Oh dear, it seems that we now have Daniel Pipes to add to our list of regulars, as first he turns up in The Australian, and now in the National Times, that feeble subdivision of the SMH designed to stir outrage in its readers, and thereby generate clicks, with Pipes helping the cause under the header When excuses are just plain inexcusable.
Pipes is convinced that it was religion that drove the mad US Major to murder thirteen and wound 38, and now he's intent on inflicting some collateral damage on do gooders, excuse-niks, and peace mongers.
When a Muslim in the West for no apparent reason violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about motives ... Instances of Muslim violence against non-Muslims inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses.
As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject these explanations as weak, obfuscatory, and apologetic.
The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law.
We are not mystified by Hasan but see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions ....
... Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad.
In 2001, for example, responding to the US attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating: "The Muslim soldier in the American army must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple, Duane Reasoner jnr, not to join the US Army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims".
If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it is also far more awkward to articulate.
Everyone finds blaming road rage or depression easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what the military analyst Ralph Peters calls the army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to his victimisation and will leave jihad unmentioned.
And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.
The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law.
We are not mystified by Hasan but see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions ....
... Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad.
In 2001, for example, responding to the US attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating: "The Muslim soldier in the American army must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple, Duane Reasoner jnr, not to join the US Army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims".
If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it is also far more awkward to articulate.
Everyone finds blaming road rage or depression easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what the military analyst Ralph Peters calls the army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to his victimisation and will leave jihad unmentioned.
And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.
Well I don't have any trouble discussing Islamic doctrines - they're on about a par with road rage and depression where I come from - and I don't have any trouble discussing the paranoid musing of Daniel Pipes, but I do have to concede that a couple of comments said it better than I could. With this:
Would that Pipes had applied such common sense to Halliburton's US-taxpayer-funded annexation of the petroleum assets of Mesopotamia.
To the extent that the violent deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi women, children and men were just the collateral damage inflicted by those people being too stupid to get out of the way, the Fort Hood atrocities are the sorts of malfunctions you have to expect when you make a giant murdering machine out of unwitting recruits. (thanks David_FTA)
To the extent that the violent deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi women, children and men were just the collateral damage inflicted by those people being too stupid to get out of the way, the Fort Hood atrocities are the sorts of malfunctions you have to expect when you make a giant murdering machine out of unwitting recruits. (thanks David_FTA)
And this:
I'd say that all the instances Pipes describes would involve some kind of mental illness. It may be that belief in an invisible, supreme being that controls and directs ones life and grants wishes is a commonly accepted practice throughout the world. It's still a bit odd though. (a sardonic PatrickB).
I'd say that all the instances Pipes describes would involve some kind of mental illness. It may be that belief in an invisible, supreme being that controls and directs ones life and grants wishes is a commonly accepted practice throughout the world. It's still a bit odd though. (a sardonic PatrickB).
Truth to tell if I wanted an unremitting bout of Islamic bashing, I wouldn't bother with the Herald, when I could just toddle off to Tim Blair, who currently is in full throated frenzy (here, but in sundry other places I couldn't be fagged following up on because he's so tediously predictable).
But then why should I expect any sense of balance or sanity from the likes of Blair, not when he smells burley in the water, and the sharks are preparing for blood.
That's the way it is when religion and religious crusades get mingled up in the business of war, and the United States is perhaps the most expert country at the moment at conflating the notions, though it always seems that the Christian nutters are handed a 'get out of jail free' card while the Islamists are damned up hill and down dale.
I was reminded of this while reading about Eric Rudolph, the Christian terrorist, who bombed abortion clinics, killing a cop in the process, which inspired Juan Cole to write the following:
Of course, you won't see the headline above in American newspapers, even though any Muslim who acts as Rudolph did would be called an "Islamic terrorist" (a particularly objectionable term because "Islamic" means "having to do with the Muslim faith). It is like talking about "terrorism rooted in Christianity."
Other things you won't see in the American press about this story (satire alert):
Thomas Friedman will not write an op-ed for the New York Times about what is wrong with white southern Christian males that they keep producing these terrorists. He will also not ask why Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are not denouncing Eric Rudolph every day at the top of their lungs.
No reporter will interview frightened Iraqis about their fears at hearing that there are 138,000 armed Christians in their country belonging to the same faith as the bomber, Rudolph, some of them from his stomping grounds of Florida and North Carolina.
Daniel Pipes will not write a column for the New York Post suggesting that white southern Christians be put in internment camps until it can be determined why they keep producing terrorists and antisemites. ( more of this fun here).
Of course, you won't see the headline above in American newspapers, even though any Muslim who acts as Rudolph did would be called an "Islamic terrorist" (a particularly objectionable term because "Islamic" means "having to do with the Muslim faith). It is like talking about "terrorism rooted in Christianity."
Other things you won't see in the American press about this story (satire alert):
Thomas Friedman will not write an op-ed for the New York Times about what is wrong with white southern Christian males that they keep producing these terrorists. He will also not ask why Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are not denouncing Eric Rudolph every day at the top of their lungs.
No reporter will interview frightened Iraqis about their fears at hearing that there are 138,000 armed Christians in their country belonging to the same faith as the bomber, Rudolph, some of them from his stomping grounds of Florida and North Carolina.
Daniel Pipes will not write a column for the New York Post suggesting that white southern Christians be put in internment camps until it can be determined why they keep producing terrorists and antisemites. ( more of this fun here).
Well, we now know what Daniel Pipes wouldn't write, but what would he write, back in 2002, as a sign of hope for the future, under the header A Christian Boom?
"Islam" is surely nearly everyone's answer. As American Christians experiment with ever-milder versions of their faith, Muslims display a fervor for extreme interpretations of Islam. As Europe suffers the lowest population growth rates ever recorded, Muslim countries have some of the highest.
But, argues Philip Jenkins recently in the Atlantic Monthly, Islam is the wrong answer. He shows how Christianity is the religion currently undergoing the most basic rethinking and the largest increase in adherents. He makes a good case for its militancy most affecting the next century.
Yep, it seems that militant Christianity is the way forward for the next century.
"For obvious reasons," notes this professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, "news reports today are filled with material about the influence of a resurgent and sometimes angry Islam. But in its variety and vitality, in its global reach, in its association with the world's fastest-growing societies, in its shifting centers of gravity, in the way its values and practices vary from place to place . . . it is Christianity that will leave the deepest mark on the 21st century."
"For obvious reasons," notes this professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, "news reports today are filled with material about the influence of a resurgent and sometimes angry Islam. But in its variety and vitality, in its global reach, in its association with the world's fastest-growing societies, in its shifting centers of gravity, in the way its values and practices vary from place to place . . . it is Christianity that will leave the deepest mark on the 21st century."
No doubt with militant Christians matching resurgent and angry Islam with their own militant resurgent anger, a variety and vitality determined to leave a deep mark on the 21st century, especially when the rapture fails to arrive, combined with global warming, events likely to lead to even more millenarian anger.
As usual, the fault in all this is liberal, but fortunately Jenkins is there to guide us on the best path to take towards extremism:
What Jenkins dubs the "Christian revolution" is so little noted because Christians divide into two very different regions North (Europe, North America, Australia) and South (South America, Africa, Asia) and we who live in the North only dimly perceive the momentous developments under way in the South. Fortunately, Jenkins is there to guide us.
Faith: The changes in the South "run utterly contrary" to those in the liberalizing North, where religious beliefs and practices are ever more removed from traditional Christianity. In the South, Protestant movements are mainly Evangelical or Pentecostal, while Roman Catholicism takes an orthodox cast.
By Northern lights, the South's theology and moral teaching are "stalwartly traditional or even reactionary," what with their respect for the power of priests, their notions of spiritual charisma, their aspiration to direct spiritual revelation, their efforts to exorcise demonic forces and their goal of re-creating a version of early Christianity. As "Southern Christians are reading the New Testament and taking it very seriously," increasing tensions develop with the liberal Northerners.
Yep, that's right, barking mad southern Christians are the way forward, even as they develop tensions with liberals, who have ruined the liberal west. There's nothing like a stalwartly traditional, conservative reactionary to guide you towards peace and bliss, preferably with the help of a semi-automatic machine gun:
Demographics: "Christians are facing a shrinking population in the liberal West and a growing majority of the traditional Rest. During the past half century the critical centers of the Christian world have moved decisively to Africa, to Latin America, and to Asia. The balance will never shift back."
The numbers are jaw-dropping: Nigeria already has more practicing Anglicans than any other country, with Uganda not far behind. The Philippines has more baptisms per year than France, Spain, Italy and Poland together. By 2025, two-thirds of all Christians (and three-quarters of all Catholics) are expected to live in the South. (This actually understates the contrast in growth rates: Many Southern Christians are relocating to the North. In London today, half of all churchgoers are blacks.) Under present trends, by 2050 non-Latino whites will make up just one in five of the world's Christians.
But wait, jaw dropping though the stats are, don't be alarmed, and don't despair. The liberals might also be on the run in the north:
Of course, the chasm between North and South is not complete (a fact that Jenkins hardly touches on); the United States, for example, contains substantial numbers of Christians with a "Southern" outlook. That said, the trends are clear:
Although Islam may appear to be the faith of choice for the world's poor, Christianity is faring at least as well among them.
Christianity is no longer predominantly a European and North American faith.
The experimentation and decline that pervades Northern Christianity is less important than it appears.
The concept of Christendom may re-emerge in the South, where political, social and personal identities are being primarily defined by religious loyalties.
"An enormous rift seems inevitable" between North and South, possibly leading to a split in the Christian church, similar to what happened centuries ago between the Catholic Church and the Protestant movements.
Christianity and Islam are on a collision course, competing for converts and influence. Some countries "might be brought to ruin by the clash of jihad and crusade."
To understand the future of Christianity, then, keep your eye on those Southern believers who reject the North's liberal outlook and who increasingly dominate the faith. (here).
Let me just repeat that penultimate point in case you missed it:
Christianity and Islam are on a collision course, competing for converts and influence. Some countries "might be brought to ruin by the clash of jihad and crusade."
Not to mention beware the liberals. Did I mention that? Danger Will Robinson, there be liberals around here, or perhaps Dr. Smith, who acts suspiciously like a child molester.
Lordy, lordy. Barking mad religionistas bringing countries to ruin, aided by right wing commentariat columnists who fight with one hand behind their backs when it comes to fundamentalist Christianity, and bring both hands, boots, baseball bats and pieces of 4 x 2 when it comes to jihadist Islamics. Not to mention the understanding of a gnat when it comes to the psychopathology of religious extremism, wherever you might find it.
Well it might not have escaped your notice that fundamentalists of both faiths have a lot in common, including but not limited to:
1. A hatred of music and a fear of dancing;
2. A patriarchal sense of women's place in the world, under the thumb of men;
3. A profound hostility to homosexuality;
4. A willingness to look at the world refracted through the mind set of people writing hundreds of years ago, leading to strange delusions like creationism (in both religions).
5. Hostility to exotic forms of dress, and a desire to see women dress in a repressed way, whether in puritan or desert garb.
6. A hostility to sex, and the enjoyment of sex, with women copping the blame as uncovered meat. (Pornography is a particular problem, as of course are the deviant ways of liberal Hollywood and the insidious intertubes).
7. A willingness to indoctrinate children, rather than bring them up in an open minded way, or imbue them with the notion that they might - through a spirit of inquiry - arrive at their own thoughts about life, as well as develop a capacity to get along with others.
8. A capacity to believe that between killing and conversion, conversion is the best, but killing will do.
9. A love of authority, and a willingness to contemplate the future as a world ruled by crusades and jihads, in the usual human way of fighting, killing and conquest.
No doubt you can think of dozens of other connections. The mind set is so comprehensively the same as to be both profoundly remarkable and shockingly disturbing.
Well a pox on both their houses, and those who linger within their houses, without considering that they're in glass houses, cheerfully throwing stones.
And pardon me if I cheer the separation of church and state, and urge on the militant atheists in their battles.
I'm just a dull stick in the mud secularist, but whenever I read the likes of Daniel Pipes' blather, I know a little bit more harm has been fomented in the world ... and somewhere in the Islamic world, some dumb ass commentator is writing, as a rough equivalent, a dose of hate fomenting twaddle about the evils of mass murdering Christians ... while both of them are writing nonsense about the mass murdering ways of atheists like Chairman Mao and Stalin ... as if religion or its absence was the sole meaning in life ...
The twaddle of turkeys, gobbling and gobbling into the long darkness ahead. Better to be a bicyclist on Sydney roads than endure the twaddle of fundamentalists ...
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