This came via email to me today. I can't vouch for it, but I thought, if it's valid, and if any of Rantburg's heros would be able to make use of it, you deserve to be told.
San Franciscoâs Handlery Union Square Hotel offers a special room rate to all active duty military currently serving America. The âFr-eedomâ room rate is $75. Valid through Dec. 30, 2005, the offer is based on availability, double occupancy, and does not include tax. Those eligible for the âFr-eedomâ rate must show active duty military ID or overseas orders.
The family-owned hotel is located in the heart of Union Square at 351 Geary Street. Hotel amenities include a restaurant and bar, an outdoor heated swimming pool, a sauna and wireless internet. Shopping and entertainment are steps away.
... One of the obstacles here is the lack of true dialogue in Muslim communities. I sometimes used to go to a local Koranic study circle. More recently I sat in on a Bible study group a friend of mine attends. Both meetings were similar in many ways. They were both held around kitchen tables, many cups of tea were drunk, and they were led by men with beards.
But when I think back on them, there was one striking contrast. Whereas everyone got a chance to speak during the Bible group, the Koranic circle was dominated by the leader, the imam of the local mosque. He was a knowledgeable man and spoke well, but I remember noticing that he didn't ask the other members of the group any questions. The purpose of the meeting was not to figure out the meaning and significance of the text we were reading together, but to learn it from the imam.
That remains the dynamic among Muslim congregations. While many Muslims in this country can recite Koranic Arabic, and children frequently attend classes after school, only a tiny proportion understand the language. Imams are not just the leaders of the congregation, they are the only interpreters of religious doctrine. In this sense, Islam is yet to have its 'Protestant moment'. People have not taken it upon themselves to learn about and reflect on the faith, and to do so from independent, non-institutional sources in their vernacular language.
In addition, Muslim communities in Britain - especially those of south Asian origin - still adhere to many of the values of the villages and small towns from which people first came here. These are places in which the mosque is the hub of social power - paid for by the local landowners, run according to their wishes - and the imam is a social and political, as well as religious figurehead. It is a position that, for example, Church of England ministers can nowadays only look on with envy.
This isn't to say that there aren't other voices in the Muslim diaspora. There are liberals, both among Islamic scholars and, increasingly, among the British commentariat. But these people don't have hold of pulpits as imams do. While Islam does not have a rigid, church-like hierarchy which may actively suppress other views, alternative opinion finds it hard to exert traction since the main mode of transmission about faith and doctrine in Muslim communities remains oral. The problem for reformers is that they write, and usually for 'western' publications. As long as the politics of grievance remains dominant in Muslim communities, splitting the world into Muslims and the West, these voices will not be heard.
As a consequence, imams and the religious organisations that bind together groups of mosques across different cities have an enormous amount of control over the Muslim community's agenda. Many of these imams were born and brought up outside Britain and their English is often poor. They have very little engagement with British culture and society. I am not blaming these imams for the difficulties faced by Muslim communities, but their position means they are uniquely able to influence the debate on how to solve them.
One major reason for the continuing salience of the politics of grievance is that imams and the religious organisations have more reason than most to exploit it. There are genuine reasons why Muslims in Britain feel excluded and disadvantaged, but imams and these organisations have fostered those feelings rather than tried to find ways to overcome them. Prior to Friday prayers, it is much easier to bind your congregation together with a sermon arguing that all these grievances come from the West's war against Muslims, rather than to challenge this with a more sophisticated critique...
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 10:42 ||
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A couple of items from Tuesdayâs papers. On the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian pilot programme for the Metâs new shoot-to-kill policy, the Daily Telegraph reports:
âA Home Office spokesman last night admitted that it had not yet identified his immigration status: âWe are looking into the case and will provide more information as soon as we are able to do so.âââ
Meanwhile, the Times includes this background information on one of the thwarted bombers of the 21 July attacks â Yassin Hassan Omar, a Somali âasylum-seekerâ:
âOmar, who was last seen vaulting a barrier at Warren Street station, has been the registered occupant of the flat since 1999. Ibrahim, who was last seen in Hackney Road, East London, after his failed attempt to blow up a No. 26 bus, shared it with him for the past two years. Omar received £88 a week in housing benefit to pay for the council property and also received income support, immigration officials say.â
So hereâs how things stand:
1) Four days after Mr de Menezes became the most famous foreigner in the United Kingdom, Her Majestyâs Government is unable to give a definitive answer on his immigration status.
2) Four years after 9/11, British taxpayers are subsidising the jihad â in Mr Omarâs Bounds Green council flat and in many other places.
Thereâs a pleasant thought the next time youâre on a bus when some Islamakazi self-detonates: itâs on your tax bill; P-A-Y-E â pay as you explode.
Number One comes at a time when the relevant department, the Home Office, not content with being unable to run its existing records system for foreigners, is determined to inflict an expensive and cumbersome bureaucracy on every non-foreigner in the land. Indeed, the Home Secretary has now upgraded it into a fundamental human right: âJust let us put in place our hierarchy of rights,â Charles Clarke told MEPs just before the second attacks. âThe right to live. The right to go to work on the Underground. The right to have an ID card.â Human rights-wise, that last one is right up there with the right to be subject to confiscatory taxation.
And Number Two isnât some stunning shocking development, either. In The Spectator of 29 December 2001, I noted the likes of Zac Moussaoui, the French citizen who became an Islamist radical while living on welfare in London, and wrote:
âIf youâre looking for âroot causesâ for terrorism, European-sized welfare programmes are a good place to start. Maybe if they had to go out to work, theyâd join the Daily Mirror and become the next John Pilger. Or maybe theyâd open a drive-thru Halal Burger chain and make a fortune. Instead, Tony Blair pays Islamic fundamentalists in London to stay at home, fester and plot.â
I wasnât the first to notice the links between Euro-Canadian welfare and terrorism. Mickey Kaus, an iconoclastic California liberal, was way ahead. But, after three-and-a-half years, one would be entitled to assume that a government whose fortunes are as heavily invested in the terrorist threat as this oneâs might have spotted it, too â especially given the ever greater numbers of British jihadi uncovered from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Israel and America.
Thatâs why I regretfully have to disagree with the editor of this great publication in his prescription of the current situation which appeared in these pages a week or two back under the headline âJust donât call it warâ. As youâll have gathered, the boss objects to the language of âwar, whether cultural or military.... Last weekâs bombs were placed not by martyrs nor by soldiers, but by criminals.â
Sorry, but thatâs the way to lose. A narrowly focused âcriminalâ approach means entrusting the whole business to the state bureaucracy. The obvious problem with that is that itâs mostly reactive: blow somewhere up, weâll seal it off, and detectives will investigate it as a crime scene. You could make the approach less reactive by a sustained effort to improve scrutiny of immigration, entitlement to welfare and other matters within the purview of government. But consider those two snippets from the Tuesday papers and then figure out the likelihood of that happening. A âcriminalâ approach gives terrorists all the rights of criminals, and between British and European âhuman rightsâ thatâs quite a bundle. If itâs a war, you can take wartime measures â including withdrawal from the UN Convention on Refugees, repeal of the European Human Rights Act, and a clawback of sovereignty from the EU. But if you fight this thing as a law-enforcement matter, Islamist welfare queens will use all the above to their full extent and continue openly promoting the murder of the Prime Minister, British troops, etc. with impunity.
Softly-softly wonât catchee monkey. Slo-mo conflicts are the hardest to win, in part because in advanced societies the public finds it hard to stay focused. Granted, there are exceptions to that rule: the government, battling the commies in Malaya, went the Boris Johnson route and declined to call it a war; and the eventual victory in the Malayan âEmergencyâ might tend to support his thesis. It was said that London was reluctant to use the term âwarâ for reasons of home and business insurance, but itâs also a broader kind of insurance: it lowers the stakes, it softens the people up for a non-victory â as in the Irish âTroublesâ. Sometimes, as in Malaya, you happen to win one of these âemergenciesâ or âtroublesâ, and thatâs a bonus. But the point is, by designating something as other than a war, you tend to make it peripheral, and therefore loseable.
Thatâs not an option here. Madrid and London â along with other events such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh â are, in essence, the opening shots of a European civil war. You can laugh at that if you wish, but the Islamistsâ most often-stated goal is not infidel withdrawal from Iraq but the re-establishment of a Muslim caliphate living under Sharia that extends to Europe; and thereâs a lot to be said for taking these chaps at their word and then seeing whether their behaviour is consistent.
Furthermore, thereâs a lot more of the world that lives under Sharia than there was, say, 30 years ago: Pakistan adopted it in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984.... Fifty years ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of itâs in the grip of Islamic law. So, as a political project, radical Islam has made some headway, and continues to do so almost every day of the week: since the beginning of the year, for example, some 10 per cent of southern Thailandâs Buddhist population have abandoned their homes â a far bigger disruption than the tsunami, yet all but unreported in the Western press. And whatever oneâs opinion of the various local conflicts around the world â Muslims vs Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs Jews in the Holy Land, Muslims vs Russians in Chechnya, Muslims vs Christians in Africa â the fact is that the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If youâre not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldnât you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards?
If the jihad has its war aims, maybe we should start thinking about ours. What would victory look like? As fascism and communism were in their day, Islamism is now the ideology of choice for the worldâs grievance-mongers. That means we have to destroy the ideology, or at least its potency â not Islam per se, but at the very minimum the malign strain of Wahabism, which thanks to Saudi oil money has been transformed from a fetish of isolated desert derelicts into the most influential radicalising force in contemporary Islam, from Indonesia to Leeds. Europeans who arenât prepared to roll back Wahabism had better be prepared to live with it, or under it.
Mustering the popular will for that sort of struggle isnât easy. But the longer you leave it the harder it becomes. Whether or not one accepts the Johnson line that Iraq is irrelevant to the war on terror, it requires a perverse genius on the part of Tony Blair to have found the political courage to fight an unpopular war on a distant shore but not the political courage to wage it closer to home where it would have commanded far more support.
On a couple of very fleeting visits to London and Belfast in recent weeks, I had the vague feeling that Britain is on the brink of a tragedy it doesnât quite comprehend. Americaâs post-9/11 muscular nationalism was easily mocked by Europeans, but its absence in London is palpable: try to imagine Mayor Giuliani uttering half the stuff Ken Livingstone said in the last fortnight (âThe bombings would never have happened if the West had simply left the Arab nations alone in the wake of the first world warâ). Even if heâs right, the message it communicates is weakness: bomb us, and we apologise â or at the very least go to comically absurd lengths to distinguish terrorism against London from terrorism against Israel. Tony Blair, in his recitation in the House of Commons of nations afflicted by terrorism, couldnât even bring himself to mention the Zionist Entity. Boris Johnson, in his call to non-arms, began with an elaborate riff on the difference between Brits and Jews in these matters:
âIf we were Israelis, we would by now be doing a standard thing to that white semi-detached pebbledash house at 51 Colwyn Road, Beeston. Having given due warning, we would dispatch an American-built ground-assault helicopter and blow the place to bits. Then we would send in bulldozers to scrape over the remains....â
The distinction between coarse blundering Israelis and subtle sophisticated Britons depends where youâre standing. If you happen to be the late Jean Charles de Menezes, for example, you might wish fate had selected you instead to be the Palestinian suicide bomber interrupted en route to Tel Aviv that same Friday. The Euro-reviled IDF managed to disarm the Fatah terrorist of his explosives belt, packed with nails, without harming a hair on his pretty little suicide-bomber head. If the demented anti-Zionism of the British and Continental media these last four years ever had a point, it doesnât now, when youâre in the early stages of the Israelification of Europe â and, in one of fateâs better jests, in this scenario youâre the Jews.
Any one of these issues would require enormous political will â stop funding the intifada, reclaim lost sovereignty from Europe, imprison and/or expel treasonous imams, end the education systemâs psychologically unhealthy and ahistorical disparagement of the Britannic inheritance in your schools. But, without a big ambitious war-sized project, whatâs left â aside from shooting the occasional Brazilian?
On the Thursday of the second attacks, I happened to pass through London, which isnât the easiest town to pass through these days. I am a Canadian subject of Her Majesty and, when I showed up at the âFast Trackâ lane at Heathrow, the immigration officer plonked down in my passport a big stamp saying âRECOURSE TO PUBLIC FUNDS PROHIBITEDâ. âTosser,â I sneered. Well, OK, I murmured it, very sotto voce, as I had no desire to miss my appointment because the zealots of HM Customs suddenly fancied an intimate cavity search. But honestly, what a pathetic example of pointless gesture politics: if youâre a fancypants North American business traveller in town for less than 24 hours and splashing a ton of hard currency around the West End, the Home Office goes through a big hoop-de-doo about saying youâve no entitlement to welfare. But if youâre a Somali and you want to live in public housing at public expense for six years while you fine-tune your plot to blow up Warren Street Tube station, pas de problÚme!
And, of course, in the event that I were overcome by a yen to join Yassin Hassan Omar on the public teat, an automatic stamp in the passport of every Canadian, American and Australian landing at Heathrow isnât going to do anything to prevent it. For all the Home Office knows, I may already be living in a council flat in Bounds Green. This silly passport stamp was introduced after 9/11, in the wake of concerns about âasylum-seekersâ, and itâs a classic example of what you get when you opt for a narrowly drawn law-enforcement approach entrusted to a complacent bureaucracy: rather than do anything about immigrant welfare fraud, theyâll simply order up a new rubber stamp that gives the vague air of doing something about it.
How come Tony Blair can bestride the world like a colossus, liberating Iraq, ridding Africa of poverty, and yet know so little about the one tiny corner of the planet for which he bears formal responsibility? Well, there are several possible reasons, but the effect is pretty much the same: daily, weekly, remorselessly, the situation will deteriorate. If itâs a war, you can win it. Anything less is unlikely to end in victory.
#1
Another article that misses the mark by a mile. His statement that the welfare system is one of the root causes of terorism is absurd! Islam and their belief of intolerance is the root cause. Tony Blair and the Britts have just identified a seam that the terrorists are exploiting, Canada take note. Again I disagree with his analysis that we should deal with them like Isreal, by blowing up the flats. In Isreal they are all fighting over the same land, and in Brittin they are just trying to kill people. Do the analysis, get the leadership thats preaching hate and recruiting from the getto's, break the chain and then chase the money flow back to the funding. Then let the violence begin, on their land, not Brittins.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
07/31/2005 8:47 Comments ||
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#2
His statement that the welfare system is one of the root causes of terorism is absurd!
That is not what he said. His point was this is war. You cannot treat terrorism strictly as a civil law enformment issue and it is stupid to subsidize your enemies with state welfare.
#3
49 pan: His statement that the welfare system is one of the root causes of terorism is absurd!
Not absurd at all. Stateside, welfare reform kicked off in the early 90's. The booting of millions of people off the welfare rolls coincided with a staggering decline in crime rates. Islam has always been a violent ideology. The welfare state provided its adherents with a steady income while they plotted against their host or home countries. The old saying - idle hands are the devil's tools - has a glimmer of truth in it.
#4
Not only that. It's a sign of weakness, and weakness - probably more than anything else - encourages terrorism. Steyn, as usual, is dead on about this. It's time to quit treating terrorism as criminal behavior and instead realize it for what it truly is: war. This is how we got into this mess to begin with. The jihadis kept saying, "Allah Allah Mohammed global caliphate jihad." And we kept saying, "No, they're just kidding..."
Posted by: Jeff ||
07/31/2005 10:22 Comments ||
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#5
Islamists treat welfare as jizya. When the jizya isn't "enough", then they view that as the violation of dhimmitude, and for an example of what happens when dhimmitude is violated, look to the Armenians in the early 20th century.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 12:22 Comments ||
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#6
Steyn is also spot on two major Western problems:
1) Anti-semitism among intellectuals who refuse to consider that the reason Israel has been under attack is the same reason Europe is under attack: Moslems want to impose submission or death to all non-Moslems.
2) Foreign parasites have come to the West in order to spread their indolent ways and murderous ideology.
Both would have to change if we were to openly admit that we are at war. Which is why I highly recommend reading Patrick Henry's "Illusions of Hope" speech. Gentlemen may cry "Peace!, Religion of Peace!" but we are at war.
#7
STEVE, You are correct. This war can not be run by the law enforcement agencies. The last thing I need, I'm a soldier, is to worry about the FBI treating a battle like a crime scene. My point was the gettos are simple recruiting grounds. The hijackers in the US lived a middle class life. If you closed the gettos they would hide in middle class areas. We must go after the leadership, and their funds, and seperate them from being able to influence and recruit.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
07/31/2005 22:56 Comments ||
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MINETTE MARRIN
It takes a long time to react fully to a disaster. After the first shock comes a kind of disbelief. So it has been with the two terrorist attacks in London. It is only slowly that people have begun to recover and come to terms with their feelings and it is only slowly that they begin to reflect on the wider implications. Our perspective and our focus need to be sharpened by time.
One of the things that strikes me more, not less, forcibly as time has passed is the contempt that Muslim extremists feel for us. They despise us for our decadence, and I feel more and more forced to accept the painful truth that they have a point. I donât want to exaggerate; there are many things about Britain that are still great. People have shown courage and compassion in response to the bombings, and a restraint that is truly heroic. And the police have discovered and arrested the failed suicide bombers with an efficiency that is anything but decadent.
All the same, it can hardly be denied that with all our celebrated freedom, and all our wealth, we have somehow created a society that is characterised by growing disorder, uncertainty and loss. For a long time now Britain â or rather many of its institutions and traditions â has been suffering from a loss of nerve and a loss of will which amounts to a national moral funk.
The results are everywhere, in each dayâs news. There is a connection between working-class lager louts looking for a fight and rich kids vomiting and copulating drunkenly in public, both here and on holiday abroad. Standards in public life have fallen very low, whether itâs the prime ministerâs wife or a slaggy Hooray Henrietta on a Cornish beach or simply Big Brother.
And there is a connection between all that and the miserable failure of Britainâs schools; illiteracy here is beyond belief, disruptive behaviour is normal, exams and degrees have been debased and ministers have just had to concede that social mobility â once the pride of British society â has declined in the past 30 years and has actually fallen since Labour came to power... Whatâs gone wrong in education is a template for whatâs gone wrong in other institutions. Hospitals, for instance, are badly run, filthy and in financial trouble, despite all the reforms and all the cash that have been directed at them. Last week, for instance, it emerged that though the NHS desperately needs more doctors, hundreds of junior doctors will find themselves without an NHS job when their contracts end this week; there are not enough jobs for them. The British Medical Association blames this astonishing situation on poor NHS planning.
The immigration system is characterised by incompetence that is the same in kind but perhaps even more astonishing in degree... And there can be very little doubt that the failures of the immigration system have created serious and unnecessary social problems here, including a comfortable environment for terrorists.
Thereâs a thread running though all this and what has been happening to the army... For if we lack the will to defend ourselves, or rather to defend those who are there to defend us, we are simply rolling over and showing to the worldâs scavengers and beasts of prey the soft underbelly of decadence.
It has been decadent to let extremist imams preach hatred and violence on the pavements here. These people could perfectly well have been sent to prison under existing legislation concerning incitements to violence or to racial hatred. But somehow the authorities lacked the will or the conviction to do it.
What connects all these things is an unwillingness, which has developed since the Sixties, to stand up for things that matter. I think it began with an unwillingness to reproach our own children. Some of my parentsâ generation were very lax with their children; people began to speak of the permissive society. And since then parents (including me) have seemed ever less able, or willing, to control and discipline their children. The very word discipline sounds almost prehistoric and possibly abusive.
Yet without proper discipline from parents, children can never develop self-discipline. And it is on self-discipline and self-restraint that a civilised society rests. With a loss of self-discipline goes a loss of standards of behaviour, a loss of efficiency and a loss of a sense of what matters. There is a very painful tension between instinct and society; that is the tragic discontent of civilisation, repression its painful price. The right balance is hard to find, and harder to maintain. But we can see today in Britain and in the West generally what happens when that balance fails.
I donât suggest that this loss of conviction affects everyone. Yet it has to be said that almost nobody has really done much to resist what has been done to our institutions and our manners. There has been a long march through the institutions of a nameless and shapeless ideology, misleadingly called political correctness... Multiculturalism, for instance, has been deeply demoralising to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, undermining their values, undermining a sense of common purpose, above all undermining the confidence of the host country. Even leading multiculturalists now, belatedly, agree on that.
Despite all this, I do, now for the first time, feel a faint glimmer of optimism. One of the responses to the bombings might be a new awareness of what matters most, and how best to defend it. If that means a new sense of purpose and a new sense of conviction, then perhaps some good will have come out of this evil.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
"They despise us for our decadence, and I feel more and more forced to accept the painful truth that they have a point."
#2
Ah, the irony! Marxists and socialists preached western bourgeois decadence for a hundred years, but it wasn't until they were in control that it happened.
#5
On its face, the tone of this article is sort of whiny and defeatist, but I think she hit the nail on the head. She properly makes the connection to the "cultural revolultion" of the '60s, when it became cool to hate one's country and despise its values, and to exalt Third World failed states as divine Oppressed, Peace-Loving Victims (Muslims now being the victim du jour). Multiculturalism is an absolute failure, and it is not only terribly foolish for us to permit this kind of sectarianism any further, it is decadence of the highest degree.
Posted by: Jeff ||
07/31/2005 5:03 Comments ||
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#6
Heh, Jeff, so does that mean we can round up the Moonbats and turn 'em into wireheads, now?
#8
Maybe she be French, after all surrender is the French first course of action. She will probably be a guest speaker on the moonbat tour lead by Jihaad Jane and the tin foil hat troupe.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
07/31/2005 8:54 Comments ||
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#9
Ah, the irony! Marxists and socialists preached western bourgeois decadence for a hundred years, but it wasn't until they were in control that it happened.
As a Roman Catholic, I am used to certains policy teachings or teachings of the church that I am against. For example, the death penalty is the right thing to do in my mind, as is the current war in Iraq. Sometimes, bad people need to go away -- far away. Much like the predatory pieces of human debris that have desecrated my church. However, my church doesn't always see things the way I do. But this story really gets me. St. Paul's on the Green church in Norwalk, Connecticut, which describes itself as an "Anglo-Catholic" church recently commissioned an artist to redo the Stations of the Cross exhibit at the church. Well, what they got was far from the ordinary. The Stamford Advocate dot com reports:
Last spring, when Gwyneth Leech was preparing for the Stations of the Cross she had been commissioned to paint for St. Paul's on the Green, her mind was on the rising insurgency in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
Indeed, the paintings reference actions that the United States has been recently criticized for. The first station shows Jesus' judgment before Pontius Pilate. While Pilate is clothed in a traditional Middle Eastern robe, Jesus is depicted in an orange prisoner jumpsuit standing between two soldiers in fatigues, an image reminiscent of prisoners at Guantanamo. An angry mob stands before a tangle of barbed wire, a symbol in many of the other paintings that evokes the image of the crown of thorns.
Not really. While I am all for political dissent if it is well reasoned this just smacks of some one who confuses artistic freedom with the requirements of the commision Just my $.02
#2
St. Paul's on the Green church in Norwalk, Connecticut, which describes itself as an "Anglo-Catholic" church
Sounds like yet another rootless cafeteria church.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 16:50 Comments ||
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#3
FInal comment at the blog is good -
I can only imagine a conversation among a family of parrisioners in the year 2046, "Mommy, why is Jesus dressed the like the guys who pick up garbage along side the highway?" "Well Jimmy, way back when I was a little girl, President Bush..."
Another thing I wish I didn't have to explain to my son. Thanks alot.
Some people have no tast or common sense.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2005 16:58 Comments ||
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#4
well we are certainly giving here what she wants, aren't we? Publicity.
#5
If religious people want to practice their faith thats great. When that faith starts trying to rewrite history and even it's foundation, thats another story. The "Passion" is well covered in the gospels. I can assure you that the war in Iraq and the war on terror is far from the practices of the Sanhedrin or the Roman Empire as one can get. The people responsible for this are typical tools who use "religiosity" as a cover for their TRANZI proclivities. Seriously you just crucified Christ on your own Golgotha.
Way to go asshats you are prime examples of why I have totally given up on all religion.
#6
Sounds like yet another rootless cafeteria church.
Actually, the Anglo-Catholics are the traditionalists who dislike the changes in the Episcopal church over the last 20 or so years. I cannot imagine that most members would be happy about this ...
However, I was at a wedding in May and a 75 yr old family friend who is quite traditional about her liturgy frothed at the mouth about Bushitler, Rumsfeld etc. So maybe some were.
Posted by: too true ||
07/31/2005 18:41 Comments ||
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#7
SPoD,
Don't give up on Christianity just because of a few morons in the church. Get up from lying down and try again!!
#8
Actually, the Anglo-Catholics are the traditionalists who dislike the changes in the Episcopal church over the last 20 or so years.
Hey, I was raised Catholic. Any church younger than 1,000 years is an upstart in my eyes.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/31/2005 18:50 Comments ||
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#9
Anglo-Catholic?
No such animal. Being Catholic is liek being pregnant - either you are or you are not. There is no half way.
This is just another case of the Anglican rite loonies trying to cloak themsleves with (Roman) Catholic symbolism while leaving the Catechism of the Catholic church behind.
These are far beyond even the Cafeteria Catholics.
My disgust for them cannot be adequately voiced in words.
#10
While Pilate is clothed in a traditional Middle Eastern robe, Jesus is depicted in an orange prisoner jumpsuit standing between two soldiers in fatigues,
Heck. I get a whole different interpretation. Pilate sentenced him to death, and the lefty moonbat crowds are calling for his crucifiction, but the American soldiers are standing "beside him".
It's ok to give up on "churchs" SPOD - but don't give up on truth and wisdom.
Gill, a badass Sikh policeman, was Director-General of Police in the Indian Punjab. He ruthlessly broke the back of the Khalastani terrorist movement and is considered a national hero in India
Posted by: john ||
07/31/2005 13:33 ||
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#1
on the occasion of each new incident of terrorism that agitates the Western world, we see the same bogus expressions of sympathy and solidarity emanating from Pakistan, quickly followed up with accusations against the West and sweeping generalisations regarding the failure to address 'root causes' and `outstanding disputes' such as Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Chechnya... But do Muslim grievances alone have root causes? And are these the only outstanding disputes in the world? Why then this floodtide of hatred and terror? And why is its fountainhead and source located in Pakistan?
...
Regrettably, (terrorism) is being artificially kept alive at present by massive and continuing state support, by the cynical exploitation of false sociologies of 'root causes' and by a range of 'human rights' organisations that have accepted the role of the handmaidens and fellow travelers of terrorism.
Posted by: john ||
07/31/2005 14:20 Comments ||
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#2
The conclusion, a portion of which is reproduced above - Through the 1980s and early 1990s, the Khalistanis had tried to build a movement out of hatred and violence. It was rejected by the large mass of Sikhs, who recognised how completely terrorism was in conflict with the tenets of their faith, and the movement collapsed and is, today, an object of derision and contempt in Punjab.
This will be the eventual outcome of the Pakistan-backed movement of extremist Islamist hatred, violence and denigration of other faiths. Regrettably, it is being artificially kept alive at present by massive and continuing state support, by the cynical exploitation of false sociologies of 'root causes' and by a range of 'human rights' organisations that have accepted the role of the handmaidens and fellow travelers of terrorism. Nor indeed, has a sufficient rejection of and resistance to this pernicious ideological movement been generated within the larger Islamic community. And it is only when such a rejection is openly and forcefully manifested that this perversion of Islam will eventually be defeated.
It is the world's duty to create the conditions for the articulation of the ideas of the silent majority of Muslims, who are as oppressed by extremist Islam as are the non-Muslim victims of Islamist terror. This is a scourge that must be faced with courage and determination, and that must be stamped out with all the force at our command.
So there are four issues:
1. The "silent majority" of muslims must speak.
2. Fellow travellers exploring the sociologies of "root causes" should be confronted and exposed.
3. Fellow travelers of human rights organizations
should be exposed and answered.
4. And the rest of us, who need to "create the conditions for the articulation of the ideas of the silent majority of Muslims, who are as oppressed by extremist Islam as are the non-Muslim victims of Islamist terror."
Which means assuming there are a few "mythical moderate Muslims' out there somewhere. To do otherwise is to take a page from the terrorist playbook - that all who do not follow our path must be against us - "anti-infidels", so to speak.
Deport the radicals, watch the immams, double-tap the boomers, close the borders, send more suspects to Gitmo, but (ooooh, I can't resist!) give peace a chance!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/31/2005 17:36 Comments ||
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#3
Bobby, there's only one glitch... there is no peace to give a chance to. That bullets are not whizzing about your head does not peace make. Nails dispersed by an explosive charge can be as deadly.
Pakistanâs response to latest terrorist attacks in London and Egypt and to the renewed indictment of Pakistan as a base for Taleban and Al-Qaeda, has been primarily of an administrative nature but has also included the effort to redefine the concept of jihad. And primarily with the help of those madrasas which were known to have supported political extremism in the hey days of the international jihad against the Soviet Union. Additionally individuals like the former ISI Gen. Hamid Gul who has, in the past, promoted and supported extremist politics among Muslim groups are appearing on television to explain how âbalanceâ in thought and action is a fundamental requirement of Islam. The attempt now is to project in the public space a less confrontationalist concept of genuine and permissible âIslamicâ jihad.
The government which has no allies from among the mainstream political parties in this colossal political-cum-administrative task of rolling back the angry, confrontationalist and reactionary version of âjihadâ seeks allies from among the religious groups.
Significantly the religious teachers from Pakistanâs leading madrasas have responded to the governmentâs call. After London and Egypt there also appears to be some voluntary internal rethink in these madrasas. In Pakistan the heads of leading madrasas are also critiquing the concept of jihad that justifies suicide bombings and killing of innocent people. In an interview to BBC Mufti Rafi Usmani, who heads Darul Uloom Karachi, one of Pakistanâs most respected madrasas, said, âIslam does not allow killing of innocent civilians and noncombatants under any circumstances.â Mufti Usmani said, âto begin with, jihad is not incumbent on all Muslims and a call for jihad can be given only under special circumstances.â
The consensus among three top scholars on the circumstances in which a call to jihad can be given includes a situation where a Muslim community comes under attack. Then jihad becomes an obligation for all Muslims, male and female, in that community. If that particular community feels it cannot fight off attackers on its own, then jihad becomes incumbent on Muslims living in nearby communities and finally if the Muslim ruler of a country calls for jihad, then it is incumbent upon the Muslims living under that ruler to join the jihad.
The effort now is clearly to roll back the popularization of jihad when, in the earlier â80s, the international community launched the joint anti-Soviet Afghan jihad. For example, Mufti Usmani said that âIf Pakistan is attacked but its army is sufficient to deal with the threat, then Pakistani civilians are under no obligation to join the jihad.â
On the conduct of jihad, the Pakistani ulema maintained that Islamic jihad completely disallowed attacking âwomen, children, the old and the meek, the sick, those that are praying and civilians.â This contradicts the justification given by the political extremists and reactionaries among the Muslims who argue that if innocent Muslims are killed in enemy action then Muslims are allowed to kill innocent people in retaliation.
But the heads of madrasas like Mufti Usmani categorically refute this. They say that Islam does not allow Muslims to respond to âa mistakeâ by another mistake because âIslam is absolutely clear on this issue. Two wrongs do not make a right.â Specifically he said if US or UK is killing the innocent civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, killing of innocent people in London or New York is not allowed.
Similarly the head of Pakistanâs leading madrasa, Jamia Binoria, Dr. Sikander told the BBC that in case Muslims do not agree with the foreign policy of those countries where they are living they must leave the country. The option for a Muslim âoutraged over Britainâs role in what is happening in Iraqâ is to go and âfight the coalition forces there,â he said. Mufti Usmani maintains that âWhen a Muslim visits a Western country or if he is living there, then he is under a kind of a contractual obligation to abide by the laws of that land.â
Redefining jihad is only one aspect of a broader challenge that is not exclusively a challenge for Muslims but indeed for the entire international community. Putting the onus on Muslims alone will only produce an inadequate response to terrorism.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2005 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
