@ The New Cold War

** Book Review by Diana West

DEFEATING POLITICAL ISLAM: THE NEW COLD WAR

Moorthy S. Muthuswamy

Washington Times

As the U.S. military slogs on, confused, trying to win the “trust” of the Afghan people; as the Obama administration, illogically, attempts to explain its way through Pakistan’s “uneven” record of fighting jihad to a new $7.5 billion aid package (on top of $12 billion spent by the Bush administration), it is great luck to come across a book like Moorthy S. Muthuswamy’s “Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War.” It contains all the answers to the questions looming over our widening and deepening presence in “AfPak,” and more.

In short, the United States fails to understand Pakistan – whose army, not incidentally, sports the motto “Faith, piety, and holy war in the path of Allah” – for what it is: a member state of what the author calls “the axis of jihad,” which also includes Saudi Arabia and Iran. These three nations – with their arm’s-length proxy armies of the Taliban, al Qaeda and Hezbollah – are the most aggressive purveyors of what the book describes as “political Islam,” the jihadist creed based on Islamic doctrine that is destabilizing the world, from India’s Kashmir region to Britain’s old mill towns, from all of Israel to Parisian banlieues.

This destabilization is happening in plain sight, but incredibly, few see it as clearly as Mr. Muthuswamy. Nearly eight years after Sept. 11, 2001, such blindness marks the epic negligence of our leadership, beginning with former President George W. Bush. On Sept. 12, 2001, the brand-new “war president” embarked on what may be remembered as his most successful campaign: his “Islam is peace” offensive, which to this day confuses our policies, not to mention our people.

Mr. Muthuswamy, an Indian-born, U.S.-educated nuclear physicist, draws the opposite inference from the “Islamic trilogy,” including the Koran, the Hadiths (traditions of Muhammad) and the Sira (biography of Muhammad). He instead argues that “extremism – not moderation – is the mainstream among Islamic traditions.” Such a viewpoint stands the basis of post-Sept. 11 security policy on its head, from constructive engagement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission (whose “major blunder,” Mr. Muthuswamy believes, was exonerating Saudi Arabia), to coalition-building efforts with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Working with “moderates” in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, he explains, hasn’t weakened political Islam in these nations. While it may have temporarily deflected jihadist attacks on the West, he writes, “Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have continued to direct jihad at Israel, India and others. With political Islam as their guide, these societies have changed little since 2001.” As a result, Mr. Muthuswamy argues, it is high time to reverse the bizarre U.S. policy that, in effect, holds political Islam in the same esteem that the Islamic world does.

This is the PC or “politically correct” policy that informs not only our engagement with “axis of jihad” nations but also our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Muthuswamy writes: “As an occupying power in need of local cooperation, America could in no way afford to totally discredit political Islam, since it represented mainstream Muslim religious institutions. …

America’s best chance of weakening political Islam and achieving true liberation in these areas, as it did with the former Soviet Union-based communist movement, is to function as a non-occupying power.”

“True liberation”? Doubtful. But “weakening political Islam”? You bet.

Taking this paradigm of the “non-occupying power” and other lessons from the Cold War, Mr. Muthuswamy urges, for example, a propaganda campaign against political Islam akin to that waged against communist ideology.

It would target “educated Muslims” in the West, he writes, who “would benefit from the local media and the government propaganda machinery willing to discredit the theological roots of political Islam.”

That they would, but here’s the rub: how first to deprogram the “local media” and the “government propaganda machinery” of their politically correct outlook on the world, including Islam?

It’s easier to imagine some of his other recommendations, more compatible in a foxy way with mainstream liberal sensibilities, gaining traction. Mr. Muthuswamy sees “a dire need to investigate whether the axis of jihadist nations – most notably the primary axis nation or the anchor state of the political Islamic movement, Saudi Arabia – have been involved in jihad-related crimes that could be categorized as crimes against humanity.”

These might include campaigns of non-Muslim ethnic cleansing and potential genocide carried out from the Middle East to the South Asia.

Such human rights efforts, resulting in what he calls a “grievance build-up” against Saudi Arabia and other perpetrators of jihad, would serve to bind together “victimized non-Muslim populations,” from India to Israel, in a new coalition to fight political Islam.

His novel idea to combat Islamization in Europe, for example, is to invoke what he calls “the right of indigenous civilizations to exist as entities in their respective homelands,” a measure the European blogger Fjordman also has proposed.

Mr. Muthuswamy’s must-read chapter about India’s debilitating fight against political Islam – which includes a shockingly rational discussion of a potential nuclear phase – makes a compelling case for the United States to elevate India’s role in fighting global jihad.

If the United States could support Muslim forces against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he writes, “why not back cornered Indians and other nations to fight political Islam and its international sponsors?”

Unlike the jihadists who ultimately turned on the United States, “an India strongly backed by the West … is no threat to the Western civilization because it shares with the West a secular and democratic mode of governing.”

What “Defeating Political Islam” tells us is that the United States, in fighting the so-called war on terror, not only has allied with nations that can never be our friends – which explains the incorrigibilities of the AfPak theater, for example – but also has effectively shunned friends, such as India and Israel, that would love to be our allies.

It all makes perfect sense; in some ways, it’s even obvious. Survival strategy usually is. Which isn’t to say that “Defeating Political Islam” won’t come as eye-popping revelation to its readers. I only hope they won’t take the book’s urgent message to heart too late.

Diana West is a columnist and the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/27/reversing-us-policy-in-afpak/

@ Sarkozy:Ban On Burqas

http://kdka.com/topstories/sarkozy.burqa.ban.2.1054859.html

Sarkozy Adamantly Supports Ban On Burqas In France

Associated Press 

Paris(AP) – President Nicolas Sarkozy said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the “debasement” of women.

In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France’s Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.

“In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,” Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.

“The burqa is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement — I want to say it solemnly,” he said. “It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.”

Dozens of legislators have called for creating a commission to study a possible ban in France, where there is a small but growing trend of wearing the full-body garment despite a 2004 law forbidding it from being worn in public schools.

France has Western Europe’s largest Muslim population, an estimated 5 million people, and the 2004 law sparked fierce debate both at home and abroad.

Even the French government has been divided over the issue, with Immigration Minister Eric Besson saying a full ban would only “create tensions,” while junior minister for human rights Rama Yade said she was open to a ban if it was aimed at protecting women forced to wear the burqa.

The terms “burqa” and “niqab” often are used interchangeably in France. The former refers to a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with only a mesh screen over the eyes, whereas the latter is a full-body veil, often in black, with slits for the eyes.

A leading French Muslim group, the French Council for the Muslim Religion, has warned against studying the burqa, saying it would “stigmatize” Muslims.

Sarkozy was due to host a state dinner Monday with Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani of Qatar, where women wear Islamic head coverings in public — whether while shopping or driving cars.

This combination picture  shows Muslim women wearing a

Hijab (top L), a Niqab (top R) a Chador (down L) and a Burqa.

@ THE WITCH HUNTS

THE WITCH HUNTS: THE END OF MAGIC AND MIRACLES

1450-1750 CE

Helen Ellerbe

Helen Ellerbe, an American researcher and writer, is the author of an important and courageous book first published in 1995, The Dark Side of Christian History.

In the introduction, she explains: “The Christian church has left a legacy, a world view that permeates every aspect of Western society, both secular and religious. It is a legacy that fosters sexism, racism the intolerance of difference, and the desecration of the natural environment. The church, throughout much of its history, has demonstrated a disregard for human freedom, dignity and self determination. It has attempted to control, contain and confine spirituality, the relationship between an individual and God. As a result, Christianity has helped to create a society in which people are alienated not only from each other but also from the divine.”

To supplement the preceding article, we reproduce here a few extracts from the eighth chapter of Helen Ellerbe’s book, which deals with the witch hunts, drawing from a wide variety of historical sources.

It took the Church a long time to persuade society that women were inclined toward evil witchcraft and devil-worship. Reversing its policy of denying the existence of witches, in the thirteenth century the Church began depicting the witch as a slave of the devil. No longer pagan tradition.

No longer was the witch to be thought of as benevolent healer, teacher, wise woman, or one who accessed divine power. She was now to be an evil satanic agent.

 The church began authorizing frightening portrayals of the devil in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Images of a witch riding a broom first appeared 1n 1280.

 Thirteenth century art also depicted the devil’s pact in which demons would steal children and in which parents themselves would deliver their children to the devil. The church now portrayed witches with the same images so frequently used to characterize heretics: “… a small clandestine society engaged in antihuman practices, including infanticide, incest, cannibalism, bestiality and orgiastic sex…”

…. Pope John XXII formalized the persecution of witchcraft in 1320 when he authorized the Inquisition to prosecute sorcery.

Thereafter papal bulls and declarations grew increasingly vehement in their condemnation of vehement in their condemnation of witchcraft and of all those who “made a pact with hell.” …. A papal bull in 1488 called upon the nations of Europe to rescue the Church of Christ which was “imperiled by the arts of Satan.” The papacy and the Inquisition had successfully transformed the witch from a phenomenon whose existence the Church had previously rigorously denied into a phenomenon that was deemed very real, very frightening, the antithesis of Christianity , and absolutely deserving of persecution. …

The persecution of witchcraft enabled the Church to prolong the profitability of the Inquisition.

The Inquisition had left regions so economically destitute that the inquisitor Eymeric complained, “In our days there are no more rich heretics.. It is a pity that so salutary an institution as ours should be so uncertain of its future.”

By adding witchcraft to the crimes it persecuted, however, the Inquisition exposed a whole new group of people from whom to collect money. It took every advantage of this opportunity.

The author Barbara Walker notes: “Victims were charged for the Very ropes that bound them and the wood that burned them. Each procedure of torture carried its fee. After the execution of a wealthy witch, officials usually treated themselves to a banquet at the expense of the victim’s estate.”

In 1592 Father Cornelius Loos wrote: “Wretched creatures are compelled by the severity of the torture to confess things they have never done…. And so by the cruel butchery innocent lives are taken; and, by a new alchemy, gold and silver are coined from human blood.”

In many parts of Europe trials for witchcraft began exactly as the trials for other types of heresy stopped.

The process of formally persecuting witches followed the harshest inquisitional procedure. Once accused of witchcraft, it was virtually impossible to escape conviction. After cross-examination, the victim’s body was examined for the witch’s mark.

The historian Walter Nigg described the process: ….. she was stripped naked and the executioner shaved off all her body hair in order to seek in the hidden places of the body the sign which the devil imprinted on his cohorts. Warts, freckles, and birthmarks were considered certain tokens of amorous relations with Satan.
Should a woman show no sign of a witch’s mark, guilt could still be established by methods such as sticking needles in the accused’s eyes. In such a case, guilt was confirmed if the inquisitor could find an insensitive spot during the process.

Confession was then extracted by the hideous methods of torture already developed during earlier phases of the Inquisition. “Loathe they are to confess without torture,” wrote King James I in his Demonologies. A physician serving in witch prisons spoke of women driven half mad:

“….. by frequent torture … kept in prolonged squalor and darkness of their dungeons … and constantly dragged out to undergo atrocious torment until they would gladly exchange at any moment this most bitter existence for death, are willing to confess whatever crimes are suggested to them rather than to be thrust back into their hideous dungeon amid ever recurring torture.”

Unless the witch died during torture, she was taken to the stake. Since many of the burnings took place in public squares, inquisitors prevented the victims from talking to the crowds by using wooden gags or cutting their tongue out.

Unlike a heretic or a Jew who would usually be burnt alive only after they had relapsed into their heresy or Judaism, a witch would be burnt upon the first conviction.

Sexual mutilation of accused witches was not uncommon. With the orthodox understanding that divinity had little or nothing to do with the physical world, sexual desire was perceived to be ungodly. When the men persecuting the accused witches found themselves sexually aroused, they assumed that such desire emanated, not from themselves, but from the woman. They attacked breasts and genitals with pincers, pliers and red-hot irons. Some rules condoned sexual abuse by allowing men deemed “zealous Catholics” to visit female prisoners in solitary confinement while never allowing female visitors.

The people of Toulouse were so convinced that the inquisitor Foulques de Saint-George arraigned women for no other reason than to sexually abuse them that they took the dangerous and unusual step of gathering evidence against him.

The horror of the witch hunts knew no bounds. The Church had never treated the children of persecuted parents with compassion, but its treatment of witches’ children was particularly brutal. Children were liable to be prosecuted and tortured for witchcraft: girls, once they were nine and a half, and boys, once they were ten and a half. Younger children were tortured in order to elicit testimony that could be used against their parents. Even the testimony of two-year-old children was considered valid in cases of witchcraft though such testimony was never admissible in other types of trials.

A famous French magistrate was known to have regretted his leniency when, instead of having young children accused of witchcraft burned, he had only sentenced them to be flogged while they watched their parents burn.

Witches were held accountable for nearly every problem. Any threat to social uniformity, any questioning of authority, and any act of rebellion could now be attributed to and prosecuted as witchcraft. Not surprisingly, areas of political turmoil and religious strife experienced the most intense witch hunts.

Witch-hunting tended to be much more severe in Germany, Switzerland, France, Poland and Scotland than in more homogeneously Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain.

Witch-hunters declared that “Rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft.” In 1661 Scottish royalists proclaimed that “Rebellion is the mother of witchcraft.” And in England the Puritan William Perkins called the witch. “The most notorious traytor and rebel that can be …”

The Reformation played a critical role in convincing people to blame witches for their problems.

Protestants and reformed Catholics taught that any magic was sinful since it indicated a belief in divine assistance in the physical world. The only supernatural energy in the physical world was to be of the devil.

 

Without magic counter evil or misfortune, people were left with no form of protection other than to kill the devil’s agent, the witch. Particularly in Protestant countries, where protective rituals such as crossing oneself, sprinkling holy water or calling on saints or guardian angels were no longer allowed, people felt defenseless…..

It was most often the sermons of both Catholic and Protestant preachers that would instigate a witch hunt. The terrible Basque witch hunt of 1610 began after Fray Domingo de Sardo came to preach about witchcraft. “[T]here were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about,” remarked a contemporary named Salazar.

The witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, were similarly preceded by the fearful sermons and preaching of Samuel Parris in 1692.

The climate of fear created by churchmen of the Reformation led to countless deaths of accused witches quite independently of inquisitional courts or procedure.

For example, in England where there were no inquisitional courts and where witch-hunting offered little or no financial reward, many women were killed for witchcraft by mobs.

Instead of following any judicial procedure, these mobs used methods to ascertain guilt of witchcraft such as “swimming a witch,” where a woman would be bound and thrown into water to see if she floated. The water, as the medium of baptism, would either reject her and prove her guilty of witchcraft, or the woman would sink and be proven innocent, albeit also dead from drawing.

As people adopted the new belief that the world was the realm of the devil, they blamed witches for every misfortune. Since the devil created all the ills of the world, his agents-witches-could be blamed for them. Witches were thought by some to have as much if not more power than Christ: they could raise the dead, turn water into wine or milk, control the weather and know the past and future.

Witches were held accountable for everything from a failed business venture to a poor emotional state. A Scottish woman, for instance, was accused of witchcraft and burned to death because she was seen stroking at the cat at the same time as a nearby batch of beer turned sour.

Witches now took the role of scapegoats that had been held by Jews.

Any personal misfortune, bad harvest, famine, or plague was seen as their fault. ….

The most common victims of witchcraft accusations were those women who resembled the image of the Crone. As the embodiment of mature feminine power, the old wise woman threatens a structure which acknowledges only force and domination as avenues of power. The church never tolerated the image of the Crone, even in the first centuries when it assimilated the prevalent image s of maiden and mother in the figure of Mary.

Although any woman who attracted attention was likely to be suspected of witchcraft, either on account of her beauty or because of a noticeable oddness or deformity, the most common victims was the old woman. Poor, older women tended to be the first accused even where witch hunts were driven by inquisitional procedure that profited by targeting wealthier individuals.

Old, wise healing women were particular targets for witch-hunters.

“At this day,” wrote Reginald Scot in 1584, “it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, ‘she is a witch’ or ‘she is a wise woman.’ Common people of pre-reformational Europe relied upon wise women and men for the treatment of illness rather than upon churchmen, monks or physicians.

Robert Burton wrote in 1621: “Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards and white witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought unto, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind.’’

By combining their knowledge of medicinal herbs, with an entreaty for divine assistance, these healers provided both more affordable and most often more effective medicine than was available elsewhere. Churchmen of the Reformation objected to the magical nature of this sort of healing, to the preference people had for it over the healing that the Church or Church-licensed physicians offered, and to the power that it gave women.

Until the terror of the witch hunts, most people did not understand why successful healers should be considered evil. “Men rather uphold them,” wrote John Stearne, “and say why should any men be questioned for doing well.’’ As a Bridget tine monk of the early sixteenth century recounted of “the simple people”, “I have heard them say full often myself … ‘Sir, we mean well and do believe well and we think it a good and charitable deed to heal a sick person or a sick beast’ …. And in 1555 Joan Tyrry asserted that “her doings in healing of man and beast, by the power of God taught to her by the … fairies, be both godly and good.’’…..

But in the eyes of orthodox Christians, such healing empowered people to determine the course of their lives instead of submitting helplessly to the will of God. According to churchmen, health should come from God, not from the efforts of human beings.

Bishop Hall said. “We that have no power to bid must pray…’’

Ecclesiastical courts made the customers of witches publicly confess to being “heartily sorry for seeking man’s help and refusing the help of God…” An Elizabethan preacher explained that any healing “is not done by conjuration or divination, as Popish priests profess and practice, but by entreating the Lord humbly in fasting and prayer….” And according to Calvin, no medicine could change the course of events which had already been determined by the Almighty.

Preachers and Church-licensed male physicians tried to fill the function of healer. Yet, their ministrations were often considered ineffective compared to those of a wise woman.

The keeper of the Canterbury goal admitted to freeing an imprisoned wise woman in 1570 because “the witch did more good by her physic than Mr. Pudall and Mr. Wood, being preachers of God’s word…”

A character in the 1593 Dialogue concerning Witches said of a local wise woman that, “she doeth more good in one year than all these scripture men will do so long as they live ….’’

Even the Church-licensed male physicians, who relied upon purgings, bleedings, fumigations, leeches, lancets and toxic chemicals such as mercury were little match for an experienced wise woman’s knowledge of herbs.

As the well-known physician, Paracelsus, asked, “… does not the old nurse very often beat the doctor?’’ Even Francis Bacon, who demonstrated very little respect for women, thought that “empirics and old women” were “more happy many times in their cures than learned physicians.”…

Not surprisingly, churchmen portrayed the healing woman as the most evil of all witches.

William Perkins declared, “The most horrible and detestable monster… is the good witch.”

The Church included in its definition of witchcraft anyone with knowledge of herbs for “those who used herbs for cures did so only through a pact with the Devil, either explicit or implicit.’’

Medicine had long been associated with herbs and magic. The Greek and Latin words for medicine, “pharmakeia” and “veneficium,” meant both “magic” and “drugs.” Mere possession of herbal oils or ointments became grounds for accusation of witchcraft.

A person’s healing ability easily led to conviction of witchcraft. In 1590 a woman in North Berwick was suspected of witchcraft because she was curing “all such as were troubled or grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity.’’

The ailing archbishop of St. Andrews called upon Alison Perirsoun of Byre hill and then, after she had successfully cured him, not only refused to pay her but had her arrested for witchcraft and burned to death.

Simply treating unhealthy children by washing them was cause for convicting a Scottish woman of witchcraft.

Witch-hunters also targeted midwives; Orthodox Christians believed the act of giving birth deified both mother and child. In order to be readmitted to the Church, the mother should be purified through the custom of “churching,” which consisted of a quarantine period of forty days if her baby was a boy and eighty days if her baby was a girl, during which both she and her baby were considered heathen. Some thought that a woman who died during this period should be refused a Christian burial. Until the Reformation, midwives were deemed necessary to take care of what was regarded as the nasty business of giving birth, a dishonorable profession best left in the hands of women. But with the reformation came an increased awareness of the power of midwives. Midwives were now suspected of possessing the skill to abort a fetus, to educate women about techniques of birth control, and to mitigate a woman’s labor pains.

A midwife’s likely knowledge of herbs to relieve labor pains was seen as a direct affront to the divinely ordained pain of childbirth. In the eyes of churchmen, God’s sentence upon Eve should apply to all women. …

To relieve labor pains, as Scottish clergymen put it, would be “vitiating the primal curse of woman…” The introduction of chloroform to help a woman through the pain of labor brought forth the same opposition. According to a New England minister:

“Chloroform [an early anesthetic] is a decoy of Satan, apparently offering itself to bless women; but in the end it will harden society and rob God of the deep earnest cries which arise time of trouble, for help.’’

Martin Luther wrote, “If [women] become tired or even die that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth that is why they are there.’’

It is hardly surprising that woman who not only possessed medicinal knowledge but who used that knowledge to comfort and care for other women would become prime suspects of witchcraft.

How many lives were lost during the centuries of witch-hunting will never be known. Some members of the clergy proudly reported the number of witches they condemned, such as the bishop of Wurtzbrg who claimed 1900 lives in five years, or the Lutheran prelate Benedict Carpzov who claimed to have sentenced 20,000 devil worshipers.

But the vast majority of records have been lost and it is doubtful that such documents would have recorded those killed outside of the courts.

Contemporary accounts hint at the extent of the holocaust. Barbara Walker writes that “the chronicler of Treves [or Trier, in Germany] reported that in the year 1586, the entire female population of two villages was wiped out by the inquisitors, except for only two women left alive.’’

Around 1600 a man wrote: “Germany is almost entirely occupied with building fires for the witches… Switzerland has been compelled to wipe out many of her villages on their account. Travelers in Lorraine may see thousands and thousands of the stakes to which witches are bound.”

While the formal persecution of witches raged from about 1450 to 1750, sporadic killing of women on the account of suspected witchcraft has continued into recent times.

In 1928 a family of Hungarian peasants was acquitted of beating an old woman to death whom they claimed was a witch. The court based is decision on the ground that the family had acted out of “irresistible compulsion.”

In 1976 a poor spinster, Elizabeth Hahn, was suspected of witchcraft and of keeping familiars, or devil’s agents, in the form of dogs. The neighbors in her small German village ostracized her, threw rocks at her, and threatened to beat her to death before burning her house, badly burning her and killing her animals.

A year later in France, an old man was killed for ostensible sorcery.

And in 1981, a mob in Mexico stoned a woman to death for her apparent witchcraft which they believed had incited the attack upon Pope John Paul II.

Witch hunts were neither small in scope nor implemented by a few aberrant individuals; the persecution of witches was the official policy of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches.

The Church invented the crime of witchcraft, established the process by which to prosecute it, and then insisted that witches be prosecuted.

After much of society had rejected witchcraft as a delusion, some of the last to insist upon the validity of witchcraft were among the clergy.

Under the pretext of first heresy and then witchcraft, anyone could be disposed of who questioned authority or the Christian view of the world.

Witch-hunting secured the conversion of Europe to orthodox Christianity.

Through the terror of the witch hunts, reformational Christians convinced common people to believe that a singular male God reigned from above, that he was separate from the earth, that magic was evil, that there was a powerful devil, and that women were most likely to be his agents.

As a by-product of the witch hunts, the field of medicine transferred to exclusively male hands and the Western herbal tradition was largely destroyed. The vast numbers of people brutalized and killed, as well as the impact upon the common perception of God, make the witch hunts one of the darkest chapters of human history.

http://www.iish.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=299:expressions-of-christianity-the-witch-hunts-the-end-ofmagic-and-miracles&catid=58:iish-messages&Itemid=112

@ DON’T CONVERT

Don’t Convert!- A rejoinder

Dr. Mrs. Hilda Raja

 —–

Dr. Mrs. Hilda Raja is a Retired Professor of Social Science from “Stella Maris College”, Chennai. She regularly writes Letters to the Editors and occasionally writes Columns too. Apart from being a practicing Catholic Christian, she is a true nationalist, who values the cultural heritage of this great country and respects the Hindu tradition too.

She has posted a rejoinder to the article “Dont Target Converts” by Michael Pinto in Times of India.

—————————————————————-

‘Don’t target Converts ‘by Michael Pinto (TOI 8th OCT) poses many questions than it answers. No amount of provocation can justify violence is easily said but humanly not easy to follow. All are not Gandhians or Jesus to show the left cheek when slapped on the right. Some countries follow a justice system which is based on ‘eye for an eye’.  

Aggressive policy of conversion followed by some fundamentalist churches and fundamental Christians cannot justify taking law into one’s hand and no amount of provocation can justify violence is correct theoretically and logically.

 But if such logic rules the hearts and minds of men/women why is there so much of violence in the world? Why do countries violate the rights of other countries? Why do law makers turn into law breakers? Why do those in the Khaki who have to operate the law on the streets become violators of human rights? In the midst of such oppression, exploitation can we expect the people to meekly be submissive and subservient? Or is the author’s theory held good only in the provocation rising in the business of conversion?

When Indira Gandhi was assassinated why thousands of Sikhs were butchered in the capital? Was it not justified by the Congress party? When the Brahmin pundits were killed and chased away from their homes in the Valley and forced to become refugees in their own country under ethnic cleansing no voices were raised against such an abuse and violation? When a holy man held in great reverence was brutally murdered with his three disciples in his own ashram will the author’s theory be strong enough to hold back the emotional, social, and religious upheaval of the hurt psyche?

Every action has a reaction. When a nun is raped then all hell breaks loose-Daily children are sexually violated and raped and murdered, no protest voice is heard -no church rallies are held, no Archbishop/bishop rebukes Chief Ministers and express pain and anguish.  

And no EU raises the issue with the PM in a foreign land. So Christians have global brokers and Christian lives become sacred and the PM is accountable to foreign powers for their safety.-the lives of others can be snuffed out without even a whimper. What is the root cause of this warped perception but religion? This is not to down play the rape of the nun but to point out that it is a harsh world we are living in and to high light the discrimination in our perception.  

Does a crime become more heinous because the victim belongs to a particular religion?

‘Terrorists do not belong to any one community knows no religion’, pontificates our political leaders. Is this again reserved only when it comes to the terrorists of the Minority community? It must be said that violence is nurtured within religious ghettos, madrassas, and only religions/beliefs are strong enough to provoke and sanctify spilling of the blood of the innocents. It is in the name of religion that the world had witnessed violence, genocide, torture and oppression and a Talibanism justifying the imposition of religious domination and curtailment of the rights of humans.

It is a utopia that Michael Pinto is envisaging when he states that no amount of provocation can justify violence. This is armchair wistful thinking. When the Christians were oppressors this theory vanished.  

The tables are turned and when there is an assertion of the Hindus to retain their culture, their religion and their heritage then the drum beating of the Constitutional guarantees is heard. It is the right of the Hindus to protect the Hindu ethos of this country which they feel is threatened. Was Art 30 not enacted to ensure the Right of the Minorities to establish manage and administer institutions to safeguard their ethos?

It is shocking that politicians are equating the Bajrang Dal and the VHP with the SIMI. The latter is a terror outfit with its branches now functioning in new names. The suspects belonging to these outfits are involved in serial blasts all over the country, they are trained in Pakistan and in POK .These are anti national outfits. What is the purpose/aim of these serial blasts-killing of innocent people who are about their daily business? The aim is to destabilize the country, create panic and insecurity and unrest within the country. Why was Parliament targeted? And who were behind it?  But the same cannot be said of Bajrang Dal and the VHP. They are nationalists-they may be attacking a particular community for reasons of their own- the root cause being forced conversion and a reaction to the denigration of the Hindu gods and goddesses. Those involved in such violence and criminal activities must be apprehended and brought to justice. But where is the justification to demand a ban on such outfits?  

This is indulging in vote bank politics. Till date not a single terrorist has been brought to justice. The reality of wars, underworld dons killing, custodial deaths, political bosses unleashing terror against their opponents are all part of the harsh reality of today’s world.

Conversion from time immemorial has a concomitant-violence. Indian history is replete with it. The oppression, force, torture, massacre of the Indians to convert them to Islam, and Christianity is not a fable. The Inquisition and all that it wrought is world record. Again it is in the name of religion. What you sow you reap. Violence begets violence-this is nature’s order. In ‘don’t target converts’ the author finds it strange that converts are targeted in a country which constitutionally upholds the right to preach and propagate one’s religion.  

But then to preach and propagate one’s religion does not mean to force and use fraudulent means to pressurize people to change from one religion to another. I am shocked that in this context the author compares inducements like ‘buy one and get one free’ in the market of commodities, to faith changing. If the market goods can be sold with inducements why not it be extended to faith and belief changing is the author’s argument. Can faith and belief be brought to the market level of sales of commodities? By this analogy the author accepts that there is inducement.  

Money is flowing from foreign based churches and the gods of these churches need recruits-the greater the strength the greater the power of these gods and hence the brokers of these gods are all out targeting the poor. The inducement-a plate of rice, a loaf of bread to the hunger, shelter for the homeless, and also the promise of the green pastures in the next world- 

The strategy has first an entry point-first denigrate, abuse, degrade and demolished their gods and icons. Second instill in these victims the doubt that their gods are false and then promise to lead them to the true god. A vulnerable victim, with a vacuum inner self is then ready for the initiation into a “New Life”/to be “Born Again”. The false propaganda is vicious because of its attack on another religion. This kind of provocation is not easy to overlook because human nature is to refute and repel this atrocious slander/blasphemy.

What will the author say if one prints pamphlets that the mother of Jesus was a prostitute and Jesus’ birth was not a virgin birth? That after her marriage Joseph found her pregnant and toyed with the idea of putting her away. Only the intervention of an angel restrained him from taking such a drastic action. This is what the bible narrates. Will the Catholic Church and other fund churches sit back and humbly submit to such provocation? When posters depicting Jayalalitha as a Virgin Mary appeared in Chennai there were massive rallies and protests.  

But if Madhuri Dixit is depicted as Durga and the goddess is painted nude it comes under the freedom of expression of a painter. Only difference is that the same painter will not dare to let his artistic acumen and constitutional right to freedom of expression to depict Allah even in the best form. This is how we perceive the operation of guarantees/Rights enshrined in our Constitution

If opting for a “New Life”/ “Born Again”, demands discarding of one’s culture, social practices, adapting a western life style and adapting western forms of worship then the convert becomes an alien to the Indian/Hindu ‘ethos’, and is sucked into a process of alienation. This has other ramifications.  

Why did East Timor break away from Indonesia when its Christian population swelled to 27percent just in a matter of ten years? Similarly in our own context the partition of India was based on the theory that two religions-Islam and Hinduism cannot co-exist as a nation-that was the contention of then Muslims leaders.  

World history and Indian history is replete with the experience that ‘peace cannot co-exist with conversion. The reason being conversion has an inbuilt violence: physical, psychological, social and cultural. It may even abet one to be anti-national.

At times church laws and rules are in variance with national rules and laws. The Christians and the Muslims have their own Personal laws. Whom will the Christians take orders from-their respective church leaders or the government of India when it comes to a national decision? When loyalties of a person are divided and clash then the likelihood of becoming a victim to schizophrenia.  

A leader from Kashmir proclaimed on the floor of the Parliament that he is a Muslim and an Indian. No Muslim/Christian will state, ‘I am first an Indian and then a Muslim/Christian’.  

One can change one’s religion but not one’s nationality into which one is born. Politicians too have abetted this by not addressing citizens but focusing on communal/caste/religious divide.

Another aspect to be noted in the business of conversion is that conversions are made even in proxy. A few years ago in Trichy district of Tamilnadu a whole list of names were produced in paper and the bishop of that evangelical church baptized them in absentia! Would this qualify as conversion?

 I belong to the Catholic Church and my understanding of conversion is that it is a process-a life long search for truth. Conversion is a private affair and not a street tamasha-neither is it an activity intended to swell numbers.

 It is not that conversion is from one religion to another the Fundamentalist churches poach on the grounds of other Christian sects. So the Jesus of one church is different from the Jesus of another.

This creates also distrust and disharmony among the Christian community. Freedom is always accompanied by restrictions. Freedom is restricted when it encroaches the freedom of others and of a whole society. Rights are not hierarchically.

When conversions are a threat to peace then it needs to be banned. Like the curfew order-the ban to strike etc. The million dollar question is why conversion? Is it a prerequisite for development work? Why are the foreign agencies funding conversion activities? It is strange that the fundamental Christians and the churches to which they belong do not turn their attention and energy in this salvation ensuring business to the Muslims.

Development and upliftment of the poor is the camouflage of evangelization all the more why the need for the churches to work with the Muslims. Because according to Sachar report the Muslims are the lowest in India-both economically and educationally.

Is it not strange that not a single Muslim has been converted?

According to Michael Pinto the Christian population has fallen from 2.6 percent in 1971 to 2.3 percent in 2001.This does not mean that lakhs are not converted by the hundreds of fundamental churches that have mushroomed in the country. Today we are one billion so what does the 2.3 indicate in absolute numbers?

When one reviews numbers a few other indicators must also be listed-Christians follow Family planning, the celibacy of nuns and priests, and the fact that most of the converts for the sake of reservation and other benefits retain the religion and the caste in which they were born on records.

Conversion has been commercialized by the Fundamentalistic churches. The number of converts is co-related to the quantum of funds that flow in. This must not be overlooked. Why not ban foreign funds and watch how evangelization evaporates? All laws have their accompanying lacunae/loopholes and difficulties in implementation, do we on such grounds fight shy of enacting laws?  

Conversions must be banned to ensure peace and harmony. Let us give peace a chance-for peace and conversion cannot co-exist.

Dr Mrs Hilda Raja,
(Former member of the National Advisory committee of the CBCI) 

Also Read : http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Conversion.htm

 http://pseudosecularism.blogspot.com/search?q=ARTICLE%2BHILDA+RAJA

@ Jesus Camp:Army of God

http://www.rense.com/general76/jcamp.htm

Jesus Camp: God Help us all!

By Alton Raines

I’ve just finished watching one of the most disturbing documentaries ever produced. It’s called ‘Jesus Camp‘ (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady/Magnolia) and deals with non-denominational ultra-fundamentalist Christian church groups and one of the bizarre, psychotic camps they send their children to for two weeks of intense brain washing. I label it as such as one who has been inside the ultra-fundamentalist Christian community and not as an outsider merely perplexed at practices or spiritual/religious activities foreign to me.

Since I extricated myself from the ultra-fundamentalists some ten years ago, things have clearly gone from worse to abominable.

Maybe Rosie O’Donnell wasn’t being too radical when she said fundamentalist Christianity is as dangerous here in America as fundamentalist Islam is elsewhere in the world.

And for me to cough up the slightest acknowledgement of a Rosie O’Donnell statement is really saying something, it barely makes it to the tips of my typing fingers without inducing a small stroke.

Let me say at the outset that there are many wonderful, inspiring, decent Christian camps for kids run by churches that are harmless, that foster intelligent inquiry and respect for the individual while instilling deeply cherished values.

But what you will see in ‘Jesus Camp’ is so abusive, so cultic, so depraved you may not make it through the whole DVD. I had to stop it several times just to sigh and pray.

You will see little children being indoctrinated with irrefutable mind control techniques and the use of emotional contagion and peer-group/group-think manipulations so dastardly, so underhanded and blatantly hypnotic that tears will likely come to your eyes, if rage doesn’t settle in first.  

Emotionally distraught children — When she should be thinking
about yucky boys and hopscotch, she’s weighted down with
intense emotions and worry over ‘the state of the nation’ by
the Pastors’ incessant political, apocalyptic ranting. 

Now, I realize a great many of these people sincerely believe everything they are doing is not only “for God,” but is the very “will of God.” But it is simply a fact of life that religion — any religion — has the capacity for a level of human abuse so far above and beyond the norm that it is paramount that we all remain highly vigilant in watching out for the church-turned-cult, and especially for the sake of the children involved… children who know no better, who are absolute innocents, so easily manipulated and molded. When I see some bloated, boisterous, verbrato-laden preacher lording it over 5-10 year olds sending them into a hysterical frenzy of tears and anguish telling them they have sinned, I want to come up out of the my seat and take the rope of Jesus in the temple and lash that wicked false prophet within an inch of his/her life.

There is nothing more despicable and devious than to monkey with the minds and emotions of little children (Jesus said “the Kingdom of Heaven belong[ed] to ones such as these”!) for ones own twisted cause, desired outcome or benefit.

And that is precisely what these “counselors” and preachers at ‘Jesus Camp’ do, with delighted, obscene abandon, rousing their “army for Jesus” as they called this group of 100+ children cloistered away in the camp.  

What was even more disturbing was to see many of the parents of these poor kids there in attendance with them, participating and involving themselves in the mass mind control, and subsequent at-home interviews revealing their complete commitment to this kind of psychotic manipulation; they themselves have been likewise brainwashed into submission to this radically irresponsible, dangerous neo-Christianity. 

Perhaps the most disturbing moment was when one of the camp counselors brought out a life size cardboard popup of George W. Bush. and stood it in the pulpit, a waving American flag graphic projected behind him, saying “Here’s President Bush, come to visit us…!” and then calling the children to come forward and touch his likeness, “pray over him! Make warfare over him” (note: to those not familiar with certain fundamentalist colloquialisms, “warfare” is in reference to the Apostle Paul’s admonition “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” and “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” speaking of spiritual warfare — prayer and intercession).

Little children clamor and cluster at the feet of this cutout, straining to touch it like the woman with the issue of blood in the Gospels reaching to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. Though the weapons of their warfare are not carnal, there is no lack of the use of utterly carnal, even military symbolisms. In one scene several children had devised a ‘dance’ to go along with some Christian Heavy Metal music, clad in fatigues and faces painted in camo, brandishing fighting sticks which they were thrusting and flailing about, shouting “War! Warfare!” The girls in the group had war-paint faces and wore black.  

‘Pastor’ Becky Fisher and her oft pointing finger
“Harry Potter is an evil warlock and would’ve been
put to death in Old Testament times!” 

 Pastor Becky Fisher, the master manipulator of this sect, is a frighteningly twisted character. The look in her eyes is overwhelmingly dark as she gazes out over the sea of little faces weeping and travailing and cackling in ‘tongues’ as she stirs her ‘army’ to frenzy, fear and then utter fanaticism.

This significantly rotund woman has the audacity at one point to admonish the children for not having the strength of faith to fast, even mentioning a 40 day fast. If this woman fasted two hours she’d likely faint and then rise up and personally demolish a Dairy Queen. The hypocrisy is simply revolting. 

One of the twisted ‘methods’ at Jesus Camp, mouths
were taped shut with red duct tape inscribed with the word LIFE
in part of a protest against abortion 

There are no ifs, ands or buts in this documentary, the people involved say plainly they are raising up, indoctrinating and forming a generation of “Conservative Christian Republicans” — WE know them as ‘Neo-cons.’ In one scene they bring the children to such an emotional mania over abortion that one could clearly argue that this is as much child-abuse as taking a child into a porno flick.  

The mixed ages of the children is one very disturbing element. Some are merely toddlers barely out of diapers, others are in their very early teens. Not every message is suitable for every age, but these unthinking yahoo’s, propelled along by the ‘The Spirit’ (may God have mercy on them for grieving the blessed Spirit of grace and truth in claiming their own perverted emotional and political rants to be the same ‘Spirit’), splatter the whole group with machine-gunned verbal assaults with no qualms about its effect on the littlest and most impressionable.

You simply do NOT tell toddlers and little ones that Satan, an invisible but terrifyingly evil monster that personally knows them and watches them, is looking to destroy them! Little children cannot possibly rightly process such a message without trauma. And that trauma is more than abundantly evident in ‘Jesus Camp.’

Among these ultra-fundamentalists, ‘The Spirit’ is an excuse for every manner of bizarre behavior, most of which looks frighteningly similar to the kinds of twitching, jolting and bellowing seen among primitives involved in trance-inducing voodoo.

None of it makes sense, nothing about it is remotely biblical or uplifting and most of the children are beet-red faced with distemper, exhausted emotionally, strained to tears and nowhere near coherent; The perfect state to implant very powerful directives at the subconscious level.  

One little boy named Levi, who looked to be around 10, was a focus for the adult manipulators. It becomes evident in the documentary that he is being groomed to be a big mover and shaker in the years to come. At one point he is heard saying, “I don’t like being around people who are non-Christian, it just makes me feel… gross…I feel bad inside… in my spirit.”

This boy doesn’t know the real Jesus from a hole in the ground! And that is the essential point here — there is no Jesus in Jesus Camp.

There’s everything BUT Jesus in Jesus Camp.

Though His name is tacked onto everything and every sentence ends with his name being bandied about like a magic wand, the real Jesus Christ of the Gospels is entirely missing; his teachings, his truths clearly are abandoned for a new and better Jesus.

A fighting Jesus. A Republican Neo-Con Jesus. A Jesus Dick Cheney could know and love and probably make a few ‘bidniss’ deals with. A Jesus that is red, white and blue, and no other colors have any meaning or significance. THIS Jesus doesn’t ride a donkey, He rides an elephant! As Pastor Becky Fisher puts it (while comparing radical Islamic training of children to fundamentalist Christian training of children) “…the difference being, we’re right and they’re wrong.”

The bombs these children are being taught to strap on are bombs of polarization, exclusion, discrimination, xenophobia and these are sure to ‘go off’ at some point when they are older.  

As a bible-believing Christian, this documentary made me want to puke.

It is even more disheartening to know full well that the documentary itself will effect millions of people and their attitudes toward all Christians, unfortunately. If this is the backbone of the great cultural divide in this nation, we’re in for some really nasty confrontations in the next twenty to fifty years.

Who will OWN the Constitution and the nation? Radical ultra-fundamentalist Christian Neo-Cons or a thinking, responsible republic of fair-minded, rational and magnanimous people from all walks of life and every religious persuasion?

That is what is on the table, when you hear Bill O’Reilly characterize his “Culture Warriors,” the “traditionalists” vs the “SPs” (Secular Progressives). Bill doesn’t realize that in his camp are some serious crazies and among the “traditionalists” are people who have zero comprehension of the Constitution, much less real conservative traditionalism.

The Neo-Con-spiracy is one big, bad mother… and it has got to be opposed at every step. Right now, it’s a lumbering, idiotic baby making a big stink.

But given a few years and exposure to nuclear radiation, it will mutate into a Godzilla of political, social and spiritual tyranny that will make the Taliban and Sharia Law look like mere beatniks.  

(Shortly after its release, the movie gained a new notoriety when Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who appears near the end of the film, resigned his post amid a male prostitute’s allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct. – Amazon.com review)  altonraines@minister.com

Also Read:   Religious Tolerance

@ Amen:Autobiography..

http://www.indianexpress.com/story_print.php?storyid=425407

Ex-nun’s confessions set to rock Kerala Church

Shaju Philip 

Thiruvananathapuram : Already reeling under several controversies, the Kerala Catholic Church is facing fresh embarrassment from a tell-all autobiography written by a nun who recently quit the Order alleging harassment from superiors.  

‘Amen — an autobiography of a nun’, released last week, is written by Dr Sister Jesme, 52, who was the Principal of St Mary’s College, Thrissur, till last August when she quit the Congregation of Mother Carmelite (CMC).

 “Dedicated to Jesus”, Amen is explicit in its details of the sexual repression and harassment behind the Church walls as well as the draconian rules and “greed” of the Order.

Jesme claims that since the book was released, she has been getting calls pledging solidarity.

 “Nuns mingle with the whole spectrum of the community around them. They teach students, comfort the aged and nurse the sick; still the brides of the Church remain an enigma.

My work would throw light on the misunderstood convent life, engulfed in darkness,” says Jesme.

Apart from the Abhaya murder in which a nun and priests are accused, the Kerala Church was recently in the news for a priest “adopting” a 26-year-old woman.

Jesme’s autobiography includes a poignant version by her of how the convent authorities tried to twice prove that she had mental problems and get her admitted into a rehab centre after she reportedly spoke out against the malpractices within the Order.

Starting with her first days in the Church, 30 years ago, she talks of priets forcing novices to have relations with them and the closet homosexuality within nun ranks, “which the Church reckons as the dirtiest thing possible”. “If nuns developed unusual interest in each other, authorities would deploy other inmates to watch them,” she writes.

The book says Jesme herself was forced into such a relationship by a fellow nun, and that her complaints to a senior nun were ignored.

According to her, the other nun said she preferred such a relationship as it ruled out pregnancy. There were others who had affairs with priests, she writes.

Another passage in Amen deals with a chance encounter Jesme had with a priest in Bangalore while on her way to Dharwar to attend a UGC refresher course in English. “My plan was to stay at the waiting room at the Bangalore railway station. But sisters in the convent gave me the address of a pious, decent priest. When I reached Bangalore, the priest was waiting to receive me. He embraced me and took me to his presbytery. After breakfast, he took me to Lalbagh (Botanical Garden) and showed me several pairs cuddling behind trees. He also gave a sermon on the necessity of physical love and described the illicit affairs certain bishops and priests had.”

Later, when they were in his room, she writes, he stripped and made her do the same.

Jesme claims that while nuns in the lower ranks were punished if caught for even minor offences, the Church turned a blind eye to those superior or with influence for major transgressions.

Talking about the Church’s draconian rules, Jesme writes in the book that she was not allowed to go home when her father died, or to even pray some extra hours for his soul. “I was able to see my father barely 15 minutes before the funeral. The alibi of the superiors was that the then senior sisters were not even lucky enough to see the bodies of their parents.”

During her time in the Church, Jesme often ran into problems with superiors. She was called “cine nun” after she provided office facility for a film festival at St Mary’s College, leading to the first campus film from the college, as well as when she shared dais with a sex worker for the release of a book on the life of a prostitute.

Since quitting CMC, Jesme has been staying alone in a flat in Kozhikode. She told The Indian Express she was still living as a “nun”. “I go for Church mass daily and have no plans to get married.”

RELATED ARTICLES:

1) Do Nuns die Virgins? @ http://honestreporting.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/do-nuns-die-virgins/

 

2) Behind Locked Doors @ http://www.reformation.org/maria-monk.html

@ Mythical Moderates

The Mythical Moderate Muslim

Faithfreedom.org

Yashiko Sagamori

Primitive tribes offer sacrifices hoping to mollify whatever nonexistent beings they believe in. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman belongs to a very sophisticated tribe that, according to the recently retired Malaysian Prime Minister, rules the world by proxy.

One would think Mr. Krugman should be above such crude superstitions. Nevertheless, in his column on October 21, he suggests that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should fire General Boykin in order to mollify moderate Muslims.

General Boykin, the leading anti-terror expert at the Pentagon and a devout Christian, had openly and publicly, on several occasions, expressed his personal opinion of Islam, which happens to be rather low. Considering where the terror is coming from, this is far less surprising than Mr. Krugman’s eagerness to sacrifice both General Boykin and the First Amendment to mollify moderate Muslims. I’d like to ask Mr. Krugman what gives him a reason to believe that the beings he is trying to mollify actually exist.

The official, politically correct point of view says that Islam is just another monotheistic religion, not that different from Judaism or Christianity. If that is true, then moderate Muslims must exist, just like moderate members of other faiths. However, moderate members of other faiths do not require sacrificial mollification — that’s basically how we tell moderates from extremists.

Therefore, either moderate Muslims are mythical creatures, or we need substantially different criteria to identify them. That dilemma alone should make us suspicious as to whether Islam is “just another religion”. Obviously, it is important that we determine how a moderate Muslim can be distinguished from a Muslim extremist.

Why not ask Muslims themselves? Irshad Manji, a young Canadian author, has published a book titled The Trouble With Islam. Since we don’t hear too many Muslim voices criticizing their religion, her book deserves our attention. This is what the author herself says on her promotional website (http://www.irshadmanji.com/the-book):

 I appreciate that every faith has its share of literalists. Christians have their fundamentalists. Jews have the ultra-Orthodox. For God’s sake, even Buddhists have absolutists.

But what this book hammers home is that only in Islam today is literalism mainstream. Which means that when abuse happens under the banner of Islam, most Muslims have no clue how to dissent, debate, or reform ourselves.

Apparently, the terms literalism and fundamentalism in the quotation above are used interchangeably, as synonyms of religious extremism.

Unfortunately, the author fails to mention the most important difference between “literalists” in Islam and other religions. Evangelical Christians may believe that heaven is reserved for them alone. Ultra-Orthodox Jews may display intimate understanding of the murkiest places in the Talmud. I have no idea what extreme fundamentalist Buddhists do that sets them apart from their moderate coreligionists.

What I do know however is that no religion except Islam pursues the idea of physical extermination of those who believe differently.

The concept of holy war is unique to Islam. Jihad is the absolute monopoly of Muslims. There is no parallel to it in any other religion in the world. (Yes, I have heard about Crusades, but Christianity does not mandate them, and do you know when the last Crusade ended?)So, here we have it in plain English, as simple as A, B, C:

A.	According to the Koran, holy war against the infidels is a sacred duty of every Muslim.
	B.According to Ms. Manji, mainstream Muslims interpret Koran literally.

The conclusion is inevitable:

C.	Mainstream Muslims perceive war against the infidels — meaning you and me — as their sacred duty.

 Once you understand that, you don’t need books to explain to you what exactly the trouble with Islam is. The trouble with Islam derives from the fact that mainstream Islam openly calls for murder of all infidels. That’s why Islam is not “just another religion”. That’s what, in my view, allows to classify all its followers as extremist.

What then, besides our stubborn, groundless faith in the general goodness of our fellow human beings, leads us to believe that moderate Muslims are not just a figment of our imagination? How do they manifest themselves in the real world? It would be utterly useless to look for them in Gaza, Judea, or Samaria.

Unlike Bin Laden, terrorists occupying Israeli lands do not live in caves. They live in small towns, villages and crowded refugee camps where everyone knows everything about everyone else. They couldn’t survive for a day without popular support.

When someone gives them a reason to doubt the sincerity of his support, they label him a collaborator and murder him on the spot. Indeed, the PA-sponsored educational system guarantees that innocent children are indoctrinated in the most murderous variety of Islamic extremism — thereby losing their innocence — at the earliest possible age.

Therefore, in Israel, a moderate Muslim is a dead Muslim, which is bad news for those who want us to believe that there is a peaceful solution to the continuing Arab war against Israel.

Let’s look elsewhere. Afghanistan, liberated by the United States from the medieval tyranny of the Taliban is about to publish the draft of its first constitution. Their new constitution is going to be firmly based on Islamic principles. The country itself is soon to be renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

We wouldn’t call a Jew or a Christian who wanted his religion to become the basis of his country’s constitution a moderate, would we?

Here, in the United States, we value the separation of church from state so much that we launch court battles to remove the Ten Commandments and every reference to God from everything that is even remotely related to the government.

If Islam is “just another religion”, shouldn’t the same criteria apply to Muslim countries? And if the same criteria do apply, we have to conclude that President Karzai installed in Afghanistan by the American military and unable to survive now or in the foreseeable future without the American military presence, is not a moderate Muslim, but an outright religious extremist. His “Very correct” remark to Mahadir’s call for the extermination of Jews shows that he is a political extremist as well.

Therefore, the only practical question regarding Afghanistan is why did the United States have to waste lives of its soldiers and tens of billions of dollars in order to replace one bunch of Muslim extremists with another?

It might have been worthwhile had it improved our security at home, but, as we know, that didn’t happen. Therefore, we have to conclude that the United States has once again won a battle but lost the war. Next, the same will inevitably happen in Iraq.

Desperate search for moderate Muslims goes all around the world. It is especially urgent in Europe whose face is being irreversibly altered by mass immigration from Islamic countries.

Recently, the British government appealed to the growing British Muslim community to isolate extremists in their midst. It’s not hard to predict the response. Actually, there will be no response, because everyone in any Muslim community is an extremist. Such is the nature of Islam, and the only thing that I find hard to comprehend is the self-imposed blindness of the British government. Apparently, such is the price of liberalism and political correctness.

Bye-bye, Europe. We are next.

I don’t think World War II could be won if the Allies, instead of eradicating Nazism, attempted to replace Nazi extremists with moderate Nazis.

Actually, nobody was looking for moderate Nazis during World War II. But those were simpler, purer times. Today, the mythical moderate Muslim remains the focal point of the US foreign policy in the Middle East. The blind faith in his existence has already led the United States to many monumental failures, and many more are to be expected in the future. Meanwhile, the moderate Muslim, along with the Big Foot, the unicorn, the Loch Ness monster, remains more elusive than a cure for cancer: there is at least a theoretical possibility that a cure for cancer can be found one day, unless of course Islam takes over and drags us all down into its own endless Dark Ages. source: www.faithfreedom.org/2009/01/30/the-mythical-moderate-muslim/

RELATED STORIES:

Chasing a Mirage  @ http://ultracurrents.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html

A German’s View @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/a-germans-view/ 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Islam @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Wrhivp7eQ&mode=related&search=

 

For Moderate Muslims @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avYtAyCxUbA&eurl=http://ibloga.blogspot.com/

@ Nurturing terror w/$

Nurturing terror with US dollars

Daily Pioneer : Jan. 18, 2009

Kanchan Gupta

Commenting on America’s response to the multiple terrorist strikes of 9/11, the most spectacular of which was Mohammed Atta and his fellow jihadis flying two passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and reducing the glittering chrome-and-glass symbol of American power to twisted steel and rubble, Gen Pervez Musharraf writes in his memoir, In the Line of Fire, “I was chairing an important meeting… when my military secretary told me that the US Secretary of State, Gen Colin Powell, was on the phone. I said I would call back later, but he insisted that I come out of the meeting and take the call. Powell was quite candid: ‘You are either with us or against us.’ I took this as a blatant ultimatum… I told him we were with the United States against terrorism, having suffered from it for years, and would fight along with his country against it.”

Gen Powell’s pronounced pro-Pakistan bias was no secret in the first Bush Administration. It is possible that his colleagues were not too sure whether he had been blunt enough while delivering what Gen Musharraf was to later correctly describe as a “blatant ultimatum” to Pakistan. So a follow-up message was sent, this time through a person who had little time and lesser patience for niceties. “When I was back in Islamabad the next day, our director-general of Inter-Services Intelligence, who happened to be in Washington, told me on the phone about his meeting with the US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage.

In what was to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made, Armitage added to what Colin Powell had said to me and told the director-general not only that we had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we chose the terrorists, then we would be bombed back to the Stone Age.”

It is anybody’s guess as to whether the Americans would have carried out their threat had Gen Musharraf cast Pakistan’s lot with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But being the crafty man that he is, Gen Musharraf decided to play along with the Bush Administration by pretending to be a ‘staunch’ and ‘steadfast’ ally in the war on terror, and thus get the West to acknowledge Pakistan as the ‘frontline state’ deserving of military and civilian aid, which has since run into billions of dollars, most of it contributed by the US.

Seven years after Gen Powell asked Gen Musharraf to choose between America and the terrorists, and Mr Armitage made sure Pakistan chose to support the US, there is little or nothing to show for the military and non-military aid. Oversight audits have revealed that much of the money meant to modernise the Pakistani Army to fight terrorism in that country’s badlands has been pocketed by its top brass through the rampant use of bogus vouchers and fake bills.

As for non-military aid, it is obvious that generous cash transfers from Western capitals to Islamabad have not helped prevent Pakistani society’s descent into Islamic fanaticism and jihadi bloodletting. Gen Musharraf had promised to reform the education system by cleansing school curriculum of the regressive elements introduced during the Islamisation drive of Gen Zia-ul-Haq, shutting down non-registered madarsas run by rabid mullahs, and modernising those seminaries which are recognised by the Government.

For all his talk about “enlightened moderation”, Gen Musharraf did nothing on this front; by the time he ordered his troops to storm Lal Masjid and its two madarsas, including Jamia Hafza, in the heart of Islamabad on July 8, 2007, thousands of clones of this Deoband-inspired seminary of hate had sprung up across Pakistan. Many more have mushroomed in the last two years and each one of them preaches a simple, one-sentence message: “Jihad is your salvation.”

Distinguished Pakistani scholar and columnist Pervez Hoodbhoy, in an article, “The Saudi-isation of Pakistan”, published in the latest issue of Newsline, laments how radical Islamism and mullah-driven Arabisation are furiously gnawing at the innards of a tottering Pakistani state. He says although the Government admits to the existence of only 13,000 madarsas with 1.5 million taliban, the real number is likely between 18,000 and 22,000.

That would mean millions of taliban being indoctrinated by hate-mongers for whom Islam means being in a state of constant war with those who refuse to submit to oppressive Islamism that militates against human liberty, equality and dignity.

The preaching of hate and the teaching of ‘virtues’ of jihad are not limited to Deobandi madarsas alone. Such has been the all-pervasive influence of state-sponsored Islamisation since the days of Gen Zia’s dictatorship — contrary to popular belief Benazir Bhutto did nothing to reverse the trend after the dictator met a justly deserved fiery death (those with an evil mind insist the CIA did him in), nor did Mr Nawaz Sharif bother to halt the onward march of radical Islam while Gen Musharraf tricked the Americans into believing he was working on education reforms but it would require a few more million dollars, please — that private schools have now begun adopting offensive textbooks.

Rezaul Laskar of PTI has filed a report from Islamabad which is worth quoting verbatim: “Thousands of Pakistani schoolgoing children are growing up learning that the Urdu equivalent of the letter ‘A’ stands for Allah, ‘B’ for bandook (gun) and ‘J’ for jihad. Though not officially prescribed for pre-schoolers, books printed by Iqra Publishers are being used in several regular schools and madarsas across Pakistan.

The three examples of Allah, bandook and jihad are not the only ones which sound like a ‘blueprint for a religious fascist state’. The Urdu letter for the ‘T’ stands for takrao (collision), ‘K’ for khanjar (dagger), H for hijab (veil) and ‘Z’ for zunoob (sins) which include watching television, playing musical instruments and flying kites.

Which takes us back to Peerbhoy’s lament: “Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind.

The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state.” Not given to grand pronouncements, Peerbhoy has been cautious with his words. For, Pakistan has not only set itself on a self-destructive course, it is also headed for a catastrophe whose victims shall not be Pakistanis alone.

Tragically, the Americans refuse to read the writing on the wall. If the Bush Administration erred in trusting Pakistan, the incoming Obama Administration has compounded that error by promising to treble aid to a criminal state whose ruling elite, both military and civilian, is a complicit partner in promoting a particularly virulent form of radical Islamism. Little does the Pakistani elite realise that it too shall be devoured by the beast it is nurturing with American dollars.      – kanchangupta@rocketmail.com

1) India & Obama @  http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers31/paper3013.html

2) Aiding Terror @ http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=277&page=10

3) Act Tough, India! @ http://newstodaynet.com/newsindex.php?id=14033%20&%20section=13

http://www.dailypioneer.com/150623/Nurturing-terror-with-US-dollars.html

@ Slumdog/Marxism/Religion

Religion, Marxism and Slumdog

Francois Gautier – Express Buzz

March 16, 2009

WHY did a film like Slumdog Millionaire, which conveys an utterly negative image of India — slums, exploitation, poverty, corruption, anti Muslim pogroms — create so many waves in the West, pre and post Oscars? And why does not the Indian government protest, as the Chinese would indeed have, for a twisted and perverted portrayal of its own reality? There are several answers: When the missionaries began to evangelise India, they quickly realised that Hinduism was not only practised by a huge majority, but that it was so deeply rooted that it stood as the only barrier to their subjugating the entire subcontinent.

They therefore decided to demonise the religion, by multiplying what they perceived as its faults, by one hundred: caste, poverty, child marriage, superstition, widows, sati … Today, these exaggerations, which at best are based on quarter-truths, have come down to us and have been embedded not only in the minds of many Westerners, but also unfortunately, of much of India’s intelligentsia.

We Westerners continue to suffer from a superiority complex over the socalled Third World in general and India in particular. Sitting in front of our television sets during prime time news, with a hefty steak on our table, we love to feel sorry for the misery of others, it secretly flatters our ego and makes us proud of our so-called ‘achievements’.

That is why books such as The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre, which gives the impression that India is a vast slum, or a film like Slumdog Millionaire, have such an impact.

In this film, India’s foes have joined hands.

Today, billions of dollars that innocent Westerners give to charity are used to convert the poorest of India with the help of enticements such as free medical aid, schooling and loans.

 If you see the Tamil Nadu coast posttsunami, there is a church every 500 metres. Once converted, these new Christians are taught that it is a sin to enter a temple, do puja, or even put tilak on one’s head, thus creating an imbalance in the Indian psyche (In an interview to a British newspaper, Danny Boyle confessed he wanted to be a Christian missionary when he was young and that he is still very much guided by these ideals — so much for his impartiality).  

Islamic fundamentalism also ruthlessly hounds India, as demonstrated by the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, which are reminiscent of the brutality and savagery of a Timur, who killed 1,00,000 Hindus in a single act of savagery.  

Indian communists, in power in three states, are also hard at work to dismantle India’s cultural and spiritual inheritance. And finally, the Americanisation of India is creating havoc in the social and cultural fabric with its superficial glitter, even though it has proved a failure in the West. Slumdog plays cleverly with all these elements.  

Many of the West’s India-specialists are staunchly anti-Hindu, both because of their Christian upbringing and also as they perpetuate the tradition of Max Mueller, the first ‘Sankritist’ who said: “The Vedas is full of childish, silly, even monstrous conceptions. It is tedious, low, commonplace, it represents human nature on a low level of selfishness and worldliness and only here and there are a few rare sentiments that come from the depths of the soul”.  

This tradition is carried over by Indologists such as Witzel or Wendy Doniger in the US, and in France where scholars of the state-sponsored CNRS, and its affiliates such as EHESS, are always putting across in their books and articles detrimental images of India: caste, poverty, slums — and more than anything — their pet theories about ‘Hindu fundamentalism’.  

Can there be a more blatant lie? Hinduism has given refuge throughout the ages to those who were persecuted at home: the Christians of Syria, the Parsees, Armenians, the Jews of Jerusalem, and today the Tibetans, allowing them all to practise their religion freely.  

And finally, it is true that Indians, because they have been colonised for so long (unlike the Chinese) lack nationalism.  

Today much of the intellectual elite of India has lost touch with its cultural roots and looks to the West to solve its problems, ignoring its own tools, such as pranayama, hata-yoga or meditation, which are very old and possess infinite wisdom.  

Slumdog literally defecates on India from the first frame. Some scenes exist only in the perverted imagery of director Danny Boyle, because they are not in the book of Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat, on which the film is based. In the book, the hero of the film (who is not Muslim, but belongs to many religions: Ram Mohammad Thomas) does not spend his childhood in Bombay, but in a Catholic orphanage in Delhi. Jamal’s mother is not killed by “Hindu fanatics’, but she abandons her baby, of unknown religion, in a church. Jamal’s torture is not an idea of the television presenter, but of an American who is after the Russian who bought the television rights of the game. The tearful scene of the three children abandoned in the rain is also not in the book: Jamal and his heroine only meet when they are teenagers and they live in an apartment and not in a slum.

And finally, yes, there still exists in India a lot of poverty and glaring gaps between the very rich and the extremely poor, but there is also immense wealth, both physical, spiritual and cultural — much more than in the West as a matter of fact.

When will the West learn to look with less prejudice at India, a country that will supplant China in this century as the main Asian power? But this will require a new generation of Indologists, more sincere, less attached to their outdated Christian values, and Indians more proud of their own culture and less subservient to the West.  fgautier26@gmail.com

 

 

 

Other stories:

1) Submission @  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGtQvGGY4S4&feature=related

2) Obsession @ http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/trailer-12min.php

3) Hindus, Jews & Jihad @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/hindus-jews-and-jihad/

 

 

 

4) Genocide of Brahmins in Kashmir @ http://www.kashmir-information.com/history/genocide.html

 

 

5) Anti-Brahminism & Anti-Semitism @ http://globeonline.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/anti-semitismbrahminism/

 

 

 

6) Anti-Brahminism:Case Study @ http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/anti-brahmanism-case-study/  

 

 

7) Making of Unbeliever @ http://globeonline.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/making-of-an-unbeliever/

 

History of Terror @ http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/09mumterror-lashkar-e-tayiba-a-history-of-terrorism.htm 

@ Europe’s Mission…

Does Europe have a Civilising mission in India?

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/87642.php

JAKOB De ROOVER

Recently, the European Parliament hosted a meeting on “caste discrimination in South Asia”. At the meeting, participants stated that “India is being ruled by castes not by laws” and that they demanded justice, because there “is one incredible India and one untouchable India.” The EU was urged to come out with a policy statement on the subject. One MEP, referring to the caste system, said that “this barbarism has to end.” This is not the first time.

However, before the EU decides to publish policy statements on caste discrimination in India, we would do well to reflect on some simple facts.

First, the dominant conception of the caste system has emerged from the accounts by Christian missionaries, travelers and colonial administrators. Rather than being neutral, these accounts were shaped by a Christian framework. That is, the religion of European visitors to India had informed them beforehand that they would find false religion and devil worship there, and that false religion always manifested itself in social evils. Especially the Protestants rebuked the “evil priests” of Hinduism for imposing the laws of caste in the name of religion. They told the Indians that conversion to Protestantism was a conversion to equality. Thus, Indian souls were to be saved from damnation and caste discrimination.

Second, this Christian account of “the Hindu religion” and its “caste system” informed colonial policies in British India. Building on the theological framework, scholars now wrote “scientific” treatises on Hindu superstition and caste discrimination.
The Christian mission found its secular counterpart in the idea of the civilising mission, which told the West that it had to rescue the natives from the clutches of superstition and caste. One no longer promoted religious conversion, but the colonial educational system harped on “the horrors of Hindu society.”

Third, the colonial educational project had a deep impact on the Indian intelligentsia. Hindu reform and anti-caste movements came into being, which reproduced the Protestant accounts of Hinduism and caste as true descriptions of India.
Their advocates did not adopt these descriptions as passive recipients, but actively deployed them to pursue socioeconomic and political interests. Political parties and caste associations were created to safeguard the interests of the “lower castes.” The elites of these groups united in associations and received financial and moral support from the missionaries and other progressive colonials.

Fourth, the “Dalit” movement of today is the product of these colonial movements. The notion of “Dalits” makes sense only within the colonial account of India, which had postulated the existence of one single group of “outcastes” or “untouchables” that was supposedly exploited by the upper castes. In reality, it concerns a variety of caste groups, with no criteria to unite them besides the claim that they are all “downtrodden.”

Indeed, many of these groups are poor and discriminated against by other caste groups. However, their socio-economic interests have been hijacked by some of their western-educated elite members. In the name of the downtrodden, these elites establish NGOs and then travel from conference to conference and country to country in order to reveal the plight of the “Dalits” to eager western audiences and secure funding from donor agencies.

Fifth, when present-day Europeans rebuke Indian society for the “barbarism” of caste discrimination, they are reproducing the old stanzas of the civilising mission. Such a stance of superiority perhaps worked in the context of colonialism. But today, at a time when Indians buy some of the European industrial giants and Europe is in need of more collaboration with India, it is ill-advised to continue this type of civilisational propaganda.

In fact, such propaganda derives its plausibility from a series of assumptions that no one would be willing to defend explicitly. It attributes all socioeconomic wrongs of the Indian society to its structure and civilisation.

 The implication is that there is only one way to get rid of socio-economic wrongs here: one has to eradicate both the social structure and the Hindu civilisation. It is as though one would blame the racism, bingedrinking, pedophilia, poverty, homelessness and domestic violence in the contemporary West on its age-old civilisation.

The times have changed. As Europeans, we need to reflect on our deep-rooted sense of superiority and how this informs our moralising discourse on human rights in other parts of the world.

To appreciate the impression we give to Indians with our statements on caste discrimination, just imagine a possible world in which the Indian government regularly castigates the US for its racism against African-Americans and the disproportionate death penalties, and the EU for the treatment of South Asians in England, Turks in Germany, women in Romania, the Basque movement in Spain, gypsies in Italy … just imagine Indian members of parliament consistently blaming the very structure of western societies as the cause of all these wrongs.

Europe needs to wake up fast. The time of colonialism is over.

If we do not change our attitudes, the irritation towards the EU will grow in countries like India and China.

So will the unwillingness to collaborate. In the fast-changing world of the early 21st Century, Europe cannot afford this.

Jakob De Roover is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation (FWO) at the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Ghent University, Belgium

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