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Sunday, January 3, 2016
Eslam Mohamed received a couple of surprises at Christmastime.
When Mohamed gratefully shared what happened on Facebook, his post went viral.
ON FACEBOOK: See the receipt post that was shared more than 28,000 times
He never expected such a response. He just wanted to tell his friends about a wonderful thing that happened, he said.
Mohamed said he and his family members – a group of seven adults and five children – were seated at a large table. After dinner, Mohamed requested separate checks because smaller family groups would pay for themselves.
The waitress returned with one receipt, on which was written "Paid. Merry Christmas Beautiful Family."
He said that at first, everyone thought someone else at the table paid. But everyone denied picking up the tab.
"We asked her, 'Please, who did that? We need to thank whoever it is,'" Mohamed said. "She said,
'Someone insisted not to be known.' I told the waitress if someone is still here, tell them it's one of the most wonderful things to happen to all of us in our whole life."
The next morning, Mohamed, a graduate student at Augusta University and avid Facebook user, posted a picture of the receipt on his Facebook page.
"I can't express how this act touched our hearts," he wrote in his post. "Among all the bad things happening to Muslims and the hate speech that the presidential candidate had made lately, there is still light in the dark, there is still hope within frustration. All what I can say to who did that, Merry Christmas to you too and God bless such a beautiful heart you have."
By Saturday, the post had been shared more than 28,000 times and been picked up by several online news outlets, including the United Kingdom's Daily Mail.
"I never imagined it would go that far," Mohamed said. "I'm happy because the act of kindness spread like that. There is someone kind in this world. Humanity still exists in a lot of things."
He said that since the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., in which a couple opened fire at a holiday party, he has noticed a little more hostility toward Muslims.
As a male, he said he doesn't notice much directed at him, but the women often receive unkind looks because of their hijabs. Nothing really bad, but a shift in attitude.
"When we walk in the mall, people are staring at us," he said. "Staring is a bad thing anyhow. That's why when this thing happened, people knowing that we're Muslims, (the person) didn't care about that. He just wanted to give. It touched our hearts."
Mohamed said he has received tons of positive messages on his Facebook page expressing support. But he has also received negative comments from non-Muslims and Muslims alike, and that surprised him.
"They told me some things I can't say. Some people say, 'You're a liar,'" he said. "(Some) Muslims say you're not supposed to say 'Merry Christmas.'"
And some commented on the food he ate.
"They said the chicken is not halal," he said. Halal is a dietary law similar to kosher in the Jewish faith.
"They're focusing on my receipt and missing the point," he said.
Mohamed said he feels sorry for the ones who overlook the real meaning of the event, but he is very happy about the amount of exposure it is getting.
"The majority of people found the kindness," he said.
95 comments:
- Dymphna said...
The person who paid for the dinner isn't interesting. The big question is what will Eslam and his family do now?
- January 3, 2016 at 11:57 AM
He already did it. He used it as an opportunity to tell the world how persecuted Muslims are. My cynicism about and suspicion of any media originating from any muslim knows no bounds any more. Muslim silence in the face of ME Christian genocide, and their constant penchant for turning muslim attacks against Christians (or Parisians, or Californians), and now turning a good deed supposedly done for muslims by Christians, into an opportunity to tell everyone how tough muslims have it has worn out my very last "tolerance" nerve.
- January 3, 2016 at 7:02 PM
By far, the greatest number of victims of Muslim terrorism worldwide has beenbeen Muslims.
Non-Muslims have carried out 90% of the terrorist attacks in the United States.
You're more likely to die of brain-eating parasites, obesity, alcoholism, medical errors, or risky sexual behavior than any terrorist attack.
Of the 180,000 murders in the US since 9/11, less than one percent have resulted from Muslim terrorism.
Your lack of tolerance is based on paranoia and bad information.
- January 3, 2016 at 8:18 PM
And your "facts" came from where exactly? Any context? At ALL? Didn't think so. I remain cynical and skeptical, not paranoid as your own paranoid presumption of my very accurate informaion indicates.
- January 3, 2016 at 11:50 PM
- Gene said...
No one with any sense would be befriending Muslims of any kind. It is sheer idiocy.
- January 4, 2016 at 5:43 AM
Fr McDonald, the fact that we're more likely to die from an accident than from a deliberate act of murder by a terrorist is meaningless to those who have died at the hands of terrorists - try using that argument with the majority of families of the victims of 9/11, or to the families of the victims in San Bernadino or to the family of Lee Rigby who was deliberately run down and had his head nearly severed by two such murderers. It's just a nonsense and it really minimises the attrocities committed by these people. Haven't we heard that the recent murderers were nice people? They were the kind of nice people that had Facebook pages and had nice posts maybe about friendly Christians and then went out and murdered them. What about the nice doctor who tried to blow up one of the airports in the UK? Being nice and being a terrorist definitely seems to go hand in hand because terrorists don't view the evil they do as wrong. They view it as helping to spread their religious beliefs. That is the problem.
- January 4, 2016 at 8:30 AM
There are some statistics for 9/11 that Americans should think about.
"2,974 victims were confirmed to have died during the initial attacks, including a doctor who was ruled in 2008 to have died on 9/11.[9] However, in 2007, the New York City medical examiner's office began to add people who died of illnesses caused by exposure to dust from the site to the official death toll. The first such victim was a woman, a civil rights lawyer, who had died from a lung condition in February 2002.[10] In September 2009, the office added a man who died in October 2008,[11] and in 2011, a man, an accountant, who died in December 2010.[12] This raises the number of victims at the World Trade Center site to 2,753 and the overall 9/11 victim death toll to 2,977.[13]
As of August 2013, medical authorities concluded that 1,140 people who worked, lived, or studied in Lower Manhattan at the time of the attack have been diagnosed with cancer as a result of "exposure to toxins at Ground Zero".[14] Over 1,400 9/11 rescue workers who responded to the scene in the days and months after the attacks have since died.[15] Eleven unborn babies also died on 9/11."
"Number of orphans created by the 9/11 attacks: 1,300
Number of babies born to women whose husbands were lost on 11 September: 17
Number of days after 9/11 that Pat Flounders, widowed in the attacks, shot herself, the first related suicide: 91
Percentage of those living within a one mile radius from the Twin Towers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: 20
Increase in PTSD among Manhattanites post-9/11: 200 per cent
Estimated minimum number of New Yorkers suffering from PTSD as a result of 9/11: 422,000
Estimated number of the city's public school students suffering from PTSD as a result of 9/11: 10,000
Percentage of Manhattanites who increased their alcohol consumption following 9/11: 25
Percentage of Manhattanites who increased their cigarette consumption following 9/11: 10
Percentage of Manhattanites who increased their marijuana consumption following 9/11: 3.2
Percentage sales increase at Toys in Babeland, a sex store in the Lower East of New York, in late September/October 2011: 30
Percentage increase in number of births reported in New York hospitals nine months on from 9/11: 20
Reported increase in church and synagogue attendance following 9/11: 20"
Not to mention over 6,000 people were also injured.
A similar attack could happen again any day and I think Americans are being fed a soporific diet from the liberal media to lull them into a false sense of security. Americans are very insular. How many, for example, read or know about what is going on overseas? The many incidents that don't make the headlines anymore? We know they don't from expats now living in the States. If Americans start reading the independent UK papers and looking at what has happened in the UK and in France it might wake up a few people to the threat within.
- January 4, 2016 at 9:11 AM
For those who want to know the facts and avoid being driven by paranoia and Islamophobia, the sources for the information I presented are many.
Regarding medical errors: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/04/statistics-you-are-not-going-to-be-killed-by-terrorists.html
Regarding who is killed in the US by terrorist actions: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005/terror02_05#terror_05sum
Regarding who carries out the attacks, Europol data: http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/01/terrorism-in-europe/
- January 4, 2016 at 10:35 AM
My friends don't fall for this garbage, creeping SHARIA is here in the United States with many many non-Muslims helping pave the way. Sad thing is LIBERALS i.e. feminists, gays, Democrats, actors, liberal Jews, musicians, animal rights activists, environmentalists, would all be the first to die under Islamic Sharia Law. Once again listen to Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Noni Darwish, Brigette Gabriel, Walid Shobet and of course the bravest man the in the world Geert Wilders from Holland, all have been warning the West of Islam for years to deaf ears!! Don't be a "dhimmi for Islam folks wake up and fight the creeping Sharia!!
- January 4, 2016 at 10:39 AM
- John Nolan said...
Thanks to PIRA and INLA in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the UK is better prepared to combat urban terrorism than most countries. Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction, and the Red Brigades who murdered Aldo Moro in 1978, were amateurs by comparison. Irish terrorism was well-funded, not least by US sympathizers. I could not help reflecting in the wake of the Boston bombings whether those Irish-Americans who forked out to enable the IRA to let off bombs in other people's cities had a twinge of conscience when bombs were let off in their own. However, when Irish bombers blew themselves up it was as a result of accident or intelligent ECM. The nearest PIRA came to suicide bombings was when they hijacked a car, held the driver's family as hostages and forced the unfortunate individual to become a human bomb. It will be clear that I have no truck with terrorists of any stripe.
Last week a young Muslim couple were sentenced to a minimum of 27 and 25 years respectively for planning a terrorist attack on the London Underground or a shopping centre. The girl was well-educated and from a respectable family - her mother was a Justice of the Peace. The death penalty is inappropriate for such people and since they had yet to kill anybody they could not have been executed even in the USA. However, they should be made to serve out their sentences in a remote location, far from their friends, families and support networks. This is what Spain did with ETA, and it worked.
I am well aware that I am far more likely to die in a road traffic accident than as a result of terrorism. Just before Christmas 1983 PIRA detonated a car bomb outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, killing three policemen and three civilians. A New York couple of my acquaintance promptly cancelled a planned trip to England! Not long ago I was on the Underground from Euston to Victoria. A bearded Muslim got on at Warren Street, with a backpack from which wires protruded. Closer inspection showed these were attached to headphones. I was still slightly relieved when it came to my stop.
One per cent of 180,000 is still 1,800. That's quite a number of lost lives. 9/11 was the sort of 'spectacular' which terrorists dream about - the IRA never quite managed it. As the images of the twin towers flashed all over the world, crowds in Pakistan spontaneously thronged the streets and danced with glee. But they weren't typical Muslims, of course.
- January 4, 2016 at 11:23 AM
Amazing we have an Islamic apologist on this blog, Kavanaugh you poor guy, just like the Democrats who blame all evils on the "white man" you fall right into the Islamic play book. Like I have said before you and liberals would be the first to be dead from Islamic Sharia, keep your in the sand buddy!!
- January 4, 2016 at 11:47 AM
Once again, YES all Muslims are NOT terrorists but ALL terrorists have been Muslims. They have not been Hindu, Buddhist, Jews, Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Yazidis, the Trojan Horse has been let into Germany, Holland, England, Belgium, France, Sweden, Norway, Austria and there is no way of getting them out. Muslims can NEVER assimilate into Western society, pork, dogs, gays, rock music, rap music, bikinis, beer, wine, Hollywood movies, the streets of Germany will be battle zones shortly, what Angela Merkl has done to Germany is utterly sickening, Germany will never be the same again and for that matter Europe is also gone. Birthrates for Muslims in Europe stand at 8.1 child per household - ethnic Europeans stand at 1.1 child per household, a society can never recover from overwhelming birthrates to replenish itself, now do you get it???? I think not, for you are a Dhimmi in the eyes of the ISLAMIC invaders!!!
- January 4, 2016 at 11:58 AM
Gene you are correct, one can never befriend a Muslim for the simple reason the Quran tells them only to PRETEND to be the infidels friend and then slay them. Read what the Yazidis and Christians in Syria and Iraq have been saying, such as: we thought they were our friends and neighbors we had them in our homes for dinners, attended each others festivals, our children played together and then, they TURNED on us and began killing us. Yes, this is the REAL Islam there is no such thing as MODERATE Islam, Islam is a way of life and it will kill you if the West does not stop it. Where are the feminists, gays, Hollywood actors, musicians, Liberal Jews, animal rights activists, Democrats??? All shaking in their boots they know very well ISIS would kill them so they remain silent, watching the destruction of freedom and the West destroyed before there very eyes.
- January 4, 2016 at 12:05 PM
Anonymous - I am not an "Islamic apologist." Islam doesn't need a apologist but the paranoid Islamophobes here and elsewhere need facts.
I've never blamed the "white man" - for anything.
And, I'm not your "buddy."
- January 4, 2016 at 1:01 PM
Hey proud to be paranoid but you will be looking for people like us to protect you when SHARIA takes hold here and yes we will still protect you. Facts here they are: Madrid, 911, London, Nairobi, Kobar towers, Benghazi, Paris, Bali, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, San Bernadino, Beslan, all brought to you by the religion of death, fear, beheadings, explosions, child rape, killing gays, sex slaves, I have the facts sir and I just stated them, can't do much else for you, facts are facts you just will not believe them and that is frighting.
- January 4, 2016 at 1:24 PM
Why don't you start speaking up for the Christian Arabs and Assyrian Christians who are being slaughtered and driven from their ancient homelands instead of defending Muslims?? The Assyrians have been there since the dawn of Christianity they are the ones that should be allowed into our great country not the Trojan Horse that Obama is bringing in by the tens of thousands, one day you will wake up and hear the sounds of the muezzin calling from the minaret and not the church bells, hey wait that is already happening in Dearborn Michigan!!
- January 4, 2016 at 1:35 PM
When, sir, someone here starts bad-mouthing the Christian Arabs and Assyrian Christians with paranoiac comments about how we can't possibly trust them, or when someone skeptically and cynically lumps all Christian Arabs or Assyrian Christians into one because of the evil done by a few of them - well, then you'll hear me speak about them.
- January 4, 2016 at 2:15 PM
Of course Christians would be charitable to strangers. What are we supposed to be, savages?
But that's the implication. That's why this 'act' is newsworthy. White Christians acting charitably to a group of foreigners, Muslims even. Why look at the good example, - let that be an example for the rest of you (mumble mumble, savage Christian haters!).
And that's how this is spun: feel good story with a passive aggressive undercurrent.
Fact is, one side is always warning about an anti-muslim backlash and mosque burnings that is poised to happen on a hair trigger from the right-wing gun totin tea party hicks.... but which never does because we aren't savages.
We don't blow up abortion clinics or assassinate abortionists for the same reason: we're not savages.
We don't blow up gay or communist gatherings or assassinate prominent gay or communist leaders for the same reason: we're not savages.
But those of us who are not savages ARE afraid of real savages in the form of Left-wing nuts and ideologues as well as foreign Muslim nuts and ideologues who justify their calls for violence against unarmed innocents on account of some past grievances or claim of divine right.
But what are we afraid of? Not of them acquiring light weapons! We are not the ones hyperventilating over "assault" rifles! We're not the ones drafting codes and rules for "gun control" (as though posting a "gun free zone" sign will do anything to prevent a nutjob).
No, we look not to the tools a person MIGHT use and look at the murderous ideology a person has that justifies not just using one particular tool but any number of other tools to advance a savage world-view at odds with our own.
It's not the gaystapo's use of the internet or mass media that concerns me. Those are just tools. It's the advancing of the absurd notion that sexuality is fluid, gender a purely social construct and that the end of their feelings justify the means of shouting people down, beating them physically and getting them expelled from civil society (with fines and jail time) that raises my concern.
Ditto with Muslims.
That they are here is only a concern because in our system enough gays or Muslims or communists will eventually begin to command political power and through that power base they will demand and receive special treatment and finally be given real seats of real power over my life.
It's the ideology, not the man or the tool used that concerns me.
- January 4, 2016 at 2:50 PM
- Unknown said...
pork, dogs, gays, rock music, rap music, bikinis, beer, wine, Hollywood movies
TIL (and ITT, btw) that I am not 'assimilated into Western society'. And I was born in Macon, GA. The lolz!
- January 4, 2016 at 3:46 PM
Strange, I gave you the facts on Islamic terror and of course there is no response kinda thought so. Liberals and leftists can never win an argument when the facts are presented to them.
- January 4, 2016 at 4:13 PM
The issue globally is that Islam, like Nazism and Communism is NOT an ethnicity, it's not a race. It's a totalitarian world view that includes a hefty component of religious ideas and spirituality.
Not all Nazis or Commies were the gulag prison guards, KGB or gestapo agents. Most in fact were "law abiding" citizens. Whole families were raised as 'good' Nazis or Communists. The vast majority of Germans and Russians and members of the Internationale were civilians who didn't participate in any 'radical' action on behalf of their respective regimes.
So pointing my attention to a million 'good' Germans or ten million 'good' Russians isn't going to make me any less apprehensive over the ideas of Nazism or Communism....or Islam.
Of course most Muslims are nice folk. Of course most women in a hijab are 'nice' harmless women. I would expect a party of Muslim civilians do be harmless just as I would have expected a similar party of Nazis or Communists to likewise be harmless.
If I ran into a table full of Ayrian, stormfront white skin heads with their wives and children at a restaurant, I would expect them to be peaceful.
But it's their ideology, the world view they pledge allegiance to that worries me.
Like with communists I fear we are being played into the old 'good cop/bad cop' routine. We MUST be nice to the good commies or else we'll end up with the bad ones? How about we say 'no' to all commies "qua" communist?
We must not just tolerate but actively sponsor the immigration EN MASSE of Muslims to prove how tolerant and Christian we are? And we must do this as uncritically as we accept the LGBTQ agenda as holy and good because otherwise we'll be helping the 'bad cop'?
Again, how about "no"?
How about we don't uncritically accept all foreigners, and don't actively sponsor people whose only identity is to be members of a hostile religion to our own? How about we don't act as though we are the threat to world peace for a change?
- January 4, 2016 at 4:38 PM
I thought this was a good example of Christian charity, and a good witness to US muslims that Christians are generous by nature. I have been to Ethiopia several times and among other things have repeatedly helped a particular muslim family there. My motive is that in the first place they are very poor and secondarily I would be very happy if they would convert to Christianity. Their gratitude has been very genuine. I do however agree that Islam is fundamentally violent and non-tolerant religion. The growth in the muslim population in Europe and the US is a ticking demographic time bomb as stated above.
- January 4, 2016 at 4:58 PM
- John Nolan said...
In 2009 the distinguished American journalist Christopher Caldwell published 'Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West'. I bought it after reading a favourable review in the Catholic Herald, read it at a sitting, and passed it on in the hope that as many as possible would read it. It is a devastating critique of 'multiculturalism' and the attitudes of European governments towards immigration. What was remarkable was that even the liberal press (The Observer, The Guardian) praised it. If Fr Kavanaugh hasn't already read it, then he surely should.
By the way, there is no such thing as 'Islamophobia'. A phobia is an irrational fear or anxiety. To be anxious about the Islamization of Europe, not to mention the very real threat posed by Islamic extremism, cannot be described as irrational.
To take against someone simply because he or she is a Muslim is a different matter. I work alongside Muslims including young professionals, and don't find it a problem if the women choose to dress modestly - until fairly recently Western women did the same. I would not make casual remarks critical of Islam if Muslims were present, since it is both insensitive and discourteous. I would not tolerate casual anti-Catholic remarks in a social context, although these almost invariably emanate from lapsed Catholics.
- January 4, 2016 at 5:39 PM
Islamophobia exists, John. You're reading it in the posts on this thread. It is irrational to worry that every single Muslim in the world is out to get you, to overthrow your government, to use a FaceBook post to spread jihad.
It's an irrational fear of Muslims.
- January 4, 2016 at 6:08 PM
- Unknown said...
Strange, I gave you the facts on Islamic terror and of course there is no response kinda thought so. Liberals and leftists can never win an argument when the facts are presented to them.
Lol... who are you talking to?
- January 4, 2016 at 7:03 PM
I just read this post by Father McDonald and I thought it was a lovely, inspiring story. Then I read the comments and I wondered, with only a few exceptions: "Are these Catholics? Are they Christians?" What would they have said about the Jews if they had been living in the Third Reich in the 1930s? Would they have bought into all the hateful paranoid rhetoric being propagated about them? I honestly don't know the answer to this question. Do you?
- January 4, 2016 at 11:24 PM
- Jenny said...
If our true goal while here on earth is the "Imitation of Christ" in order to join with the saints in heaven for eternity, what does that really mean and necessitate daily in this life? Isn't that what we are asking God here on this blog and in our prayer time? Isn't that what we seek every day as practicing Christian Catholics? How exactly do we know, love, and serve God in this life in order to gain eternal life with Him... Or is that really what we are seeking? Where/when exactly are we seeking reward?
Maybe more to the point, if we show mercy to a fellow human, do we sacrifice justice? Or, perhaps even more critical: if in showing mercy to a fellow human I am sacrificed, is God served?
Time to really figure that out...
- January 5, 2016 at 12:17 AM
- Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...
A2 pre Vatican II Catholics knew and lived their Faith and this produced many saints and Marytrs. Post Vatican II coloring book Catholics rely only on emotions and fears to inform them as well as their politics.
- January 5, 2016 at 4:36 AM
I suggest Americans - including Fr Kavanaugh - would be wise to read the Gladstone Institute's report on the Islamisation of Britain in 2014 which sounds a warning note to what will happen to the US. A brief synopsis:
"The Gatestone Institute has produced a comprehensive review of the growth of Islam and Islamism in Britain during 2014. Breaking down all the major events by month, senior fellow Soeren Kern says that Britain is becoming increasingly Islamised, and the process shows no signs of slowing down.
The Muslim population of Britain reached 3.4 million in 2014 to become around 5.3% of the overall population of 64 million, according to figures extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France and Germany.
Islam and Islam-related issues were omnipresent in Britain during 2014, and can be categorized into four broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism and the security implications of British jihadists in Syria; 2) the continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) the sexual exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; and 4) Muslim integration into British society."
The report begins:
◾"Britain remains the world's leading recruiting ground for al-Qaeda." — Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph.
◾When she sought help from the police and a lawyer, "the family of the defendants were insulted that she had gone to the law. They wanted her back within the family fold... Therefore, it was decided that she should be forced to comply or be killed." — Prosecutor of Ahmed A-Khatib, who murdered his wife for becoming "too westernized."
◾British school teachers are afraid to teach their students about Christianity out of fear of offending Muslims. — Roger Bolton, BBC Radio 4's Feedback program.
◾Rather than taking steps to protect British children, police, social workers, teachers... and the media deliberately played down the severity of the crimes [of Muslim sexual grooming gangs] in order to avoid being accused of "Islamophobia" or racism. — From the report "Easy Meat: Multiculturalism, Islam and Child Sex Slavery."
◾A group of British lawyers launched a website, Sharia Watch UK. The group called Sharia law "Britain's Blind Spot."
◾After Adebolajo, who murdered and tried to behead British soldier Lee Rigby with a meat cleaver, was given a "whole-life" prison term, his brother said his sibling was the victim of "Islamophobia."
◾"The problem of honor-based violence and forced marriages in England is "worse than people think." — Claire Phillipson, Wearside Women in Need"
People like Jenny and Fr Kavanaugh are at a minimum foolhardy. They have a misguided view of Christianity in that they overlook the violence to women and children perpetrated by these groups, shown to be happening in Britain. But, on a more serious level, I believe people like Jenny and Fr Kavanaugh must bear some guilt for not only the violence against Muslim women and children - not to mention the way they slaughter their animals to which they turn a blind eye - but also for the violence, death and mayhem perpetrated in incidents like San Bernadino perpetrated by the very Muslims that they welcome into the US with open arms.
As a society we have a Christian duty first to protect our own citizens from violence as far as possible and opening the door wide to groups that harbour violent extremists is palpably wrong. When the next incident occurs in the US - as it surely will before long - I will be looking at not only President Obama but also people like Jenny, Fr Kavanaugh and Anon 2. No doubt they will all slink into the shadows ... but I will hold them responsible.
- January 5, 2016 at 5:45 AM
Unfortunately, Fr McDonald, these days since Vatican II there are what I call "cosmetic Catholics". These are Catholics who like the cosmetic beauty of a nice Latin Ordinary Form Mass, with all the trimmings, but they are not seem to understand or be interested in the theology that underpins the Extraordinary Form of the Mass which is the very thing that caused pre-Vatican II Catholics to live their faith as and post-Vatican II Traditionalists still do today.
These cosmetic Catholics do not seem to notice the dwindling ranks of Catholics who are leaving because they are not being fed by the Ordinary Form of the Mass and many more are worried and concerned about what is emanating from the Vatican. No one can colour over this any more, much as they try ... even a Protestant told me recently they felt very sorry for the Catholic Church the way things are going.
- January 5, 2016 at 6:13 AM
Although it will probably pass over the heads of most cosmetic Catholics, who either plainly just don't have the wit to understand or are just not interested, OnePeterFive has a good article listing 10 reasons for attending the Traditional Latin Mass, which I briefly set out here:
"1.You will be formed in the same way that most of the Saints were formed.
2.What is true for me is even more true for my children. This way of celebrating most deeply forms the minds and hearts of our children in reverence for Almighty God.
3. Its universality. The traditional Latin Mass not only provides a visible and unbroken link from the present day to the distant past, it also constitutes an inspiring bond of unity across the globe.
4. You always know what you are getting. The Mass will be focused on the Holy Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. There will be respectful and prayerful silence before, during, and after Mass.
5. It's the real McCoy. The classical Roman rite has an obvious theocentric and Christocentric orientation, found both in the ad orientem stance of the priest and in the rich texts of the classical Roman Missal itself, which give far greater emphasis to the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the sacrifice of Our Lord upon the Cross.
6. A superior calendar for the saints. In liturgical discussions, most ammunition is spent on defending or attacking changes to the Ordinary of the Mass—and understandably so. But one of the most significant differences between the 1962 and 1970 Missals is the calendar. Let's start with the Sanctoral Cycle, the feast days of the saints. The 1962 calendar is an amazing primer in Church history, especially the history of the early Church, which often gets overlooked today.
7. A superior calendar for the seasons. Similarly, the "Temporal Cycle"—Christmastide, Epiphanytide, Septuagesimatide, Eastertide, Time after Pentecost, etc.—is far richer in the 1962 calendar. Thanks to its annual cycle of propers, each Sunday has a distinct flavor to it, and this annual recurrence creates a marker or yardstick that allows the faithful to measure their spiritual progress or decline over the course of their lives.
8. A Better Way to the Bible. Many think that the Novus Ordo has a natural advantage over the old Mass because it has a three-year cycle of Sunday readings and a two-year cycle of weekday readings, and longer and more numerous readings at Mass, instead of the ancient one-year cycle, usually consisting of two readings per Mass (Epistle and Gospel). What they overlook is the fact that the architects of the Novus Ordo simultaneously took out most of the biblical allusions that formed the warp and woof of the Ordinary of the Mass, and then parachuted in a plethora of readings with little regard to their congruency with each other.
9. Reverence for the Most Holy Eucharist. The Ordinary Form of the Mass can, of course, be celebrated with reverence and with only ordained ministers distributing Holy Communion. But let's be honest: the vast majority of Catholic parishes deploy "extraordinary" lay ministers of Holy Communion, and the vast majority of the faithful will receive Holy Communion in the hand. These two arrangements alone constitute a significant breach in reverence for the Blessed Sacrament.
10. When all is said and done, it's the Mystery of Faith. Many of the reasons for persevering in and supporting the traditional Latin Mass, in spite of all the trouble the devil manages to stir up for us, can be summarized in one word: MYSTERY. What St. Paul calls musterion and what the Latin liturgical tradition designates by the names mysterium and sacramentum are far from being marginal concepts in Christianity."
The full article can be read here:
- January 5, 2016 at 6:14 AM
- John Nolan said...
Fr K, I take your point, but 'Islamophobia' suggests an irrational fear of Islam, not of Muslims. Moreover it is used as a catch-all term to shut down rational debate. The suffix -phobia is (mis)used to suggest dislike or even disapproval in order to make certain opinions 'unacceptable'. Incidentally, my reaction to the latter word is to ask 'unacceptable to whom?'
So to disapprove of homosexual lifestyles is to be 'homophobic'; to criticize the latest liberal fad, gender theory, is to be 'transphobic', and so on. Academic institutions which would deny a platform to the feminist Germaine Greer because she is 'transphobic' (she suggested that no amount of surgery or hormone therapy can really turn a man into a woman, which is surely true) are no better than those German universities who purged their libraries of works by Jewish authors after Hitler came to power.
Recently an eminent scientist was hounded from his post for making a light-hearted comment which the 'liberal' thought police deemed to be 'sexist'. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, let's remember, was dispatched to the Gulag for making a joke about Stalin.) It's not just the spinelessness of the university authorities when confronted with the rabid intolerance of vocal pressure groups which I find alarming; it's that young men and women who supposedly represent the intellectual élite can espouse such extreme views and brook no criticism of them.
The juvenile Trots and Maoists of 1968 made a considerable noise and weren't averse to violence - a few did later espouse terrorism. They did not persuade Western governments to adopt their agenda. That is the difference between then and now.
- January 5, 2016 at 7:13 AM
For all of you who hold the pro-abortion, pro-same sex marriage Ayn Rand disciple Pamela Geller is such high esteem, feast on the following if you dare:
I hope the cognitive dissonance is not too distressing for you.
- January 5, 2016 at 7:20 AM
"When the next incident occurs in the US - as it surely will before long - I will be looking at not only President Obama but also people like Jenny, Fr Kavanaugh and Anon 2. No doubt they will all slink into the shadows ... but I will hold them responsible."
It will be a nice question who will be more responsible for future terrorist attacks: those whose fevered anti-Muslim rhetoric feeds into the radical Muslim terrorist narrative and recruiting pitch that the West is on a crusade to destroy Islam or those who want to cool the heated rhetoric and not play stupidly into the terrorists' hands. Keep it up and I am sure you will see your prediction fulfilled.
- January 5, 2016 at 7:33 AM
Jan - It does not good whatsoever - unless you are a candidate running for political office - to encourage sectarian hatred. As Anonymous 2 notes, your vitriol will accomplish nothing here, and will only serve to further inflame those who may be dangerous to us.
Now, if you are a politician, fear mongering is the route to take. If you can make people afraid - and you seem to be very afraid - you can make people do things they otherwise would never do.
Fear Obama! Fear the IRS! Fear "Big Government"! Fear Bugnini! Fear the Japs! Fear the (fill in the blank)! Make people afraid of some one or some thing and they will be putty in your hands. They might even vote for you.
- January 5, 2016 at 10:08 AM
- John Nolan said...
Anon 2
I have never heard of Pamela Geller and until I had to google it a few weeks ago Ayn Rand. I was under the impression that the latter had something to do with the RAND Corporation.
I get the impression from your posts that you are not an American. You do however exude a certain complacency; you are quick to criticize but rarely offer convincing alternatives that rise above the level of platitude. Were you a Brit I could imagine you voting LibDem.
However since you do not identify yourself this is purely inference on my part.
- January 5, 2016 at 10:38 AM
- TJM said...
Here's something for "Father" Kavanaugh to chew on: http://news.yahoo.com/germany-stunned-rash-years-sex-assaults-132433588.html
- January 5, 2016 at 11:39 AM
Anon, is it possible for a flawed person to be right about anything? Or must Pamela Geller's entire persona be judged before we decide whether or not she's right when it comes to Islam?
Because, see, two can - and should - play the same game to see if the rules are fair.
Might I judge Hillary as incompetent for believing she can communicate with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt or for believing in UFOs (both of which she has admitted believing in)? Now, most people would say "irrelevant" to her politics. And for Democrats this is almost ALWAYS how it goes: embarrassing personal foibles and beliefs are quietly ignored. Bill Clinton's personal sex life is "off limits" so long as "he does his public job". Family members are always "off limits"....until the person happens to be Republican.
So...let's be consistent with our criteria of judgment shall we? If we must discount Pamela Geller's opinion on Islam because she's wrong in some other completely unrelated field of thought....then we ought to judge everyone likewise.
Now, about Islam. I note that no one has admitted that most Nazis and Communists were also 'good people'. No one has refuted the affirmation that most Nazis and Communists were civilians and most were peaceful, law abiding folk and that consequently if peaceful law abiding folk are the new standard for judging any foreign religion or foreign ideology, why are we not ruthlessly consistent?
- January 5, 2016 at 1:17 PM
- Jenny said...
I don't usually respond to diatribes, but I felt the need to remind Jan of Fr. Allan's personal introductory sentence in his post:
"This is a great Christmas story from the Augusta Chronicle!"
Perhaps Jan needs to include Fr. McDonald in her list of people to blame for the next terror attack? Or perhaps Jan missed the fact that Fr. thought it was a "great Christmas story".
I do know from lots of personal experience that hatred only breeds more hatred; no good can come of broad-strokes hatred. It is based in fear, and "Fear is the chief activator of all our faults."
- January 5, 2016 at 2:13 PM
John Nolan - The "alternative" to irrationally fearing every Muslim is not fearing every Muslim.
The "alternative" to irrationally suspecting every Muslim in the world of wanting to kill every non-Muslim is not suspecting every Muslim in the world.
The "alternative" to the irrational Pamela Geller (she has called for the removal of the Dome of the Rock from atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; posted doctored pictures of Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court justice, in a Nazi helmet; suggested the State Department was run by "Islamic supremacists"; and referred to health care reform as an act of national rape) is Khaled Abou el Fadl, author of "The Great Theft - Wrestling Islam from the Extremists or Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, author of "Not In God's name - Confronting Religious Violence."
The "alternative" to Ayn Rand's irrational and anti-Christian philosophy of Objectivism (Follow reason, not whims or faith. Work hard to achieve a life of purpose and productiveness. Earn genuine self-esteem. Pursue your own happiness as your highest moral aim. Prosper by treating others as individuals, trading value for value) is Judeo-Catholic Humanism. "The greatest service to development, then, is a Christian humanism that enkindled charity and takes its lead from truth, accepting both as a lasting gift from God." [Caritas in Veritate, 2009, no 78]
- January 5, 2016 at 2:36 PM
Fr. Kavanaugh, With all due respect, you are very misguided, as are all liberals. I am a Chaldean. I have lived in Iraq for the first 34 years of my life. I have lived with Muslims. They have slaughtered family and friends. They have threatened death to anyone who does not convert to Islam. They have forced me and many of my family out of our homeland of Iraq, to come to America. These were not "extremists"... they were common, everyday Muslims. You need to wake up. You need to stop fooling yourselves into believing Islam is some kind of religion of peace. It is a violent, dangerous, death-seeking cult. I have lived with this, I have seen this first hand. With all due respect, Fr Kavanaugh, you haven't. Listen to the Chaldean patriarchs who are warning the US to turn Muslim refugees away. Write the USCCB and urge them to change their position on bringing Muslims to the US.
Wasim Salim.
- January 5, 2016 at 3:20 PM
Fr Kavanaugh and Jenny, you in turn use the terms "vitriol" and "hatred". Where in any of my statement is there vitriol or hatred? I have merely stated the facts of what is happening. Any turning against Islam is surely to do with the attacks in Paris and San Bernadino, etc, isn't it? If those people were living in harmony with people then there would be no problem. Is it vitriol or hatred to point out the barbaric practices of these people which both of you conveniently ignore? Therefore, you are both complicit in the actions of these people from sexual abuse of minors, which is permitted in the Koran, to feminine genital mutilation to practising pologmy which occurs even in Britain despite the law.
Both of you prove the point of John Nolan's excellent post at 7.13. Neither of you can answer the points raised so you try to silence free speech and opinion by falling back on "Islamophobia" and in my case "vitriol" and "hatred". Mark my words, when the next large-scale terrorist attack comes it will be more than me pointing the finger directly at people like you who no doubt are well known in your neighbourhoods for supporting the importation of terrorists into the US, despite warnings from abroad and from Daesh themselves that there are many terrorists within groups of "refugees" so-called.
It is time people looked at the world at large and found out what is happening in countries where there is now a growing population of Islamists, who do not accept the law but instead are pushing sharia and all the barbaric practices that go with it. We have all been warned that if the master of the house was aware that a thief was coming to his house he would lay in wait. Well, Anon 2, Fr Kavanaugh and Jenny, you are also well aware of the dangers approaching "the house" but still you sleep and wish everyone to do the same. Really, you are no better than the peace-niks who lulled Britain and others into a false sense of security before the wars - none of them were thanked for it and the people didn't forget and nor will we.
- January 5, 2016 at 3:30 PM
I will be very interested to see if either Fr Kavanaugh, Jenny or Anon 2 have any answer for Wasim Salim. I suspect not. Face with truth they will slink away into the shadows ...
- January 5, 2016 at 4:02 PM
- TJM said...
Jan, "being a liberal means never having to say your sorry!" (With Apologies to "Love Story."
- January 5, 2016 at 4:40 PM
Jan - You are not the only person posting on this thread, nor is this the only thread on this blog to have dealt with Muslims.
You ask, "Any turning against Islam is surely to do with the attacks in Paris and San Bernadino, etc, isn't it?" The answer is, "No." There are tens of thousands of Muslims who live in harmony with non-Muslims in this country and millions who do so around the world. The "barbaric practices" no one is ignoring are not the practices of "these people" any more than the barbaric practices of individual Christians are the practices of all Christians.
Wasim - I don't know who you are or how to judge the legitimacy of your claims.
- January 5, 2016 at 4:46 PM
John Nolan:
I am originally from the United Kingdom, near Winchester. I emigrated to the United States 36 years ago in my mid-20s. In the United Kingdom I always voted Tory and would do so today. This equates (roughly) to being a center right Democrat over here. However, before the Republican Party lost its collective mind, I sometimes voted Republican as well, depending on the person and the issues. For example, I voted for George W. Bush in 2000. I have never voted LibDem or Labour in the United Kingdom. As for rarely offering convincing alternatives, you either have not read many of my posts or we disagree about the meaning of "convincing alternatives." Also, in this regard, I refer to and endorse Father Kavanaugh's post of 2:36 p.m.
So, what do you think of Pamela Geller now that you know more about her?
- January 5, 2016 at 6:10 PM
I wondered how long it would be before someone played the Hitler/Chamberlain/appeasement card. By the way, how about answering my question about Nazi propaganda regarding Jews that I asked yesterday evening? Where would_you_have stood? Related, I noticed the implied threat at the end of your post. This is how it starts, Jan—always has, always will. First come the threats (to begin with oh so subtle, then more blatant as passions rise), then comes the "watching" of suspected "dissidents" followed by their being rounded up, then come the executions. As I said on another thread, we are heading into a very dark place (again).
And the "slinking into the shadows" is another of your fevered imaginings. I do not slink.
- January 5, 2016 at 6:11 PM
Wasim Salim:
Thank you for your post. I am indeed very sorry that you have had to suffer such persecution. Are you comfortable sharing more details with us? I think that it could prove very instructive. Clearly, the best source of information is from people who have real world experience such as yours. I am especially interested to know when the persecution and slaughter started. Was it after the U.S. invasion in 2003 (hundreds of thousands of Christians fled Iraq after that event due to rising sectarian violence) or was it before this (my understanding is that Saddam Hussein promoted a policy of discrimination against non-Arabs but that they were better off on the whole than after his ousting).
- January 5, 2016 at 6:12 PM
It depends on the nature of the foible. Did you read the link about Pam Geller's ravings? And remember, this is a woman who is perfectly willing knowingly and deliberately to risk other people's lives to make an ideological point about "free speech." The foibles I mentioned are consistent with an ideologically driven personality in a way that belief in UFOs, for example, is not (anyway, aren't you ate least open to the possibility that there is something to the UFO phenomenon; I have an open mind on the question and will be guided by the evidence; how about you?).
- January 5, 2016 at 6:43 PM
- George said...
We Americans can be rightly accused of sometimes "losing our heads" in arguing our convictions, but at least we don't require that others lose theirs as the price for not accepting what we believe.
Quite a number of times over the preceeding centuries, many Catholics better than myself, giving due credit to God and the Blessed Virgin, kept Muslim invaders from succeeding in their plans to conquer large parts of Europe. If anyone would want to argue that this was of little consequence, they can do so, but they will get have a willing ear from me.
We convert by the Cross and not by the sword.
- January 5, 2016 at 8:18 PM
- John Nolan said...
Anonymous 2
I, too, would not quarrel with what Fr Kavanaugh posted at 2:36; but I don't think he is prepared to admit that the problems with Islam are not confined to the actions of extremists. David Cameron's observation in the House of Commons that ISIL has 'perverted the peaceful religion of Islam' does not make sense in either religious or historical terms.
Criticisms of Islam since its inception have been remarkably consistent, whether from Latin and Greek Christians, Jewish scholars, Enlightenment sceptics like David Hume, 19th century Protestants, Hindus (notably Ghandi) and by modern secularists like the late Christopher Hitchens. The greatest Iranian writer of the last century, Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) lamented the corrosive effect of Islam on Persian culture - bookshops in France will no longer stock his works following Muslim protests. In Africa Islam (unlike Christianity) was imposed by brute force and its influence is baleful.
Present-day Muslim scholars still debate the legitimacy of enslaving non-Muslims. The east African slave trade was run by the Arabs for 1000 years. It was only ended in 1890 when Britain established a Protectorate in the interior and closed the slave market at Zanzibar. After the 1914-18 War Britain and France did much to eradicate slavery in those territories which had been part of the Ottoman Empire, but it still persists in the Islamic world (Saudi Arabia formally abolished it in 1962 but forced servitude is still rife).
- January 5, 2016 at 8:20 PM
- John Nolan said...
Pamela Geller is a SIF (Single Issue Fanatic). I understand she was refused entry to the UK because her views would antagonize Muslims. I suppose she could have retaliated by accusing the Home Office of anti-Semitism.
Free speech is too hedged about with qualifications to have much meaning. Prejudice is still allowed between consenting adults in private (like buggery).
- January 5, 2016 at 8:34 PM
Thank you, my friend, for your sympathy for our persecution. It did not begin in 2003, this has been going on for centuries. At times things would get better, then it would get worse. Perhaps things escalated after 2003, but in no way did any American involvement cause any of this. It started long before America was even a country. If you seek more information, I suggest you go to www.chaldean.org as a good resource. Also, an article at http://thearabdailynews.com/2015/08/28/community-protests-building-of-mosque-in-detroit-suburb/
illustrates how even in America, us Chaldeans are often shunned in favor of Muslims, using the "Islamophobia" code word.
Wasim Salim
- January 5, 2016 at 9:00 PM
Anon 2 said, "how about answering my question about Nazi propaganda regarding Jews that I asked yesterday evening? Where would_you_have stood?" You have already raised that question on a previous blog and I answered you by saying that you cannot equate the situation with what happened to the Jews who were innocent and not involved in killing people as Muslims are and have been down the centuries. I have nothing against Muslims, per se. However, as I have already stated, I do object to Muslims from Syria where their background cannot be checked because of the war situation and I believe it is foolhardy of Obama to permit this when he knows that Daesh has said there are terrorists among them. I support what Trump says about calling a halt until some sort of proper checks can be put in place.
Did you bother reading the Gladstone report which lists all the problems Britain had in 2014 due to the Muslim population, sharia etc? These practices are occurring in the UK and the UK Government has had several inquiries into FGM etc and you can read all about it if you bother to take the time. What makes you think that these practices are not occurring in the US? Sharia law is already in in several US states. Police have said that there are certain no-go areas which are controlled by Muslims that they cannot enter. Can you tell me of any other people who are not subject to the laws of the country they immigrate to?
"First come the threats (to begin with oh so subtle, then more blatant as passions rise), then comes the "watching" of suspected "dissidents" followed by their being rounded up, then come the executions. As I said on another thread, we are heading into a very dark place (again)" What you are describing here would seem to me what people like Wasim have had to endure in their country being persecuted by Muslims - the very same people that are coming to the US. I hope these people are your neighbours and not Wasim's. It sounds as if he has suffered enough already.
- January 6, 2016 at 12:47 AM
Wasim Salim, I understand what you went through in Iraq, a good friend of mine a Chaldean Catholic owned a liquor store in Basra in the South of Iraq as many Christians in Iraq do. Well to say the least after their store was burned down time after time and were told they must convert to Islam, they had enough and finally fled to the United States to El Cajon Ca. where many Chaldeans live. Oddly enough he told me most of his "customers" in Basra were MUSLIMS who would drink secretly, very very common in the Islamic world. And by the way like it or not Christians were protected by Saddam Hussein just like they were in Syria under Bashir Al Assad. By the way Miss Geller is a very brave woman as is Geert Wilders, Brigette Gabriel, Walid Shoebat, Noni Darwish and Mr.Robert Spencer!! All of whom live under death threats.
- January 6, 2016 at 12:49 AM
TJM - I agree! To me it seems that many liberals lack sufficient grey matter to be able to discern the Trojan horse in their midst while others are deliberate in their attempts to destroy the social order as we know it.
- January 6, 2016 at 12:53 AM
Fr Kavanaugh said, "Wasim - I don't know who you are or how to judge the legitimacy of your claims". With due respect Fr Kavanaugh, I don't even know if you are a Catholic priest but I take what you say as true and so I think you should be prepared to give Wasim the same consideration as we give you. To my mind you've just dodged everything that Wasim said - as I said faced with truth you have no answer.
Although there are others posting on this blog the comment regarding "vitriol" was addressed to me if you go back and read what you had to say! As I said there was no vitriol in my post, merely facts which you have not and cannot answer obviously. Just as you have no answer to Wasim. Slink away Father K ...
- January 6, 2016 at 12:59 AM
John Nolan:
Thank you for your responses. I could be wrong and stand to be corrected but I have the distinct impression that Islam and majority Muslim societies were headed on the whole in a "good direction" in the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries. There were many "liberal" reformist impulses at work. Left to their own devices, therefore, I suspect that Islam and Muslim societies would have evolved benignly, on the whole as I say.
But, of course, Islam and Muslim societies were not left to themselves, were they? Instead, and focusing now on the Middle East (India-Pakistan is another troubled story), World War I and the infamous Sykes-Picot betrayal set the stage for subsequent tragic drama, with artificial states constructed by the victorious Western powers as they carved up the defeated Ottoman Empire, and with "Westernized" fundamentalist secularists such as Kemal Ataturk in Turkey and the Shah in Iran. All this was bound to provoke a reaction, especially when one adds the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 to the mix (following a good dose of anti-British Jewish terrorism). But the lid was kept on Pandora's tinder box because authoritarian regimes kept the reactive radical elements under control, and revolutionary Iran after 1979 (and hence the potential for bloody Sunni-Shia conflict across the Middle East) was kept in check by Saddam—until George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq for various reasons, not the least of which was the juvenile, naïve ideology of the neoconservatives, thereby destabilizing the entire region (or, arguably until his father H.W. Bush decided it was time to realize the "new world order"—remember that quaint phrase?—including by evicting Saddam from Kuwait in 1991 and stationing American forces in the Islamic Holy Land of Saudi Arabia).
And in addition to this foolish Western (and I include the Soviets here for present purposes) meddling with other peoples' houses, we should remember our own atrocious behaviors within our own house. World War I was an insanely bloody civil war which led directly to the rise of Nazism (due to the injustices of Versailles), and probably Communism in Russia and the Soviet Union as well, and hence to World War II, another insanely bloody European civil war. The Holocaust was perpetrated by the West, as was the carpet bombing of civilian populations and the nuclear devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Justifications for these latter actions are beside the point, the point being that these were all atrocities committed by the West as it tore itself apart. Quite simply, the idols of nationalism and ideology had now replaced the idol of religion as the impetus for unleashing the dogs of civil war. And then, of course, there is the insanely bloody American experience as Americans too tore themselves apart in the atrocious carnage of the Civil War, precipitated if not initially fought over the evil institution of chattel slavery. No, the Islamic world has no corner on barbarism and slaughter. We often talk about the scourge of abortion. But shouldn't we be on our knees begging for divine forgiveness for the slaughter of those who are already born as well? We should, but of course we won't, because we are too blind to see what we are and what we have done. We lack the necessary humility and courage to look and acknowledge the truth about ourselves.
- January 6, 2016 at 1:13 AM
Seen in this perspective (which is not anti-Western at all, just facing the reality of our fallen natures), the Islamic world is playing catch up, and might indeed already have caught up had we not interfered so much. And all this sets the stage for what we now confront. No-one on this Blog supports radical Islamic terrorism and everyone is agreed on the need to defeat it. The disagreements center not on the end but on the means for achieving the end as well as, related, the extent of radicalization and the potential causes of further radicalization. Blogs such as Pamela Geller's are distinctly unhelpful because they just stoke the fire. Moreover, they cause a lot of smoke that impairs our vision because they so frequently resort to hyperbole and indeed deception. This is why I reject them in favor of more balanced and objective sources. And I have to wonder why people like Geller (and those who propagate spurious videos on the Internet, videos that seduce innocents like Jan) feel the need to resort to such hyperbole and deception. If their case is so strong, the simple truth should suffice, no? It almost makes one wonder if they have a hidden agenda, but I digress. The sad thing is, the more people buy into their vitriol and, yes, their Islamophobia, the more they are likely to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy by provoking reactions leading to further radicalization. It is, in my view, well past time to step back from the brink, assuming it is not too late already and the poison has not already done its nefarious work.
- January 6, 2016 at 1:14 AM
Anon 2, a Catholic priest (a liberal one by the way) told in a sermon how his relations who are in the army in Indonesia are not able to attend Mass openly there as they would be attacked and so have to go spasmodically at the American embassy when they can. Indonesia is an Islamic country not interfered with by the USA. Can you explain why Catholics cannot attend Mass for fear of harm if Islam is such a benign religion as you state? I also had a friend from Jordan who told us that when he was living in Jordan there were certain areas they couldn't go to because they would be attacked and his wife had to cover her head in public or risk attack. So much for this benign group of Muslims that you are welcoming to the States. None of these groups would be regarded as terrorists either just your ordinary run-of-the-mill Muslims. For those who are interested in facts about the "religion of peace":
"This is a list of targeted acts of terrorism on Christian civilians and church workers by religious Muslims since September 11th, 2001. These attacks have nothing to do with war, combat or insurgency. The victims are innocent Christians who were specifically targeted and abused solely on account of their faith by those who claim their own religion as a motive."
- January 6, 2016 at 7:07 AM
- TJM said...
Jan, lots of excellent points.
- January 6, 2016 at 9:23 AM
- John Nolan said...
Anon 2
In addition to the valid points you make:
1. The massacre of the Christian Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 onwards is the first example of genocide in a century marked by state-sponsored mass murder - in subsequent chronological order we have Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot. Also two destructive world wars from which Europe recovered in a remarkably short time. Sadly she now seems intent on surrendering her own cultural values.
2. Too much is made of the 'infamous Sykes-Picot betrayal'. In the first place the agreement proposed an independent Arab state encompassing roughly modern Iraq and Syria. Secondly, having defeated the Ottoman Empire the allies were responsible for an area of strategic and (with oil) ecomomic importance, and could hardly leave it to its own devices. Thirdly, the states which emerged in 1922 are not as artificial as people often make out. Iraq and Syria, despite what ISIL claims, were distinct entities even in pre-Islamic times.
Recent events have shown that the Iranian hostility to the Saudis is not simply because they adhere to a different strain of Islam; to the Persians the Arabs have always been semi-civilized camel drivers. Racist? Of course.
- January 6, 2016 at 10:01 AM
Jan - First, if, after reading this blog for a very long time, you do not even know if I am a Catholic priest, then there is something wrong with your ability to perceive what is in front of you.
Second - When I present some fact, I back it up by citing sources or posting the information to which I refer. I don't present my own personal opinions or experiences as facts.
Third - Anyone can claim anything when posting on a blog. I'm not saying that Wasim isn't telling the truth. I am saying that, in this kind of discussion, it helps to be able to verify the claims some people make about their own experiences.
Indonesia has 1 cardinal, 10 metropolitan archbishops, and 27 dioceses with bishops, and 37 cathedrals. As a church under siege in Indonesia, the Catholics seem to have a pretty significant, public presence
- January 6, 2016 at 11:22 AM
Anonymous admits that the Muslim world today is marching on a war footing but blames the West for this as though the West has developed in isolated from the world or as though somehow all non-Westerners are inert, passive reactors while only Western men have free will and moral agency?
Are only Western white males racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc? So the Muslim world couldn't HELP but be radicalized by evil Western men? They had no moral agency at all - despite what we are to believe about their religion itself being totally about peace?
Fact is, EVERY culture and national block on earth is constantly being influenced by outside forces. The West, Christendom, has been infiltrated by Jacobins, Masons, Communists and a host of other foreign sects and ideologies from the mid-1760s. The world is in constant turmoil and froth - no group is innocent and no group is a passive lump of inert matter. People have free will.
In any event, it's refreshing to see Anonymous begrudgingly ADMIT that Islam has been radicalized. Since the fall of the Ottoman empire, who radicalized them? Muslims!
Muslims taught other Muslims about the various Socialist and Communist and Nationalist ideologies that they sought as elixirs to adopt FREELY as their own in an effort to reconstitute the Caliphate. The Pan-Arabism of the Ba'ath party....the efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood....the efforts of Khomeni's Shiites....the subsidy of Wahabi Mosques the world over by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia all have this in common: a concerted effort to find the recipe that would reconstitute a Caliphate.
As I pointed out with the Nazi and Communist analogies wherein most Nazi or Communist party members were civilians and were NOT directly involved in the atrocities of their respective ideologies, so too most Muslims are civilians and likewise NOT directly involved in atrocities. BUT THE IDEOLOGY is far from innocent or Amish-like in pacificism.
The ideal Muslim (Mohammed) was not Amish-like. He was a warlord. He died a warlord. The ideal 'state' of existence for Islam is not as peaceful citizens in constitutional federated republics with freedom of religion but Caliphate - the total interpenetration of Mosque and State. There is no "render to Caesar what is Caesars but to God what is God's" in Islam. One's religious obligation is to the Caliph.
Thus while it may be the accidental fact that individual Muslim immigrants are nice and peaceful, it doesn't follow that they are so because of their religion anymore than individual Nazis or Communists were so because of Nazism or Communism.
Islam doesn't create conditions on the ground of peaceful kumbaya co-existence.
We in the West are brow beat our entire lives over what "we" did to Jews and Indians and Blacks. But the Muslims have absolutely no similar 'guilt-trips' over how they treat non-believers as Walid can attest.
Slavery, polygamy, the casual cruelty and abuse of children, pedastry, etc. are ho hum common across the Muslim world. Honor slayings of daughters - perfectly common the world over. They don't suffer under guilt trips like we do. They are not Amish.
So treating Muslims as though their religion is "peaceful" and the resulting culture of 'faithful' Muslims will necessarily or axiomatically also be peaceful (provided they are 'faithful to the book') is a pleasant fiction. It makes "terrorists" these faceless drones - baffling mysteries - like so many faceless stormtroopers in our movies. It's a pleasant fiction because it allows us Westerners to continue to blame ourselves as the only moral agents in the world and thus the ones "in control" inasmuch as we hold all the buttons, we pull all the strings. It allows us to continue to think that more socialist command and control will "keep us safe" when in reality such things only make everything worse and worse as we see in every major city that tries such utopian tinkering.
- January 6, 2016 at 1:15 PM
Now, it has been affirmed by Anonymous, Fr. K and others that Islam is a peaceful religion and the vast majority of Muslims are likewise peaceful and that terror groups do not and cannot reasonably be held to represent this peaceful theology and the peaceful masses of worshippers.
That to conflate the few 'radicals' with the theology and majority populations is in fact both unjust and irrational.
Is this not the argument?
OK. If so then what do we make of the Koran, Hadith, and Suras that speak of warfare and how to 'deal with' non-believers?
How do we make sense of the first 1,000 years of Islam and its relationships both external and internal to non-believers?
How do we make sense of the following? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks
It would seem wildly improbable that a religion devoted to peace and a global population of peaceful people would produce dozens and dozens of paramilitary groups who actively create mayhem and destruction for the sake of socio-political upheaval of the status quo for the sake of recreating a Caliphate.
I look for analogues and find none. There are supposedly 1,000 "militia" groups in the USA but next to none of them are actually involved in any 'kinetic' operations and those who are arrested are set up by the FBI. None of the 3%ers or Oath Keepers are blowing up buildings or shooting police and calling for the creation of a theocracy in North America.
The remaining terror groups are all Left-wing Communist groups.
So what are we to make of these dots? When we get FBI documents spelling out the Muslim Brotherhood's penetration in to 85% of all US Mosques and internal documents of them spelling out a hegemonic strategy to take over the USA...What are we to make of that? That the organization responsible for the majority of US Mosques is of no concern? That they are not "representative" of US Muslim sentiment?
I'm beginning to think that Anonymous and Fr. K are not nearly as well read up on the topic as they perhaps would like to imagine themselves to be.
Being concerned with a global religion that is not at all peaceful in theory or practice....being concerned with a global community that hues to an ideology of total conquest and which puts this into practice in 30 groups world-wide, and who are active in the USA as well, is not 'irrational' prejudice.
- January 6, 2016 at 1:32 PM
My objection to Islam is premised on the basic theology of the Great Commission of Our Lord to the Apostles: we are to make disciples of "all nations". This must inevitably mean preaching to nations who are members of foreign religions and different cultures.
We are to make disciples of all peoples - not because we despise them but precisely because we love them. So I for one don't regard Muslims as people to be inherently inferior or intrinsically evil. They are the 'nations' for whom Our Lord died and to whom He sends us to actively evangelize.
Islam on the other hand is a totalitarian ideology that includes as religion and like Catholicism also has global ambitions and directives to conquer the world for their god, Allah.
So Christianity and Islam are necessarily, theologically, at odds. But Christians are precisely to convert Muslims (and pagans, and Buddhists and Hindus etc.).
Thus it is entirely right that we avoid unnecessary hostilities with individuals but not right that we confuse this attitude with respect to their religion or ideology.
I must love Communists not because they're Communist but because they are people. And my aim and goal ought not be to reinforce and secure them in their communism but rather to witness to them of the Gospel and help them abandon their Communist cell.... or to leave their Islamic family and enter into the liberation that is found in Christ.
But if (as is the case) our government and the elites in both the DNC and GOP all promote Islam as such as "peace" and insist that Muslims as 'faithful followers of Islam" are compatible with both the US system of government and Western civilization, then we have a problem and it involves reality and the truth.
Islam is not about 'peace'. Being a 'faithful' Muslim man does not create an Amish or Quakerlike attitude except in rare circumstances where they feel totally outnumbered and outgunned. Thus their pacifism is tactical, not strategic.
The goal of modern "mainstream" Muslim groups is world domination. Their 'good cops' seek to do this via immigration and PC penetration of all levels of government while their 'bad cop' members seek to accomplish it quicker via violence. Both seek the same goal and that is not peaceful co-existence as equals.
This being the case, we must continue to treat individual Muslims as we would any human being or fellow citizen but not BECAUSE they're Muslims (or communist or Nazi or racist...) but because they're a fellow human being or fellow citizen. But we have no such moral or theological obligation to treat ISLAM as harmless and innocent and benign.
- January 6, 2016 at 2:24 PM
There are over 90 world conflicts in the world today and over 95% involve Muslims who CANNOT LIVE WITH ANYONE EVEN FELLOW MUSLIMS!! Read Jihad Watch by Robert Spencer and Gateway Pundit and you will know the truth about the evil that is Islam, you will not find it in the MSM.
- January 6, 2016 at 3:22 PM
As I said to Jan, I have a job and cannot spend all my time trying to respond to everything you throw up. So let me just say this.
I have never denied that there exists a threat from radical Islam and radical Islamic terrorists. Indeed, it is the premise behind everything I have written. For years I have talked about the "battle for the soul of Islam" on this blog. What on earth do you think that is about if not the battle between the radicals and non-radicals?
And I have maintained that Western participation in this battle needs to be intelligent, not stupid. In my view it is not intelligent, but stupid, to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria based on the fevered imaginings of Islamophobic extremist bloggers and so-called "experts." Instead one needs to look at the evidence in a calm, cool, and collected manner. One needs to understand before one reaches judgment. I am a lawyer by training, so this is in my DNA.
Let us take just one document you cite as illustration—the 1991 "Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum." Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I did not know about it. So, yes, I suppose I am not so well-read, as you say. I am certainly not as well read in the world of Islamophobic extremist blogs and their conspiracy theories as you and some others here seem to be. As I said, I prefer more credible sources. Apparently, this document is the basis for the theory that the Muslim Brotherhood is planning to take over the United States, or some such thing. Given the monopolization of the Internet by Islamophobic extremist blogs that share and repeat the same material, it took me a while to find a response with "inconvenient information" that may cause a bit of cognitive dissonance. Did you even look? Here it is, in two links:
I hope you understand that, as a lawyer, my disposition is to consider both sides of an issue and to evaluate all the evidence and all the arguments regarding that issue instead of uncritically buying into one particular narrative. As I indicated yesterday, I have the same approach to UFOs. Even though I am open to the possibility that extraterrestrial life may exist and indeed may even have discovered a means of traveling to Earth, I regret to say that the evidence just is not there yet. I await your response.
- January 6, 2016 at 4:39 PM
P.S. Here is what appears to be the bottom line on this document (see the recent New Yorker article quoted at the end of the first link):
"The memo, however, is far from probative. It was never subjected to an adversarial test of its authenticity or significance. Examined closely, it does not stand up as an authoritative prescription for action. Rather, it appears to have been written as a plea to the Muslim Brotherhood leadership for action, by an author we know little about, Mohamed Akram. He is listed elsewhere as a secretary in the Brotherhood, but he writes in the tone of an underling. Islam watchers do not quote his appeal that the recipients "not rush to throw these papers away due to your many occupations and worries. All that I'm asking of you is to read them and to comment on them." These lines reveal the memo as a mere proposal, now twenty-four years old. No other copies have come to light."
- January 6, 2016 at 4:46 PM
Thank you for the information on the Gatestone (not Gladstone) 2014 report. I have read a bit in it and will continue reading when I get some more time later. It is certainly more credible than, for example, the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum. I do notice, however, that the Institute is headed up by Ambassador John Bolton. He is known over here as a rather militant neoconservative hawk. Here is his Wikipedia entry:
Here is the Wkipedia entry on Gatestone:
- January 6, 2016 at 5:06 PM
Let me try this again as the post to which the P.S. was added apparently got lost in cyberspace:
As I said to Jan, I have a job and cannot spend all my time trying to respond to everything you throw up. So let me just say this.
I have never denied that there exists a threat from radical Islam and radical Islamic terrorists. Indeed, it is the premise behind everything I have written. For years I have talked about the "battle for the soul of Islam" on this blog. What on earth do you think that is about if not the battle between the radicals and non-radicals?
And I have maintained that Western participation in this battle needs to be intelligent, not stupid. In my view it is not intelligent, but stupid, to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria based on the fevered imaginings of Islamophobic extremist bloggers and so-called "experts." Instead one needs to look at the evidence in a calm, cool, and collected manner. One needs to understand before one reaches judgment. I am a lawyer by training, so this is in my DNA.
Let us take just one document you cite as illustration—the 1991 "Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum." Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I did not know about it. So, yes, I suppose I am not so well-read, as you say. I am certainly not as well read in the world of Islamophobic extremist blogs and their conspiracy theories as you and some others here seem to be. As I said, I prefer more credible sources. Apparently, this document is the basis for the theory that the Muslim Brotherhood is planning to take over the United States, or some such thing. Given the monopolization of the Internet by Islamophobic extremist blogs that share and repeat the same material, it took me a while to find a response with "inconvenient information" that may cause a bit of cognitive dissonance. Did you even look? Here it is, in two links:
I hope you understand that, as a lawyer, my disposition is to consider both sides of an issue and to evaluate all the evidence and all the arguments regarding that issue instead of uncritically buying into one particular narrative. As I indicated yesterday, I have the same approach to UFOs. Even though I am open to the possibility that extraterrestrial life may exist and indeed may even have discovered a means of traveling to Earth, I regret to say that the evidence just is not there yet. I await your response.
P.S. Here is what appears to be the bottom line on this document (see the recent New Yorker article quoted at the end of the first link):
"The memo, however, is far from probative. It was never subjected to an adversarial test of its authenticity or significance. Examined closely, it does not stand up as an authoritative prescription for action. Rather, it appears to have been written as a plea to the Muslim Brotherhood leadership for action, by an author we know little about, Mohamed Akram. He is listed elsewhere as a secretary in the Brotherhood, but he writes in the tone of an underling. Islam watchers do not quote his appeal that the recipients "not rush to throw these papers away due to your many occupations and worries. All that I'm asking of you is to read them and to comment on them." These lines reveal the memo as a mere proposal, now twenty-four years old. No other copies have come to light."
- January 6, 2016 at 5:34 PM
- George said...
Any Catholic (and really any Christian) if truly such, is not without hope. It is through our sacrifices offered up, and our pleadings and supplications to God, that He, by them, might have mercy on us and reduce and mitigate the chastisements and punishments we so richly deserve. God does require certain things of us so that He is not just at our bidding to do what we ask of Him, without anything done on our part. We are not like cattle out in the field to soak up the benevolence and kindness which the Divine Sun bestows on us without us contributing something. He allows certain things to transpire and to be inflicted on us so that we might again be and do what He desires of us. Sin has consequences, and it is one of the consequences that evil grows and becomes more powerful, and in doing so it takes unforeseen forms and directions. So, yes, there is always hope that one day the Moslems will practice their religion and allow others to practice theirs in peace, free from intimidation and fear. In the meantime we must continue to do the spiritual works that all Catholics should do. At least try to pray the rosary and Divine Mercy chaplet every day.
- January 6, 2016 at 6:51 PM
If you need any evidence of how Muslims, the "religion of peace", are treating Chaldean Christians in the Middle East, just read these news items at www.helpiraq.org
- January 6, 2016 at 7:17 PM
Well then Fr Kavanaugh you are calling a fellow priest a liar when he says his relatives can't go openly to Mass. I suggest you read:
Catholics injured in attacks on Indonesian prayer service
Intruders assault home owner, a journalist and others
Ryan Dagur, Jakarta
May 30, 2014
Indonesia: Muslims screaming "Allahu akbar" attack Roman Catholic Church during Sunday Mass
June 30, 2014 6:33 pm By Robert Spencer
Indonesia Deploys 1,500 Police to Protect Churches Against Christmas ISIS Attack
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/indonesia-deploys-1500-police-to-protect-churches-against-christmas-isis-attack-152687/#FSvCicXK9kwFODBu.99
Indonesia's Christmas shrouded by terror
Fifteen years after deadly church attacks's Christians remain vulnerable
Siktus Harson, Jakarta
This backs up what the priest I know says and shows that in every country Islam is violent.
- January 6, 2016 at 8:14 PM
Jan - In what continents are Christians violent?
- January 7, 2016 at 7:30 AM
- John Nolan said...
Anon 2
In our adversarial system lawyers start with a presumption of guilt or innocence. Examining the evidence and coming to a conclusion is usually left to the jury. One of the functions of a defence counsel is to discredit the evidence put forward by the prosecution, whether it's true or not. If a lawyer is not partisan, he will make a poor advocate.
Could we please drop the loaded term 'Islamophobia'? Anti-Islamic, like anti-Catholic is a more accurate description of those who for one reason or another are opposed to these particular manifestations of religious belief. The Nazi persecution of the Jews was surely irrational, yet we don't use the term 'Judaeophobia'. Incidentally, the Nazis were never successful in turning ordinary Germans against the Jews - the NSDAP organized a 'Judenboykott' in 1933 with the slogan 'Kauf nie bei Juden!' It was a flop and was never repeated.
The behaviour of certain groups of non-European origin, and the apparent favourable treatment of them by the authorities (minority status confers privileges) is causing increasing resentment among the European public at large. What happened in Cologne on New Year's Eve has sparked protests, not least against the police who failed to take action. The advance of the Front National in France was only stalled by tactical voting on a massive scale. The sense of grievance is real; it is not generated by anti-Islamist blogs. Nor is it much to do with terrorist atrocities - don't forget that nearly three decades of Irish republican terrorism failed to produce a significant anti-Irish backlash in Britain. What is of most concern is the failure of the government to control immigration; a concern shared (in Britain at least) by established immigrant communities, including Muslim ones.
There are also historical factors. When Islam burst out of the Arabian peninsula it came into contact with civilizations like the Byzantine and Persian and adapted to them and borrowed from them. By the later Middle Ages it had largely declined into obscurantism at the same time as the Christian West, always open to scientific enquiry, was embarking on an age of expansion and would come to dominate the planet. Modern Islam is very much a religion of resentment; a third-world faith; the religion of the 'have-nots' rather than the 'haves'. Apart from anything else, there is no majority Muslim state that in military terms has more than local influence.
- January 7, 2016 at 7:41 AM
Where are the 'moderate' Muslims who fight the radicals? Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan... that's about it. And to fight them requires a massive police surveillance state with swift and bloody repression of any Jihadi group. Syria hasn't done anything against its radicals that Algeria didn't do in their civil war....
Now, these various kingdoms and centralized regime states are nationalists, not pan-arabs. The powers that be realize that ideological Islam, the Islam calling for Caliphate would be their death so they will fight to the death to preserve their own skin. This may tactically mean they will help the West but they are fighting not to reform Islam but to use Islam to maintain power.
The point being that when "moderates" and "radicals" both use Islam to justify the mass destruction and mayhem leveled against civilian populations, we've got a serious problem and it's not caused by "phobia" on the part of American conservatives calling our government to restrict immigration.
Islam justifies slavery. It justifies honor killing. It justifies all manner of abuse of children and women and non-believers. Historically it has always militated towards Caliphate. So these "moderates" you so fervently believe we must be nice to (good cop) so as to not drive into the camp of the radicals (bad cop) are "moderate" not by theological or ideological premises but in tactical, temporary, conditional ways.
Only when Islam is below 3% of a given population do they behave peacefully. Once they grow beyond that their own internal theological and ideological requirements militate towards Sharia law.
If our hope then is that the "moderates" will become Modernists, ala "cultural Catholics" or "Muslims in name only" that's a very weak read to plant one's security on. Why not just go to full conversion?
Ah, but then that would run afoul of the fiction that global religions can co-exist in a permanent state of détente and non-competition all while preaching doctrines of global significance and purpose.
Communism HAS to seek world domination. The theory itself calls for total control in order to 'work'. Islam HAS to seek world domination. Likewise, Catholicism, to be true, HAS to seek to make disciples of all the nations.
Thus as much as we might pray for peace, there must necessarily be ideological and religions conflicts - they're inescapable.
- January 7, 2016 at 10:04 AM
On December 31st Muslim men raped and groped German women in the cities of Berlin, Colonge, Düsseldorf , Hamburg, Aacen and many others the police admitted they lost control and could only stand and watch incredible!!! The female mayor of Colonge blamed the women for the raping and groping, can you believe this???? Angela Merkel wanted these animals in Germany and by God she got her wish. This is only the beginning of a disaster waiting to happen, you ain't seen nothing yet!!!
- January 7, 2016 at 2:35 PM
Anonymous, we are not allowed to think bad thoughts about Muslims at all. See, if we do harbor bad thoughts, we'll just drive the otherwise utterly peaceful, Amish-like awesomely awesome Muslims into the arms of the radical bad Muslims (who, when they kill people magically cease to be Muslims in no-true-Scotsman style).
Thus, any bad behavior is CAUSED not by them being savages but by us not being sufficiently welcoming. If only we were more submissive to them, they wouldn't be such threats to us.
See how this works?
A statesman once reminded us that there is a certain path to peace: surrender. But also that there is something more precious than "peace" and it's worth fighting for.
- January 7, 2016 at 4:36 PM
John Nolan:
You are correct regarding the lawyer's role as an advocate. However, to be truly effective in advising the client as a counselor (including preparatory to or during adversarial litigation when representing the client as an advocate), the lawyer must be able to evaluate the case from both sides and, in criminal defense work, also imagine how potential jurors might see matters (to prepare jury strikes). And if you still don't like the lawyer point, then I am also an academic for whom the quaint notion of "truth" still carries some weight.
The word phobia seems perfectly appropriate in this situation. One of the central elements of a phobia is irrationality. Check out these definitions in Webster's. I think you will see that they fit quite readily:
One of the central elements of a phobia is irrationality. Thus, when people have a fearful automatic reaction, or perhaps better said overreaction, to an event or situation before they have examined the evidence regarding that matter or situation, it is irrational. For example, when people see some fabricated video or read about some very questionable document on the Internet and automatically assume its truth because it fits into the pre-existing narrative "all Muslims are radicals or terrorists and/or want to take over the country," it is irrational and the result of phobia. This said I am totally opposed to the use of such terms to shut down conversation as so many on the liberal left do in a PC manner. (I should add that those on the right can be just as guilty; for example, one favored tactic of the right over here, and you see it on this blog as well, is to suggest that one is a "terrorist sympathizer" or "apologist for Islam" if one dares to question the rationality of various claims; this again is the result of "Islamophobia.") No, what I seek is the objective evaluation of the evidence.
You make some cogent points in the third paragraph. I have said on this blog before that Enoch Powell, for all his "strangeness," was correct to warn against the imprudent admission into Britain of so many immigrants from certain parts of the world and to caution that it could well result in social unrest and violence. Notice, this isn't necessarily to blame the immigrants, or indeed to blame anyone, morally. It is just a question of social realities about how human beings react to radical change. One of the things that can happen with the admission of large numbers of "aliens" is mutual incomprehension and mutual suspicion, especially when there is little positive contact between an immigrant group(s) and the existing population.
Are there social problems in Britain and elsewhere arising from the immigration of Muslims? To be sure there are. But we have to try to understand the nature and causes of the problems. Take the incidents over New Year in Cologne, for example. I do not yet have the facts, so any judgment must be provisional. As I understand it at the moment, however, alcohol was involved. If that is the case, and if the alleged groping, rape, and theft were due to inebriation, how on earth can one blame Islam when, as I am sure you know, under the classical Shari'a consumption of alcohol is haram (even if the prohibition may sometimes/often be ignored)? No, it may have had far more to do, one suspects, with the non-religious cultural attitudes of the individuals concerned (assuming the allegations are true). Thus what happened in Cologne may well have occurred not because of Islam but in spite of it (but, as I said, I need more facts). Here is an ABC report which illustrates my points:
Incidentally, a lot of things get blamed on the religion which are more socio-cultural in origin. So we need to make some distinctions here.
- January 7, 2016 at 4:59 PM
As another example, then, is "grooming" the result of Islam or the cultural background of the immigrants coming from a particular part of the world? Is it permitted by Islam or prohibited? To the extent Islam appears to permit the practice, does it depend on a particular interpretation of the relevant texts? Indeed, is it agreed which texts are even relevant? If Islam appears to prohibit it (again this may depend on the texts and their interpretation), then this suggests Islam is not part of the problem but instead part of the solution. The only way to get at these matters is to examine the motivations of the perpetrators. What was actually in their minds?
So, there is so much that I (we?) do not know but would need to know to reach a fair and objective judgment about so many of these incidents and situations. But is this how the anti-Islamic blogger industry proceeds? Doesn't the question answer itself?
I will try to respond to the good points you make in your fourth paragraph in a later post.
- January 7, 2016 at 4:59 PM
"Islam justifies slavery. It justifies honor killing. It justifies all manner of abuse of children and women and non-believers."
- January 7, 2016 at 5:02 PM
Jus ad Bellum at 4:36 p.m.:
Now you are being very silly. I thought you were a philosopher and therefore were trained how to think. Perhaps you are having a bad day and your dripping sarcasm is getting in the way.
By the way, have you made any progress in figuring out the problem with your statement: "If so then what do we make of the Koran, Hadith, and Suras that speak of warfare and how to 'deal with' non-believers?" I asked about this on another thread a few weeks ago. As well read as you are, compared to me and Father Kavanaugh, you should have no trouble.
Talking of which, I am still waiting for your response to my post addressing the purported Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum.
- January 7, 2016 at 5:59 PM
The spreading of misinformation online - Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zolloa, Fabio Petronic, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarellia, H. Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchia
"ABSTRACT: The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15––where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of a new civil war in the United States. In this work, we address the determinants governing misinformation spreading through a thorough quantitative analysis. In particular, we focus on how Facebook users consume information related to two distinct narratives: scientific and conspiracy news. We find that, although consumers of scientific and conspiracy stories present similar consumption patterns with respect to content, cascade dynamics differ. Selective exposure to content is the primary driver of content diffusion and generates the formation of homogeneous clusters, i.e., "echo chambers." Indeed, homogeneity appears to be the primary driver for the diffusion of contents and each echo chamber has its own cascade dynamics. Finally, we introduce a data-driven percolation model mimicking rumor spreading and we show that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades' size."
- January 7, 2016 at 6:52 PM
- John Nolan said...
Anon 2
Regarding the Cologne incident, first reports described sexual assaults and robbery committed against women by 'hundreds' of men 'of Arabic or African appearance'. Your average English market town on a Friday or Saturday night can present an alarming spectacle with belligerent and drunken youths brawling noisily and the behaviour of the scantily-clad female element is equally bad. But I have never seen the same in Germany; this sort of public disorder is not a German trait (the street violence of the Weimar years was an historical aberration). The young women victims interviewed by the BBC were intelligent and respectable, and could not understand why the police did not protect them.
I agree it is a facile oversimplification to blame Islam for all this. Cultural factors are important. The atavistic village culture of Pakistan is not easily transplanted into a northern English town, first generation immigrant women won't learn English and can only mix with their own kind, and one of the most problematic of migrant groups, the Romanian gypsies, are not Muslim in the first place. However it is equally facile to deny that some cultural practices abhorrent to the west are at least indirectly influenced by Islamic teaching.
- January 7, 2016 at 7:57 PM
Anon 2.
I was being sarcastic in 4:36
As for your question about the Koran, hadith and suras dealing in large measure with how Muslims are to treat non-believers... what is your critique or question?
1) a large amount of the texts DO provide instructions for how to deal with non-believers and a lot of it involves treating us at a minimum as second class citizens and at worse as enemies to slay or subjugate. Their doctrine of abrogation means the pacific texts of the early Koran are abrogated by the later, more hostile texts.
2) CAIR isn't a fiction. That document isn't a fiction of the internet. It's real. Now, to what degree all the groups listed are coordinating with each other with that global Jihad concept in mind is anyone's guess. But ASSUMING there is no master plan, that such a plan is "impossible" and that we've nothing whatsoever to fear is unsupportable by any evidence. Your wishful thinking is even less rational than my concerns for you have nothing to base this presumption that Muslims will never, ever seek Sharia for the US when they have sought to implement it everywhere else.
3) I fully respect foreigners and foreign ideologies as adult human beings capable of free will and grand ambitions. I don't believe the White Supremacy myth that only evil white men are capable of "manifest destiny" type agendas. I don't accept the myth that minorities are helpless waifs incapable of global ambitions because history is replete with examples of minorities seizing control of empires and nations. The vast majority of Russians were not Bolsheviks in 1920 but it didn't matter. The vast majority of Germans weren't Nazis in 1938 but it didn't matter. You seem to presume and believe that the 'vast majority' of Muslims not being actively involved in armed Jihad means they will never, ever be and that the only driver possible towards that will exclusively come from evil white people thinking bad thoughts about them (again, premised on the believe that we are the only moral agents on earth and everyone else are reactive and inert lumps).
- January 8, 2016 at 11:10 AM
As for Islam justifying slavery, I direct you to peruse the following links:
Note the pains all take to point out how 'enlightened' Islamic slavery was/is compared to all other cultures' slavery. But also that the Koran explicitly accepts slavery as a right and proper condition unlike the Gospel that accepted it as fact but not as a positive good.
So Christians who owned slaves did so not for religious reasons but for cultural and economic ones whereas Muslim slavers can point to Mohammed's own practice and the Koran and the Hadith etc. for ratification of his owning another human being.
So the best we could hope for from Islam is a relatively benign or humane treatment of slaves (including sex slaves). We can't expect slavery to be repudiated by any "faithful" Muslim because it is EXPLICITLY approved by Mohammed.
- January 8, 2016 at 11:34 AM
Anon. 2,
As for Islam justifying the abuse of women - look no further than the Koran and Hadith themselves.
Now, check the references - Islam explicitly preaches that having sex with enslaved women and girls is OK. It regards people claiming this practice to be 'haraam' (wrong) as themselves committing sin.
There's no analogue among Catholicism for such a belief and practice. Nothing in our Just War tradition, nothing in our canon law or praxis would make a Catholic think he has a divine right to seize a girl as a concubine and use her sexually.
Far from being a cultural factor, this is explicitly approved as a good thing.
So how are we going to 'reform' Islam? The best we could hope for is Muslims not being 'faithful' in key components of their creed. That they renounce what their religion calls as a morally fine and uncontroversial practice.
As we're seeing with the resurgence of Polygamy, it won't be long before Muslims in the US openly take on second wives if indeed they're not already doing it under the guise of friends with benefits.
It's a real problem and it's not something I think we can legislate away or police. It's a problem solved ultimately by cultural and religious CONVERSION but to convert someone you need to accept that their religion is not a path of salvation while your own is.
- January 8, 2016 at 11:59 AM
I've found the pro-Muslim websites to be VERY helpful.
http://islamqa.info/en/159301 They readily admit to a supremacist world view.
in this we see how the devil apes God. Islam is a mirror image of the Church. With such a beast there can be tactical armistices but no lasting peace anymore than we can have lasting peace with Communists. Their core belief system precludes a world of peace-ful and permanent co-existence as moral and civil equals. Both Communists and Muslim core doctrines call for global domination via their own hand, their own doing rather than the New Jerusalem coming down to earth from heaven (as we do).
Our core beliefs don't paint a picture of the world ending with a triumphant Catholic army conquering the evil-doers by force of arms but of the final battle being a rear-guard 'last stand' that is won not by our arms (though they must exist to give battle to the forces of the anti-Christ) but by God's intervention.
Islam's picture of the last day is of their armies triumphing over the cross, over those who believe in God's triune nature.
And there's no "reforming" that. So why - other than terror of reality - do so many insist that Islam is peace and if only we treat them as though they were Quakers or the Amish we'd soon have world peace?
- January 8, 2016 at 12:10 PM
On the Explanatory Memorandum: Can we infer from this document that the Muslim Brotherhood may possibly have adopted this document's proposals and be coordinating many different front organizations in the United States? Yes. Can we infer from it that the Muslim Brotherhood has likely done so? No. It is not wishful thinking to suggest that more evidence is needed to prove likelihood than one document (now more than 20 years old and which might even not be genuine) from some underling in the Muslim Brotherhood to his superiors, pleading with them that they not throw the document away but that the at least hear what he has to say. To suggest otherwise is like suggesting that one document (which may or may not be genuine) from some lowly Iraqi official in Saddam's government proposing to Saddam that Iraq should restart its WMD program proves that Iraq likely had WMDs in 2003. Oh, wait a minute . . . .
On my presumptions: "You seem to presume and believe that the 'vast majority' of Muslims not being actively involved in armed Jihad means they will never, ever be." Not so. Please reread my last posts about the "struggle for the soul of Islam."
On slavery: Did you read the entirety of the Wikipedia article, including the sections on Modern Interpretations and Slavery in the Contemporary Muslim World? Clearly Islamic views on slavery evolved in a liberal direction in modern times. But there is now a radical extremist reaction, which is of course part of the struggle for the soul of Islam too. Even the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam of the Organization of Islamic States (a document which is a Shari'a based version of human rights) prohibits slavery. Article 11(a) states "Human beings are born free, and no one has the right to enslave, humiliate, oppress or exploit them, and there can be no subjugation but to God the Most-High." For the full document see:
As for Christians and slaves, not so fast. Southern justifications for slavery invoked sources in the Western tradition, from Aristotle onward, to justify chattel slavery. And lest we forget, how long ago did these here great United States practice apartheid?
On sex slavery: We in the United States would do well to look in the mirror. For example, campus rape and the pornography industry anyone?
On the pro-Muslim websites: You cite and quote a salafist website, which of course can be expected to express these sorts of views. No-one denies this. Again, such radical extremist views are all part of the struggle for the soul of Islam. Here is information about the founder and his website:
Interestingly he is banned in Saudi Arabia.
Now, why don't you Google Islamic reform movements and see what you find?
And have you read the book I recommended several times? Here it is again. Please read it. Perhaps then your views would then be less one-sided and more balanced because you would have a broader perspective. (You might even learn what a surah is and how it is redundant to talk about the Qur'an_and_surahs as if they were somehow different. They are not; surahs are chapters in the Qur'an):
When you are ready, and when you have learned what else you need to learn about Islam and about those opposing radical Islamic extremism and are ready to have a serious conversation about what we need to do to combat the threat we face from radical Islam, we can talk again. Until then, I fear that further exchanges on this subject are a waste of time for both of us.
- January 8, 2016 at 5:38 PM
P.S. Jus:
This is a concise and, I believe, honest overview of some critical points that I found on the first page of my own Google search of "Islamic reform movements." I just hope that it is not too late to reverse the radical extremist juggernaut unleashed by stupid Western historical meddling and by ideological liberals on the one hand and ideological Islamophobes on the other:
Some of us are doing what we can. And I would invite you and others to get engaged in the real battle for hearts and minds instead of frequenting Islamophobic hate-blogs full of distortion that just play into the hands of the radicals, who are consequently growing in power. Stop messing about and get on with the real task to which we are called. But you will first have to learn to respect Islam and Muslims as our Church teaches us to do.
- January 8, 2016 at 6:11 PM
Should the Spanish have 'respected Aztec blood religions and the Pagans of Mexico' rather than overthrown them, knocked down their altars, and wiped out their bloody sacrifices?
I respect human beings who happen to be Muslim. How exactly am I to 'respect' Islam?
- January 9, 2016 at 12:41 AM
You could start by taking seriously the following statement of the Church in Nostra Aetate Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions:
"3. The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.
Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom."
The "mutual understanding" bit challenges you (and all of us) to learn as much as we can about Islam. That is one main reason I decided to offer a course entitled "Islamic Law in Comparative Perspective" four years ago. Prior to that I had included an Islamic Law module in my Comparative Law course using El Fadl's book "The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists" (2007), which Father Kavanaugh mentions earlier in this thread, as well as various photocopied materials:
In the full course, however, we use the following:
Raj, Bhala, Understanding Islamic Law (Shari'a) (2013; 2d. ed. 2016, forthcoming)
Mustafa Akyöl, Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (2011, with 2013 Epilogue)
I recommended earlier that you read the second book.
I am currently reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book "Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now" (2015) (she wrote the article I linked yesterday):
I have read selected chapters so far. Based on what I have read, I would say that the book is a useful introduction to those parts of the Shari'a that need reforming but that the author lacks nuance in her explanations and consequently the book appears somewhat shallow (although the ant-Islamic crowd will love her sweeping generalizations).
I also want to read El Fadl's recent book on the Shari'a, which addresses how to reform the Shar'ia using resources within the Islamic tradition itself and which promises to be the most scholarly and robust book of all on this topic:
And then, of course, there is Rabbi Sack's marvelous "Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence" (2015) that Father Kavanaugh and I are planning to use in one or more book discussions later this spring:
So, if you really want to become informed, there is plenty to read other than the distorted one-sided rabble rousing papulum of people like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller. And if you were living in this area I would suggest that you attend the Mercer series of four talks on Islam and Muslims this spring (beginning next Thursday, January 19):
- January 9, 2016 at 3:58 PM
P.S. Sorry; temporal confusion. The first Mercer event is next Thursday, January 21, not January 19.
- January 9, 2016 at 8:30 PM
PP.S. More temporal confusion – Raj Bhala's book was published in 2011, not 2013:
- January 10, 2016 at 5:14 AM