Back where we started - words of peace married with acts of war
Reader comment on item: Christianity Dying in Its Birthplace

Submitted by Reuben Horne (Australia), Sep 27, 2005 at 04:36

Dr Pipes,
I find myself exhausted running an intellectual marathon on many fronts - writing a thesis and returning occasionally to make points of clarification. Debate certainly refines ones ideas ,but to quote a friend "insanity is to keep repeating the same behaviour and expect a different result." For Shazia and I this dance of ours has landed us back where we started. I'll leave it to others to make the judgement as to whether it is my sanity or hers that is impaired. Perhaps I should take all the blame after all Kierkegaard quite correctly made the observation/criticism that my arguments are tangental - and certainly they take a long time to get where they're going. In the interests of simplicity rather than brevity I write the following.

Shazia retreats back into advanced theological discourse - this time her words echo Hindu notions of a universal godhead being revealed in various ways. This theology is not however owned by Islam which by its very nature rejects the division of the spiritual from the physical and has a well established disrespect for other religions. Its historic conquest of Christian and Jewish areas is a history of religious apartheid - tales of the horrors of dhimmitude abound - people being forced to wear inferior clothes to the muslims and armbands with pigs or monkeys on them (a reference to the Koran's exhortations against the unbelievers "And Allah will turn them into pigs and monkeys"). The assymetric application of laws to favor muslims over other religious groups to the extent that they could even murder them without sanction (One famous Sheik often quoted as saying "How can a believers blood be equal to that of the other"). The Hindus who apparently had not been envisioned by Mohammed as a peoples and the Bhuddists (who inhabited Pakistan and Afghanistan long before the reactionary death cult that was the Taliban) endured far worse. For them there was a history of ethnic clensing so successful we see its culmination in the production of the first Islamic nuclear power Pakistan. Dr Pipes through this small article illustrates absolutely nothing has changed. Tolerence indeed.

Shazia's use of this Hindu Theology reminds me of a recent speech made by the Malaysian Prime Minister in which he used similar references to universality of religious experience. "We are all members of the Abrahamic faith," said he. Then of course he continued with the infamous and much touted New Economic Policy (NEP) which involved the same religious apartheid as I have already outlined. His words stink of tactic rather than truth. How can a religion and a people so disingenuous ever claim to understand the ultimate truths of the universe? Such an understanding might turn out to not be politically useful. The Malaysian Prime Ministers predecessor Dr Mahatir Mohammed (I think he got an honorary doctrate but he retained the title) made another infamous public speech about how "the jew" was the greatest enemy Islam faced in the modern world. This speech the product of numerous conspiracy theories demonstrates that fiction has more political utility than fact. Christian ideals of "telling the truth even if it means your death" have found little leeway. It draws to mind a quote made by Saint Augustine on the subject of witch burning, "Calumny and cruelty are far more dangerous forms of devil worship than any ritual of a witchdoctor in deepest darkest Africa." With these words he embraced religious substance over form - ethics were more important than everyone kneeling in a building with a crusafix over it. Mohammed plainly thought this unimportant, which has had serious implications for Islam.

For starters there is no such thing as a "rule of law" in Islamic countries - foreigners who work there are often forced to work in guarded compounds - something which doesn't only occur in Iraq but in more or less all Gulf states. Islamic enclaves in western societies bear similar characterisitics - police are forced to tip toe around in Islamic dominated neighbourhoods. In Sydney often officers of the law are assaulted or at least verbally abused when they make an appearance in the suburbs dominated by Lebanese muslims. They have emptied out of almost all other members of different ethnic groups - apparently noone wants to live near them either. And this is the consequence of deliberate government policy - as the Federal Minister John Cobb was quick to remind me we live in a "multi cultural" society - diversity for the sake of diversity.

Extraordinary are the measures taken to manufacture this socially engineered disaster dressed up as utopia. Full credit to the godless minions of Georg Lukacs, once they're done it will be the first society in which the losers rather than the victors write the history. Shazia quite considerately tells me that I am entitled to my opinion. I wish that view were shared by the Victorian Islamic Council or any of the various and sundry social democratic state governments Australia wide who are passing legislation to gag people like me from simply expressing our opinions under pain of severe economic sanction or failing that jail time. As I pointed out earlier despite being couched in generalist terms this legislation is much like the terror laws is a specific response to the presence of Muslims in our community. There is a fear of similar pogroms occurring given that muslims mostly live and work in the same areas it is not hard to envision this eventuality. In order to avoid this scenario the government has given Islamic leaders a means of punishing their enemies - Islamic law by stealth. Its an ideal compromise for the governments. Awareness of the true nature of the Islamic faith and its adherents politics is restricted to a pathetically small number of westerners. Tragically sometimes only alarm bells ring after the entireity of the society has been completely transformed as in the Netherlands. Better to sacrafice these few people than risk civil unrest - civil liberties and freedom of speech be damned.

These matters have personal relevance to me as my Mother not having been born in Australia is familiar with what happens in a society when the "rule of law" is lost. In Sri Lanka she witnessed incidents of Tamal women on similar pogroms having their pregnant stomachs slashed open by the dominant Sri Lankan ethnic group. This country had a similar legal, judicial and political system to Australia's - all of the structures - but they lost sight of the substance of the "rule of law" for but a short time and the consequence was civil war. Essentailly the law was applied in a different manner according to the race of the perpetrator. This should sound entirely familiar to westerners - the priveleged status of minorities in their countries is a similar violation of the rule of law rendered acceptable by the competing doctrine of multi culturalism. It enshrines in legislation the belief that the white Anglo-Celtic majority are essentially entirely racist and therefore priveleges must be rendered to those whom they have traditionally persecuted and even those whom they are simply percieved to have persecuted. What an outrage! I'm a person of mixed birth I've seen other societies and this most definitely /not/ a racist country. How demeaning then for the Anglo-Celtic taxpayer to pay more and the Anglo-Celtic welfare recipient to recieve less. As a matter of fact they call this dhimmitude in the Middle East don't they? No wonder Muslims feel so at home here.

In conclusion these theological universalities that Shazia outlines are easy ground to defend simply because they are not even in contention. If two generations of Muslims have been educated in Islamism then Islam is effectively and essentially Islamist in nature - its bloody past converging with its bloody future. With such realties one wonders the merit of the statement "we all worship the same god." An observation that might be true but is certainly not going to allow the west to survive. You can't simply alter your own perspective so that your enemies are not enemies - you have to alter their perspective as well and hopefully first. Peace is the product of bilateral and not unilateral initiatives and concessions. It takes two to tango. I've not run out of cliches but I'll end this line of inquiry here. I will make the observation however that alot of monotheistic religious commentators who have an awareness of the present course of Islam have tried to distance their own faiths from Mohammed's. They have ascribed various labels to it "the cult of Hubal" which for those fortunate enough not to know anything about it was the moon god of Mecca whose symbol rests atop ever mosque. It's highly embarrassing to these people to think they may have even influenced it with their own philosophies.

Its extremely rich to be lectured on tolerance by someone who follows a religious philosophy that defines itself against yours in such a manner that its utopia will only be achieved when your own religion is either destroyed or you and all your fellows are second class citizens in a state administered primarily by people of the aforementioned religion. Such an enterprise is one that can only result in war not peace and that is why Islam has bloody borders. I can see the darkness it is just these specks of light that Shazia refers to that are hard to make out.
Cordially,
Reuben Horne.

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