structure. The commission held 399 sittings and in the course of its investigation, examined powerful people like former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao, BJP leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Kalyan Singh, VHP leader Ashok Singhal, the Congress’s Arjun Singh, and former UP chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Karunanidhi’s official involvements in murders and assassination, acquitted later[4]: People generally forget the recent past. In how many murders and assassination, Karunanidhi was officially involved? In fact, people, particularly, the non-Tanilnadu citizens know very well that he was one of the accused in the Indira Gandhi attempted murder along with 6 others in 1969. Indira Gandhi gave relief to him by withdrawing the case. He has been also under the suspicion of assassination Rajiv Gandhi, as he was / is having links with LTTE. Even when Priyanka met Nalini one of the offenders and undergoing punishment in Vellore jail, she was asking as to any political parties were involved in the assassination plot of his father?  He was also involved in the cold-blooded murder of the Tiruchendur temple priest and people might have forgotten the Justice Paul Commission Report. The report itself was made disappeared ad the Judge made kept quite.

Karunanidhi and Commissions: Karunanidhi has always been a man of two faces, many tongues. He keeps harping publicly that he is willing to face any inquiry against him. But when an inquiry commission is instituted, he always runs away from it. He tried to run away from the Justice Sarkaria Commission constituted to inquire into corruption charges against him. Another example is the case where the Justice Paul Commission Report was stolen. A case was registered and in this connection in the Madras High Court his attitude of non-cooperation was heard by Justice Singaravelu. Karunanidhi, the fourth accused in the case, refused to cooperate. In fact, the learned Judge[5] observed that “Even if the 4th accused is brought to Court through some coercive steps, it would be futile and the proposed remedy would only aggravate the malady…‘ Karunanidhi  had obtained the C J R Paul Commission’s report on the mysterious death of Tiruchendur Murugan temple executive officer Subramania Pillai in 1982 during the M G Ramachandran regime[6]. Ironically, the verification Officer of Hindu Religious & Endowment was murdered[7] on 26-11-1980, “26^th November”!

Sonia daunted and haunted by widows: After the Sikh widows meeting, Sonia,  the widow was totally upset by another group of widows meeting her. There were moments in the meeting, according to sources, when the women talked about the similar situation inflicted on them by fate. “I also went through a similar situation,” Sonia reportedly told Kavita, recalling the time after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination[8]. However, the fact being that none of the widows are happy with Sonia. Not only the Sikh widows[9], now the Sri Lankan Tamil widows have also been in the same feeling, as if they were betrayed.

‘Don’t challenge my character…get lost’: Upset over the “leakage” of his report on Babri Masjid demolition, Justice (retd) Manmohan Singh Liberhan on Monday said he was not a “characterless” person who will hand it over to the media. “I will not speak on the report. If the report is with the media, then go and find out from where the media got it and who provided the report,” a visibly angry Liberhan told reporters at his residence in Sector 9 in Chandigarh. When it was pointed out that the opposition had been alleging that the report was “selectively leaked” and asked whether it was leaked from “his side”, Liberhan said, “let the opposition say anything, but what do you mean by this? “Don’t challenge my character…get lost,” a perturbed Liberhan, who lost his cool, said. “I am not a person who is accessible to you (media)…I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I am not that characterless a person that I will hand over the report to the media before being placed in Parliament,” Liberhan said.

The outburst of Manmohan Singh and Karunanidhi: The flare-up of Manmohan singh is something inexplicable and unwarranted, as it is open secret what these “One Man Commission” would deliver! Here, also the reaction has been remarkably striking! Karunanidhgi retorted to the media persons, when he was questioned about his son – Azhagiri’s involvement in a murder case. Immediately, he flared up and started accusing in a derogatory way, “…You are the murderer…..I  tell you are the murderer……..”. “I am not that characterless a person that I will hand over the report to the media before being placed in Parliament,” Liberhan said. Yes, had he been so conscious about the justice, he would not have taken 17 years with all government perks and all enjoying life and finally present the “Prepared Report” to Congress at a particular time. And Karunanidhi obtained the C. J. R. Paul Report and reportedly destroyed as none knew where it had gone!

Justice delayed is Justice denied: Perhaps, even a student knows what it is. Then with all character conscious retired Judge should not have delayed his report. In fact, he could have resigned and gone sensing the political interference and his self-exploitation of becoming “Yes Master”. But he has not done. Nowadays, everybody knows the practical nuances of 900 pages report. How it is typed, corrected, retyped, corrected, and finally, correct or accepted copy is taken out, out of the printer! So can we say that the report has been so fool-proof that it could not have been accessed by anybody, even the “accepted copy” or “final draft” was being read by him up to his satisfaction! Then, he must have typed himself in his own computer, taken rough drafts, made corrections and then the final report. He must have destroyed all the early copies. Has he done that exactly, so that he can assert that the report was not leaked out!.

·         Therefore, instead of presenting the facts to the people without any controversy, why the learned Judges, and others indulge in such emotional outbursts?

·         Having delayed, he could have suggested releasing it after 26^th November, instead of before 26^th!

·         Can Indians find any difference between the visibly cognizable sycophants like Navin Chawla and himself?

·         The general public may doubt their credentials, as the happenings go in different way!

Vedaprakash

25-11-2009

[2] http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/apr/16tn.htm

[3] http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/all_about_the_liberhan_commission.php

[4] Nathuram Godse and Karunanidhi Written by Vedam on 18-04-2008

http://indiainteracts.in/mobile/blog/read.php?post_id=56&user_id=2290&id=read&x=1

[5] http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/07/11/stories/0111000e.htm

[6] http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/apr/16tn.htm

[7] http://www.assembly.tn.gov.in/archive/Resumes/07assly/07_04_1.pdf

[8] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/I-was-in-same-situation-Sonia-to-cops-widows/articleshow/5262348.cms

[9] http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article40228.ece.

To present the Thanksgiving story and disregard the Calvinism that ran through the mindset of Governor Bradford and the early settlers in Massachusetts in 1621 would be a grave error.  Not for nothing were they called Puritans!  Would there have been a Thanksgiving story to tell without the Calvinists?  I don’t think so.  You’ll see why below.

Yet, here’s what most kids in the US have been learning about this public holiday for at least a generation. Excerpts follow from ‘The Real Story of Thanksgiving’,  November 21, 2007:

… the Pilgrims came over, and they were just overwhelmed; they were swamped; they had no clue where they were; they had no clue how to feed themselves; they had to clue how to protect themselves; they had no idea how to stay warm; they had no idea how to do anything.  They were just typical, dumb … people fleeing some other place they couldn’t manage to live in.  And then, out of the woods came the … Indians, who had great compassion … and they befriended us … and Thanksgiving is where we give thanks to the Indians.

Of course the rest of the Thanksgiving story is that after the Indians saved the white people, who, after all, did what?  They brought syphilis, sexually transmitted diseases, gonorrhea — as had one high school health teacher pronounced it — racism, bigotry, homophobia, all these things… 

The truth in that account is the value of the Indians’ friendship and skills; conversely, the STDs didn’t come from the Pilgrim Fathers.  That was further south in non-Puritan or non-English settlements (e.g. Virginia, other parts of the New World) where there was much depravity and sadness because of ungodly actions by certain Europeans.  But, back to Thanksgiving and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And, let’s not forget that John Calvin — whose theology formed the basis of Puritan belief — said that we must recognise common grace in all people. We are all here to accomplish good.  

So, here’s what happened as I learned it – back in the last century (same source link as above):

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible …

The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work. But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford’s detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims — including Bradford’s own wife — died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure.

When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. 

The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives.

He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. … Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn’t work! …

What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation!  But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years — trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it — the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson.

Here’s what he wrote: ‘The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing — as if they were wiser than God.’

‘For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.’

So what did Bradford’s community try next? … Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products… ‘This had very good success,’ wrote Bradford, ‘for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.’

In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves … So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians.

‘The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the “Great Puritan Migration”.’

So the Pilgrims decided to thank God for all of their good fortune.  And that’s Thanksgiving.  And read George Washington’s first Thanksgiving address and count the number of times God is mentioned and how many times he’s thanked.  None of this is taught today.  It should be.

This post is going out the day before Thanksgiving so that you have time to share it with your children or grandchildren.  I hope that your preparations are going well, and I pray that you have a very happy Thanksgiving.

Tomorrow: The first Thanksgiving proclamation — from George Washington