Title - Ye must be born all over again

Thanksgiving table centrepiece - arranged by Cynthia

Thanks for nature's bounty - arranged by Cynthia's dad

I suspect that most of us are baffled by the mob demonstrations in the Middle East, responding—at least so we're told—to a You Tube amateur film ridiculing the prophet Muhammad. It's hard to imagine similar demonstrations by Christians in Ottawa, Washington or London in response to an unfavourable depiction of Christ in, say, China or Malaysia. And because we can't imagine the one, we are flummoxed by the other.

            A group of us talked briefly about this a few days ago and I suggested that there must be a continuous, hot resentment brewing just below the surface, waiting for a  trigger that will allow the mix to boil over. It's happened in the Middle East and North Africa before—remember The Satanic Verses?

           Most certainly, there are forces waiting also for the opportunity to foment mob rage, specifically against the United States; the USA was no more implicated in the production of this latest insult than was Iceland but the irrelevance of that fact was successfully propagandized out of the equation by whatever forces were fanning these latest flames, apparently.

            It's unfortunate. The degree to which North Americans equate terrorism with Islam is bound to escalate as a result of these demonstrations; it's already a big problem, particularly for Muslims who have settled in North America and become productive, civic-minded Canadians and Americans. They can protest all they want that the violence is not sanctioned by their faith and is certainly not endorsed by Muslims who have immigrated in order to live a better, safer life in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect for human rights. But see one terrorist in a head covering and human nature easily generalizes it to all people wearing similar symbolic clothing.

            The history of civilization as we know it has demonstrated over and over again that human rights progress can be easily undone by a very few events. One has only to recall the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Towers in New York to realize how much freedom of movement and right to privacy have been compromised as a consequence. How much more may Muslim Canadians feel the tightening noose as a result of the current upheavals?

            I've recently kept informal track of the web comments generated by news articles on the current anti-American violence in the Middle East, North Africa, the Philippines and Malaysia. It's not a true test of general opinion, but the anti-Muslim comments outnumber the tolerant comments about 5 – 1. You might well say that the internet attracts bigots, and that's likely mostly true, but the “bigots” writing these vitriolic comments are also walking our streets, waiting—as it were—for the coalescing of a retaliatory mob through which their hatred can be released on the nearest representatives of that which they hate and fear. In North America, that happens to be a highly visible minority.

            Working in Europe in the '80s, we had occasion to spend time in both Irelands and to talk to people there about the “troubles,” which were going full force. “North Americans don't get what's going on here,” they told us. “This is not a Catholic/Protestant conflict at all, it's a pro and anti-colonialism struggle! The independence people—the native Irish—just happen to be mostly Catholic and the pro-Britain faction just happen to be mostly Protestant. Solve the colonialism question and the two religious persuasions will get along just fine!”

            To apply this paradigm to the Middle East holus-bolus might be oversimplifying it; I'm no expert on all the details, but considering that the West has recently sent armies and/or lethal weaponry to enforce its will in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait and Libya, might it not be reasonable to suggest that there could be deep anti-colonialist resentment driving the outbreaks—and with good reason? It's that curious kind of a world, after all, in which it's perfectly logical that Israel should have nuclear weapons and massive military power to defend itself, while for Iran to possess these capabilities is considered unthinkable.

            Inequality always breeds resentment and factionalism; that's a literal truism by now. Nations that feel equal to their neighbours, and are respected for that fact, don't produce terrorism aimed at these same neighbours. (Local vandalism is a form of domestic terrorism, also identifiable as a response to perceived inequality; it works at all levels.) President Obama seemed to get this at the beginning of his first term when he made some noises to indicate that we might have precipitated some of the resentment that led to 9/11; he very soon learned that American presidents don't admit to error and don't apologize . . . ever.

            John 3:1-21 is a narrative about Jesus' encounter with the pharisee, Nicodemus. At the core of the story is the phrase that has become the centrepiece for the “born again” focus in North American Christianity: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again (NIV).” Using metaphors of wind, darkness and light, Jesus tries to explain to Nicodemus that he can't possibly grasp what the Kingdom of God is about until he commits to starting over, this time seeing the world through the “spirit” as opposed to the “flesh.”

            But this proves to be yet another metaphor that Nicodemus has trouble following.

            Can nations be “born again?” Can the Israeli/Palestinian conflict be resolved unless the principals (and their principles) are “born again?”

            It seems unlikely.

A World Without Islam - Graham E. Fuller - a review.

teacher's desk

Fuller, Graham E. A World Without Islam. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010



The central thesis of Fuller’s book is that even if Mohammed had never been born, or if the Islamic religion had never taken hold, the tensions in the Middle East would be very similar to what we see today. He refers a number of times to the Islamisization of the conflicts in the Middle East. More and more, the rhetoric of democracy against Islam is used to provide context for the wars, and more and more, the public is being encouraged to see Western intervention in the Middle East as a defense of Western democracy against a brutal, dangerous Islam.


Fuller begins by tracing the history that led to the current tensions in the Middle East. Many readers will find chapters like “The Third Rome and Russia: Russia inherits the Orthodox Legacy” or “Colonialism, Nationalism, Islam, and the Independence struggle” challenging; there are whole blocks of world history that we in the West typically didn’t even touch on in school. He makes a reasonable case for asserting that what we have often seen as religious wars were really geopolitical conflicts, sometimes taking on the shape of religious disputes because the combatants were of different religious persuasions. Fuller maintains that religion doesn’t start wars, but can exacerbate tensions and contribute to the context of disputes, can be harnessed as a means of diverting attention from the real motives of the combatants.


Religion will always be invoked wherever it can to galvanize the public and to justify major campaigns, battles, and wars, especially in monotheistic cultures. But the causes, campaigns, battles and wars are not about religion. Take away the religion, and there are still causes, campaigns, battles and wars (p.286).


Fuller opens the question of how terrorism is defined, viewed and responded to in the west. His argument that Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of terrorism in exactly the same way as 9/11 was, is persuasive. The extreme escalation of terrorism via suicide bomber attacks on the symbols of power is, however, a recent development and in the West, the opinion that it is enabled by Islamic religious beliefs is widespread. Terrorism is the way in which a weaker combatant wages war against a stronger. Having no military force to match the one considered an oppressor, the weaker one resorts to terror, the infliction of fear through the mechanism of surreptitious sabotage. Not unlike Robin Hood. Fuller doesn’t excuse terrorism by any means, but his contention that we need to define terrorism in a global manner and apply it evenly to all occasions of dispute is timely.


Insurgency may be “illegal,” but it is the essence of human response to unjust conditions (p. 292).”


Fuller agrees with an opinion I’ve expressed on numerous occasions: 9/11 should have been treated as a criminal act rather than an act of war, as George W. Bush declared it to be shortly after the event.


Efforts to identify and stymie terrorist acts must be carried out through intelligence and police work; capture of terrorists should be the prerogative of international organizations or local countries, and not by the United States operating on an illegal extraterritorial extension of its sovereign rights to capture and assassinate individuals at will (p. 301).


It’s hardly necessary to add that Fuller sees the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and the closure of foreign military bases to be the first necessary steps in arriving at eventual peace in the Middle East. He considers the Israeli expansion and its displacement of Palestinians to be the most irritating barb in East/West relations, and advocates for the reversal of this expansion. Until this happens, the Arab/Muslim world will always be in a posture of defense against outside aggression, and it won’t be a consequence of religion, but of geography, politics and the right to defend oneself and one’s community against foreign aggression.


I remember a conversation with a man in Belfast during a tense period of “the troubles.” He said—in effect—that the Western media completely misunderstood the conflict in Ireland as being a Protestant-Catholic feud. He went on to say that it hinged completely on nationalist/loyalist grounds and had no reference to religious differences. In Northern Ireland, as in the Middle East, religion was used to further ends of both British loyalist and Irish nationalist’s goals.


That the Canadian and American governments should be putting a beneficial spin on the news of their activities in Afghanistan is understandable; much money and many lives have been invested in what is most certainly going to prove itself to have been a fool’s errand. There is no military solution to terrorism; it’s foundations must be found and addressed. The average Canadian, I observe, has a very poor grasp of the foundations of the Middle East conflicts and deals in platitudes, half-truths and herd wisdom. It’s time we all read and studied Fuller’s book.

Bush gets it wrong - again

"WASHINGTON, July 27 — The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years."

The above article from today's New York Times may make sense to someone. Not to me. The US is basically setting out to arm the whole Middle East in order to counter threats from Iran. It's like a principal of a school handing out pistols to students so they can protect themselves from bullies, and then allaying the teachers' concerns about their safety by giving them kalashnikovs! Hopefully then the principal will feel safer in his office assuming that the "good students" and the teachers together will deal with any aggression on the playground and in the classrooms, and he'll be much safer in his office. Never mind that it cost the entire library and textbook budget to make it happen!

If you disapprove of this action, I suggest that you open the link below(you may have to copy and paste it into the URL window), identify yourself with your email address and write to the US State Department something like: "I strongly oppose the proposed multi-billion dollar sale of arms to the Middle East. Such an action will only serve to encourage another arms race and will raise tensions in the area. Please reconsider."

http://contact-us.state.gov/cgi-bin/state.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php?p_
sid=ZXPbGLHi&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9Jn
Bfcm93X2NudD0xMTEmcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYX
JjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0x