Note: Cardinal Pell of Sydney is not very impressed with the claims of Islamists to Islam being a 'religion of peace'.
Read on...
Looking at the global scene, it would seem that disaffected Muslims drift towards political jihadism, while disaffected Christians drift towards "sects" that promise prosperity and individual fulfillment. Why do you think that is?
That's an interesting question. I suppose the first thing I would say is that I suspect those things are more a function of the societies in which Christians and Muslims live rather than the religion itself. I'd also say that Islam is a much more war-like culture than Christianity. … The more significant factor is the presence or absence of jihad, and what that means. I've had it asserted to me is that in the relationship between the Islamic and non-Islamic world, the normal thing is a situation of tension if not war, of outright hostility. You have to declare peace. … That's what's been alleged. A state of tension or hostility between Islam and the dar al-Harb, the non-Islamic world, is constant.
Is Islam without at least a notional striving towards an Islamic state conceivable?
We don't yet know. It was only after the First World War that they were encouraged, or even allowed, to live in a non-Islamic state. I think that was a development that enabled them to cope with their changed circumstances. They weren't allowed to live in non-Islamic states, and many are still encouraged not to mix with non-Muslims.
So you believe jihad is not a modern distortion of Islam, but something that arises from its internal logic?
That's the million dollar question. I don't know. It remains to be seen. To put it another way, can a good moderate Muslim be faithful to the Koran? I think it depends on who's going to win where, if there is going to be a struggle between the moderates and the extremists.
You use the subjunctive. You don't think there's such a struggle now?
Yes, I do. But I'm not sure in how many places the moderates are prevailing.
You also said there are different concepts of the human person, and you expressed the Christian concept as a unique intersection of freedom, love and intelligence. How do you understand the Muslim concept?
I'm not nearly as well informed on that side of it as I am the Christian side, but I'm happy to say something. I don't know to what extent they have a concept of conscience like we do at all. It's tied up with their understanding of the Koran, which they believe is directly the word of God as dictated by Gabriel. The pope has made this point. Whereas with our Scriptures, we recognize that there is a human author who worked under the power of the Spirit. Although I've gotten into trouble for saying this, there are errors in Scripture. Not religious errors, but misunderstandings of geography and other matters. Even when there's no separation of church and state, that makes a difference.
You're raising questions rather than proposing definitive conclusions?
Exactly. I know enough to be a nuisance. I'm continuing to read and talk with people, and I think this is a legitimate question.
You said, "Considered on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion." What did you mean?
I'd been thinking about the general historical and political record of Islam. Now you might say that for a lot of our history, we weren't particularly tolerant either. To that objection, I'd say, 'Show me where they're tolerant.'
You said that President Bush's ambition to export democracy to the Middle East is a risky business. Why?
The President of Iran was voted in by the people, and Hamas was voted in by the people. You can't guarantee that because you give everyone a vote you're going to get a reasonable regime. If you could get democracy long enough, it would probably shake down to something reasonable. The problem is you're likely to get extremists in, and they'll just change the rules.
You spoke in passing about Muslim immigration in the West, and that we tend to think of the religious affiliation of immigrants as irrelevant. Do you think there should be restrictions on Muslim immigration in the West, along the lines suggested by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi of Bologna?
He got into all sorts of trouble for suggesting there should be limits, but he's raised a very real and interesting question that needs to be debated and discussed calmly, not in the aftermath of some atrocity when there could be a ferocious and horrendous reaction against Muslims.
Why are some forces resistant to discussing the religious dimension of immigration policy? Is it just religious indifference?
I think it's deeper than that. I think some seculars are so deeply anti-Christian, that anyone opposed to Christianity is seen as their ally. That could be one of the most spectacularly disastrous miscalculations in history.
You give a comparison between Russia and Yemen with regard to fertility rates. To put it crassly, are you worried that Muslims are out-breeding Christians?
I think that some people with a decidedly Christian point of view in Europe should be interested in the question. When John Paul II first started to talk about the 'culture of death,' I thought it was over the top, just a bit too much. But I think there's a lot of truth in it. I think it's intimately tied up with, first, the collapse of Christianity, and also the decline of hope. The presence or absence of children is substantially allied with a world view. You've only got to look at the difference in the birth rates between the red states and the blue states in the United States.
Oriana Fallaci and others warn that Europe may become an outpost of Islamic civilization. Do you think that goes too far?
I do. I don't think that's the more immediate danger at all. The greater danger is that there would be a white fascist reaction. I think both dangers are remote at the moment, but between the two, the danger of an anti-Muslim reaction is greater. I don't think Europe is going to go Muslim at all, but I would be frightened of the turmoil if things got out of hand.
Comment: Islam is not a religion of peace. Everyone knows that, but not everyone admits it. This site reminds readers that the first victims of Islamic violence are muslims. We in the West can protect ourselves from the violence of the Islamists. How can muslims protect themselves from such violence?
Monday, July 31, 2006
Some Intelligent Observations On Lebanon, Today.
Note: Apologies for my abrupt disappearance; problem beyond my control. To make up for lost time I have posted a long report, with various elements, written by John Allen from the american paper, National Catholic Reporter. It concerns the current serious situation in Lebanon.
Read on...
This week saw some extraordinary engagement from the Catholic church on the crisis in Lebanon. The Holy See joined a 15-nation summit in Rome and the spokesman for the U.S. bishops on international policy, Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, was outspoken on the crisis in an exclusive interview with NCR.
One thing that has become clear is a deep, and growing, division of opinion between the church and the Bush administration (in addition to the Israelis) over the wisdom of an immediate cease-fire.
The White House believes that simply freezing things in place now would allow Hezbollah time to regroup, all but ensuring that any truce would be temporary, and that the all-too-familiar cycle of terrorist attacks followed by Israeli responses would continue. Opposition from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blocked a call for a cease-fire in Rome; she argued the situation cannot return to the status quo ante.
Catholic leaders, on the other hand, have argued that no lasting peace can emerge from violence, and therefore the first order of business must be to prevent further bloodshed. Calls for an immediate cease-fire have come from the Vatican’s top diplomat, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, and from Wenski in the name of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Policy.
Wenski elaborated on his position in the NCR interview, insisting that "the more people who are killed, the more the fighting escalates, the more infrastructure is destroyed, the more difficult it becomes for all sides to find common ground to negotiate."
"That’s why the cease-fire is so important," Wenski said. "It would allow us to take a deep breath, to let reason direct policy rather than reactions of anger to hurts old or new."
Analysts say the current stand-off between the United States and the church bears striking parallels to the diplomatic impasse over the U.S.-led Iraq war in 2003.
My news story on the response from church leaders is on NCRonline.org.
The full text of the Wenski interview is in the Special Documents section of NCRonline.org.
* * *
The Vatican took part as an observer in the International Conference for Lebanon held in Rome on Wednesday, sending a three-member delegation led by Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Secretary for Relations with States. Two officials from the Secretariat of State accompanied him, Monsignors Franco Coppola and Alberto Ortega Martin.
Both Coppola and Ortega Martin are veterans of the tortured politics of the Middle East.
Coppola was the chief advisor to Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, former president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, during a February 2003 mission to Baghdad in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to avert the U.S.-led invasion. When then- Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited John Paul II in 2004, Coppola was again part of the Vatican’s team. Ortega Martin, meanwhile, served in the Holy See’s embassy in Lebanon, in Harissa, which is the See of the Maronite Christian Patriarch.
On Thursday, the Vatican Press Office released the text of a Vatican Radio interview with Lajolo about the Rome Summit.
What’s your evaluation of the conference?
It was certainly positive that it was convened so quickly by an initiative of the Italian government, and that it concentrated its attention on the most urgent themes of the moment.
Its conclusions were, however, seen as rather disappointing. What’s your opinion?
Certainly, public expectations were rather high, but for those involved in the work who know its difficulties, one can perhaps says that the results are admirable. I’d like to point out above all four positive aspects:
The fact that countries from different parts of the world, from Canada to Russia, came together in awareness of the gravity of what’s happening in Lebanon, reaffirming the necessity that it recover as quickly as possible its full sovereignty, and committed themselves to giving it help;
The request that an international force be formed, under a mandate of the United Nations, that can support the regular Lebanese forces in matters of security;
The commitment for immediate humanitarian aid to the people of Lebanon, and the assurance of support for reconstruction, with the convocation of a Donors’ Conference. Various participating countries have already set aside substantial assistance, but it’s still insufficient to cover the enormous needs of the country;
The commitment among participants, after the official closure of the conference, to remain in continual contact regarding ongoing developments that the intervention of the international community in Lebanon will have.
What created the impression of disappointment?
Above all, the fact that an immediate end to hostilities was not requested. Unanimity among participants was not reached because some countries believed the appeal would not have the desired effect, and that it’s more realistic to express a commitment to obtaining as quickly as possible an end to hostilities, a commitment that can in fact be maintained.
It’s also problematic that [the summit] limited itself solely to inviting Israel to exercise the maximum moderation: such an invitation carries by its very nature a certain ambiguity, but concern for the innocent civilian population is a precise and uncompromising duty.
What was the evaluation of the Lebanese government?
On the one hand, [Lebanese] Prime Minister [Fouad] Siniora had the opportunity to outline the dramatic character of the situation facing the country, and he presented his plan for the immediate and definitive resolution of the conflict with Israel; on the other, he was able to note, and ultimately to encourage, the positive efforts the international community is making for bringing relief to the Lebanese people, for putting an end to the hostilities, and for reinforcing the control of his government over his country.
Yesterday afternoon Prime Minister Siniora, accompanied by [Lebanese] Foreign Minister [Fawzi] Salloukh, asked for a meeting with Cardinal Sodano and with me. He expressed great appreciation for the commitment with which the Holy Father personally, and the Holy See, are following the conflict that has gripped Lebanon, and beseeched us to continue to support his country in the international arena. He recalled the words of Pope John Paul II, who defined Lebanon not merely as a country but as a "message," for all peoples, of balanced coexistence among different religions and confessions in the same state. This, certainly, is the historical vocation of Lebanon, which it must be able to realize. The Holy See will continue to use all the means at its disposition so that the country returns to being that "garden" of the Middle East that it was before.
In your capacity as an observer, were you able to influence the work of the Summit?
The observers did not have the right to speak, and I was not asked to do so. I believe, however, that even the silent presence of the Holy See as an observer at the table of the Heads of Delegations had meaning, which was clearly perceptible.
After the Summit, what’s the position of the Holy See?
The Holy See remains in favor of an immediate suspension of hostilities. The problems on the table are multiple and extremely complex. Precisely for this reason, they cannot be confronted all at once: while keeping in mind the broader context and the global solution to be reached, it’s necessary to resolve the problems one by one, beginning with those that can be solved right away. The position of those who believe that conditions first have to be created so that a truce is not violated again reflects only a superficial realism, because those conditions can only be, and must be, created with means other than the killing of innocent persons. The pope is close to those populations which are victims of strife and of a conflict to which they are strangers. Benedict XVI prays, and all the church with him, that the day of peace will be today and not tomorrow. He prays to God and supplicates the responsible political leaders. The pope weeps with every mother who mourns her children, with every person who weeps for their loved ones. An immediate end to hostilities is possible, and therefore obligatory.
* * *
Apparently unfazed by criticism that his comments "deploring" the Israeli incursion into Lebanon amounted to a form of moral equivalence between terrorism and legitimate self-defense, Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano continued to speak out this week.
In an interview with the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Sodano said that an international force for Lebanon, an idea embraced by Wednesday’s Rome summit, "could be opportune," but only on the condition that it have "the necessary instruments to intervene."
"The recent history of some of these U.N. forces is not encouraging," Sodano said. "It’s enough to think of the lethargy of these forces in some painful situations in the Balkans, in Africa, or in Haiti or East Timor. Still today there’s a U.N. force, Unifil, between Lebanon and Israel, but it was not able to stop the current conflict."
"What is needed," Sodano said, "is the will to peace on the part of governments and the governed. For this reason the church, and in particular the Holy See, will never tire of inviting the parties to dialogue, in order to find paths of understanding and reconciliation."
Sodano said it’s a duty for Christians "to stop the inhumanity of war, as a true degeneration of humanity."
The cardinal acknowledged that "the right to a legitimate self-defense cannot be denied to states." At the same time, however, Sodano said the "ius in bello," meaning the law of rightful conduct of a war, "must be remembered … above all for not drawing innocent civilians" into the conflict.
"Humanitarian law is a conquest of our civilization, and it may never be violated," he said.
Responding to criticism that his earlier comments were unfair to Israel, Sodano said that the line of the Vatican "in all the conflicts of the past century, and in those at the beginning of this one, has always been that of favoring the arguments for peace. It’s a line that sometimes can displease one or another of the belligerent parties, but it is born from the desire to be faithful to the mission in the world that Christ entrusted to the church."
* * *
Reaction to Sodano’s initial take on the conflict continued to roll in this week.
Catholic writer Joseph Bottum, in The Weekly Standard, said Sodano’s denunciation of Israel reflected a cynical political calculus he finds all too common in Vatican statements on the Middle East: "Supporting Israel risked the murder of Christians in Islamic countries; supporting the Arabs risked a stern note from the Israeli ambassador," he wrote.
Meanwhile, Italian Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University and a close advisor to Benedict XVI, published an opinion piece in Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most prestigious daily newspaper, on July 22 that read a bit like a "correction" of Sodano’s line, in the form of an interpretation of Benedict’s comments on the conflict to date.
"Between the act of self-defense to which every government is obliged in order to protect its citizens, and the attack of terrorist groups of various stripes with the common denominator of refusing to recognize Israel, the voice of the pope was in favor of the Jewish people," Fisichella wrote.
"From this point of view, there’s no sede vacante, and for anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear, the voice of Benedict XVI has been, from the very beginning, clear and unequivocal," Fisichella wrote.
"The Jewish people necessarily must live together with the Palestinians and the Lebanese, in the maturity of the democratic process that the nations have acquired, but it must be equally clear that situations of collaboration with any terrorist group cannot be permitted," he said.
* * *
Faced with violence such as that in Lebanon, in which religious differences play a significant role, one temptation for believers is to retreat into a kind of vague humanitarian language, soft-pedaling any confessional approach for fear of making things worse. Some believers worry that striking spiritual notes while the world burns flirts with naiveté; as Woody Allen once put it, if there really is a God, the best that can be said of him is that he’s an under-achiever.
Benedict XVI understands all this. Yet at bottom, he does not buy the premise that a time of crisis should imply a gag order on the gospel. On the contrary, he believes, only its message is capable of offering the world a different path.
His comments during his homily on Sunday, July 23, the day he set aside for prayer and penance for Lebanon, are eloquent testimony of the point.
The pope said:
… Today in a multi-cultural and multi-religious world, many are tempted to say: "It’s better for peace in the world among the religions and the cultures not to speak too much of the specificity of Christianity, that is, of Jesus, of the church, of the sacraments. Let’s be content with those things which can be more or less universal …" But it’s not true. Precisely in this moment -- in a moment of great abuse of the name of God -- we need the God who triumphs on the Cross, who wins not with violence but with his love. Precisely in this moment we need the face of Christ, to know the true face of God and thereby to carry reconciliation and light to this world. Thus together with love, with the message of love, with all that we can do for the suffering of this world, we must also carry the witness of this God, of the victory of God precisely through the non-violence of his Cross.
Let’s return to where we began. What we can do is to render the witness of love, the witness of faith; above all we can raise a cry to God: we can pray! We are sure that our Father hears the cry of his children. In the Mass, preparing ourselves for Holy Communion, to receive the Body of Christ that unites us, we pray with the church: "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and give us peace in our day." Let this be the prayer of the church in this moment: "Deliver us from every evil and give us peace." Not tomorrow or the day after: Lord, peace today! Amen.
* * *
As a sidebar to the humanitarian mobilization for Lebanon, the German-based Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, released a statement on July 25 saying the number of families affected by the ongoing military clashes to be more than 100,000. The charity said many of these families are taking refuge in Catholic convents and other church buildings.
Melkite Catholic Archbishop Elias Chacour of Akka, Haifa, Nazareth and all of Galilee issued a separate statement saying that Arab Christians in northern Israel have been especially hard-hit by the current round of violence. Many do not have bomb shelters, he said, cannot take refuge in Haifa or other large Israeli cities as easily as Jews, and are denied certain kinds of compensation by the Israeli government.
"I never imagined that a day will come that I have to make an appeal, a kind of SOS for us Christians in Galilee. We wish to wipe away the tears of the children and parents in these difficult times," Chacour said.
* * *
The crisis in Lebanon, driven in significant measure by jihadist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, is also a reminder of the importance of dialogue between the West and the Islamic world.
Recent days, however, have brought fresh reminders of the challenges that dialogue poses.
In Turkey, the Apostolic Vicar for Anatolia, Capuchin Bishop Luigi Padovese, has complained about a drumbeat of anti-Christian commentary in the Turkish press, some focused on Benedict XVI’s projected late November visit to Istanbul for a meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew.
Padovese referred to newspaper reports calling on the Holy Father not to pray while visiting the Hagia Sophia, one of Christendom’s greatest achievements -- a vast cathedral that was turned into a mosque before becoming a museum.
"The newspaper reports were saying that the pope should remember Hagia Sophia is now a museum, not a place of worship," Padovese said. "They say they will be very critical of him if he starts praying there."
In Australia, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney in recent weeks has openly expressed concern with what he sees as tendencies towards violence and extremism in the Quran, the sacred scripture of Islam. One place he voiced those concerns was in this space: June 6, 2006
In response, the president of the Islamic Information and Services Network in Australia, Abu Hamza, has called Pell a "clown" and alleged that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, was full of murder and seemed to condone rape.
"This ignorant man does not know Christianity, let alone Islam," Hamza said in a sermon.
From Rome, Pell replied: "I am not sure how much Mr. Hamza’s comments improve the situation, but there are no teachings of Jesus, unlike Mohammed, which advocate violence against followers of other religions."
All this is a reminder of how complex, and potentially explosive, things can become when dialogue between Christians and Muslims moves beyond the "tea and cookies" stage and gets down to brass tacks.
Comment: while this situation is still unfolding it is best to refrain from analysis. I would call for more active participation by Australia in getting humanitarian supplies to Lebanon. As Lebanon has an incompetent government, and Israel does not, the effort by Australia has to be to help the Lebanese people, who are tragically caught between Hezbullah terrorists, a corrupt and useless Lebanese government and a very tough Israeli army and government.
Read on...
This week saw some extraordinary engagement from the Catholic church on the crisis in Lebanon. The Holy See joined a 15-nation summit in Rome and the spokesman for the U.S. bishops on international policy, Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, was outspoken on the crisis in an exclusive interview with NCR.
One thing that has become clear is a deep, and growing, division of opinion between the church and the Bush administration (in addition to the Israelis) over the wisdom of an immediate cease-fire.
The White House believes that simply freezing things in place now would allow Hezbollah time to regroup, all but ensuring that any truce would be temporary, and that the all-too-familiar cycle of terrorist attacks followed by Israeli responses would continue. Opposition from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blocked a call for a cease-fire in Rome; she argued the situation cannot return to the status quo ante.
Catholic leaders, on the other hand, have argued that no lasting peace can emerge from violence, and therefore the first order of business must be to prevent further bloodshed. Calls for an immediate cease-fire have come from the Vatican’s top diplomat, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, and from Wenski in the name of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Policy.
Wenski elaborated on his position in the NCR interview, insisting that "the more people who are killed, the more the fighting escalates, the more infrastructure is destroyed, the more difficult it becomes for all sides to find common ground to negotiate."
"That’s why the cease-fire is so important," Wenski said. "It would allow us to take a deep breath, to let reason direct policy rather than reactions of anger to hurts old or new."
Analysts say the current stand-off between the United States and the church bears striking parallels to the diplomatic impasse over the U.S.-led Iraq war in 2003.
My news story on the response from church leaders is on NCRonline.org.
The full text of the Wenski interview is in the Special Documents section of NCRonline.org.
* * *
The Vatican took part as an observer in the International Conference for Lebanon held in Rome on Wednesday, sending a three-member delegation led by Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Secretary for Relations with States. Two officials from the Secretariat of State accompanied him, Monsignors Franco Coppola and Alberto Ortega Martin.
Both Coppola and Ortega Martin are veterans of the tortured politics of the Middle East.
Coppola was the chief advisor to Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, former president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, during a February 2003 mission to Baghdad in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to avert the U.S.-led invasion. When then- Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited John Paul II in 2004, Coppola was again part of the Vatican’s team. Ortega Martin, meanwhile, served in the Holy See’s embassy in Lebanon, in Harissa, which is the See of the Maronite Christian Patriarch.
On Thursday, the Vatican Press Office released the text of a Vatican Radio interview with Lajolo about the Rome Summit.
What’s your evaluation of the conference?
It was certainly positive that it was convened so quickly by an initiative of the Italian government, and that it concentrated its attention on the most urgent themes of the moment.
Its conclusions were, however, seen as rather disappointing. What’s your opinion?
Certainly, public expectations were rather high, but for those involved in the work who know its difficulties, one can perhaps says that the results are admirable. I’d like to point out above all four positive aspects:
The fact that countries from different parts of the world, from Canada to Russia, came together in awareness of the gravity of what’s happening in Lebanon, reaffirming the necessity that it recover as quickly as possible its full sovereignty, and committed themselves to giving it help;
The request that an international force be formed, under a mandate of the United Nations, that can support the regular Lebanese forces in matters of security;
The commitment for immediate humanitarian aid to the people of Lebanon, and the assurance of support for reconstruction, with the convocation of a Donors’ Conference. Various participating countries have already set aside substantial assistance, but it’s still insufficient to cover the enormous needs of the country;
The commitment among participants, after the official closure of the conference, to remain in continual contact regarding ongoing developments that the intervention of the international community in Lebanon will have.
What created the impression of disappointment?
Above all, the fact that an immediate end to hostilities was not requested. Unanimity among participants was not reached because some countries believed the appeal would not have the desired effect, and that it’s more realistic to express a commitment to obtaining as quickly as possible an end to hostilities, a commitment that can in fact be maintained.
It’s also problematic that [the summit] limited itself solely to inviting Israel to exercise the maximum moderation: such an invitation carries by its very nature a certain ambiguity, but concern for the innocent civilian population is a precise and uncompromising duty.
What was the evaluation of the Lebanese government?
On the one hand, [Lebanese] Prime Minister [Fouad] Siniora had the opportunity to outline the dramatic character of the situation facing the country, and he presented his plan for the immediate and definitive resolution of the conflict with Israel; on the other, he was able to note, and ultimately to encourage, the positive efforts the international community is making for bringing relief to the Lebanese people, for putting an end to the hostilities, and for reinforcing the control of his government over his country.
Yesterday afternoon Prime Minister Siniora, accompanied by [Lebanese] Foreign Minister [Fawzi] Salloukh, asked for a meeting with Cardinal Sodano and with me. He expressed great appreciation for the commitment with which the Holy Father personally, and the Holy See, are following the conflict that has gripped Lebanon, and beseeched us to continue to support his country in the international arena. He recalled the words of Pope John Paul II, who defined Lebanon not merely as a country but as a "message," for all peoples, of balanced coexistence among different religions and confessions in the same state. This, certainly, is the historical vocation of Lebanon, which it must be able to realize. The Holy See will continue to use all the means at its disposition so that the country returns to being that "garden" of the Middle East that it was before.
In your capacity as an observer, were you able to influence the work of the Summit?
The observers did not have the right to speak, and I was not asked to do so. I believe, however, that even the silent presence of the Holy See as an observer at the table of the Heads of Delegations had meaning, which was clearly perceptible.
After the Summit, what’s the position of the Holy See?
The Holy See remains in favor of an immediate suspension of hostilities. The problems on the table are multiple and extremely complex. Precisely for this reason, they cannot be confronted all at once: while keeping in mind the broader context and the global solution to be reached, it’s necessary to resolve the problems one by one, beginning with those that can be solved right away. The position of those who believe that conditions first have to be created so that a truce is not violated again reflects only a superficial realism, because those conditions can only be, and must be, created with means other than the killing of innocent persons. The pope is close to those populations which are victims of strife and of a conflict to which they are strangers. Benedict XVI prays, and all the church with him, that the day of peace will be today and not tomorrow. He prays to God and supplicates the responsible political leaders. The pope weeps with every mother who mourns her children, with every person who weeps for their loved ones. An immediate end to hostilities is possible, and therefore obligatory.
* * *
Apparently unfazed by criticism that his comments "deploring" the Israeli incursion into Lebanon amounted to a form of moral equivalence between terrorism and legitimate self-defense, Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano continued to speak out this week.
In an interview with the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Sodano said that an international force for Lebanon, an idea embraced by Wednesday’s Rome summit, "could be opportune," but only on the condition that it have "the necessary instruments to intervene."
"The recent history of some of these U.N. forces is not encouraging," Sodano said. "It’s enough to think of the lethargy of these forces in some painful situations in the Balkans, in Africa, or in Haiti or East Timor. Still today there’s a U.N. force, Unifil, between Lebanon and Israel, but it was not able to stop the current conflict."
"What is needed," Sodano said, "is the will to peace on the part of governments and the governed. For this reason the church, and in particular the Holy See, will never tire of inviting the parties to dialogue, in order to find paths of understanding and reconciliation."
Sodano said it’s a duty for Christians "to stop the inhumanity of war, as a true degeneration of humanity."
The cardinal acknowledged that "the right to a legitimate self-defense cannot be denied to states." At the same time, however, Sodano said the "ius in bello," meaning the law of rightful conduct of a war, "must be remembered … above all for not drawing innocent civilians" into the conflict.
"Humanitarian law is a conquest of our civilization, and it may never be violated," he said.
Responding to criticism that his earlier comments were unfair to Israel, Sodano said that the line of the Vatican "in all the conflicts of the past century, and in those at the beginning of this one, has always been that of favoring the arguments for peace. It’s a line that sometimes can displease one or another of the belligerent parties, but it is born from the desire to be faithful to the mission in the world that Christ entrusted to the church."
* * *
Reaction to Sodano’s initial take on the conflict continued to roll in this week.
Catholic writer Joseph Bottum, in The Weekly Standard, said Sodano’s denunciation of Israel reflected a cynical political calculus he finds all too common in Vatican statements on the Middle East: "Supporting Israel risked the murder of Christians in Islamic countries; supporting the Arabs risked a stern note from the Israeli ambassador," he wrote.
Meanwhile, Italian Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University and a close advisor to Benedict XVI, published an opinion piece in Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most prestigious daily newspaper, on July 22 that read a bit like a "correction" of Sodano’s line, in the form of an interpretation of Benedict’s comments on the conflict to date.
"Between the act of self-defense to which every government is obliged in order to protect its citizens, and the attack of terrorist groups of various stripes with the common denominator of refusing to recognize Israel, the voice of the pope was in favor of the Jewish people," Fisichella wrote.
"From this point of view, there’s no sede vacante, and for anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear, the voice of Benedict XVI has been, from the very beginning, clear and unequivocal," Fisichella wrote.
"The Jewish people necessarily must live together with the Palestinians and the Lebanese, in the maturity of the democratic process that the nations have acquired, but it must be equally clear that situations of collaboration with any terrorist group cannot be permitted," he said.
* * *
Faced with violence such as that in Lebanon, in which religious differences play a significant role, one temptation for believers is to retreat into a kind of vague humanitarian language, soft-pedaling any confessional approach for fear of making things worse. Some believers worry that striking spiritual notes while the world burns flirts with naiveté; as Woody Allen once put it, if there really is a God, the best that can be said of him is that he’s an under-achiever.
Benedict XVI understands all this. Yet at bottom, he does not buy the premise that a time of crisis should imply a gag order on the gospel. On the contrary, he believes, only its message is capable of offering the world a different path.
His comments during his homily on Sunday, July 23, the day he set aside for prayer and penance for Lebanon, are eloquent testimony of the point.
The pope said:
… Today in a multi-cultural and multi-religious world, many are tempted to say: "It’s better for peace in the world among the religions and the cultures not to speak too much of the specificity of Christianity, that is, of Jesus, of the church, of the sacraments. Let’s be content with those things which can be more or less universal …" But it’s not true. Precisely in this moment -- in a moment of great abuse of the name of God -- we need the God who triumphs on the Cross, who wins not with violence but with his love. Precisely in this moment we need the face of Christ, to know the true face of God and thereby to carry reconciliation and light to this world. Thus together with love, with the message of love, with all that we can do for the suffering of this world, we must also carry the witness of this God, of the victory of God precisely through the non-violence of his Cross.
Let’s return to where we began. What we can do is to render the witness of love, the witness of faith; above all we can raise a cry to God: we can pray! We are sure that our Father hears the cry of his children. In the Mass, preparing ourselves for Holy Communion, to receive the Body of Christ that unites us, we pray with the church: "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and give us peace in our day." Let this be the prayer of the church in this moment: "Deliver us from every evil and give us peace." Not tomorrow or the day after: Lord, peace today! Amen.
* * *
As a sidebar to the humanitarian mobilization for Lebanon, the German-based Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, released a statement on July 25 saying the number of families affected by the ongoing military clashes to be more than 100,000. The charity said many of these families are taking refuge in Catholic convents and other church buildings.
Melkite Catholic Archbishop Elias Chacour of Akka, Haifa, Nazareth and all of Galilee issued a separate statement saying that Arab Christians in northern Israel have been especially hard-hit by the current round of violence. Many do not have bomb shelters, he said, cannot take refuge in Haifa or other large Israeli cities as easily as Jews, and are denied certain kinds of compensation by the Israeli government.
"I never imagined that a day will come that I have to make an appeal, a kind of SOS for us Christians in Galilee. We wish to wipe away the tears of the children and parents in these difficult times," Chacour said.
* * *
The crisis in Lebanon, driven in significant measure by jihadist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, is also a reminder of the importance of dialogue between the West and the Islamic world.
Recent days, however, have brought fresh reminders of the challenges that dialogue poses.
In Turkey, the Apostolic Vicar for Anatolia, Capuchin Bishop Luigi Padovese, has complained about a drumbeat of anti-Christian commentary in the Turkish press, some focused on Benedict XVI’s projected late November visit to Istanbul for a meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew.
Padovese referred to newspaper reports calling on the Holy Father not to pray while visiting the Hagia Sophia, one of Christendom’s greatest achievements -- a vast cathedral that was turned into a mosque before becoming a museum.
"The newspaper reports were saying that the pope should remember Hagia Sophia is now a museum, not a place of worship," Padovese said. "They say they will be very critical of him if he starts praying there."
In Australia, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney in recent weeks has openly expressed concern with what he sees as tendencies towards violence and extremism in the Quran, the sacred scripture of Islam. One place he voiced those concerns was in this space: June 6, 2006
In response, the president of the Islamic Information and Services Network in Australia, Abu Hamza, has called Pell a "clown" and alleged that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, was full of murder and seemed to condone rape.
"This ignorant man does not know Christianity, let alone Islam," Hamza said in a sermon.
From Rome, Pell replied: "I am not sure how much Mr. Hamza’s comments improve the situation, but there are no teachings of Jesus, unlike Mohammed, which advocate violence against followers of other religions."
All this is a reminder of how complex, and potentially explosive, things can become when dialogue between Christians and Muslims moves beyond the "tea and cookies" stage and gets down to brass tacks.
Comment: while this situation is still unfolding it is best to refrain from analysis. I would call for more active participation by Australia in getting humanitarian supplies to Lebanon. As Lebanon has an incompetent government, and Israel does not, the effort by Australia has to be to help the Lebanese people, who are tragically caught between Hezbullah terrorists, a corrupt and useless Lebanese government and a very tough Israeli army and government.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Wahhabi Islam In Fact.
Note: Readers will be aware that this site is implacably opposed to Wahhabi Islam, the official version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. Agents of this excrescence operate openly in Australia.
Read on and see why Wahhabi Islam should be banned in Australia and its adherents expelled from our country.
Saudi avoids religious rights sanctions
Thursday 20 July 2006,
Public practice of any religion other than Islam is illegal
The United States has decided that Saudi Arabia will not face sanctions because it has made efforts to improve religious tolerance in the kingdom.
The United States put Saudi Arabia on a watch list in 2004, warning that it could enforce sanctions if the kingdom did not extend religious freedoms.
It is the first time a country blacklisted under a 1998 law targeting nations that violate religious rights has not been punished.
After listing the country in 2004 the US state department avoided immediate action with a waiver and said it was working with the Saudis on issues such as deleting insults about Jews in school textbooks.
By law the Bush administration had to decide whether to extend the waiver or take sanctions against its ally.
Saudi opposition and rights groups have questioned how far Saudi Arabia has improved religious freedom, especially in cleaning up its textbooks.
Sean McCormack, the state department spokesman, said the state department told the US congress that it decided to leave the waiver in place due to Saudi co-operation in promoting more tolerance and creating a rights commission to review complaints.
In 2004, the State Department said religious freedom did not exist in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has no legal protection for freedom of religion and the law requires that all citizens be Muslims. The public practice of all other religions is illegal.
Comment: The views of Wahhabi Islam which promote this situation in Arabia are promoted in Australia by the 'lecturers' who are given visas by the Howard Government.
These views do not promote harmony between local muslims and Australians. This is not in our national interest. Stop Wahhabis coming to Australia and kick out those already here.
Is anyone awake in Canberra.
Read on and see why Wahhabi Islam should be banned in Australia and its adherents expelled from our country.
Saudi avoids religious rights sanctions
Thursday 20 July 2006,
Public practice of any religion other than Islam is illegal
The United States has decided that Saudi Arabia will not face sanctions because it has made efforts to improve religious tolerance in the kingdom.
The United States put Saudi Arabia on a watch list in 2004, warning that it could enforce sanctions if the kingdom did not extend religious freedoms.
It is the first time a country blacklisted under a 1998 law targeting nations that violate religious rights has not been punished.
After listing the country in 2004 the US state department avoided immediate action with a waiver and said it was working with the Saudis on issues such as deleting insults about Jews in school textbooks.
By law the Bush administration had to decide whether to extend the waiver or take sanctions against its ally.
Saudi opposition and rights groups have questioned how far Saudi Arabia has improved religious freedom, especially in cleaning up its textbooks.
Sean McCormack, the state department spokesman, said the state department told the US congress that it decided to leave the waiver in place due to Saudi co-operation in promoting more tolerance and creating a rights commission to review complaints.
In 2004, the State Department said religious freedom did not exist in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has no legal protection for freedom of religion and the law requires that all citizens be Muslims. The public practice of all other religions is illegal.
Comment: The views of Wahhabi Islam which promote this situation in Arabia are promoted in Australia by the 'lecturers' who are given visas by the Howard Government.
These views do not promote harmony between local muslims and Australians. This is not in our national interest. Stop Wahhabis coming to Australia and kick out those already here.
Is anyone awake in Canberra.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Islam In Sclerosis.
Note: This post is from 'open Democracy', an American liberal site which promotes excellent discussions. It is from 2005.
The costs of sclerosis
The rise of fundamentalism in the Islamic world, and the inability of Muslim societies to contain it, carry huge costs: from sectarian riots and pogroms against religious minorities to the entrapment of minds in impoverishing dogma.
Unreformed Islam’s relationship to the Muslim world is equivalent to pre-Reformation Christianity in Europe. The Reformation allowed the west to liberate itself from religious thinking and set free forces of progress; meanwhile, Islamic empires shrank into their shell, refusing reality, rejecting change and resisting “infidel” knowledge. Stupefied by ignorance, they submitted to western conquerors with scarcely a whimper. If today’s Muslim bomb-throwers want someone to blame for their mindless rage, they should look at their own ancestors.
The long-term answer to terrorism in its Islamic guise can only lie in reform. Islamic reformers must re-examine pre-modern practices and concepts (such as the hudood laws that allow men “non-reciprocal” rights over women); repudiate Islamic radicals who wish (as in Canada) to apply sharia laws to Muslims in the democratic west; shed sectarian dogmas that perpetuate intra-communal conflict; consign the theological disputes of early Islam to the past; and update or discard rigid rules (often deriving from pre-Islamic rituals) that have no relevance today.
The path to enlightenment
Only Muslims themselves can undertake such a project. But to whom would it be addressed? The Shi’a in Iran and elsewhere and some sub-sects recognise spiritual leaders, but Islam as a whole has no pope, nor indeed any temporal or spiritual head. The only claimant to an Islamic papacy in modern times is a mass murderer hiding in the Tora Bora mountains.
The precedents and prospects for reform are not promising. For centuries, reactionary Islamic scholars and clerics have used threats, intimidation and outright murder to resist it. Islamic graveyards are full of unsuccessful reformers. Ijtihad, the practice of knowledge-seeking by consensual discussion, once enabled Muslims to resolve issues not covered in the Qur’an or hadith; but founders of the Sunni schools of thought replaced it six centuries ago with the word of a single mufti (religious academic).
A mufti can issue a fatwa declaring the mildest dissenter a murtid (apostate), whom a Muslim is obliged to slay. I received my first apostasy fatwa thirty-five years ago, in the run-up to Pakistan’s first democratic election. In this I was in the good company of all Pakistan’s progressive journalists. Fortunately for us, for every reactionary mullah there was an enlightened one; for every fatwa, there was a counter-edict. When the election was over, three-quarters of Pakistan’s population had been placed beyond the pale of Islam, by virtue of their support for secular parties.
The mullahs retired to lick their wounds, but returned when the Americans put General Zia ul-Haq into power. During the Zia decade, democratic forces were systemically crushed and rational clergy driven out of mosques and madrasas. This rooted culture of ignorance and intolerance was further emboldened by the emergence of people like Osama bin Laden.
The extremist ideologies holding modern Muslim societies to ransom have been exported across the western world by globalisation, the electronic revolution, migration, abuse of refugee and asylum-seeking status, and arranged marriages.
The outlook for reform in the Muslim heartlands is bleak, but a ray of hope comes from European Islam. A new generation of Muslim thinkers is emerging, free of the fetters of the thought-police that bind its predecessors. The moderate tone of their Islamic polemics suggests that an updating of outdated theory and practice might be possible. Progressive Muslims in Britain and elsewhere must be encouraged to support, protect and encourage this movement. Their work offers some hope that Islam will survive the even greater tribulations this century is bound to bring.
openDemocracy, July 28, 2005
Comment: This posting explains clearly the problems caused to muslim people by the totally degenerate system of imams that now exist in the sunni muslim world in particular. Shia Islam is not similarly degenerated.
An Australian government that knew what to do about the 'Muslim Question' would start by removing the sunni imams from Australia and not allow any replacements.
However that will not happen as the dopes in Canberra are utterly out of their depth on questions of Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East. Just look at the incompetence and bungling that surrounds the situation with removing Australian citizens from harm's way in Lebanon. They did not even have any notion of a plan in the drawer, ready to be acted upon when the time came. One does not need a doctorate from Harvard to predict trouble in the Middle East...but it caught the Australian government completely by surprise. Pathetic.
The costs of sclerosis
The rise of fundamentalism in the Islamic world, and the inability of Muslim societies to contain it, carry huge costs: from sectarian riots and pogroms against religious minorities to the entrapment of minds in impoverishing dogma.
Unreformed Islam’s relationship to the Muslim world is equivalent to pre-Reformation Christianity in Europe. The Reformation allowed the west to liberate itself from religious thinking and set free forces of progress; meanwhile, Islamic empires shrank into their shell, refusing reality, rejecting change and resisting “infidel” knowledge. Stupefied by ignorance, they submitted to western conquerors with scarcely a whimper. If today’s Muslim bomb-throwers want someone to blame for their mindless rage, they should look at their own ancestors.
The long-term answer to terrorism in its Islamic guise can only lie in reform. Islamic reformers must re-examine pre-modern practices and concepts (such as the hudood laws that allow men “non-reciprocal” rights over women); repudiate Islamic radicals who wish (as in Canada) to apply sharia laws to Muslims in the democratic west; shed sectarian dogmas that perpetuate intra-communal conflict; consign the theological disputes of early Islam to the past; and update or discard rigid rules (often deriving from pre-Islamic rituals) that have no relevance today.
The path to enlightenment
Only Muslims themselves can undertake such a project. But to whom would it be addressed? The Shi’a in Iran and elsewhere and some sub-sects recognise spiritual leaders, but Islam as a whole has no pope, nor indeed any temporal or spiritual head. The only claimant to an Islamic papacy in modern times is a mass murderer hiding in the Tora Bora mountains.
The precedents and prospects for reform are not promising. For centuries, reactionary Islamic scholars and clerics have used threats, intimidation and outright murder to resist it. Islamic graveyards are full of unsuccessful reformers. Ijtihad, the practice of knowledge-seeking by consensual discussion, once enabled Muslims to resolve issues not covered in the Qur’an or hadith; but founders of the Sunni schools of thought replaced it six centuries ago with the word of a single mufti (religious academic).
A mufti can issue a fatwa declaring the mildest dissenter a murtid (apostate), whom a Muslim is obliged to slay. I received my first apostasy fatwa thirty-five years ago, in the run-up to Pakistan’s first democratic election. In this I was in the good company of all Pakistan’s progressive journalists. Fortunately for us, for every reactionary mullah there was an enlightened one; for every fatwa, there was a counter-edict. When the election was over, three-quarters of Pakistan’s population had been placed beyond the pale of Islam, by virtue of their support for secular parties.
The mullahs retired to lick their wounds, but returned when the Americans put General Zia ul-Haq into power. During the Zia decade, democratic forces were systemically crushed and rational clergy driven out of mosques and madrasas. This rooted culture of ignorance and intolerance was further emboldened by the emergence of people like Osama bin Laden.
The extremist ideologies holding modern Muslim societies to ransom have been exported across the western world by globalisation, the electronic revolution, migration, abuse of refugee and asylum-seeking status, and arranged marriages.
The outlook for reform in the Muslim heartlands is bleak, but a ray of hope comes from European Islam. A new generation of Muslim thinkers is emerging, free of the fetters of the thought-police that bind its predecessors. The moderate tone of their Islamic polemics suggests that an updating of outdated theory and practice might be possible. Progressive Muslims in Britain and elsewhere must be encouraged to support, protect and encourage this movement. Their work offers some hope that Islam will survive the even greater tribulations this century is bound to bring.
openDemocracy, July 28, 2005
Comment: This posting explains clearly the problems caused to muslim people by the totally degenerate system of imams that now exist in the sunni muslim world in particular. Shia Islam is not similarly degenerated.
An Australian government that knew what to do about the 'Muslim Question' would start by removing the sunni imams from Australia and not allow any replacements.
However that will not happen as the dopes in Canberra are utterly out of their depth on questions of Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East. Just look at the incompetence and bungling that surrounds the situation with removing Australian citizens from harm's way in Lebanon. They did not even have any notion of a plan in the drawer, ready to be acted upon when the time came. One does not need a doctorate from Harvard to predict trouble in the Middle East...but it caught the Australian government completely by surprise. Pathetic.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Calm Analysis Of Lebanon Crisis.
Note: This posting is offered to readers to help them make some sense out of the confused current crisis in Lebanon.
Read on...
Franciscan Catholic priest Fr. David Maria Jaeger,is Jewish by birth and an Israeli citizen, an expert in international law and for many years the Holy See’s chief negotiator with the Israeli authorities.
This is how Fr. Jaeger evaluated the conflict now in progress, in a July 15 interview with Daniele Rocchi of “Incroci News,” the online weekly of the archdiocese of Milan:
“Painful but measured reactions”
An interview with Fr. David Maria Jaeger
Q: What will be the consequences of opening the Lebanese front for the difficult situation in the region?
A: We are witnessing a qualitative escalation of severity. Israel maintains that it has been attacked, not merely by the militant organization Hezbollah, but by the state of Lebanon itself, and has decided to respond on the basis of this assessment. It is not without reasons in support of its view: Hezbollah – Israel stresses – is an integral part of Lebanon’s institutions, including the parliament and the executive branch of government. Furthermore, Lebanon has decided not to take control of its southern region bordering Israel, and has in effect handed it over to Hezbollah. The UN, the United States, and Europe have repeatedly appealed, in vain, for the state of Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, which is financed and supplied by Iran, and to take back control of the south. Now – the Israelis say – if Lebanon does not decide, in these extreme circumstances, to assert its sovereignty over this armed organization at the service of a foreign state dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, Lebanon risks seeing all of its laborious, costly, and promising work of reconstruction over the last twenty years come to nothing. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who has roots among the right-wing nationalists, seems to be the only moderate voice, promising painful but measured reactions.
Q: Who will have to give in?
A: The Palestinians. They are the big losers in Hezbollah’s war initiative, which has turned attention away from the humanitarian emergency in Gaza and may have derailed the semi-secret negotiations aimed not only at the release of corporal Gilad Shalit, but also at a general cease-fire in the Gaza strip and its surroundings, at the release of an undisclosed number of Palestinian detainees, and at some modest letup in the tensions. In any case, even if at the end of the current umpteenth armed confrontation on multiple fronts there were a release of Palestinian detainees in exchange for the captured Israeli soldiers, the credit would be claimed by Hezbollah, and not by the Hamas-led Palestinian government. No one has more to lose than Hamas, which hoped that by freeing its prisoners it would increase its popularity among Palestinians, and instead risks being outmaneuvered and overshadowed by even more militant groups.
Q: What can Palestinian president Abu Mazen do?
A: President Abu Mazen seems to have been reduced almost to the point of utter powerlessness. It is true that he still commands some rather impressive security forces, which he has simply abstained from mobilizing. But there is no doubt that, especially for him, the idea of the voluntary disbanding of the Palestinian National Authority is very appealing. In essence, the PNA was created by the Oslo accords as an interim body for the temporary administration of some of the portions of the occupied territories, in expectation of a definitive peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, which was first projected for 1999 and then moved back to 2000. Declaring the end of the PNA would, moreover, remove the obstacle of the ambiguous relationship between the PLO – the Palestinian Liberation Organization – and the PNA, and would fully restore to the PLO its formal but defunct role as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people on the international stage, a competency recognized by all, including by Israel since 1993. The self-disbanding of the PNA would also deprive Hamas’ recent electoral victory of its formal significance, and would exert enormous pressure upon Israel to resume peace negotiations with Abu Mazen and the PLO, which he heads.
Q: Do you think a cease-fire is possible at this point?
A: A cease-fire is always possible, and they have always come in the history of this many-faceted conflict. But the only real way out is peace, which requires, as the pope said at the Angelus on June 29, not only the good will of the national governments concerned, but also the generous contribution of the international community. It is now more than ever up to the latter to swing into action, to work wisely and untiringly to accompany these sorely tried nations along the road to a just and lasting peace.
Comment: It would be useful for the Australian government, incompetent though it is in helping the Australians currently caught in Lebanon, to prepare a large supply of the food and medicines that Lebanon will need when the eventual ceasefire comes into place.
Australia has long standing good relations with Lebanon and should be pro-active in preparing for practical help for that severely shocked country.
Hezbullah is a terrorist organisation and has no right to be in possession of 12,000+ rockets and missiles. No right at all. The protection of Lebanese sovereignty is the sole duty of the Lebanese Army.
That said, great sympathy must be extended to the thousands of Lebanese and Israeli civilians, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Druze and all the many groups in Lebanon and Israel who are suffering in this crisis.
Read on...
Franciscan Catholic priest Fr. David Maria Jaeger,is Jewish by birth and an Israeli citizen, an expert in international law and for many years the Holy See’s chief negotiator with the Israeli authorities.
This is how Fr. Jaeger evaluated the conflict now in progress, in a July 15 interview with Daniele Rocchi of “Incroci News,” the online weekly of the archdiocese of Milan:
“Painful but measured reactions”
An interview with Fr. David Maria Jaeger
Q: What will be the consequences of opening the Lebanese front for the difficult situation in the region?
A: We are witnessing a qualitative escalation of severity. Israel maintains that it has been attacked, not merely by the militant organization Hezbollah, but by the state of Lebanon itself, and has decided to respond on the basis of this assessment. It is not without reasons in support of its view: Hezbollah – Israel stresses – is an integral part of Lebanon’s institutions, including the parliament and the executive branch of government. Furthermore, Lebanon has decided not to take control of its southern region bordering Israel, and has in effect handed it over to Hezbollah. The UN, the United States, and Europe have repeatedly appealed, in vain, for the state of Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, which is financed and supplied by Iran, and to take back control of the south. Now – the Israelis say – if Lebanon does not decide, in these extreme circumstances, to assert its sovereignty over this armed organization at the service of a foreign state dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, Lebanon risks seeing all of its laborious, costly, and promising work of reconstruction over the last twenty years come to nothing. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who has roots among the right-wing nationalists, seems to be the only moderate voice, promising painful but measured reactions.
Q: Who will have to give in?
A: The Palestinians. They are the big losers in Hezbollah’s war initiative, which has turned attention away from the humanitarian emergency in Gaza and may have derailed the semi-secret negotiations aimed not only at the release of corporal Gilad Shalit, but also at a general cease-fire in the Gaza strip and its surroundings, at the release of an undisclosed number of Palestinian detainees, and at some modest letup in the tensions. In any case, even if at the end of the current umpteenth armed confrontation on multiple fronts there were a release of Palestinian detainees in exchange for the captured Israeli soldiers, the credit would be claimed by Hezbollah, and not by the Hamas-led Palestinian government. No one has more to lose than Hamas, which hoped that by freeing its prisoners it would increase its popularity among Palestinians, and instead risks being outmaneuvered and overshadowed by even more militant groups.
Q: What can Palestinian president Abu Mazen do?
A: President Abu Mazen seems to have been reduced almost to the point of utter powerlessness. It is true that he still commands some rather impressive security forces, which he has simply abstained from mobilizing. But there is no doubt that, especially for him, the idea of the voluntary disbanding of the Palestinian National Authority is very appealing. In essence, the PNA was created by the Oslo accords as an interim body for the temporary administration of some of the portions of the occupied territories, in expectation of a definitive peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, which was first projected for 1999 and then moved back to 2000. Declaring the end of the PNA would, moreover, remove the obstacle of the ambiguous relationship between the PLO – the Palestinian Liberation Organization – and the PNA, and would fully restore to the PLO its formal but defunct role as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people on the international stage, a competency recognized by all, including by Israel since 1993. The self-disbanding of the PNA would also deprive Hamas’ recent electoral victory of its formal significance, and would exert enormous pressure upon Israel to resume peace negotiations with Abu Mazen and the PLO, which he heads.
Q: Do you think a cease-fire is possible at this point?
A: A cease-fire is always possible, and they have always come in the history of this many-faceted conflict. But the only real way out is peace, which requires, as the pope said at the Angelus on June 29, not only the good will of the national governments concerned, but also the generous contribution of the international community. It is now more than ever up to the latter to swing into action, to work wisely and untiringly to accompany these sorely tried nations along the road to a just and lasting peace.
Comment: It would be useful for the Australian government, incompetent though it is in helping the Australians currently caught in Lebanon, to prepare a large supply of the food and medicines that Lebanon will need when the eventual ceasefire comes into place.
Australia has long standing good relations with Lebanon and should be pro-active in preparing for practical help for that severely shocked country.
Hezbullah is a terrorist organisation and has no right to be in possession of 12,000+ rockets and missiles. No right at all. The protection of Lebanese sovereignty is the sole duty of the Lebanese Army.
That said, great sympathy must be extended to the thousands of Lebanese and Israeli civilians, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Druze and all the many groups in Lebanon and Israel who are suffering in this crisis.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Preaching Mainstream Religious Muslim Views.
Note: It is good that Sheik Hilali will be dumped from the Prime Minister's Muslim Reference Group. He is an imam; all imams should be excluded from any muslim group in Australia that is connected with the government.
What he preached was simple straightforward contemporary religious muslim views. Sorry to upset the fantasists in Australia who think that religious muslims have Western views on life and history.
Read on...
Mufti to be dumped from PM's council
July 18, 2006 - 6:25AM
Australia's most senior Islamic cleric will be dumped from Prime Minster John Howard's Muslim advisory board after calling the Holocaust a "Zionist lie".
The Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali, holds a senior position on the Muslim Community Reference Group.
But Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Robb, said the Egyptian-born leader would be stripped of the role when the group's membership is reviewed next month.
"It's unlikely he will continue," Mr Robb told The Australian newspaper.
He called the Mufti's comments about the Holocaust "offensive and divisive".
Reference group chairman Ameer Ali said he was not surprised by the Sheik's comments but urged the government not to sideline the spiritual leader.
"He is part of the community and the government should make use of him rather than push him aside," Mr Ali told the paper.
Comment: The dropping of the imam Hilali was effected by pressure from Australian Jews and Israelis, as well as many politicians on both sides of Parliament. This is perfectly legitimate; the application of political pressure is how democracy works.
A sensible government would now leap on this opportunity to pressure all the other imams in Australia (about 60 odd) and use their support for Hilali to send them out from Australia and not allow replacements.
This won't happen because the dopes in Canberra still think that somewhere there is an 'Islam' that is not like Hilali and his attitudes. There isn't.
Is anyone awake in Canberra?
What he preached was simple straightforward contemporary religious muslim views. Sorry to upset the fantasists in Australia who think that religious muslims have Western views on life and history.
Read on...
Mufti to be dumped from PM's council
July 18, 2006 - 6:25AM
Australia's most senior Islamic cleric will be dumped from Prime Minster John Howard's Muslim advisory board after calling the Holocaust a "Zionist lie".
The Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali, holds a senior position on the Muslim Community Reference Group.
But Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Robb, said the Egyptian-born leader would be stripped of the role when the group's membership is reviewed next month.
"It's unlikely he will continue," Mr Robb told The Australian newspaper.
He called the Mufti's comments about the Holocaust "offensive and divisive".
Reference group chairman Ameer Ali said he was not surprised by the Sheik's comments but urged the government not to sideline the spiritual leader.
"He is part of the community and the government should make use of him rather than push him aside," Mr Ali told the paper.
Comment: The dropping of the imam Hilali was effected by pressure from Australian Jews and Israelis, as well as many politicians on both sides of Parliament. This is perfectly legitimate; the application of political pressure is how democracy works.
A sensible government would now leap on this opportunity to pressure all the other imams in Australia (about 60 odd) and use their support for Hilali to send them out from Australia and not allow replacements.
This won't happen because the dopes in Canberra still think that somewhere there is an 'Islam' that is not like Hilali and his attitudes. There isn't.
Is anyone awake in Canberra?
The Reality Of Islam And Religious Equality
Note: This posting is a tale from Egypt. It concerns a muslim who converted to Christianity. It shows the reality of Islam and apostasy in a muslim country. The tall tales readers may hear about the religious 'tolerance' of Islam need not be believed.
This posting is from 'Chiesa' an Italian site, published in English.
Thou Shalt Have no Other Allah
by Dina Nascetti
CAIRO - At 13 years of age, Ibrahim knew the Koran by heart. The imam in his Cairo neighborhood used him as an example for many young people, and foresaw for him a future as a great preacher of the most radical sort of Islam. Ibrahim had become that young preacher: already at 16 years of age, on Fridays, with the exuberance and impetuosity of his youth, he harangued the faithful who came running to the mosque to hear him, the rising star of the jihad, the holy war. "I had imposed the veil on all the women of my family; my grandmother, my mother, my sisters," he recounts. "I could not endure the non-Islamic expressions of our society in daily life. I kept watch and denounced anyone who did not respect the rules and deviated from the right way."
Ibrahim was preaching in the mid-1990¿s, when, under the pressure of the Islamic movements, many of them connected with the university of Al Azhar, the hadit had been reintroduced to Egypt. The hadit are the sayings of Mohammed on the isba, the principle that allows anyone to begin an inquiry against someone who strays from the teaching of the sharia, the Islamic law, and on the ridda, the accusation of apostasy. One of the first hadit holds that the blood of a Muslim "may be spilled in three cases: homicide, adultery, and apostasy." Thus the pious citizen is authorized to kill the sinner. On the basis of this dogma, many intellectuals condemned for their unorthodox works were assassinated during those years, or seriously injured, like the Nobel-winning writer Naghib Mahfuz.
Two years ago Ibrahim, who was born into the faith in Allah and the Koran, converted to the Catholic faith. He took the name Mikeil, Michael, the archangel most venerated in Egypt. Convents, churches, and chapels are dedicated to Michael all over the country. The remnants of places of worship consecrated in pre-Islamic Egypt are still visible in the Babylon fortress in Old Cairo.
But Ibrahim-Mikeil lives his conversion in great secrecy. His family, his friends, and even his wife are unaware of it. He risks being run over by the accusation of apostasy, he says, "on the part of old friends, a relative, which could become a death sentence, or in the best of cases a sentence which would inflict years of imprisonment and certain torture."
Are Ibrahim¿s fears well-founded? In a formal sense, no. Article 3 of the Egyptian constitution of 1923 proclaims the equality of all Egyptians before the law, without distinction of race, language, or religion. But the reality is different. Since 1971, a constant tendency toward the islamicization of the Egyptian justice system has been in course. President Anwar Al-Sadat, later killed by Islamic fundamentalists, was the one who accepted certain requests from the Muslim Brotherhood aimed at combating the nationalist parties and the left, which opposed his economic policies: he introduced into the constitution an amendment according to which "sharia is one of the principal sources of legislation," which became, in 1980, the "principal source."
"A Muslim from birth can never change religions," affirms Youssef Sidhom, the director of the Christian weekly "Watani": "They will not only seek by every means to dissuade him, but his very life will be in danger. He will be excluded from his inheritance and from the community to which he belongs. But on the contrary, an Egyptian Christian who embraces the Muslim faith is welcomed with many parties, his identity card is quickly changed, he is helped in his job and with his house."
The secrecy in which he lives his new faith has permitted Ibrahim-Mikeil, for now, to escape the police roundups that have led to the arrest of 23 Egyptian converts to Christianity, while hundred of others are being sought. This news, completely ignored by the Egyptian media, was broken from Rome by the agency "AsiaNews", which provides information on the critical situation of Christians in the Islamic world. The only Arabic newspaper to have recounted the arrests has been "Al Quds," which is produced in London and banned in Egypt. It denounces: "The work of the Egyptian police to criminalize ex-Muslim converts to Christianity continues in silence. We are amazed that a matter of such delicacy should be left in the hands of police forces. It is true that sharia does not allow apostasy, but in a state ruled by law this question should certainly not be confronted in conformity with fundamentalist tendencies."
According to a priest who asked to remain anonymous, "the arrests by the police, which have been infiltrated by now, like the magistratures and professional corporations, are due to the rooting of fundamentalism in the Egyptian educational system. As a matter of fact, there are many cases in which students belonging to minority religions have been heavily discriminated against and maltreated. It happens, for example, that Christian girls in elementary schools are forced to wear the veil. The public schools have suffered strong interference from the imams of Al Azhar and the governing authorities, which have long been inclined to satisfy the requests of the fundamentalists in order to maintain their own power. For months one hears nothing of the arrested converts. And in the meantime, they suffer beastly mistreatment. Then their fate will be asked of a judge, who is not always impartial. Assuming they are not condemned, the only thing they can do is to go into exile in the United States, Canada, or Australia, in order to avoid disdain both within their families and in the communities around them."
These aspects are completely overlooked by the Egyptian media, but not by "Watani." "Ours is an independent newspaper," says the director, Sidhom, "without particular relations with the Church, from which it receives no subsidies." In the face of this return to the crude repression of Christians, Coptic Patriarch Shenuda III, accustomed in the past to remarking on the harmony between Christians and Muslims, has changed his stance, bewailing the numerous attacks against his community. The life of the Christians, among whom the Copts, at 6-7 million, are the great majority, has not been easy in recent years. The persecution of this community hearkens back to the forms of martyrdom used against the first Christians. One¿s memory turns back to the terrible events in October of 1998, when Egyptian security forces carried out rapes and crucifixions during incursions into the Coptic village of El-Kosheh, near Luxor. The crucifixions were carried out in groups of 50 persons, who were literally nailed or chained to doors, with each person¿s legs joined to the next¿s. There were victims beaten and tortured through the application of electric current to their genitals by the police, who accused them of being infidels. Romani Boctor, 11, was strung up with an electric cable in an attic.
But it is the discrimination perpetrated in all aspects of society that makes life difficult for Christians. By constitutional law, the president must be a Muslim. Christians cannot be prime minister, though they have been in the past. Of the 32 ministers, only two of them are Christian: the finance minister and the minister of the environment. The mayor of a city or village cannot be a Christian. The highest posts in the army, the police, and the president¿s guard are granted only to Muslims. A Christian cannot assume an important role in a tribunal. Even worse, according to the law, two witnesses must be obtained before a sentence can be passed, but if one of the two is a Christian, the judge may disallow his testimony.
A Christian cannot be the rector of a university or dean of a faculty. The government pays the salaries of the imams, but not of the Christian priests. The university of Al Azhar does not accept Christian students, even though it is maintained by taxes taken from both Muslims and Christians. Added to all of this are the insurmountable obstacles to be faced in building a church. These difficulties can be traced back to a 1934 law that dictates ten conditions for the granting of a permit. For example, a church can not be built on farm land; it must not be close to a mosque or a public monument; police authorization must be obtained if it will be constructed near bridges on the Nile, canals, or railway lines. And the president of the republic must give his signature. "In spite of the protests, the state wants to maintain these conditions, and that provokes in all Egyptians a spirit of fanaticism and of division among Christians and Muslims," says Sameh Fawzi, a Christian journalist.
"The culture and life of the Copts have completely disappeared from the Egyptian press. For this reason, we have intensified our interest in the Christian minorities. We want to foster union among Egyptians, both Christians and Muslims, because all are children of the same nation," says Sidhom, warning: "The state¿s indifference is bringing Christians to the bitter conviction that Egypt considers them second-class citizens. That a Christian is a kafir, an infidel, neither knowing the true religion nor possessing the true faith, and thus does not deserve to be heard. And that, in this country, an humiliating discrimination on religious grounds has been created."
Ibrahim-Mikeil understands all of the dangers of his conversion, but lives his Catholic conversion with great serenity. "When I opened my eyes to the violence, I began to consider my religion," he recounts. "I wanted God to be very close to me, but in Islam he seemed very far away. There he is the master of all things, but he is not a God who lives among us. This is what tormented me. Then one day I visited the monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai, and there I received the true inspiration." St. Catherine was the young Egyptian princess who converted to Christianity and was ordered to be beheaded by the Roman emperor Maxentius. Ibrahim-Mikeil¿s dream? "To go to Rome to be able to pray freely at St. Peter¿s, ideally with my wife."
Comment: The best move any Australian government could do would be to open Australia to muslim apostates who consider that they must, for safety sake, leave the muslim country in which they live because of their abandonment of Islam.
The West needs to fight, with many 'weapons', against the ideology of Islam. This ideology has captured the religion of Islam (so muslim reformers tell us), and is in political struggle against the West. So be it. We must fight back.
Apostasy undermines the ideology of Islam. The West can encourage it by providing safety for those muslims who want to be free of the backwardness which is the common lot of muslims around the world. Australia can lead the way for such a sensible policy, if it had a government with any imagination.
Is anyone awake in Canberra?
This posting is from 'Chiesa' an Italian site, published in English.
Thou Shalt Have no Other Allah
by Dina Nascetti
CAIRO - At 13 years of age, Ibrahim knew the Koran by heart. The imam in his Cairo neighborhood used him as an example for many young people, and foresaw for him a future as a great preacher of the most radical sort of Islam. Ibrahim had become that young preacher: already at 16 years of age, on Fridays, with the exuberance and impetuosity of his youth, he harangued the faithful who came running to the mosque to hear him, the rising star of the jihad, the holy war. "I had imposed the veil on all the women of my family; my grandmother, my mother, my sisters," he recounts. "I could not endure the non-Islamic expressions of our society in daily life. I kept watch and denounced anyone who did not respect the rules and deviated from the right way."
Ibrahim was preaching in the mid-1990¿s, when, under the pressure of the Islamic movements, many of them connected with the university of Al Azhar, the hadit had been reintroduced to Egypt. The hadit are the sayings of Mohammed on the isba, the principle that allows anyone to begin an inquiry against someone who strays from the teaching of the sharia, the Islamic law, and on the ridda, the accusation of apostasy. One of the first hadit holds that the blood of a Muslim "may be spilled in three cases: homicide, adultery, and apostasy." Thus the pious citizen is authorized to kill the sinner. On the basis of this dogma, many intellectuals condemned for their unorthodox works were assassinated during those years, or seriously injured, like the Nobel-winning writer Naghib Mahfuz.
Two years ago Ibrahim, who was born into the faith in Allah and the Koran, converted to the Catholic faith. He took the name Mikeil, Michael, the archangel most venerated in Egypt. Convents, churches, and chapels are dedicated to Michael all over the country. The remnants of places of worship consecrated in pre-Islamic Egypt are still visible in the Babylon fortress in Old Cairo.
But Ibrahim-Mikeil lives his conversion in great secrecy. His family, his friends, and even his wife are unaware of it. He risks being run over by the accusation of apostasy, he says, "on the part of old friends, a relative, which could become a death sentence, or in the best of cases a sentence which would inflict years of imprisonment and certain torture."
Are Ibrahim¿s fears well-founded? In a formal sense, no. Article 3 of the Egyptian constitution of 1923 proclaims the equality of all Egyptians before the law, without distinction of race, language, or religion. But the reality is different. Since 1971, a constant tendency toward the islamicization of the Egyptian justice system has been in course. President Anwar Al-Sadat, later killed by Islamic fundamentalists, was the one who accepted certain requests from the Muslim Brotherhood aimed at combating the nationalist parties and the left, which opposed his economic policies: he introduced into the constitution an amendment according to which "sharia is one of the principal sources of legislation," which became, in 1980, the "principal source."
"A Muslim from birth can never change religions," affirms Youssef Sidhom, the director of the Christian weekly "Watani": "They will not only seek by every means to dissuade him, but his very life will be in danger. He will be excluded from his inheritance and from the community to which he belongs. But on the contrary, an Egyptian Christian who embraces the Muslim faith is welcomed with many parties, his identity card is quickly changed, he is helped in his job and with his house."
The secrecy in which he lives his new faith has permitted Ibrahim-Mikeil, for now, to escape the police roundups that have led to the arrest of 23 Egyptian converts to Christianity, while hundred of others are being sought. This news, completely ignored by the Egyptian media, was broken from Rome by the agency "AsiaNews", which provides information on the critical situation of Christians in the Islamic world. The only Arabic newspaper to have recounted the arrests has been "Al Quds," which is produced in London and banned in Egypt. It denounces: "The work of the Egyptian police to criminalize ex-Muslim converts to Christianity continues in silence. We are amazed that a matter of such delicacy should be left in the hands of police forces. It is true that sharia does not allow apostasy, but in a state ruled by law this question should certainly not be confronted in conformity with fundamentalist tendencies."
According to a priest who asked to remain anonymous, "the arrests by the police, which have been infiltrated by now, like the magistratures and professional corporations, are due to the rooting of fundamentalism in the Egyptian educational system. As a matter of fact, there are many cases in which students belonging to minority religions have been heavily discriminated against and maltreated. It happens, for example, that Christian girls in elementary schools are forced to wear the veil. The public schools have suffered strong interference from the imams of Al Azhar and the governing authorities, which have long been inclined to satisfy the requests of the fundamentalists in order to maintain their own power. For months one hears nothing of the arrested converts. And in the meantime, they suffer beastly mistreatment. Then their fate will be asked of a judge, who is not always impartial. Assuming they are not condemned, the only thing they can do is to go into exile in the United States, Canada, or Australia, in order to avoid disdain both within their families and in the communities around them."
These aspects are completely overlooked by the Egyptian media, but not by "Watani." "Ours is an independent newspaper," says the director, Sidhom, "without particular relations with the Church, from which it receives no subsidies." In the face of this return to the crude repression of Christians, Coptic Patriarch Shenuda III, accustomed in the past to remarking on the harmony between Christians and Muslims, has changed his stance, bewailing the numerous attacks against his community. The life of the Christians, among whom the Copts, at 6-7 million, are the great majority, has not been easy in recent years. The persecution of this community hearkens back to the forms of martyrdom used against the first Christians. One¿s memory turns back to the terrible events in October of 1998, when Egyptian security forces carried out rapes and crucifixions during incursions into the Coptic village of El-Kosheh, near Luxor. The crucifixions were carried out in groups of 50 persons, who were literally nailed or chained to doors, with each person¿s legs joined to the next¿s. There were victims beaten and tortured through the application of electric current to their genitals by the police, who accused them of being infidels. Romani Boctor, 11, was strung up with an electric cable in an attic.
But it is the discrimination perpetrated in all aspects of society that makes life difficult for Christians. By constitutional law, the president must be a Muslim. Christians cannot be prime minister, though they have been in the past. Of the 32 ministers, only two of them are Christian: the finance minister and the minister of the environment. The mayor of a city or village cannot be a Christian. The highest posts in the army, the police, and the president¿s guard are granted only to Muslims. A Christian cannot assume an important role in a tribunal. Even worse, according to the law, two witnesses must be obtained before a sentence can be passed, but if one of the two is a Christian, the judge may disallow his testimony.
A Christian cannot be the rector of a university or dean of a faculty. The government pays the salaries of the imams, but not of the Christian priests. The university of Al Azhar does not accept Christian students, even though it is maintained by taxes taken from both Muslims and Christians. Added to all of this are the insurmountable obstacles to be faced in building a church. These difficulties can be traced back to a 1934 law that dictates ten conditions for the granting of a permit. For example, a church can not be built on farm land; it must not be close to a mosque or a public monument; police authorization must be obtained if it will be constructed near bridges on the Nile, canals, or railway lines. And the president of the republic must give his signature. "In spite of the protests, the state wants to maintain these conditions, and that provokes in all Egyptians a spirit of fanaticism and of division among Christians and Muslims," says Sameh Fawzi, a Christian journalist.
"The culture and life of the Copts have completely disappeared from the Egyptian press. For this reason, we have intensified our interest in the Christian minorities. We want to foster union among Egyptians, both Christians and Muslims, because all are children of the same nation," says Sidhom, warning: "The state¿s indifference is bringing Christians to the bitter conviction that Egypt considers them second-class citizens. That a Christian is a kafir, an infidel, neither knowing the true religion nor possessing the true faith, and thus does not deserve to be heard. And that, in this country, an humiliating discrimination on religious grounds has been created."
Ibrahim-Mikeil understands all of the dangers of his conversion, but lives his Catholic conversion with great serenity. "When I opened my eyes to the violence, I began to consider my religion," he recounts. "I wanted God to be very close to me, but in Islam he seemed very far away. There he is the master of all things, but he is not a God who lives among us. This is what tormented me. Then one day I visited the monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai, and there I received the true inspiration." St. Catherine was the young Egyptian princess who converted to Christianity and was ordered to be beheaded by the Roman emperor Maxentius. Ibrahim-Mikeil¿s dream? "To go to Rome to be able to pray freely at St. Peter¿s, ideally with my wife."
Comment: The best move any Australian government could do would be to open Australia to muslim apostates who consider that they must, for safety sake, leave the muslim country in which they live because of their abandonment of Islam.
The West needs to fight, with many 'weapons', against the ideology of Islam. This ideology has captured the religion of Islam (so muslim reformers tell us), and is in political struggle against the West. So be it. We must fight back.
Apostasy undermines the ideology of Islam. The West can encourage it by providing safety for those muslims who want to be free of the backwardness which is the common lot of muslims around the world. Australia can lead the way for such a sensible policy, if it had a government with any imagination.
Is anyone awake in Canberra?
Monday, July 17, 2006
Watch John Howard Roll Over Like A Spaniel.
Note: This site has consistently pointed to the fact that the imams are the primary source of trouble in Australia vis a vis muslim relations with the wider community. This outburst by the imam of the Lakemba mosque is par for the course.
Until these imams are deported whence they came, there is no hope of getting the muslims in Australia to settle down and properly integrate into the wider community. All money spent, policies enacted, initiatives launched will be failures because these poisonous imams are perfectly placed to undermine all such intergrative efforts.
Readers should contact their MPs and urge serious action to remove the biggest source of trouble...the imams.
Holocaust denial from Australia's senior Islamic cleric.
THE nation's Islamic leader, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, has dismissed the Holocaust as a "Zionist lie" in a series of fiery sermons in which he also lashed out at the West and the US-led occupation of Iraq. And Sheik Hilali -- the Mufti of Australia and a member of John Howard's Muslim Community Reference Group -- also accuses the Government of being dishonest for claiming the anti-terrorism laws were not designed specifically for Muslims.
"These laws are tailored to target us precisely," he said in a sermon recorded at Sydney's Lakemba Mosque in November - one of a number of recordings The Weekend Australian has of Sheik Hilali's religious addresses delivered in Arabic over the past eight months.
Revelations that the nation's most senior Islamic cleric has been openly preaching extreme messages to his mainstream followers will be a major setback for the Howard Government.
Sheik Hilali is a senior member of the Prime Minister's Muslim advisory board. Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs Andrew Robb will tomorrow unveil details of federal funding for national projects to help address problems within the Islamic community.
[...]
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the mufti's intolerance of other religions was hypocritical. "It is not the time for anyone in positions of responsibility to make comments about other groups, particularly if you are someone who has been concerned about a lack of tolerance towards Muslims," he said.
Indeed. But is his position on Howard's Muslim advisory board in any danger?
In a February sermon, Sheik Hilali attacked the Western press for being afraid to admit that the Holocaust was "a ploy made by the Zionists".
He also trivialised the number of Jews killed by the Nazis. "What's that six million all about? Is there six million?", said the Egyptian-born cleric, before calling on Muslims worldwide to boycott Danish goods over the publication of cartoons that offended Muslims for their depiction of the prophet Mohammed.
Comment: The imam Hilali is, of course, entitled to his opinions on the events of WW2. While most of us are happy to formulate our ideas on events guided by the actual historical evidence, others are free to choose to be ignorant of factual evidence, if their ideology requires it. Holocaust denial is not a crime in Australia, nor should it be. This site is a 'free speech absolutist' site.
These speeches by Mr.Hilali show that imams are still working to retard (sic)the integration of muslims into the Australian mainstream. This action is the
raison d'etre of any imam being in Australia. This is what they are sent out here to do. Stop them entering and deport those who are here.
Of course, nothing of the sort will happen as this government is utterly committed to an ostrich approach in regard to growing problems in the muslim communities. The problem is that all the decision makers in Canberra are intellectually confused about Islam and its attendant problems and cannot see clearly what is needed to defend Australia's national interest.
Watch as the situation gets worse, thanks to Mr. Howard and his ministers.
Until these imams are deported whence they came, there is no hope of getting the muslims in Australia to settle down and properly integrate into the wider community. All money spent, policies enacted, initiatives launched will be failures because these poisonous imams are perfectly placed to undermine all such intergrative efforts.
Readers should contact their MPs and urge serious action to remove the biggest source of trouble...the imams.
Holocaust denial from Australia's senior Islamic cleric.
THE nation's Islamic leader, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, has dismissed the Holocaust as a "Zionist lie" in a series of fiery sermons in which he also lashed out at the West and the US-led occupation of Iraq. And Sheik Hilali -- the Mufti of Australia and a member of John Howard's Muslim Community Reference Group -- also accuses the Government of being dishonest for claiming the anti-terrorism laws were not designed specifically for Muslims.
"These laws are tailored to target us precisely," he said in a sermon recorded at Sydney's Lakemba Mosque in November - one of a number of recordings The Weekend Australian has of Sheik Hilali's religious addresses delivered in Arabic over the past eight months.
Revelations that the nation's most senior Islamic cleric has been openly preaching extreme messages to his mainstream followers will be a major setback for the Howard Government.
Sheik Hilali is a senior member of the Prime Minister's Muslim advisory board. Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs Andrew Robb will tomorrow unveil details of federal funding for national projects to help address problems within the Islamic community.
[...]
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the mufti's intolerance of other religions was hypocritical. "It is not the time for anyone in positions of responsibility to make comments about other groups, particularly if you are someone who has been concerned about a lack of tolerance towards Muslims," he said.
Indeed. But is his position on Howard's Muslim advisory board in any danger?
In a February sermon, Sheik Hilali attacked the Western press for being afraid to admit that the Holocaust was "a ploy made by the Zionists".
He also trivialised the number of Jews killed by the Nazis. "What's that six million all about? Is there six million?", said the Egyptian-born cleric, before calling on Muslims worldwide to boycott Danish goods over the publication of cartoons that offended Muslims for their depiction of the prophet Mohammed.
Comment: The imam Hilali is, of course, entitled to his opinions on the events of WW2. While most of us are happy to formulate our ideas on events guided by the actual historical evidence, others are free to choose to be ignorant of factual evidence, if their ideology requires it. Holocaust denial is not a crime in Australia, nor should it be. This site is a 'free speech absolutist' site.
These speeches by Mr.Hilali show that imams are still working to retard (sic)the integration of muslims into the Australian mainstream. This action is the
raison d'etre of any imam being in Australia. This is what they are sent out here to do. Stop them entering and deport those who are here.
Of course, nothing of the sort will happen as this government is utterly committed to an ostrich approach in regard to growing problems in the muslim communities. The problem is that all the decision makers in Canberra are intellectually confused about Islam and its attendant problems and cannot see clearly what is needed to defend Australia's national interest.
Watch as the situation gets worse, thanks to Mr. Howard and his ministers.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Wahhabi Islam...A Time Bomb For Australia.
Note: This site has written in the past about Wahhabi Islam. Readers should study this letter and apply its details to Australia. Wahhabi muslims are here and they are working against Australia's national interest which is best served by the complete integration of the local muslims into the Australian mainstream.
Read and be worried...
15 July 2006
A letter from a reader : on Wahhabism and Terrorism
Allie, Jon E
For Westerners, it seems natural to look for answers in the distant past, beginning with the Crusades. But if you ask educated, pious, traditional but forward-looking Muslims what has driven their umma, or global community, in this direction, many of them will answer you with one word: Wahhabism. This is a strain of Islam that emerged not at the time of the Crusades, nor even at the time of the anti-Turkish wars of the 17th century, but less than two centuries ago. It is violent, it is intolerant, and it is fanatical beyond measure. It originated in Arabia, and it is the official theology of the Gulf states. Wahhabism is the most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism, and its followers are called Wahhabis.
Not all Muslims are suicide bombers, but all Muslim suicide bombers are Wahhabis — except, perhaps, for some disciples of atheist leftists posing as Muslims in the interests of personal power, such as Yasser Arafat or Saddam Hussein. Wahhabism is the Islamic equivalent of the most extreme Protestant sectarianism. It is puritan, demanding punishment for those who enjoy any form of music except the drum, and severe punishment up to death for drinking or sexual transgressions. It condemns as unbelievers those who do not pray, a view that never previously existed in mainstream Islam.
It is stripped-down Islam, calling for simple, short prayers, undecorated mosques, and the uprooting of gravestones (since decorated mosques and graveyards lend themselves to veneration, which is idolatry in the Wahhabi mind). Wahhabis do not even permit the name of the Prophet Mohammed to be inscribed in mosques, nor do they allow his birthday to be celebrated. Above all, they hate ostentatious spirituality, much as Protestants detest the veneration of miracles and saints in the Roman Church.
Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703–92), the founder of this totalitarian Islamism, was born in Uyaynah, in the part of Arabia known as Nejd, where Riyadh is today, and which the Prophet himself notably warned would be a source of corruption and confusion. (Anti-Wahhabi Muslims refer to Wahhabism as fitna an Najdiyyah or ‘the trouble out of Nejd’.) From the beginning of Wahhab’s dispensation, in the late 18th century, his cult was associated with the mass murder of all who opposed it. For example, the Wahhabis fell upon the city of Qarbala in 1801 and killed 2,000 ordinary citizens in the streets and markets.
In the 19th century, Wahhabism took the form of Arab nationalism v. the Turks. The founder of the Saudi kingdom, Ibn Saud, established Wahhabism as its official creed. Much has been made of the role of the US in ‘creating’ Osama bin Laden through subsidies to the Afghan mujahedin, but as much or more could be said in reproach of Britain which, three generations before, supported the Wahhabi Arabs in their revolt against the Ottomans. Arab hatred of the Turks fused with Wahhabi ranting against the ‘decadence’ of Ottoman Islam. The truth is that the Ottoman khalifa reigned over a multinational Islamic umma in which vast differences in local culture and tradition were tolerated. No such tolerance exists in Wahhabism, which is why the concept of US troops on Saudi soil so inflames bin Laden.
Bin Laden is a Wahhabi. So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are his Egyptian allies, who exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death at Luxor not many years ago, bathing in blood up to their elbows and emitting blasphemous cries of ecstasy. So are the Algerian Islamist terrorists whose contribution to the purification of the world consisted of murdering people for such sins as running a movie projector or reading secular newspapers. So are the Taleban-style guerrillas in Kashmir who murder Hindus. The Iranians are not Wahhabis, which partially explains their slow but undeniable movement towards moderation and normality after a period of utopian and puritan revivalism. But the Taleban practise a variant of Wahhabism. In the Wahhabi fashion they employ ancient punishments — such as execution for moral offences — and they have a primitive and fearful view of women. The same is true of Saudi Arabia’s rulers. None of this extremism has been inspired by American fumblings in the world, and it has little to do with the tragedies that have beset Israelis and Palestinians.
But the Wahhabis have two weaknesses of which the West is largely unaware; an Achilles’ heel on each foot, so to speak. The first is that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceful people who would prefer the installation of Western democracy in their own countries. They loathe Wahhabism for the same reason any patriarchal culture rejects a violent break with tradition. And that is the point that must be understood: bin Laden and other Wahhabis are not defending Islamic tradition; they represent an ultra-radical break in the direction of a sectarian utopia. Thus, they are best described as Islamofascists, although they have much in common with Bolsheviks.
The Bengali Sufi writer Zeeshan Ali has described the situation touchingly: ‘Muslims from Bangladesh in the US, just like any other place in the world, uphold the traditional beliefs of Islam but, due to lack of instruction, keep quiet when their beliefs are attacked by Wahhabis in the US who all of a sudden become “better” Muslims than others. These Wahhabis go even further and accuse their own fathers of heresy, sin and unbelief. And the young children of the immigrants, when they grow up in this country, get exposed only to this one-sided version of Islam and are led to think that this is the only Islam. Naturally a big gap is being created every day that silence is only widening.’ The young, divided between tradition and the call of the new, opt for ‘Islamic revolution’ and commit themselves to their self-destruction, combined with mass murder.
The same influences are brought to bear throughout the ten-million-strong Muslim community in America, as well as those in Europe. In the US, 80 per cent of mosques are estimated by the Sufi Hisham al-Kabbani, born in Lebanon and now living in the US, to be under the control of Wahhabi imams, who preach extremism, and this leads to the other point of vulnerability: Wahhabism is subsidised by Saudi Arabia, even though bin Laden has sworn to destroy the Saudi royal family. The Saudis have played a double game for years, more or less as Stalin did with the West during the second world war. They pretended to be allies in a common struggle against Saddam Hussein while they spread Wahhabi ideology everywhere Muslims are to be found, just as Stalin promoted an ‘antifascist’ coalition with the US while carrying out espionage and subversion on American territory. The motive was the same: the belief that the West was or is decadent and doomed.
One major question is never asked in American discussions of Arab terrorism: what is the role of Saudi Arabia? The question cannot be asked because American companies depend too much on the continued flow of Saudi oil, while American politicians have become too cosy with the Saudi rulers.
Another reason it is not asked is that to expose the extent of Saudi and Wahhabi influence on American Muslims would deeply compromise many Islamic clerics in the US. But it is the most significant question Americans should be asking themselves today. If we get rid of bin Laden, who do we then have to deal with? The answer was eloquently put by Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, and author of an authoritative volume on Islamic extremism in Pakistan, when he said: ‘If the US wants to do something about radical Islam, it has to deal with Saudi Arabia. The “rogue states” [Iraq, Libya, etc.] are less important in the radicalisation of Islam than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the single most important cause and supporter of radicalisation, ideologisation, and the general fanaticisation of Islam.’
From what we now know, it appears not a single one of the suicide pilots in New York and Washington was Palestinian. They all seem to have been Saudis, citizens of the Gulf states, Egyptian or Algerian. Two are claimed to have been the sons of the former second secretary of the Saudi embassy in Washington. They were planted in America long before the outbreak of the latest Palestinian intifada; in fact, they seem to have begun their conspiracy while the Middle East peace process was in full, if short, bloom. Anti-terror experts and politicians in the West must now consider the Saudi connection.
USA Mr USA AMC-SWA"
Comment: I have left the email address of the author to enable readers to contact him.
Clearly, the Wahhabi agenda in America is being replicated on a smaller scale in Australia. It must be stopped. No one in Canberra will do anything about this. They are stupid beyond belief.
Read and be worried...
15 July 2006
A letter from a reader : on Wahhabism and Terrorism
Allie, Jon E
For Westerners, it seems natural to look for answers in the distant past, beginning with the Crusades. But if you ask educated, pious, traditional but forward-looking Muslims what has driven their umma, or global community, in this direction, many of them will answer you with one word: Wahhabism. This is a strain of Islam that emerged not at the time of the Crusades, nor even at the time of the anti-Turkish wars of the 17th century, but less than two centuries ago. It is violent, it is intolerant, and it is fanatical beyond measure. It originated in Arabia, and it is the official theology of the Gulf states. Wahhabism is the most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism, and its followers are called Wahhabis.
Not all Muslims are suicide bombers, but all Muslim suicide bombers are Wahhabis — except, perhaps, for some disciples of atheist leftists posing as Muslims in the interests of personal power, such as Yasser Arafat or Saddam Hussein. Wahhabism is the Islamic equivalent of the most extreme Protestant sectarianism. It is puritan, demanding punishment for those who enjoy any form of music except the drum, and severe punishment up to death for drinking or sexual transgressions. It condemns as unbelievers those who do not pray, a view that never previously existed in mainstream Islam.
It is stripped-down Islam, calling for simple, short prayers, undecorated mosques, and the uprooting of gravestones (since decorated mosques and graveyards lend themselves to veneration, which is idolatry in the Wahhabi mind). Wahhabis do not even permit the name of the Prophet Mohammed to be inscribed in mosques, nor do they allow his birthday to be celebrated. Above all, they hate ostentatious spirituality, much as Protestants detest the veneration of miracles and saints in the Roman Church.
Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703–92), the founder of this totalitarian Islamism, was born in Uyaynah, in the part of Arabia known as Nejd, where Riyadh is today, and which the Prophet himself notably warned would be a source of corruption and confusion. (Anti-Wahhabi Muslims refer to Wahhabism as fitna an Najdiyyah or ‘the trouble out of Nejd’.) From the beginning of Wahhab’s dispensation, in the late 18th century, his cult was associated with the mass murder of all who opposed it. For example, the Wahhabis fell upon the city of Qarbala in 1801 and killed 2,000 ordinary citizens in the streets and markets.
In the 19th century, Wahhabism took the form of Arab nationalism v. the Turks. The founder of the Saudi kingdom, Ibn Saud, established Wahhabism as its official creed. Much has been made of the role of the US in ‘creating’ Osama bin Laden through subsidies to the Afghan mujahedin, but as much or more could be said in reproach of Britain which, three generations before, supported the Wahhabi Arabs in their revolt against the Ottomans. Arab hatred of the Turks fused with Wahhabi ranting against the ‘decadence’ of Ottoman Islam. The truth is that the Ottoman khalifa reigned over a multinational Islamic umma in which vast differences in local culture and tradition were tolerated. No such tolerance exists in Wahhabism, which is why the concept of US troops on Saudi soil so inflames bin Laden.
Bin Laden is a Wahhabi. So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are his Egyptian allies, who exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death at Luxor not many years ago, bathing in blood up to their elbows and emitting blasphemous cries of ecstasy. So are the Algerian Islamist terrorists whose contribution to the purification of the world consisted of murdering people for such sins as running a movie projector or reading secular newspapers. So are the Taleban-style guerrillas in Kashmir who murder Hindus. The Iranians are not Wahhabis, which partially explains their slow but undeniable movement towards moderation and normality after a period of utopian and puritan revivalism. But the Taleban practise a variant of Wahhabism. In the Wahhabi fashion they employ ancient punishments — such as execution for moral offences — and they have a primitive and fearful view of women. The same is true of Saudi Arabia’s rulers. None of this extremism has been inspired by American fumblings in the world, and it has little to do with the tragedies that have beset Israelis and Palestinians.
But the Wahhabis have two weaknesses of which the West is largely unaware; an Achilles’ heel on each foot, so to speak. The first is that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceful people who would prefer the installation of Western democracy in their own countries. They loathe Wahhabism for the same reason any patriarchal culture rejects a violent break with tradition. And that is the point that must be understood: bin Laden and other Wahhabis are not defending Islamic tradition; they represent an ultra-radical break in the direction of a sectarian utopia. Thus, they are best described as Islamofascists, although they have much in common with Bolsheviks.
The Bengali Sufi writer Zeeshan Ali has described the situation touchingly: ‘Muslims from Bangladesh in the US, just like any other place in the world, uphold the traditional beliefs of Islam but, due to lack of instruction, keep quiet when their beliefs are attacked by Wahhabis in the US who all of a sudden become “better” Muslims than others. These Wahhabis go even further and accuse their own fathers of heresy, sin and unbelief. And the young children of the immigrants, when they grow up in this country, get exposed only to this one-sided version of Islam and are led to think that this is the only Islam. Naturally a big gap is being created every day that silence is only widening.’ The young, divided between tradition and the call of the new, opt for ‘Islamic revolution’ and commit themselves to their self-destruction, combined with mass murder.
The same influences are brought to bear throughout the ten-million-strong Muslim community in America, as well as those in Europe. In the US, 80 per cent of mosques are estimated by the Sufi Hisham al-Kabbani, born in Lebanon and now living in the US, to be under the control of Wahhabi imams, who preach extremism, and this leads to the other point of vulnerability: Wahhabism is subsidised by Saudi Arabia, even though bin Laden has sworn to destroy the Saudi royal family. The Saudis have played a double game for years, more or less as Stalin did with the West during the second world war. They pretended to be allies in a common struggle against Saddam Hussein while they spread Wahhabi ideology everywhere Muslims are to be found, just as Stalin promoted an ‘antifascist’ coalition with the US while carrying out espionage and subversion on American territory. The motive was the same: the belief that the West was or is decadent and doomed.
One major question is never asked in American discussions of Arab terrorism: what is the role of Saudi Arabia? The question cannot be asked because American companies depend too much on the continued flow of Saudi oil, while American politicians have become too cosy with the Saudi rulers.
Another reason it is not asked is that to expose the extent of Saudi and Wahhabi influence on American Muslims would deeply compromise many Islamic clerics in the US. But it is the most significant question Americans should be asking themselves today. If we get rid of bin Laden, who do we then have to deal with? The answer was eloquently put by Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, and author of an authoritative volume on Islamic extremism in Pakistan, when he said: ‘If the US wants to do something about radical Islam, it has to deal with Saudi Arabia. The “rogue states” [Iraq, Libya, etc.] are less important in the radicalisation of Islam than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the single most important cause and supporter of radicalisation, ideologisation, and the general fanaticisation of Islam.’
From what we now know, it appears not a single one of the suicide pilots in New York and Washington was Palestinian. They all seem to have been Saudis, citizens of the Gulf states, Egyptian or Algerian. Two are claimed to have been the sons of the former second secretary of the Saudi embassy in Washington. They were planted in America long before the outbreak of the latest Palestinian intifada; in fact, they seem to have begun their conspiracy while the Middle East peace process was in full, if short, bloom. Anti-terror experts and politicians in the West must now consider the Saudi connection.
USA Mr USA AMC-SWA"
Comment: I have left the email address of the author to enable readers to contact him.
Clearly, the Wahhabi agenda in America is being replicated on a smaller scale in Australia. It must be stopped. No one in Canberra will do anything about this. They are stupid beyond belief.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Muslims In Australia...Please Note!
Note: Congratulations to this muslim man in Canada...a real Canadian muslim.
His muslim brothers in Australia must follow his example.
Toronto Muslim worked as police informer within jihad cell
Now this is the sort of thing we need to see much more often. "Mounties had mole in alleged terror cell," from the Toronto Star, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
A well-known member of Toronto's Muslim community worked as a police agent to infiltrate an alleged terrorism cell that police say was planning attacks in Canada, the Toronto Star has learned.
Although his identity is now known within the community and also to some of the 17 terrorism suspects arrested June 2, his name cannot be published due to Canadian laws.
Sources say the man worked for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, and then became a paid RCMP agent once a criminal investigation was launched.
It's an offence under the Witness Protection Program Act to disclose the name of an RCMP agent.
While the names of sources in national security cases are often protected, this witness has agreed to testify in open court when his identity will be made public, sources say.
Pray, then, for his protection.
Comment: The policy of infiltrating Australian agents into suspect islamic groups is an essential tool for protecting the muslims in Australia from those who would harm them.
I assume that this is occurring.
His muslim brothers in Australia must follow his example.
Toronto Muslim worked as police informer within jihad cell
Now this is the sort of thing we need to see much more often. "Mounties had mole in alleged terror cell," from the Toronto Star, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
A well-known member of Toronto's Muslim community worked as a police agent to infiltrate an alleged terrorism cell that police say was planning attacks in Canada, the Toronto Star has learned.
Although his identity is now known within the community and also to some of the 17 terrorism suspects arrested June 2, his name cannot be published due to Canadian laws.
Sources say the man worked for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, and then became a paid RCMP agent once a criminal investigation was launched.
It's an offence under the Witness Protection Program Act to disclose the name of an RCMP agent.
While the names of sources in national security cases are often protected, this witness has agreed to testify in open court when his identity will be made public, sources say.
Pray, then, for his protection.
Comment: The policy of infiltrating Australian agents into suspect islamic groups is an essential tool for protecting the muslims in Australia from those who would harm them.
I assume that this is occurring.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Slavery In the Land Of Islam...Approved By Sharia Law.
Note: Classical Islam allows slavery today, as it always has. The test for us in the West is to force the end of classical Islam and its replacement with some reformed version.
Read and see why this is necessary...
Twenty-first Century African Slaves - In the Land of Islam
From the Niger River to Sudan slavery continues to be practiced and justified in the name of the Koran. Resounding the alarm are black African bishops, an Italian reporter and an English baroness from the House of Lords
by Sandro Magister
ROMA -ÊSudan´s first saint, Iosephina Bakhita, was canonized by John Paul II in the year 2000. From an early age she was made a slave, sold and resold at the El Obeid and Khartoum markets. She was fortunate to have ended up in Italy. It was in 1890 that she was finally freed and baptized.
Yet today, more than a century later, there are still slaves found between the Sahara and the Nile. What´s more, it is slavery having its basis in Islam, inheritor of the trade which for centuries has forcibly sent 11-14 million Africans from the sub-Sahara region to Arab and Muslim countries.
Little is studied or said about the trade, the opposite being true of slave trade directed toward the Americas. The last general assembly of the African Catholic bishops conferences took place in Dakar in October 2003, where a session was dedicated to the issue, being introduced by statements such as the following:
"Analyses of this issue have been prohibited at length. One cause of the paralysis of this historical conscience has been the attitude of many intellectuals and Muslim rulers regarding the trans-Saharan trade. For reasons of religious sensitivity they don´t want to properly admit to Arab and Islamic responsibility in this drama, whose evil effects still continue. Today in the Arab world the word ´black´ simply means ´slave.´ The tracks of the trans-Saharan trade have formed geographic roads leading to Maghreb and the Middle East."
* * *
The past is like the present. On one of these roads - currently used by numerous Africans from Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, and Camerun - black emigrants converge to Niger and from there, from Agadez (see: photo of mosque), they face the hard desert until reaching the Libyan coastline. From there they set off for Italy and Europe. In Italy´s largest daily, "Corriere della Sera", one of its correspondents, Fabrizio Gatti, recounted cases of 21st century slavery which he ran across as part of a five-part special report published this past Dec. 24-Jan. 2.
Along the emigrants´ current trans-Saharan route is the Dirkou oasis in Niger, the epicenter of slavery found upon crossing the Téneré desert. Illegal emigrants arrive there broken, having been robbed of everything by soldiers placed at numerous road blocks. Thus, Fabrizio Gatti writes:
"In order not to die of hunger they work for free in the homes of merchants or in palm groves. They wash pans, do gardening and yard work, gather dates and make bricks. All in exchange for a bowl of millet, noodles, coffee and some cigarettes. Their desire was to reach Italy, but became slaves instead. It is only after months of hard work that the owner lets them go, paying them finally a ticket to Libya: 25,000 African francs or 38.50 euro. Their fear is ending up like those who have been held prisoners for more than a year, who have gone mad and live in the bush."
And what is the thinking behind this new slave trade? An infantry corporal with "Arab looks and surname" explained to the "Corriere" correspondent, pointing to blacks kneeling in the sand:
"We already prayed to Allah that they continue playing their drums and eat among themselves like animals. Those over there are not like us. If they can pay their passage to Italy, it means they are rich. They are right in leaving something behind in Niger, something for us who haven´t the money to leave."
The reporter commented:
"It´s an old story. Arabs and black living along the Niger consider inhabitants of Africa´s coasts to be simply inferior. Once they used to cross the Ténéré and Sahara along the same route to buy and resell them as slaves. Today, worse than animals, they pile them into trucks. In comparison, goats and camels ride first class, having room to lay down, hay to eat and water to drink."
* * *
East of Niger lays Chad. And one comes to Sudan, crossed by the Nile, a country with a long history of civil war between the Arab and Muslim north (the power holders) and the black, non-Islamicized south. In Sudan slavery continues to be not only practiced by dominant Arabs, but also theorized on the basis of the Koran.
A book published in London in June 2003 by the British institute, Civitas, reports that in black populated areas of Sudan, like Bahr El-Ghazal, the Nuba mountains, South Kordofan and Darfur, there are reoccurring raids conducted by armed Arab groups "to kill most of the men and to abduct women and children into slavery."
The book contains testimony by women and children who escaped from slavery and evidences that in the 1990s the practice was encouraged by the National Islamic Front, the leading party in Khartoum headed by Hassan Al-Turabi, an important leader in the Islamic world:
"Leading NIF figures mobilized the local Arab tribesmen; encouraged them to participate in the jihad; promised them the right to keep slaves as the bounty of war, assuring them that it is justified in the Koran, as a means of conversion to Islam; and provided logistical back-up on ´slave raids´ with provisions of horses, weapons and troops."
One of the book´s authors, Baroness Caroline Cox, is a member and former vice president of the House of Lords - Great Britain´s high political assembly. In her first trip to Sudan, Baroness Cox went to a village called Nyamlell in the Bahr El-Ghazal region, where just before her arrival 80 men and 2 women were killed and 283 women and children were abducted as slaves. Afterward, she made another twenty or so trips to Sudan, often in forbidden areas while gathering ever more detailed documentation.
The book also contains interviews with Arab slave traders, who sustain that the shari´a (Islamic law) authorizes them to enslave children and relatives of men with whom they are at war. They state that they sell slaves to Arabs in other countries.
A former slave from Karko in the Nuba mountains, Mende Nazer, told her story in a book published last year in German (now in English). Captured in 1992, she was first a slave to a rich family from Khartoum and, then in 2000, to a Sudanese diplomat in London, from whom she escaped seeking political asylum.
Comment: There is no comment needed after this tale.
Read and see why this is necessary...
Twenty-first Century African Slaves - In the Land of Islam
From the Niger River to Sudan slavery continues to be practiced and justified in the name of the Koran. Resounding the alarm are black African bishops, an Italian reporter and an English baroness from the House of Lords
by Sandro Magister
ROMA -ÊSudan´s first saint, Iosephina Bakhita, was canonized by John Paul II in the year 2000. From an early age she was made a slave, sold and resold at the El Obeid and Khartoum markets. She was fortunate to have ended up in Italy. It was in 1890 that she was finally freed and baptized.
Yet today, more than a century later, there are still slaves found between the Sahara and the Nile. What´s more, it is slavery having its basis in Islam, inheritor of the trade which for centuries has forcibly sent 11-14 million Africans from the sub-Sahara region to Arab and Muslim countries.
Little is studied or said about the trade, the opposite being true of slave trade directed toward the Americas. The last general assembly of the African Catholic bishops conferences took place in Dakar in October 2003, where a session was dedicated to the issue, being introduced by statements such as the following:
"Analyses of this issue have been prohibited at length. One cause of the paralysis of this historical conscience has been the attitude of many intellectuals and Muslim rulers regarding the trans-Saharan trade. For reasons of religious sensitivity they don´t want to properly admit to Arab and Islamic responsibility in this drama, whose evil effects still continue. Today in the Arab world the word ´black´ simply means ´slave.´ The tracks of the trans-Saharan trade have formed geographic roads leading to Maghreb and the Middle East."
* * *
The past is like the present. On one of these roads - currently used by numerous Africans from Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, and Camerun - black emigrants converge to Niger and from there, from Agadez (see: photo of mosque), they face the hard desert until reaching the Libyan coastline. From there they set off for Italy and Europe. In Italy´s largest daily, "Corriere della Sera", one of its correspondents, Fabrizio Gatti, recounted cases of 21st century slavery which he ran across as part of a five-part special report published this past Dec. 24-Jan. 2.
Along the emigrants´ current trans-Saharan route is the Dirkou oasis in Niger, the epicenter of slavery found upon crossing the Téneré desert. Illegal emigrants arrive there broken, having been robbed of everything by soldiers placed at numerous road blocks. Thus, Fabrizio Gatti writes:
"In order not to die of hunger they work for free in the homes of merchants or in palm groves. They wash pans, do gardening and yard work, gather dates and make bricks. All in exchange for a bowl of millet, noodles, coffee and some cigarettes. Their desire was to reach Italy, but became slaves instead. It is only after months of hard work that the owner lets them go, paying them finally a ticket to Libya: 25,000 African francs or 38.50 euro. Their fear is ending up like those who have been held prisoners for more than a year, who have gone mad and live in the bush."
And what is the thinking behind this new slave trade? An infantry corporal with "Arab looks and surname" explained to the "Corriere" correspondent, pointing to blacks kneeling in the sand:
"We already prayed to Allah that they continue playing their drums and eat among themselves like animals. Those over there are not like us. If they can pay their passage to Italy, it means they are rich. They are right in leaving something behind in Niger, something for us who haven´t the money to leave."
The reporter commented:
"It´s an old story. Arabs and black living along the Niger consider inhabitants of Africa´s coasts to be simply inferior. Once they used to cross the Ténéré and Sahara along the same route to buy and resell them as slaves. Today, worse than animals, they pile them into trucks. In comparison, goats and camels ride first class, having room to lay down, hay to eat and water to drink."
* * *
East of Niger lays Chad. And one comes to Sudan, crossed by the Nile, a country with a long history of civil war between the Arab and Muslim north (the power holders) and the black, non-Islamicized south. In Sudan slavery continues to be not only practiced by dominant Arabs, but also theorized on the basis of the Koran.
A book published in London in June 2003 by the British institute, Civitas, reports that in black populated areas of Sudan, like Bahr El-Ghazal, the Nuba mountains, South Kordofan and Darfur, there are reoccurring raids conducted by armed Arab groups "to kill most of the men and to abduct women and children into slavery."
The book contains testimony by women and children who escaped from slavery and evidences that in the 1990s the practice was encouraged by the National Islamic Front, the leading party in Khartoum headed by Hassan Al-Turabi, an important leader in the Islamic world:
"Leading NIF figures mobilized the local Arab tribesmen; encouraged them to participate in the jihad; promised them the right to keep slaves as the bounty of war, assuring them that it is justified in the Koran, as a means of conversion to Islam; and provided logistical back-up on ´slave raids´ with provisions of horses, weapons and troops."
One of the book´s authors, Baroness Caroline Cox, is a member and former vice president of the House of Lords - Great Britain´s high political assembly. In her first trip to Sudan, Baroness Cox went to a village called Nyamlell in the Bahr El-Ghazal region, where just before her arrival 80 men and 2 women were killed and 283 women and children were abducted as slaves. Afterward, she made another twenty or so trips to Sudan, often in forbidden areas while gathering ever more detailed documentation.
The book also contains interviews with Arab slave traders, who sustain that the shari´a (Islamic law) authorizes them to enslave children and relatives of men with whom they are at war. They state that they sell slaves to Arabs in other countries.
A former slave from Karko in the Nuba mountains, Mende Nazer, told her story in a book published last year in German (now in English). Captured in 1992, she was first a slave to a rich family from Khartoum and, then in 2000, to a Sudanese diplomat in London, from whom she escaped seeking political asylum.
Comment: There is no comment needed after this tale.
Islam...Up Close And Very Personal.
Note: This posting is from 2004. The Bishop of Rumbek is a believable witness.
Read and be informed...
Enemy Islam. An Interview with the Bishop of Rumbek, Sudan
Muslim persecution described by an eyewitness. Two million dead in twenty years. "And this is just the beginning. The challenge of Islamism is much worse than communism. Something the next pope will have to fully face"
by Sandro Magister
ROMA - On May 26 in Naivasha, Kenya, the Arab-Islamic government of Khartoum signed a peace agreement with Christian and animist separatists from southern Sudan, ending twenty years of civil war.
Other than the south, the accord concerns the three bordering regions of Abyei, the Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains. The agreement does not affect Darfur, which lies to the west along the Chad border where another bitter war between Arabs and black African tribes is being waged.
The long war in the south has put the Catholic Church found in these regions to a difficult test, as an extremely high number of Christians have been among the conflict´s two million victims. But as Msgr. Cesare Mazzolari, the Italian-born bishop of Rumbek (in southern Sudan) said in a recent interview: "A new Christianity will arise from the blood of martyrs."
The interview - conducted by Stefano Lorenzetto and printed in the May 23 Sunday issue of the Milan-based daily, "Il Giornale" - is republished below in its full, original version.
The interview is an exceptional report, offering a perfect portrait of a frontier-land bishop who knows "his" Islam very well, sees it in practice and describes it without reticence as an Islam made also of crucifixions, slavery, forced conversions and trickery.
According to bishop Mazzolari there is a world of difference between Islam and Christianity: Allah is not the same God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
However the bishop does not idealize Christian warriors who have taken up arms against Muslims from Khartoum. Even they have committed their share of wrongdoings. The bishop reported such instances, and has subsequently endured problems on account of this
Even less so does the bishop praise the West and Western Christianity while lashing out vicious accusations against the United States. Following the attacks of September 11, the bishop views Americans as waging a furious hunt based on vengeance, which he says leads only to hatred.
The bishop explains how his extremely poor African faithful "experience September 11 everyday" in their lives. Yet they take no revenge. "They suffer injustice and disease without any bitterness. You can only learn from them," he said.
When asked about Christian-Muslim dialog, the bishop responded: "One day they came and asked me to speak with Muslims, that is, to do the impossible."
And when commenting on the question about a ´clash of civilizations´, Mazzolari remarks: "This is just the beginning."
In brief, the bishop´s interview is one that should be read in its entirety, bearing in mind one thing: when Pope John Paul II receives bishops from all over the world during their "ad limina" visits to Rome every 5 years, many of those hailing from Muslim countries think just like Mazzolari. And, when in audience with the pope, some of these bishops even speak up about it.
Meanwhile, in the Vatican there is also the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog, a peace-loving organization involved in fostering interfaith relations.
The last official inter-religious meeting with Islamic faithful took place in Qatar on May 27-29, where the Vatican´s own delegation included cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and archbishop Michael Fitzgerald. Among the Muslim representatives were Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the Sheikh of Al Azhar, and Youssef Al Qaradawi of Qatar University.
The latter is one of the most famous fundamentalist intellectuals in Arab society and a celebrity on the Al Jazira television network. In Sudan his equal is Hassan Al Turabi, whom Bishop Mazzolari describes as "the cleverest person in the world. He´s extremely intelligent, he´s an attorney, and he speaks English and French better than the English and French themselves. He has a sly, forked tongue. He always succeeds in getting what he wants from you".
And Bishop Mazzolari explains why in the following interview.
"A Clash of Civilizations? This Is Just the Beginning"
An interview with bishop Cesare Mazzolari, by Stefano Lorenzetto
As he speaks bishop Cesare Mazzolari fixes his gaze on a map of Sudan, his most beloved and troubled adopted homeland. Only once he raised his eyes, filled with tears, to look at me. It was then when he told me he would die a violent death: "The time to be martyred is drawing near. I hope the Lord grants us the grace to face such bloodshed. There´s a need for purification. Many Christians will be killed for their faith. Yet a new Christianity will arise from the blood of these martyrs."
I asked him if and when the infernal frenzy we have been sucked into since September 11, 2002 would ever end. The bishop said in response: "God will send us a person with charisma capable of opening up a new way toward reconciliation or will allow for punishment, a measured test leading us to wisdom. We live in a blind and deaf world. We need to be really shaken up. We no longer listen to prophets. Of the few that have remained, we have eliminated from society."
The bishop then burst into tears, which he could no longer hold back. Later his colleagues, who were also upset, told me that they "had never seen the bishop in such a state before." Perhaps there was something tragic about to happen, to him and to us - only that the bishop took into account the Latin motto of his bishop´s coat of arms: "Per reconciliationem et crucem ad unitatem et pacem" (Peace and Unity through Reconciliation and the Cross). Usually bishops take such mottos from words of the Gospel. Yet the bishop of Rumbek wrote his all by himself, which is surely significant.
The 67 year old Bishop Mazzolari, a Combonian missionary from Brescia, Italy, has been living among Muslims since 1981, whom he says he knows quite well by now.
The bishop says he has seen what Muslims have done to an elderly missionary in his order. Once, he recounts, after having found half-empty bottle of whisky left by a transport operator in the back of a rail car, Muslims began beating him belligerently. "They struck him 50 times," he said. "Halfway through it, a younger brother in the order begged them, saying, ´Stop! Give the remaining beatings to me instead.´ However his plea was useless, as they kept striking him until the very end."
He also witnessed what they did to an enslaved Christian boy named Joseph Santino Garang, who was crucified one Sunday when, after having lost a camel, he stopped to pray. "His owner pounded nails through his hands and knees then poured acid over his wounds. Now the poor boy is a hunchback and looks like a victim of polio. I met him in a camp of ex-displaced where, in order to make them return north, the camp´s officials forced them to push their own train cars."
In southern Sudan, where Rumbek is located, a twenty year-long civil war, filled with violence and disease, has provoked 2-3 million deaths. Bishop Mazzolari can still preach the Gospel there, since he works in a territory controlled by of Sudan People´s Liberation Army (SPLA) under the command of John Garang, a Protestant rebel fighting against the Islamic government of Khartoum. His diocese is as large as all of Italy, where his 30 priests care for 350,000 faithful each. His cathedral is 20 meter-wide, zinc-roofed shed. "This way they can´t burn it down," he explains.
The bishop sleeps under leafy branch-covered huts. "They prepare one for me in every village I go to," he said. And he´s like the good shepherd leading a wondering flock in search of water and grain. As the bishop explains: "One in six displaced persons in the world is Sudanese. There is a dramatic difference between refugees and displaced people. A displaced person doesn´t even have a pot to cook with and must continually move around to flee from war, famine and disease."
While the bishop eats twice a day, his faithful eat just two times a week. "With the added difference that I could eat meat for lunch and dinner, if I wanted," he said with embarrassment. The bishop, however, said he survives on eating beans, bread, canned tuna and dried fish.
Then there was his comment about how he had to prepare cornmeal for his starving faithful, who "are so weakened by hunger they don´t even have the strength to cook." Twice a week, he says, shipments of cabbage arrive from Kenya but don´t survive for more than a day in Sudan´s 40-50 degree heat.
From now until October should be the rainy season in Sudan. "We hope to be able to grow something," the bishop said. For the time being, the scorching sun promises only drought. Just like last year, the year before, and the year before that.
A group of benefactors from Brescia gave him a Thuraya satellite phone to call the Cesar Association (+39.030.2180654) in Italy, headquartered in Concesio, the town where pope Paul VI was born. The bishop seemed quite surprised when I told him that Thuraya was a company based in the United Arab Emirates. He had thought it was Swiss. I fear that from today onward he won´t use the phone so willingly.
Q. - Do you convert many Muslims?
A. - "Absolutely not. Getting close to Islamic people is like giving them the death penalty Those that convert freely are forced to flee. Yet they end up being caught and punished, anyway, thousands of kilometers away."
Q. - Are there Catholics who convert to Islam?
A. - "Yes, unfortunately. Pushed by hunger, at least 3 million have headed north and have had to profess the shahada, the public profession of Muslim faith, in order to find jobs. These converts are then fire-branded, literally being stamped on their sides like cows so as to distinguish them from infidels."
Q. - Do you have relations with Islamic authorities in Khartoum?
A. - "Once I used to have an entry visa. Now I´d be thrown in jail if I were to travel to the capital. They would say I inspired the revolt, despite the fact that armed separatists once took me hostage and banished me for 6 months, after I said they stole 60% of international aid meant for Sudan´s starving population. If want to return to Italy I have to take a land route to Kenya and then fly from Nairobi."
Q. - Is the God of Christians the same as the Allah of Muslim?
A. - "No way! Where would the concept of the Trinity fit in? And Christ is certainly not the greatest of their prophets."
Q. - Will a Muslim who leads a good life end up in the same heaven where you hope to go?
A. - "Yes, I am quite sure of this. God does not judge others like we do, in our severe and narrow-minded ways. There will be many different creatures in heaven, since each one leads a life according to what the Lord places in his heart."
Q. - Do you think that after the New York and Madrid terrorist attacks a third world war has broken out?
A. - "I think, I mean I used to think, that things would have changed for the better after those massacres. Instead, I've noticed that a sense of fighting back has turned into vengeance."
Q. - Should Bush have thanked Osama Bin Laden?
A. - "Uncertainty and poverty can turn up in your own home, even if you´re the wealthiest man in the world. Power does come from neither vengeance nor money. The president of the United States can no longer pick up a microphone and say: ´Let´s round up and kill every last one of them.´ The wave of hatred that has filled the Islamic world will spread for years to come."
Q. - What would He have felt obligated to say?
A. - "Today the Lord has come to visit even us."
Q. - Yeah, in an airplane.
A. - "Over 90% of the planet lives in uncertainty. In some way the Americans have understood this well and have gone back to pray in churches. We have wasted a sign from heaven, using it to cause even more division among men instead of uniting them in compassion."
Q. - Nice words. But coming from the mouth of a bishop, more than a state official.
A. - "The world is poor, just like it has always been. It´s not Bush´s duty to judge and sentence four-fifths of humanity. Otherwise the weakest populations get the impression that the greatest power is found in getting revenge. I believe, however, that vengeance belongs to a culture of primitives. The president of the world´s most powerful nation scoffed at the planet´s highest authorities, the UN and the pope. This damages trust in authority worldwide. And soldiers who were supposed to carry out such vengeance have gone out of their minds. They´re doing crazy stuff."
Q. - But what does poverty have to do with the terrorists? Bin Laden is definitely not poor.
A. - "Bush cannot boast in front of anybody that he´s the world´s protector of human rights. I lived in the United States for 26 years. I was even ordained in San Diego, California. I worked among blacks and helped Mexicans mine-workers. I know that the rights of the poor and minorities are systematically stepped on in the United States. I always tell my Sudanese acquaintances thinking of heading across the Atlantic in search of prosperity: ´Here you experience poverty in terms of food and culture. In America you´ll experience the worst misfortune that could ever befall you There you´ll understand what it means to be a slave.´ "
Q. - But even the president´s main collaborators, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, are black!
A. - "I assure you that the vast majority of American blacks can aspire to become firemen or police officers at best."
Q. - So, Bush should have turned the other cheek.
A. - "Spain, after the March 11 massacres in Madrid, reacted in completely opposite way."
Q. - Nice way.
A. - "Whether you like it or not, I am casting a bit of influence over you in this interview. Maybe I make you feel bad; maybe I make you feel good. I don´t know. Bush doesn´t realize that, in spreading hate in all directions, the world is become even more divided."
Q. - Excuse me, but it wasn´t him who declared this war.
A. - "You know, Islamic terrorism causes me grief, too. When a plane from Khartoum fires at another air freighter carrying food aid, what do you call this? The Sudanese experience September 11 every day, when there is no trace of their martyrdom in your newspapers. Why? They suffer injustice and disease without any bitterness. You can only learn things from them. They beat their drums and dance around, even with empty stomachs. Westerners are much poorer, humanly speaking. Believe me. I see the three thousand victims of the Twin Towers attacks everyday in the faces of those coming to me seeking food and not finding anything. And, as they are dying, they hear their bishop tell them: ´The Lord loves you.´ Then with their last breath they whisper in my ear: ´Tell the Lord we´ve been punished enough.´"
Q. - I´m sorry. But it doesn´t seem fair to blame this on the United States.
A. - "When their interests are at stake, the Americans are completely ready to a dialogue. They write ´In God we trust´ on their dollar bills. Yet in reality they believe more in the dollar´s green than in God himself. Bush has even said he was for introducing the shariah, the Koranic law, all throughout Sudan Ñ as long as there would be peace between the north and the south and they could begin drilling for the sea of oil Sudan floats on."
Q. - I see. It´s all about oil, again.
A. - "The United States wants peace in Sudan. They also want the oil in Sudan. There are 1500 kilometers of pipeline from my diocese to Khartoum. Chevron began coming in 1978 to take our oil reserves. Then all the others came. Today the Chinese steal 42% of our crude, which they make a small army of mercenaries and former convicts drill for. Malaysia takes away 24% of it. Replacing Canada has been India. But history has its ways of putting the world back in order. As Paul VI warned us, ´If you keep stepping on the poor, one day they´ll rebel on you. Woe to you who live to see the revolution of the poor.´ These were the words of a prophet who had understood well what terrorism would lead to, well enough to be ready to sacrifice his very own life to save his friend, Aldo Moro, who had been abducted by the terrorist group of Brigate Rosse. He knew the only way was that of Christ: through mercy."
Q. - Did you see the footage of the beheading of Jewish American, Nick Berg?
A. - "No. But I heard it described so vividly that it´s like as if I had seen it. We have gone beyond mankind´s limits. We have become barbarians again."
Q. - Is it possible that one day we´ll see footage in which Christians behead men while giving praise to Jesus?
A. - "They would have to be nuts if they were ever Christians doing this."
Q. - Even the Church in the Dark Ages sent poor innocent men to the stake while reciting litanies.
A. - "It made a mistake. John Paul II apologized for this. History books, on the left page, record man´s sins and, on the right page, God´s forgiveness."
Q. - Is it exaggerated when people talk about a clash of civilizations, as between the West and Islam?
A. - "No. This is just the beginning. The Church has defeated communism, but is just starting to understand its next challenge - Islamism, which is much worse. The Holy Father has not been able to take up this challenge due to his old age. But the next pope will find himself having to face it. The answer does not lie in thinking ´we´re right and they´re wrong´. We boast about a Christian tradition which in actual fact we don´t live out. Yet Muslims are constant in practicing their faith, having a way of proselytizing superior to our own. When they teach you to say ´sukran´ (thank you), for them this is missionary activity, since Arab is the language of the Koran."
Q. - And yet some of your fellow bishops in Italy have allowed chapels to be used as mosques.
A. - "It will be the Muslims who convert us, not the other way around. Wherever they settle down, sooner or later they end up becoming a leading political force. The Italians are intent on welcoming them in an easy-going manner. But soon they´ll realize that the Muslims have taken advantage of their good-natured spirit, allowing ten times more to arrive than what was originally permitted. They are much more clever than we are. They knock my schools down and you leave your church doors wide open for them. If someone is a thief, you don´t give them a room in your apartment, because sooner or later you´ll find all your furniture gone."
Q. - Recent statistics say that only 20% of Muslims in Italy respect the Koran´s teachings, just as only 20% of Catholics go to Mass every Sunday. Hence they are Muslims, but in name only.
A. - "But their Islamic culture remains. Religion is only a part of their civilization. No one can erase their belonging to the umma, the community of Muslim believers."
Q. - Does it make sense to export our democracy in agricultural and sheep-herding societies that make no distinction between religion and politics?
A. - "No. This is idiotic. Islamic people base their decisions only and exclusively on the umma. They don´t even know what individual rights are. It´s absurd to teach them the first amendment of the American Constitution, which says Congress can make no law to prohibit freedom of worship or to limit freedom of speech or the press. They have absolutely no comprehension of this."
Q. - Is the shariah in full effect in Sudan?
A. - "The fundamentalist government sustains it will only apply it to Islamic citizens. No one knows what will happen to an accused Christian, since the legal right to an attorney doesn´t exist there".
Q. - Roberto Hamza Piccardo, secretary to the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, told me the scourging that occurs in Sudan is merely symbolic, since "the flogger holds the Koran under his arm to ease up on the force of his lashings".
A. - "I met this man. If you stand around listening to him, he´ll tell you another thousand lies just like this one."
Q. - But even St. Benedict approved of floggings for "evil, stubborn, haughty and disobedient men."
A. - "He didn´t become a saint for this, but despite this. These are little things associated with great men."
Q. - Piccardo told me that some parts of the shariah enforced in Sudan, like the cutting off of hands, represent "the extremely rare cruel acts of local mafia bosses persecuting helpless people."
A. - "It´s not true. It is the state that applies Koranic law most often. It cuts the hands and feet off of even non-Muslims and arrests them without evidence."
Q. - Piccardo also told me that the Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan Al Turabi, "the famous jurist", was against applying the death penalty, as the Koran would prescribe, against apostates - that is, Muslims who convert to other faiths.
A. - "Al Turabi is the cleverest person in the world. He´s extremely intelligent, he´s an attorney, and he speaks English and French better than English and French men themselves. He has a sly, forked tongue. He´s always succeeds in getting what he wants from you. I´ll give you a concrete example. It is stated in the English version of the Sudanese Constitution that Islam is the state religion and that other faiths are tolerated. However in the Arab version, there is not a trace of such a guarantee."
Q. - Yet last November Al Turabi went to congratulate Gabriel Zubeir Wako, the archbishop of Khartoum, the first and freshly appointed cardinal. Even you have been in Sudan for 23 years and no one has ever laid a hand on you.
A. - "You should note that my hair has turned white. The greatest punishment Arabs can inflict is oppression, a sense of falsity. If they can fool you, they do it with will all their might. They are proud of their ability to trick you, to behave like liars and compliment you. Al Turabi will take Bush for a ride, wherever and whenever he wants. And he could do much worse things. I, rather than being tricked and playing the fool, prefer being slapped in the face. Muslims fill you with fear, they keep you in a permanent state of uncertainty. It´s a continuous psychological affliction, worse than torture."
Q. - Is there slavery in Sudan?
A. - "The government authorities swear there isn´t. They went to say so at the United Nations, in Geneva. And yet my missions are full of former slaves. In 1990 I freed 150 of them personally, paying less than I would have for a full-breed dog: 50 dollars for females, 100 for males. I never did this again, since I realized that it could turn into a vicious circle, as they are then used as shepherds or sent to serve wealthy Arab families in Khartoum. And they force them to go to Koranic schools."
Q. - Why did you become a missionary?
A. - "Perhaps because I used to watch my father, a vegetable grower, take soup to prisoners. I never thought about doing anything else. At 8 years old I was an altar boy at the Sacred Heart Church in Brescia run by Combonian missionaries. Then, when I was 9, I went to visit their seminary in Crema. At age 10 I entered their seminary"
Q. - Are you ever afraid?
A. - "I wouldn´t do what I do if I were afraid. You can´t get through life by being afraid. When I realize that one of my priests is afraid, I remove him from his mission. It is a contagious disease. The day I am afraid, I pray that God will take me with Him."
Q. - Will you ever go back to Italy?
A. - "My home is Sudan. I have promised my faithful that I would never leave them, not even over my dead body. They already know where to bury me."
Q. - Do you believe that Christians and Muslims will ever be able to live peacefully together?
A. - "Respect will come once we know each another. For the time being, we share only the earth on which we walk."
Q. - Is there something that either I or my readers can do for you, father?
A. - "Pray a lot."
Q. - Only this?
A. - "Don´t forget about us."
Q. - I won´t forget.
A. - "Sure you will. The poor are quickly forgotten."
Comment: Readers in Sydney will have notice a small number of Sudanese refugees in our city. This posting shows you what they have fled from.
Read and be informed...
Enemy Islam. An Interview with the Bishop of Rumbek, Sudan
Muslim persecution described by an eyewitness. Two million dead in twenty years. "And this is just the beginning. The challenge of Islamism is much worse than communism. Something the next pope will have to fully face"
by Sandro Magister
ROMA - On May 26 in Naivasha, Kenya, the Arab-Islamic government of Khartoum signed a peace agreement with Christian and animist separatists from southern Sudan, ending twenty years of civil war.
Other than the south, the accord concerns the three bordering regions of Abyei, the Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains. The agreement does not affect Darfur, which lies to the west along the Chad border where another bitter war between Arabs and black African tribes is being waged.
The long war in the south has put the Catholic Church found in these regions to a difficult test, as an extremely high number of Christians have been among the conflict´s two million victims. But as Msgr. Cesare Mazzolari, the Italian-born bishop of Rumbek (in southern Sudan) said in a recent interview: "A new Christianity will arise from the blood of martyrs."
The interview - conducted by Stefano Lorenzetto and printed in the May 23 Sunday issue of the Milan-based daily, "Il Giornale" - is republished below in its full, original version.
The interview is an exceptional report, offering a perfect portrait of a frontier-land bishop who knows "his" Islam very well, sees it in practice and describes it without reticence as an Islam made also of crucifixions, slavery, forced conversions and trickery.
According to bishop Mazzolari there is a world of difference between Islam and Christianity: Allah is not the same God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
However the bishop does not idealize Christian warriors who have taken up arms against Muslims from Khartoum. Even they have committed their share of wrongdoings. The bishop reported such instances, and has subsequently endured problems on account of this
Even less so does the bishop praise the West and Western Christianity while lashing out vicious accusations against the United States. Following the attacks of September 11, the bishop views Americans as waging a furious hunt based on vengeance, which he says leads only to hatred.
The bishop explains how his extremely poor African faithful "experience September 11 everyday" in their lives. Yet they take no revenge. "They suffer injustice and disease without any bitterness. You can only learn from them," he said.
When asked about Christian-Muslim dialog, the bishop responded: "One day they came and asked me to speak with Muslims, that is, to do the impossible."
And when commenting on the question about a ´clash of civilizations´, Mazzolari remarks: "This is just the beginning."
In brief, the bishop´s interview is one that should be read in its entirety, bearing in mind one thing: when Pope John Paul II receives bishops from all over the world during their "ad limina" visits to Rome every 5 years, many of those hailing from Muslim countries think just like Mazzolari. And, when in audience with the pope, some of these bishops even speak up about it.
Meanwhile, in the Vatican there is also the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog, a peace-loving organization involved in fostering interfaith relations.
The last official inter-religious meeting with Islamic faithful took place in Qatar on May 27-29, where the Vatican´s own delegation included cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and archbishop Michael Fitzgerald. Among the Muslim representatives were Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the Sheikh of Al Azhar, and Youssef Al Qaradawi of Qatar University.
The latter is one of the most famous fundamentalist intellectuals in Arab society and a celebrity on the Al Jazira television network. In Sudan his equal is Hassan Al Turabi, whom Bishop Mazzolari describes as "the cleverest person in the world. He´s extremely intelligent, he´s an attorney, and he speaks English and French better than the English and French themselves. He has a sly, forked tongue. He always succeeds in getting what he wants from you".
And Bishop Mazzolari explains why in the following interview.
"A Clash of Civilizations? This Is Just the Beginning"
An interview with bishop Cesare Mazzolari, by Stefano Lorenzetto
As he speaks bishop Cesare Mazzolari fixes his gaze on a map of Sudan, his most beloved and troubled adopted homeland. Only once he raised his eyes, filled with tears, to look at me. It was then when he told me he would die a violent death: "The time to be martyred is drawing near. I hope the Lord grants us the grace to face such bloodshed. There´s a need for purification. Many Christians will be killed for their faith. Yet a new Christianity will arise from the blood of these martyrs."
I asked him if and when the infernal frenzy we have been sucked into since September 11, 2002 would ever end. The bishop said in response: "God will send us a person with charisma capable of opening up a new way toward reconciliation or will allow for punishment, a measured test leading us to wisdom. We live in a blind and deaf world. We need to be really shaken up. We no longer listen to prophets. Of the few that have remained, we have eliminated from society."
The bishop then burst into tears, which he could no longer hold back. Later his colleagues, who were also upset, told me that they "had never seen the bishop in such a state before." Perhaps there was something tragic about to happen, to him and to us - only that the bishop took into account the Latin motto of his bishop´s coat of arms: "Per reconciliationem et crucem ad unitatem et pacem" (Peace and Unity through Reconciliation and the Cross). Usually bishops take such mottos from words of the Gospel. Yet the bishop of Rumbek wrote his all by himself, which is surely significant.
The 67 year old Bishop Mazzolari, a Combonian missionary from Brescia, Italy, has been living among Muslims since 1981, whom he says he knows quite well by now.
The bishop says he has seen what Muslims have done to an elderly missionary in his order. Once, he recounts, after having found half-empty bottle of whisky left by a transport operator in the back of a rail car, Muslims began beating him belligerently. "They struck him 50 times," he said. "Halfway through it, a younger brother in the order begged them, saying, ´Stop! Give the remaining beatings to me instead.´ However his plea was useless, as they kept striking him until the very end."
He also witnessed what they did to an enslaved Christian boy named Joseph Santino Garang, who was crucified one Sunday when, after having lost a camel, he stopped to pray. "His owner pounded nails through his hands and knees then poured acid over his wounds. Now the poor boy is a hunchback and looks like a victim of polio. I met him in a camp of ex-displaced where, in order to make them return north, the camp´s officials forced them to push their own train cars."
In southern Sudan, where Rumbek is located, a twenty year-long civil war, filled with violence and disease, has provoked 2-3 million deaths. Bishop Mazzolari can still preach the Gospel there, since he works in a territory controlled by of Sudan People´s Liberation Army (SPLA) under the command of John Garang, a Protestant rebel fighting against the Islamic government of Khartoum. His diocese is as large as all of Italy, where his 30 priests care for 350,000 faithful each. His cathedral is 20 meter-wide, zinc-roofed shed. "This way they can´t burn it down," he explains.
The bishop sleeps under leafy branch-covered huts. "They prepare one for me in every village I go to," he said. And he´s like the good shepherd leading a wondering flock in search of water and grain. As the bishop explains: "One in six displaced persons in the world is Sudanese. There is a dramatic difference between refugees and displaced people. A displaced person doesn´t even have a pot to cook with and must continually move around to flee from war, famine and disease."
While the bishop eats twice a day, his faithful eat just two times a week. "With the added difference that I could eat meat for lunch and dinner, if I wanted," he said with embarrassment. The bishop, however, said he survives on eating beans, bread, canned tuna and dried fish.
Then there was his comment about how he had to prepare cornmeal for his starving faithful, who "are so weakened by hunger they don´t even have the strength to cook." Twice a week, he says, shipments of cabbage arrive from Kenya but don´t survive for more than a day in Sudan´s 40-50 degree heat.
From now until October should be the rainy season in Sudan. "We hope to be able to grow something," the bishop said. For the time being, the scorching sun promises only drought. Just like last year, the year before, and the year before that.
A group of benefactors from Brescia gave him a Thuraya satellite phone to call the Cesar Association (+39.030.2180654) in Italy, headquartered in Concesio, the town where pope Paul VI was born. The bishop seemed quite surprised when I told him that Thuraya was a company based in the United Arab Emirates. He had thought it was Swiss. I fear that from today onward he won´t use the phone so willingly.
Q. - Do you convert many Muslims?
A. - "Absolutely not. Getting close to Islamic people is like giving them the death penalty Those that convert freely are forced to flee. Yet they end up being caught and punished, anyway, thousands of kilometers away."
Q. - Are there Catholics who convert to Islam?
A. - "Yes, unfortunately. Pushed by hunger, at least 3 million have headed north and have had to profess the shahada, the public profession of Muslim faith, in order to find jobs. These converts are then fire-branded, literally being stamped on their sides like cows so as to distinguish them from infidels."
Q. - Do you have relations with Islamic authorities in Khartoum?
A. - "Once I used to have an entry visa. Now I´d be thrown in jail if I were to travel to the capital. They would say I inspired the revolt, despite the fact that armed separatists once took me hostage and banished me for 6 months, after I said they stole 60% of international aid meant for Sudan´s starving population. If want to return to Italy I have to take a land route to Kenya and then fly from Nairobi."
Q. - Is the God of Christians the same as the Allah of Muslim?
A. - "No way! Where would the concept of the Trinity fit in? And Christ is certainly not the greatest of their prophets."
Q. - Will a Muslim who leads a good life end up in the same heaven where you hope to go?
A. - "Yes, I am quite sure of this. God does not judge others like we do, in our severe and narrow-minded ways. There will be many different creatures in heaven, since each one leads a life according to what the Lord places in his heart."
Q. - Do you think that after the New York and Madrid terrorist attacks a third world war has broken out?
A. - "I think, I mean I used to think, that things would have changed for the better after those massacres. Instead, I've noticed that a sense of fighting back has turned into vengeance."
Q. - Should Bush have thanked Osama Bin Laden?
A. - "Uncertainty and poverty can turn up in your own home, even if you´re the wealthiest man in the world. Power does come from neither vengeance nor money. The president of the United States can no longer pick up a microphone and say: ´Let´s round up and kill every last one of them.´ The wave of hatred that has filled the Islamic world will spread for years to come."
Q. - What would He have felt obligated to say?
A. - "Today the Lord has come to visit even us."
Q. - Yeah, in an airplane.
A. - "Over 90% of the planet lives in uncertainty. In some way the Americans have understood this well and have gone back to pray in churches. We have wasted a sign from heaven, using it to cause even more division among men instead of uniting them in compassion."
Q. - Nice words. But coming from the mouth of a bishop, more than a state official.
A. - "The world is poor, just like it has always been. It´s not Bush´s duty to judge and sentence four-fifths of humanity. Otherwise the weakest populations get the impression that the greatest power is found in getting revenge. I believe, however, that vengeance belongs to a culture of primitives. The president of the world´s most powerful nation scoffed at the planet´s highest authorities, the UN and the pope. This damages trust in authority worldwide. And soldiers who were supposed to carry out such vengeance have gone out of their minds. They´re doing crazy stuff."
Q. - But what does poverty have to do with the terrorists? Bin Laden is definitely not poor.
A. - "Bush cannot boast in front of anybody that he´s the world´s protector of human rights. I lived in the United States for 26 years. I was even ordained in San Diego, California. I worked among blacks and helped Mexicans mine-workers. I know that the rights of the poor and minorities are systematically stepped on in the United States. I always tell my Sudanese acquaintances thinking of heading across the Atlantic in search of prosperity: ´Here you experience poverty in terms of food and culture. In America you´ll experience the worst misfortune that could ever befall you There you´ll understand what it means to be a slave.´ "
Q. - But even the president´s main collaborators, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, are black!
A. - "I assure you that the vast majority of American blacks can aspire to become firemen or police officers at best."
Q. - So, Bush should have turned the other cheek.
A. - "Spain, after the March 11 massacres in Madrid, reacted in completely opposite way."
Q. - Nice way.
A. - "Whether you like it or not, I am casting a bit of influence over you in this interview. Maybe I make you feel bad; maybe I make you feel good. I don´t know. Bush doesn´t realize that, in spreading hate in all directions, the world is become even more divided."
Q. - Excuse me, but it wasn´t him who declared this war.
A. - "You know, Islamic terrorism causes me grief, too. When a plane from Khartoum fires at another air freighter carrying food aid, what do you call this? The Sudanese experience September 11 every day, when there is no trace of their martyrdom in your newspapers. Why? They suffer injustice and disease without any bitterness. You can only learn things from them. They beat their drums and dance around, even with empty stomachs. Westerners are much poorer, humanly speaking. Believe me. I see the three thousand victims of the Twin Towers attacks everyday in the faces of those coming to me seeking food and not finding anything. And, as they are dying, they hear their bishop tell them: ´The Lord loves you.´ Then with their last breath they whisper in my ear: ´Tell the Lord we´ve been punished enough.´"
Q. - I´m sorry. But it doesn´t seem fair to blame this on the United States.
A. - "When their interests are at stake, the Americans are completely ready to a dialogue. They write ´In God we trust´ on their dollar bills. Yet in reality they believe more in the dollar´s green than in God himself. Bush has even said he was for introducing the shariah, the Koranic law, all throughout Sudan Ñ as long as there would be peace between the north and the south and they could begin drilling for the sea of oil Sudan floats on."
Q. - I see. It´s all about oil, again.
A. - "The United States wants peace in Sudan. They also want the oil in Sudan. There are 1500 kilometers of pipeline from my diocese to Khartoum. Chevron began coming in 1978 to take our oil reserves. Then all the others came. Today the Chinese steal 42% of our crude, which they make a small army of mercenaries and former convicts drill for. Malaysia takes away 24% of it. Replacing Canada has been India. But history has its ways of putting the world back in order. As Paul VI warned us, ´If you keep stepping on the poor, one day they´ll rebel on you. Woe to you who live to see the revolution of the poor.´ These were the words of a prophet who had understood well what terrorism would lead to, well enough to be ready to sacrifice his very own life to save his friend, Aldo Moro, who had been abducted by the terrorist group of Brigate Rosse. He knew the only way was that of Christ: through mercy."
Q. - Did you see the footage of the beheading of Jewish American, Nick Berg?
A. - "No. But I heard it described so vividly that it´s like as if I had seen it. We have gone beyond mankind´s limits. We have become barbarians again."
Q. - Is it possible that one day we´ll see footage in which Christians behead men while giving praise to Jesus?
A. - "They would have to be nuts if they were ever Christians doing this."
Q. - Even the Church in the Dark Ages sent poor innocent men to the stake while reciting litanies.
A. - "It made a mistake. John Paul II apologized for this. History books, on the left page, record man´s sins and, on the right page, God´s forgiveness."
Q. - Is it exaggerated when people talk about a clash of civilizations, as between the West and Islam?
A. - "No. This is just the beginning. The Church has defeated communism, but is just starting to understand its next challenge - Islamism, which is much worse. The Holy Father has not been able to take up this challenge due to his old age. But the next pope will find himself having to face it. The answer does not lie in thinking ´we´re right and they´re wrong´. We boast about a Christian tradition which in actual fact we don´t live out. Yet Muslims are constant in practicing their faith, having a way of proselytizing superior to our own. When they teach you to say ´sukran´ (thank you), for them this is missionary activity, since Arab is the language of the Koran."
Q. - And yet some of your fellow bishops in Italy have allowed chapels to be used as mosques.
A. - "It will be the Muslims who convert us, not the other way around. Wherever they settle down, sooner or later they end up becoming a leading political force. The Italians are intent on welcoming them in an easy-going manner. But soon they´ll realize that the Muslims have taken advantage of their good-natured spirit, allowing ten times more to arrive than what was originally permitted. They are much more clever than we are. They knock my schools down and you leave your church doors wide open for them. If someone is a thief, you don´t give them a room in your apartment, because sooner or later you´ll find all your furniture gone."
Q. - Recent statistics say that only 20% of Muslims in Italy respect the Koran´s teachings, just as only 20% of Catholics go to Mass every Sunday. Hence they are Muslims, but in name only.
A. - "But their Islamic culture remains. Religion is only a part of their civilization. No one can erase their belonging to the umma, the community of Muslim believers."
Q. - Does it make sense to export our democracy in agricultural and sheep-herding societies that make no distinction between religion and politics?
A. - "No. This is idiotic. Islamic people base their decisions only and exclusively on the umma. They don´t even know what individual rights are. It´s absurd to teach them the first amendment of the American Constitution, which says Congress can make no law to prohibit freedom of worship or to limit freedom of speech or the press. They have absolutely no comprehension of this."
Q. - Is the shariah in full effect in Sudan?
A. - "The fundamentalist government sustains it will only apply it to Islamic citizens. No one knows what will happen to an accused Christian, since the legal right to an attorney doesn´t exist there".
Q. - Roberto Hamza Piccardo, secretary to the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, told me the scourging that occurs in Sudan is merely symbolic, since "the flogger holds the Koran under his arm to ease up on the force of his lashings".
A. - "I met this man. If you stand around listening to him, he´ll tell you another thousand lies just like this one."
Q. - But even St. Benedict approved of floggings for "evil, stubborn, haughty and disobedient men."
A. - "He didn´t become a saint for this, but despite this. These are little things associated with great men."
Q. - Piccardo told me that some parts of the shariah enforced in Sudan, like the cutting off of hands, represent "the extremely rare cruel acts of local mafia bosses persecuting helpless people."
A. - "It´s not true. It is the state that applies Koranic law most often. It cuts the hands and feet off of even non-Muslims and arrests them without evidence."
Q. - Piccardo also told me that the Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan Al Turabi, "the famous jurist", was against applying the death penalty, as the Koran would prescribe, against apostates - that is, Muslims who convert to other faiths.
A. - "Al Turabi is the cleverest person in the world. He´s extremely intelligent, he´s an attorney, and he speaks English and French better than English and French men themselves. He has a sly, forked tongue. He´s always succeeds in getting what he wants from you. I´ll give you a concrete example. It is stated in the English version of the Sudanese Constitution that Islam is the state religion and that other faiths are tolerated. However in the Arab version, there is not a trace of such a guarantee."
Q. - Yet last November Al Turabi went to congratulate Gabriel Zubeir Wako, the archbishop of Khartoum, the first and freshly appointed cardinal. Even you have been in Sudan for 23 years and no one has ever laid a hand on you.
A. - "You should note that my hair has turned white. The greatest punishment Arabs can inflict is oppression, a sense of falsity. If they can fool you, they do it with will all their might. They are proud of their ability to trick you, to behave like liars and compliment you. Al Turabi will take Bush for a ride, wherever and whenever he wants. And he could do much worse things. I, rather than being tricked and playing the fool, prefer being slapped in the face. Muslims fill you with fear, they keep you in a permanent state of uncertainty. It´s a continuous psychological affliction, worse than torture."
Q. - Is there slavery in Sudan?
A. - "The government authorities swear there isn´t. They went to say so at the United Nations, in Geneva. And yet my missions are full of former slaves. In 1990 I freed 150 of them personally, paying less than I would have for a full-breed dog: 50 dollars for females, 100 for males. I never did this again, since I realized that it could turn into a vicious circle, as they are then used as shepherds or sent to serve wealthy Arab families in Khartoum. And they force them to go to Koranic schools."
Q. - Why did you become a missionary?
A. - "Perhaps because I used to watch my father, a vegetable grower, take soup to prisoners. I never thought about doing anything else. At 8 years old I was an altar boy at the Sacred Heart Church in Brescia run by Combonian missionaries. Then, when I was 9, I went to visit their seminary in Crema. At age 10 I entered their seminary"
Q. - Are you ever afraid?
A. - "I wouldn´t do what I do if I were afraid. You can´t get through life by being afraid. When I realize that one of my priests is afraid, I remove him from his mission. It is a contagious disease. The day I am afraid, I pray that God will take me with Him."
Q. - Will you ever go back to Italy?
A. - "My home is Sudan. I have promised my faithful that I would never leave them, not even over my dead body. They already know where to bury me."
Q. - Do you believe that Christians and Muslims will ever be able to live peacefully together?
A. - "Respect will come once we know each another. For the time being, we share only the earth on which we walk."
Q. - Is there something that either I or my readers can do for you, father?
A. - "Pray a lot."
Q. - Only this?
A. - "Don´t forget about us."
Q. - I won´t forget.
A. - "Sure you will. The poor are quickly forgotten."
Comment: Readers in Sydney will have notice a small number of Sudanese refugees in our city. This posting shows you what they have fled from.
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