Religion

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Geert Wilders is Still a Bigot and Still No Kind of Hero

Way back in February I suggested that Geert Wilders should have been allowed to show his wee film Fitna in Britain and that it was a mistake to deny him entry to the United Kingdom. But I also suggested that he was no sort of champion of freedom or free speech or any liberal sense of decency. Not to put too fine a point on it, I argued, he's a boor and a bigot. Many commenters took issue with this and that, for sure, is their prerogative. I rather think, however, that Mr Wilders is helping make my case for me. Here is his Ten Point Plan To Save The West: 1. Stop cultural relativism. We need an article in our constitutions that lays down that we have a Jewish-Christian and humanism culture. 2. Stop pretending that Islam is a religion. Islam is a totalitarian ideology.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Faith and Begorrah…

Good lord, it's like the last thirty years never happened: the Irish government wants a new law to prohibit blasphemy. If passed then, astonishingly, the courts will be asked to decide if the supposed victim has been sufficiently outraged for there to have been an offence. Remarkable. And expensive too since it could cost you up to €100,000 and a visit from the Gardai Siochana to confiscate the "offensive material". As Carol Coulter explains: For that to happen, a court will have to be satisfied the matter published is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion”, and that the outrage was intentional.

Saturday

Interconnect

Henry’s VIII’s Psalter

In this illumination from Henry’s VIII’s Psalter, the young David prepares to confront Goliath. In this illumination from Henry’s VIII’s Psalter, the young David prepares to confront Goliath. Dressed in Tudor costume, he wears a soft black hat with a white feather brim, similar to that worn by Henry in the famous Holbein portrait in Whitehall. Goliath is modelled on Pope Paul III, who excommunicated the ‘heretic’ King in 1538. David’s victory over Goliath is thus directly analagous to Henry’s ‘liberation’ of England from servitude to Rome. From Charlemagne onwards, European monarchs identified themselves with King David. But Henry had a better claim than most to do so.

Tuesday

Jonathan Sumption

Doomed to despotism

Khomeini’s Ghost, by Con Coughlin The Life and Death of the Shah, by Gholam Reza Afkhami The fall of the Shah of Iran at the beginning of 1979 took the world by surprise. A self-confident autocrat, supported by a large, American trained and equipped army and a ubiquitous and powerful security service, he was driven from power in less than six months by a motley alliance of middle-class liberals, clerical fanatics and student demonstrators, without a blow being struck in his defence. The impression of sudden cataclysm was accentuated by the character of the Shah’s successor: a bearded Islamic ideologue, who flew in from Paris after 15 years in exile. All the signs are that the diplomatic and intelligence services of the West were as unprepared as every one else.

Friday

Alex Massie

Geert Wilders is Not a Hero

Several readers take me to task for not substantiating the suggestion that Geert Wilders is, as I put it, a "boor and a bigot". This, apparently, is a "shoddy tactic" and absent any substantiating evidence I should "withdraw the comment" and, asks Francis, is Wilders "really worse than your average Socialist"? Wilhelm, meanwhile, wonders if I'm taking my cues from what I saw on "the lefty BBC and Channel 4 news?" This last notion would, I think, surprise long-time readers. The answer is that Wilders is not a poster-boy for free speech, largely because he would seek to deny that right - not privilege, right - to those whom he disapproves of himself.

Saturday

Sara Maitland

All or nothing

A Book of Silence, by Sara Maitland The BBC sound archive has a range of different silences: ‘night silence in an urban street’; ‘morning silence, dawn, the South Downs’; ‘morning silence, winter moor’; ‘silence, sitting room’; ‘silence, garage’; ‘silence, cement bunker;’ ‘silence, beach’. You only have to read those phrases to know, viscerally, that their differences are true and real, and that you could add any number of others. Silence, kitchen, with fridge; silence, theatre; silence, restaurant, across the table; silence, restaurant, rural, general; silence, car, after argument; silence, bath; silence, bed, 3am; silence, at the Cenotaph; silence, friendly and silence, not.

Friday

Pj Kavanagh

A balancing act

If anyone should wince at a hint of aggression in the title of this book — and some Catholics might — let him or her remember or read Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! (1855), in which every Spaniard is a sallow coward, every priest a slinking prevaricator and every Protestant Englishman an apple-cheeked exemplar of straightforwardness and truth. At least, that is how I remember it, with astonishment; a high point in 300 years of anti-Catholic propaganda. Tit for tat is never a good idea, but balance is, and this collection of 16 portrait-biographies by different hands can be thought of as a contribution towards fairness.

Monday

Justin Marozzi

Dirty diggers

The Buddha & Dr Fuhrer, by Charles Allen Charles Allen’s latest book on India has a suitably exotic, occasionally improb- able, cast of characters. Centre stage is Dr Anton Führer, an unscrupulous German archaeologist hell-bent on discovering the legendary — and legendarily elusive — city of Kapilavastu, where the Buddha grew into manhood as Prince Siddhartha. Then there is the thoroughly decent British landowner, William Claxton Peppé, who in 1898 made an astonishing find: a reliquary casket, surrounded by a dazzling collection of jewels and gold, purporting to contain the ashes of the Buddha.

Alex Massie

Because the current war just isn’t big enough…

National Review Online's Andy McCarthy believes that the premise that: "we are all quite aware that the Muslims we take seriously are the formers and reformers'" — is mistaken.  We, as in you and I and many of us Corner types, may be aware of that.  But the American people generally are not.  They have been told, repeatedly, by high public officials (and those who would be high public officials) that there is one Islam, that it is a religion of peace (the religion of love and peace, sayeth our Secretary of State), and that the people we need to be concerned about constitute a tiny fringe who have distorted the "true Islam.

Alex Massie

How the Elector of Saxony Created Osama bin Laden. Or Something.

So it's all-Corner all the time here today. Next up is the never-knowingly-undersold Mark Steyn: The Islamic "reformation" is, in a sense, the opposite of Christianity's. The Saudis have used their vast oil enrichment to promote themselves as a kind of Holy See for Muslims, and the Wahhabization of previously low-key syncretic localized Islams in almost every corner of the planet is testament to their success. I look at the gazillions of dollars tossed into the great sucking maw of US "intelligence" agencies and I wonder why somewhere in the budget we couldn't put something aside to promote a bit of covert ideological rollback in Chechnya or Bosnia or Pakistan. But we're not that savvy, and God knows what unintended consequences would blow up in our faces.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Beyond The Lunatic Fringe

So, yes, there's been a mini-hiatus around these parts. Cricket and an unexpected trip to Edinburgh for a first meeting with my godson were largely to blame. Plus, you know, idleness. Anyway, we return to consider this remarkable passage: The Salmond/Saeed axis is not merely a disturbing sign of Salmond’s own prejudices.  It has a potential strategic significance that goes beyond Scotland. The Brotherhood’s strategy for Britain is to promote separate Islamic development, declare sharia-only enclaves and infiltrate mainstream institutions as a springboard for Islamising the entire society. Since Salmond’s aim is to make Scotland independent from the rest of the United Kingdom, with one leap the Brothers could achieve an Islamised country on England’s border.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Score one for common sense instead…

So I see this at The Corner: British Future "Muslims ‘to outnumber traditional churchgoers.’" Score one for Steyn. Interesting (well, sort of) if true! But it turns out that the Telegraph story reports that: The increasing influence of Islam on British culture is disclosed in research today that shows the number of Muslims worshipping at mosques in England and Wales will outstrip the numbers of Roman Catholics going to church in little more than a decade. Projections to be published next month estimate that, if trends continue, the number of Catholic worshippers at Sunday Mass will fall to 679,000 by 2020. By that time, statisticians predict, the number of Muslims praying in mosques on Fridays will have increased to 683,000.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

A Picture of Putin

Rod has an excellent and rather moving wee tale about how Time magazine ended up with a photograph of Vladimir Putin not an icon to illustrate its decision to hail Putin as its Person of the Year. It's a reminder that non-believers can find much to admire in believers. Or, to put it another way, religious devotion that is sincere and modest and personal - and thus the exact opposite of how religion has come to be used in the American political arena - is a tough road to follow but one who's virtues ought to be apparent even to those of us who remain unpersuaded by organised religion.

Monday

Alex Massie

Hitchens on Huckabee

Hitch gets in touch with his inner Mencken today: However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like himself is unaffected by my expression of an opinion.

Friday

Alex Massie

Religious politicians: kooks or not?

Rod Dreher asks: I agree that it was stupid that Romney should have had to have given that speech, but American political culture really left him little choice. As silly as that may seem -- as silly as it is -- is Britain really better off? This, from Jeff Jacoby's column on Romney today: It was on Sunday that the Romney campaign announced the forthcoming speech, saying the candidate would discuss how his "own faith would inform his presidency if he were elected." On the same day in Britain, as it happened, the BBC broadcast an interview with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said that his Christian faith had been "hugely important" to him during his 10 years in power - but that he had felt constrained to keep it a secret for fear of being thought a crackpot.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Romney’s Unsurprisingly Terrible Speech

Mitt Romney's "Mormon" speech must have been awful; Chris Matthews loved it. Clearly, I'm not the target audience for this sort of thing so it's perhaps unsurprising that I found it entirely unpersuasive and, in places, quite appalling. Some immediate thoughts... It was nice of Governor Romney to concede that jihadist terrorists are "worse" than Europeans who don't share the American brand of religion, but really it's insulting for him to even make the comparison. I didn't know we were also the enemy. Even if the terrorists are "infinitely worse" it's significant that the two be bracketed together as examples of the twin perils facing America.

Alex Massie

What an embarrassment!

Mitt's Mightiest Fan, K-Lo, on the speech: I think a non-talking-head American watching the speech might be embarrassed at the thought that any American might be asked to prove he's qualified to be president despite his religion. Really? What if the candidate were a Scientologist? Or a Jehovah's Witness? Or, shudder, a Muslim? I think most Americans would demand to know more about that candidate's religious views in those circumstances. I think Kathryn would too. Equally, it seems entirely proper that Huckabee's belief in Creationism be weighed when assessing his candidacy. If you believe religious faith is a necessary condition for the Presidency - and clearly many people, including K-Lo and Romney, do - then that faith must be a matter for discussion.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Derbyshire voted off the island…

John Derbyshire on fetishisation and Islamophobia (which does, of course exist, even if it is much less widespread than muslim "community leaders" would have you believe): Speaking of which, I have been voted off the New English Review site for being insufficiently Islamophobic. Fair enough. NER has now settled down as a definitely and strongly Islamophobic vehicle, and I'm a poor fit for it, being Islamophobophobic. In matters editorial I am anyway a believer in totalitarian despotism. I've seen enough of magazine and newspaper editors tearing their hair to know that it's a wellnigh impossible job—"herding cats" is the merest approximation—and am content to leave them to it, so long as they don't grossly infringe on my rights as a contributor.