Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations?

For all those who have a moment to spare, a very illuminating debate from over at Jihad Watch (available here or here) concerning the issue of whether or not a "Clash of Civilizations" is occurring between the Islam and the West.

In very brief summary, the debate shows the unique approach used from both sides that I have often noticed in debates on this topic. Essentially, the debater arguing that there is no clash of civilization was debating from a modern and emotive position, using recent historical facts to illustrate his points rather than delving into ancient history to explore the historical facts that counter his position. On the other hand, the debater arguing in favour of the claim that a clash of civilization is actually occurring uses original and foundational Islamic source material, in addition to the original interpretations of the most respected Islamic scholars and legalists, to support his position. Strangely enough, these are the very same sources that are used by the vast majority of Islamic terrorist groups to justify their actions and support their claims to being "true" Muslims.

With this final point in mind, it is not hard to realize which one of the debaters had the stronger argument.

Lack of Pro-Life Media Coverage...Is This Really Surprising in Canada?

TORONTO, May 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Like the CBC, the Toronto Star, which is Canada's largest newspaper based in Canada's largest city, failed to report on the over 12,000 Canadians who marched for life at Parliament Hill earlier this May. Instead, the paper's editors gave extra coverage to a US story about a man who was jailed over two years ago for killing an abortionist more than 10 years ago.

While the media blackout of the National March for Life is an annual occurrence, this year's huge support for the march from Canadian Catholic Bishops, coupled with a record number of marchers, has incited pro-life groups to take action against the media bias against socially conservative causes.

Campaign Life Coalition just days ago sent a letter to the CBC criticizing the fact that they again denied coverage to the annual march:

"How is it that CBC's national news desk has in the recent past given lengthy coverage to a paltry 200 individuals at a pro-marijuana rally on the Hill," asks the letter, "but fails to notice 12,000+ prolife citizens overflowing the grounds of Parliament Hill?"

"Is this not proof of a double standard which favours 'socially liberal' causes?"

I think every Canadian knows the answer to that last question, although the myth of the mainstream`s media objectivity--an impossible idea for any angle--will certainly remain in the minds of many.

Ultimately, the problem that I have with this issue is not that both the Toronto Star and the CBC did not report the event, but rather that my tax dollars are paying for the CBC and they did not report the event. Thus, I am forced into a position where my personal money, taken from me by the Canadian Government, is funding a social propaganda campaign (through silence) that I do not subscribe to, endorse or otherwise wish to support. And yet, I have no choice in the matter.

As a related side note, I would be equally frustrated if the government run CBC was biased towards socially conservative ideas for the simple fact that, as much as possible, political worldviews and ideologies should be argued for based on their merits and effectiveness, not through a media machine.

Explaining True Christian Love

An outstanding summary, directly linked to a topical issue, of what Christian love truly means...and it is certainly not what most people assume today.

An excerpt:

The President then delivered his answer to the puzzle of living in the world of diverse faiths. "For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together," he said. "It's no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule - the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. The call to serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth."

Interestingly, all committed Christians can agree on this point, but the result will not be what Mr. Obama is intending. Speaking as someone who was once on the proverbial 'other side,' who was living a lifestyle contrary to the Gospel, who was anti-life, I know that the most charitable loving thing Christians can do for those on the 'other side' is to love them enough to let them know that their behavior is harmful to themselves, and especially to their eternal salvation.

It is love to have the courage to tell the active homosexual that his behavior is harmful for him physically, emotionally and spiritually. It is kindness to tell the abortionist that God loves him and will forgive him if he'd only repent and stop the killing. It is an act of charity for the bishop to tell the errant pro-abortion Catholic politician that he may not receive Holy Communion until he repents of his support for abortion. The Golden Rule does not - as Obama hinted that it does - simply mean that we ought to suspend our faculties of judgment and accept error (a truly fatal error in the case of support for abortion) against our better judgment.

In this day and age it is the easy road to allow our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters in Christian parlance, to do as they please in these areas. It is tough to stand up to societal pressures and muster the nerve to speak out in love against that which leads to perdition. But, if we truly love our brothers and sisters, if we care about them as a father does for his child, then we must love them enough to let them know the truth even if it hurts.

Read it all here.

An Immigration Debate

Just finished listening to an interesting round-table debate on immigration featuring a number of prominent Canadian bloggers of all political stripes. Listen to it here.

One point which I noticed that was not raised during the debate--although understandably so due to it being slightly off topic--was addressing the issue of immigration's flow. Indeed, since the topic of immigration is inextricably linked to such broader philosophical issues as cultural relativism, the idea of immigration flow is critical when discussing these topics. So what is meant by "immigration flow?" Quite simply, it means the direction that immigrants move. And when we examine that particular fact, what is very clear is that the flow of immigration is overwhelming in one direction: to the West--with all its Common Law traditions and Judeo-Christian heritage. Indeed, one does not hear of any massive immigrant backlogs in Saudi Arabia or China or Sudan, as we do for the countries traditionally seen as part of Western Civilization.

Thus, everywhere outside the halls of liberal academia and especially in the non-western countries from which thousands of immigrants come, it is eminently obvious that cultural relativism does not stand. So the next time the issue of immigration and cultural relativism arises, just ask the cultural relativist why immigration only seems to flow one way. (Although I will admit that I do not believe that this will continue in the future for the simple reason that we are losing our Judeo-Christian heritage, but that is a topic for a different post.)

UPDATE: Deborah Gyapong addresses this topic in an excellent post Multiculturalism and Immigration on her blog:

I think immigrants should integrate into the variant of Western Civilization that Canada represents and graft themselves onto its history and its founding stories. While I think there should be lots of room for religious freedom and unique cultural expression, it should not be a kind of "anything goes." Practices like honor killings, widow burnings, genital mutiliation, cannibalism (even if the victim volunteers on E-Bay) should be circumscribed by reason founded on Judeo-Christian principles that form the bedrock of everything that is good about the West.

Liberal Tolerance...Really?

In an older but excellent essay, Francis Beckwith--currently writing for the What's Wrong with the World blog--deconstructs the idea of "Liberal Tolerance."

An excerpt:

The proponent of liberal tolerance, it turns out, is not the celebrant of diversity he portrays himself to be. Perhaps another example, one from popular culture, will be instructive. In 1997, in her acceptance speech for an Emmy for cowriting the “coming out” episode of Ellen, Ellen DeGeneres said, “I accept this on behalf of all people, and the teen-agers out there especially, who think there is something wrong with them because they are gay. There’s nothing wrong with you. Don’t ever let anybody make you feel ashamed of who you are.”

There are many who, after hearing or reading Ellen’s speech, applauded her for her liberal sensibilities, concluding that the actress is an open and tolerant person who is merely interested in helping young people better understand their own sexuality. If you think this way, you are mistaken. Ellen’s speech is an example of what I call “passive-aggressive tyranny.” The trick is to sound “passive” and accepting of “diversity” while at the same time putting forth an aggressively partisan agenda and implying that those who disagree are not only stupid but also harmful. In order to understand this point, imagine if a conservative Christian Emmy-award winner had said, “I accept this on behalf of all people, and the teen-agers out there especially, who think there is something wrong with them because they believe that human beings are made for a purpose and that purpose includes the building of community with its foundation being heterosexual monogamy. There’s nothing wrong with you. Don’t ever let anybody, especially television script writers, make you feel ashamed because of what you believe is true about reality.” Clearly this would imply that those who affirm liberal views on sexuality are wrong. An award winner who made this speech would be denounced as narrow, bigoted, and intolerant. That person could expect never again to work in Hollywood.

Ironically, Ellen’s Emmy speech does the same to those with whom she disagrees. By encouraging people to believe there is nothing wrong with their homosexuality, she is saying there is something wrong with those (i.e., Christians and other social conservatives) who don’t agree with this prescription. This condemnation is evident in the script of the show for which Ellen won an Emmy. In that famous “coming out” episode, the writers presumed that one is either bigoted or ignorant if one thinks Ellen’s homosexuality is deviant and that such a one is incapable of having a thoughtful, carefully wrought case against homosexuality. Such hubris is astounding. It presumes not only that Ellen’s detractors are wrong but also that they are stupid, irrational, and evil and should not even be allowed to make their case. They are, in a word, diseased, suffering from that made-up ailment, “homophobia.”

What a strange way to attack one’s opponents! After all, whether one fears homosexuals is irrelevant to the question of whether homosexual practice is natural, healthy, and moral. No one would say that the arguments of an antiwar protestor should not be taken seriously on the grounds that he is “hemophobic,” that is, fearful of bloodshed. Moreover, if one is homophobic (assuming there is such a thing), that is, suffering from a phobia as one would suffer from claustrophobia, then the homophobe cannot help himself and is therefore suffering from a mental disorder, perhaps one that is the result of his genes. Consequently, calling someone homophobic is tantamount to making fun of the handicapped, unless of course the accuser is himself homophobic.

Ms. DeGeneres has every right to think those who don’t agree with her judgments on human sexuality are wrong. The problem is that she and her more cerebral and sophisticated colleagues present their judgments as if they were not judgments. They believe their views to be in some sense “neutral.” From their perspective they are merely letting people live any way they choose. But this is not neutral at all. It presupposes a particular and controversial view of human nature, human community, and human happiness. It assumes that only three elements, if present, make a sexual practice morally permissible: adult consent, one’s desire, and the lack of intrusion into another person’s lifestyle orientation (i.e., “it doesn’t hurt anybody”).

This, of course, is not obvious. For example, an adult male who receives gratification as a result of pedophile fantasies while secretly viewing his neighbor’s young children, though he never acts on his fantasies and nobody ever finds out, is acting consistently with these three elements. Nevertheless, it seems counterintuitive to say what he is doing is on par with heterosexual monogamy and ought to be treated as such. By what principle can the Ellenites exclude this gentleman from the “tolerance” they accord more chic sexual orientations? At the end of the day, Ellen’s viewpoint is one that affirms what its proponents believe is good, true, and beautiful, while implying that those who dispute this viewpoint are incorrect. Ellen is as intolerant and narrow as her detractors.

In the words of Lieutenant Columbo, the proponent of liberal tolerance is pulling a fast one. She eschews reason, objective morality, and exclusivity, while at the same time proposing that liberal tolerance is the most high-minded, righteous, and philosophically correct perspective that any reflective person with a university education can possibly embrace. Even the most sophisticated defenders of this viewpoint, whether intentionally or not, cannot seem to avoid this philosophical faux pas.

Read it all here.

Addressing the false idea of "Liberal Tolerance"--and the above example in particular--is especially pertinent currently, seeing the "tolerant" backlash from such issues as the democratic vote concerning Proposition 8 in California (here and here).

In fact, from my own experience (and much like many others, I am sure), I have experienced such "tolerance." When completing a Master's Level Cultural Studies Course--taken specifically to see precisely what academia was currently teaching in such a course--I found that all discussion concerning the vast variety of cultures was cordial and tolerant until one claimed to subscribe to the precepts and ethics of what is best described as the Judeo-Christian culture. After that, the oft touted tolerance and all-cultures-are-equal attitude suddenly changed. One wonders why.

Overpopulation and the Billionaire Cabal

NEW YORK, May 25, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Even though recent demographic study has revealed a great looming threat of demographic winter, the richest of the rich seem to believe that overpopulation is the top priority for their philanthropic endeavors. John Harlow writes today in The Times about a secret meeting of the global financial elite, convened by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, at which attendees agreed that curbing the world's population should be their top priority.

In "Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation," Harlow recounts that a May 5 meeting took place in Manhattan that included "David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America's wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey." Harlow notes that the general agreement that population control was a major priority came at Gates' instigation.

What can one say except: It is always best to lead by example!

Read it all here and here.

Vox Day Sets the Record Straight: The Great Papal Smear

An excellent and thoroughly historical blog post from Vox Day--author of the outstanding book The Irrational Atheist and not a Catholic himself it should be mentioned--concerning the misconceptions and myths surrounding the so-called "Papal Inaction/Silence" during the Second World War and the genocide of the Jewish people.

An excerpt:

Pius XII can also be confirmed to have vigorously and repeatedly protested the National Socialist actions through direct communications with the German government. The Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, testified at the Nuremburg Trials: "I do not recollect at the moment, but I know we had a whole deskful of protests from the Vatican. There were very many we did not even read or reply to."

Israeli sources report that papal relief programs saved more Jews than any other, an estimated 860,000. It is not an accident that 80 percent of Italy's Jews survived the war despite the German occupation, about four times more than survived the war in other occupied countries. Many important Jewish leaders of the era, including Israel's first president, first foreign minister, and chief rabbi were explicit in their gratitude towards Pius XII and the Catholic Church for their defense of the Jewish people. Time Magazine printed a letter from Albert Einstein in 1940:

"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. . . . Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."

But as for the man Pius XII himself, let Golda Meir pronounce the final judgment. After his death in 1958, she delivered the Israeli government's official condolences to the Vatican:

"We share in the grief of humanity… When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."

Read it all here.

What is most interesting, from a personal perspective at least, is that before my return to Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, I used to wholeheartedly believe the various misconceptions, half-truths and anti-Christian/Catholic propaganda--such as the issue above--that would circulate through popular culture.

It is truly amazing what a little personal research and study into actual historical fact--as opposed to simply passively listening and accepting what was taught to me in my high school/university years from academia and the surrounding culture--can do for one's perspective, understanding and knowledge of historical truth.

Atheism in Auschwitz: Is Religious Morality the Only Morality that can Survive the Lowest of Human Depravity

As any individual with a devout religious belief—and in particular those of the Christian faith—knows, recent years have seen a strong rise in vocal challenges against believers from those within the atheist camp. Although this rise may be simply attributed to the loudness of certain “evangelical” atheists, it must be admitted that this revived atheist wave does raise various questions in the believer’s mind with which they must grapple. In particular, it is in the field of human morality where practical concerns develop. Many atheists point to the evils committed under a religious banner as a claim that religion, far from improving morality, actually perverts and distorts it. “Can we be moral without God?” these atheists ask. “Can we believe in and follow the tenets of kindness, compassion and the myriad of other virtues without an eternal overseer?” they question. For many individuals, the answer to these questions seems to be affirmative; not only have such individuals found that answering affirmatively to the question of morality without God is satisfactory, they also point to examples within our society where many who would call themselves atheists or agnostics live moral and law-abiding lives.

Yet, as I myself confronted these questions and seemed to arrive at the same conclusion as most of secular society does today, I stumbled upon a story that I had read as a child and had long since forgotten. This story illuminated some interesting doubts about the easy answer to secular morality as a self-assured and self-evident certainty; it is a story about Father Maximilian Kolbe, the Saint of Auschwitz.

Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest—Prisoner 16770—who died in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Father Kolbe and the other friars at his friary began to organize a shelter for Polish refugees, among who were numerous Jews. The friars shared everything they had—food, water and materials—with the refugees. Inevitably, due to its activities, the friary came under closer and closer scrutiny by the occupying Nazi authorities and in May 1941, the friary was closed down and Father Kolbe and four companions were taken to Auschwitz, where they were to work with the other prisoners.

Placed in a situation of indescribable hardship and suffering: the prisoners at Auschwitz were beaten, starved and worked to death. Their rations were so meager that not even a child could properly survive on the thin diet. When food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and ensure that they received their portion. Father Maximilian Kolbe however, stood aside regardless of his hunger and quite often, there would be no more food left for him. At other times, he shared what he had with the other prisoners. No matter what happened in the camp, Father Kolbe maintained the true teachings and spirit of Christ. At night, he moved from bunk to bunk, saying: “I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?” A prisoner later remembered how he and others would sometimes crawl across the floor during the dead of night to be near the bed of Father Kolbe, so that they could make their confessions and ask for consolation. Father Kolbe begged his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. When he was struck by the guards, he never cried out and instead, he prayed for his attackers. A Protestant doctor who treated the patients in Block 12 later recalled how Father Kolbe waited until everyone else had been treated before asking for help.

In order to prevent escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if one man escaped, ten men would be killed in his place as punishment. In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped and once this was discovered, the remaining men of the bunker were led outside. “The fugitive has not been found!” the commandant Karl Fritsch yelled. “You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.” It was a horrendous death sentence, for after only a few days in the bunker without food and water, a man’s intestines would dry up and his brain would burn with pain.

The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He could not help but cry out. “My poor wife!” he sobbed. “My poor children! What will they do?” When he uttered this in dismay, Father Kolbe stepped forward quietly, took off his hat, and stood before the commandant saying, “I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.”

Astonished, the Nazi commandant asked, “What does this Polish pig want?” Father Kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated, “I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.”

All those watching in terror believed that the commandant would be furious and would refuse the request, or even order the death of both men. Yet the commandant remained silent. After a few moments, he agreed with the request. Apparently, for the commandant, a young worker was more useful than an old one. And so, Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, while Father Kolbe took his place.

Along with the other nine victims, Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 and left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Father Kolbe encouraged his fellow prisoners with prayers, psalms, and meditations on Christ. After two weeks, only four were left alive. The cell, however, was needed for more victims and the camp executioner came in and injected a lethal dose of carbolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Father Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer and smile on his lips, he raised his arm for the executioner.

So it was that Father Maximilian Kolbe was executed on 14 August, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, a martyr of charity. Father Kolbe's body was removed to the crematorium and was disposed of without any dignity or ceremony, like all the other bodies before and after his. The story of Father Kolbe echoed through the camp. Amidst all that he had endured, he had maintained his love for his fellow man. A survivor, Jozef Stemler, later recalled: “In the midst of a brutalization of thought, feeling and words such as had never before been known, man indeed became a ravening wolf in his relations with other men. And into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Father Kolbe.” Another survivor, Jerzy Bielecki, declared that Father Kolbe's death was “a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength...It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.”

Now, Father Kolbe’s heroic deed is clearly a strong example of selfless love and sacrifice, which stands in fierce opposition to the claim often purported by various prominent atheists that “religion poisons everything”. Clearly, Father Kolbe’s deep faith did not poison him or the man he saved or the multitude of prisoners in Auschwitz to whom Father Kolbe brought unimaginable hope. At the same time, Father Kolbe’s story poses new questions concerning the certainty of the secular and atheist ethic, the core of which is this: when everything else but a man’s morality has been torn away from him, could or would an atheist act in the same way as Father Kolbe?

It is true that in the emerging field of evolutionary morality—a field that believes that morality emerged as an evolutionary survival trait—the idea of mutual reciprocity and the fear of personal shame or societal humiliation generate a great deal of incentive for individuals to be moral. And many atheists grab onto the idea of morality as simply an evolutionary trait because it seems to remove the need for a moral Law-Giver, thus helping atheists remove a further obstacle in their path towards showing that “the divine is not needed for morality”. In addition, there are clear examples of those with an atheist ideology fighting and risking their lives for a cause greater than themselves. But are such factors still relevant in a place like Auschwitz, where a person’s humiliation is total, where their existence has been reduced to that of the lowest animal, where there is no chance of material reciprocity from your fellow prisoners and where every moment is a struggle to survive. Is it possible to make the decision that Father Kolbe had made when, unlike the fighting atheist who balances the risks he takes with the rewards he might achieve, death is not just a possibility, but an absolute certainty? And instead of gaining even the smallest reward, one must lose everything except one’s morality and human dignity.

In fact, following the tenets of evolutionary morality, would the atheist not have been the very man who tried to escape regardless of the consequences to the other men that he condemned to death? Would he not have been the very first to become a Nazi collaborator, ready and willing to gain the material reciprocity and any amount of personal benefit from the only people that had any to give: the Nazi guards? Would this not have been his natural evolutionary and “survival-of-the-fittest” drive, superseding all other needs when placed in such dire circumstances? For the atheist, would not collaboration or escape, regardless of the consequences, have not only been morally permitted but also have been the morally correct action in such a case?

Thus, a final question must be contemplated by those that claim that a faith in the divine is an unnecessary impediment to morality: In a place of terror like Auschwitz, where the Nazi men were their own gods, where all aspects of human civilization had been stripped away and where all that was left was a man’s conscience, what would preclude the atheist—who holds to “evolutionary morality”—from doing whatever he needed to do to survive, regardless of those that he might destroy along the way? It seems to me that following such an evolutionary ethic, nothing would legitimately stop the atheist from doing so. And if this is the case, then when all pretenses are gone and when men are pitted against other men like animals, perhaps religion really is the last and only stand for morality against the horrors of unimaginable evil that men can bring upon themselves.

First Post...It Seemed Rather Appropriate Given the Title of this Blog

And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel….” And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.

- Matthew 8:5-13 (New American Standard Bible)