Melbourne's Wahhabi Dupes

No doubt Trump's Saudi bestie, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (aka MBS), would be so proud of these two fanatics:

"Two Sunni Muslim men who fire bombed a Shia mosque in Melbourne... in a terrorist act have been jailed for 22 years... Ahmed Mohamed [and] Chaarani Abdullah burned down the... mosque in December 2016, following a failed attempt... the previous month. Yesterday, Supreme Court judge Andrew Tinney said the men were 'motivated by hatred, intolerance, malevolence and misguided piety. You crime is very difficult to understand and quite impossible to excuse,' he said. He said the men attacked a fundamental value in Australian society, 'namely religious freedom' in order the advance the ideology of Islamic State." ('Cowardly' mosque firebombers get 22 years,Tessa Akerman, The Australian, 25/7/19)

Judge Tinney also stated that "'[This] was more than an attack upon a mere building. It was an attack upon a branch of your faith'." (ibid)

How absolutely right he is, Wahabbist ideology notwithstanding.

Thus Spake Franklin Graham...

... when asked about his support for Donald Trump:

"In the scriptures Caesar was the ruler of the world, and he was a ruthless person who killed who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people. But at the same time, the Bible says all authority on earth has been given by God, so for some reason God has allowed Donald Trump to become President of the United States." (In his father's footsteps, Barney Zwartz, The Sun-Herald, 10/2/19)

File under 'God works in mysterious ways'.

The Making of Morrison

Some gems from Scott Morrison's maiden speech, 14/2/08:

"Growing up in a Christian home, I made a commitment to my faith at an early age... "

Indoctrinated from birth...

"My personal faith in Jesus Christ is not a political agenda... "

OK...

"In recent times it has become fashionable to negatively stereotype those who profess their Christian faith in public life as 'extreme' and to suggest that faith has no place in the political debate of this country."

Contradicts himself...

"This presents a significant challenge for those of us... who seek to follow the example of... Desmond Tutu... [This leader] stood for the immutable truths and principles of the Christian faith."

My goodness, is this the same Archbishop Tutu who wrote "I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of apartheid"? (Divesting from injustice, huffingtonpost.com, 25/5/11)

And who praised the work of UC Berkeley BDS activists "in support of divesting the university's money from companies that enable and profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and violation of Palestinian human rights"? (ibid)

And who pointed out that "these students are doing the right thing... the moral thing... which is incumbent on them as humans who believe that all people have dignity and rights, and that all those being denied their dignity and rights deserve the solidarity of their fellow human beings"? (ibid)

Mr Morrison, you're no Desmond Tutu.

Something for a Religious Freedom Commissioner to Chew On?

Scott Morrison's proposed legislation to 'protect' freedom of religion has The Australian's editorialist scratching his head:

"How would the new religious freedom commissioner (who must also defend those of no faith) deal with an arrogant, Richard Dawkins-like assault on Christianity? Could a Shia Muslim haul a Sunni before a tribunal for 'conciliation'? Would Scientology or Falun Gong qualify as religions? If a critic faults Islamism on political grounds, could a radical make a complaint of religious discrimination? Would a court ruling that a witness in a niqab or burka show her face come under challenge?" (Scott Morrison's big ideas and the problem of detail, 14/12/18)

These, of course, are all just hypotheticals. And yet, there on the front page of the same edition, The Australian featured a matter anything but hypothetical:

"Sending her three children to Leibler Yavneh College at Elsternwick, in Melbourne's southeast, is a form of 'life insurance' for Zoe Goodhardt. But this is an insurance policy like no other. It is the guarantee Ms Goodhardt says that her family's Jewish faith and way of life can continue untrammelled. So it is no surprise as rising secularism clashes with the beliefs and values of traditional faiths that Ms Goodhardt, 32, has rushed to support Scott Morrison's pledge to protect religious freedom... 'I think that it's our right, and the right of the school, to cultivate a community at the school in line with their ethos and values,' Ms Goodhardt says... At Yavneh College, that community is based around the modern orthodox school's mission to adhere to Jewish law (Halacha), ethical behaviour (Derech Eretz) and Zionist ideals." (Keeping religion alive lies at heart of family's values, Brad Norrington, The Australian, 14/12/18)

Since Zionism is the ideological driving force behind the settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel, could this not be grounds for a Palestinian complaint to a future 'religious freedom commissioner' that the school's Zionist focus is aimed at producing students who, in one way or another, could conceivably go on to aid and abet, or even become directly involved in, the violation of Palestinian rights?

And if you think this is a stretch, keep in mind that "Modern Orthodox Jews form the core of the religious Zionist settlement movement in Israel." (See 5 key takeaways... from new survey of US Modern Orthodox Jews, Ben Sales, The Times of Israel, 30/9/17)

How typical of Murdoch's Australian to instance "Islamism", while ignoring political Zionism, with its blatant conflation of religion and politics, even when (on this rare occasion) it makes it to the front page.

(On this matter of Palestine/Israel in court, readers might like to trawl through my posts Sixteen Angry Men 1 (25/9/10), Sixteen Angry Men 2 (28/9/10), and Sixteen Angry Men 3 (29/9/10). These are well worth a re-read.)

'God' Gets Down & Dirty in the Middle East

As Trump was mouthing his excuses for his decision to attack Syria, he asked his fellow Americans to "say a prayer for our noble warriors... as they carry out their mission," and "pray that God will continue to watch over and bless the United States of America." (Full text of Trump's address regarding airstrikes in Syria)

Meanwhile, in occupied Palestine, Trump's other half, Benjamin Netanyahu was cheering on the "holy work" of his snipers*, with the following result:

"Israeli forces injured around 1,000 protesters, 15 of them critically, on Friday as it used lethal force to crack down on demonstrations in eastern Gaza for the third week in a row. One Palestinian, 28-year-old Islam Mahmoud Rushdi Herzallah, was reported by the Gaza health ministry to have died after being shot in the back east of Gaza City." (Israel targets reporters, medics in Gaza protests, Maureen Clare Murphy, electronicintifada.net, 13/4/18)

[*Netanyahu says Israeli snipers are doing 'holy work', Alison Deger, mondoweiss.net, 12/4/18]

Christian Wahhabis... 2

Positively prophetic:

"Some of the 'holy' violence alarmed even the Church. In North Africa at the turn of the fifth century, the circumcellions became notorious not only for their suicides but for their vicious attacks on those who didn't share their particular Christian beliefs. One bishop was standing next to his altar when suddenly he found himself surrounded and beaten by men with clubs. Then his attackers tore his altar apart, beat him with its remnants, before finally stabbing him in the groin. Another priest found himself dragged from his house and, once the circumcellions had him outside, they gouged out his eye. Like the tailor-made tortures that awaited sinners in Hell, where blasphemers were strung up by their tongues, there was a ghoulish appositeness to these assaults. Eyes of the erring were gouged out because those who couldn't see the true religion were 'blind' anyway. Another bishop was seized, his hands chopped off and his tongue, which had preached falsehoods, cut out.

"The circumcellions roamed widely, vandalizing property, setting light to churches and torching houses. Just when people thought that these 'warriors', as they called themselves, could not have got any worse, they invented what Augustine called a 'new and unspeakable kind of violence, a piece of cruelty deserving of the Devil Himself'. By mixing together caustic lime powder and vinegar they created a solution strong enough to burn human skin. This they took to throwing into the eyes of priests, blinding them. Nowhere was safe: if a 'traitor' - as they called those who didn't share their beliefs - was known to be at home, the circumcellions would go into their house, drag them out, and then attack them. The more unexpected the attack, the more glorious the effect.

"Festivals of the old gods were a favourite target: circumcellions raided these, smashing statues and shouting their rallying cry of Laudes Deo - 'Praise the Lord' as they went. In a moment, a joyful, drunken celebration could be reduced to sheer chaos. Like so many before and since, these men wanted religious conformity and they would stop at little to get it. Because Matthew 26:52 advised Christians to 'sheathe your sword', with almost Jesuitical precision they adopted the club as their weapon of choice. Appalling violence could thus be done while sin was avoided. Besides, a club was efficient enough: they would beat to death as many as they could before melting back into the landscape. The sticks with which these men carried out this work became their proud trademark; they called them their 'Israels'." (The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey, 2017, pp 223-24)

Required Christmas reading.

Christian Wahhabis...

... in 4th/5th century Syria:

"Decades before the laws of the land permitted them to, zealous Christians began to indulge in acts of violent vandalism against their 'pagan' neighbours. The destruction in Syria was particularly savage. Syrian monks - fearless, rootless, fanatical - became infamous both for their intensity and for the violence with which they attacked temples, statues and monuments - and even, it was said, any priests who opposed them. Libanius, the Greek orator from Antioch, was revolted by the destruction that he witnessed. 'These people,' he wrote, 'hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron, and in some cases, disdaining these, with hands and feet. Then utter desolation follows, with the stripping of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues, and the overthrow of altars, and the priests must either keep quiet or die... So they sweep across the countryside like rivers in spate.' Libanius spoke elegiacally of a huge temple on the frontier with Persia, a magnificent building with a beautiful ceiling, in whose cool shadows had stood numerous statues. Now, he said, 'it is vanished and gone, to the grief of those who had seen it' - and the grief of those who now never would. This temple had been so striking, he said, that there were even those who argued that it was as great as the temple of Serapis - which, he added with an irony not lost on later historians, 'I pray may never suffer the same fate.'*

"Not only were the monks vulgar, stinking, ill-educated and violent they were also, said their critics, phoneys. They pretended to adopt lives of austere self-denial but actually they were no better than drunken thugs, a black-robed tribe 'who eat more than elephants and, by the quantities of drink they consume, weary those that accompany their drinking with the singing of hymns.' After going on their rampage these men would then, he said, 'hide these excesses under an artificially contrived pallor and pretend to be holy, self-denying monks once again.' Drunks they might have been but, as Libanius saw, they were ferociously effective. 'After demolishing one [temple], they scurry to another, and to a third, and trophy is piled on trophy' - and all this 'in contravention of the law'." (The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey, 2017, pp 107-08)

I'm now reading Catherine Nixey's ground-breaking, Christians-behaving-badly, history, and, guess what: plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose. Who'd have thought? The ideal Christmas gift!

[Destroyed by a Christian mob led by Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, in AD 392.]

The Balfour Declaration Centenary: 1 Month to Go

Here's the American historian, Herbert Adams Gibbons (1880-1934), writing on the subject of Britain's odious, ill-fated November 2, 1917, decision to hand Palestine to the Zionist movement in the January 1919 edition of the New York magazine Century:

"The Zionists fall back upon their acceptance of the clause in the Balfour Declaration that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.' Zionism, they say, does not mean oppression of or conflict with the other communities. If conflict arises, it will be the fault of others, and help will be asked from Dr Weizmann's 'one just and fairly responsible guardian' [Britain!] to defend the immigrants. But how can the setting up of the Jewish 'national home' in Palestine fail to affect the civil and religious rights of the present inhabitants of the land? What other result can it possibly have than to rob the Palestinian Arabs of their hope to evolve into a modern, self-governing state? The spirit of the twentieth century is unalterably opposed to government by communities constituted on theocratic principles. The evolution of self-governing democracies has been possible only through unification and secularization. Utah is an illustration. Doing away with polygamy was simply the rallying cry in the inevitable conflict with Mormonism. In Zionist congresses delegates have frequently advocated making the United States 'the promised land.' But the answer always was that the ideals of Zionism could not be realized under the American system of civil government. Mr Lloyd George is now an enthusiastic advocate of Zionism - for Palestine. But years ago, when he was lawyer for the [Zionist] organization at the time of the eastern African proposal, he told his clients frankly that they would have to change their scheme of governing Zion if Zion was established in a British colony."

The Wahhabi Campaign to Close the Muslim Mind

The following reflection by Nabil Echchaibi (Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Colorado-Boulder) rings true:

"My aim here is not to disparage a civilization, but to diagnose its current malaise, one that inflicts Muslims today and prevents them from thinking themselves into the world, not because they are incapable of doing it, but because of a coordinated campaign to deny them the right to do it. Like many Muslims, I feel the weight of this tension every day because the distance between our religious leaders and the world in which we live is a gaping hole.

"The biggest orchestrator of this campaign is not Isis. That is only one of its sad manifestations. It is Saudi Arabia and its rampant Wahhabi religiosity which cripples everything Muslim today. Its literalist theology is suffocating and has no place in the modern world.

"How can we tolerate a religious system which still flogs its people in public squares, denies its women basic rights like driving and looking out windows and criminalizes any form of dissent? Weighty words fit for a colossal peril that is Saudi Arabia. I do not mince my words because this tragedy has gone on for too long and it robs Muslims around the world of their ability to think their religion anew.

"In fact, I agree with Algerian author Kamel Daoud who made a subtle distinction between a 'black Isis' and a 'white Isis.' Black Isis, he says, beheads, pillages, kills indiscriminately, and destroys the cultural heritage of humanity, whereas white Isis - Saudi Arabia - is better dressed and cleaner, but does more or less the same thing." (Muslims today face a deep malaise. We must confront it, theguardian.com, 18/6/17)

Forgive Her Lord, She Knows Not What She Says

Another of Monday night's Q&A Christian panelists, Tiffany Sparks, is described as a "progressive Anglican minister."

Here is her response to the same question dealt with by John Haldane:

"I think for us, as Australians, it's (ie, our Middle East interventions) really exposed a rift in our inter-faith understanding. There's a real problem with us understanding each other's faith. I don't know, there's some sort of stumbling block."

Tiffany's clearly out of her depth here. She continues:

"I'm a pacifist. I'm a really proud daughter of a returned serviceman that did three tours of Vietnam and I think my father's a pretty amazing person. So I have a great respect for our military and for people who do have the courage to be able to do those sort of things, that I certainly couldn't do."

Let me get this straight. Although she's a pacifist, she's proud of her Dad because he just couldn't resist popping over to 'Nam and popping assorted Vietnamese Dads and Mums and...

"I mean all of that being said, I think it's probably an interesting thing to raise is that most Palestinian Christians are actually pacifists in this whole thing. We had a wonderful presenter, Reverend Dr Greg Jenks, who is now the dean of St George College over in Jerusalem and that was something that he took great pains to really point out, that that's where the birthplace of Christianity was and they, even in all of this, are still pacifists."

Better to have held her tongue than to have uttered such nonsense.

Baby steps for Tiffany Sparks:

1) Palestinians are Palestinians are Palestinians. Whether they're Christians or Muslims is irrelevant.

2) They're all in the same trench against Zionist colonisation and dispossession. (In fact, the very first organisational manifestation of Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonisation and dispossesion came in the form of Moslem-Christian Associations, which arose in 1918 and coalesced to formed a national body, the Palestinian Arab Congress, which called for immediate independence from the Britain, and opposed the Balfour Declaration and Jewish immigration.)

3) Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonisation and dispossession has oscillated between armed struggle and non-violent resistance. You never get to hear about the latter because, by and large, the mainstream media is simply NOT INTERESTED in reporting it.

4) Palestinians, moreover, have a right under international law to resist "by all available means, particularly armed struggle," (UNGA 33/24) and "by all available means, including armed struggle" (UNGA 3246).

Interesting, though, her mention of Dr Gregory Jenks. I looked up his website, gregoryjenks.com. While I have real problems with many of Jenks' concepts and statements, which I won't go into here, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by the relative sophistication of his analysis in the following paragraph:

"In the late nineteenth century, European material interests colluded with an emerging sense of nationalism among European Jewry, to cultivate the dream of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. All of the people of Palestine, whether they identify as Arab or Jewish, continue to suffer from the tragic consequences of European colonialism; as do their neighbours in Iraq and Syria, where international borders drawn up by imperial bureaucrats in London and Paris continue to diminish the lives of people across the Middle East." (A Palestinian Jesus, 30/12/16)

Of course, he should have mentioned a) that Zionism at this time was very much a minority movement among Jews; b) that the interests and rights of the indigenous Palestinians (90% of the population of Palestine) were completely disregarded by the British and their Zionist collaborators; and c) that the odious and outrageous Balfour Declaration of 1917, which he inexplicably leaves out, constituted nothing less than a crime against the Palestinian people. Nonetheless, the general thrust of what he says is undeniably correct.

Forgive Him Lord, He Knows Not What He Says

The illiteracy of public intellectuals and pontificators on the subject of Palestine in particular, and the Middle East in general, never ceases to amaze.

A case in point was Monday night's all Christian Q&A panel. The panel dealt with a question, among others, about Australia's Middle Eastern involvements - Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, with a questioner asking, "are we not reaping the seeds we have sown?" Well, talk about sorting the sheep from the goats!

Now you would think that a bloke who doubles as a professor of moral philosophy and director of a centre for ethics, philosophy and public affairs might have something sensible to say on the subject, right? Wrong.

The bloke in question is John Haldane, here on a visit to Australia's Catholic University of Notre Dame from Scotland's University of St Andrews. The main part of Haldane's answer to the above question ran as follows:

"I do think that there is one thing that probably needs to be understood... the deep sense of humiliation that's felt in the Arab Muslim world, going all the way back to the end of the caliphate at the end of the First World War. And it was interesting in the period when, after 9/11, I happened to be in Washington when those attacks took place and Osama bin Laden issued a statement about the shame and humiliation that our people have suffered all these years and he saw this as a kind of just retaliation. Well, that humiliation was the dismantling of this great Islamic empire, the caliphate. I think that there is a burden of shame that is felt, that plays a very major role in reactivating the sentiments of militant Islam in various parts of the world and we don't necessarily help that at times, behaving in ways that look as if or can be interpreted as sort of carrying on the business of the continuing humiliation."

Haldane was possibly referring to bin Laden's October 7, 2001 statement, The Winds of Faith:

"What America is tasting today is but a fraction of what we have tasted for decades. For over 80 years our umma has endured this humiliation and contempt. Its sons have been killed, its blood has been shed, its holy sanctuaries have been violated, all in a manner contrary to that revealed by God, without anyone listening or responding. So when God Almighty granted success to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them to destroy America utterly. I pray to God almighty to lift them up to the highest Paradise. When these men retaliated on behalf of their poor, oppressed sons, their brothers and sisters in Palestine and in many of the other lands of Islam, the whole world cried out, and the hypocrites followed them." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, Ed. by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 104)

In all of bin Laden's statements which follow in Lawrence's compilation, there is only one solitary reference to the concept of the caliphate:

"So I say that, in general, our concern is that our umma unites either under the Words of the Book of God or His Prophet, and that this nation should establish the righteous caliphate of our umma, which has been prophesied by our Prophet in his authentic hadith: that the righteous caliph will return with the permission of God" (p 121)

By contrast, bin Laden's statements fairly throng with references to the injustice of Palestine.

Despite this, our eminent visitor, a Scot no less, as was Lord Balfour who issued the eponymous Declaration which created the Palestine problem, makes no reference whatever to the subject, let alone Britain's role in its creation. (Keep in mind, that but for Britain's creation of that problem almost 100 years ago we would not likely be involved militarily in the Middle East today.)

Had Haldane addressed the issue elsewhere, I wondered? Despite an exhaustive Internet search (John Haldane/ Palestine/ Israel) I could find nothing on the matter save a YouTube video of our august authority speaking to a packed & rapt house at Sydney's Notre Dame University on March 23. There he was saying pretty much the same as he said on Q&A... only worse:

"There is a sense of humiliation among many Muslims, principally among Arab Muslims, because they see themselves as the inheritors of a great tradition represented by the Ottoman Empire but going back beyond that, and then they see themselves as suffering a tremendous humiliation. This is actually analogous in a way to feelings you get in Russia because the Russians were humiliated by the West and there's a great deal of resentment..."

IOW, today's Arabs are just miffed because they're no longer top dogs a la the Ottoman sultans!

But that claptrap was as nothing compared to what followed:

"I think a very significant aspect of all of this, of course, is the whole position with regard to Israel and the perception in the Arab world that Israel has been sustained particularly by the US, and some have capitalised on that and seen it as part of this ongoing, as they see it, humiliation of the Arabic [sic] and of the Muslim world more generally. Now I think all of that is wrong, but it is part of what has to be engaged with."

IOW, Israel is not really sustained by the US (or Britain before that), it's just a deep-rooted, irrational "perception" hard-wired in the Arab mind. And, of course, the Arabs are just plain "wrong" here, but, alas, we, the West, have little choice but to deal with their mental-as-anything paranoia, right?  If only we could convince them that the US has nothing to do with Israel, and that anyway Israel is the best thing that could ever have happened to them, and that...

Oh, and to return to Q&A, here's our moral philosopher pronouncing on the woes of those poor blighters, Bush and Blair:

"I would not want to be in the shoes of someone in the White House or in Downing Street who has to make these big decisions. They're not easy and I'm reluctant to criticise them."

Jeeesus!

Inside Baird's School Chaplaincy Program

The investigative journalist, David Marr, has described NSW premier Mike Baird as a "Bible-basher."*

What we do not know, however, is whether his particular brand of Christianity embraces the kooky heresy known as Christian Zionism, the belief that the modern day state of Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and should be supported as such. Certainly, Australia has never had a more Israel-focused premier. In fact, Baird spent a week there last month, the first day of which he devoted to visiting religious sites. Whatever the exact nature of the premier's theological beliefs, however, or the degree to which they inform his politics, the buck surely stops with Baird when it comes to the following, quite disturbing state of affairs:

"Evangelical Christian groups continue to dominate funding granted in the National School Chaplaincy Program,** earning millions of dollars... Generate Ministries has been given $4 million to provide chaplains to 202 of the 438 NSW schools participating in the scheme in 2016... Generate Ministries has historically dominated the NSCP in NSW, earning $3 million last year, and had hoped to double its funding with aggressive marketing to 2,000 schools... Although funding of $20,000 per school comes from the federal government, it has been allocated by the NSW government since 2015." (Evangelicals lead chaplains scheme, Kirsty Needham, Sun-Herald, 24/4/16)

So what are Generate Ministries - to name but the most prominent of these evangelical groups - foisting on our kids?

We can get some idea from their "SRE Curriculum Teacher's Outline," titled "Our SRE."

Among its "expected outcomes" for Year 7 students we find that students "will... comprehend God's character, purpose and action from before recorded time until the present and into the future," "appreciate the historical context of the Bible, its purpose, construction and claims," and "recognise that God and his message (in the Bible) are relevant to current society."  Take note of those highlighted words.

IOW, critically, the content of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is viewed and presented, contrary to all available archaeological evidence and contemporary scholarship, as history.

In Year 8, for example, students are taught the following fictions as fact:

"Abraham obeys God and moves his whole clan to a promised land where God will give him many descendants and land."

"Moses is chosen by God to lead His people out of Egypt to the land God promised to Abraham."

"On the death of Moses, Joshua leads the people across the Jordan River into the Promised Land and after many battles takes hold of the land."

"The nation of Israel grows..."

Fertile soil, indeed, for a false understanding of today's settler-colonial, ethnographic, apartheid Israel.

Then there's this on the Crusades:

"From the 6th Century, Islam spread rapidly..."  Islam, in fact, arose in the 7th century.

"Subsequent crusades were needed to retake Jerusalem from other Muslim invaders."  Muslim, not European Christian, invaders?!

Would that this were merely a case of snouts in the trough. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

[*The Mike Baird Story, theguardian.com, 23/3/15; **See my 5/11/10 post Gillard's Education Revolution.] 

Great Moments in BDS

Ah, religion...

Put to one side for now what it preaches, all that pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die stuff. Let's just focus on the behaviour of believers instead, in this case the Uniting Church:

"Proposal 66 calls upon the assembly [of the Uniting Church] to 'establish an awareness-raising campaign throughout the church on the plight of Palestinian Christians and the Palestinian people, including promotion of the boycott of goods from the illegal settlements in the West Bank as part of the campaign.' However, it stops short of endorsing the formal Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with the church's Reverend Dr Mathew Wilson telling the AJN, 'We do know that there are significant anti-Semitic problems with the full BDS movement'." (Talks to continue with Uniting Church despite boycott motion, The Australian Jewish News, 8/1/16)

Sweet Jeeesus, will you take a look at that motion?!!

- "the plight of Palestinian Christians and the Palestinian people":

FFS, 'Palestinian Christians' and 'Palestinian people' are separate entities? Seriously?

- Israeli criminality is confined to "illegal settlements in the West Bank"? Really?

Look, ever since Herzl & Co, over a century ago, began coveting Palestine as a 'Jewish state' and turning a blind eye to the people who actually lived there, 90% of whom were non-Jews (not to mention the fact that most of the Jewish 10% at the time were not Jewish-staters), criminality in every sense of the word has been core Zionist praxis. But all the UC can see is "illegal settlements in the West Bank"! What a feat of selective vision is this?

- "We do know that there are significant anti-Semitic problems with the full BDS movement." OFFS!!!!

What a colossal slander is this?! Please, Rev. Dr, thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: do be my enemy for friendship's sake.

Reverend Green & the Selective Samaritan

OMG, yet another religious ratbag pushing the 'CHRISTIANS ONLY (and maybe a few others if you insist) but MUSLIMS NO FUCKING WAY, OK?' line. But, hey, check out the reason:

"For many years I have pointed out the sufferings of Middle Eastern Christians to anyone who would listen, but with minimal impact. The tide is finally turning. Middle Eastern Christians, like Yazidis, Mandaeans and others, represent the pre-Muslim aboriginal populations of their lands, people who have resisted assimilation largely through their religious faiths and refused to embrace Islam after the Muslim invasions of the early Middle Ages..." (Rev) Peter R Green, Silver Street Baptist Mission (Letter, SMH, 10/9/15)

There's more of course, but the Rev's made his point upfront. Which is that he believes as follows (with apologies to Genesis 1):

1 In the beginning God created the Middle Eastern Christian - the aboriginal, and therefore, rightful inhabitants and owners of the Middle East.

2 Then along came the MUSLIMS from... from... wherever, OK?

3 The Muslims told the Christians: convert or die!

4 Why? This was God's great sifting of souls!  (The Bugger always works in mysterious ways, OK?)

5 Many, alas, way too many Middle Eastern Christians converted to Islam, whereupon they ceased immediately to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the Middle East. 

6 For some inexplicable reason the MUSLIM invaders and occupiers got tired of slaughtering the rest (I did say the Old Bugger worked in mysterious ways) and so some Middle Eastern Christians miraculously remained in the Middle East to this very day, and it is only they who represent the pre-MUSLIM genuine, dinky-di, true blue aboriginal inhabitants (and hence rightful owners) of the Middle East.

All simple-minded, self-serving bullshit, of course.

Look, it's not that hard really. In the Middle East, over the course of time, the aboriginal tillers of the soil have taken on one new religion after the other - various forms of paganism, various forms of Christianity, and various forms of Islam - but they have always remained the aboriginal tillers, and hence rightful owners, of the soil regardless of religious affiliation. (FYI, see my 11/1/11 post Casual Cliocide (to Oud Accompaniment).)

Do these Selective Samaritans seriously think we're fooled by their sectarian shit?

Thankfully, the following letter to the editor (SMH again) preceded the above nonsense:

"As an Arab Christian my heart is broken when I see the suffering of my co-religionists in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq, and I offer what support I can to them through established charities (Syrian strikes loom, September 9).

"As an Australian citizen I expect my government to use my taxes to help people on the basis of need, irrespective of religion or race. It is unbelievable that we have elected federal representatives deliberately fomenting religious bigotry by stating that some refugees are more deserving than others based on an arbitrary test. I never cease to be amazed by our federal government's descent to the deepest of depths." Elias Nasser, Sylvania

Archbishop Fisher & the Selective Samaritan

Meet the Catholic cleric (Gorgeous George Pell's successor) who's pushing the "persecuted minorities," aka Christians first/only, line:

"[Catholic] Archbishop [of Sydney Anthony] Fisher was meeting Syrian Catholic leaders and the heads of church welfare agencies and parishes to discuss what might be done to provide housing in families, parishes and convents... He said the current persecutions were the worst against Christians in history, including those under maddened Roman emperors: "It's estimated 100,000 Christians are now martyred every year, 11 killed for their faith every hour'.' ('Fleeing Christians should go to the front of the queue', Tess Livingstone, The Australian, 8/9/15)

Given the context, anyone reading the above would be forgiven for assuming that Fisher was talking about 100,000 Middle Eastern Christians (Hey, maybe he was!). In which case, the above comment, trotted out in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, is grossly irresponsible.

But it's worse than that because, wittingly or not, Fisher is recycling a wholly fallacious and discredited claim:

"The number comes originally from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (GSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the US state of Massachusetts, which publishes such a figure each year in its status of Global Mission. Its researchers started by estimating the number of Christians who died as martyrs between 2000 and 2010 - about 1 million by their reckoning - and divided that number by 10 to get an annual number, 100,000.

"But how do they reach that figure of 1 million? When you dig down, you see that the majority died in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 4 million are estimated to have been killed in that war between 2000 and 2010, and GSGC counts 900,000 of them - or 20% - as martyrs. Over 10 years, that averages out at 90,000 per year.  

"So when you hear that 100,000 Christians are dying for their faith, you need to keep in mind that the vast majority - 90,000 - are people who were killed in DR Congo. This means we can say right away that the internet rumours of Muslims being behind the killing of 100,000 Christian martyrs are nonsense. The DRC is a Christian country. In the civil war, Christians were killing Christians." (Are there really 100,000 new Christian martyrs every year? Ruth Alexander, BBC Magazine, 12/11/13)

That BTW was only an excerpt. Feel free to read Alexander's expose in its entirety. But back to Archbishop Fisher.

He appeared on Radio National's Breakfast program this morning, interviewed by Geraldine Doogue (Catholic church calls for preference of persecuted minorities in Australia's refugee intake: Archbishop of Sydney).

Instead of simply stating his preference for NO MUSLIM refugees, he hid behind the following formula:

"Syrian and Iraqi Christians and other persecuted minorities should be given preference, so it wasn't just for Christians."

Which, face it, was basically just code for NO MUSLIM refugees. 

And when Doogue invoked the parable of the Good Samaritan, her formula for raising the question of discrimination against MUSLIM refugees, Fisher replied (somewhat Jesuitically for a Dominican I have to say) that: "The Good Samaritan only had one man on the road to deal with. I suspect if he'd seen a dozen, he would've gone to the one who was most desperate."

And that, need I say, was good enough for Geraldine.

Takfiri Tripe

Macbeth must surely have had Australian takfiri Neil Prakash in mind when he spoke of "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing":

"'Hunters for Jannah (Paradise), message me... We need to fulfil our promise to Allah,' Prakash said in an internet post. 'Let your blood be a witness for you on DOJ (day of judgement)! My beloved siblings, be the ripe fruit that Allah swt loves and tells his angels he loves... Don't settle for second row, Be a forerunner!

"He also posted comments about the rewards of being killed in an explosion or suicide bombing. 'Oh how the martyr is rewarded, sheds his blood to see the beautiful face of his Rabb (Lord)! Blowing up kuffar for a place in Akhira (the afterlife),' he said.

"'Message me if your (sic) ready to meet your Lord in pieces!" (Drone kills Oz-linked Islamic terrorist, Mark Schlieb, The Australian, 28/8/15)

Judeo-Jesus

The following ad, from eTeacherBiblical.com - JEWISH BACKGROUND OF NEW TESTAMENT, makes interesting reading in light of Geraldine Doogue's Easter in Jerusalem:

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Jesus Wept 2

Then there was the following segment, where Geraldine surveys the East Jerusalem skyline under the guidance of Sr Mary Reaburn:

GD (on camera): Wowee!
GD (off camera): The first step on my quest to learn more is the Ecce Homo Convent overlooking the ancient city.
GD (on camera): Oh, look at it. Isn't it fantastic?
MR: So these two dark domes on the horizon are the Holy Sepulchre.
GD: Yes.
MR: That's still within the Old City. And then of course here's the piece de resistance, the Dome of the Rock.
GD: Wow! It sure is.
MR: And now today it's a Moslem [her pronunciation] shrine...

Unfortunately, we didn't get to hear the rest of Sr Mary's words, but I can't help wondering about the somewhat provisional nature of her comment about the Dome of the Rock (now, today), sort of 'Today it's a Moslem shrine, but tomorrow...'

What follows is what the French call folie a deux (a shared folly):

GD (off camera, interrupting): I'm here to meet Sr Mary Reaburn from Melbourne. Mary spends half her year teaching biblical history here in Jerusalem... Mary belongs to a unique French convent, the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, an order dedicated to understanding the Jewish roots of Christianity.
MR: Mary is a Jewish woman.
GD: A Jewish mother.
MR: A Jewish mother. And raising a Jewish son. I like to tell people sometimes Jesus was never a Christian, a Catholic. He remained, born, lived and died a Jew.
GD: Well that's what I'm fascinated by, you see, that's what I'm really interested in that...
MR: Do you know why?
GD: Why am I interested? Well, how the heck did this Jewish man become this source of this amazing international religion. I find it more and more and more interesting.
MR: If we believe in the incarnation, and that's central, we have to understand the particularity of Jesus, which is his Jewishness, as well as the universality of Jesus, which is his mission... for 1900 years we forgot about Jesus's Jewishness.
GD: I think we did.

Now precisely what this is all supposed to signify is anyone's guess, but I'm sure it's all welcome Judeo-Christian grist to the Zionist propaganda mill. The problem here, of course, is that the locals have effectively been erased from the production. Geraldine is in Jerusalem, not Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem. And you can forget about occupied Palestinians, there aren't even any Arabs here.

In the following segment, our clueless gusher is actually surprised to find that most of those doing the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa are actually "from the area." It's as though she's only just become aware that there are Palestinian Christians, which she only ever refers to (and then only once) as "Middle East Christians":

GD (on camera): What an extraordinary experience. I mean pilgrims have been coming here to the Holy Land since before the 8th century. In the 12th the Crusaders came and controlled the place for 100 years. Then in the 18th it was all the sea pilgrimage which became fashionable. And then of course by air, which means that pilgrims come by the millions as we've just seen, but, mind you, this was very much a Middle Eastern experience. Most of the people involved mainly were from the area. A lot of us were looking on but it belonged to them. That wasn't quite what I expected.

The ugly reality of Israeli apartheid and occupation is also conspicuous by its absence in the following segment with the passing strange Sr Mary:

GD: How do you find the overt displays of piety?
MR: It teaches me something of the variety of the world. It doesn't have to be my piety...
GD: But, you know, how some deep faith is frankly deeply terrifying. Does that cross your mind?

It's obvious that Geraldine's thinking here about the incident involving the Judeo-fascist in the Cenacle, because none of the Christians in the film have so much as blinked an eyelid. Still, listen to Sr Mary's response, and remember that this is a woman who spends half of every year in Jerusalem:

MR: It does because we know in our own church history the deep faith of the Crusaders who brutally murdered people here on their way to try to regain the Holy Land... sometimes I think God must have a little chuckle.(Chuckles)

!!!!????

This woman's the 3 wise monkeys all wrapped in one.

Finally, Geraldine invites viewers to "join me later this year when I explore the Jewish roots of Christianity."

What? More of Sr. Mary's maunderings? I can hardly wait.

Jesus Wept 1

When someone says, 'He wouldn't know the truth if it hit him in the face,' we are seldom witness to an actual incidence of the phenomenon.

Well, I was.

It was last Sunday night, while watching the invariably gushing, always clueless, and unfailingly Israel-friendly Geraldine Doogue star in her own ABC Compass doco, Easter in Jerusalem.

There was clueless Geraldine, gushing away as usual, when the inconvenient truth of a situation, rudely entered her charmed circle, smacked her fair across the face, and then was gone, leaving her, unbelievably, still gushing, and worse, still clueless.

Here's a transcript of this most extraordinary event:

GD (off camera): The next stop on my journey, just outside the city walls on Mt Sion is the building known as the Cenacle, the site of the Last Supper. Now according to Christian tradition this is the upper room where the Last Supper took place, where Jesus had his final meal with his apostles and he gave them the immortal message - really emphasised it - love one another as I have loved you.
GD (on camera): But look, it's incredible this place because it's a church, a synagogue and a mosque all in one. The Crusaders built the church over this holy ground... then the Ottomans came and made it a mosque and they dedicated a little prayer area to King David. So it's an amazing example of interfaith, and you can hear the chanting 'cause we're waiting now for one of the great ceremonies of Holy Thursday, the Washing of the Feet where, effectively, aping Jesus washing of the feet of his disciples, the great act of service of a leader, of humility...

At this point an American voice, rudely interrupting Geraldine's exposition, can be heard above the din of the thronging faithful:  'This is not a Church!'

GD (off camera): Then an unexpected arrival...

The camera pans to a a newly-arrived, black-hatted, black-garbed Orthodox Jewish fanatic, ranting at the faithful:

Zionist Fanatic: This is not a church! This is a Jewish state! Medinat yahudi. This is not a church! It's a museum! We don't need your dirty money! We don't need your [inaudible]

Palestinian Christian: Go out!

ZF: No, you go out!

PC: Go out!

ZF: You go out! This is the Land of the Jews!

PC: I'll call the police.

ZF: Go ahead...

PC: I will!

GD (on camera, gobsmacked): Well, that was certainly unplanned. He doesn't think it's a church and he will not be evicted. So this is... he's really quite dramatically changed the complexion of events. I think the Washing of the Feet is still going to continue but, you know, it's really quite extraordinary to hear that level of passion up close and very personal. 'This is the land of the Jews. This is a museum. It is not a church. Do not pray here.' Quite something. He was later evicted by Israeli police and the prayers continued.

So even when the ugly truth of Zionist fanaticism knocks her down, scattering her interfaith fantasies all over the floor and leaving her gasping, Geraldine Doogue still doesn't get it.

'It's really quite extraordinary to hear that level of passion up close and very personal,' is the best she can manage.

Jesus wept!

To be continued...  

The Other Jihadis

"While Western intelligence agencies struggle to stop their citizens joining Islamic State, a small, yet growing, band of men and women have joined the other side. The cause has attracted a bizarre array of former soldiers, surfers, bikers, adventure-seekers, arms dealers and a handful of evangelical Christians who believe they are waging a crusade. Their motives are equally eclectic: revulsion at Islamic State's beheading of hostages, the collapse of the Iraqi army, boredom or the chance of combat after years in the army. Others liken their struggle to that of the British and US volunteers who fought fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

"Duncan, who joined the Royal Irish Regiment aged 16, says he was horrified as he watched reports last year of how Islamic State gradually took over parts of Syria before butchering its way across the border into Iraq. 'I was kind of getting restless,' said Duncan... 'It was going away from a so-called people's revolution in Syria to it becoming about Islamic extremism. And we were still throwing them arms. We were basically arming extremists.'

"Late last year, after contacting Jordan Matson, a US fundamentalist Christian fighting in Syria, he joined Syrian Kurds fighting for the YPG, or people's defence units... However, Duncan quickly realised that the YPG fighters he was with were 'as socialist as hell', an ideology that clashed with his right-wing views - so he went home to his fiancee. Undaunted he returned, joining up with a newly formed Assyrian Christian militia... in northern Iraq... Duncan is one of just seven foreign fighters with the [Assyrian] militia... a fraction of the 50 to 100 foreign fighters with the YPG...

"Tensions have flared. Duncan has especially been riled by one volunteer, a young American evangelical called Brett. 'He had long hair and this lip piercing, stalking about as if he's some sort of gangster, using Facebook as a dating agency,' Duncan said with disgust. 'He was calling himself 'soldier of Christ' and saying he sees it as a crusade. The Assyrians hated it. This fight isn't about religion. This is about everyone - Muslims, Christians, everyone - working together against one common enemy. This is about humanity.'

"Duncan is equally dismissive of other volunteers, many of whom he refers to as 'clowns and Muppets' seeking 'Facebook likes and five minutes of fame'. Others he calls 'Xbox warriors. They're young kids from the UK and US. They don't realise in war you don't get three lives. It's not this comfy game. You're sitting freezing your arse off. You're not getting fed properly, you're tired, you're on guard duty. They are a waste of time and dangerous.' (Crowd-funded idealists join 'defenders of humanity', Miles Amoore, The Sunday Times/The Australian, 24/3/15)