Today I read Rod Dreher <a href=”http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/11/peter-maurin-and-the-culture-o.html”>comments</a> on Freddie de Boer’s <a href=”http://lhote.blogspot.com/2008/11/economic-conservatism-and-american.html”>piece about conservatism and the American Dream.</a>  Immediately I was reminded of a conversation my wife and I had about the infrastructure of communities, and how we had built away our sense of neighborhood in America, and replaced it with a consumer culture ever-wired together by new technologies, which have both the power to congregate us and disband us depending on how we use them.

Dreher writes:
<blockquote>What Freddie’s post brings to mind is how our permissive, hedonistic culture hurts the poor and the working class the most. You don’t have to believe in God to understand social psychology, and how important it is for people who don’t have much of anything to live by a code that encourages thrift, modesty and self-restraint — because they have so very much to lose if they don’t. We have created a society in which it’s hard for people to develop the habits of the heart that help them achieve — well, if you don’t like the word <em>goodness</em>, how about <em>health</em>, or <em>sustainability</em>? Put another way, the way we’re living, and the culture of consumption we’ve created, both are unsustainable, because they depend on a distortion of human nature. As we are learning, and shall learn.</blockquote>

The more I read Dreher’s work on “Crunchy Conservatives”, the more I like what I see.  My wife and I have been mulling over this concept of the “American Dream” and how out of control it’s gotten.  The notion of an “ownership society” is all well and good, but when it becomes a “finance your boat and your five flat-screen TV’s with the future value of your home that you haven’t even paid off yet” society, then I think obviously things have gotten a bit out of hand.

We have become a nation without restraint, fed at the trough of greed and materialism, told we are worthless unless we are all CEO’s, unless we are all driving the best cars and watching our nightly shows on the biggest, flattest , most colorful screens available.  We are taught to emulate pop-stars and business executives rather than poets and heroes–unless, of course, those poets are rappers, or those heroes are only heroes of the Will Smith variety–fictional and easily categorized.

We have lost our sense of community and locality, and replaced it with a need to buy more, be more, and in a sense strive to transcend our humanity through artificial gains, through that promise of an American Dream which has grown ever shallower in the face of unbridled consumerism.

In society there are levels of structural units, building blocks, beginning first with the individual and ending up with the Federal Government or the National cultural scene (as in Hollywood, cable tv, etc.)  In between these stages are many smaller structures.  Perhaps most importantly we have the family unit.  Then there is the extended family; the neighborhood; the section of town; the town; the county; the State; the region; and so on into ever expanding levels of society.  In a global world, the scope becomes truly vast.

What has happened, first with the advent of the interstate system, and the build up of the suburbs, and now with the internet and mass communication, is a sort of systemic disassociation from the smaller structural pieces–family, neighborhood, locality.

We now prefer to listen to national hits on our radios when, at least in my home town, there are easily a dozen very talented bands and as many more solo musicians far more interesting and unique.  I can’t find a station that plays a single of their songs.  We skip local theatre in favor of big action movies, and could name fifty movie stars before we could conjure up a single local actor.

We ignore local politics in favor of the big, flashy national elections, even though in an ideal world, the election of our mayor or sheriff would have at least as much of a personal impact on our daily lives as the election of our next President.

What all of this leads to is a culture of easy promises which manifests into a population overwhelmed with high-interest debt, run-away levels of depression, and rampant materialism.  We trade in tradition and values for the rat-race.  Money, we are told, and fame are surest ways to be successful–and in some sense, it’s very hard to argue with this.  Some measure of financial success is completely necessary.  So is there a balance to strike?

I have the option to work overtime at my job, and make a great deal more money.  When I do this I am able to spend a great deal more, but I’m tired, busy, and a far worse companion.  In a sense, I view this overtime work as a tax increase on my time rather than an income potential.  If I could cut my spending, I wouldn’t have to raise this time tax.  It would no longer be necessary.  If I could live more frugally, I could spend more time pursuing my goals, and hanging out with my family.  But to do this, I can’t borrow endlessly.  I have to cut spending.  Plain and simple.  I have to set limits.

Our culture says otherwise.  The actions of our spend-all Government say otherwise.  The constant barrage of ads and materialist assaults on our sense of self say otherwise.  After 9/11 the salve with which we were supposed to treat our wounded nation was the simple, no-sacrifice act of shopping.  We weren’t asked to go give back to our country.  No indeed, the best way to do this was to go spend our money at Sears and Best Buy.

We no longer sit on our front porch for entertainment, hollering back and forth with the neighbors, or trading stories in our front lawns.  Most people don’t even have a front porch.  We no longer walk to the corner market.  Most people don’t even have a corner market, and the big superstore is too far away or at least it certainly seems too far away in our towns built for cars and not people.

This is what I like about the Crunchy Con movement and the New Urbanist movement, and how I see them becoming entangled.  They both evoke the spirit of neotraditionalism.  I just think change should emerge in a grassroots, community-first way, and that some of the most basic ways I believe we can change this culture of consumption is through an investment in our infrastructure, building cities that are once again friendly to the pedestrian and the neighborhood, rather than commuter islands built for the benefit of the oil and auto and construction industries.  Let’s create communities we can once again be a part of.  That’s real America–and it’s an idea, not a geographic location, or the arbitrary colors red or blue on a map.
There is no easy way to escape a consumer-driven society.  But it’s about time conservatives started talking about it.

UPDATE: Brought to you by George Soros

As anyone familiar with my writing knows, I’m a hawk.  I believe in America as a world power that, when needed, should use its military might to protect the downtrodden, those suffering genocide, or to stop a country harboring terrorists.  I would support an invasion of Iran if all else failed.  However, I do think we need to truly exhaust all resources prior to bomb, bomb, bombing that country. After all, its citizenry is very pro-American.

But I’m not down with Holy War.  I’m not interested in casting out demons or witches, or putting a Pentacostal Evangelical who makes Bush look agnostic at the helm of this government.  It’s crazy, people.

Won’t this play right into the extremists’ hands?  Electing another evangelical, end-times Christian into office while in the midst of two wars in or near the Holy Land?  I don’t imagine that Israeli’s are feeling too comfortable with this choice either, though they may be as nervous about an Obama Presidency.

Personally, I think we’ve reached critical mass with this.  There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with religious people in Government.  It’s just that Palin is so over-the-top religious.  Zealots, even well-meaning ones, are dangerous when put in positions of power.

I am a committed atheist. I subscribe to Christopher Hitchens’ view that ‘God is not great’, though I would not agree with him that anyone who believes in religion ought to be distrusted. A common misunderstanding is that one must be religious in order to recognize the role religion can play in making society a better place in which to live. This is not true.

In a recent article in Standpoint magazine, the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, complains that Christianity’s marginalisation in Britain has created a ‘moral and spiritual vacuum’, and warns radical Islam may fill this void. Nazir-Ali argues the increasing secularization since the 1960s is to blame as religious faith has been replaced by ‘endless self-indulgence’, of which I presume he is making reference to social evils, like the consumer driven society in which we now live.

Nazir-Ali argues Christianity helped create the British identity and values such as freedom, equality, the rule of law, and hospitality, and is still capable of standing for these. Yet he seems unwilling to recognize the failure of the Church of England in providing any form of defence for these values, to help halt the tide of the liberal counter-culture he warns against. To combat a ‘moral and spiritual vacuum’, moral and spiritual leadership is needed, which the Church of England has proved increasingly reluctant to provide in recent years. I would argue this has greatly contributed to the retreat of Christianity in Britain, over society’s addiction to the latest I-phone or widescreen television. Nazir-Ali recognizes the problem - the vacuum, yet he, like most Church leaders is unwilling to acknowledge the Church’s role in enlarging the vacuum, and making it easier for others – notably Islamists, to fill.

The Church of England is emblematic of many in Britain and the world today - in that they consciously endorse relativism. By this I mean they increasingly believe that they have no moral authority over those whom present a challenge to theirs, and society’s prevailing beliefs. Relativism universally prioritizes the oppressor over the victim. For example, in the 1990s the then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey argued no one under 18 should be held in custody, even though it was argued by those with knowledge of the subject that it was often a necessity for the protection of the general public. Yet Carey’s tenure as Archbishop is now perceived as the good old days in contrast to his successor - Rowan Williams.

Williams’ liberal worldview has led him to, among other things, call for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 16, as well as apologising for bringing Christianity to the world. Yet it is his views on Islam which have caused most controversy. Williams has called for Brits to embrace Sharia law by saying its partial adoption into British law is ‘unavoidable’. With reference to al-Qaeda, he argued terrorists often have serious moral goals. Views like these have been typical of the Church’s response to the terrorist threat in Britain. When the head of the Church espouses such views, is it any wonder the secular ‘vacuum’ exists and is growing? It amounts to nothing more than pandering to the threats we face, in the hope that following the liberal, multicultural, relativistic sickness that plagues society, the Church’s reputation will somehow be enhanced, when it is this very sick society which must be cured of its terminal illness.

In Britain, after the London terror attacks, Christian leaders, instead of speaking out in defence of the victims of the atrocities, empathised with the community of the faith which carried out the attacks, and mistakenly denied they were religiously driven. Whilst Church leaders in the US sought to defend the Christian faith against a common enemy post 9/11, the Church of England crumbled after 7/7 when confronted with the terrorist threat. As one critic says, the Church has consistently ‘appeased the forces of secularism’ since. Given this, Nazir-Ali has no right to criticise increasing secularization, because the Church of England has done to little to discourage it.

What Church leaders, like many in society, appear unwilling to accept or believe however, is that the end point of relativism (and the nihilism their appeasement creates) is that the views of their opponents, i.e. Islamic radicals, ultimately begin to appear valuable, and are given equal respect to their own views. Ultimately, it is agreed the opposing views are superior to the prevailing ones, and that our opponents must defeat us, and we have no moral right to do anything about this, as there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’; no ‘true’ and ‘false’.

Clearly my own atheism leads me to reject any form of religious dogmatism. But the Church of England has now become so far removed from doing this, that to hear more dogmatic views on television from Church leaders is the preferable option. Yet their rhetoric need not be dogmatic, as they would be merely representing those citizens who wanted a future where freedom, equality and respect for the rule of law, were protected, the very values Nazir-Ali argues Christianity helped create. To be silent and watch while these established values are slowly eroded would be a fatal mistake. Yet it is this which we see occurring at the present time.

This is what I mean when I say religion can play a role in making society a better place, for both the religious and non-religious. The Church of England can encourage the religious and the rest of society to stand up to extremism by speaking out for what they believe in. Leaders must stand strong in the face of relativism, liberalism and often multiculturalism, and refuse the temptation to play the demagogue. The Church needs courageous leaders who are willing to make a stand and express their beliefs with moral clarity and absolutism. Do this, and the Church would receive far more respect, and the size of the ‘vacuum’ Nazir-Ali rightly warns against would be reduced, as would the likelihood of radical Islam filling the gap. The outcome of which being something Hitchens would certainly argue beneficial.

The Sun, which in Britain is loosely categorised as a national newspaper, last week “exposed” a pole dancer called Yasmin as the daughter of the Muslim cleric and former leader of Hizb ut Tahrir and Al Mujahiroun, Omar Bakri Mohammed.  She doesn’t see much of daddy these days - he’s stuck in Lebanon because the British government won’t let him come back - and anyway they don’t get on.  She’s a single mum who ran out on an arranged marriage, and what with the pole dancing and tattoos, she’s not exactly a stereotypical Muslim, yet she’s apparently fasting, and she doesn’t eat pork.

David T at Harry’s Place cites Yasmin as an example of how…

In a free and pluralist society, an awful lot of people move backwards and forward between different iterations of their identity. One generation is not like the next.

The inference we are supposed to draw is that Muslims in western society (in this context, particularly British society), are quite capable of integration and assimilation into the wider community.  This is what other groups have done down the centuries - is there any reason to suppose that Muslims should be any different?

All of this has implications for the proposition, advanced by various commentators, including Mark Steyn, that Europe is undergoing a process of Islamification driven by demographic change: catastrophically declining birth rates in Western Europe - particularly among the indigenous population, contrasting with much higher birthrates among Muslim communities (many of whom are immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants), and combining to deliver a very rapid demographic shift in favour of a very greatly increased Muslim population.

David T lists three premises which seek to characterise, but largely misrepresent, this theory:

How is this going to happen?

• First of all, the birth rates of Muslims will outstrip those of non-Muslims indefinitely.
• Secondly, all Muslims will demand, and subject themselves to Sharia.
• Thirdly, people will convert to Islam, but nobody will leave Islam.

Each of those premises is dubious.

The first premise is indeed false (or most probably false).  The birthrates in Muslim communities are already falling and will probably match those of the majority community within a couple of generations.  However, that still gives a fair amount of time for fairly rapid growth in the Muslim community as a proportion of the total population.

The second proposition is equally false.  The degree of adherence to Shari’a law is variable within and across Islamic countries - at least insofar as the citizens of these countries have any choice in the matter.

The third proposition is the most interesting and the most significant.  Currently approximately three percent of the British population is Muslim.  Current demographic trends would suggest that this proportion will increase to somewhere between ten and fifteen percent within the next fifty years or so, depending on the impact of additional immigration.  The other unknown factor is what the effect of conversion will be.

Walking through some of the great cities of Northern England, as I do reasonably frequently, it is striking these days not that so many women are wearing hijab, but that so many of the faces under the hijab are white.  For Islam is not an Arab religion, nor is it an Asian religion or a “Black” religion.  Islam is a religion with a global mission and, like Christianity, it assumes a global mandate.  The call to Islam is being heard and accepted by an increasing number of the ethnic majority in British society.

The big questions here are “Why?” and “How strong will this trend become?”.  The why is reasonably straightforward.  There are several reasons why someone might find Islam an attractive proposition as a religion.

Firstly (and most destructively), many on the far left of politics, having discovered that their old socialist gods are made of clay, have discovered political Islamism as an alternative outlet for their totalitarian predilections.  The ironically-named Respect Coalition led by George Galloway MP was founded as a marriage-made-in-Hell between the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party, a bunch of Galloway groupies and another group of Islamists.  Although Respect has recently collapsed (as the SWP control-freaks found riding the tiger of Islamism rather too draining of their revolutionary energy), the ideological convergence has yet to run out of steam.  The (largely unrequited) love affair that many leftists have with Hamas and Hezbollah, and the continuing and alarming rise of anti-Semitism within the mainstream left are both disturbing indications of this.

Secondly, mainstream Christianity in Britain has largely given up the ghost.  The Church of England is largely paralysed by squabbles over gay rights and women bishops.  Other churches are in catastrophic decline.  Meanwhile the mosques are heaving.  Moreover, the government, the political establishment and the media are willing to give Islam an easy ride whereas Christianity, its beliefs and institutions are simply regarded as an easy target.

For example, back in 2005 the BBC televised a performance of Jerry Springer - The Opera, a comedy show which included, among other things, a representation of Jesus in a nappy.   Christian activists in the UK rarely get outraged about anything, but in this case the result was pandemonium, driven not least by the suspicion that if it had been Mohammed in a nappy then the Jerry Springer Opera would have got nowhere near a television screen, or indeed a stage. Compare and contrast the uproar among the so-called liberal elites about the publication of certain Danish cartoons…

Sooner or later, the logic of this situation will begin to sink in.  Muslims get some respect for their beliefs (even if this respect derives to no small extent from fear).  Christians get none and therefore regularly get a kicking - in fact sometimes they get the kicking which would otherwise be given to Muslims - the gay police association produced a pamphlet denouncing religious hate crimes against gay people.  The booklet had a picture of the Bible on the cover.  What happens when those of a traditional frame of mind see Muslims articulating their beliefs and worldview (more or less), and getting respect for it, while the Christian churches spend all their time in pointless handwringing and getting a regular pasting for their pains?  Perhaps some of those pretty parish churches in the shires will be mosques in a few decades time.

Thirdly, we live in a time of unprecedented social breakdown.  The family as an institution is in real trouble.  In some council housing estates fathers are an endangered species.  Many young people are rootless, without hope or prospects, without direction or even much of an education.  Islam offers a structure to life, a goal for the future, membership in an extended family and community.  Particularly when so much of what passes for Christianity seems to have lost the plot, would it really be a surprise to see these people turn to Islam as a solution in their lives?

The fourth part of “Why?” addresses the second question.  How strong will this trend become?  We can’t at this stage know.  Western societies generally have lost their sense of direction.  There is no longer much of a sense that we believe in the superiority or even of the worth of the liberal democracies for which our grandparents’ generation had to shed blood.  We won’t stand up for freedom and human rights abroad.  When our governments try to free an ancient and noble people from an appalling dictatorship, millions of numbskulls take to the streets to chant “Not in my name!”  The protagonists of the culture wars have sought to erase all memory of what our societies stand for - and in its place all we have is a blank page - tabula rasa - anything goes.  The point is that the page can’t remain blank forever.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  If we no longer know what we are for, then somebody else will step in who does.

The only question is when.  What will the tipping point be?  What will be the trigger?  A major environmental disaster?  Another war?  A collapse of the global financial system perhaps…

CALIFORNIA - A moment before beginning his dinner, Masab, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, glances at the friend who has accompanied him to the restaurant where we met. They whisper a few words and then say grace, thanking God and Jesus for putting food on their plates.

It takes a few seconds to digest this sight: The son of a Hamas MP who is also the most popular figure in that extremist Islamic organization in the West Bank, a young man who assisted his father for years in his political activities, has become a rank-and-file Christian. A few seconds later, he is savoring his meal, explaining that he hasn’t been eating much recently because of financial problems. During the past week he has been living with the friend, a Christian, of course, whom he met at church. “Without him,” he says, “I would have become homeless.”

The younger Yousef is well aware of the implications of this interview, and how it will likely offend his family, as well as of the slim chance that he will be able to return to Ramallah one day. But apparently he is on a crusade of his own. “I know that I’m endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he’ll understand this and that God will give him and my family the patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity. Maybe one day I’ll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah together with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God.”

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“I’m now called Joseph,” he says at the outset. A few seconds earlier he had received me with greetings in Arabic: “Ahalan wasahalan. I’m very excited that you’re here,” he said, switching to a few words in Hebrew: “Shalom, ma nishma [What's up]?” he laughed.

We met for the first time about four years ago, outside the military prison at the Ofer Camp, only about half a kilometer from the family home in the town of Bitunia, near Ramallah. His father, not a member of parliament at the time, was one of the founders of Hamas in the West Bank and one of the prisoners’ leaders; he was supposed to be released after several years’ imprisonment for membership in the organization. In order to arrange an interview with Sheikh Hassan Yousef (Abu Masab), I had to speak to his eldest son, Masab, who was expected to take an active part in running his father’s political affairs in the future. When I saw him in the prison parking lot I was surprised by his unusual appearance, which deviated from the dress code expected of relatives of senior Hamas leaders. Without a beard or even a goatee, he sported a Western haircut, jeans and a motorcyclist’s leather jacket. But the media uproar that accompanied his father’s appearance made me forget his “improper” appearance.

Since then, the young man has hardly changed. He is 30 years old and has lost several kilos (”because I don’t eat much”), his hair is short, he is suntanned and looks like just another young Israeli in California. Most of the interview is conducted in English, mostly so that his friend Ryan will understand.

“As a child I grew up in a very religious family, on the principle of hatred of Israelis. The first time I encountered them was at about the age of 10, when soldiers entered our home and arrested my father. Until then I had never been separated from him. We didn’t know anything about the circumstances of his arrest. His membership in Hamas was a secret matter, and we certainly didn’t think he was one of its founders. I didn’t understand anything about politics or religion. I only knew that the Israeli army had arrested my father repeatedly, and for me he was everything: a good, loving man who would do anything for me. He took care of us, bought us gifts, gave of himself, whereas the soldiers entered our house and took him away from me. In high school I studied sharia, Islamic law. In 1996, when I was only 18, I was arrested by the Israel Defense Forces because I was the head of the Islamic Society in my high school. It’s a kind of youth movement of the organization. And my process of awakening began.”

What happened?

Masab-Joseph: “Until then I knew Hamas through my father, who lived a very modest and loving life. At first I really admired the organization, mainly because I admired my father so much. But during the 16 months I spent in prison I was exposed to the true face of Hamas. It’s a negative organization. As simple as that. A fundamentally bad organization. I sat in Megiddo Prison and suddenly I understood who the real Hamas was. Their leaders in prison received better conditions, such as the best food, as well as more family visits and towels for the shower. These people have no morals, they have no integrity. But they aren’t as stupid as Fatah, which steals in broad daylight in front of everyone and is immediately suspected of corruption. [Hamas people] receive money in dishonest ways, invest it in secret places, and outwardly maintain a simple lifestyle. Sooner or later they will use this money and screw the people.

“Nobody knows them and how they operate as well as I do. For example, I remember how the family of Saleh Talahmeh, a member of the military arm of Hamas, who was assassinated by Israel, was forced to beg for financial assistance because they were left with nothing after his death. The Hamas leadership abandoned them as well as the families of other shaheeds [martyrs], while the senior members of the organization abroad wasted tens of thousand of dollars a month only on security for themselves.”

For example?

“Even some of the current leaders of Hamas were involved in the past in the ’security arm’ in the prisons, so that he is among those responsible for these acts. They were suspicious of prisoners who spent too much time in the bathroom, even if it was only an upset stomach. They suspected that the prisoner was transferring information or alternatively having sexual relations with other men. A homosexual. The gays were immediately suspected of collaboration. Then I understood that not everyone in Hamas is like my father. He’s a nice, friendly man. But I discovered how evil his colleagues are. After my release I lost the faith I had in those who ostensibly represented Islam.”

Were you tortured?

“No. I enjoyed immunity because of my father’s status.”

‘Jesus loves me’

Masab-Joseph has five brothers and two sisters. He is in regular contact with them and keeps them informed of his situation. However, until recently he refrained from telling his family that he had converted to Christianity, and at the time of this interview his father the sheikh still did not know that his son had converted. And in spite of the secrecy surrounding his conversion, sometimes he seems like a veteran missionary who is trying to get entire communities to change.

“You’ll see, this interview will open many people’s eyes, it will shake Islam from the roots, and I’m not exaggerating. What other case do you know where a son of a Hamas leader, who was raised on the tenets of extremist Islam, comes out against it? Although I was never a terrorist, I was a part of them, surrounded by them all the time.”

How were you exposed to Christianity?

“It began about eight years ago. I was in Jerusalem and I received an invitation to come and hear about Christianity. Out of curiosity I went. I was very enthusiastic about what I heard. I began to read the Bible every day and I continued with religion lessons. I did it in secret, of course. I used to travel to the Ramallah hills, to places like the Al Tira neighborhood, and to sit there quietly with the amazing landscape and read the Bible. A verse like “Love thine enemy” had a great influence on me. At this stage I was still a Muslim and I thought that I would remain one. But every day I saw the terrible things done in the name of religion by those who considered themselves ‘great believers.’ I studied Islam more thoroughly and found no answers there. I reexamined the Koran and the principals of the faith and found how it is mistaken and misleading. The Muslims borrowed rituals and traditions from all the surrounding religions.”

But they all did that.

He doesn’t respond to this comment directly. “I feel that Christianity has several aspects. It’s not only a religion but a faith. I now see God through Jesus and can tell about him for days on end, whereas the Muslims won’t be able to say anything about God. I consider Islam a big lie. The people who supposedly represent the religion admired Mohammed more than God, killed innocent people in the name of Islam, beat their wives and don’t have any idea what God is. I have no doubt that they’ll go to Hell. I have a message for them: There is only one way to Paradise - the way of Jesus who sacrificed himself on the cross for all of us.”

Four years ago, he decided to convert. He says that nobody in his family knew about it. “Only those Christians with whom I met and spent time knew about my decision. For years I helped my father, the Hamas leader, and he didn’t know that I had converted, only that I had Christian friends.”

I remember how you dressed at the time. How were you accepted in Hamas?

“You have to understand, I was never one of them. Although I helped my father and accompanied him, I was always opposed to the use of terror. Hamas members didn’t like me. I didn’t come to pray in the mosques, I hung around with strangers. They didn’t like my leather jacket or even my jeans. They considered it going astray. But I helped my father and conducted his affairs because he’s my father, not because he’s a leader in Hamas. I’m not a Hamas activist who converted to Christianity. That’s not the story. I wanted to help my father understand that harming innocent people is forbidden and through him perhaps to change other people’s thinking.”

What is Hamas’ attitude toward Christians? What is your father’s attitude?

“When I was with my father, I in effect pushed a moderate Hamas leader into making logical decisions, such as stopping the attacks and establishing two states alongside one another. I felt responsible. It was better for me to be there rather than a gang of fools who would poison his mind. I tried to understand those people, their thoughts, in order to change them from inside by means of a strong person like my father, who admitted to me in the past that he does not support suicide attacks. He thinks that harming innocent people gives the organization a bad name. The sheikh once said to me that when he sees an insect outside the house he is careful not to harm it, ’so what can I say about harming civilians?’

“But within Hamas there were other leaders, mainly from the Gaza Strip and Damascus, who thought they had to continue with suicide attacks as an effective means of achieving their aims. The problem was that they were stronger than my father in terms of their status in the organization. What helped stop the attacks in the final analysis was Israel’s attacks against the Hamas leaders.”

How involved was your father in making decisions in Hamas?

“He had no connection to the military arm, but they always consulted him about strategic decisions. The Hamas leadership did not make decisions only according to the opinion of the organization leaders in Syria or Gaza. However, you have to remember that the Hamas leadership in Damascus was in control of the organization’s money. Therefore it had the most influence on organization policy. They were also the only ones who were not restricted in contacting one another, as opposed to the leaderships in the West Bank and Gaza, so that they also served as go-betweens among all the groups in Hamas. And incidentally, although they now claim that the revolution in Gaza was not planned, I can tell you from clear knowledge that a year earlier, in the summer of 2006, they spoke among themselves to the effect that if the tension with Fatah continued, they intended to take control of the Strip.”

Regards to Israel

Masab-Joseph listens to singer Eyal Golan in his free time. “I’ve been listening to his music for 10 years,” he says. “I like his voice but don’t always understand the words.” However, his favorite singer is Leonard Cohen. “He’s a Canadian Jew,” he explains.

He has a bachelor’s degree in geography and history from the Al-Quds Open University in Ramallah, but in the United States he has difficulty finding work. He has plenty of free time, and participates in religion lessons and prayers in the church at least once a week. Every few days he plays football with friends from the church, and surfing is a must. This is California, after all.

When he was working in his father’s office, he encountered Hamas leaders as well as members of the Palestinian and Israeli security services and Israeli journalists, who often spoke with the sheikh. He does not conceal the fact that he supported contact with the Israeli media and has almost warm feelings for Israel. “Send regards to Israel, I miss it.”

You miss Israel?

“I respect Israel and admire it as a country. I’m opposed to a policy of killing civilians, or using them as a means to an end, and I understand that Israel has a right to defend itself. The Palestinians, if they don’t have an enemy to fight, will fight each other. In about 20 years from now you’ll remember what I’m telling you, the conflict will be among various groups within Hamas. They’re already beginning to quarrel over control of the money.”

He does not conceal his abhorrence of everything representing the human surroundings in which he grew up: the nation, the religion, the organization.

“You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death. They have to take revenge against anyone who did not agree to accept the Prophet Mohammed, like the Jews who are seen in the Koran as monkeys and the sons of pigs. They speak in terms of historical rights that were taken from them. In the view of Hamas, peace with Israel contradicts sharia and the Koran, and the Jews have no right to remain in Palestine.”

Is that the justification for the suicide attacks?

“More than that. An entire society sanctifies death and the suicide terrorists. In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheikhs tell their students about the ‘heroism of the shaheeds’ and that causes the young people to imitate the suicide bombers, in order to achieve glory. I’ll give you an example. I once met a young man named Dia Tawil. He was a quiet boy, an outstanding student. Not a Muslim extremist and not radical in his ideas against the Israelis. I never heard extreme statements from him. He didn’t even come from a religious family: His father was a communist and his sister was a journalist who didn’t wear a head covering. But Bilal Barghouti [one of the heads of the military arm of Hamas in the West Bank] didn’t need more than a few months to convince him to become a suicide terrorist.” (Tawil, 19, blew himself up in March 2001 next to a bus at the French Hill junction in Jerusalem; 31 people were wounded.)

“Do you know that Hamas was the first to use the weapon of suicide bombers against civilian targets?” he continues. “They are blind and ignorant. It’s true, there are good and bad people everywhere, but Hamas supporters don’t understand that they are led by a wicked and cruel group that brainwashes the children and gets them to believe that if they carry out a suicide attack they’ll get to Paradise. But no suicide bomber will find himself there and no virgins are waiting for them after they have carried out an attack. They have to understand that Islam was created by people and not by God.”

Were there good people in Hamas?

“In my eyes there were all cruel, ugly inside. But I think that Mahmoud Zahar [one of the leaders of Hamas in Gaza] is one of the worst.”

And yet, in spite of the criticism of the place he left, California can’t make the longings disappear. “I miss Ramallah,” he says. “People with an open mind. I liked to walk around among the buildings, the restaurants, the people, to feel the night life. I have many friends there whom I would like to see and I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do that at all. I mainly miss my mother, my brothers and sisters, but I know that it will be very difficult for me to return to Ramallah soon.”

Cloudy future

In spite of his financial distress, the severance from his family and the loneliness, during the entire interview he sounded determined and sure of himself. “I hope that I’ll succeed one day in becoming a writer, in order to write about my personal story and about the Middle East conflict. But at the moment, at least, my ambitions are only to find work, a place to live. I have no money, I have no apartment. I was about to become one of those homeless people, but people from the church are helping me. I’m dependent on them.”

Why did you leave? After all, there are other Christians in Ramallah.

“I left behind a great deal of property in Ramallah in order to achieve true freedom. I wanted to get to quiet surroundings that would help me to open the eyes of the Muslims and reveal the truth to them about their religion and about Christianity, to take them out of the darkness and the prison of Islam. In that way they’ll have an opportunity to correct their mistakes, to become better people and to bring a chance for peace in the Middle East. I don’t give Islam a chance to survive for more than 25 years. In the past they scared people and in that way they prevented anti-religious publicity, but today, in the modern age, they won’t be able to hide the truth any longer.”

At the moment he doesn’t have a partner, but he is relying on help from above on this matter, too. “I hope that someday God will give the opportunity to meet the right one. She will have to be a believing Christian, and if she’s a Jew who converted, even better.”

There are things that Masab-Joseph is still afraid to talk about. In the middle of the meeting he wanted us to go outside the restaurant in order to make sure that I wasn’t carrying listening or recording devices.

“Many people will hate me for this interview, but I’m telling them that I love all of them, even those who hate me. I invite all the people, including the terrorists among them, to open their hearts and believe. Now I’m trying to establish an international organization for young people that will teach about Christianity, love and peace in the territories, too. I would like to teach the young people how to love and forgive, because that’s the only way the two nations can overcome the mistakes of the past and live in peace.”

You might recollect the Danish cartoons that got the jihadists all crazy, and sparked a world-wide “Lego-burning” phenomenon. Well, I’m publishing them out of principle.

America has self-censored itself plenty, along with the rest of the world, because members of Islam are offended by cartoons. Muslims burn American and Israeli flags, and extremists incite violence and terror on the civilized world, yet the Islamic world takes offense when a Danish cartoonist draws their Prophet. They should take more offense when a suicide bomber blows himself up in the name of their religion, their prophet, and their Allah.

Can anything even come remotely close to this preposterous? I don’t mean to bash Islam–though I guess, actually, yes I do mean to bash Islam, in a sense. I mean to bash Islamism, which is the attempt by Orthodox Muslims and radicals to bring about a global Caliphate.

I’m not big on organized religion in the first place. Radical Christians scare me. There are plenty of moderate Christians, though, who can shrug off any satire of their religion. They may not like it, but they can take it with a grain of salt.

They aren’t too concerned that Jesus will be offended, using the logic that he is probably above such things, you know, being a divine entity and all….

Can’t You Take a Joke?

Muslims are so prickly when it comes to Muhammad that they threatened to behead a school teacher when she lets her class name a Teddy Bear after him. Half the Muslim world is named Muhammad but if you name a toy after the Prophet, that is obviously a crime against Allah, and punishable by lashings, imprisonment, and death.

Like Jesus, I’m pretty sure the Prophet himself wouldn’t have been too concerned with a stuffed animal sharing his name. He might have even thought of it as cute. What’s cuter than a Teddy Bear named after a Prophet? And after all, when Mr. Muhammad showed up on the Mesopotamian scene he came as a reformer.

Muslims today seem to forget this, using the inherent Orthodoxy of Islam, and the Prophet’s writings as a means to subjugate the masses, elicit violence, and justify all sorts of violence against women, members of other faiths, and innocents across the globe. You can even use the Koran to justify “wiping Israel off the map” if you try hard enough.

This is not to say that all Muslims are bad. Far from it. Many are educated and moderate.

But “many” here equates to a minority–at least in terms of the ripple effect that Islamism is having on the world, if not in actual numbers. Moderation is not accepted in this religion. Adherence to extremism, salafism, and blind orthodoxy are the status quo. Perhaps this isn’t the religion itself; perhaps Islam is undergoing its own Dark Ages.

Nevertheless, like the Catholic Crusades, the Islamism of today seeks to bring about the institution of Sharia, or Islamic Law, across the globe.

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Dear Sirs and Madam … or … whatever,

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TEHRAN — A man wrapped in a shawl stood at the door.

“This is Jesus,” said another man.

Jesus sat and peeled an orange as his companion, Nader Talebzadeh, began to speak, precisely, so as not to be misunderstood on a matter so sensitive. The Iranian director’s new film is based on the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, depicting the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith.

One might imagine such a tale may not screen well in the red states of America. The film, nearly 10 years in the making, draws on the Koran and the putative Gospel of Barnabas, considered by many Western scholars a medieval fable. The premise of “Jesus, the Spirit of God” is that Jesus was compassionate and performed miracles, but was not crucified or resurrected from the dead. The message implies that Christianity, a faith of 2 billion people and the core of much Western philosophy, is based on a falsehood.

“I pray for Christians. They’ve been misled. They will realize one day the true story,” said Talebzadeh, whose film has been screened at international film festivals and is being marketed for wider release.

“People might use this film as a strategy to further demonize Iran,” he said. “They may succeed. But I hope once you see that the focus of the film is sacred, it will overwhelm. No one would have imagined that an Iranian would make a film to glorify Jesus.”

Not to mention an Iranian who supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and believes 9/11 was partly a U.S. government conspiracy. “Someone masterminded something,” he said. “And this is the cause for a lot of evil America is doing in this part of the world.”

There is another irony. The actor who plays Jesus, Ahmad Soleimani-Nia, once was a soldier in the Iranian army and later a welder for Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, which the Bush administration accuses of pursuing nuclear weapons. Such footnotes don’t seem odd when talking with Talebzadeh, who has kept Nia in Jesus character — flowing hair, beard, mystic pose — for seven years because he never knows when he might shoot new sequences for the film.

“Jesus, the Spirit of God” comes out of Iran at a time of hostile rhetoric between Washington and Tehran and a divide between Islam and the West that has produced jihad websites, DVDs on the apocalypse, editorial cartoons lampooning Muhammad and a recent Osama bin Laden tape condemning Pope Benedict XVI for a “new crusade” against Islam.

Religion has long been at the heart of tensions between East and West, but it is being swept into a wider cultural war played out on the Internet, film and satellite TV in which icons and sacred texts have been attacked and manipulated. A new Dutch film by a right-wing politician, who compares the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” depicts Islam as a violent faith. In response, a Saudi blogger posted a video suggesting that the Bible could be read as a document for war.

Talebzadeh knows that his Jesus walks on volatile terrain; one wonders, given the tenor of the times, how many fatwas would be issued if a Western director made a film suggesting that Muhammad, whose depiction is forbidden under Islamic tradition, was someone other than the prophet.

“There is so much wrong with this man’s understanding of Jesus and Christianity,” wrote an incensed Christian blogger, referring to Talebzadeh in a conversation about the film that is unfolding in cyberspace. “It’s another piece of Satanic propaganda intended to accomplish no meaningful purpose in this world.”

The rough, choppily edited $5-million film, condensed from a 1,000-minute-long series that will soon air on Iranian TV, reveres Jesus as a blessed prophet speaking parables and moving through soft light and angelic chants amid a ruckus of zealots and conspiring Pharisees. The narrative and dialogue are attributed to Islamic teachings and Jesus’ disciple Barnabas, whose gospel the director said was hidden by church authorities so as not to undermine the established Christian faith.

Scholars believe that the gospel, not included in the canon of the early Catholic Church, was written by others centuries later and ascribed to Barnabas. It overlaps with the stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but it does not present Jesus as the son of God. Barnabas’ tale resonates with Muslims who believe that it supports the Koran’s teaching that Jesus, though born of a virgin, was not divine, but one of the last great prophets. Talebzadeh’s film shows Jesus ascending to heaven before Roman soldiers come for him; Judas, the disciple who betrays him, is transformed into the likeness of Jesus and crucified. According to Islamic traditions, Jesus is alive and will return to defeat evil.

“Barnabas is a missing link the world is not ready to accept. It’s a piece of literature we should look into,” said Talebzadeh, a man with a graying beard who sat in his office the other day before a bowl of fruit.

Draped in a shawl and legs crossed as if in meditation, Nia-as-Jesus lingered behind Talebzadeh looking very much like a 1970s rock star. He was quiet, serene, a former welder with a thespian calling drifting between the Koran and the New Testament. He had never acted before, but his light skin and angular features mixed with Middle East repose conjured an aura of Western aesthetics and Eastern spirituality.

“I’ve never been able to resolve why I am so drawn to Jesus,” said Nia, a Muslim born in the western mountains of Iran near Iraqi Kurdistan. “It goes back to when I was a boy of 7 or 8. I saw a painting of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ and I identified with Jesus. He has always been with me. In my neighborhood, with my long hair and beard, I am known as Jesus.”

Talebzadeh grew up in Iran under the reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In 1970, he moved to the United States, where he says he studied at American University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia University in New York. He witnessed a convulsive American decade of antiwar protests over Vietnam and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

For much of that time, Iran was a U.S. ally. That changed in 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led an Islamic revolution that toppled the shah and resulted in 52 Americans being held hostage for 444 days.

“I returned to Iran feeling there was a huge misunderstanding in the West about my country,” he said. “Iran was being demonized.”

Talebzadeh directed a number of documentaries on themes such as the Bosnian conflict and the Iran-Iraq war. In 1999, he began filming “Jesus, the Spirit of God,” which grew out of a passion that began decades earlier when he attended a school in Tehran with Christians and continued over his fascination with the purported writings of Barnabas.

“If there’s one thing in my life I wanted to do, this film is it,” said the director, whose Jesus movie won an interfaith dialogue award at the 2007 Religion Today Film Festival in Italy. “I didn’t say Jesus wasn’t crucified, God did. It’s in the Koran. . . . The film is made with faith. I tried to do it as beautifully as I could.”

He added that he hoped his 35-millimeter film would start a conversation between religions: “In the 21st century, the arts and the media have to create an area for more cordial discussions between faiths at a time when information is moving in the blink of an eye. . . . We should be joining people together, not giving distortion and misunderstanding. We have to say, ‘Have you looked at this door to know the truth about Jesus?’ ”

Some Americans have peeked through Talebzadeh’s door. He showed the movie to four audiences in the United States, and it was recently screened at the Philadelphia Film Festival. He said many people were open-minded and intrigued by the historical and religious questions it raised.

“The truth has a whole, different vibration to it,” he said. “If you enhance it with artistry, you can create a discussion.”

Not according to the website of the Worldwide Church of God in Fairfield, Calif.: “Attempts by the Iranians or anyone else who try to deny that Jesus Christ is the true messiah will ultimately fail. The Holy Bible confirms the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth in numerous ways, and no amount of filmmaking or lecturing or rhetoric to the contrary can defeat that fact.”

Nia-as-Jesus finished his orange. Talebzadeh, whose office was warm in the afternoon sun, kept talking about the film, about divinity, about how to capture truth.

He turned in his chair toward Jesus, and was still, after all these years, amazed at the likeness, the highlighted hair, eyes of fervor. He joked that he had been searching for his lead character for a long time when his assistant director spotted Nia on the street one day and said, “I found your Jesus.”

~from The LA Times

I just have to add that the preview for this movie looks so incredibly cheesy–I just laughed and laughed when I saw it.  Too bad Mel Gibson isn’t a Muslim–he could do this concept justice.  Oh my, oh my.

Seriously.

The debate over evolution has been going on ever since the concept was first devised by Darwin–even Darwin struggled with the idea of evolution, because it challenged his belief in God, and he was a deeply faithful man. Indeed, one of the reasons Darwin didn’t publish his Origin of Species was because of its contradiction with Christian beliefs.

Now, many years later, the debate still rages. (more…)

Christianity is a difficult subject for me on many levels.  I find it hard, for many reasons, to utterly abandon any notion of Christianity in my life–I am not a Christian, true, but Christianity’s roots are still very much a part of me.  I was raised Christian, and not in a fierce or fanatical way, but in a very deep way.  I think my recent study of Judaism has brought up many things in me regarding Christianity and Jesus.

For one, reading the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, the Torah, and so forth–I realize what the New Testament brought to the concept of God, at least for me.  The Old Testament is rather hard and cold–the Torah, though it is celebrated by the Jewish people in ways I have yet to understand, can be a very Commanding book, and very authoritative in a truly impersonal way.  Jesus and the Gospels brought a “closeness” and a warmth that the Old Testament doesn’t have, at least to me.  Of course, this warmth I speak of has also been used to create war and hate, but the uses of a Holy Text and the intentions of one are often very much at odds.

I find myself still trapped, perhaps, in the notion that the Old Testament just leads naturally to the New Testament–this is very ingrained in me, and while I have considered converting to Judaism because I admire so much the Jewish people, the intellectualism inherent in their culture and faith, I believe that this deeply rooted sense of the truth of Gospels will be hard for to shake–perhaps too hard.  The other problem I’ve felt lately with Judaism, is while they do not believe in Hell, there is still the notion of the “chosen” people.  And I think as a convert, I’d never really be considered “one of the group” as it were, and least not in the way I would want.  So there’s another form of exclusivity that turns me off–not Hell, but rather Life in general.  As much as I admire the Jewish people, I think I would always feel like an outsider–even if I was a well-liked, well-treated outsider.

So back to Christianity–I guess as I explore my spirituality I don’t want to limit the outcome.  I could never experience Christianity the way my parents do, or the way I once did as a child.  But there are good examples of Christians whose practices and belief appeal to me.  My mother-in-law is a good example.  Hers is a very personal, inward sort of faith.  I like that.  That’s one of the things I admire and respect most about her.  I also have read a little about Quakerism–and that also is something that is quasi-Christian but very different from the way I learned the religion.  There is something very appealing about Quakerism in its abandonment of clergy and mediators, in its mystical approach toward connecting with God.

Also, there is the notion of allegorical faith.  Many modernists believe in the allegorical qualities of the bible, unlike Evangelicals who believe it word for word.  Nevertheless, many modernists still accept that Jesus is the “son” of God; they believe in a place called Hell–and in the necessary “salvation” from this Hell.

The only way I think I could ever accept Christianity–perhaps the way that I do accept it–is with an interpretation that moves beyond the modernist/liberal views.  I think Jesus is a fine role-model, with a great deal of wisdom to offer, and a strong moral code to follow–and viewing him as the allegorical son of God is one way I think I can be at ease with the whole Jesus concept.  Nothing really proves that he wasn’t using metaphor when he spoke of himself as the son of God.  After all, most of what Jesus taught was in parable format–the use of extended metaphors was basically his very own Socratic method.

Regarding Hell, too, I think it’s important to think of this concept from within an allegorical framework.  First of all, most modern publications of the Bible no longer include references to Hell.  The Old Testament does not–so it is only sensible that the New Testament, birthed out of the Old, would not either.  Rather, the King James and earlier interpretations latched on to the very Greco-Roman concept of Hades, and translated that into Hell.  The notion of salvation, then, was also transformed.  Initially it simply meant closeness to God.  Jews believed in a very personal relationship with God.  There were many old, outdated ways (sacrifices) that they could make to apologize for doing bad things.  Here it is important to recall that Jesus was Jewish, though a very unorthodox Jew to be sure!  I think Jesus was simply trying to “modernize” or perhaps simplify the process, saying that all you need to do is believe to be “saved.”  This of course was later twisted into salvation from a Hell that had prior never been a part of either the Jewish religion or the message of Jesus.  Salvation was simply getting back in God’s graces.  There was no threat of Hell.  I believe there is no threat of Hell–only a life without God, or distant from God.  Salvation is, to me at least, simply a path to God and spiritual contentment.

So, to me, the only way I could accept Christianity is to view Jesus as a messenger who personalized the relationship with humankind and God–and used allegory and extended metaphor to describe our relationship to God as a very personal, even familial one.  Hell was a later invention, used to strike fear into the hearts of the unbeliever and “transgressor” and to make the concept of salvation more desperate, more essential, than it was ever intended to be.  Jesus was a reformer, trying to cast out old outdated methods of reaching closeness to God–his biggest enemies were the High Priests and the Tax Collectors, after all….

In this sense, I can see myself calling myself a Christian–one who believes in a close, personal, and individual relationship with God; one who doesn’t believe in the exclusivity of one man or one faith over the other (recall the Good Samaritan); and one who  disbelieves utterly in the concept or notion of a Hell that we need to be saved from–salvation, to me, is a deeply personal  thing, an awakening of our own inner spirituality  and our own  inner connection to God.

I’ve long thought of Agnosticism as the lazy thinker’s way out of cerebral toil. Whilst not personally sharing the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins, I had concluded before I read his fascinating book, The God Delusion, that people who declared there might or might not be a divine being, were as bad as those who caught splinters sitting on the political fence. Surely if the agnostic in question has delved into the history of man’s belief in Gods and the religious and cultural evolution of such concepts, then there would appear to those with doubt, that indeed God does not exist, except as a mental construct. Add to the melting pot, the imperfections of life, from the mass extinctions through to the tendency for one in three people to get cancer in their life times, then one has to ponder that if there is a God, He is as imperfect as we are, and therefore not worthy of praise and worship.

I might be seen to be attacking Theists but that is not my agenda. In my view, religious belief in a higher being is perfectly natural to humanity and it is therefore pointless and perhaps damaging to fight against such a phenomenon. If a person is to hold a devout belief in God, whilst I might disagree, they are at least prepared to sink and lay foundations of moral absolutes and principles.

We’ve been taught in modern society that there is no such thing as right or wrong, only different perceptions. I fully believe this nihilist relativism is in danger of undermining our identity, our cultures, our principles and indeed our freedoms. When we cannot be prepared to stand up for something that is morally right, of which I believe there is only one course, then our whole system is weak to the attack of those with wrong, but unfortunately strong, moralistic absolutisms.

When we start to equate Islamic suicide bombers to noble and brave freedom fighters, or the Communist tyrant Fidel Castro to a saviour of his people, then we must assume our morals are in danger of rotting away. In my humble opinion, it is a mixture of self-gratifying pomposity and dire intellectual fraud to suppose the ‘rights’ we have cultivated over centuries are open to question from the morally corrupt and retrograde forces of, for example, Socialism, or worst still, Islamism.

Whilst a belief in God is not a necessity, the concept of the religiously inspired battle of ‘good versus evil’ is vital. There is not, in my eyes, a giant intellect in the Universe setting the standards of what is right or wrong. However, if democratic and free values are to be defended on our insignificant planet, then humanity in the West must grasp and champion the morally correct universal human rights set out in both the Judeo-Christian scriptures, in the works of the Philosophers of old and indeed, the likes of the American Constitution.

Otherwise we let our comfortable Liberalism self defeat itself and open the doors to those with no doubts about what is right and wrong, but who are in fact, entirely morally bankrupt.

~from Beaman’s World

~by Churchill’s Parrot

“In history every nation that watered-down it’s Judeo-Christian heritage was taken over by Islam. Every single one.”
-Walid Shoebat, former Islamic terrorist, on The Gathering Storm Report 3/14/08
————–
Christendom - the concept of nations or families of nations united through their mutual devotion to the teachings of Christ and thus comprising a formidable foe to the forces of evil - is a concept which no doubt strikes terror in the hearts and minds of secularists and multi-culturalists presently at the helm of Western Civilization (and driving it straight into the wall.) For to them, if “evil” exists at all, it comes in no greater form than Christianity. In part, we feel their pain. The prevailing caricature of Christianity is that of a vapid, bubbleiscious, painted-smile cult offering all the spiritual depth of an Osmond family reunion on the Lawrence Welk show. To this we would most assuredly say, “no thank you.” We would also say to secularists as well as to Christians who have helped facilitate this caricature, this is NOT Christianity.
Even more terrifying for non-believers are proposals for the formation of some kind of structured world body defining and defending an official Christendom. “The Global Christian Alliance” as illustrated by Mr. Timothy Furnish, or the “Shire Strategy” of Mr. James Pinkerton. Both strategies, these gentlemen propose, would redefine the Judeo-Christian heritage shared by the vast majority of the free world and better enable it to defend itself against enemies of that heritage, most particularly Islam.

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