Britain Adopts Shari’a
British papers are reporting that shari’a law has been officially adopted in Britain, with shari’a courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases, notably including wife beating. Gordon Brown’s Labour government “has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.” Particularly alarming is the fact that Islamic rulings are now enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously such rulings could not be enforced by the British state.
Shari’a courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, with two more courts planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. A visibly pleased Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, explains that he had taken advantage of a clause in the British Arbitration Act of 1996, which classifies sharia courts as “arbitration tribunals” whose rulings are binding in law once both parties in a dispute agree to accept its authority. It goes without saying that battered Muslim wives and disinherited Muslim daughters will “freely choose” the authority of shari’a courts rather than face various unpleasant and potentially fatal consequences of not conforming to the “community’s” rules and preferences.
What this means in practice was evident from a recent inheritance dispute in the Midlands, when the Nuneaton shari’a court divided the estate of a Muslim father between three daughters and two sons. The “judges” gave the sons twice as much as the daughters—perfectly in accordance with sharia, of course, but contrary to any regular British court, which would have given the daughters equal shares. In six cases of domestic violence quoted by Siddiqi, the “judges” ordered the husbands to take “anger management” classes and “mentoring from community elders” (such as imams and shari’a judges). In each case, the battered women subsequently withdrew the complaints and the police stopped their investigations. It should be noted that under normal British law those six cases could have been prosecuted as criminal, rather than “family” cases.
UNDERSTANDING SHARI’A—Muslim activists point out that allegedly simiral Jewish family courts (Bet Din) and Catholic marriage tribunals have existed in Britain for many years, but there is a major difference: such courts explicitly claim jurisdiction only over their believers, whereas according to orthodox Islamic teaching shari’a is the only legitimate law in the world, with universal jurisdiction over Muslims and non-Muslims alike. To a devout Muslim the incorporation of shari’a into British law is by no means the end of the affair. It is merely a major milestone on the road that cannot stop short of subjecting all Britons, regardless of faith, to the stricutres of Allah’s commandment and Muhammad’s example.
The Islamic law, the Shari’a, is not a supplement to the “secular” legal code, it is the only such code and the only basis of obligation (Kuran 4:8). No mere human entity has the authority to enact laws: shari’a judges cannot do or enact anything contrary to the Kuran or Sunnah. The definition of what is just depends solely on Allah’s will and Muhammad’s acts, to which none of the usual moral criteria found among non-Muslims is applicable. “Just” and “unjust” are not regarded in Islam as intrinsic characteristics of human actions to be legally judged. A shari’a judgment requires extensive knowledge of the Kuran and the Hadith, of course, as well as of Islamic legal precedents. Nevertheless, the body of sources of the law is finite and only qiya, or analogical reasoning, can be applied in the judgment.
Contrary to the Christian concept of governmental legitimacy (Romans 13:1), Islam condemns as rebellion against Allah’s supremacy the submission to any other form of law (Kuran, 5:50). Muslims believe that Shari’a should be used as a standard test of validity of all positive laws. Christ recognized the realm of human government as legitimate when he said, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). In Islam there is no such distinction between church and state.
Shari’a is not at all a “religious law” but a blend of political theory and penal law that relies for the punishment of violators on the sword of the state. To be legitimate, all political and legal power must rest with those who obey Allah’s authority and his revealed will sent down through his prophet (Kuran 5:59). Shari’a applies to all humankind just as Kuran applies to all creation. Any law that is inconsistent with it is null and void, not only to the Muslims, but to all humanity. Jews, Christians, and pagans are subject to Shari’a, too, and from Muhammad’s standpoint they cannot invoke the judgments and moral principles of prior revelations (4:60). Resort to any other source of authority is not only unjustified, it is satanic. The non-Muslims are to be judged by the laws of Islam in everything, “whether they like it or not, whether they come to us or not.”
Shari’a stands above reason, conscience, or nature. Its lack of any pretense to moral basis is explicit: there is no “spirit of the law” in Islam, no discernment of the consequences of deeds. The revelation and tradition must not be questioned or any other standard of judgment—least of all any notion of “natural” justice inherent to men as such—can be invoked, let alone applied (5:45). Muhammad has stifled in his followers the proclivity to natural law, “this high and often ultrahuman motive enhanced by education and refinement” (C.S. Lewis). A shari’a judge, like any other good Muslim, knows that thing is right simply because Allah says so, or because the prophet has thus said or done. No other standard of good and evil can ever be invoked.
BRITANNIA DELENDA—The ruling elite in Great Britain is either ignorant of, or more likely indifferent to, the implications of shari’a’s incorporation into the country’s legal system. The pace of Islamification of Britain is impressive. Earlier this year Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, declared on BBC Radio 4 that the establishment of sharia “seems unavoidable” in Britain. Two months ago Britain’s top judge (“the lord chief justice”), Lord Phillips, said that Muslims in Britain should be able to live under sharia. Theirs is the mature form of appeasement and surrender that has a long and inglorious history.
In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, then-Prime Minister “Tony” Blair said, “What happened in America was not the work of Islamic terrorists, it was not the work of Muslim terrorists.” Speaking to Muslim “community leaders” he added: “It was the work of terrorists, pure and simple,” who must not be honored “with any misguided religious justification,” because they “contravened all the tenets of Islam” which “is a peace-loving, tolerant religion.”
Echoing the Prime Minnister, two weeks after 9-11 former Home Office Minister John Denham made a pledge to cut out the “cancer of Islamophobia” allegedly infecting Britain, and declared that “the real Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and understanding.” He called on the media to avoid promoting “a distorted or caricatured or prejudiced” view of Muslims or the Islamic faith. Yet Dr. Richard Stone, chairman of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, responded by criticizing the government for not addressing “in a deep way” the anti-Muslim prejudice and for failing to address "institutional Islamophobia.”
Exactly six months later, on July 7, 2005, London’s turn came. The suicide bombers were four young British citizens, Muslim by religion, three of them Pakistani by parentage, born and bred in England and educated in state schools. Yet the deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, said that the culprits “certainly were not Islamic terrorists, because Islam and terrorism simply don’t go together.” He repeated, almost word for word, Tony Blair’s assurances given four years earlier. Blair himself declared it was hard to understand how those “born-and-bred Yorkshire lads” could turn on their fellow citizens. His reference to the morbid jihadist team as “lads”—an English term of endearment for the youthful male person, derived from Middle English ladde—was indicative of a seriously deranged mindset.
The adoption of shari’a is a logical outcome of the Blairite forma mentis, the size of Muslim immigration into Britain, and the dynamics of that growing community’s symbiotic interaction with the elite consensus. That consensus had started emerging even before the Rushdie affair (1988) allowed Muslims in Britain to flex their muscles in open opposition to the law of the land.
A generation later mosques and Islamic centers have multiplied all over Britain and provide the backbone to terrorist support network. The British security services have largely followed their political masters into a state of denial regarding the threat. The courts, for their part, routinely interpret the criminal, asylum, and terrorism laws in the manner damaging to the security of the Realm and favorable to the Jihadist underground. That underground thrives in mosques, state-supported Islamic educational institutions and community centers.
The new and supposedly improved Tory Party hardly offers an alternative. After a string of electoral defeats, under David Cameron it has joined the multiculturalist bandwagon. He now believes in racial, ethnic, and gender-based quotas. His colleague, the Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude, says immigration had been “fantastically good” for the United Kingdom.
Such inanities are light years away from another British Prime Minister and a far truer Tory, Winston Churchill, who warned over a century ago that “no stronger retrograde force exists in the world” than Islam: “Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
The science is still there, but the shelter has been eroded, perhaps fatally, in the realm of the soul. T.S. Eliot may yet be proven right in his warning that the West would end, “not with a bang but a whimper."
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I think we should criticize who set our immigration laws and promoted multi-culturism saying that a diverse society is promoting tolerance and the makings of a democratic society.
You can’t bring a wolf into a sheep pen and complain that it acts like a wolf.
I think we should criticize who set our immigration laws and promoted multi-culturism saying that a diverse society is promoting tolerance and the makings of a democratic society.
You can’t bring a wolf into a sheep pen and complain that it acts like a wolf.
What a disheartening state of affairs. I dare not say goodbye to England yet, as i have a fondness for her (what with all that bequeathing of civilisation to my island),
But I feel the day may be coming soon when I must
NGPM: Given the unnatural demographics of the situation, we could surely agree that it would be desirable to play such an ordeal OUTSIDE of Europe if at all possible.
I could not agree more.
But there is one corner of Europa Irredenta where it must inevitably be played out: Constantinople. When the minarets immuring Hagia Sophia are toppled, the roundels desecrating the sanctuary torn down; when the Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom resounds once again: for this holy house and for those who enter it with faith, reverence, and the fear of God, let us pray to the Lord, when the Oecumenical Patriarch is no longer a dhimmi, then might the legacy of Tours, Granada, Lepanto, Vienna be vindicated.
I am not optimistic however. The present course may yet see sharia supplant the Christ-less secular constitution of Europe. Unhappily, I think we may hear, as Srdja quotes Elliot above, the whimper of the Last Sigh of the Christian before the bang of tumbling minarets and plunging medallions. For a pope has now learned to face the mihrab.
i wonder if we go back to the article and read this bit
'once both parties in a dispute agree to accept its authority'
does that not make it good for anybody - even muslims - to have the choice of recognizing this law - or indeed NOT recognizing it and going through regular english courts?
or am i being too simplistic for this discussion???
55Ilija
I’d also like to correct Gargi by stating that Anglo-Saxons came to England AFTER the Romans:) It is also typical of many liberals and non-Christians alike to generalise the behaviour of Christians and put them all “in the same basket” as it were. You’ll find, after a bit of research, that the nature and dynamic of proselytism varies greatly amongst the very various ‘Christian’ branches. And, as always, the incredible legacy of Eastern Christianity in Byzantium seems to be conveniently overlooked by ‘westerners’ and ‘easterners’ alike.
I have nothing against Christians. I have just seen very aggressive missionaries in our areas, and that is all we are familiar with. I am just not used to the idea of converting people to a religion. Moreover, although Christianity was imported from the Mid-East, which is the source of the mentality of the Abrahamic religions(which to me seem all similar in mentality except that the Europeans are no longer the way they were at the times of the Crusades, and even then, one has to be thankful that they fought for the sake of their civilization considering they had to fight Islam). The Europeans have molded Christianity in their own way. If HIndu princes had not been disorganized amongst themselves and fought the Muslim invasions, the subcontinent would have been different today. During the invasions many Buddhists did not fight because of their ideas of non-violence and look where that lead them. One has to understand one's enemy and fight accordingly. Unfortunately, they still do not learn from their mistakes as is evident from what is happening in Kashmir where the original peaceful non-violent Hindus who had been living in the valley for 3000 years have been displaced by muslims who converted a few hundred years ago, and have become refugees in their own country, and are becoming extinct as a race--people who had stalwartly refused to convert to Isalm. They allowed Islam to come into the valley and now they are kicked out of their millenia of habitat and are refugees in their won country. These people were the most highly educated group in the subcontinent and made great contributions to our literature and culture--and when 500,000 of them were kicked out by jihadists the government did nothing, so I understand only too well Islam. There was no uproar by the liberal press because these people are mild nature and educated, non-violent and traditionally engage in intellectual and spiritual pursuits. If they had been Muslims, the world media would have raised an uproar. But the religious heritage of Europe is Christianity even though it was an import, without it they have nothing. So I respect that. It is different for us. We belong to the same religion as our ancestors. That is why our religion and Islam are like oil and water--they stem from two opposing world views. But most Christian countries are civilized and progressive showing that the original graft has been molded. I was a student of ancient Greek and the modern Greeks seem to me to be a very different peoples today, closer to the people around the Balkan areas in outlook. This is just a personal opinion from what I have seen and the people I have interacted with. I understand the British were different at the time of the Romans, I just referred to them as Anglo-Saxons as a general term to designate them.
“After Christianity, dark ages descended in Europe becasue the Christians were against the “rationalism” of the Greeks” etc.
I think most of my professors of Greek are agreed on this--an adequate reading of history shows this. Europe only progressed because of the rediscovery of Greek ideals and world view. After Christianity Greek science same to a halt for a few hundred years till it was rediscovered again. I essentially believe from my reading of history that the essential European heritage is Greco-Roman civilization and later Germanic civilization in modern times. Regardless, Christianity is the spiritual heritage of the West. And I stated how it brought in something that Greeks did not believe in: that all men are equal.
I personally know better: the Sisters have always served those treated like discared trash by their Hindu brothren regardless of religous affiliation or caste."
"As for your Hindu friends in my corner of the U.S., they contribute nothing to the local community despite being second or third generation. I’d rather have Sister Thersa and her ilk any day."
You are free to think as you please. There are intelligent Indians and there are fools. Many are stupid because they do not understand their history. In America they are among the highest earning group and have the highest numbers of educated among the new immigrant groups. You can think of them as you please, but they are not on welfare and are not a burden on the government at least. I do not like to generalize about people as a whole. Although I do not like the outlook of Islam I have met some outstanding Muslims.
I personally know better: the Sisters have always served those treated like discared trash by their Hindu brothren regardless of religous affiliation or caste."
I never said that Hindus were better than missionaries, I do not intend to compare people because you cannot make generalizations: simply that missionaries prey on the poor. And I did say that when Hindus complain about them I often tell them why don't you help these people regardless of religion without trying to convert and thereby show a better example to missionaries? I never said HIndus are perfect: Hindu does not designate one race or ethnic group or monolithic outlook. And I did say that HIndus have become callous to the poor. Despite the Vatican agenda Teresa brought attention to the poor and I respect her for that. As for her beliefs that is what she believed in. In my eyes Ablert Schweitzer was a perfect Christian.
"If you wish to accuse us colonists of moralising and ruining your country,"
I do not accuse anyone of anything. There were men of substance in England who opposed colonialism. There was exploitation but contact with the West was renewed after the British came in and India benefited from these ideas brought in by the British, as it had become isolated under Islam. And I believe that if the British had not been there, the area would have been Mohammedean.There are educated and uneducated, enlightened and unenlightened peoples amongst all groups. I have very high regard for the British--I am writing in their language so the civilizational influence shows in many ways. But just because the British had great men of intellect does not mean that all British are great and there are no fools among them. This can be said of any civilization. After all what remains of the great empire? Just the great men they produced. Which is what ultimately remains in all cultures.
I personally know better: the Sisters have always served those treated like discared trash by their Hindu brothren regardless of religous affiliation or caste.”
I agree with you that India is messed up as a result of many foreign invasions, the most deadly were the barbaric Afghan-Turkish hordes.
I find that many Hindus have become very hardened and uncharitable and have lost many of their original ideals and after being messed up for centuries are now not as creative historically. However there is a spark that has not died. And with the right political conditions that spark has a chance to flower. I see changes taking place there. The native culture is resilient. If the government implements the right policies, and if militant Islam quiets down, I see hope there. If the current progress is not dragged down by corrupt politics, then I would give it 20-30 years to see very visible changes. We can just look towards the future and hopefully Hindus will understand their own history because without this understanding they are lost.
“If you wish to accuse us colonists of moralising and ruining your country,”
I have just stated historical facts and am not moralizing. If you read the new book "Sea of POppies" by Amitav Ghosh which won some awards, you can see how British rule was financed through the opium trade. It has been 50 years since the British left, and Indians are to blame for the problems now. But the problems there are not simply a result of "caste" as people naively think. And regarding colonizers, the British were far better than most--one just has to compare them with the French in Ind0-China--no schools, no hospitals, no nothing...Even the Russians have a good record. They built an infrastructure in their Muslim republics.......
And yes, we–myself, most other Chronicles folk, and the Pope whose “agenda” you so deplore has never been a secret–believe Christianity is THE religion. No true Christian does not believe this
Oh and how different you are from Muslims who believe that Islam is THE religion, or those among Jews who believe they are the chosen people and Judiasm is THE RELIGION. Perhaps I shall burn in hell because I am pagan and do not subscribe to "THE REligion". You all think alike it seems to me except you do not blow up buildings anymore or burn witches at the stake like your forefathers did.....or eat the dead bodies of Muslims as Christians did during during your Crusades when food supplies ran out...this is well documented by both Christian and Muslim historians.
I have no problems with pious Christians who do not impose thier world view on others and observe their religion in peace and let other religions be ....Is spirituality impossible without a revealed religion that claims it is the ultimate truth? I do not think so. There are other religions out there other than the Christian one or the revealed religions. It is not a simple clear cut case of be a Christian or be an atheist --you do not seem to allow for alternatives. I guess I am doomed because I am pagan and follow beliefs that "The Religion" does not approve of. But who knows? You should not lose sight of the fact that it could be you will also end up in hell as I surely will according to "The religion".
@Gargi: Monsieur, I seem to have misunderstood you on a few points. I had thought that you were attempting to blame all of India's problems on the Christian colonists, but you seem to acknowledge that they did a lot of good. (By the way, the French never got much of a chance to do anything in India, but I should add that they were certainly kinder to the Natives in North America than the British were. I don't know how it would have been in your country had they won the Seven Years' War.)
Nevertheless, if you are commenting on Mother Teresa, I should be remiss not to advise you that citing a disingenuous figure such as Christopher Hitchens, who supports the Iraq war and opposes all religion and indeed all things good and decent, is not a way to win credibility on this site.
I do not have any information about the supposedly "aggressive missionaries" you encounter. I can say that if someone does refuse material help to non-Christians in an arbitrary manner, he is acting in a decidedly non-Christian fashion and they will have to answer for it, someday.
(I qualify that with "arbitrary manner" because of course one should always first give material help to one's family and proximate neighbours. But if a group of strangers about to starve to death comes to your fence begging for food and you pick out the Christians and feed only them, you have a problem.)
And you are correct to draw a distinction between ideology and person. I have met and even befriended Muslims and Hindus that I liked, although I will say they did not seem traditionally "Islamic" or "Hindu" in their mindset.
But I cannot agree that "Europe only progressed because of the rediscovery of Greek ideals and world view." Europe entered the Dark Ages because of barbarian invasions and political turmoil that eroded old Roman norms and institutions, but Greek was never predominant in the West; Latin was. And the Latin culture of Western Europe was anything but "dark" or "stagnant." It is quite true that the Renaissance did Europe a huge favour by reintroducing Greek, but the improvement had already been ongoing for centuries, and can clearly be correlated with the spread of Monastic Christianity (which conserved the old Latin civilisation of the Roman Empire). Renaissance scholars don't do enough justice to Latin.
And it is most certainly not true that all Christians were "anti-Greek"; at one point half of the Christian world spoke Greek c.f. the Byzantine Empire. Greek and Latin Christianity do not necessarily conflict with each other.
"Christianity is the spiritual heritage of the West. And I stated how it brought in something that Greeks did not believe in: that all men are equal."
To clarify: Christianity in its orthodox form does not teach that all men are equal, but only that 1. there is a common humanity derived from the Image of God, and 2. that the standards of God in valuing human life are not always the same as our standards, and as His standards are not always comprehensible to us, we are to "Do unto others" as we "would have them do unto" ourselves.
Now onto the last point, the absolute claim of truth of Christianity...
First of all, no, we do not all think alike. Christians do believe there is truth and there is falsehood, good and evil, that the Truth is Good and the lie is evil. Islam and Judaism believe this to some extent but not to the same degree. There are many more differences between the traditional Christian and the traditional Judaic and Islamic mindsets that I do not have time to go into. (I am speaking primarily of Apostolic Christianity; Reformed Christianity is another beast entirely.)
"You do not blow up buildings anymore or burn witches at the stake like your forefathers did... or eat the dead bodies of Muslims as Christians did during during your Crusades when food supplies ran out."
Christianity spent the first few centuries disciplining its own, teaching doctrines peacefully and engaging in charitable endeavors. Islam spent its first few centuries cutting down everything that did not submit immediately. Terror bombing per se may not be sanctioned by the Qu'ran, but it is far more violent than the New Testament and the martial mentality of Islam is certainly conducive to arbitrary violence such as that directed against the Assyrian Christians in Iraq.
Christianity has never sanctioned violence except as a means of defence or admistration of justice. The Crusades were done specifically to protect ancient pilgrimmage sites and to come to the aid of Christians who had asked for help against the Muslim onslaught in the lands they used to rule before it was stolen from them.
Speaking in the abstract, I cannot defend the killing of a man on the basis of his beliefs, but most heretics burned at stake were the equivalent of serious political agitators: they were consciously or unconsciously trying to destroy the fabric on which the local society depended. Mass slaughters, witch hunts and so forth were largely the provenance of laity and uneducated lower clergy; they have always been roundly condemned by the higher moral authorities, whose physical power could only extend so far. Ultimately a Christian whose conduct is unbecoming his Faith will have to answer for his actions, if not in this life then in the next.
Joseph de Maistre said it well: the Church does not like conflict, she never has, and it is only at pain that she uses force.
I submit, Monsieur, and I've no doubt you will disagree, but I submit that it is the LEFTIST, whether he is a perennialist of the so-called "Nouvelle Droite," a nominal Christian/Muslim/Hindu, an atheist, an agnostic, a Pantheist, or whatever religious guise he chooses, that thinks in the monotonous and predictable fashion: all of them are some variation on, "I take my path, but other religions are a path to the pie in the sky." Modern decadent cosmopolitanism is pretty well the same everywhere, whether you are in Paris, New York or London.
I see that you have learned a thing or two about Christian and European history. Good. I encourage you to learn more. Read not only third-party sources; get to know the Fathers of our Faith: St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and their lay brethren on sociological implications, like Joseph de Maistre. The world we live in is a physical one, and "spirituality" in this life is directed at another world.
And that ends my lengthy and off-topic diatribe. I shall bow out now. I wish you the best.
One last point that I forgot: the belief in absolute Truth is part and parcel of the greatness of Western Civilisation: the quest to understand the infinite but knowable Mystery and the Creation. To jettison this belief in absolute and knowable Truth is to jettison our spiritual heritage. Christians cannot allow for the truth of conflicting religions without destroying our own.
NGPM
I am not monsieur. Gargi is a female name. My degrees were in classical Greek and Latin on which I spent ten years.
I have nothing against Christians. I have read the Bible-- in fact, I enjoy reading it at times--certain parts--like all truly devotional texts it is inspiring--in parts. I also studied Hebrew for two years. St. Augustine is in fact is one of my favorite authors. He has a different frame of reference but he was a deeply spiritual man and I have high regard for him.
I just dislike militant Christians. Often organized religion is at fault, not the noble ideals arising from true spirituality. If certain missionaries help poor people, I do not think anyone in their right mind would be against it--but I have seen them use force for conversions, and I have seen them use money to lure poor people into thinking that their souls will be saved if they convert. There must also be good missionaries but I have not met one that did not try to convert me and completely sure the absolute truth of their religious teachings. Hindus are at fault here because they have not been helping their people who are marginalized for centuries and the reasons for this is complex. I am sure there are all varieties of Christians. The man who wrote my Buddhism book was a Christian priest and had a deep religious understanding. It is wrong to make fun of anyone's religion. I am sure there are pious Muslims as well--their religious point of reference is different just as the frame of reference of Hindus and Buddhists is different. But when one religion claims superiority and tries to impose its views by violence as the case with militant Islam, militant Hindusim and militant Christianity, the trouble starts.
Among my favorite books is the varieties of Religious Experience by William James. I have also enjoyed reading St. Thomas Aquinas. We Hindus respect all religions and let others be. We believe that there are many paths to god, not just one. It depends on the spiritual and intellectual and moral development what path someone will choose. The Christian ideals of compassion, devotion etc. can be found amply in Buddhism and Hinduism. It is not wrong for me to ocassionally read the bible if it inspires me. I have been moved hearing the mass--all expressions of true spirituality are admirable and command respect. But our tradition is not to convert people and I guess that is where the clash with missionaries comes in--but most missionaries I have seen are not very educated people, they are out on a mission to convert folk. I am sure there are some who genuinely want to help and not just spread religion--as there are all kinds among folks everywhere.
I am sorry if my abrasive comments offended genuinely pious people. I was just answering the man who insisted only Christians have a monopoly on the truth. It is this that I disagree with. All organized religions have a capacity for creating mischief, but it does not mean that they also do not teach good things--the religious and spiritual impulse in all people is commendable. When someone performs a noble deed, helps his fellow brother without desire for reward but out of genuine empathy for him as a human being, that is noble regardless of religion. And I can see in the West when children are brought up without any religion, that is not good either, and they are missing a lot when their parents never take them to church or teach them values. In the formative years some religion is necessary, for one can be critical only when one has been exposed to all points of views: the religious and non-religious.
I have found the dynamics of faith by Paul Tillich highly edifying, he writes as a Christian but that does not mean I cannot learn some things from him.
And while I admire greatly Greek culture I know that Christianity brought in things that the Greek aristocratic culture never accepted: that all men are created equal which resulted in the moral evolution of peoples in the Western world.
Also I find it futile to argue with many narrow minded Christians over religion--you cannot have a discussion with someone who does not understand any other religion apart from their own. I have done my homework--I have read my Greek and Latin for ten years, two years of Hebrew and six years of French and German. I cannot explain a different point of view to people who do not read anything but the bible. I have read the bible, but unless the Christians have read my religious texts of which there are many, I cannot expect them to understand another religion. We do not have a single book like the Christians . If Christians believe what they do who complains? Provided that religion is not used as a tool of violence or brain washing. But when people impose their beliefs on others by force like militant Islam does the problem starts.
The real problems of the world it seems to me are unbridled materialism and hedonism, disrespect for life which causes cows to be fed to cows and chickens to chickens (the epitome of cruelty to animals), the rampant greed which has resulted in our food being contaminated, water being contaminated, the wanton destruction of nature and life everywhere--the thinking that the world's resources are unlimited--now people in the East are learning about this attitude towards life and if the Indians and Chinese follow the current pattern of growth and development, surely they will strip the world bare like locusts.
"Christians cannot allow for the truth of conflicting religions without destroying our own."
The Christians can believe in whatever they want, but this statement just shows the narrowness of your point of view.
One last point that I forgot: the belief in absolute Truth is part and parcel of the greatness of Western Civilisation: the quest to understand the infinite but knowable Mystery and the Creation.
The quest for understanding of the infinite is the part and parcel of all aristocratic cultures that have been creative in history--
Don't equate me with being a liberal or a leftist because I do not agree with you-- I am neither a liberal nor a leftist nor do I agree with you.
Gargi--
I was going to let that be my last word, but I feel I must, at least apologise for mistaking your sex, and say that I have appreciated the discussion. Your writing is too prolific to respond to in full, but just some closing thoughts:
1. I do not think your comments particularly abrasive. I'm not--and I don't think most Christians would be--personally offended that you choose not to believe in Christianity and that you state as much. Christians do believe that there are truthful insights to be found in other religions, but there is only one religion expressing the fullness of Revealed Truth.
2. You can call me narrow-minded for believing that some religious statements are true and some are false, but then what is the point of being open minded if one could not consider the possibility of absolute truth? "All truth is empirical" is a metaphysical statement. "All truth is relative" is an absolute statement.
3. Christianity is what it is, and it would not be what it is without its whole--and this includes its belief in Revealed Truth. Many Christians do not act in a manner becoming of their faith. Violent, forced conversions are one example, and these are repeatedly condemned by Church authorities, but contrary to what is often supposed they are by far the exception and not the norm.
4. I apologise if I seemed to call you a leftist; I mistakenly lumped all forms of religious non-absolutism in with that ephitaph. What I meant to say was that since one particular conviction underlies the principle of religious relativism, there would be no more diversity of thought in a world where everyone was truly and deeply convinced of the truth of all religions than in a world where everyone was convinced of the truth of Christianity (and perhaps a great deal less).
Christianity is the heritage of the West. There is no doubt about that. When you take this away from many Christian countries, there is nothing to replace it. For most Christians, the choice is to believe or not to believe. But I see a lot of very educated people in the West dissatisfied with this religion. It has nothing to do with the fact they are leftists or liberals. Many of my educated friends who are physicists and mathematicians call themselves atheist. This is also an extreme attitude. Considering the loss of values in West such as that of family etc. , I believe that it is appropriate for children to have some exposure to religion in their youth than none. Many American children miss out on not receiving any religious instruction in the family whatsoever. Regardless, I respect Christians as long as they do not engage in forced conversions and try to lure poor people to the religion through money as I have amply seen. But when pious Christians practice their faith in peace that is benign.
Anyway, I am glad I do not belong to a revealed religion, and that choice for us is not between belief (in a revealed text) and atheism. There are other approaches to religion and spirituality. I respect all genuine expressions of the spiritual in man. I also respect the religious heritage of the West--whether one agrees with it or not, it is the heritage of the West and one has to respect it as such.
These are my comments. I stumbles upon this site and it interested me becasue militant Islam is growing in our regions.
Also I noticed a great dislike of "multiculturalism" on this website. What passes for "multiculturalism" here is often not really multiculturalism. Passing off garbae for literature is not multicultrualism, nor the attitude that anything goes in the name of multicultrualism. Believe me, Western new age hacks who become Buddhists without even understanding what it is is, are just as annoying to us as those here try to do away with any standards. So I understand when you say standards have to be kept. I also get depressed when I see the loss of family, all kinds of perverted values being learned in the East from this culture--that is the bad stuff of Western culture. But a lot of good things are also learned like science, technology and such. Multicultrualism is when all the great things produced by men are appreciated wherever they might come from. And often it takes greatness to appreciate greatness.
In ancient Greece, cultural relativism produced Socrates and the dialogues of Plato. Perhaps the world is on the verge of something. Culture can exist only in isolation--with rapid globalization no part of the world can hide from the rest and everything is open to all. If we will all not self-destruct from climate change and our excessive abuse of our natural environment and senseless wars over religion, perhaps the future can hold something better. One can but be optimistic. It is clear that the world is in expectation of something.
One last thing as I have occupied too much space already. Someone mentioned Sati--this is typical. There has only been one recorded case of Sati in the last one hundred years. Moreover, it occurred mostly among the Brahmin and Kshatriyas. Many Rajput princesses would just jump into the fire than be violated by invading barbaric Turko-Afghan hordes. It was in medieval India that this became widespread during Muslim invasions because honor meant a lot to people. I am not saying that I condone this, but it is understandable that many Rajput women would rather jump into the fire than be violated by invading muslims.
NGPM
I have left some things unanswered:
"And Islam was a “graft” onto most Turkish tribes, as well, yet they have become enthusiastic and at times fanatical Muslims."
There is a big difference. The Turks were fierce tribes in Central Asia and when they adopted a religion like Islam, they only became more violent. Indeed, the Turks attained glory only after they converted to Islam and most later Islamic dynasties were of Turkish origin. The Gaznavids of Khorasan (eastern Iran) went into India and heaved unparaled destruction and bloodshed (unparaled in history for the degree of bloodshed and violence). Northern India was mostly devastated. You see the effects even today--the North remains backward from the South which was ravaged much less....and there is hardly any architecture left unlike in the South...The Seljuks conquered Anatolia and were in turn conquered by Mongols -- Byzantine had become so corrupt that it was easy for the Muslims to conquer--one just has to read the excellent biography of Bellisarius( among the world's greatest generals who never lost a battle) by Lord Mahon (written when he was only 25 when the British aristocracy was still impressive) to see the corruption and how easy it must have been for the Muslims to conquer. Most people probably were converted by force and converted out of necessity because they had to pay high taxes for being non-Muslims (this was the case everywhere under Islam). And then the ethnic minorities who were non-Muslims such as Armenians were cleansed in the early 20 century. Moreover, the Ottoman empire was the bastion of the Islamic empire in the 17, 18 and 19 century--so the former trace of Byzantine is superseded by Islamic culture there.
I find the case different for Christianity. It arose from the mid-East but civilized people of the ancient world became Christians such as Greeks and Romans, so I believe Christianity grew in a different fashion. Although it hindered Greek science for a few hundred years, science grew again and religion was subject to checks and controls, and critiques.....So I mean a graft in that sense but the graft was molded by the culture....
"To clarify: Christianity in its orthodox form does not teach that all men are equal, but only that 1. there is a common humanity derived from the Image of God, and 2. that the standards of God in valuing human life are not always the same as our standards, and as His standards are not always comprehensible to us, we are to “Do unto others” as we “would have them do unto” ourselves."
When I said that Christianity says all men are created equal it was in the sense that you state: namely man is made in the image of God, and not in the sense of the American constitution. This was a revolution for the ancient world, since for the aristocratic culture of the Greeks, the slave did not matter, he was inferior as he had no political power, although he might often be educated as slaves were often conquered folk. To the Romans, turning the other cheek would be ludicrous. Christianity offered something for the poor, the downtrodden, those shipwrecked in life. And it was not surprising that you find many women, widows and such among famous early Christians... I find a bit of bitterness in it towards the rich and powerful (just a personal opinion)...I do not find any bitterness in Buddhism (500 B.C.) I guess because it was founded by a Prince turned beggar...Two great religions arising from different cultural conditions...
P.S. I apologize to everyone for not editing my comments --I wrote fast and submitted what I wrote without rereading making them a pain to read....
I recently read an article by Dr. Trifkovic about Islam in India--he seems to understand what happened there under Islam. People in the West do not understand the level of destruction brought about in India by Islam--it is a wonder that the original survives at all considering the devastation. When you mention it you are labeled a Hindu fundamentalist. Hindus are still recovering and have been messed up under Isalmic rule for centuries. The nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul said he saw a great deal of healing in India in this respect. One can only hope that the culture will heal itself and the original creative culture will reassert itself--but the problems there are massive.....