What Rough Beast?

I think it is probable that we are witnessing the collapse of Islam. 

Islam as an ideology is particularly vulnerable to the increased communication produced by the Internet. The apparent recent radicalizing of Islam, more women wearing hijabs and more Islamist political movements, compared to only a generation or two ago, looks like a defensive move, a circling of the wagons. Another example of the ostrich’s philosophy of sticking his head in the sand; or the child’s of sticking his fingers in his ears. The upsurge  of “Islamic terrorism” is a further symptom. You resort to violence when you irretrievably lose the argument. It is fair to say that Islam always sanctioned violence in a way other religions do not. Nevertheless, there has clearly been a recent upsurge. Islam abided in relative peace with the rest of the world for several centuries before this.

One major problem is that the Quran makes self-contradictory claims. It states, and the average Muslim believes, that the Christian trinity is Allah, Jesus, and Mary. Easily disproved with contact. 

If the Quran is wrong about this, it cannot be the direct word of God, can it? What else might it be wrong about?

The Quran states that Jesus did not die on the cross; that Allah only made it appear so. Yet this means that Allah is a deceiver, prepared to deceive mankind, and must have known this particular deceit would lead to the development of the world’s largest religion. Christianity would be based on a fundamental error. This would be Allah’s fault. If Allah was prepared to deceive, how can we trust anything in the Quran, as the word of God? He might be deceiving again.

This is without even bringing up the celebrated issue of the “Satanic verses,” Muhammed’s own statement that some verses that he dictated as from God were actually, he later realized, from Satan. So what other Quranic passages might be?

The Quran claims that its truth is confirmed by comparing the prior scriptures, the Torah and the Gospel, which it affirms, and seeing they are all in conformity: it cites them as its evidence. Yet the Quran differs from the Torah and the Gospels in many of its historical claims; although the Torah and the Gospels agree with one another. It says Abraham sacrificed Ishmael instead of Isaac, for example. It says Mary’s father is Amram, not Zechariah, and Aaron is her brother--seeming to confuse Mary the mother of Jesus with Mary the sister of Moses.

So by its own standard, the Quran is disproven.

Militant Islam now looks as though it is spent. There have been fewer attacks in most recent years. The theocratic regime in Iran seems to have done much to discredit the idea of political Islam. Some surveys suggest widespread apostasy in Iran, and in other Muslims lands like Saudi Arabia. It is not visible, because apostasy is punishable by death. But that façade may soon be unsustainable.

The rise of militant Islam, as of 9/11, 2001, has had profound effects, however. It first gave birth to the “New Atheism.” Influenced by political correctness, these New Atheists could not see Islam specifically as the problem—that would be “Islamophobia.” So they put the blame on religion per se, and attacked Christianity instead. 

This both provoked and legitimized Islamic militancy, rather than countering it.

Leaving it to Christianity to emerge as the response and alternative to militant Islam, and as the defender of truth and good against what is, objectively, an evil and destructive mass hysteria—a group of people in a state of panic, of “cognitive dissonance.” The doctor is in.

The net result is likely to be a Muslim collapse and a Christian revival.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Is Islam Dying?

One never knows what to believe. I keep seeing contradictory assertions on the net. Even assertions coming with solid data: data can be falsified or misrepresented. Scott Adams avers that “all data is false.” 

I hear one moment that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion.

Then I hear that Islam is collapsing, and Muslims are apostacizing in droves.

All one can do is rely on faith and common sense.

I suspect the latter is more likely the case: that Islam is at least in danger of collapse.

The growth of Islam in recent decades, I gather, had to do with Muslims simply having more children on average than the Christian or secular West. And Muslim birth rates are now apparently collapsing as well. The temporary divergence perhaps had only to do with Muslim countries being less developed than Christian ones. Trends arrive there later.

My strongest evidence that Islam is dying is the worldwide trend to Islamic terrorism. Anger and violence is how people react when they have lost an important argument decisively. It is what you might do when you feel the rug has been pulled out from under you. You want to lash out at the person who destroyed your comfortable world view and self-image.

The reality may be somewhat hidden by the fact that Islam decrees death for apostasy. That being so, apostates are not going to be public about it. The number of actual Muslims might be a fraction of the nominal figures. The instant the threat of punishment is removed, there might be a huge visible exodus. So collapse cold be sudden.

I read that fewer books were translated into Arabic over the past 500 years than are translated into Spanish every year. If true, Islam may have kept deceptively strong by simply avoiding critical examination.

Now, inevitably, especially thanks to the internet, Muslim lands are opening up to the wider world. Islam may be unable to compete in the open theatre of ideas.

And I perceive that it is not losing to secularism, but to Christianity.

Rape is Not a Part of Islam

 

Islam is getting a bum rap in the UK grooming gang scandal. Islam does not enable or endorse the behaviour of these young men. That is the reverse of the truth. It is culture shock.

Coming from a culture with strict rules for the separation of the sexes, severe punishments for rape, strict traditions for female dress, the typical Muslim view of the West is that here, by contrast, everything is permitted. My Pakistani friends used to refer proverbially to “the wicked West.”

We always think this way of proximate foreign cultures: to England, France is always synonymous with sexual license. In Barcelona, a strip joint is named “Baghdad,” and nude dancers are called “exotic.” The most famous stripper in Montreal once had the stage name “Fawzia Amir.” In early Canada, sex fantasies centred around the Indians. No surprise if Muslims think the same about us: in the West, all women are available and everything is permitted.

This is a common expression of culture shock. Finding in some new culture that many familiar norms do not apply, you can easily assume that here there are no norms at all, and everyone is free to do as he pleases.

The initial reaction is to act out your fantasies, here where nobody knows you. The second reaction is to despise these immoral and crazy people, and feel righteous in doing them harm.

This sense is that much more severe when coming from a culture with strict social norms.

So young Muslim immigrants are a bad risk for violence and sexual predation, criminal behavior, and mental illness.

And we are making the same mistake they are, by imagining that such outrageous behaviour is endorsed by and part of Islam.

The fault is in our governments, who are blind or deliberately blind to the importance of culture and cultural difference. And this has nothing to do with racism: race is not culture, and those who suppose they are the same are the most profound racists.

It is callous folly to let in large groups of immigrants from quite different cultures. There will be social breakdown and immense suffering, not least for the immigrants themselves.

We should, in all sanity, prioritize immigrants from cultures with social norms most similar to Canada’s. That means we should give absolute preference to Christians, Jews, Americans in the broad sense of that term, and Europeans.

Failing that, we should give preference to those who have a strong religious commitment. That is, just the opposite of our current thinking, that the problem has something to do with religious “extremism.” A strong faith anchor inoculates against culture shock, and ensures the individual does not act out selfish desires. If these Muslim men in Rotherham and other British cities were good Muslims, they would not behave this way despite temptation.

Farage the Islamophobe

 

There seems to be a firestorm in the UK over Nigel Farage’s recent comments that the UK is letting in too many immigrants who do not support “British values” and “loathe what we stand for.” He is being accused of “Islamophobia” for saying this.

Watch the original interview. It seems to me Farage is perfectly right, and the interviewer dishonest. He is trying to poison the well; Farage is not allowed to cite simple facts, or he is “Islamophobic.” This shuts down debate and leads to bad policy.

Farage here shows himself, once again, a true leader. He will not be intimidated.

Surely it is self-evident that Islam is a set of values. Are these values the same as traditional British values? Are they compatible with them? If not, is British culture and are British values worth preserving?

Let’s take these necessary questions in turn.

Are Islamic values the same as British values? 

They are not, in one essential way. Islam demands sharia law. Nothing, not even the English language, is more central to British culture than British common law; including the principles of Magna Carta and all the rest. 

Next to that, little is more central to British culture than parliamentary democracy. Islam demands a theocracy. There is a reason why there are no functioning democracies in the Muslim Middle East. 

Britain is an officially Christian country; the King is head of the church. Islam is obviously a different creed. Granted, freedom of religion is also a mainstay of modern British culture. But Islam is also doctrinally opposed to freedom of religion: death is the punishment for apostasy. Blasphemy laws apply to non-Muslims; no one may deny the truth of Islam. 

Can these Muslim values coexist with British values? 

On their face, no. And the history of Islam everywhere suggests they cannot. Because of the requirement for sharia law and theocracy, Islam must rule. If there is a substantial Muslim population anywhere, there is an immediate demand for segregation and independence: they will not integrate. 

Are, then, British culture and British values worth preserving?

Just consider the objective accomplishments of British culture. Science, democracy, the Industrial Revolution, Shakespeare, William Blake, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, Dickens, the Brontes, Orwell, football, cricket, rugby, and so on. Suppose it is not the best culture in the world. Even so, surely it is worth preserving. Surely every people has a right to exist, to their culture.

But also consider the quality of the average person’s life in the UK, say over the past few hundred years, with that of the average countryman elsewhere worldwide. Look at the raw economic statistics, or the relative absence of violence and social turmoil.

The answer is obvious. If British culture is lost, it is unlikely to be replaced by something better.

All of these same considerations, of course, apply to Canada; or the US.

This is nothing against Islam. Different countries and different  cultures all have a perfect right to exist. Muslims are free to be Muslims in Muslim countries. British people simply deserve the same right.

Muslim Immigration

 

I am loath to say anything against Islam. Any religion is better than no religion, and any of the ethical monotheisms is infinitely better than no religion. Living in Saudi Arabia, I felt I had far more in common and could be more relaxed with devout Muslims there than with secularists in Canada. Despite the fact that attending a Catholic mass was illegal.

However, many people are belatedly beginning to realize that Muslim immigration is a problem for Western democracies. We have seen and heard the demands for Jewish genocide. We have seen the unpredictable stabbing and bombing sprees. We have seen the grooming gangs and rapes. 

Muslims do not assimilate politically, and liberal democracy does not assimilate Islam. There is a reason why there are no functioning democracies in the Middle East.

To start with, Islam is opposed to the separation of church and state. The state executed Christianity’s founder, who said “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Judaism, has the tradition of the prophets, who lived alone in the desert and railed against the inequities of the state. But in Islam, the prophet, the original religious authority, was also the secular authority: Muhammed was an emperor. No separation. This means there is no leeway for religious experimentation among citizens. In a Muslim state, any non-Muslim is an alien. Conversely, any Muslim living in a non-Muslim state must see himself as eternally alien, never assimilated, until and unless he can seize political control and institute shariah law.

This is a problem for non-Muslim neighbours, and for any liberal-democratic regime. Note that elsewhere in the world, wherever there is a Muslim majority, they will demand separation and Muslim government.

Any Muslim who remains nominally Muslim yet does not fight for this is a bad Muslim; irreligious and unprincipled. Not the sort of citizen you want either.

If Islam comes to power in any jurisdiction, democracy is also no longer desirable. The state is supposed to be a theocracy, not a democracy. Democracy is blasphemy.

Islam also does not believe in human equality or the right to life in the way Christianity does. Christians believe God loves all of us, even sinners. Islam believes he hates unbelievers, who have rejected his sovereignty. He has issued a commandment to all true believers to kill them. So, no right to life, let alone equal status, for kaffirs.

This is not “Islamism” or “Muslim extremism.” This is Islam, properly understood. It is perfectly reasonable, given the starting premises. God is God. We do not see if it we are raised in a Judeo-Christian culture.

Islam of course does not believe in freedom of religion or freedom of conscience. There is no distinction between individual morality and the law. Why would there be? “If the government is not there to enforce morality,” asked a Muslim friend once, “Why is it there?” So of course, Islam demands such things as laws against homosexuality, laws against adultery, laws against fornication, laws requiring modest dress, laws requiring religious observances, and the like. One is certainly not permitted to choose some different religion: converting away from Islam is punishable by death, since it involves a wilful rejection of God’s sovereignty. 

All this is obviously a problem in a liberal society.

Since Constantine, Western nations have been held together as civil societies by their shared Christian values. As in a couple, so long as fundamental values are shared, and can be appealed to, disagreements can generally be worked out. This used to be universally understood. 

Unfortunately, with the Reformation, this civil consensus was shattered in Europe, and much conflict ensued. This was then resolved by the rise, toward the end of the 18th century, of the “Enlightenment” doctrines of liberalism. This has worked well enough for the West since. There is a reason why the civil monuments in Washington D.C. look reminiscent of pagan temples. 

But it has always been naïve to think that liberalism could be compatible with all religious beliefs. It is reasonably compatible with Hinduism, Buddhism, or Confucianism, all of which recognize a separation of church and state. It is not compatible with Shintoism. It is not compatible with paganism, which resurfaced in Germany as Nazism, more recently in France and America as postmodernism; it is not compatible with atheistic Marxism; and it is not compatible with Islam.

 Now all the major Western nations have let in large numbers of Muslim immigrants. Our leaders have gotten us into this problem out of their own sheer ignorance of religion and of Islam.

But then, Marxists and postmodernists are at least as big a problem.

Muslim Parents Protest

 

The leftist coalition is falling apart. It is losing women, Muslims, Latinos. The striking thing is that most leftists in power are not pulling back from their demand to expose children to transgenderism. Two members of Blair Higgs’s PC cabinet in New Brunswick actually resigned rather than accept that parental knowledge and permission is required for a child to formally change gender--despite polls showing Higgs has a winning issue.  Antifa is in the streets calling Muslims “bigots” for objecting to drag shows in the schools. Despite calling anyone else who criticizes Muslims “Islamophobic.” This is the hill they are ready to die on. It is worth wondering why? What, for them, is at stake?

We used to call the ideology they are fighting for here “relativism.” Or, speaking more plainly, truth and morality are for them a matter of free choice. The idea that a man can decide to be a woman is only the flagship for this flotilla. Having sex with children is also, by this doctrine, perfectly okay. It is this they want to defend; they want to defend the dream that they can have and do anything they want. Any denial of this absolute freedom of choice is “fascist.” It is a wicked angel at the gates of Eden wielding a flaming sword.

Foolishly, they imagined that Islam was an ally. After all, they had a different set of beliefs from Christians, and so their presence discounted absolutism, right? That proved all beliefs are arbitrary, so we must all embrace relativism. Let them all immigrate in a flood. That ought to fix everything.

But Muslims are of course absolutists. While they might disagree with Christians on details, broadly, their beliefs regarding reality and morality are the same, and relativism is the one unacceptable option.

The Al Qaeda terrorists did not fly into the Twin Towers to end the influence of Christian theism. They did so to end the immorality emanating from the West, the unrestricted sex and moral license. 

Muslim Protest in Front of the PMO

 

https://twitter.com/truckdriverpleb/status/1672683426535682056?s=20

https://twitter.com/truckdriverpleb/status/1667193315576487936?s=20

So much for Trudeau's claim that Muslims support secularism and Christianity is anti-Muslim.

As a believing Christian, I actually felt more comfortable in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States than I do in secular Canada.

Anderson's Crime Revealed

 

Alexa Lavoie may have uncovered why Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre have both declared Christine Anderson, without explanation, a hateful racist. In an interview for Rebel News, the MEP states her opinion that Islam is not a religion, but an ideology. Moreover, it is a “misogynistic, dehumanizing” ideology, more properly comparable with Communism than what we refer to otherwise as religion.

I can understand why Trudeau and Poilievre do not want to actually quote her or explain their opposition. The problem is, she has a good case. And if more people in Canada hear it, it is liable to lead to civil strife.

First of all, we must be free to criticize religions, as opposed to adherents of a religion. Nobody looks askance at criticizing Scientology’s theological claims, or those of the Unification Church (the “Moonies”); or for that matter Catholicism, or evangelical Christianity, or Christianity as a whole. In a free and pluralistic country, Islam cannot be exempt from such criticism. 

On the other hand, awkwardly, Muslims themselves are not tolerant of any criticism of their faith, and are liable to issue fatwas, and generally become violent. 

The politicians have a tiger by the tail. It is safest to just try to silence anyone who mentions the problem. Not that this will fix it—it will make it worse—but with luck, they will be retired from politics and living in a gated community somewhere by then.

As someone trained in Comparative Religions, I can say that Anderson’s questions about Islam are reasonable. People in general, and perhaps also our politicians, do not seem to understand that the definition of religion is uncertain in the field, and Islam is in fundamental ways not a religion like Christianity or Judaism. Unlike them, or Buddhism, it does not see a separation between religion and politics, church and state. For Islam, in principle, the only legitimate government is a Muslim government, and Islam can  only be practiced, in principle, under a Muslim government.

Hence, Anderson is right to say it is a political ideology as much as it is a religion. 

It cannot coexist with other faiths in peace on an equal playing field. Whenever and wherever there is a substantial concentration of Muslims, they will demand their own government. If they control a government, they will want to impose sharia law on all citizens.

This is not compatible with a pluralistic liberal democracy.

So—if we continue to accept Muslim immigration, should we require new citizens to take an oath to support liberal values like free speech, equality of the sexes, and religious tolerance?

Problem: we are then in effect asking them to renounce their religion. Those who do may not turn out to be ideal citizens; we may be selecting for the unscrupulous and irreligious.

It is a serious problem, which we are building for our future. It is probably past due for us all to have a discussion of this. Anderson is forcing such a discussion, as are some others in Europe. Trudeau and Poilievre fear one.

Do Muslim and Christians Worship the Same God?

 

I am usually in awe of William Lane Craig as a philosopher. But in his claim that Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God, I think he is off the mark. 

He argues that there is cause to accept the possibility that we worship the same God; but not sufficient warrant. It is possible, he says, that it is not the same God, and then he leaps to the conclusion that Yahweh and Allah are not the same God. 

Surely, at a minimum, he is actually giving no better justification for his own claim than for the claim that they are the same. It is possible; that does not make it necessary.

But it is not even possible. We are actually obliged to accept that it is the same God. 

Craig offers two analogies: first, we see a man treating a woman well, and observe that her husband is kind to her. But as it turns out, that man is not her husband, and her actual husband abuses her. In this case, if we say her husband treats her will, and another insists her husband abuses her, we are not talking about the same person.

His second example is the Immaculate Conception: Protestants commonly assume this Catholic doctrine refers to the birth of Christ. But to Catholics, it refers to the conception of the Virgin Mary. Accordingly, the two are not speaking of the same thing. Mistaken identity.

But these analogies, or any mistaken identity problem, depend on there being more than one existing item or person it is possible to be referring to: more than one man man in the world, and more than one conception. Therefore, confusion is possible.

By definition, there is only one God in the universe; and both Christians and Muslims aver it. Accordingly, it is impossible to accuse either of a care of mistaken identity, that they are thinking of another God.  By definition, Muslims and Christians simply must be worshipping the same God, whether or not they have different conceptions of Him. To disagree, Craig must first declare himself a polytheist.

If Muslims and Christians do differ in their concept of God, it is probably not very useful to argue about it. God is in his essence beyond human conception. Some things may be necessarily true, for example, by definition; but beyond such points it is unreasonable to insist that your own conception is the right one.

To demonstrate that they are different Gods, Craig points out that the Muslim God is hostile to non-Muslims, while the Christian God loves everyone, “unconditionally.”

Problem: Does the Hebrew God of the Old Testament love the Canaanites and Philistines “unconditionally”? That’s far from clear. He does, after all, want them wiped out, men, women, children and cattle.

And does the God of the New Testament, really? The scribes and Pharisees? The “goats” thrown into the eternal flames?

The term “Muslim” properly means “obedient to God.” So God loves Muslims. This seems to me the same as the Christian teaching: God loves those who love him, but those who reject him are damned.   Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, turning from God, is the unforgivable sin.

It is an odd partisan blindness on Dr. Craig’s part.

The Backlash in Europe

 

A backlash against high levels of immigration is underway in Europe. Denmark now wants to send refugees from Syria back. If they cannot, they will round them up and put them in camps. Sweden wants to stop accepting refugees. Britain voted for Brexit to cut the flow of immigration, and is now sending refugees to Rwanda. Hungary has built a wall. Politicians have found it necessary to take these positions, which only a little while ago they would have condemned as “far right” and beyond the pale, due to public outcry. 

Politicians in Canada would be wise to take note. This convoy is almost surely headed our way. Those who tie themselves too tightly to the mast of multiculturalism may soon find they have no support.

The problem is not immigration as such; at least that is what the politicians say; and I believe them. We need immigration. It is the failure to integrate. This means social division and high crime rates. It turns out that diversity is not our strength. Strength is from movement towards unity, “e pluribus unum.”

And the problem is not racism or discrimination against immigrants. The problem is that some immigrants discriminate.

Compare Chinese with Japanese Canadians. There has been at least as much discrimination against Japanese immigrants as Chinese—most North Americans can’t tell the difference visually, and if they can, history gives more reason to resent the Japanese. The Chinese were never interred. However, much as I love the Chinese, Chinese do not integrate, and the Japanese do. The Chinese stick together in “Chinatowns.” Japanese intermarry and engage with the culture. There are no, or few, “Japantowns.”

When Europeans move into some other country and then stay aloof, sticking to their own neighbourhoods and not learning the language or culture, we condemn this. We see them as colonizers. 

It works the same way regardless of skin colour. Immigrants who do not integrate are colonizers. They want to change the country they come to to suit them; and this quite properly causes resentment among those already there. They have their own culture, have a right to it, and want to preserve it. Unlike the immigrants, they did not make a choice to change.

An intelligent government can predict and should distinguish among immigrant groups who will strengthen the country, and who will lead to problems. Much is predictable based on cultural characteristics. Chinese, for example, do not integrate well because Confucianism does not recognize any responsibility towards anyone with whom you do not have some formal relationship. Strangers are ghosts. Therefore foreigners are ghosts.

You can also see it from experience. Filipinos are good at integrating. Greeks make good immigrants. Koreans make good immigrants. Sikhs make good immigrants. Jews make good immigrants. Lebanese Christians make good immigrants. They are quickly contributing to the mainstream culture.

Muslims make poor immigrants, for predictable reasons. Islam is not compatible with liberal democracy, Canadian social norms, and religious pluralism. In principle, in Islam, no government is legitimate that is not Muslim, and enforcing Islam as state religion. No law is legitimate that does not conform to shariah law. 

Accordingly, any Muslim immigrant is in principle hostile to the government and alienated from the non-Muslim majority.

You may well argue that this assumption is not fair to “moderate Muslims.” But if someone is prepared to reject the moral code with which they were raised, and which they claim to follow, are they a good bet to be a moral person? Are they not also likely to be a problem, perhaps a worse problem?

I say this with great respect to Islam and to my own Muslim friends. Islam is an admirable ethical system; but it is not compatible with immigration to and assimilation to a non-Muslim nation. Muslims themselves will insist this is so: whenever numbers warrant, they will demand a separate state.

Salman Rushdie

 

Salman Rushdie has at last been gotten to by the Muslim terrorists. 

The perpetrator has been caught, and will no doubt face stiff punishment. 

And nothing will change, more broadly. Someone else will be next.

Muslim terrorism keeps resurfacing, and is growing. Nations with longstanding Muslim minorities, like the Philippines, can attest that Muslim violence has been a fact of life there for centuries. It is growing now simply because there are more points of contact between Islam and the rest of the world. 

Nobody has yet found a way to stop it; although there is the legend that General Pershing, or some other American or British worthy, when informed that it was simply the local Muslim custom to every now and then run amok and behead random citizens, and nothing could be done about it, explained that it was the American custom, when such events occurred, to open fire.

I expect this is apocryphal. The conventional protections and punishments do not work, because we are dealing, broadly, with “suicide bombers.” The assailant does not care about dying. They get a big reward in the hereafter. So what can we possibly do to stop or to discourage them? Execute them? To their minds, and those of their supporters, that just makes them an immortal martyr.

Here’s the way to discourage Muslim terrorism. Each attack, very publicly seize or destroy a mosque. A mosque of commensurate value. If, for example, there was a $5 million fatwa on Rushdie’s head, seize American mosques of equivalent book value. If the target is something like the World Trade Centre, a cruise missile hitting the Ka’aba.

Some, of course, will immediately protest. This is unjust to average Muslims, who have nothing to do with the assaults. This is Islamophobia. This is religious persecution.

Yet, for fair comparison, we have no problem with seizing Catholic Church funds and property to punish the crimes of individual priests and bishops. Obviously, ordinary Catholics did not endorse these sex crimes, had nothing to do with them, and are their primary victims. Yet they are being punished for them.

Surely it is fairer to seize mosques in response to religious terrorism. A pity for individual Muslims; yet after all, unlike the sexual sins of priests, the terrorists are motivated by the explicit idea of advancing Islam. Unlike seizing Catholic Church property, which looks only like religious persecution, seizing mosques might deter future crimes. A prospective terrorist would have to think twice: is he advancing Islam, or harming it? Can he risk the chance of being condemned in the next life instead of rewarded?

Mary and Islam

 

A Muslim (Persian) depiction of Mary with Jesus

Nobody gets religion; on the left or on the right.

A piece from PJ Media claims the Vatican has “betrayed” Mary by saying she is a bridge among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. They object to the claim in a Vatican document that she was “a Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman.” After all, how could she have been a Muslim -- “A religion that came into being 600 years after Mary died.”

Bad theology there, pal. Mary did not die, in the conventional sense. The term is “dormition.” She ascended bodily into heaven. At least, that is what Catholics believe. Even if she hadn’t, she, like all the saints, is alive in heaven. Accordingly, why couldn’t she have become a Muslim at some point after 622 AD?

This further supposes, falsely, that Islam began with Muhammad, as Christianity began with Jesus Christ. By that assumption, when did Judaism begin? “Islam”” means “submission”: that is, submission to the one true God. Accordingly, as far as Muslims are concerned, there were Muslims long before Muhammed, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and, of course, Mary. They would have thought and believed all the same things Muhammed thought. Muhammed did not come to change anything, but to restore the true faith, and place a seal on it.

The article’s second objection is that “Islam presents Mary, the Mother of Christ, as ‘married’ to and ‘copulating’ with Muhammad in paradise.” Shocking? Why? Did you suppose God was against sex?

Ah, but, the article says, this claim violates the Christian doctrine that she was eternally a virgin.

That is not the Christian doctrine. That is the Catholic and Orthodox doctrine. If this fatally alienates Islam from Christianity, it equally divides Christianity. 

Moreover, the Muslim claim is actually compatible with Mary being eternally a virgin. In fact, Islam believes she was. They are closer to Catholicism here than Protestantism is. Marriage in heaven is necessarily a very different matter from marriage on earth. The article makes the point that the Arabic word implies copulation, not some Platonic relationship. Fine—but imagine how “sex” works in heaven, given that in heaven one does not, until the resurrection, have a body. Perhaps Mary, uniquely, does; even if so, Muhammed does not. Does this really contradict the concept of Mary’s virginity? How exactly?

Third, even if this hadith were controversial for Christians, it is not an article of faith for Muslims. A hadith is a tradition about Muhammed, not something from the Quran, and all hadiths are not equal. The chain of authority behind this particular hadith, according to a Muslim site, is “weak.” Any Muslim is free to take it or leave it.

Undeniably, there are differences between Christianity and Islam. But there is a tendency to exaggerate them. 

The Trinity and Islam

The major world religions agree on most things. On basic morality, on an afterlife, on heaven and hell. However, it is valid and necessary to point out that they do disagree in some things; and when they do, at least one of them must be wrong.

Islam has made its fundamental disagreement with Christianity plain: it developed, after all, in the context of Christianity, and needed to differentiate itself. Christianity is wrong because it believes God is a Trinity; for Islam, God is a unity. According to Islam, believing Jesus is God is a ticket to Hell.

We are obliged to take a position on the matter. We cannot stay neutral.

First, why insist God cannot have more than one nature? Even a mere mortal like myself can have three separate Facebook pages, each presenting a somewhat different identity. Why can’t God do something similar? And God is omnipotent: does one deny his ability to do so? To deny such an ability is to deny your God is God—and that would be the apostasy. You are worshipping some demon.

One must assert, therefore, that God may choose to remain at all times one person, or manifest himself as many. Do we have the right to presuppose which he must choose or has chosen? Would God send us to Hell if, in sincerity, we chose wrong in guessing the divine intent? How would that be a moral failing on our part?

To make it a matter for hellfire, therefore, looks like special pleading to scare people away from examining the argument.

What is the evidence? 

The evidence of the Quran is clear, that God is one and Jesus is not God. But the authority of the Quran depends on the assumption that it comes from God; using it as authority on the nature of God is tautological. The same is true of the evidence for the Trinity in the Bible.

Our conclusion must therefore be based on pure reason from first principles.

There are such arguments for the Trinity.

To begin with, to say that God is a perfect unity, lacking all duality or multiplicity, means that God is lacking something: multiplicity. If he lacks something, unless that thing is itself a flaw, he is less than perfect. Is being more than one a flaw? If so, creation itself is a flaw, and God must have been wrong to create anything. Either way, if he is envisioned as perfect unity, he is flawed.

Let us then consider the repeated Muslim assumption that Allah is benevolent, merciful. Or the Christian equivalent assertion, that God is love.

It is impossible for God to be benevolent or merciful in the absence of any other beings. Merciful to whom?

It is impossible for love to exist within only one being; love exists only with other.

Therefore, if either love or benevolence are intrinsic to his nature, he must have been multiple in some way eternally. Or, if he was not, his nature has changed over time. If it has changed over time, his previous state must have been lacking. And lacking in things we would consider intrinsically good: in love, in mercy, in benevolence.

So he was not God yet, for God is by definition perfect, and he was not perfect.

In sum, God is not God until and unless he is multiple. We must assume he is and was eternally.

The Oppression Olympics

My cargo-shifted-to-port pal Cyrus, not to be confused with Xerxes, sought the other evening to explain why the left seemed to spin on a dime from being irreconcilably opposed to Islam for oppressing women to making the extirpation of “Islamophobia” one of its main policies. He acknowledges the inconsistency, but suggests that, once the left identifies a group as oppressed, they immediately tend to overlook any faults, perhaps as overcompensation.

That seems admission enough—but also leads to the next question. How are Muslims in general an oppressed group?

His response seemed to me tentative: “colonialism.”

Problem: if the issue is having been colonized, and recently, Muslims are simply in the same situation as just about everyone else in the world. So why this special concern for Muslims, and not for Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Bahais, or Christians? Granted that some European countries—England, one or two others—have not been colonized in recent times. Neither has Muslim Turkey.

Moreover, Muslims have been up to quite recent times among the world’s most eager colonizers themselves. In principle, for Islam, empire is the proper form of government. The Ottoman Empire, which in the 19th century still held large swaths of Christian Europe, ended only in 1922. Muslim Indonesia allowed independence to Christian Timor-Leste only in 2002. Muslim Sudan allowed independence to Christian South Sudan only in 2011. Muslim Mauritania became the last country in the world to legally abolish slavery in 1981, following soon after Saudi Arabia and Oman. Reports are that slavery continues de facto in Muslim Libya.

Strictly speaking, on balance, Muslims are probably the single least-historically-oppressed demographic in the universe; with perhaps the exception of the English, Germans, French, or Russians.

Which brings up the wider question, how many other of the left’s supposedly “oppressed” client groups are in fact not oppressed? If the left is wrong here, are they wrong in other cases?

I think they are systematically wrong. While, granted, some of their client groups have been historically oppressed or discriminated against, this would have been in the past, not in the present. It was other people at another time. Almost by definition, once there is a consensus that a given group has been oppressed, that oppression must be over. Because nobody at all is prepared to admit they are oppressing anyone. The left is, at best, always in the business of urgently pouring water on fires that have been out for generations. While other fires blaze untended.

Who currently is genuinely oppressed? Falun Gong. Christians in the Middle East. Christians in China and North Korea. Yazidis. Jews in Europe and the Middle East. Kurds. Muslims in China. White South Africans. Is the left interested in doing anything to help?

Not a bit.

Immigration Shibboleths

Minority religions in India. Over 50 million potential immigrants.

Poland is catching flak for turning down immigrants from Muslim lands, while opening its doors to immigrants from the Ukraine.

But Poland’s policy here is entirely sensible, and ought to be a model for others.

In an overreaction to racism, we have for years pretended that all immigrants are equally desirable, regardless of their prior culture.

This is false, and relies on a pernicious false equivalency of culture with race.

We in Canada have long understood, and accepted, that immigrants who are already fluent in French or English are preferable, because they will most readily fit in and be able to contribute. Surely this is a no-brainer. Language is not based on race. Anyone can learn any language.

Language is a part of culture. The same is true of other parts of culture.

Poland and the Ukraine being Slavic Christian neighbours, with a largely shared history, a huge proportion of the culture will be shared, making Ukrainian integration easy.

Perhaps most valuable, in this regard, is shared religion. This matters for immigration for the same reason it matters in a marriage. If both partners have the same goals in life, they are going to find it easier to work together and support one another. If each is trying to accomplish different and possibly incompatible things, conflict is almost inevitable. Shared religion gives people a shared purpose, shared assumptions and authorities to appeal to in cases of disagreement, and is the traditional glue for social cohesion in all cultures and societies throughout history.

This traditional consideration is amended somewhat for post-enlightenment Europe and North America. In effect, our shared religion, guaranteeing social cohesion, has become liberalism, using that term in the proper sense—human equality and human rights. This makes members of minority religions ideal immigrants in our case. In the lands from whence they came, they will have been second-class citizens. Liberalism now allows them to be fully equal. And they can when they arrive have no presuppositions or expectations of theocracy on the basis of their own creed in their new home.

A rational immigration policy for Canada or the US would give priority to Christian immigrants, since Christianity is overwhelmingly the majority belief in Canada or the US now; ensuring social cohesion on that basis, and ensuring that when they arrive they have a support system in place to help them integrate, just as would an immigrant who already has other family members in the country. And there will be no conflict with their neighbours on essential values.

Along with Christians, priority ought to be given to members of religious minorities who are minorities wherever they live: Yazidis, Bahai, and so forth. Logically, they will not only appreciate the religious freedom Canada offers, but will have less lingering commitment to some alternate homeland. They will be more likely to see Canada as their home, and contribute accordingly. Exactly this, I think, has been the Canadian experience, with the Jews, the Sikhs, and other such religious minority groups. They have contributed to the culture and the economy beyond their numbers. At the same time, we are doing a great humanitarian service, in many cases, in saving people at risk of persecution elsewhere, while reducing social tensions in their countries of origin.

Beyond this, priority should be given to immigrants coming from functioning democracies and from areas that follow the British common law tradition. They will be far more likely to understand how things work and what is expected of them when they arrive. More likely to be able to participate, and less likely to break the laws.

Will all this tend to favour people with while skin? On the whole, perhaps, but only coincidentally. For example, Filipinos should score very high on most of these factors: functioning democracy, common law tradition, speak English, Christian. Parsees should as well: functioning democracy, common law tradition, speak English, minority religion everywhere. There are over a billion people in Indian who follow the British common law tradition, and many of them are religious minorities. The world hosts almost 100 million Filipinos. There is no reason to suppose this set of immigration standards will produce a paler populace, if that matters.

On these grounds, it must be frankly admitted, Muslims in general make for bad immigrants. It is not just that they are in most cases accustomed to being the majority religion. It is also that, unlike in Christianity, there is no initial concept of separation of church and state in Islam. Separating church and state is, to Islam, in principle, an abomination. It means an immoral government. Accordingly, in immigrating, they will see the current government and laws of Canada as illegitimate. This does not make for easy integration.

Some, you will argue, are “liberal,” “enlightened,” and will happily accept the concepts of liberal democracy. Indeed, some will. But, in so doing, they are also turning their back on their own religious and ethical tradition. Put in simplest terms, these are bad Muslims. They have made a deal with the devil. They are liable to be immoral in other matters as well.

To a lesser extent, Chinese immigration poses the same problems. Confucianism is a comprehensive rival ethical and social system to liberalism. There is a reason why Chinese immigrants tend to huddle in “Chinatowns,” ghettos, and are slow to integrate. By comparison, Japanese immigrants, although otherwise culturally similar, tend to soon intermarry and integrate. As do Filipinos.

We are foolish not to see the difference, and it is dangerous not to.

Blowing in the Wind

A few days ago, I wrote about the slaughter in Christchurch, and that of course everybody is going to come out and say they are against murder and hate; but they always say that, and it does nothing.

Actually, this time, in Canada, not everyone has done so. And this looks significant.

Andrew Scheer’s initial statement seemed to avoid saying that the victims were Muslim.

“Freedom has come under attack in New Zealand as peaceful worshippers are targeted in a despicable act of evil. All people must be able to practice their faith freely and without fear.”

He was quickly criticized for this omission, and sent out a second statement that was more explicit. 

Maxime Bernier

Maxime Bernier did not. He first said nothing about the incident, and then, when challenged, responded that there was no call to issue a statement. He did not automatically issue statements whenever Christians or others were attacked either.

“Some journalists have no decency. Did this one harass me or anybody else when dozens of Christians were massacred in Nigeria and the Philippines weeks ago? Why not? As a rule I don’t comment on these horrible tragedies in other countries. Period.”

Bernier has a point. Islam has been given more consideration in Canada in recent years than Christianity or Judaism. Witness House of Commons resolutions consciously and deliberately condemning “Islamophobia,” without referring to other religions—religions that suffer more actual hate crimes.

But this reaction, by Scheer and Bernier, suggests that politicians are now no longer certain they gain politically by defending Muslims. Even at a time when one might expect natural sympathy. That’s chilling. They are making a careful calculation instead; fingers are to the wind. And the direction of the wind may be shifting.

Important moral for any minority in a democracy: do not trust government to protect you from a lynch mob. The same lynch mob elected them. 

There is a reason for the blindfold.

This is one of the great overlooked advantages of Empire. The authorities in London, and those they sent out to administer, were divorced from local factions and prejudices. They could view disputes with a disinterested eye, and so would dispense justice. Good news for minorities everywhere: Sikhs in India, Ibo in Nigeria, Hakka in Malaysia, French in Canada. This is always less probable in either a democracy or a local oligarchy.

Witness the very different experience of aboriginal people in Canada, under the Empire, and in the US. Thomas Darcy McGee found the same to be true for the Irish: Montreal treated them more fairly than Boston, where the signs went up that “no Irish need apply.” Witness the disparate treatment of Africans in the two countries. 

It was real.

In theory, liberal democracies also have checks and balances built in to restrain the mob. This is the point of the Senate, in either Canada or the US. This is the point of a constitution and a separate judiciary. To some extent, this is the point of a federation.

Unfortunately, we have increasingly politicized them.

While all the talk has been, for the past forty years or, about celebrating minorities, do not be misled. Our system is not set up for this, and this was never true. It looked true only so long as so-called “minorities” constituted a majority voting bloc, and some disliked minority—such as “cisgendered Anglo straight white males”—could be falsely presented as the majority. But the focus of the mob can just as easily, and abruptly, swing to another victim: the Jews, or white women, or the Muslims, and so forth. We are beginning to see this.

First they came for the cisgendered Anglo straight white males, and I said nothing, for I was not a cisgendered Anglo straight white male. Then they came for the Jews, and I said nothing, for I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Muslims …

Sinead O'Connor Converts to Islam

I see one guy online, Jack Buckby, criticising Sinead O'Connor for becoming a Muslim. To my mind, that is beyond the pale. Religious faith is private. It is arrogant to assume we know better than another what their walk with God entails. 

We do all know O'Connor has had serious struggles with her mental health. She seems to be “bipolar,” to use the standard diagnostic term. This means turning to religion is exactly what she needs to do. But her mental suffering is probably also due to some form of abuse during childhood. And it may well be that her childhood experiences have closed Catholicism to her. That's what can happen if you are abused by a priest, or if an abusive parent uses bogus religion as a club against you. God can start to look like the abusive priest or parent writ large across the sky—when you, the abused, are the one most in need of Him. Bad people will almost always try to co-opt religion for their purposes.

Moving to Islam may therefore be exactly what O'Connor needs. And this need not imply some error in Catholicism. 

This may well by why God in his wisdom has allowed more than one religion to flourish. For cultural or for personal reasons, one or the other may work better for each of us. This may be because our upbringing or our culture has poisoned some once sacred well. Christianity itself arose in objection to the abuse of Judaism by the Pharisaic authorities of Jesus's day, who had turned it into a club to lord it over people. Yet this was no comment on Judaism. It does not mean, has never meant, that the convenant with the Jews was invalid, or has ever lapsed.

Religion is not a competition.

Sinead O'Connoer deserves our support and prayers.

Miriam Umm Eisa Mosque

Mary's new mosque.

You want good news? Here’s good news. As of last Wednesday, The Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE has been renamed Mary, the Mother of Jesus Mosque.

This is no small gesture on the part of the government of the UAE. The Sheikh Zayed mosque was formerly named for the UAE’s founder. Almost like renaming the Washington Monument.

Interior.

And this was done by the UAE government in the name of harmony among the world’s faiths. It is a reminder of what Christians and Muslims share.

Maria Kannon, Tacloban

Mary also unites Christians and Buddhists. In the Philippines, there are several memorial gardens to Maria Kannon or "Madonna of Japan," donated by Japanese Buddhists. The premise is that Filipinos and Japanese are united by their love of Mary, here and often elsewhere identified with the most important Buddhist Bodhisattva, Kannon (Japanese), Kuan Yin (Chinese), Kwanseum (Korean) or Avlokitesvara (Sanskrit). As a matter of fact, I think there is a strong historical argument that they really are one and the same person.

Ave, Maria!

Shrine of Maria Kannon, Corregidor.

A Muslim View of Manchester

A very good friend, a Welsh convert to Islam, whom I can also vouch to be a very good man, has written in his Facebook feed:

Manchester.......death, mayhem and destruction. The suicide bomber's goal was pain and terror, twisted reason borne from hatred and a need for retribution.However, mass slaughter of innocents solves nothing. Ordinary UK citizens (or anyone) going about their lives harming no one, are not responsible for the catalogue of brutalities meted out by western armies in foreign lands. And the same people who died yesterday may well be those who in their daily lives oppose such interventionism and who have kindly supported their victims and refugees....Today in spite of how it might appear, millions of Muslims across the world are not celebrating and gloating in triumph. We are all feeling the same outrage and disgust. We are also distraught and perplexed by the kind of thinking that causes a Muslim to end his/her own life and that of others in such a dramatic and unforgivable fashion.More, it is fruit of perverted reason clothed in Islamic rationale. It is outrage unresolved, unfettered poisoning of beliefs and idealism turned evil. It is a dramatic and insane logic. It is so far out, we Muslims hardly recognize it....Clearly, though it is the cause, we must not blame the millions of innocent European citizens for paying taxes to fund their governments' acts of foreign aggression and slaughter of innocents such as we have witnessed so often in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine etc.Recognizing and opposing it is one thing, but acting out violent personal revenge is quite another.Likewise, we must not hold millions of ordinary Muslims worldwide responsible for the horrific perversions perpetuated by the tiny few. On the contrary, it is equally abhorrent to us and must be hotly and unreservedly condemned for the evil that it really is.

It is good, on the one hand, to hear an ordinary Muslim condemn Islamist terrorism.

On the other hand, it is troubling to hear him say, as if a given, that the Muslim world has a legitimate grievance against “the West” for aggression.

He refers specifically to a “slaughter of innocents” in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria,” and “Palestine.”

I can’t see it.

Consider Syria: there is indeed a slaughter of innocents going on, but other than air strikes, the West has stayed out. So how can you blame it on the West?

In Iraq, too, there was also a slaughter of innocents: Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and his use of chemical weapons on the Kurds. Both, of course, were Muslim. The West went in to overthrow him.

Here they took the opposite approach. Yet this too was blameworthy. 

Starts to look like scapegoating, surely.

In Palestine, again, the West has not been involved. If innocent Palestinians and innocent Israelis are nevertheless killed, how is this the West’s fault?

In Afghanistan, the West went in. But who struck first? This was in reaction to Afghanistan sheltering Bin Laden, who had killed over 3,000 innocent Americans in a surprise attack. How is the West, and not the Afghans, blameworthy for that conflict? Don’t the deaths of innocent non-Muslims matter?

And why not also mention Kosovo, and Bosnia, where the West intervened to protect Muslim minorities from Christian majorities? Surely "the West" was equally guilty, by the same logic, for all the deaths there?

Yet my friends views are not unusual. He is not the only Muslim I know. His opinion seems to be the standard one.

This means, sadly, that there is simply nothing the West can do to appease Muslims and Islam. As they are being used as a scapegoat to preserve local solidarity, no action on their part can make things better. If they say yes, they are at fault. If they say no, they are at fault. If they intervene to end the violence, they are at fault. If they stay out, they are at fault. If they ignore the Muslim world, they are at fault. I they listen to the Muslim world, they are at fault.

The problem, I’m afraid, is within Islam.

And not just within a small faction called "radical Islam," "jihadism, or "Islamism." It is a problem even among the very best of Muslims.

There is, in the end, an impenetrable "us versus them" mentality. Non-Muslims are evil.

The Madness in their Method

It’s getting nasty out there.

I am now reliably informed that if I oppose M-103, the motion currently before the Canadian Parliament condemning “Islamophobia,” I am an Islamophobe, a Fascist, and a white supremacist.

The empire is striking back. They seem to have taken down Milo Yiannopoulis and Pew-di-pie. They are working on Jeff Sessions. The elites smell blood. And ultimately, it is their own. Who could expect them to go down without a fight? Things are starting to get to the streets.

But it is more than just the elites. There are a lot of people who are with the old regime in this as well. People who are not themselves getting fat off the system. Why? Are they just naive?

Seems not possible. They include some pretty intelligent people, and the charges they are supporting are little short of delusional. How many Fascists, for example, do you really think are living in Metropolitan Toronto?

I guess I had better weigh in on M-103. First, it makes no sense to single out Islam among the religions for special concern. In Canada, there are currently and historically more crimes of prejudice against Jews. And they seem to be growing. Worldwide, there are more hate crimes against Christians than anyone. Moreover, the largest proportion of both currently are actually done in the name of Islam. So it seems perverse to single out Islam here as under threat. It looks like deliberate misdirection. Or like giving Islam special status, and tacitly endorsing hate towards Christians and Jews.

Second, enshrining the term “Islamophobia” in the motion is a problem. First, a phobia is a mental illness (sic); it is something over which people have little control. It is not something willed, and it is something nobody would wish upon themselves. For the government to condemn something as a “phobia,” is to say that phobia is culpable. This is well calculated to promote prejudice against the mentally ill, who already have enough to suffer; and who are already a group that is discriminated against. No government should be giving any kind of sanction to such an expression.

On the flip side, the term seeks to prevent legitimate debate: a particular viewpoint is not to be questioned. If you do, you are simply mentally ill, and your concerns need not be addressed. This is an old Soviet tactic.

Then there is the term Islam. The word is “Islamophobia,” not “Muslim phobia.” It is a very different matter to condemn Islam than to condemn Muslims. One can certainly argue that condemning Muslims is illegitimate discrimination. But condemning Islam is anyone’s right. Obviously, if you are not yourself Muslim, it is because you disagree with one or more of the teachings of Islam. This concept of “Islamophobia” implies that simply disagreeing with Islam is not legitimate. Allow that, and you have ended freedom of religion, free speech, and freedom of thought.

It is vital that we preserve this distinction. Which is, indeed, currently in danger of being lost. For example, the idea that homosexual sex is a human right has recently extended to the idea that it is not permitted to say that homosexual sex is morally wrong.

Hard to see how you can parse that with the fact that Islam condemns homosexual sex as morally wrong; but logical inconsistency is the least of our problems here.

When the Liberal government were offered the opportunity to back a bill that took out these troublesome elements, while preserving the claimed intent, to protect religious liberty against discrimination, they refused. Why would they, unless this proves an ulterior motive?

The intent is not to protect Islam. But it is not really to end free speech and freedom of thought either, at least in the many people who are not part of the elite, but are going along enthusiastically with this agenda.

It is, I think, the opportunity to target a specific portion of the population as deplorable, morally intolerable. As “Fascists,” “white supremacists,” and “Islamophobes.”

It would be simpler, granted, to simply so target Muslims. And the left has done that in the past. But if you are so obvious about it that people realize what is happening, it does not work.

Because the whole point of scapegoating is to sublimate some guilt you yourself feel over something you have done. If you can blame the scapegoat for supposedly scapegoating, that gives you license to scapegoat them guilt-free.

A large body of people with guilty consciences, then, are eager to blame everything on some “basket of deplorables,” or “Nazis” or “white supremacists” or “the alt-right.” Just as they at other times would have blamed the Jews, or the bourgeois, or Catholics. And they do it, by unjustly accusing others of the same sin, of hating immigrants, or Mexicans, or Muslims, or blacks. Great bit of misdirection. It is not so much that these others are poisoning the wells; but that they are utterly bad, and so, by opposing them, I must be essentially good.

I do think, for the great mass of people who support this leftist pogrom, that it all comes down to abortion and free sex. So many people have bought into this, and their consciences have been after them about it. So, along with crazy, almost psychotic leftist politics, we have things like the self-esteem movement. A lot of people are going on these days about the need to “forgive yourself,” to love yourself, and so forth.

Forgive yourself for what? It all presupposes a troubled conscience.

Forgive yourself, sure, but the first step is to acknowledge the sin. That’s the hard part.

Rather than do that, those with said guilty consciences are demanding popular acceptance of crazier and crazier propositions: unisex bathrooms, free choice in gender, resolution M-103, and so forth. You have to sign on, or they no longer feel "safe." 

"Safe," ultimately, from the truth.

But the truth shall set you free.