Its not often that I am lucky enough to get the opportunity to catch some of R4’s Woman’s Hour but today was one of those days when the chance came my way and I leapt at it. As with every other occasion it seems I, by chance, managed to tune in just as they were talking about converts to Islam. Usually it is about the joys of conversion and just how happy everyone seems. The researchers must have got it wrong this time as the narrative went rapidly off line, the convert, in a book under discussion, going from infidel, to Muslim convert, to suicide bomber.
However there was a rapid rebuttal of any thoughts that Islam might be the trigger for the convert’s terrorism, the author stating that it absolutely had nothing to do with Islam but was a result of the woman’s own psychological problems, Islam does not lead you into terrorism.
The presenter, Jane Garvey, told us that Muslims were sick to death of Islam and terrorism being linked together….it’s all the media’s fault…..Garvey said that ‘it’s so unfair’.
Except it’s not really is it? Islam does have a link to terrorism….but there’s the rub, Muslim campaigners always claim that terrorism and violence are not linked to Islam however that’s not really the problem with Islam in the West. The problem is the innate nature of Islam that is in opposition to everything that a democratic, secular, liberal, western civilisation stands for and it is that ‘extremism’ by comparison to the West’s values that is the problem which Muslims and the BBC don’t want to talk about and divert attention away from by talking of terrorism or violence as if they are the only issues….just look at how the BBC reported the Trojan Horse scandal…the BBC essentially lied about what was going on, downplaying its significance, telling us that it was a hoax, that this was more about racism, Islamophobia and paranoia of non-Muslims than any real threat to society.
The author of the book, Meike Ziervogel, told us that she had considered converting to Islam herself, however it was not for spiritual reasons. She said she found certain aspects of Islam highly attractive at the time, almost mesmerising….the rigid structure, the rituals, the praying 5 times a day, the rules that told you exactly how to live your life. In the end she didn’t convert but as I listened I thought that Islam must be the ideal religion for those on the autistic spectrum needing that rigid structure to their lives in order to cope in a world so full of options.
Whilst fanatically rigid Islam is by far the most suitable for those needing an ‘institutionalised’ way of life many religions could offer similar solace and support almost like a drug to help treat them, taking away the need for free thought and decision making, all that confusing choice and personal responsibility.
Maybe Islam should be available on the NHS. Religion is the opium of the masses after all.
As religion strips away the need to think it puts the power into the hands of the leader’s of the religion which is what makes religion, with its unthinking, often fanatical, battalions on tap, so dangerous. The Church of England had long been the source of much radicalism and terror until it was tamed and became the friendly parish priest doling out tea and sympathy linking the community together. Religions need to be leavened, moderated, to control and rein in the fanaticism.
Islam on the other hand is nowhere near that stage of development, and looks increasingly like it never will flip to the peaceful side. The BBC’s Giles Fraser for one is happy that this is so, and in fact wants the Church to go down a similar path of radicalisation and fundamentalism…presumably he wants a Christian Isis…a Chrisis?
He tells us that…
The Church of England is the longest-running prevent strategy in history. If not from its inception, then certainly from the end of the English civil war, the big idea of the C of E was to prevent radicalisation – precisely the sort of radicalisation that led to religious people butchering each other throughout the 1630s and 40s. Its strategy was to discourage two things: big expansive politically minded theology – the sort of theology that has ambitions to change the world – and religious passion (or “enthusiasm” as it was dismissively described).
And then along comes Islam – and, thankfully, it disrupts this absurd game and refuses to play by the rules. Its practitioners want to talk about God, sex and politics rather than mortgages, school places and the latest Boden catalogue. And good for them.
Yes, good for them….that’s precisley what we need…more radicalisation… ‘the sort of radicalisation that led to religious people butchering each other throughout the 1630s and 40s.’ Good for them.
Fraser likes ‘non-violent extremism’ and doesn’t appreciate Cameron’s approach to it….
Attacking it is simply an attack on thinking big, thinking differently and arguing passionately. It comes from a now defunct C of E mindset (now defunct even within the C of E, thank God) that assumes it’s the job of religious people to be pastorally nice, softly spoken and uncontroversial. But that’s not Jesus. And like him, I believe in pulling the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly. And I believe there is an authority greater than yours – one I would obey before I would obey the laws of this land. And if that makes me a dangerous extremist, Mr Cameron, then you probably ought to come over to south London and arrest me now.
Trouble is ‘non-violent extremism’ is the source of the ideology that spawns the violence that is intended to impose that ‘non-violent’ extremist ideology on those who don’t agree with it….as he admits….
Of course, the reason the authorities are often nervous of religious anarchy is precisely because of the enormous power that it can evoke, for good and ill. Hence the need for our episcopal prefects to behave as the state’s health and safety officers in matters of religion.
And here’s where Giles disagrees with himself..declaring that diverse and turbulent religions need tanks on the streets and state control of religion, ala Cameron?, to keep the peace between the communities…..who’d have thought?….direct from Kazakhstan and Giles Fraser’s brain…
There’s also an increasing anxiety that a less repressive approach to religion might open the door to radicalisation. So only state-authorised religions are allowed here. Missionaries are regulated. Religious political parties are banned. And the president of Kazakhstan, an old-style ex-Soviet politician – who received a comedy 97.75% of the vote at his re-re-re-election back in April – presides over this gathering of well-meaning religious flannel.
And maybe they are right to do all this. For Kazakhstan has, within its own set limits, developed a properly deserved reputation for religious toleration. …..his is a place of genuine diversity, where different faiths rub along remarkably well. Despite all the off-putting pomposity of the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, it’s not a totally unrealistic reflection of how things are here. Maybe there is something for that tank to protect.
Great that the BBC employs a wannabe religious extremist who wants to turn the Church fundamentalist and radicalise it by injecting some ‘anarchic religious energy’ into it. Just what we need, yet another set of religious fanatics, this time presumably wanting to live by their fundamentalist religious beliefs and presumably also therefore opposing those other religions that attack and undermine Christianity…such as Islam….a recipe for disaster and religious wars on a grander scale than we have already?
Christianity…the new Religion of Peace?
Oddly enough, I too caught some of this article.
Interestingly, Ms Ziervogel’s account might almost have been mistaken for a re-telling of the story of the notorious Jonestown religious cult, where ultimately several hundred adherents were nudged into suicide or were simply murdered. Other cult-comparisons also come to mind (notably the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh, which ended in the Waco siege), but this one had, perhaps, the most dramatic outocme.
Her story of the seductive attractions of an authoritarian religious cult which called for total submission on the part of its adherents was near-identical to the way followers of Jim Jones were sucked in to a rejection of the real world and ultimately self-immolation for a lunatic cause.
As I recall, no-one at the time claimed that the cult in question was not responsible for the fate of its members, so why should such an obviously bizarre response to Ms Ziervogel be given credence in this case?
A lunatic death-cult is a lunatic death-cult, whatever its size, and however far it has penetrated into our modern society. Especially if, unlike Jim Jones’ personality cult, the teachings of IS are recognisably aligned with ‘mainstream’ Islam, as practised throughout our country by some 3-4% of our population.
Christianity has always been the religion of peace. The barbarism of Islam are rapidly convincing people that the Crusades were not aggressive wars, rather attempting to keep the Muslim menace in check. Crusades receive endless amounts of flak for “Christian aggression,” yet ruthless Muslim expansion across North Africa, Iberia, the Middle East and south-eastern Europe is never questioned. Unbelievers were either executed or, if they were lucky, forced to pay an infidel tax. How tolerant and peaceful!
I won’t sit here and deny Christianity hasn’t had its share of crackpots taking things to extremes. A Christian extremist, however, seems equal to a Muslim moderate. Why can’t these numbskull liberals realise that Islam actively promotes western destruction. Followers of Islam are called to war against unbelievers.
Then again, I suppose it fits the liberal narrative. Don’t agree with a liberal? You must be silenced. Just like Muslims. I guess they aren’t so different after all.
Another good article by Alan. Yes Xavier support much of what you say and in particular, the fact the aim of Islam is for the destruction of the West-and they are dangerously close to completeing their task. It would appear from the absolute chaos being created by the vast hordes currently coming across the Med that, the European Bureaucrats & Politicians are frozen into immobility, to the point of being utter ly oblivious to the monumental danger knocking on their doors. I have mentioned this before that, as the waters of discontent bubble away so will civil unrest begin to rise.
Xavier writes: “Christianity has always been the religion of peace.”
A little early in the day for rib-cracking jokes, isn’t it?
Just because Giles is an imbecile and the BBC is displaying outrageous bias by constantly promoting his nonsense, there’s no call to re-write history. That makes us as bad as them.
Perhaps Mr. Cooper could enlighten to what he thinks is so galling about Christianity instead of trying to be funny.
Don’t be so ridiculous. Christianity has a fine history of persecution and intolerance. There may well be mitigating factors and undoubtedly it has changed but your original statement was ahistorial whitewashing.
What is the point of descending to the intellectual level of the BBC and then complaining about its behaviour?
Oh, so you can’t name any examples. Here I was thinking you were about to make a valid point.
Xavier…please, you’re about to be slaughtered. A few examples:
30 years War (17th C) approx 6 million dead
French Wars of Religion (16th C) approx 3 million dead
Spanish Inquisition
…and that’s just Western Europe!
Quite!
Yes but those examples are the politics of Christianity not the doctrine. Christ taught peace, a Christian follows Christ’s teaching, the Christian Churches are political institutions that use Christ’s teachings more or less as a banner, we cannot blame the wars, tortures, burnings at the stake, etc. on Christ & his teachings. Contrast this to Islam, the doctrine as well as the politics do not teach absolute peace. There is a big difference I think.
It’s a distinction without a difference.
Some Muslims like to claim (as, indeed, does our Prime Minister) that Islam is a religion of peace and that it is only those who pervert its message that kill.
I’m sure some Christians would make the same claim about the murder of the Protestant Martyrs in the 16th Century.
If Christians are unwilling to accept responsibility for the evil done in the name of their faith then are in a poor position to start complaining about anyone else’s behaviour.
I am about as far from being an apologist for Islam as you could get but there are no excuses for hypocrisy.
It is a huge difference that you refuse to acknowledge. Why should modern Christians apologise for things done in the past in their warped, perverted view of Christianity that was used to gain power, status and wealth?
Modern Muslims should apologise for past an present atrocities that Islamic doctrine clearly calls for: the extermination of unbelievers.
So you pick a piddling three examples to prove your point. Quite a poor attempt, but let’s examine these examples more closely with the ever-useful Wikipedia.
Thirty Years War – Initially a war between Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmenting Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers of Europe.
The war was between Christians predominantly in Germany. Many other factors contributed to the outbreak of war, including the Spanish possession of the Netherlands, France feeling threatened by Hapsburg lands and Nordics wanting more control over the Baltic. The conflict between Catholics, Protestants and Lutherans was largely political in nature (as were most conflicts) and simply boiled down to who possessed the most power in the region. Not matters of faith or murdering in the name of God.
The French wars of Religion were little more than civil infighting between French aristocratic houses each receiving foreign support. These wars, I concede, were religious in nature, boiling down to power hungry monarchs insisting THEIR brand of Christianity was the right one and attempts had to be made to maintain the monarchy’s authority. I feel this is a good point to direct you to NCBBC’s post. Christian doctrine does not preach eliminating unbelievers and bringing their heads on a pike. The majority of religious conflicts can be summed up as power hungry monarchs desperately using religion as a veil to enhance their power.
The Spanish Inquisition is the typical “aha, gotcha!” answer. It loses most credibility however, when it is learned that some American states execute more people than the Inquisition did. Once again, a whole range of reasons for the Inquisition exist:
“Various motives have been proposed for the monarchs’ decision to found the Inquisition such as increasing political authority, weakening opposition, suppressing conversos, profiting from confiscation of the property of convicted heretics, reducing social tensions, and protecting the kingdom from the danger of a fifth column”
Nothing about killing in the name of God or Jesus as you will see.
I am on a mobile device so apologise for the shortness of response, though needless to say your response was predictable and utterly unconvincing. Please provide examples of actual murder in the name of God and Jesus, like Muslims murder in the name of Allah.
It takes a very special mind to dismiss the Thirty Years War or the Spanish Inquisition as ‘piddling examples’ and then to pretend that those who tortured and burned didn’t do so ‘in God’s name’.
I have neither the time nor the patience to argue with such foolishness.
I just told you the reasons why people were “tortured and burned” and the majority of the time it wasn’t because of God. Even if it were because of God, it is just an excuse for violence because Jesus advocated peace. You just ignored everything in the post, stuck your fingers in your ears and said “no religion still did it”. Boring.
…glad you agree they prove the point though. Thanks. I am not on a mobile device but believe brevity is a virtue 🙂
The Cathars ( heretics in the eyes of the Church) were ruthlessly suppressed and at Monsegur in 1244 the remaining ones murdered because they would not recant and become orthodox Catholics.
A clear example of religious murder I feel.
Oh yes the Cathars medieval hippies with flowers in their hair
Firstly they weren’t Christians but some sort of bizarre and unpleasant gnostic/dualist cult that started in Zoroastrian Persia ( the assassins had similar roots)
Secondly they weren’t a peasant movement but very much a belief embraced by they aristocracy due to the unlimited licence it gave them
Thirdly they instigated the violence in France it was only after that the pope declared a crusade against them
The Hospitalers refused to take part and the Templers only after considerable internal debate and a good deal of pressure from the pope
Interestingly Philip IV’s right hand man Guillaume de Nogaret
was most likely a Cathar
For those that don’t know (ie people that have got their history from the BBC) Cathars believed that the material world and specifically humanity was intrinsically evil and should be brought to an end . So for them the only sin was procreation
Every thing else up to including murder and child rape was permissible (If nothing is true all things are permissible) and practised. It is hard to see how the pope could have not intervened
It was a true ‘do as thou wilt philosophy’ – no wonder the liberal inquisition love them so much.
Islam is root and branch an aggressive , intolerant and violent cult. Muslims only respond to what is required of them from the canonical texts of Islam.
The opposite is true for Christianity. Christianity is a peaceful religion, as Jesus was peaceful. That does not mean that Chrsitianity is pacifist, like Buddhism. Were it so, most of the ills and evil of the Roman era and the Dark ages, would still be with us. These ills were removed not by fiat but buychanging the nature of European man.
Most of the wars of religion were about looting the churches one or other. Kings and the nobility profited from the loot.
Islam was, undoubtedly, spread by the sword and is implicated in a very great deal of the trouble in the world today. One might go further but for the laws passed by the Blair junta…
But to pretend that Christianity has no history of compulsion, persecution, burnings and torture is a grotesque distortion of reality.
Anyone who tries to pretend otherwise is either profoundly ignorant or performing some very entertaining moral contortions.
Your ‘you were barstewards several hundred years ago so you can’t bang on about Muslims now’ argument, is bollocks. We are referring to now, not then. Muslims murdered then, and now, on an industrial scale. Christians, unless the BBC has been remiss in reporting it, (which they would-with glee) don’t. And while I’m at it, Christianity has done far, far more good than any evil dredged up by aggressive secularists keen to do down the religion at every opportunity.
I suggest you buy a pair of glasses. Specsavers is meant to be quite good.
The OP was lying about Christianity’s history and I corrected him.
That said, the desperate attempts to rewrite history by Christian apologists is starting to look very BBC-like. It puts you in a very curious moral position.
I think Giles Fraser is a dangerous and treacherous plotter who is content to undermine both the country and Christian faith. Spineless but mischievous exhibitionists like Giles are cravenly making all sorts of excuses for Islamic fascism in an attempt to mask their repulsive cowardice.
The Marxist left have infiltrated the following institutions in England:
CoE
Education
Media
NHS
Politics
Third Sector (charity)
Sport and culture
The only area they have yet to infiltrate fully is the armed forces.
The only area they have yet to infiltrate fully is the armed forces.
That is because membership of the armed forces carries the danger of getting shot at, and even killed.
Lefties dont like it up ’em.
Having witnessed Fraser in action several times on QT, I have been struck by how essentially dense he is. His arguments never hold water and he usually resorts to bluster and empty rhetoric to pull in cheap applause from the audience.
The acceptable face of the C of E as far as the BBC is concerned.
It always bear rehearsal.
Not all muslims are terrorists, but at present most terrorists are muslims. Seeking seemingly to impose their view on life on others by use of arms. That they seem to seek imposition of Sharia law to a greater or lesser extent if they succeed may be a hint of a relationship between terrorism and Islam.
Let’s not forget that, when muslims use terminology such as “terrorism”, “violence”, “war”, “jihad”, “blasphemy”, “defamation” and “suicide”, their meanings bear no relation to those of non-muslims.
When a muslim says islam has nothing to do with terrorism, or with violence, that is true, according to the very specific muslim definition of “terrorism” and of “violence”. In sharia, as defined by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, it is impossible for a muslim to be a terrorist.
Insofar as “violent” is a pejorative term, being “violent”, too, is outside the capabilities of any true muslim. Slitting the throat of any Jew, “Crusader”, or Hindu is simply routine.
As for Fraser, he reminds me of those pretend intellectuals who are absolutely thrilled by (appropriately enough) vicarious violence. The October Revolution in Russia was full of them. It devoured them, eventually.
It’s not Woman’s Hour, it’s Wimmin’s Hour.
It most certainly is!
Normally I`m the first one to stick the boot into the archdunce Giles Fraser who is a parody of a biblically-based prelate…a vacuous, dense BBC parody of a priest in fact.
But I don`t see where-if indeed-he says that “Jesus was a jihadist”…or, based on what the quotes say-we can safely deduce that he`s saying that.
If he did-I`d be raging with bible quotes to show he`s not only a moron…but Satans Little Helper in a literal sense(good as).
Reasons are that such a “Jesus is the slave of Allah” is exactly what a jihadist would say….but Fraser only seems to be pathetically trying to ingratiate himself as ever with Islam…but seems not to say that Jesus is any kind of Muslim role model-a Christian would wipe the floor with that as a notion, but it`s not the only sin for which there`s no forgiveness(in Jesus own words)…implying that what is of God is satanic-and vice versa.
Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is that charge-and Fraser isn`t saying that, as a far as I can see.
He`s just a star sucking prat…not evil here, just thick.
If I`m wrong, do tell me.
If you took a literal reading of the Old Testament, whose prophets Jesus didn’t come to overthrow but to fulfil remember, you could probably come to a view that violence was encouraged in some circumstances. The difference is that unlike the Koran the Bible isn’t pitched as a rigid instruction manual but as a story and inspiration. This is why radical interpretations of the Koran are more dangerous and why Giles calling for more radicalism within Christianity and extending this across all religions as a positive doesn’t hold up.
If you just look at the gospels for inspiration the messages are to love everyone unconditionally (especially the un-loveable) and to stand up and be counted in pursuit of that, no matter what the personal cost. It’s always struck me this is extremely hard to reconcile with a modern Conservative message (which might well be because it’s bollocks from a Humanist perspective). I you look at a map of Anglicanism and Dissentors (i.e. “radicals”) in the UK from the 17th century there’s a spectacular similarity to the Conservative/Labour split of the country today.
I suspect that whether deliberately or not Giles is trying to make a political left wing point.