In yet another example of why the west might not beat the onslaught of radical Islamofascism, Minette Marrin of the Timesonline thinks she has found a solution to the clash of cultures. Marrin details the extremism evinced by too many Muslims in England and then posits a solution: ban all religion. Talk about an absurd idea. It’s as foolish as throwing out the baby with the bath water. It also discounts thousands of years of worthy and enlightened western culture influenced, guided and based on Christian philosophy.

In To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups, Marrin’s wooly headed prescription also serves as a fine example of the most shallow of PC, postmodern “thinking.” Famed French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré once said that, “to doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.” It is a lesson in discernment and critical thinking that escapes most on the left, and specifically this prosaic, anti-intellectual Timesonline columnist.

The first half of Marrin’s piece details recent poll results revealing the extremist leaning of Muslim students in England and it is alarming information, indeed. These poll results show, for instance, that four out of ten Muslim students in Britain support Sharia law in the UK. One third said that killing in the name of religion was justified. It shows that a quarter think women are not equals to men. The poll also shows that, among other results, 57% believe Muslim soldiers in the British army should be allowed to opt out of the war on terror. This alarming YouGov poll will be released on Monday, July 28. To sum up, Marrin says of the poll:

The authors make it clear that the majority of Muslim students support secularism and democratic values and are broadly tolerant of others. However, the CSC points out that the incidence of conservative and separatist Muslim beliefs has been growing and is more prevalent in young Muslims than in their parents’ generation. British Muslims used to be much more moderate.

It is an alarming poll. Of course, who can doubt such results? The Brits have for decades been collectively turning their back on western society with politically correct teaching that holds that their own culture is no more than just another culture and, therefore, not deserving of special consideration. Like most left leaning provocateurs, British liberals have become fond of morally equating their own culture with the worst lot of humanity. On the other hand, these young Muslims are taught from birth that their religion is superior. Not only that, but Islam is a political system as well as a mere religion. So why shouldn’t British Muslims seek to replace the British culture with one they are taught is superior? If the English aren’t going to insist their culture is optimal, why should anyone else?

In all this England is reaping what it has sown. Also in this they aren’t much different than the French, the Germans, Spain, Canada, and to a lesser extent, even the U.S.A.

It is enlightening information and serves as a good warning, but Marrin isn’t done. She wonders aloud what we should do. “Insecure young people can be swayed by extremists,” she assures us, “The question is how to stand up to the extremists.”

Marrin begins with a good idea saying, “First, I think, we should abandon all discussions of what Islam truly is.” That is a pretty good prescription, but it isn’t a subject of much discussion in the west, really. Westerners aren’t interested in what is or is not the “real” Islam. That is a question that has vexed the Muslim world from time immemorial and will surely never be resolved. What the west is interested in, though, is what Islam is not, and that is a “religion of peace.” Still, no matter what it is, it is a major problem and solving that problem is all the west is interested in. Muslims living in peace is not something the west is interested in meddling with. Muslims on the rampage is.

And now we get to Marrin’s solution of banning all religion, her nihilistic suggestion.

What follows inescapably from this is that religious people and their views should not be officially recognised in groups. Religion should not be allowed a public space or public representation. This is hard for those of us who used to love the muddled Anglican compromise; it means the disestablishment of our national church – if it doesn’t self-destruct first.

She goes further.

The challenge of other, fiercer and more divisive convictions has forced the issue; multiculturalism has been subversive. There must be no more religious schools – personally I would leave those that exist alone. There must be no public recognition of religious associations as representatives of anything or anybody: not on campuses, not in student unions, not in government consultations or in parliament.

Marrin even wishes to ban religious schools? And how does this make her much different in stringent authoritarianism than the radical Islamists she here condemns?

Now Marrin’s absurd, overreaction would make sense if there were even half as many honor killings in Britain perpetrated by Christians, Buddhists — or even Druids for that matter — as there are Muslims. It would make sense if Christian nations were exporting terror cells secretly into nations throughout the world. It would make sense if major Christian leaders were issuing their own fatwa-like proclamations calling their flocks to violence, oppression, and self-immolation.

It would be a perfectly sensible idea to ban all religions if all religions were exactly as dangerous as Islam. But they aren’t. In fact, it isn’t even close. Islam is by many magnitudes of measurement a far more dangerous ideology than any other religion on the planet.

Yet, in a reductionists silly fantasy, Marrin offhandedly decides to veer off track and rush to ban all religions instead of making even a tiny attempt to actually deal with the real problem. This is the same sort of empty headed thinking that would punish the bully and his schoolyard victim for fighting on the playground. Hers is the same sort of idiocy that reduces all human actions to moral relativity. Marrin’s ultimate destination for her vacuous reasoning would equate the works of a Gandhi or a King, Jr., to that of a Stalin or Hitler. After all, all of them espoused their philosophies loudly and insistently and brought many followers to their side.

Certainly, a banning of Islam is not perhaps a solution out of the question. After all, Islam is the problem, here. But a foolhardy banning of all religion just because one is currently a problem is no solution at all. But it is a “solution” that falls into Poincaré’s admonition. It has the dubious benefit of eliminating any reflection. Sadly, it is the way of the unthinking left that we’ve become so tiresomely familiar.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThFvlybQYso[/youtube]

Oh really? Um…now do you understand why there is no good news coming out of either Iraq or Afghanistan? They had to wait for their god to appear.

Now if you ask me, anyone who looks to a politician for all their answers is a NUT. A dangerous one at that. Dear Gerard Baker, you are forgetting one thing. You do NOT get to decide who will be president in America. Get it?

Anyone who parades themselves as the next messiah could be campared to Ahmadinejad as far as his ‘seeing’ the 12th imam. Not only that, but he claims he IS the 12th imam! This is unacceptable to me, and it should be unacceptable to you too. I do not like McCain, but this only makes me want to work harder to make sure America is never saddled with this person in the WH.

PS. Did you know that Obama has plans to open an office for an Islamic Liason?

The Huffington Post announced this week that Obama has chosen Hiam Nawas to serve in the position of ‘Muslim liaison’ though an aide later hurried to assert that the final decision on Nawas hadn’t been made yet: [Continue reading this article by Aurora at The Midnight Sun.]

Does this raise the hair on the back of anyone’s neck but mine?

Hat tip: National Black Republican Association, Chairwoman Francis Rice, who also gave me the link to the UK article. If you cannot see the video, here is the link to see it at YouTube.

Cross-posted @ Rosemary’s Thoughts.

May you walk with the LORD always, and when you cannot take another step, may He carry you the rest of the way until you can walk along side Him again.

The classroom assignment was called “All About Me,” and was intended to provide an opportunity for children to “identify individual interests and learn about others,” the ADF said. The activity at the school – which lists an unspecified “religious holiday” in September but a “winter recess” in December – allowed students to talk about their interests through the use of their favorite stuffed animals, posters, snacks and games and books.

The brief noted that the school allowed discussion of religion in the “All About Me” assignment. “Because Wesley liked to go to church, he created a poster that included a picture of a church with the words, ‘I like to go to church’ below it. This poster was displayed on the wall.”

But the Bible reading Wesley requested was rejected because the Bible promotes “a specific religious point of view” and the teacher instead suggested Wesley’s mother “read a book ‘about witches and Halloween’ instead.”

When his turn came, Culbertson Elementary student Wesley Busch asked his mother to read from his favorite book, the Bible. But the ADF said school officials told Donna Kay Busch that the school viewed the Bible as “proselytizing” and as “promoting a specific religious point of view,” banning it from the class.

There are quite a few questions to ask here. First of all, would a Muslim kid wanting to talk about Mohammad or the Qu’ran get the same treatment? The statement, “go read about witches and Halloween” is pretty insensitive overall.

Secondly, was the Bible story specifically prosletyzing, or did the teacher and the district just assume that every story in the Bible prosletyzes for Christianity? There are many absolutely cool stories from the Bible that in themselves don’t really prosletyze like David and Goliath, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, etc. Or were the administrators like most Americans so completely ignorant of the Bible that they just assumed anything in there was prosletyzing. There’s of course a far more fundamental problem here, though.

While the focus of the story heretofore has been on what was allowed in the given activity, what exactly are kids learning from the activity by doing reports and drawings about oneself. Are they being prepared for life? Further education? Reading a Bible story and actually hearing about one portion of the greatest best-seller of all times may be the most truly educational thing to come out of this experience. Instead, we have teachers suggesting books on witches and halloween, which if not harmful are certainly banal and mind-numbing rather than enlightening. Maybe, it’s time for schools that educate.

I think of local Christian School, Covenant Academy which in Kindergarten teaches Bible Survey I, Basic History, Reading, Writing, basic math, and an overview of science, and I think that perhaps our schools need more of this and less of nonsensical self-actualizing bunk.

(Hat Tip: Idaho Values Alliance.)

As I come at this, I see a number of issues all tangled up. These issues range from the theological (do we all worship the same God?) to the cultural (Is Multi-culturalism correct?), as well as the various public maneuverings surrounding these posts across numerous blogs. I’m going to break this up due to the sheer magnitude of the issues.

The Hindu Prayer

You can listen to my initial reaction to the Hindu prayer. I was not as outraged by it as either Congressman Sali or Reverend Fischer. I viewed the Hindu prayer as a smaller problem than the nature of the daily prayers in the Senate.

Every day, men rise and pray Christian prayers to a Senate chamber that is nearly empty unless for a big debate. Following the invocation of the great and mighty Lord, the King of Heaven and Earth, members of Congress proceed to bring about such monstrosities. They cheat for their own interests, they rob their fellow citizens blind in order to build monuments to themselves. More than 30 voted to continue the practice of partial birth abortion that no less a liberal that Pat Moynihan declared it to be infanticide.

We go through the motions, but we are not sincere before God. The Founders knew that without God, their efforts were meaningless. Our members of Congress are some of the least God-fearing of any we’ve had, which is why they can hear these prayers and then behave so corruptly.

This mass corruption of our elected officials, the bloodiness of our land, and the hypocrisy of our prayers, I can’t help but imagine that they stand out to God. In the book of Isaiah, Chapter 1, Verses 10-18 God delivers a message to Israel:

Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah:

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?” saith the LORD. “I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs or of hegoats. When you come to appear before Me, who hath required this from your hand, to tread My courts?

“Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me. The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure. It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth; they are a trouble unto Me, I am weary of bearing them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood. “

The piety of their words is shown to be a lie by the way our Congress deals with the American people. The fact is that the chaplain could be praying to Millie Vanilli and most of the Senators wouldn’t know the difference. God has become to them little more than “the Lord thy prop.” Church attendance for most members is a show event meant to please man rather than worship God.

Until we change the character of our leaders, the religion of the person saying the prayer is a secondary issue. I imagine that the God who spoke to Isaiah would tell the Senate and House to put away vain prayers and empty repetitions, and that he was tired of them and couldn’t stand them anymore.  He would then make the same offer he made to the people of Judah:

Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. “Come now, and let us reason together,” saith the LORD. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

To me, the root of the problem is a corruption and insincerity that rises as a foul stench from one end of the Continent to the other. Though they say they pray to God, the god most of Congress serves is power.

I have immense respect for Congressman Sali and Reverend Fischer, but this was one issue where we saw differently. I didn’t intend to chime in on this issue. But this has become about far more than a single prayer, rather the debate around this issue is about the future of our country. So, I am compelled to speak.

Continued in Part Two

What is the problem with our nation? This is the Summer of our discontent. We’re dissatisfied with our President and our Congress. We’re dissatisfied with the direction of our nation, but we act as if we’re helpless.

In fact, the means of our deliverance are easily obtained In nations like Cuba and North Korea, the price of bringing freedom is blood. Yet, in America, you can describe what is necessary in two paragraphs.

A small number of Americans can change this nation’s politics through small contributions to candidates who share their values and just aren’t making it up to get to the next level of their career. A few thousand bloggers with a hopeful vision can jam the Internet with the truth about corrupt politicians like Ted Stevens (R-AK) and the vile games that go on in Congress and demand change, and spur others on to action. We can turn to our neighbors, to people of integrity and ask them to answer the call to leadership and replace our self-serving near-sighted elected officials.

We can change the arts and culture through our decisions and our encouragement of those who labor in those fields in our midst, often without our notice and occasionally with our disdain.

We could, but we don’t. Some answer the call, but not enough. There are a few who give to candidates, but there are many more who sit on the sidelines. They gripe, they give their long cynical lists of complaints, and declare their battle hopeless. While folks strive for freedom, righteousness, and truth around the world, our nation is eaten away by a cynical apathy that declares all is lost. Never have so many fools died but inches from the water, complaining of their thirst.

What has happened to our nation? Why is it that a pastor in China will strive on against state-sanctioned persecution, through torture and beatings and prison, while here in America, the American Christian throws up in his hands with his belly full, a good job, and a retirement plan?

Perhaps, it’s because the God of the Chinese Pastor is bigger than the God of the American Christian. What do I mean? They’re both Christians. But in America, an extraordinary thing has happened, we’ve shrunk God.

Other nations like China or the Soviet Union have tried to pretend God wasn’t there, or like most of Western Europe , they’ve ignored God. We’ve tried to do something quite marvel, we’ve tried to make God smaller to fit our lives.

It wasn’t always so in America. Though our Founder’s faith varied from the devout to the deist, they understood God was mighty and powerful. He had the power to help a nation rise up or cast it into dust. When deist Benjamin Franklin saw the Constitutional Convention deadlocked, he saw only one way that New Englanders, Southerners, and Mid-Atlantic states, big states and small could ever agree on a Constitution, would be by the power of God.

God was viewed as so needful in the Civil War that Abraham Lincoln called national days of prayer eight times. What happened?

Over time, this big God became somewhat inconvenient to the American Church. The holiness, righteousness, and justice of God became too hard for us, so we chose to de-emphasize this part of his character and focus on those characteristics that were comforting and gentle only. This has progressed over time to the point where church after church has begun to spin God. Sins that would have scandalized in a prior generation are tolerated and accepted without question in many of our churches. Sin is rarely spoken against, and even more rarely named in our pulpits, and even when it is, our hearts are hardened against it.

Our problem is that when we remove part of someone’s character, we can very easily turn them into a caricature. God is no different. Be it God as Santa Claus who gives you everything you want, a comfortable Teddy Bear, or Zeus with his lightning bolts ready to strike us down for our sins, whenever we view God incompletely, we turn him into a fictitious caricature rather than the Almighty.

When we shrink God, we shrink His Church. Our Churches are no longer the bride of Christ, but simply consumer-driven clubs we pay dues to, and can leave as easily as we can a cell phone company or bank.

When we shrink the Church and we’ve shrunk God, we see great needs that must be addressed and those needs inevitably fall to the State. The State in turn has built bureaucracy upon bureaucracy, and in the name of helping people has destroyed more lives than can be counted.

Now, today, we truly need God’s help. Our councils are frustrated. Our Churches are divided and downcast. Our nation is under attack from those who hate America and believe that to kill Christians is virtue and reward. Do we really pray? We pray mechanically, because we know we’re supposed to. We have a prayer said before our government meetings. not because we really think it will do any good, but because it’s tradition. Why don’t we seek him as our only hope? Why don’t we cry out as men who’s schemes and plots have reached an end, and we are now at a point when only God can help and lift us out of this miry pit?

We don’t call out because God has been shrunk to the level where we really don’t believe he can help us. Who would ask a teddy bear to save their lives? Would most Christians in their heart agree with that old deist Franklin when he declared, “God governs in the affairs of men?” If we really believe this, than tell me why are millions of “Bible-believing” Christians committing their support to a man who is a favorite of the National Abortion Rights Action League and the homosexual rights movement for fear that a Democrat will be elected President and their families will be killed by Al Qaeda?

Ultimately, we’ve concluded that WE govern in the Affairs of men and that God is a nice preliminary, like politicians saying the pledge of allegiance to the Republic before voting to spend the hard-earned tax dollars to enrich a campaign contributor. We’ve made God a creature comfort, not a reality. We’ve shrunk God and we’ve shrunk ourselves into little more than calculating beasts that take the path of least resistance, time and time again.

We can’t fight with the courage of a Washington to sit in the cold and dark of Valley Forge, when death and defeat encircle us like a blanket, and still fight on. Washington prayed. He prayed because the God of our Founders was God of Justice. He was a Big God.

Despite our best efforts, we’ve not shrunk God, we’ve only shrunk our Faith. He’s as big as He ever was. It’s we that must grow, it’s we that must change. At this time of confusion and despair, we must turn to God, for He is our only Hope. We must have our eyes opened as the Lord opened the eyes of the Prophet’s servant so that we see how big our God is.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, Right Truth, Big Dog’s Weblog, Webloggin, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, Allie Is Wired, Nuke’s news and views, The Pink Flamingo, Planck’s Constant, Wyvern Dreams, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and Public Eye, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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