Meanwhile, David Thompson has a lesson in history and religion for Karen Armstrong. It is reproduced in full, but you can find the original, with hyperlinks, here.

Karen Armstrong: Islam’s Hagiographer

By David Thompson

Karen Armstrong has been described as “one of the world’s most provocative and inclusive thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world”. Armstrong’s efforts to be “inclusive” are certainly “provocative”, though generally for reasons that are less than edifying. In 1999, the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Los Angeles gave Armstrong an award for media “fairness”. What follows might cast light on how warranted that recognition is, and indeed on how the MPAC chooses to define fairness.

In one of her baffling Guardian columns, Armstrong argues that, “It is important to know who our enemies are… By making the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the… problems of our divided world.” Yet elsewhere in the same piece, Armstrong maintains that Islamic terrorism must not be referred to as such. “Jihad”, we were told, “is a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no connection with violence.”

Well, the word ‘jihad’ has multiple meanings depending on the context, and it’s hard to determine the particulars of what “most Muslims” think in this regard. But it’s safe to say the Qur’an and Sunnah are of great importance to Muslims generally, and most references to jihad found in the Qur’an and Sunnah occur in a military or paramilitary context, and aggressive conceptions of jihad are found in every major school of Islamic jurisprudence, with only minor variations. Mohammed’s own celebration of homicidal ‘martyrdom’ makes for particularly interesting reading.

The Muslims who do commit acts of terrorism do so, by their own account, because of what they perceive as core Islamic teachings. The names they give themselves – jihadist, mujahedin, shahid – have no meaning outside of an Islamic context. But Armstrong would have us ignore what terrorists repeatedly tell us about themselves and their motives. One therefore has to ask how one defeats an opponent whose name one dare not repeat and whose stated motives one cannot mention.

In another Guardian column, Armstrong insists that, “until the 20th century, anti-Semitism was not part of Islamic culture” and that anti-Semitism is purely a Western invention, spread by Westerners. The sheer wrong-headedness of this assertion is hard to put into words, but one might note how, once again, the evil imperialist West is depicted as boundlessly capable of spreading corruption wherever it goes, while the Islamic world is portrayed as passive, devoid of agency and thereby virtuous by default.

According to Armstrong, Mohammed was, above all, a “peacemaker” who “respected” Jews and other non-Muslims. Yet nowhere in the Qur’an and Sunnah does Mohammed refer to non-Muslims as in any way deserving of respect as equals. Quite the opposite, in fact. Apparently, we are to ignore 1400 years of Islamic history contradicting Armstrong’s view, and to ignore the contents of the Qur’an and the explicitly anti-Semitic ‘revelations’ of Islam’s founder. Has Armstrong not read Ibn Ishaq’s quasi-sacred biography of Mohammed? Has she not read the Hadiths? Does she not know of the massacre of the Banu Qurayza and the opportunist raids against the Bani Quainuqa, Bani Nadir and Bani Isra’il and other Jewish tribes? Does she not know how these events were justified as a divine duty, one which formed the theological basis of the Great Jihad of Abu Bakr, setting in motion one of the most formidable military expansions in Islamic history? Does she not know how these theological ideas established Jews and Christians’ subordinate legal status throughout much of the Islamic world for hundreds of years?

In her latest offering, Armstrong is again given free rein to mislead Guardian readers and, again, rewrite history. Armstrong asserts that, “until recently, no Muslim thinker had ever claimed [violent jihad] was a central tenet of Islam”. In fact, contemporary jihadists draw upon theological traditions reaching back to Mohammed’s own murderous example. The Fifteenth Century historian and philosopher, Ibn Khaldun, summarised the consensus of five centuries of prior Sunni theology regarding jihad in his book, The Muqudimmah: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the… mission to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force… Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.” Shiite jurisprudence concurred with this consensus, as seen in al-Amili’s manual of Shia law, Jami-i-Abbasi: “Islamic holy war against followers of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to Islam.”

Given that Armstrong is regularly described as a “respected scholar” and an “expert on Islam”, she must surely know of Khaldun and his sources, and must surely know how Mohammed himself conceived jihad primarily as an expansionist military endeavour. Armstrong must also be aware of the jihad campaigns of religious ‘cleansing’ throughout the Arab Peninsula, in accord with Mohammed’s death bed words. Likewise, the five centuries of jihad campaigns in India, during which tens of millions of Hindus and Buddhists were slaughtered or enslaved to further Islamic influence, along with similar campaigns in Egypt, Palestine, Armenia, Africa, Spain, etc. All of these campaigns are thoroughly – indeed, triumphantly – documented by Muslim sources of the period and are available to any serious scholar. (For a detailed overview, see Andrew Bostom’s Legacy of Jihad.)

If Armstrong does not know of such things, in what sense can she be considered a “respected scholar” of this subject? For what, exactly, is she respected? For reaffirming popular misconceptions and PC prejudice, even when her claims are demonstrably false and egregiously misleading? It is, I think, more likely that Armstrong is aware of these inconvenient details and has chosen not to divulge them. Either way, Islam’s foremost hagiographer and shill has found an audience among Muslims and those on the left with little appetite for unflattering facts and a preference for being told whatever they wish to hear.

Do read Hugh Fitzgerald’s empassioned and brilliant essay, inspired by Richard Cohen’s column on Tuesday, obscenely titled “Hunker Down With History”.
Hugh starts off taking modern journalism to task, but achieves so much more. I am not going to quote any of it here. Read the whole thing. It is a history lesson the West urgently needs.

Another fantastic history lesson for Cohen was written by Israel Matzav here. Here’s a part of it, but again, it is well worth reading in full.

The term “Palestina” was invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian. The Romans wanted to rename Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) after the Philistines, the longtime enemy of the Jews. Hadrian believed that by renaming the Jewish homeland after the Jews’ archenemy, he would be able to forever break the bond between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

But even the name of the Philistines, from which the term “Palestine” was adopted, is completely alien to the Land of Israel.

The name Philistines in Hebrew is plishtim, which comes from the Hebrew verb polshim (foreign invaders).
Arabs only came to the Land of Israel in large numbers after the Jews returned in the 20th century and started to rebuild the nation, thereby creating economic and employment opportunities for Arab immigrants.

Prior to 1870, when Jews started to return to the Holy Land in large numbers, there were fewer than 100,000 Arabs living in what is today the State of Israel – including Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District).

This small number of nomadic, tribal Arabs who lived in the Holy Land before the modern Jewish return never considered themselves to be a separate people or nation.

The Arabs who lived in the Land of Israel were not “Palestinians” but Arabs – part of a huge Arab people with 22 very large independent nations that control one-ninth of the land mass on the planet Earth.

In an interview given by Zuhair Mohsen to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in March 1977, Mr. Mohsen explains the origin of the ‘Palestinians’:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

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Israel is anything but a mistake, and history shows the justice of Israel’s cause. With the exception of the period between the two Jewish Temples between roughly 586 and 516 BCE, Jews ruled this land continuously from approximately 1300 BCE until 68 CE. Since that time, no other government has been based in Israel, no other country has called Jerusalem its capitol, and no other people has called this land its home. It is not history that is Israel’s enemy but the false narrative of history presented to the World by the Arab Muslims. It is not history that is Israel’s enemy, but Arab attempts to wipe out the vestiges of that history, as if destroying all of the Temple artifacts on the Temple Mount will confirm that it was ‘always’ Haram al-Sharif, that two Jewish Temples never stood there and that Jesus never argued with money changers there.

This country was deserted swampland for much of the period between 68 CE and the beginning of the return of larger numbers of Jews started in 1870. Israel’s interior areas were mainly a desert-like wasteland while her coast was a malaria-ridden swamp. But Jews always prayed three times a day that God should gather them in from their diaspora and bring them back to this country. Many Jews attempted to come here on their own. Jews were a majority of the population of Jerusalem in the 19th century, and settled many of the cities of the Galilee as well. In 1844 – when the Land of Israel was controlled by the Turkish Muslims – the Turkish census counted 7,120 Jews and 5,000 Muslims living in Jerusalem. Thus, Jerusalem was already a Jewish city 160 years ago. Until an Arab massacre wiped them out in 1929, there was even a large Jewish community in Hebron, which included a major Talmudical academy, which was transplanted from the village of Slobodka in Lithuania.

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Don’t forget to read Hugh Fitzgerald’s piece now.

For some reason this article on the resurgence of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia had me from the first sentence.

KHARKHORIN, Mongolia (Reuters) – When Gendenjav Choijamts thinks of praying, he thinks of vodka.

The 62-year-old monk at Mongolia’s oldest Buddhist monastery remembers when his father and his friends had to pretend they were gathering for a drinking session to hide the fact they were gathering in prayer.

“My father was a monk but because people were persecuted for that; it wasn’t widely known,” he said in the lush green grounds of Erdene Zuu, which dates from the 16th century.

“He was a herder. He hid his shrine and would chant in secret in the evening,” he said.

Monastic life, which took hold in Mongolia in the 1500s, was nearly wiped out within 15 years of communist rule, mostly during Stalinist purges in the 1930s when an estimated 17,000 lamas were executed.

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Yet another brilliant essay from Fjordman has been posted at the Brussels Journal.

Stupidity Without Borders – The Alliance of Utopias

From the desk of Fjordman on Mon, 2006-07-17 08:38

The 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have witnessed the most spectacular population growth in human history, most of it in Third World countries. The world’s population, estimated at 6.4 billion in 2006, grows by more than 70 million people per year. In sixty years, Brazil’s population has increased by 318 per cent; Ethiopia’s by 503 per cent. There are now 73 million people in Ethiopia – more than the population of Britain or France.

At the same time, many of the most economically successful countries, both in the East and in the West, have problems with ageing or declining populations. At its peak around 1910, one-quarter of the world’s population lived in Europe or North America. Today the percentage has probably declined to about one-eighth. South Korea’s birthrate has dropped to the point where the average Korean woman is expected to have only one child throughout her life. The U.S. still has a birthrate of more than two, while the U.K. saw births inch up from 1.63 to 1.74 and Germany from 1.34 to 1.37 in the same period. The low birthrate problem in Asia is rooted in women’s rising social and economic standing. Japan’s birthrate was 1.28, comparable to Taiwan’s 1.22, and Hong Kong’s 0.94.

“Europe and Japan are now facing a population problem that is unprecedented in human history,” said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau. Countries have lost people because of wars, disease and natural disasters but never because women stopped having enough children. Japan announced that its population had shrunk in 2005 for the first time, and that it was now the world’s most elderly nation. Italy was second. On average, women must have 2.1 children in their lifetimes for a society to replenish itself, accounting for infant mortality and other factors. Only one country in Europe – Muslim Albania – has a fertility rate above 2. Russia’s fertility rate is 1.28.

Writer Spengler in the Asia Times Online commented that demography is destiny: “Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death.” “The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe’s population will relive – in slow motion – that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050.”

It’s numbers like these that have prompted Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to state that “it’s demography, and not democracy, that will be the critical factor shaping growth and security in the 21st century. High rates of births are contributing to the booming populations which are dragging down developing nations. Meanwhile falling birth rates are sapping the growth of developed nations.” “Although migration is one option developed countries are looking at to keep their economies vibrant,” Lee said, “it might not solve all their troubles and might even breed social tensions.” According to him, governments may not be able to afford to keep out of personal issues like sex, marriage and procreation much longer.

Historian Niall Ferguson reveals how Islam is winning the numbers game. “If fertility persisted at such low levels, within 50 years Spain’s population would decline by 3-4 million, Italy’s by a fifth. Not even two World Wars had inflicted such an absolute decline in population.” “In 1950 there had been three times as many people in Britain as in Iran. By 1995 the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain. By 2050, the population of Iran could be more than 50 per cent larger. At the time of writing, the annual rate of population growth is more than seven times higher in Iran than in Britain.”

Even in developing countries such as fast-evolving China, population growth is falling, and in the Indian subcontinent, Muslims have higher growth rates than Hindus or other non-Muslims. We thus have a situation with an explosive population growth in failed countries, while many of the most economically and technologically advanced nations, Eastern and Western, have stagnating populations. This strange and possibly unprecedented situation, which could perhaps be labelled “survival of the least fit”, will have dramatic consequences for the world. It is already producing the largest migration waves in history, threatening to swamp islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty.

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You really should read it all.

This excellent essay over at DhimmiWatch today, by Fjordman. Here are some extracts:

On Britain:

“Asian youths,” a British euphemism for Pakistanis and Muslims from South Asia, in parts of Oldham are trying to create no-go areas for white people. One of them told: “There are signs all around saying whites enter at your risk. It’s a matter of revenge.” However, it’s not just the white natives that are targets of Muslim violence, but other non-Muslims, too. A report on Hindus being driven out of the English city of Bradford by young Muslims was described by some Hindus as “ethnic cleansing.” Some of them want to leave the city to escape the “Talibanization of Bradford.”

In an online story in newspaper The Daily Telegraph that was removed “for legal reasons,” former Muslim Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo warned that British Muslims could soon form a state within the state. Dr Sookhdeo believed that “in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.” “In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future – and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.” “Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on.”

The next step will be pushing the Government to recognize sharia law for Muslim communities – which will be backed up by the claim that it is “racist” or “Islamophobic” to deny them this. Sookhdeo noted that there is already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. “There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time – and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.” “The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government’s record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that.”

You can read the aforementioned Daily Telegraph article which quotes Patrick Sookhdeo here. (Recommended)

On France:

In France, Muslims already have many smaller states within the state. Criminologist Lucienne Bui Trong wrote that: “From 106 hot points in 1991, we went to 818 sensitive areas in 1999.” The term she used, “sensitive areas,” was used to describe Muslim no-go zones where anything representing a Western institution (post office truck, firemen, even mail order delivery firms) was routinely ambushed with Molotov cocktails. The number was 818 in 2002, when the French government decided to stop collecting the statistics.

In some of these areas, the phenomenon of gang rape “has become banal.” Violence against and pressure on women is part of daily life in the suburbs, where boys can dictate how girls should dress. Pressure is mounting for Muslim women to wear veils. In 2002, a 17-year-old girl was set alight by an 18-year-old boy as his friends stood by. The support group “Ni Putes, Ni Soumises” (“Neither Whores nor Submissives”) says the number of forced marriages has risen in recent years, with roughly 70,000 girls pressured into unwanted relationships each year in France. A leaked study conducted between October 2003 and May 2004 under the auspices of France’s inspector-general of education, Jean Pierre Obin, described an educational system where Muslim students regularly boycotted classes that concerned Voltaire, Rousseau and Moliere, whom the students accused of being anti-Islamic. Orbin’s report cited Muslim students’ refusal to use the “plus” sign in mathematics because it looks like a crucifix; Muslims boycotting class trips to churches, cathedrals and monasteries; and forcing wholesale changes in school lunch fare to accommodate their religious practices.
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[After the French riots] some of the rioters left boasting messages on various Internet forums. “We aren’t going to let up. The French won’t do anything and soon, we will be in the majority here” One observer stated: “In France, the majority of young Muslims believe that French society is dying, committing suicide. More like 10 percent to 20 percent of them believe that they are in the process of replacing European civilization with an Islamic one.” In the southern city of Marseille, Muslims make up at least a quarter of the population, and rising fast.

On Holland:

In the Netherlands, Muslims will soon make up the majority in all major cities. “Today, we have 1 million Muslims out of 16 million Dutch,” according to Frits Bolkestein, Dutch politician. “Within 10 years, they will have an absolute majority in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam. We are staring into the face of a shortly to be divided community. Muslims have the right to their own schools, so there is no teaching of evolution, gay teachers are not tolerated but anti-Semitism is.” A researcher for the Netherlands Ministry for Immigration and Integration found that 40% of young Moroccan Muslims in the Netherlands rejected Western values and democracy. Six to seven percent were prepared to use force to “defend” Islam, and the majority were opposed to freedom of speech for offensive statements, particularly criticism of Islam.

On Germany:

Security sources in Germany warned that the country was home to between 3,000 and 5,000 potential Islamic suicide attackers. A Berlin court in 2005 ruled that a well-known Turkish religious leader should be extradited to Turkey. In his Berlin mosque he repeatedly said that “all Germans were stinking people and doomed to go to hell because they were useless creatures and infidels.” Shortly before, the press spokesman of this mosque had told about the Turks’ strong interest in fostering good relations with native Germans. TV correspondent Reinhard Laska feared that the opinions voiced by the Imam were only the tip of the iceberg: “There was nobody in the mosque who stood up and demanded that the Imam stop his nasty talk about Germans,” he said. “Nobody seemed to mind at all.” In 2006, “Valley of the Wolves,” a virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war, sold out to cheering audiences from Germany’s 2.5 million-strong Turkish community. According to Der Spiegel, Germany’s and Europe’s biggest weekly magazine, an estimated number of 50 women in Germany have been murdered in so-called honor killings in the past decade. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. Much of this insular and ultra-religious world is out of public view, “often hidden in inner-city apartments where the most influential links to the outside world are satellite dishes that receive Turkish and Arabic television and the local mosque.” “In these families, loyalty and honor are elevated virtues and women are treated little better than slaves, unseen by society and often unnoticed or ignored by their German neighbors.” It caused an outcry when a group of 14-year-old Turkish boys mocked one victim during a class discussion. “She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German.”

On Sweden:

In Sweden, reports about criminal gangs and mafias, a phenomenon that is growing day by day, are coming in from urban areas all over the country, and a feeling of powerlessness is spreading among ordinary citizens. “We have no other possibility than to flee from this area. Families cannot fight against these problems alone. We are talking about survival, you can get stabbed here. We can only survive by attempting to avoid getting targeted.”

Feriz and Pajtim, members of youth gang Gangsta Albanian Thug Unit in the Swedish city of Malmö, explain how they mug and beat people downtown. “Many of us participated in gangs that fought against the Serbs during the war in Kosovo. Violence is in our blood,” Feriz said. They target a lone victim and make him a scapegoat. “We make it look like he bumped into one of us. Then we have an opportunity to attack him. We surround him and beat and kick him until he no longer fights back,” he said. “You are always many more people than your victims. Cowardly?” “I have heard that from many, but I disagree. The whole point is that they’re not supposed to have a chance.” Neither Feriz nor Pajtim expressed any sympathy for their victims. “If they get injured, they just have themselves to blame for being weak,” said Pajtim and shrugged.

They bring with them a rather brutal culture to Sweden. A BBC article described how the centuries-old custom of blood feuds has made a comeback in Albania in recent years. “The law and order vacuum created by the collapse of communism sent many Albanians back to the ancient customary laws of their tribal roots.” “The Kanuns sanction blood feuds and regulate them from all points of view,” said professor of law Ismet Elezi. “And first they established the rule: whoever kills will be killed. Blood is avenged with blood.” In an effort to end to this perpetual cycle of revenge, the Albanian education ministry has set up programmes for children affected by blood feuds. Each local authority tries to identify the children who do not attend school because they are in hiding or confined to their homes. “It’s between the families. If we go and ask for the police to help this thing will get even worse.”

What the BBC conveniently “forgot” to mention in this article was that these blood feuds are rooted in Islamic teachings.[..] The idea of blood money originates from the Koran, 2.178. Indemnity is secured through the payment of blood money to the next-of-kin or the injured party, as opposed to retaliation, in which the killer is put to death or has a like injury inflicted on him/her. It depends upon what the family of the deceased or the injured party wants.

And this quote from Douglas Murray:

“All across Europe, debate on Islam is being stopped. Italy’s greatest living writer, Oriana Fallaci, soon comes up for trial in her home country, and in Britain the government seems intent on pushing through laws that would make truths about Islam and the conduct of its followers impossible to voice. Europe is shuffling into darkness. It is proving incapable of standing up to its enemies, and in an effort to accommodate the peripheral rights of a minority is failing to protect the most basic rights of its own people.” A survey in April 2005, after the murder of another critic of Islam, Theo van Gogh, indicated that 32 percent of Dutch people wanted to emigrate abroad.

Full essay here.

In recent years, slowly but surely, scientific research has again begun on the possible medical uses of various psychedelic substances. After several decades of almost total absence for mostly political reasons, small, often privately funded, studies have begun springing up around the world. MDMA has been showing very positive results in the treatment of anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ibogaine has been haled as nothing short of a magical wonder cure for opiate dependence, at least in comparison to other treatment options currently available. Now recent research has added “magic” mushrooms, used by many cultures all over the world, from the South American Aztecs to the shamanic tribes of Siberia, for thousands of years, to the list of potential treatment options for a variety of psychological disorders.

From “‘Magic’ mushrooms blow many minds: study” on NineMSN:

“Magic mushrooms,” used by Native Americans and hippies to alter consciousness, appear to have similar mystical effects on many people, US researchers report.

More than 60 per cent of volunteers given capsules of psilocybin derived from mushrooms said they had a “full mystical experience.”

“Many of the volunteers in our study reported, in one way or another, a direct, personal experience of the ‘beyond,’” said Roland Griffiths, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry and behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who led the study.

A third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes.

Many likened it to the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.

And the effects lingered.

Two months after getting the drug, 79 per cent of the volunteers said they felt a moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction, according to the report published in the journal Psychopharmacology.

Griffiths said the drug might be used to treat addiction as well as severe pain or depression.

Other teams are also exploring some different posibillities:

Food and Drug Administration, and one team led by Dr Charles Grob at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California is testing the drug on patients with end-stage cancer.

“Our specific aim is to learn whether this psychoactive drug, psilocybin, might be effective in reducing anxiety, depression and physical pain, and therefore improving your quality of life,” the researchers say on their website.

Dr Solomon Snyder, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins who says he has experimented with LSD himself, said the experiment might lead to a way to find the “locus of religion” and the biological basis of consciousness in the brain.

What do you know, for a change the hippies were onto something. Of course too much of a good thing..

I highly recommend supporting MAPS: the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a non-profit organisation that assists research into the medical and spiritual potential of psychedelic substances, by helping scientists and research teams in securing funding, obtaining approval for and designing their studies. You can read about the many research projects currently under way in the US and around the world on their website. Current research includes MDMA, LSD, Ibogaine, psilocybin/mushrooms, mescaline/peyote, DMT, Ketamine, Salvia Divinorum and ajahuasca.

The following exerpt is from “10 Questions with Dr Rachael Kohn”, which appeared in the May 26 issue of Australian Jewish News. Dr Kohn, who has been described as “the David Suzuki of the soul”, is the author of “The New Believers: Re-imagining God” and a presenter on “The Spirit of Things” program on Radio National. You can hear the program at 6pm on Sundays. She has also produced several documentaries for the ABC and is a PhD in Religious Studies. Dr Kohn was interviewed by Mark Franklin, Thanks to Mark for allowing me to reproduce parts of his interview here.

Is science loosening religion’s grip of its claim on truth?

I think a living thriving religion has very little problem with science. It absorbs many of the discoveries and the truths of science. I think its biggest problem is popular culture that is materialist, hedonist and self-centered. And unfortunately, that culture is driven by a very big consumerist imperative and it deals very big challenges to the religiously-informed life.

What do ‘new-age’ approaches to spirituality offer that religion does not?

New age spirituality offers the possibility of constantly changing fashion. It’s open-ended, it’s eclectic, it’s totally self-centered so that any individual can create and pull together their own view of the world. That’s why it’s so attractive. It also ends up being very vacuous and I think most people eventually end up drifting back into something organized.

What are the dangers of spiritual beliefs that are simply absorbed with self?

I think the most frightening thing is that they’re politically and morally very naive. There is no interest in history, and history sadly has had a lot to teach us in the last century about the costs of being naive and blind. History has taught us that we can’t afford to live in a sort of cushy utopian world and not see around us the harsh political realities and identify ideological fanaticism.

Could humanity ever outgrow religion?

No. Never. Because we will always sense that there is more to life than our material needs and desires. And in order to gain an ethical and moral perspective in life you have to step outside that material world and see human existence from a wholly other perspective. I think it’s essential in recognising a kind of fundamental humility of the human condition – that we come from dust, as it were, and we leave as dust. Faith in God is essential for me. It’s the only way that I think life makes sense.

And a few more words from Dr Kohn that I totally agree with:

I hope the new believers do not become fanatical zealots but genuinely reflect on the challenges of spiritual living. We can become too politically correct and not critique other religions. It is important that people of different faiths engage one another and the problems we all face.

Winston Churchill wrote the following in 1899 (yes, 107 years ago), when he was only 24 years old in “The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan”. The book is an account of Kitchener’s campaign against the jihadists in the Sudan, on which Churchill served as a British journalist-officer. The quote has been on high rotation in the blogosphere ever since it was described by Mark Steyn as “rather shrewd and pertinent analysis by one of Britain’s most eminent leaders” in one of his columns exactly two years ago tomorrow. By the way, at least some recent editions of the book no longer contain this quote. Even history can be politically corrected.

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!

“Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. 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 civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co.), 1899

And here’s a few words from the aforementioned Mark Steyn column, “Blunkett’s ban will fan the flames”:

…If you’re the “moderate” Imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi, you’ll be invited to speak at the “Our Children Our Future” conference sponsored and funded by the Metropolitan Police and the Department for Work and Pensions. But, if you express concern about ol’ Mullah Moderate, an Islamic lobby group will file an official complaint about you.

Indeed, after Sir John Stevens, Met commissioner and event co-sponsor, said he didn’t want his officers on the same stage as the imam, the Muslim Association of Britain filed an official complaint about his comments. By the time you read this, Sir John might have already called for himself to be investigated by a Royal Commission and found guilty of systemic Islamophobia.

As for “Our Children Our Future”, when it comes to children, the imam certainly has the future all mapped out: as he has said, “Israelis might have nuclear bombs but we have the children bomb and these human bombs must continue until liberation.” Thank heaven for little girls, they blow up in the most delightful way.

If an Anglican Bishop were to commend a career as a suicide bomber to his Sunday school charges, you’d certainly hope to be free to question his judgment on the matter. Not that Anglican bishops ever say such things, of course. They’re lost in anguished debate on whether they should just have celibate gay deans in long-term relationships or go for full-blown robustly active gay bishops, and all the thanks they get for their painful efforts to keep up with the times is wholesale public mockery of Christianity up and down the land – i.e. my old friend Alistair Beaton’s satirical Iraq-war song, We’re Sending You a Cluster Bomb From Jesus.

Meanwhile, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the Western world, but Blunkett wants us to pretend that it’s a wee delicate bloom which has to be sheltered from anything unpleasant. The other week, the governor of one of those Nigerian states that now lives under sharia called for the burning of all Christian churches within his jurisdiction. Every Friday, on state TV and radio throughout the Arab world and in mosques somewhat closer to home, the A-list imams call for the killing of Jews and infidels. Well, good luck to them. But, if they can dish it out so enthusiastically, couldn’t they learn to take it just an eensy-teensy-weensy bit?

One of the reasons Arab nations are in the state they’re in is because of the inability to discuss Islam honestly. I was in Amman for the Jordanian election last year and one of the things you notice is that, although the city does a reasonable impression of a modern dynamic capital and its press is, by the standards of the region, free-ish, its stunted political culture is subordinate to its religious culture. That’s why, for example, Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal Code – which effectively licenses “honour killings” – always gets renewed when it comes up in parliament.

[and about the Churchill quote:]

If Blunkett bans the sentiments in that first sentence, the sentiments of the last will prove even more pertinent.

‘Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.‘ — George Santayana

I couldn’t agree more with Education Minister Julia Bishop’s plan to have history tought as a standalone subject in Australian high schools. The average Australian’s knowledge of history is absolutely appalling. How can a democratic nation know its place in the world when the citizens lack even the most basic knowledge of world history or even of the history of their own country? How can it know where it is heading, when its citizens know nothing of where it came from?

Education Minister Julie Bishop earlier this week:

“I want to work with the states on this. I want them to come along with me in a renaissance in the teaching of Australian history.”

..

“Australian history has fallen victim to a crowded curriculum that has squashed it together with other social and environmental studies. I intend to consider ways the federal Government can encourage state education authorities to make teaching of Australian history a critical part of the syllabus.”

..

“There’s both a quantitative and a qualitative problem with the teaching of Australian history in schools. There are not enough students learning for a start.”

“And there is too much politics in it, too much indoctrination and not enough pivotal facts and dates.”

(source: NineMSN)

Lets be more specific here. I think Mason Cooley, an American professor of English summed it up nicely when he said “Radical historians now the tell the story of Thanksgiving from the point of view of the turkey”.

I am concerned that Australian history has been downgraded and swallowed up in other studies in Australian schools. And I would like to see Australian history as a separate part of the curriculum, a stand-alone subject, so that all Australian school students leave school with a comprehensive understanding of Australian history.

(source: ABC)

“I think school systems have become afraid of teaching Australian history for fear of saying something that isn’t politically correct.”

“I have seen one example of teaching of Australian history where they describe Captain Cook’s voyage to Australia as part of an invasion fleet. In fact Captain Cook came to Australia as part of a scientific expedition in 1770.

“Every school child should know when and why James Cook sailed along the east coast of Australia, why the British transported convicts to Australia and who was Australia’s first prime minister.”

(source: NineMSN)

Prime Minister John Howard, on Radio 5AA, Adelaide, Wednesday, July 5th:

… any proper study of Australian history has to include a study of the indigenous peoples, of course.

Just as any proper study of Australian history has got to include an understanding of the influences that shaped Australia before European settlement. It’s got to include some understanding of British and European history, an understanding of the enlightenment, an understanding of the influence of Christianity, of western civilisation. All of those things that shaped Australian society have got to be included, but very particularly we have got to have a proper narrative of what happened to this country both before 1788 and 1770, 1788 and onwards.

Now that includes obviously some reference to indigenous history. What we’ve got to get away from is studying history, as part of an examination of issues, an examination of cultural drifts. I want history to be Australian history in all of the manifestations I have described. I want it to be a standalone subject. It deserves that treatment. I want Australians in future to understand the scale of the Australian achievement.

“I’m not trying to write a course, I just want to establish the priority… I cannot understand how anybody in a government could object to Australian history being, for some period of time, a compulsory, standalone subject.”

Strange times indeed when such things need to be pointed out and the idea is actually scoffed at by Australian academics. Reminds of a certain scene in ‘The life of Brian’: ‘All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, rods, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?‘

Kevin Donnelly, in “History writ shamefully”, in The Australian:

Textbooks give school students a one-sided account of our national history and Aboriginal culture, argues Kevin Donnelly
FEDERAL Education Minister Julie Bishop is right. It’s about time school students were taught traditional Australian history. For too long, teachers have downplayed – even, at times, denigrated – our nation’s achievements. Pointing out past sins is one thing; making ourselves ashamed to be Australians is another thing altogether.

As a student back in the Soviet Union I recall learning History as a compulsory standalone subject as early as year 4. Even the commies understood its importance. But then, we were also already learning English and Russian Literature as standalone subjects in year 4 and Biology in year 5. It seems that only in Australia children go to school pretty much to be baby-sat until they get to high school.

As the theologian Walter Rauschenbusch said, “History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same.” It seems that modern “progressive” thinking has succumbed to the basic fallacy that the world has moved beyond history, that humanity has evolved past the mistakes that the study of history would teach us to avoid. This in itself a mistake bourne of a lack of historical understanding. Reality however is fast catching up with us.

Its a quotes bonanza on TOD this week! No shame in getting the message across using the words of those who can craft their point together ever more artfully than I ever could.

(via LGF)

Another very courageous woman I greatly admire is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Born in Somalia, Hirsi Ali was until recently a member of Dutch Parliament, from which she resigned last May amid much controversy, ironically because she provided false information on her refugee status and Dutch citizenship applications. The real reason for her move to the Netherlands was to escape a forced marriage. On June 27, 2006 the Dutch government, apparently in damage control mode, announced they will let her keep her Dutch citizenship, but Ayaan stuck by her previous decision to move to the United States to work at the American Enterprise Institute. When she was 5 years old her grandmother had the procedure of female genital mutilation performed on her, while her father, who was opposed to it, was away overseas. In her youth, while a student at an Islamic girls school in Kenya, Hirsi Ali backed the Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie. However studying philosophy as part of her political theory course at the University of Leiden unshackled her mind of the bonds of religious dogma and on finishing university she began her political career with the Dutch Labour Party, seeking to fight against fundamentalist oppression and in particular to fight for the rights of women. In 2004 she worked on the film “Submission” (see film at google video) with Theo van Gogh, about the treatment of women in Islamic society. In late 2004 Van Gogh was murdered by a Jihadist, who shot him and then nearly decapitated the corpse, because the film was seen to insult Islam. The killer left a knife stuck in Van Gogh chest, with an attached note threatening a similar fate for Hirsi Ali (far from the first threat and definitely not the last), who has had a permanant security escort since (her entitlement as a Parliamentarian). She is now working on a follow up film, called “Submission 2″, which will look at the persecution of homosexuals in Islamic society.

The Times online on the weekend published an essay from her book “The Caged Virgin”, entitled “A Call For Clear Thinking”.

Her bestselling collection of essays, The Caged Virgin, brings together some of her most passionate and compelling writing on a wide range of issues concerning Islam. Drawing on her own first-hand experience and cultural background, she assesses the role of women in Islam both in practice and in theory; the rights of the individual; fanaticism; and Western policies towards immigrant communities.

[the essay:]

AFTER THE CARNAGE OF THE terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005, Tony Blair defined the situation as a battle of ideas. “Our values will long outlast theirs,” he said, to the silent acquiescence of the world leaders who stood alongside him. “Whatever (the terrorists) do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.”

By defining this as a battle of values, Blair raised the question: which values are at stake? Those who love freedom know that the open society relies on a few key shared concepts. They believe that all humans are born free, are endowed with reason and have inalienable rights. These governments are checked by the rule of law, so that civil liberties are protected. They ensure freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, and ensure that men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, are entitled to equal treatment and protection under the law. And these governments have free-trade practices and an open market, and people may spend their recreational time as they wish.

The terrorists, and the Sharia-based societies to which they aspire, have an entirely different philosophical point of view. Societies that espouse the following of Sharia law, which is a code derived from a literalist reading of the Koran, are fundamentalist Islamists. They believe that people are born to serve Allah through a series of obligations that are prescribed in an ancient body of writings. These edicts vary from rituals of birth and funeral rites to the most intimate details of human life; they descend to the point of absurdity in matters such as how to blow your nose and with what foot to step into a bathroom. Humans in this philosophy must kill those among them who leave their faith, and are required to be hostile to people of other religions and ways of life. In their hostility, they are even sanctioned in the murder of innocent people. The edicts make no distinction between civilians and the military — anyone who does not share this faith is an infidel and can be marked for murder.

..

Read the rest of the essay.

Awakening
In the preface to The Caged Virgin Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes how she came to question her upbringing
[#M_Expand preface extract (also from The Time) inpost.|Close|

My parents in Somalia brought me up to be a Muslim — a good Muslim. Muslims, as we were taught the meaning of the name, are people who submit themselves to Allah’s will, which is found in the Koran and the Hadith, a collection of sayings ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad. I was taught that Islam sets us apart from the rest of the world, the world of non-Muslims. We Muslims are chosen by God. They, the others, the Kaffirs, the unbelievers, are antisocial, impure, barbaric, not circumcised, immoral, unscrupulous, and above all, obscene; they have no respect for women; their girls and women are whores; many of the men are homosexual; men and women have sex without being married. The unfaithful are cursed, and God will punish them most atrociously in the hereafter.

But, through my personal experiences, through reading a great deal and speaking to others, I have come to realise that the existence of Allah, of angels, demons, and a life after death, is at the very least disputable. If Allah exists at all, we must not regard His word as absolute, but challenge it.

_M#]