Ehsan Jami is an intelligent, softly-spoken 22 year-old council member for the Dutch Labour Party. He believes there should be no compromise, ever, on the rights of women and gay people and novelists and cartoonists. He became sick of hearing self-appointed Islamist organisations claiming to speak for him when they called for the banning of books and the “right” to abuse women. So he set up the Dutch Council of Ex-Muslims. Their manifesto called for secularism – and the end to the polite toleration of Islamist intolerance. As he put it: “We want people to be free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.”
Ehsan was immediately threatened with death. He was kicked to the ground outside the supermarket. He was grabbed in a street with a knife put to his throat.
Many of the publications allegedly called on British Muslims to segregate themselves from non-Muslims and for unbelievers to be treated as second-class citizens wherever possible. The literature also allegedly contained repeated calls for gays to be thrown from mountains and tall buildings and for women to be subjugated.
collected were in English – raising questions about the emphasis placed by the Government in combating extremism by training more English-speaking imams.
Herouxville!
P.S., ET: From an earlier post I made (and perhaps in relation to Theodore Daltymple’s comments), I’d appreciate a response: “Instead of all the generalities we’ve heard over and over again, please provide the specific, practical remedies that you think will return the multicultural, relativistic genie to his bottle. Please include how the West will, as I said above ‘have the cohesion of thought and purpose and the cojones to reassert its own heritage'”.
As penny and I have pointed out, time is very short.
Which “church” are you talking about, lookout? Certainly the Catholics and Calvinists had wildly different views on the role of the “church” and religion in society. Bloody religious wars and the idea of the “Divine Right of Kings”, annointed by God and supported by scripture are not so far in our past.
ET was simply pointing out that most of the ethical base for our modern beliefs and institutions pre-date Christianity. In establishing these beliefs, reason was employed without the need for a metaphysical entity.
It is odd that ET creates history to form her formulaic statutes on human behavior.
Please do point out references to the creation of Islam as a response to Christian incursion of the Arabian Peninsula? Any dates for attacks? Any locales that incursions occurred? Any names of these vague Christian oppressors?Can you provide one example please? Islam came from one man ET with an agenda free of your mytical Christian attacks. Your pretense at knowing Islam is painful to behold. You almost carry water for them with your willful ignorance.
And as to your penchant for economic/political foundations for everything, please expound on an ideology that is crafted to be both predator and parasite to every neighbour they find themselves against…. “until all religion is for Allah….”
You cannot free yourself from your western mindset so you cannot perceive Islam as it truly is.
lookout – I disagree that the ‘church’ had a vital role in maintaining the Greco-Roman basis of democracy, reason and the individual. From the Arian-Athanasian 4th c disputes to the 11th-15th c, Europe saw an intellectual battle against the repressive role of the institution of the church.
As for your question on multiculturalism, it will dissolve on its own, as people realize that cultural relativism is both an originally empty and ultimately a dangerous formula for dealing with the world wide migration of populations. A nation cannot operate within a plurality of rules.
Such a realization is already happening, as I pointed out, in numerous nations around the world, and the fact that multiculturalism is being questioned and rejected in public, shows that its relevance is weakening. Of course the leftists promote it; they live in the seminar room of protected clouds of rhetoric. But in the concrete world of pragmatic reality,pluralism and relativism are useless as guides to life. It will dissolve because it is useless.
You, I am sure, will continue to disagree.
As I say to my students, Belisarius: “Use the text.” I wrote “Church”: upper case “C”. I didn’t do it arbitrarily. It MEANS something.
I’m no historian, but by the Reformation, the template for Western civilization was more or less in place: hospices for the needy, hospitals, institutions of learning, high culture, religious communities, which were both sanctuaries and repositories of beauty and learning, the idea of and some institutions for democratic governance, etc.
Apparently, able to read ET’s mind, you say, “reason was employed without the need for a metaphysical entity”. If that’s what you believe, fine.
But, if we’re of the West, it’s not what most of our forbears believed. And their beliefs were, as I said earlier, embodied in institutions, by which the culture of the West was handed down, generation by generation. Like it or not, most of these institutions were Christian. Before the Reformation, they were Roman Catholic. After the Reformation, for social and cultural purposes, the RC template was still quite viable and used by a multiplicity of other Christian denominations. It is only quite recently that the state has taken over our lives . . . er, I mean . . . the roles traditionally assumed by both the churches and the family, via traditional marriage.
Check out our modern day institutions: most had their genesis via the Christian Church.
And check out—see Dalrymple—what’s happening now that the West’s spurned its heritage: not at all a pretty picture.
People, like you and ET, may equivocate and continue to insist that polar opposites can coexist. But you’re wrong. Reality doesn’t work that way.
Lookout – I’m no historian, but by the Reformation, the template for Western civilization was more or less in place…
Incorrect. Absolute monarchies and a repressive Church were the norm, the English Bill of Rights did not exist, secular learning was actively suppressed (particularly if it contradicted Church doctrine), heretics were imprisoned or put to death and much of Greek and Roman learning forgotten.
The Reformation began to change this. The questioning of the Church’s authority opened the crack that ultimately led to our modern, western institutions. The Church fought these changes every step of the way.
I think Belisarius and ET are right in their points. What institutions were founded on the church? As ET has mentioned many times the West only became strong as the power of the church waned. Quebec is a recent example of this. The purpose of religion is control and power, the stronger it is the poorer and more backward its followers become, witness Islam.
Our civilization will only last as long as our Roman Legions (US Military) maintain their strength and have our support. Large powerful empires like ours are not taken over they collapse from within. Muslims now are aligning with liberals as they ceaselessly tear at the fabric of our social pillars and along with our declining demographics could push us into a decline we may not recover from. In our latest battles with the Axis powers and the USSR the enemy was evident and we emerged stronger and triumphant. This battle is totally different as it focused on our values. They have to be defined and are we willing to fight for them? Or will they continue to be muddied and weakened until they are meaningless?
If the anarchy of Caledonia is a small example of an unanswered challenge to our laws where our governments back down and retreat we could be in serious trouble with a major disaster like 9/11 in Canada. Liberals are always trying to appease or compromise but when they meet an ideology like Islam that has no interest except your demise they flounder.
Though I hope ET is right I worry that our leaders and general population will act on the danger in time. As Steyn has noted we are in trouble long before the waterfall is noticed round the bend. It begins in the quiet backwater upstream when the strong current begins to sweep us along.
“secular progressives”
Oh wait, you mean the majority of society.
Keep your invisible boogeymen, thanks.
“Check out our modern day institutions: most had their genesis via the Christian Church.”
What a load of revisionist nonsense. The church opposed the spread of even the simplest learning – that of reading – in fact, if I recall correctly, the first man to publish the bible in the common tongue – that is, not latin — was deemed a heretic. Gibbons said it best when he called the priestly class of the Middle Ages parasites – all of Europe was ruled by a de facto theocracy centralized in the Vatican. In fact, much of the renaissance was fueled by science and ideas coming from Sicily which had been heavily influenced by Islamic scholars – note, not Islamic clerics.
The repsonses to my posts are altogether selective–and I also note a hint, at least, of anti-Christian/Catholic bias. This is now so pervasive in our society, it’s quite easy to catch. Our substandard education system mixes apples and oranges readily, which many posters seem to do here whenever the topic is Christianity and the church.
David Hand asserts, “As ET has mentioned many times [so?] the West only became strong as the power of the church waned. [Documentation, please.] Quebec is a recent example of this [sic]. The purpose of religion is control and power [sic], the stronger it is the poorer and more backward its followers become [sic], witness Islam.” Utter hogwash, all of it.
Quebec is a sorry place: it’s a welfare state, propped up by the rest of Canada, it has the lowest birthrate, the highest abortion rate, the highest co-habitation (versus marriage) rate–not good for the few kids it has–the highest suicide rate in the country, and the most corrupt political culture. Now, isn’t that a fine example of strength?
Mr. Hand’s libel of Christianity is ignorant bigotry. Re Western institutions founded by the Church, read my earlier posts. (How about virtually all the great Western universities in Europe and North America?) Quid Pro Quo continues in the same head in the sand vein: “The church opposed the spread of even the simplest learning – that of reading . . . ” The Church was the CENTRE of learning in many societies. E.g., It was the monasteries which preserved learning after the fall of Rome.
Christianity and Islam have bequeathed two very different cultures to the world. Trying to conflate the two isn’t very helpful–or truhtful. When Christianity is the topic here, the parochialism demonstrated by many posters is both predictable and undignified.
Broaden your horizons: for a contemporary take, read Dalrymple, an enlightened unbeliever. Just Google City Journal.
coming late to this party but must thank lookout, mnd, and others for their posts educating others on the fact that our civilization is great because it is built on Biblical values.
Classical Greek and Roman thought may have given us our foundations in aesthetics, beauty, art, engineering, etc but where do we get our principles of equality before the law, justice, social responsibility, education, family, the sacredness of each and every life.
The ancients saw no problem with infanticide for example. Aristotle — argued in his Politics that killing children was essential to the functioning of society. He wrote:
“There must be a law that no imperfect or maimed child shall be brought up. And to avoid an excess in population, some children must be exposed. For a limit must be fixed to the population of the state.” (Politics VII.16)
Let’s not forget what went on in the coliseums. The pagan world of the ancient Greeks and Romans is not one I am sure that anyone here would care to live in.
It is the Bible that has given us our concept of the brotherhood of all mankind, of everyone being equal (kings, nobles, servants), of the importance of marriage, of social responsibility (taking care of widows and orphans – do you think the Greeks and Romans gave two hoots about underprivileged people?). The Bible also gave us the weekend (Sabbath – taking a day off work). The Greeks and Romans thought the Jews were mental and lazy for “resting” one day.
Just watch the HBO series Rome and then think about how much the ancient world needed Christianity.
We are living off of the fruits of our Judeo-Christian heritage. But like cut flowers who have no roots, we are withering without our foundation.
check out WORLD PERFECT: The Jewish Impact on Civilization
by Rabbi Ken Spiro
thanks for the link to the Dalrampyle article
Not all those arabs are blood lusting fanatics unfortunatly this young man was the victim of thugs who should get 50 years in prison
ex-liberal, I appreciate your intelligent input to my thesis. Yes, watching HBO’s Rome, was an eye opener re the barbaric, gut-churning ways of a pagan society, which, now that the West has spent most of its Judeo-Christian moral capital, we’re fast becoming again. Care for the less fortunate in pagan times? What’s that? And all the recent empirical evidence shows that the religiously observant give far and away more of their time, talent, and treasure to others than their less observant fellow citizens. This is a fact.
I’d love to have ET, David Hand et al accompany me and other public board teachers to our schools over an extended period of time. I think these “foundational culture” deniers might be shocked at the erosion of authority—a significant and not unsurprising result of the denigration of Judeo-Christian religious observance and, therefore, its values—in our classrooms. Daily acts of discourtesy and barbarism towards students’ peers and teachers, which demonstrate no regard for anyone but themselves, are a common occurrence. Administrators, unmoored from any ethic other than the shallow, secular counterfeit—the only one allowed in the public square—lack confidence, are afraid of being perceived as politically incorrect, and cave to the most craven behaviours. As the plethora of “Behaviour Codes” being churned out in our schools—all based on thin air and accompanied by candy-floss consequences or none—increases exponentially, so does the appallingly egocentric, inconsiderate, irresponsible and even criminal behaviour of too many of our students and future citizens. (Now THAT’s scary!) Not one teacher I know would recommend the job to a young person, and every teacher I know can’t wait for retirement.
I grew up in the fifties, a time in Canada when religion was taken seriously by most, even those who were non-observant. Children and adults were not hostage to the false gods of “equality and diversity”. Adults behaved like adults: in general, this benefited them, the children, and society at large. The false doctrines of “equality and diversity” have upended all of this. Everyone, including the most craven individual, no matter how young, believes that he or she is “entitled”. Entitled to what? To believe—truth and evidence be damned—whatever he/she wishes and posit it as equal to all other beliefs and opinions. This would be the moral relativism ET rightly disdains.
I’m sympathetic to the Muslims as far as their disgust with the West’s anti-Judeo-Christian, laissez faire take on moral matters. I’m not sympathetic, however, to the Muslims’ plans—jihad—to overthrow it. ET thinks we’ll repossess the high ground. Not the way we are now! I keep asking how she thinks the evil, Western, all-me-all-the-time genie—the antithesis of the Judeo-Christian “Love thy neighbour as thyself” ethos—will be put back in the bottle. I’ve asked for practical suggestions. I keep not hearing.
The West is in a horrible mess. Unless we truthfully diagnose our problem—IMO, Dalrymple’s a real treasure here—we’ll never find our way back to where we’re meant to be. Ironically, this makes me think of the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young lyrics, “We are caught in the Devil’s bargain/ And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
They don’t really mean what I do: for one, there is no getting back to the garden. However, maybe we can get back to common decency. That road, though, is narrow and steep. It takes self-control, discipline, sacrifice, and hard work. It means being adult and taking responsibility. It takes putting others first. Secularism, which now rules in Canada, has never gone that route.
So, IMO, until we’re willing to respect the Judeo-Christian roots that do go that route (and built the West)—and that doesn’t mean everyone going to synagogue or church—we’ll continue our descent to barbarism, either at our own hands or, not having the moral fortitude to defend ourselves, at the hands of the jihadists. (Or maybe both.)
“What institutions were founded on the church?”
The question should be rephrased – what university wasn’t founded by either the Protestant or Catholic church?
And then this load of rubbish, from some retread hiding his ignorance behind a latin name:
“The church opposed the spread of even the simplest learning – that of reading – in fact, if I recall correctly, the first man to publish the bible in the common tongue – that is, not latin — was deemed a heretic. Gibbons said it best when he called the priestly class of the Middle Ages parasites – all of Europe was ruled by a de facto theocracy centralized in the Vatican. In fact, much of the renaissance was fueled by science and ideas coming from Sicily which had been heavily influenced by Islamic scholars – note, not Islamic clerics.”
Either the Protestant of Catholic Church founded pretty much every great University in the west.
Exactly what “science and ideas” has Islam created?
That B.S. is right up there with the lastest Muslim claim that North America was discovered by the Muslims and the proof is that NA Aboriginals are actually Muslims.
The idea that the west ‘owes Islam’ is a complete fabrication and has been debunked too many times to count. But here’s the most recent version:
Fjordman: Islam, the Greeks and the Scientific Revolution, Part 1, 2 &3.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes. asp?ID=3565&cid=3&sid=117 – 58k –
Or to put it another way: Islam claims to have invented zero and they’ve provided the world with as much ever since.
Although they didn’t invent zero either. The Hindus did.
What should be obvious, based on factual history and reason:
Historian, Christopher Dawson wrote in his book “Progress and religion” from 1929:
“It is the religious impulse which supplies the cohesive force which unifies a society and a culture. The great civilizations of the world do not produce the great religions as a kind of cultural by-product; in a very real sense the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest. A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture”
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French 19th-century political thinker, stated in Democracy in America:
“Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion – for who can search the human heart? – but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions.”
Lee Harris is the author of Civilization and Its Enemies and The Suicide of Reason. According to him, Christian Europe was a fusion of diverse elements: The Hebrew tradition, Christianity, the Roman genius for law and the Germanic barbarians’ love of freedom, among others. What created the communities of reasonable men that eventually made modern reason possible? This was the question taken up by Johann Herder:
“What were the necessary conditions of the European Enlightenment? What kind of culture was necessary in order to produce a critical thinker like Immanuel Kant himself? When Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, methodically demolished all the traditional proofs for the existence of God, why wasn’t he torn limb from limb in the streets of Königsburg by outraged believers, instead of being hailed as one of the greatest philosophers of all time?”
For Herder, modern scientific reason was the product of European cultures of reason, the world-historical encounter between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry, “with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage.”
The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was an atheist. Yet according to him, it was the Christian idea of God that permitted Europeans to believe that the universe was a rational cosmos.
As Harris points out, “Human beings will have their gods–and modern reason cannot alter this. Can even the most committed atheist be completely indifferent to the imaginary gods that the other members of his community continue to worship?”
And if modern reason required a pre-existing community of reasonable men before it could emerge in the West, maybe modern reason “must recognize that its own existence and survival demand both an ethical postulate and a religious postulate. The ethical postulate is: Do whatever is possible to create a community of reasonable men who abstain from violence, and who prefer to use reason. The religious postulate is: If you are given a choice between religions, always prefer the religion that is most conducive to creating a community of reasonable men, even if you don’t believe in it yourself.”
According to Theodore Dalrymple, the underlying problem in Western Europe in particular is a lack of purpose, which gives rise to a large amount of social pathology:
“Quite a large proportion of the population does not derive any self-respect from having to work for a living because some people are no better off if they work than if they do not work [due to the welfare state].” They “do not feel they belong to any larger project than their private lives. (…) I am not myself religious. However, I am not anti-religious. I am pro-religion provided that it is not theocratic, so long as there is still a division between church and state.”
Dalrymple also believes that “Discipline without freedom leads to misery, but freedom without discipline leads to chaos, shallowness, and misery of another kind,” alluding to the total lack of freedom in Islam, but also to the seeming lack of direction in the West.
I agree with Harris and Dalrymple: As long as there is separation between religion and state, those of us who don’t have any religious belief should prefer religions which tend to create reasonable and prosperous communities. Our traditional Judeo-Christian religions have proven this capability. Islam never has, and probably never will. As Australia’s Cardinal George Pell says, “some seculars are so deeply anti-Christian, that anyone opposed to Christianity is seen as their ally. That could be one of the most spectacularly disastrous miscalculations in history.”
Indeed it could. Maybe if Western Multiculturalists get their will, and Islam does conquer parts of the West, they will discover that the new religion is infinitely worse than the old one. Of course, by then it will be too late.
– Fjordman. Again.
irwin daisy, bravo! Thanks for your intelligent, thoughtful, informative posts.
What a nice change on this thread from the gobbledygook served up by certain boneheads, who unashamedly parade their ignorance and arrogance for all to see: part of the new, “all me, all the time” dispensation. (I’d be ashamed if I were them. But wait: “shame” is no longer part of their truncated lexicon. Pity.)
Good Lord, deliver us.