Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

Bad news for the Pope

Australians win the right to be annoying...

The JFS may have won but it can still change its mind

So the JFS has won its court case. The Judge decided that to rule against them would bring down the whole faith school network. He probably made the right decision.

But JFS has no cause for self congratulation. Its behaviour has been entirely wrong.

I'd better fill you in if you haven't been following the case.

JFS had been accused of racially discriminating against parents becuase it was willing to accept the children of Jewish born atheists but not those of observant parents where the mother had converted.

In the case of the Lightman family the mother had an Israeli conversion. She actually teaches at JFS and they are observant. Yet the school, using the Chief Rabbi's office to make the decision on Jewish status, has not accepted the conversion and therefore has not provided a place to the Lightman's daughter.

Legally they have been found to be within their rights. But just because it is legal, doesn't make the action correct.

The school is using large sums of public money. It should employ a generous and enlightened attitude to Jewish status, doing its best to provide places for observant Jewish families willing to attend.

To apply a small minded, nit picking, sectarian definition of Judaism is shameful in these circumstances.

These are very good people, trying their best to serve the community and doing spectacularly well at it most of the time but they have, I beg them to see, made a mistake.

It is their right to exclude families like the Lightmans and now they have established that it is their right. Can they not now allow compassion, common sense and generosity to prevail?

There is no point in prayer and religion if it doesn't allow for that, is there?

It's not too late.

EXCLUSIVE - Sharia plot exposed

A story in today's Times reveals that secret Government negotiations have taken place in Morocco to introduce Sharia in Britain.

The journalistic expose is the work of that well known chronicler Matthew Paris who cites senior parties to the negotiations as his source.

The talks were aimed at getting Shiite assistance to head off domestic unrest in Britain in exchange for a new legal framework.

Read the full astonishing story here.

Is the Archbishop really wringing his hands?

Think the Archbishop feels he's made a terrible mistake? You're wrong.

A fabulous piece by Ruth Gledhill in today's paper suggests that his apparent hang-wringing is actually cover for a self-assurance bordering on arrogrance.

Blogging the Archbishop - a roundup

--Libby Purves in Faith Central: Sharia in Britain? We think not...

--Ruth Gledhill in Articles of Faith: Has the Archbishop gone bonkers?

--Chris Dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling: Rowan Williams and Civil Society

--Iain Dale's Diary: Who will rid us of this idiotic priest?

--Matthew D'Ancona in Coffee House: A massive clerical error

--Heresy Corner: Woe is Rowan

Why the Archbishop is wrong about Sharia

The Archbishop of Canterbury is often hard to follow - by which I mean hard to comprehend. But when a sentence peeks through the fog and makes itself understood, I frequently find I disagree with him.

Not long ago I attended a lecture by him about freedom of expression and when asked to describe it later I said: "It was too obscure for me to know when to heckle."

I do not have the same difficulty with today's extraordinary remarks about Sharia law.

He has just told the BBC that the adoption of certain parts of Sharia law is "unavoidable". He believes that if we do not adopt it, there will be a tension between the cultural customs of parts of the community and the requirements of the state.

Well, first of all this adoption is not unavoidable in the literal sense - we can avoid it by not doing it.

What makes this country a liberal, peaceable democracy is that we all live under the same laws, we are equal citizens before the law.

As I argued in my column yesterday, this is a Christian country, even if (unbelievably) the Archbishop himself wishes it were not so. Everyone is entitled to worship any religion or none but this under British law and with due respect for the way that British traditions hold in public space.

Fortunately these traditions include remarkable tolerance for others, a welcome and interest in the practice of others and great generosity of spirit. But such values are not abstract one, conjured out of nowhere. They are rooted in this country's history and practice as a Christian nation.

There are any number of places in the world where people can live under Sharia law. This isn't one of them.

Nor should it be. 

Unintelligent views on intelligent design

Andrew Sullivan takes up my post on Governor Huckabee and adds a video where the candidate defends himself on evolution.

He does just fine for the first minute and a half or so, eliding his support for the theory of intelligent design and his belief in God.

Even then he's a bit confused. He says he doesn't know how we were created ("I wasn't there") just that God created us. In fact, intelligent design says the opposite. It says we do know how we were created, but not by who. But let that pass.

For around the two minute mark he goes further. He slips into "for goodness sake let's not have this guy's finger on the trigger" territory. Here's what he says:

But you know, if anyone wants to believe that they are the descendents of a primate they are certainly welcome to do it. I don't know how far they will march that back.

Erm, well I certainly want to believe that I am the descendant of a primate. My mother and father for instance.

The teddy bear sentence was not disproportionate

Have you noticed that word disproportionate?

It keeps popping up in relation to Gillian Gibbons and the teddy bear.

The Archbishop of Canterbury called her jail sentence:

"absurdly disproportionate response" to a "minor cultural faux pas".

while the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis), which represents more than 90,000 Muslim students in the UK and Ireland, said it was:

"deeply concerned" at what was a "gravely disproportionate" verdict.

Er, no.

It was not a misunderstanding of culture on the part of Gillian Gibbons. And the verdict was not disproportionate.

The arrest and imprisonment of this teacher was a political act, not a cultural or religious one. Its aim is not cultural preservation but terrorising the population. It is the classic move of a totalitarian state supported by a mob.

Why wasn't it disproportionate? This word implies that some sort of censure was required but that imprisonment was too much. The punishment wasn't out of proportion. It was unwarranted, outrageous, insupportable.

The use of the phrase "disproportionate" is offensive.

Do you think I am being insensitive about the sensibilities of the Sudanese government?

Too right I am.

Great Pope mystery deepens

The moment has come. Comment Central scoops the Daily Mail on one of its areas of great expertise.

Today's Daily Mail records the reappearance of Pope John Paul II....in a bonfire. The paper records that some are convinced that the flames photographed below show the silhouette of the late pontiff:

Service director Jarek Cielecki, a Polish priest and close friend of John Paul II, travelled to Poland after hearing an onlooker had photographed the image.

Father Cielecki said he was convinced the picture showed the former pontiff.

"You can see the image of a person in the flames and I think it is the servant of God, Pope John Paul II," he said.

But now, after minutes of painstaking research, Comment Central's Ludicrous Superstitious Nonsense Unit can reveal that the miracle was far greater than it seemed.

The Pope was not the only person who as the photographer said "had made many pilgramages during his life and was still making them in death". Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley and Jimmy Connors have all also appeared in the bonfire.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.

 

The priorities of Google...

It's the first day of Ramadan today. It's also Rosh Hashanah - Jewish New Year.

So what has Google chosen to celebrate? Roald Dahl's birthday.

Human nature is politically incorrect

This article, intriguingly titled:

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

lives up to its billing. For example, the authors contend:

Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight — suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive

Eek.

My British Muslim eyes boggled at this theory on why most suicide bombers are Muslim. Read the thesis - while ignoring the contention that the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka committed more suicide attacks in the 80s and 90s than Hamas and Hezbollah, and forgetting that many Muslims (like myself) intepret the Koranic passage on polygyny to mean that it is not acceptable. It is so staggeringly un-PC, yet original, that I submit it for your attention while hiding behind my chair.

Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region...

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

Talk about sexual frustration, eh?

Murad Ahmed

The map of faith

Looking for God? Well this is where best to find Him in America.

This map above shows “religious adherents as a percentage of all residents”. Click on the map to enlarge the image. Essentially, the redder it is, the stronger the faith.

It seems to me that the Bible Belt, which was traditionally seen as stretching from Texas, across states like Tennessee and Alabama, to Virginia – has been flipped up, through “tornado alley” and into Northern states like the Dakotas.

As though the importance of the Almighty in American politics wasn’t clear to you, below is the electoral map following the 2004 Bush-Kerry presidential election for you to draw your own conclusions.

Hilton shatters the God delusion

This amusing Paris Hilton story, reminds me of the very good joke I heard last week on Radio 4:

Richard Dawkins and Chritopher Hitchens must be feeling pretty stupid. They say they can't discover any evidence of God, then Paris Hilton goes to jail and finds him within 24 hours.

Entering the blogosphere: Libby Purves and Faith Central

Today Libby Purves, who graces the airwaves and the op-ed pages of The Times, enters the blogosphere. Faith Central promises to be Comment Central but with incense, prayer wheels, angels dancing on pinheads, burkas and much much more. There are already plenty of posts up: so go discover something about warlike Buddhist monks.

Robbie Millen

Abortion: finding the right words

Cardinal Keith O'Brien in his sermon against abortion and politicians who collude with the "evil trade" has sinned against the rules of politics: he's used "inflammatory" language. Worse still, the words he used carry actual meaning rather than being the stuff of Punch-&-Judy political rhetoric.

Jeremy Purvis, a Lib Dem MSP, whimpered that:

I think it’s very unfortunate that he has chosen to use extreme and provocative language, and a hectoring and bullying tone against MSPs and MPs who every day balance their own consciences against what they think are the best interests of their constituents

What does Mr Purvis think that the Cardinal should have said?

Instead of:

I urge politicians to have no truck with the evil trade of abortion. For those at Westminster this means finding means of overthrowing the legislation, which makes the killing possible. For those at Holyrood that means refusing to allow our health services to participate in the wanton killing of the innocent

Perhaps this?

The termination of foetuses is a challenging issue for all stakeholders, particularly to the womb-dependent community, and we need a partnership-based strategy to work towards the reduction of this form of inappropriate population management

If you regard abortion as murder, then it is preposterous to use the sort of milk-and-water language that one might use to attack Gordon Brown's Tax Credits to denounce abortion. It would be crazy for the Cardinal not to use black-and-white, uncompromising language to remind the members of his flock what the Church's teaching is.   

Any Catholic MP or MSP knows the Church's position on abortion, so the Cardinal's words can hardly be regarded as "hectoring". Nor can the Cardinal be said to "bullying" Catholic politicians with excommunication because those politicians should already know that, according to long-established canon law, they will have excommunicated themselves if they support pro-abortion laws. This article in First Things clearly explains the position. Go read it.

Robbie Millen

Dawkins: Robust or rude?

In Saturday's Times Richard Dawkins replied to critics of his book The God Delusion.

This morning, William Rees-Mogg responded to his assertion that moderate religionists are numerically irrelevant. I want to respond to another of his points.

He began his article with a defence of his robust style of argument:

A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would, in other contexts, sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a shrill rant. My nearest approach to stridency was my account of God as “the most unpleasant character in all fiction”. I don’t know how well I succeeded, but my intention was closer to humorous broadside than shrill polemic. Restaurant critics are notoriously scathing, but are seldom dismissed as shrill or intolerant. A restaurant might seem a trivial target compared to God. But restaurateurs and chefs have feelings to hurt and livelihoods to lose, whereas “blasphemy is a victimless crime”.

Richard Dawkins finds it incomprehensible that an intelligent person could believe in God. How could they be so stupid, he wonders. And this sets the tone for his work.

To which I make two replies.

The first is that many clearly intelligent people do believe in God and advance arguments in favour of his existence that are worthy of serious debate.

The second is that serious debate should be courteous and respectful and should always allow for the possibility that the other person may have a point. This does not need to involve giving any quarter. I am not impressed by Professor Dawkins's idea that he need only be as polite and respectful as a scathing politician or a snide restaurant reviewer. The behaviour of these individuals does not exactly elevate debate.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to require the Professor to behave better than that.

Fisking the Fisk

A group of conservative bloggers have set up thefisk.com. This is its purpose:

At The Fisk you'll read daily rebuttals of comment articles, speeches, government leaflets and blogs. In the internet age no sloppy thinking is free from exposure and analysis

Well, hooray. Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers Alliance makes a good fist of fisking; he marshalls his facts and exposes the flaws in Polly Toynbee's arguments.

Alas, most of the other posts are just right-wing shouting (There's nowt wrong with right-wing shouting, but let's not call it fisking when it isn't fisking.)

Take Cramner on Rowan Williams' slave-trade pilgrimage:

It is a bizarre sense of spiritual priority that the Church should bring to the attention of the media the sins of those died a couple of hundred years ago, while the needs today’s widows and orphans go ignored. The poor and outcast live in poverty and loneliness, while the Church seizes a media opportunity to remind us all that the Archbishop of Canterbury is still alive.

Come off it! Just because the Archbishop is paying penitence for the slave trade, doesn't mean that he or the Church is doing nothing about the poor and outcast. It just happens that an anti-slavery pilgrimage is considered more newsworthy than a hundred sermons or workaday acts of charity. Not his fault.

Or take the post on The Independent's frontpage, "It's the war, stupid". The writer simply asserts that:

if one lifts the veil of characteristic simplicity of the front page, an altogether more worrisome message is revealed. That message is one of rampant anti-Americanism, along with a more subtle – but no less important – air of anti-western sentiment. 

Well, have a look at the frontpage: I can't see rampant "anti-Americanism". "Its the war, stupid" is a perfectly reasonable headline for an article on the US midterm elections that in many states hinged on the war in Iraq. Yep, The Indy does occasionally have a sneery anti-American tone, but the author of the post doesn't provide a scintilla of evidence to make his/her case.

The Fisk if it really fisks lazy, illogical or inaccurate journalism will be a great service to media junkies. But fact-free, dogmatic right-wing assertion is as dreary as tired old liberal myths.

Robbie Millen

The Catholic Church and the Holy Prepuce

Like most gin-and-lace Anglicans I'm deeply jealous of the more exotic and obscure rituals and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. This story about the Holy Prepuce in Slate is utterly mystifying. (I would advise the faithful not to read the last line).

Robbie Millen

Should Turkey join the EU?

Well, it appears that Pope Benedict XVI now thinks Turkey should join the EU. But is he right? Here in this Times article Anthony Browne makes the case against. Rosemary Righter in another Times article makes the case for. And Norman Stone, the historian, in a characteristically eccentric intervention says Turkey can have Britain's EU membership.

Unlike the Pope I'm an agnostic on this, so what are your thoughts?

Robbie Millen

More Dawkins

My poor powers of exposition cannot compete with this fantastic short South Park clip that says it all.

(Hat Tip: Dave commenting on my previous post on Dawkins. Read my previous post on Dawkins and his arrogance here)

God complex

Here is Richard Dawkins in Wired magazine:

Dawkins looks forward to the day when the first US politician is honest about being an atheist. "Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists," he says. "Not a single member of either House of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn't add up. Either they're stupid, or they're lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they've got a motive! Everybody knows that an atheist can't get elected."

So let's recap. Dawkins thinks that, on the whole, unless you are stupid (like say Sir Jonathan Sacks and Martin Luther King) then you will agree with him. If you are intelligent and say that you disagree with him, then you must be lying. Your motive for lying is that everyone else is stupid (unlike Dawkins) and won't vote for you unless you lie to them.

Regardless of whether Dawkins is correct about the existence of God, isn't this unpleasantly arrogant?

(UPDATE: South Park sums it up)

Oppressive and pointless

On the surface there seems little wrong with the Government's proposal that faith schools might be asked to admit 25 per cent of pupils who belong to a different faith.

But I believe these proposals are simultaneously oppressive and pointless.

Why oppressive? Everybody keeps warbling on about the importance of school choice. For all this talk, in practice there is very little choice at the moment. One of the very few ways you can choose a different education for your child within the state system is by sending them to a faith school.

Anybody who thinks that the character of such schools will not be fundamentally altered by introducing a large non-faith element does not understand how faith schools work.

Are the non-Jewish children in my son's primary school class supposed to make a flag for Simchat Torah to carry round in synagogue? Or is my son supposed to stop making such a thing? The faith element is woven into the curriculum. The new proposals would change faith schools forever.

Good, you may say. That's the whole point. But what harm have these faith schools, the one bit of free choice parents have (save the private sector), ever done to you? The children at the school my sons attend are well integrated and will be fine members of British society.

I know that some people worry about how integrated British Muslims are. But any problem here arose without attendance at faith schools. One of the 7/7 bombers was a teacher at an integrated school, for heaven's sake.

Now, let’s say that there are a few faith schools you do worry about. Will anybody from a different religious background actually send their children there? That's why these proposals are not just oppressive, they are also pointless. Any school that has an extreme ethos will not attract a mixed intake.

These ideas are a combination of two things. First is the idea that since we must do something and this is something, therefore we must do it. The second is a sort of totalitarian liberalism, which increasingly sees religious practice as an enemy.

And one final point. It maybe that at the end of this post, you still feel it would better for my children if there were changes to faith schools. But the whole point of liberty is that it protects my right to do what I think is correct for my children, whatever you might think. Provided, of course, that it does no harm to you, which is a pretty high hurdle for the reform proposals to jump. And they don't remotely jump it.

(Further reading: An excellent post, as usual, by Ruth Gledhill)

Ready, aim, fire

The Pope, outraged Muslim demonstrators..... Christopher Hitchens could have turned his guns in either direction. He turns them on the Pope.

Disagreeing with Melanie

I hold Melanie Phillips in high regard. She has been consistently brave and, I believe, correct about just what we're up against in the war on terror.

So she deserves to be taken seriously when she sounds a warning about David Cameron's foreign policy speech:

If anyone doubts just what David Cameron has allied himself to in his anti-neocon speech, they should read the latest entry on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK website. The MPACUK is a profoundly anti-Jew, anti-Israel, jihadi website whose utterances are simply vile and terrifyingly extreme.

Yet, as she should know, there's a big difference between the MPACUK saying positive things about the Tories and the Tories saying nice things about the MPACUK. I think the MPACUK's construction of the speech is simply wrong, as they are about many things.

I certainly agree with Melanie that William Hague was mistaken to criticise Israeli bombing as disproportionate, but, wrong though I think he was, that does not make him a supporter of the other side in the war on terror.

I am afraid that suggesting that Cameron's speech allied him to the MPACUK is ridiculous, whether it is Melanie or the MPACUK drawing this conclusion.

And as for calling the Tories "jihadi-cons", that simply goes too far, Melanie.

Come again

Have I got this right? Some people are so furious at being unjustly described by the Pope as violent, that they, er, firebomb a church.......

You couldn't make it up.