True Believers

Ew, Canada!

I recently recorded a radio show for Canada Day, on historic patriotic poems. One participant said he would have to bow out unless we allowed him to read poems critical of Canada. Pressed, he was not prepared to say that Canada itself was a good thing; he was content to live here because there was no war.

It seems to me that we have come to a dangerous point when we cannot all agree on the essential idea of Canada. What then do we have in common? How can we function as a society?

Islam and the woke, neoMarxist left pose a grave and increasing danger to our democracies; and it is really in both cases the same problem. These two organized groups have substituted politics for religion. They have made their politics their religion, or vice versa.

Religion is at its core the assertion of supposed ultimate truth. Seeking truth is admirable; it is what we are here for. In response to these perceived truths, you bind yourself to a set of rules. They govern your actions. But the common sense of the matter, in liberal democracies, is that you do not impose these rules on others: religion must be entirely voluntary.

When politics is your religion, or your religion is political, that no longer holds. Politics is the exercise of power over others. So this means imposing your religion on others.

Can this actually ever be avoided? Since religion is definitionally the assertion of a perceived ultimate truth, mustn’t what is ultimately true automatically be the basis of all decisions, including all political decisions? Our current concept of religious liberty and the separation of church and state may be an illusion: it has been apparently possible because our true religion, over the past few centuries, has become liberal democracy rather than Christianity.

Granted that this is so, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism have found themselves capable of continuing within this liberal framework. They are at their core, perhaps for different reasons, “mystical” faiths. They do not expect to achieve a paradise in this world, and so they are generally content to leave this world to its own devices.

Political matters can therefore be discussed politely, in liberal terms. 

But Islam and woke neoMarxism, because they involve a specific political agenda, are not reconcilable with liberal principles.

This happens whenever a creed emerges that believes that heaven, a state of perfection, can be achieved by specific human political action here on earth; what might be called “millenial” movements. It then becomes a matter of ultimate importance to impose those specific political measures as soon as possible, a whatever possible cost.

Nazism is an obvious example: it believed it was creating a new species, the “superman.”

Marxism similarly believes that by following its precepts, we can achieve an Edenic state where there is no restriction on our natural desires, and we can all do whatever we want.

Islamism believes that we have an obligation to bring the entire world under the laws of Islam, which come from God himself.

Wokery, apart from Marx, is influenced by the postmodern idea that we create our own reality. Therefore the task of life is to force everyone else to accept our own reality.

I similarly fear Christian movements that focus on the “end times” and the apocalypse; at least as something dependent on any political action.

How to deal with such groups is an existential problem for a liberal democracy: for they reject the principles on which a liberal democracy functions. 

Such movements can be tolerated so long as there is no chance of them coming into power and ending liberal democracy. But I fear we are past that point, and the danger is clear and present.

Imagine

 

Friend Maximilian sends a video clip of Irish comic Dave Allen. The gag is that Catholics think only Catholics go to heaven. And he points to a comment: “I always thought every religion thinks that way.”

Actually, only some fundamentalist Protestants think this way: that only “born again” members of their own denomination get to heaven. This is a reasonable conclusion from Martin Luther’s doctrine of “salvation by faith alone.” If you are saved by your belief, you must have the correct belief to be saved.

 For the Catholic Church, however, this position is heretical. Yes, non-Catholics can get to heaven.  Google “Feeneyism”; and note the ethnicity of the name. Like Allen, and, indeed, like Maximilian, Feeney was Irish. Due to long contact and subjugation, Irish Catholics have often picked up Protestant heresies. Don’t ask me about my own Irish “Catholic” upbringing.

This does not quite mean that Catholics believe “all good people go to heaven.” Rather, to be clear, all who sincerely seek truth, as well as striving to do what is morally right, get there. Faith is involved. If this search for truth nevertheless does not lead them to Catholicism, so long as they are sincere in their beliefs, they are protected from guilt by what Catholics refer to as “invincible ignorance.” Indeed, so long as anyone seeks truth, they are a follower of Christ: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The same is true for Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists: none of them think you must be formal members of that religion to achieve heaven, or enlightenment, or blessedness. It is only Protestants; and not even all Protestants. Many Anglicans, for example, are “latitudinarians.” Yet the fundamentally Protestant background to English-speaking culture leads many to assume that this is the standard among all religions.

Maximilian objects, “What about the Muslims and the Jews?” He was clearly thinking of the situation in Gaza. 

Being a leftist, he was at the same time taking the “plague on both your houses” position, supposing the Jews were equally responsible for the hostilities. Or rather, to avoid blaming anyone for their actions, religion was. If we could only get rid of religion, we would all live in peace and harmony. 

Hamas started the war, of course, not Israel. 

There is surely an ethnic more than a religious distinction between the two sides. One fifth of the population of Israel is Muslim. Before Hamas took over, the PLO led the fight against Israel; and the PLO was Marxist, not Islamist. George Habash, leader of the more radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was Christian, not Muslim. The conflict pre-existed any religious justification for it. 

So does Islam hold that you must be a Muslim to go to heaven?

Islam, too, believes you do not have to be a formal member of the faith to get to heaven. “Islam” means “submission.” Anyone who submits to the will of the one God is “Muslim.” Muslims will therefore argue that Islam is the world’s oldest faith, and that Jesus and Moses and Abraham and St. Francis of Assisi were all Muslims.

Islam is, however, almost uniquely, a political as well as a religious doctrine. By its standards, the only government that is ever legitimate is an Islamist government, imposing the laws laid out in the Quran and Hadith. 

This does not mean all others must convert: but they must submit to being governed by the shariah law.

This is akin to the demands of liberalism, enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all governments must recognize certain human rights and democratic principles in order to be legitimate. It is an ideological or political issue, not a religious one. 

In both cases, it is based on an appeal to divine authority. It is because God says so: “endowed by their creator.” “The laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

So, the problem is not religion; it is this annoying concept of human rights.

For the sake of world peace, should human rights be banned? Show of hands?

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.

Correction

ISIS has now claimed responsibility for the Sri Lanka bombings, which makes much of what I wrote about them yesterday obsolete. It really was, then, done by Islamist terrorists.

But it also means the Sri Lankan government was wrong to blame the attacks on a local Muslim organization. In doing this the government may have been exploiting the affair to pursue their own agenda. Or they may only have been trying to cover for their own prior incompetence by being seen to take some swift action against someone.

This also does not speak well for either the intelligence or the abilities of ISIS. Supposedly, the church bombings were in retaliation for the Christchurch shootings in New Zealand. Yet the motive for the latter was not religious, and it is not clear that the shooter even identified as a Christian. He also does not appear to have been Sri Lankan, does he? And the point that the Western media does not care about Christians being bombed still holds.

The explanation may be that ISIS has grown so weak that they are now incapable of coming up with anything more relevant or compelling to the media. They needed some soft targets. They happened to have the assets in Sri Lanka, the churches had little security compared to any historic temples, and ISIS had nothing anywhere else.

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.

Terrorism Insurance

Does this make me look fat?

On the Manchester bombing, I still like my idea of commemorative pig statues named Mohammed, but the barbarity seems to have escalated: killing children at a concert! No more. Here’s something else we can do.

It involves no government expense, and might end terrorism pretty quickly.

I speak of terrorism insurance.

Insurance companies would, for a fee covering the risk undertaken, as with any other insurance, guarantee against a given person committing a terrorist act. If he or she did, the policy would pay double the entire medical expenses of victims, say, plus a fixed amount in “blood money,” say $500,000, or $1,000,000 to the estate of anyone killed.

Then just stand back and let the actuarial tables do their magic. If it turns out that Muslims are more prone to terrorism than others, fine; such insurance will cost them more. No need to ban Muslims as such. No need to “discriminate” against anybody.

Governments should then require a terrorism insurance policy, valid for ten years, before allowing any immigrant or refugee into the country. Such policies are going to be cheaper for the better immigrants, more expensive for the riskier ones, doing our work of immigrant selection for us. 

Such insurance policies should also then be required, the same as accident insurance, for anyone applying for a driver’s license, or a gun license, or a plane ticket. 

Anyone holding a large event as in Manchester might also wish to require such a live insurance policy from all attendees. True, it might limit the audience, but it would also reassure many that attending was safe. On balance, perhaps an advantage, perhaps a wash. Given the odds, it would probably not be an onerous burden on fifteen-year-old Christian girls.

This could be a source of revenue for religious organizations. On obvious way to cut the odds, for the underwriting organization, would be to ask for certification of good character from a minister of religion. For which service they might reasonably request some compensation. If, in turn, this or that Muslim minister’s guarantee turned out to be unreliable, they would lose this revenue source, giving them an incentive to encourage peace instead of violence. And it would give any Muslim groups an incentive to shun and disassociate themselves from anyone with violent aims.

It would also drain much of the propaganda value from such attacks. Would the killers have accomplished anything, by their own lights? The blood money is paid automatically. Set the blood money high enough, and it becomes automatic revenge. Nor would the perpetrator escape this any longer by committing suicide in the act.

I wager the fashion for jihadi suicide bombings would soon disappear.

The Coming End of Islamist Terror

While terrorist attacks have become increasingly common, I think there is hope they will soon disappear.

It has happened before. In the Sixties to Eighties, we had terror too. But it was from the left: the IRA, the ETA, the FLQ, the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Symbionese Liberation Front, the Weather Underground, and so on.

It abated by about the end of the Eighties.

Now why would that be? What happened then?

They lost their funding. The Soviet Union pulled out of the geopolitical game.

For a time, some of them got money from Libya; but then Gaddafi lost interest. And the shooting and bombing mostly stopped; until Islamism took up the slack.

It takes money. And why did Islamism take over? Because just as the funding dried up from the Communist Bloc, the price of oil skyrocketed, and suddenly there was a lot of money washing around in the Middle East.

Some of it, one way or another, has been available to promote the ideology of radical Islam/political Islamism.

Thanks to fracking, those oil-producing countries are now scrambling to meet their budgets. That does not look as though it is going to end any time soon.

And who else has been stirring up trouble for the West?

Venezuela and Russia. Again, their ability to make problems has been based on their oil revenues: Russia in Eastern Europe, Venezuela by propping up Cuba.

They are facing the same problem now.

On top of this, Iran in particular is facing a demographic collapse. Iranian families have more or less stopped having children.

So the man current challenge to the peace and security of the West looks as though it is about to die of natural causes. No doubt something else will soon show up, but this puppy seems bound for the pound.

The most upsetting thing is that, instead of taking advantage of this, when miscreants really had no choice but to come to the table, the Obama regime did not make any hard bargains, but instead threw Cuba and Iran generous lifelines. They now have the money to foment trouble for a few more years. Not to mention vacating Iraq and leaving the field free for ISIS militants to grab some revenue and some oil. They really could not have done worse in terms of foreign policy.

But even so, when it comes to ending Islamic terrorism the future looks bright.

The Pig Proposal

In the wake of the new terrorist incident in London, one is left once again feeling helpless. What can we do to counter this sort of atrocity?

London is not new to bombings. There used to be the IRA. But then, at least, it had a clear purpose, and a clear demand. It was a demand that the UK leave Ireland. In the case of the ISIS and Al Qaeda attacks, there is no actual demand. “Get out of the Middle East”? The US was not there, when 9-11 happened. Other than Afghanistan, Obama pulled out; bombings intensified.

In the end, to radical Islamists, it is an unacceptable offense simply not to be Muslim. That makes you a “kaffir,” and properly to be slaughtered.

Under these circumstances, there is simply no path of appeasement available.

So how to respond?

Simply catching and punishing the criminal will not do it—obviously. These are usually suicide attacks. The perpetrator is expecting death; no penalty for getting caught is meaningful.

Those planning such attacks must somehow be shown that they do the opposite of what is intended.

Someone once suggested that, whenever a Muslim terrorist attack occurs, a mosque should be blown to rubble. Starting with the most prominent. We have the drones and missiles. We can time it for the middle of the night, so that casualties are limited.

I think that has possibilities, but I think it is misdirected, because it does real harm to innocent Muslims. As well as to some of the world’s shared heritage. I have another idea: cheaper, simpler, less destructive.

You remember that fad years back when cities were putting up fiberglass statues everywhere? I think it started with Chicago and cows. Then Toronto did moose, Dubai did camels, and on and on.

Obviously, these statues are not terribly expensive to produce.

I propose that whenever a terrorist attack occurs, for each resulting death, a fiberglass statue of a large pig be erected, with the nameplate “Muhammed” on the pedestal. On or near the site of the attack.

Nobody is harmed. No Muslim is harmed. It is just a pig named Muhammed.

Islamists will go crazy. Fine, if you are inclined to go crazy over it, that pretty much proves you are an Islamist of the sort who opposes our traditions of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. You have just carefully self-selected as an appropriate target for the insult.

Add closed-circuit cameras to catch anyone trying to smash the statues. They have self-identified as potential terrorists. Great. Now we know.

And for any pig that goes down, we put up two in its place.

Will honest, responsible Muslims also be offended? Only if they have not accepted our traditions—Christians put up with this kind of thing all the time. Even insisting on seeing the statues as religious is a matter of interpretation. It’s just a pig named Muhammed. We like pigs.

At the same time, if the intent of the terrorists is to glorify Islam, this makes their efforts counter-productive. The pigs go up in direct response. Moreover, they go up exactly where the terrorists have chosen to leave their own message—usually places of maximum publicity, like Westminster. So from now on, indefinitely, Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament will be decorated, for all the tourists to see, with big brightly painted pigs named Muhammed.

This brings Islam into disrepute, you say? And who exactly, has brought Islam into disrepute? Isn’t this just a reminder of that fact? Isn’t this what they wanted? Doesn’t this just show what they did?

Picture three thousand big bright pigs in lower Manhattan.

It also sends the message: we will not be cowed. We will not adjust our own ideals to please Islam. We accept no blasphemy laws. We demand freedom of speech.

Who’s in? We can start a private fund. Perhaps it is best if governments can just shrug their shoulders when dealing with Muslim countries and say, “What can we do? It’s our tradition of freedom of speech.”

A good lesson in itself.

Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

Showing our gay pride.

I see a sad disconnect in the coverage of the Orlando massacre. I see worse coming.

When jihadists—good term; call them jihadists; although it is wrong to think that “jihad” per se is the problem—slammed two large planes into the Twin Towers, Jerry Falwell said this was because we had endorsed homosexuality and feminism. Almost everyone took him to task over this as a terrible thing to say. Yet to me, his comment was overwhelmingly likely to be correct. Plain good sense. Why does anyone else think they ran those planes into those towers? Because America supports Israel? Just because they hate anyone who is not Muslim?

I was married for a time to a Muslim woman from Pakistan. She referred to Europe and North America as “the wicked West.” I did not particularly appreciate this; but she was apparently expressing the common Muslim view. We were and are wicked, because we have gone all in for sexual immorality—notably, feminism and homosexuality. Loose women, gay men. Not a problem for her, from one perspective. Heck, she was here for the sexual immorality. She just wanted a piece of it. I, on the other hand, was not deeply interested in being wicked. And so, eventually, we parted company. Divergent interests.

But I digress. Given that you think promiscuous sex is genuinely immoral, she—and the plane bombers—were of course right. The West is wicked. We are wicked. 

It would not be so disturbign, either, if we kept it to ourselves. But instesd, we make insistent demands that the rest of the world, including the Muslim world, becomee as immoral as we are: that they endorse feminism, end the segregation of the sexes, allow women to bare much of their flesh, and end “disccrimination” against gays. That's being aggressively evil, and a declaration of war.

President Obama, in his speech in reaction to the Orlando mass shooting, did not mention Islam. Although the killer took the trouble to phone 911 and say that he was doing this in the name of ISIS, Obama explained earnestly “I've directed that we must spare no effort to determine what—if any—inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups.” But he did say, in reaction to events, that we all need “the strength and courage to change.” I'm guessing he did not mean to convert to Islam, but to double down on our public endorsement and support of the gay lifestyle. Especially since he described the gay nightclub as “more than a nightclub—it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.”

An author in the National Review—more or less at the opposite end of the Amerian political spectrum—is less inclined to avoid mentioning Islam. He points out that a popular and influential sharia manual, Reliance of the Traveller, says “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.”

Seems to me we have a bit of a problem here. It is not just a case of two ships passing in the night, completely oblivious to the other's concerns. It is more a case of two locomotives heading full tilt towards each other on the same tracks.

Obama does not mention the religion, for good reason. He is effectively saying that nobody has a right to be a Muslim. He is condemning a tenet of sharia law as beyond the pale in American society, in liberal democracy, in the land of civil rights. Doesn't sound so good when stated baldly.

From the Muslim point of view, whose advice are you going to take on proper morality: God's, or the US President's? The necessary answer is that Obama and all Western secularists speak for Satan.

The voices on the right are at least a little better; they do at least acknowledge the issue. Thats a start. But they do it only to target Islam as the enemy. They do not appreciate that Muslims might have a case. They are simply the Other, and must be defeated.

But if you are an honourable Muslim man, and Satan personified comes knocking at your door making demands, what is the moral reaction?

Christians might be inclind to simply prepare for martyrdom. Islam does mot share that ethic.

In all of this, from the Muslim perspective, I'm afraid the West, and not ISIS or Al-Qaeda, has been the aggressor. I mentioned the demands—going far back—that Saudi Arabia, for example, change its attitudes towards women. There were many calls—have others forgotten?—well before 9-11 for American and the US to intervene in Afghanistan, to overthrow the Taliban government, in the name of rights for women. Demands by international organizations claiming some sort of jurisdiction, as well.

If being homosexual is declared a human right, as it now has been in the US and Canada, that must mean, by the logic of human rights, that no country or government can legitimately act against it. For if they can, they can also act against the human rights of Jews, say, or against freedom of speech, and so forth. The entire concept of human rights is then violated—among other things, the legal basis for the existence of the United States. In principle, any laws anywhere against sodomy now cannot be tolerated.

Problem here for liberal democracy, even without Islam in the picture. By the doctrine of human rights, one already has the right to freedom of conscience, and of religion. It is right there in the First Amendment, in American terms. That means one has the prior right to believe that sodomy is immoral, and even that those who commit sodomy ouught to be put to death. Given the new notion that any word spoken against homosexuality is hate speech directed against an identifiable group, one no longer haas a right to freedom of religion. Any religion: sodomy is understood to be immoral not just by Islam, and Christianity, but also Judiams, Buddhism, and, I expect, any known moral code.

We already, then, have two locomotives heading towards eachother down the track. We have total war to the death already declared. Gun bans would do nothing, or worse than nothing. Trump's plan to ban all Muslims from entering the US might offer a kind of temporary, partial relief. But even if this seems honourable, what about Americans who are already Muslim?

There are over a billion Muslims I n the world, even leaving aside Christians or Buddhists. We are going to have to live together. Time to deal with it.

It does not seem to me to be desirable, in any case that either side be wiped out. We need both religion, and liberalism. In fact, we need religion even to have liberalism: that's the fountain from which it sprang. Liberalism, conversely, is there to protect our freedom to have religion.

We need to stop both trains. Unfortunately, the Orlndo massacre and Obama's speech following it both instead turned up the throttle.

At base, this is a mistake made by the libdem side. By the doctrines of liberal democracy, as well as of Christiainty, where it came from, crime and sin are two very different things. Recall, if you will, that Jesus was executed as a criminal. By libdem principles, a state is justified in making a thing a crime if and only if it is a violation of another human party's rights. Outside this sphere, society has no say. Therefore, by liberal democratic doctrine, society has no obvious justification for making sodomy illegal. Sin is a different matter. One can sin against nature, or against God.

This is already difficult for Islam to accept. It does not see the same distinction between sin and crime that Christianity makes. In Islam, government is there to enforce the moral law. If it is not doing so, government is not doing its job.

But liberal democracy has now gone much further, by itself confusing legality with morality, encouraging Muslim misunderstanding. Rather than just being content to remove laws against sodomy, they have decided to declare being homosexual a human right, giving it a moral standing. They have allowed gay marriage, a public and civil endorsement of a sin. They have legally required recognition of gay marriage; nobody is allowed, then, to dissent from the practice. Or refuse to cater it. It is possibly illegal now for anyone to speak against sodomy.

Instead we have Gay Pride parades: two deadly sins for the price of one. Sodomy is not only legal: it is publicly celebrated. Talk about sending a message to Muslims in the Middle East.

Now we even have mandatory unisex washrooms. That obviously requires a violation of conscience for any Muslim woman. And asking everyone to use the washroom designated for their biological sex, given that the washroom facilities are comparable, is not even an inconvenience to anyone. It sure looks like deliberate provocation towards anyone with conventional moral beliefs on sexual matters of any sort.

Female promiscuity is another, parallel, and older issue here. We would say “feminism”; but the real issue, as Muslims would rightly see it, is female promiscuity. It is one thing, and perhaps tolerable, to have no laws against it. It is something else to celebrate it, and make it a crime to speak against it. That is making it a crime to be a good Muslim.

Before the Sixties, there was no Islamic terrorism to speak of, because there was no conflict between Islam and the West and these moral issues.

The West changed, Islam did not.

Of course, now I am going to be charged with discrimination against homosexuals. I adamantly reject the charge, on the initial grounds that there is no such thing as a homosexual. It is profoundly dehumanizing to identify people by their sexual preferences. “Homosexuals” were invented towards the end of the nineteenth century. Very Victorian concept, too. Before thet, there were just people, and they could freely choose to indulge or not indulge in this or that particular sexual act with this or that person. Has that really changed? Let us grant that not everybody is even inclined to indulge in homosexual sex. Most of us would reject it if offered. So it is a sin attractive to only a few. Is that unfair? God knows. It does not obviously lead to a moral right to homosexual sex. Some of us are also more inclined than others to steal things—kleptomania, to use the common term. That does not give them the moral right to steal. Some are inclined to have sex with the boss's wife. That does not give us a right to it. Even if she is willing.

The calculation is simple. If sodomy harms no one, then there is no need to make it illegal. At the same time, there is no need to elevate or to advertise the act.

No Muslims Need Apply

So now Ben Carson is in trouble, for saying he could not “advocate” a Muslim as president of the US.

His critics are right that there is no legal bar: there can be no religious test for office, according to the US Constitution. But that is not what Carson was saying. Carson was saying he would not vote for a Muslim, nor campaign for one, for the Presidency. That is a different matter, and well within anyone's right. There is a difference between “can” and “should.”

His critics are wrong, I think, to say that this is just prejudice on Carson's part, comparable to prejudices against Catholics holding office in the US, or Jews, or Mormons. It sounds like prejudice, but Carson seems actually to be quite knowledgeable on the subject, probably better informed than his critics. Prejudice is passing judgment in the absence of complete information. Carson has informed himself on the matter.

In fact, there really is something special about Islam in this regard. Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, all presume in one way or another the separation of church and state. Islam does not: Mohammed was both a civil ruler and a religious prophet. For Islam, theocracy is the prescribed norm, and anything else is failure. The religious authority is supposed to be the civil government, and vice versa.

This makes it difficult for a Muslim to separate his religious views from his politics, in a way that it is not for Jews, Catholics, or Hindus. The thought of doing so is fundamentally against Islam.

The Emir of Dubai is one example of a secular Muslim ruler. Within his realm, he has boasted, everyone has their choice. They can go to the mosque, or they can go to the tavern. It is their own concern.

But the Emir is not popularly elected.

A Muslim colleague of mine, by no means a “fundamentalist,” indeed quite Westernized, and nominally in favour of liberal democracy for the Muslim world, commented spontaneously on the depravity of this. “Then what,” he asked, purely rhetorically, “is government for?”

You give the average Muslim the franchise, and, as we have seen again and again, he is not going to vote for a secular government. He cannot, in good conscience.

There is a Catch-22 here. Any Muslim who does strictly separate his religious views from his politics, is being, in the terms of his own religion, immoral. This is not the sort of Muslim one would want in power and in command--one with no principles. Yet any Muslim who is properly observant will feel obliged to try to make sharia law, for example, the law of his adopted land, and cannot accept other faiths as having equal rights. This is not the sort of Muslim we probably want in command either.

A Muslim government can be democratic, no problem. It can believe in human equality, no problem. But you cannot really reconcile Islam with the “social contract” theory of government on which the US and the US constitution is based. Government, for Islam, is not a social contract among equals: it is properly imposed by God. And must follow His rules.

Ben Carson may be wrong. Turkey and Malaysia, for example, are trying to forge a secular course, if that is desirable. They may even succeed in the end—the jury is out. But he has his reasons.

ISIS Problem Solved

Gurkhas in British service, 1896.

The situation in Iraq and Syria has become a historic humanitarian crisis, on the level of Rwanda or Kampuchea. We must do something. Our posterity will not forgive us if we don't.

Unfortunately, the US is exhausted. After Iraq and Afghanistan, they have no more stomach for war. And the Europeans, after Libya, have lost what little appetite they had.

Once, in the days of empire, such matters were easier. One could send in the colonial troops:

We don't want to fight, but, by jingo, if we do--
We won't go ourselves; we'll send the mild Hindoo.

Indian artillery, Jerusalem, 1917.

Under British or French officers, of course.

This is apparently no longer considered seemly; even though the modern alternative looks much worse.

Still, there is a variant of the old formula that might be called into service.

It may not have escaped notice altogether that the US has an illegal immigration problem. Twelve and a half million, too many, many say, to deport. And Europe is facing a Syrian refugee problem. Germany predicts 850,000 refugees this year alone.

We have our solution, don't we? Give the immigrants in the States a “path to citizenship” by serving a term in the military, and in harm's way, overseas. Give the refugees in Europe rifles, turn them about face, and march them back to Syria in good order under German officers. Since we believe in sexual equality, there is also no reason to limit this requirement to the men.

Yes, it would cost something. But quite possibly less than a continuing and growing flood of refugees, if the present carnage continues.

This is in fact a time-honoured way for immigrant groups to prove their commitment to their new home. The Irish, long mistrusted in Canada (thanks, Fenian raids) proved themselves to their neighbours by enlisting in droves during the First World War, even while their homeland was in revolt. The Japanese of America did the same in the Second, proving their loyalty as their homeland was at war with their adopted home.

In the case of the Syrian refugees, such proof is quite appropriate: we have reason to suspect the presence of Islamist moles. More generally, such required service solves a problem with modern immigration. In the old days, an immigrant had little hope of ever returning home. He lived or died by his own efforts. There was no dual citizenship, and there was no social safety net. He had to commit.

Now, it is too easy for immigrants to be summer patriots, to see Canada, or Germany, as a comfortable hotel. You can milk it, then leave when anything is asked of you.

Requiring national service for immigrating would eliminate this temptation, would it not?

I think I've just killed about three nasty birds with one stone.

Eat depleted uranium, ISIS.

Osama Bin Laden's Book Club

Move over, Oprah!

It is interesting to see what was on Osama Bin Laden’s bookshelf. The contents of his private library have just been released by US Intelligence.

The most notable thing is, as I would expect, his appreciation for Islam seems to have been rather superficial. He had the Qur’an, plus a selection of short tracts roughly at the “Islam for Dummies” level. These are primers, largely written for non-Muslims: “What Must Be Known about Islam”; “Muhammed, Messenger of Allah”; “A Brief Guide to Understanding Islam.” They are the sort of short paperbacks commonly found free on racks in malls around the Gulf, for the benefit of non-Muslim tourists. Books that would be of no use to anyone who knew Islam well. Just enough context, I submit, to convincingly talk the talk.

Interestingly enough, his bookshelf also included another book on a religious theme: The Secret Teachings of All Ages, an early twentieth century “New Age” tract on Freemasonry and the like. Certainly not of any spiritual interest to any serious Muslim; Islam generally frowns upon such things. It is the sort of titillating book that appeals to those with sophomoric knowledge of world religions. The sort who want to go to Tibet to get their palms read.

The initiation of a Freemason.

But the most prominent theme in his reading seems to have been leftist writing of an anti-Western and anti-capitalist bent. Noam Chomsky scores two books: Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, and Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Other titles include The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. On the measure of his reading list, Bin Laden was more of a leftist than a Muslim, and certainly more of a political than a religious animal.

Which is probably generally true of all the suicide bombers and terrorists bizarrely now being called “religious extremists.”

The Geopolitical Importance of Depression

This is what depression looks like.

Just saw this interesting map of depression rates by country.

It could be wildly misleading, because depression is an invisible thing, and so rates of diagnosis could be very different from actual rates of occurrence. For example, I do not buy the extremely low rate of depression the map shows for East Asia—China, Japan, Korea. I have lived in some of those countries, and my impression is that the real rate of depression is very high. The difference is that suicide is culturally accepted: instead of seeking therapy, people just go off and kill themselves.

The map seems to disprove the claim, sometimes heard, that depression is a disease of prosperity, or of modernity, or a kind of spoiled malingering of the rich. Even though you would expect reported depression to be higher in richer countries simply because the medical infrastructure is better, this turns out not to be the case. Western Europe and North America do well on the depression scale; sub-Saharan Africa does poorly.

But I was struck by the rather consistently high rate of reported depression across what is sometimes called the MENA region—Middle East and North Africa, aka the Muslim world. As if to prove the point, Israel and Lebanon, Jewish and semi-Christian enclaves within the Middle East, do not conform to the overall trend.

I think this illustrates my own thesis that depression is caused by being caught in a double bind, a situation in which you are wrong no matter what you do—the kind of situation commonly caused by emotional abuse. Specifically, the Muslim world is caught in a double bind of conflicting values, pulled in two different ways. Traditional Muslim law says one thing, and the liberal secular doctrine of the West says another, and the two are not compatible. So what's the point of anything?

The same problem is surely at the root of “Islamist terrorism.” People feel a natural rage at being told to do two contradictory things at the same time, and the obvious solution is to go with the one and reject the other as oppressive. This would be why Islamic terrorism invariably arises among the ranks of Muslims who have had the greatest exposure to the West and Western ideas.

This problem would not be as acute in South Asia, among Hindus, or in East Asia, because Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese folk religions are not ethically prescriptive. They do not lay out any strict moral requirements, any strict doctrine of right and wrong. Accordingly, there is less conflict with modern secularism.

In general, too, there is less conflict with Christianity, because, although it, like Islam, is an ethical religion, modernism has emerged from it, and it has had many more years to adjust to the moral conflict. In this connection, however, it is worth noticing that the Netherlands is a standout among European nations for having high levels of depression. Why? Perhaps because the Netherlands has put itself in the forefront of secularization, with things like free and open prostitution and free and open drug use, so boosting the sense of conflict with more traditional values.

The State of the World This Friday

I suppose it is too obvious to say that war involving North Korea is unlikely. There in nothing in it for North Korea or her government but suicide, and nothing in it for South Korea or the US. The one danger, and it is real, is that those in charge in North Korea – i.e., Kim Jong Un – are so completely sheltered from reality that they actually believe they can win such a war. We've seen it before: Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile, events in Egypt may herald the end of “radical Islam.” The Muslim Brotherhood have the misfortune of having been left holding the bag during a disastrous period of chaos and economic recession. Actual rule has already discerdited political Islamism among the people of Iran, reputedly. Mosque attendance in Iran has fallen through the floor; it might imply supporting the government. Egypt may do the same for the Arab world.

On top of that, political Islamism's sources of funding may soon be drying up. It has been boosted by Middle Eastern oil wealth. The fracking revolution in North America looks to me likely to force down the price of oil soon and for the foreseeable future, taking a lot of that money out of the system. 

In any case, Islamism has always looked to me like a retrograde movement, an attempt to slam the door on a perceived cultural threat from globalization. By their nature, such movements tend not to succeed and tend to collapse suddenly. I, for one, hope that Islam itself is not tainted by it all in the end.

I expect Europe to continue to coast downhill. Isn't it obvious, with the latest crisis in Cyprus, that things there are steadily getting worse? It's only a matter of time before the Euro falls apart, and that will cause some dislocations. Things will not really be able to start getting better until that happens.

.

Words to Remember

 “‘Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure." Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

Dead straight. Consider this in relation to "Islamism." It is a defensive reaction to the perceived threat of the West. So, for that matter, was Fascism in its day, with its emphasis on preserving national culture.

The same insight explains feminism. It popped up because the traditional role of women had suddenly become obsolete, thanks to the mechanization of household tasks. In the Fifties, almost for the first time, a man could contemplate living quite well, in terms of material comfort, without a wife. Before this, if unmarried, he would at least have probably had to resort to a boarding house. Hence the glorification of the single life by, among other cultural artifacts of the time, the "Playboy philosophy" and the James Bond films. 

In the first wave of reaction to this rather sudden obsolescence, women had a lot more children, to fill up their time and to feel still needed. When this did not work out well, because the additional financial burden on the men hardly recommended marriage to them, women switched to the peculiar form of fanaticism we now call feminism.

Another example is Protestant revivalism. Again and again, we see fervent, extremely doctrinaire Protestant fundamentalist movements arise, and within a generation or two, they collapse into nearly pure secularism. Evangelical Methodism evolved, in Canada, into the United Church. Puritanism is now Congregationalism.

The militant New Atheism, similarly, may really signal a loss of confidence in scientism.

All perhaps promising for the long term, but in the meantime, there is likely to be hell to pay. Fanatics are not easy to deal with, and they do tend to be murderous.

The Coming Rise of Christianity

The Christian World

I think there is a general sentiment among the clerisy (the intellectuals) of the West that Christianity has had its day, and is on the decline. The New Atheists have become strident about it. As a social ideology, it has been supplanted by Liberal Democracy and Scientism. It is medieval. It is opposed to human rights and human progress. It will soon be chucked down the memory hole.

I doubt this is possible, first because Liberal Democracy and Scientism are lacking in the essentials of a viable religious faith. They function well on the social level, but they lack the mystical element. This is dehumanizing. One way to see the Sixties was as a popular uprising against the lack of a mystical element in the ruling ideology. Sadly, on the social level, that rebellion failed. Leaving the problem unresolved, and getting worse.

Second, there is the issue that, on the deeper philosophical level, both science and liberal democracy depend on specifically Christian doctrines. To the extent that either seek to supplant Christianity, therefore, they are only sawing off the branch on which they sit. They cannot supplant their tree. Liberal Democracy's concept of separation of powers, of human equality, and of separation of church and state are all fundamentally Christian. Science's faith in the meaningfulness and comprehensibility of the physical universe and the value of sharing new knowledge widely are also fundamentally Christian. Chuck Christianity, and they fall into self-contradiction.

Scientism may or may not have parted ways with Christianity with Darwin, but certainly did so with Freud. Liberal democracy has parted ways with feminism, abortion, and homosexual rights, if not before. Because their foundations are fundamentally Christian, this will in the end destroy scientism and liberal democracy, rather than Christianity, if the clerisy do not pull up short before that cliff. The doctrines become incoherent—as, indeed, we have already seen in “postmodernism.”

And such logical inconsistencies do matter, vitally, because for a social ideology to stand or fall, it must hold the sincere allegiance of the clerisy, of the intellectual class, who must in turn be genuinely the best and brightest, for a culture to do well.

In the meantime, history itself seems to be taking a turn against scientism and liberal democracy. It now looks as though the net result of the Arab Spring is going to be the clearer rise of “Islamism” as a social ideology in direct rivalry to liberal democracy and scientism, checking what had looked, through the UN and its ilk, like its inevitable worldwide dominance after the fall of Marxism. Islamism now rules Egypt, the largest Arab state, along with Iran, possibly soon Syria, Tunisia, and Libya, technically Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. It appears that free and fair elections in the Arab world lead to Islamism, not liberal democracy.

This might have two effects in the West. First, it looks like a failure of liberal democracy and scientism, forcing it to reexamine its claims of universal supremacy. It contradicts some of its fundamental assumptions: free elections are supposed to lead to liberal democracy. Second, it tends to remind other cultures of their own religious heritage. Islamism has, for example, apparently sparked a tendency towards political Hinduism in India. These become further challenges to liberal-scientistic hegemony. It may well similarly, as it grows, spark an awareness in Westerners of the fundamentally Christian nature of Europe and the New World. It may spark a tendency there to examine political Christianity as an alternative to both Islamism and secular scientism.

Meanwhile, in defiance of the current perceptions of the Western clerisy, Christianity is actually growing and thriving worldwide.

In China and the Far East, they understand the importance of a coherent ruling ideology, and have tried many—Confucianism, Legalism, Taoism, Buddhism, Marxism. They have a history of putting on and pulling off such heavenly mandates. It can happen again. Christianity is now eliciting a lot of interest among Chinese intellectuals, and might well replace Marxism in this role. In fact, it looks like the leading candidate, assuming Marxism is on the way out. If China goes Christian, there will be ripples as well in Vietnam and Korea—Korea is already in the process of going Christian in any case. How much further might those ripples go, given China's concurrent rise to world dominance?

Africa is also going Christian, rapidly, and looks as though it is rapidly on the rise economically and politically—I suspect largely as a result. Won't this also raise the profile and prestige of Christianity elsewhere?

It seems to me likely that a combination of these factors actually points to an ascendancy of Christianity worldwide, not just as an individual faith, but as a social ideology.

This probably does not mean throwing science or liberalism down the memory hole in turn—certainly I hope not. The danger is that, by picking fights with Christianity and looking like its opponent, as they have done with Islam, the partisans of science and liberalism may discredit themselves. It may be hard for them to regain the prestige to which they are legitimately entitled as a result.