Easter Celebrations in a Storm of Postmodern Iconoclasm

Unless you've taken up residence on planet Vulcan (which is becoming a more attractive prospect by the day) you can't have helped noticing the Catholic Church coming under heavy assault. In the chain of events the story happens to culminate over Holy Week and Easter.

While the abuse at the hands of priests is entirely despicable and without wishing to whitewash the guilty, it must be said that some of the media exposure has been disproportionate, to put it mildly. The postmodern left have reacted true to nature: dialectically and entirely in line with the Alinsky tradition: hold them to live up to their own standards (which no human being can do all of the time), then come down on them like a ton of bricks.

The smear campaign unleashed this week affects many groups and entities: the Tea Party movement, Republicans, Conservatives, Geert Wilders, Israel, the Berlusconi government in Italy, Euroskeptics, warmist deniers, Georgia and its President Saakashvili, the US Constitution (now toilet paper), George Bush and Dick Cheney, Eric Cantor, the usual talk radio hosts, Fox News, banks, insurance companies, big oil and big pharma, Capitalism, the private sector, reason, the middle class, weapons, heterosexual marriage, the Pope and the Vatican - all dissent from the Neo Socialist line is fair game. See here what's happening in the UK, where the Tory leader turns out to be a follower of Lucifer "community organizer" Alinsky.

The Counter-Enlighteners have had their eye on religion for a very long time. But Catholicism, as the ultimate adversary, has been singled out for demolition from the get go (others get the "boring from within" treatment). They've had too much power for far too long. Now's the moment to strike and paint them as essentially evil. And that, they do. They've been ramming nails into the coffin all week long.

But Free Republic in a post just up entitled "Forgotten Study: Abuse in School 100 Times Worse than by Priests" have been summing up the figures and put them into some perspective:

"(...) the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests. After effectively disappearing from the radar, Shakeshaft’s study is now being revisited by commentators seeking to restore a sense of proportion to the mainstream coverage of the Church scandal. 

According to the 2004 study “the most accurate data available at this time” indicates that “nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.” (...) 

In an article published on Monday, renowned Catholic commentator George Weigel referred to the Shakeshaft study, and observed that “The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague” in which Catholic priests constitute only a small minority of perpetrators." (...) >>>

By a chance constellation the Jewish Passover, Western Easter, and Orthodox Easter, all happen to coincide this weekend. But there's no love lost in the Christian brotherhood. While the Archbishop of Canterbury has said the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has lost "all credibility", and "Experts offer opinions on whether the pope should be held responsible", Galveston-Houston Archbishop Cardinal Daniel DiNardo criticized the media coverage.

The Church has started pushing back: "several prominent European clergy on Thursday denounced suggestions that Pope Benedict XVI was anything but a vigorous defender of victims of priestly sexual abuse."

And at a Good Friday service, the Pope's personal preacher, Reverend Cantalamessa, likened allegations of the pope's involvement in an alleged cover-up to "some of the worst aspects of antisemitism". It didn't take long before that was viciously savaged in a fit of moral indignation. Antisemitism is on the order of the day, unless Jews can be exploited to attack Christians! Talk of bigotry! After the dust settled it transpired the cleric had been quoting from a letter he received from a Jewish friend. You can hardly expect postmodernists to understand the parallels in using a few rotten apples to tarnish the whole basket, or can you?

That is, unless their favorite religionists are involved! When it comes to Muslims, it is entirely outrageous and racist, indeed fascist to lump an entire religion of peace pieces, with a few assertive victims of Western imperialism who - in their desperation - have turned to asymmetric warfare (a.k.a. terrorism, or man-made disasters). Hold them to their own standards and then apply double standards, is the line.

The Jihad Jane case - "white Al Qaeda", home-grown hirabahism, is by now hardly unique. It provides ample proof that Islamic violence has nothing to do with race or culture, but has everything to do with Islam as an ideology. There must be something in it, that triggers its practitioners into bloodletting. While the older religions of Judeism and Christenity according to the Platonic mind/body dichotomy have separated the sacred from the secular, the younger religion of Islam permeates every aspect of life, including politics.

The test that liberal democracy has in store for Muslims will be if the Ummah will be able to break up its collective, and if it will manage subsequently to separate Mosque from State. That will be the sole hope of integration into Western culture, so as to avert the clash of civilizations that everyone fears so much.

Happy Passover, a happy and blessed Easter, Kali Anastasi kai Kalo Pascha ...

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• Williams critical of Irish Church (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Child abuse scandal 'left Catholic church with no credibility', says Rowan Williams (telegraph.co.uk)

Review: "Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam"

The political video documentary"Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam", written and directed by Joel Gilbert is - on the whole - a beautifully produced opus that delves into the origins of the confrontation between Islam and the Jews at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and is insightful in that respect, to say the least.

It is introduced as "a historic journey from the birth of Islam, through its 1,200 year reign over the civilized world, to the last 300 years is Islamic decline, overtaken and dominated by the West - then humiliated by a Jewish state. Islam's historic trials with Jews, and its relationship with conquered non believers, help illustrate the Islamic world view - all through the eyes of Muslims."

And this is exactly where the problem with this effort lies, resulting in part omission, part subjectivism, part revisionism. While it is appreciated that Judeo-Christian history is not part of this 'narrative', it is a serious objection to completely ignore the scene in which Islam from its inception, found itself. History begins with Mohammed, the measure of everything, so is the message.

The suggestion is made, that Christendom emerged from 'the obscurantism of the Dark Ages with the discovery of the Americas', ignoring centuries of social, cultural, religious, scientific and philosophical development under the influence of the Roman Church, and everything else for that matter, that has taken place before AD 610. The suggestion is ludicrous.

The author also missed the opportunity to stress the emergence and conquests of the Turkish tribes in the twelth and thirteeth centory, which could have clarified the Christian origins of the Levant and Asia Minor. Likewise, that the Crusades were as much a reconquest as the Spanish Reconquista.

The rich roots of pre Christian Greco-Roman culture, of which Islam was the custodian during the often praised 'Golden Age of Islam', is ignored altogether, as is Middle Eastern paganism. Islam, apparently, is an island. In that respect Gilbert indeed paints an accurate ' version of reality' .

On the other hand, an important insight is provided by describing more recent history. During the course of the last century Amin Al Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem between 1921 and 1948 and uncle to Yassir Arafat, is correctly identified as the link between the precedent of the massacre of the Jewish tribes at M'dina at the hand of Mohammed for failing to accept Dhimmitude, and the justification of the Turkish genocides of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in the aftermath of World War I, as well as the Nazi Holocaust (recommended video) during World War II.

The last two occasions of genocide and alleged genocide were encouraged and sanctified by Amin al Husseini on the grounds of the M'dina precedent: Dhimmis behaving in a manner unbecoming of their status. The M'dina Jews refused conversion as well as taxation, resulting in their 'justified' annihilation.

As Mohammed is the measure of everything in Islam, the less than loyal attitude of the Dhimmi groups that were subjugated and unwillingly integrated into the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire, likewise resulted in their mass murder.

Strikingly Adolf Hitler came up with the so-called Dolchstoss legend against the Jews, 'treason' resulting in the loss of World War I on the part of the German-Turko side - a similar justification for Holocaust. (More on the Unholy Alliance between (National) Socialism and Islam on files, Part I and Part II.)

Interesting is the suggestion that Anwar Sadat's 1977 Camp David Accords with Israel actually constituted not an offer of peace, but an attempt at destroying Israel by diplomatic efforts. The question is such case is, why was he assassinated by Al Zawahiri c.s. Apparently the effort was wasted on the Muslim Brotherhood.

The document' s central assertion is that - contrary to what is suggested by the title - the Islamic world doesn't seek as much the destruction of the state of Israel, as the wish to reduce it to Dhimmi status - tributaries under Islamic rule - the natural and solely acceptable status of infidels under Islamic rule. This suggestion is a fresh attempt at literally playing dice with Evil at the price of a second Holocaust. The very notion is despicable and worthy of denunciation as a irresponsible, Postmodern piece of amorality!

Nonsensical is the idea that the Bush administration played into Al Qaeda's hands after 9/11 by attacking Islamic lands. The suggestion is, that this would so much outrage Muslims that they'd dispose of their despotic rulers on a mass scale. In effect, the only changes of regime that have occurred have taken place in the countries thus liberated by the Coalition.

Gilbert further suggests that the establishment of democracy will merely result in radical Islamist regimes being voted in all over the Middle East. Indeed, the Hamas regime in Palestine has nothing to do with Fatah corruption and mismanagement, and everything with spiting the West.

Artistically "Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam" is a fine piece of work. Historically it is insuffient, it is politically wanting, and moraly irrelevant.

- Filed on Articles in "The Unholy Alliance", Part II -