4 posts tagged “religion”

I found this interesting article on National Review, and thought I'd share it.  I enjoy the fact that Islam is still being preserved from criticism, even much deserved criticism.  It seems that no progress has been made since the riots following the pope's call to reason at Regensburg. 
Threaten enough people and I guess you get your way.  Perhaps when Christians begin to cut off the heads of their detractors they will be afforded the same deference.  I doubt that very much, for it often seems that anti-Christian sentiment is the last acceptable bigotry.  Is it because we are "the Establishment" religion?  Perhaps so.  Europeans are increasingly godless and it has ever been the fashion of the American societal elite to ape Europe.   Give him enough time, and the common man begins to ape the ape in a bid for the appearance of sophistication. 
The other week I had the occasion to attempt a dialogue with another Voxer who had made it very clear that she didn't like my particular religion.  She trotted out the usual litany of abuses committed by my Church over the years, but focused primarily on the sexual abuse scandal among the clergy.  When I offered a counterpoint to her views, I was unfortunately met with "The Wall."  That is, the "this is my personal view and I don't want to be criticized for it" wall.  Now, I would hope that anyone who reads my piddling excuse for a blog would understand my frustration.  Anything I post in public I understand to be open to criticism.  Especially if I post something critical to another person's beliefs.  Sometimes, I border on the insulting.  I'd hate to be labeled a troll, but there is a point at which letting an accusation or a misconception stand is tantamount to agreement.  So it seems I am constantly stepping on the toes of liberals, atheists, global warming nuts and even Protestants.
It's all quite frustrating, because at the end of the day the Internet just isn't real.  The victories I might win are easily ignored.  The points I make are suspect because the conversation begins with me as an intruder on a particular person's public space (which makes no sense to me...the Internet is hardly private).  So what is the point of it all?
Well, I still believe that we can carry our principles with us even when we are completely anonymous.  I feel that the anonymity allows us to engage in debate devoid of the usual obfuscations of personal pride and ego.  Rhetorical tactics can still be used to great effect, but the debate can be essentially neutral without lacking substance.
What we say on the Internet actually is real and it matters.  I still believe that relativism is the thing that will doom us to half-witted expressions of banal tolerance for even the worst sorts of offenses.   And so I suppose I am going to continue feeling awkward and unpopular amongst my many anonymous Internet acquaintances.
Whose commentary, as always, I welcome.

The Evolution of Religious Bigotry

Courage without consequence.

By Jonah Goldberg

I just watched Fitna, a 17-minute film by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. 

Released on the Internet last week, Fitna juxtaposes verses from the Koran with images from the world of jihad. Heads cut off, bodies blown apart, gays executed, toddlers taught to denounce Jews as “apes and pigs,” protesters holding up signs reading “God Bless Hitler” and “Freedom go to Hell” — these are among the powerful images from Fitna, Arabic for “strife” or “ordeal.”

Predictably, various Muslim governments have condemned the film. Half the Jordanian parliament voted to sever ties with the Netherlands. Egypt’s grand imam threatened “severe” consequences if the Dutch didn’t ban the film.

Meanwhile, European and U.N. leaders are going through the usual theatrical hand-wringing, heaping anger on Wilders for sowing “hatred.”

Me? I keep thinking about Jesus fish.

During a 1991 visit to Istanbul, a buddy and I found ourselves in a small restaurant, drinking, dancing, and singing with a bunch of middle-class Turkish businessmen, mostly shop owners. It was a hilariously joyful evening, even though they spoke little English and we spoke considerably less Turkish.

At the end of the night, after imbibing unquantifiable quantities of raki, an ouzo-like Turkish liqueur, one of the men gave me a worn-out business card. On the back, he’d scribbled an image. It was little more than a curlicue, but he seemed intent on showing it to me (and nobody else). It was, I realized, a Jesus fish.

It was an eye-opening moment for me, though obviously trivial compared with the experiences of others. Here in this cosmopolitan and self-styled European city, this fellow felt the need to surreptitiously clue me in that he was a Christian just like me (or so he thought).

Traditionally, the fish pictogram conjures the miracle of the loaves and fishes as well as the Greek word IXΘΥΣ, which means fish and also is an acronym for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.” Christians persecuted by the Romans used to draw the Jesus fish in the dirt as a way to tip off fellow Christians that they weren’t alone.

In America, these fish appear mostly on cars. Recently, however, it seems Jesus fish have become outnumbered by Darwin fish. No doubt you’ve seen these, too. The fish is “updated” with little feet on the bottom, and “IXΘΥΣ” or “Jesus” is replaced with either “Darwin” or “Evolve.”

I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there’s the smugness. The undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less sophisticated than we Darwin fishers.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing that “hate is not a family value.” But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance; similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.

As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. “Namely: It’s acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it. A plaque with ‘Shalom’ written inside a Star of David would hardly attract notice; a plaque with ‘Usury’ written inside the same symbol would be an outrage.”

But it’s the false bravado of the Darwin fish that grates the most. Like so much other Christian-baiting in American popular culture, sporting your Darwin fish is a way to speak truth to power on the cheap, to show courage without consequence.

Whatever the faults of Fitna, it ain’t no Darwin fish.

Wilders’ film could easily get him killed. It picks up the work of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by a jihadi for criticizing Islam.

Fitna is provocative, but it has good reason to provoke. A cancer of violence, bigotry, and cruelty is metastasizing within the Islamic world.

It’s fine for Muslim moderates to say they aren’t part of the cancer; and that some have, in response to the film, is a positive sign. But more often, diagnosing or even observing this cancer — in film, book or cartoon — is dubbed “intolerant,” while calls for violence, censorship, and even murder are treated as understandable, if regrettable, expressions of anger.

It’s not that secular progressives support Muslim religious fanatics, it’s that they reserve their passion and scorn for religious Christians who are neither fanatical nor violent.

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.

Not my words.

Relativism is powerful in Western life, evidenced in many areas -- from the decline in the study of history and English literature, through to the triumph of subjective values and conscience over moral truth and the downgrading of heterosexual marriage.

One reason for optimism is that no one believes, deep down, in relativism. People may express their scepticism about truth and morality in lecture rooms or in print, but afterwards they will go on to sip a cappuccino, pay the mortgage, drive home on the left side of the road, and presumably avoid acts of murder and cannibalism throughout their evening. People, unless insane, do not live as relativists. They care about truth and follow clear cut rules.

Nothing matters more than truth to our country. Differences about important issues such as war, slavery, abortion, euthanasia are different claims to moral truth, not merely competing preferences. Some who have never been deprived of truth can give it up too easily, perhaps using talk of relativism or secularism to camouflage their actual commitment to money, success, possessions, power. But these are ambiguous goods: they can be misused and are rarely distributed fairly.

It is getting to the truth about things and having the integrity to live by that truth that is the ideal we should pass to the next generation. By comparison, relativism is bankrupt: it offers no future because it is not liveable; and where it is a camouflage, what it camouflages is generally rotten and often shaped by greed.

--Cardinal George Pell

I've been struck in recent years at how poor the quality of debate has become in my country and around the world.  I feel that this contemptible philosophy of relativism is mostly to blame.  To lay claim to any sort of moral truth is seen as backwards, an anachronism.  The current vogue is to merely "present one's opinion" and if someone should take issue with that then run to the safety of the lamest of rebuttals.  How can any serious thinker allow for the existence of relativism in matters of morality or even politics?  How can anyone who claims to be open-minded steadfastly refuse to change their mind on the subject of Absolute Truth?

Well, as anyone who has been paying attention for the better part of this decade knows, Muslims of a certain stripe don't take kindly to anyone who doesn't follow their customs and way of life.  Recently, a British woman living and teaching in Sudan was jailed for the reprehensible crime of naming a class teddy bear "Muhammed."  Wait, scratch that.  She didn't name it, she merely allowed her class to name it.  One boy named Muhammed actually suggested the name, after his own. 
What happened next, I'm not sure, but somehow this woman ended up in a Sudanese prison.  Better still, she faced a maximum sentence of prison time or forty lashes.  Forty lashes with a bamboo cane no wider than a finger has the potential to cause serious permanent damage. 
Now, as those who pay attention expected, come the calls for her death.  For her death!  Who, pray tell, put out these calls?  Osama bin Laden?  Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad?  No, nobody so grand.  Local imams preached on the subject today, and afterwards their followers massed for a protest, brandishing knives and clubs and demanding this British woman's execution.
This is clear evidence of the effect of just kernels of radical Islam on a population.  Where it is allowed to fester, the populace is soon consumed with a violent antipathy towards non-Muslims and a complete disregard for common sense. 
The article states that many British Muslim groups have come out against this action.  This is commendable!  I have often lamented that the very people in the best position to quash radical Islam - moderate, pro-democracy Muslims - are nearly always silent by choice or by cowardice or by coercion.  The more moderate Muslims speak out against things like this - like the Saudi rape case, like the honor killing which took place in London itself - the more progress will be made against our mutual enemy.

And why is Britain even tolerating this?  Was a time when the British commandos would have stormed that prison, relations with a pissant little country like Sudan be damned.  Shouldn't the lives of British subjects be protected from unjust persecution in foreign lands?  This woman committed no crime, and should be freed immediately.  She may not last the 15 days in that jail cell before a mob comes and carries her to her death. 

So here's an article.  Notice the difference in eyebrow shapes.  Methinks Christopher Hitchens waxes.

I think Christopher is right about Iraq, but Peter is right about Christopher and most of what he's writing about.  And Peter seems to have a consistent opposition to violence even if he does fail to realize that our Muslim enemies care little for his views.  That's where Christopher scores points about faith...radical Islam is a faith that needs to stop existing.  But remove the Christian sensibilities from C. Hitchens' worldview and it becomes difficult to rationalize being a good person for its own sake.  P. Hitchens and C. Hitchens should write themselves a book together in which they argue bitterly...I would read it.

Also, the article is a good example of how the terms "left" and "right" mean different things across the pond.