The Conservative Party Co-Chairman and Minister without Portfolio (Clue - her titles hint at the real situation), Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, has tripped off to the Vatican to praise the well-known misogynist, Pope Benedict, and call for Europe to be more confident about Christianity. In a craven paean to The Holy Father, Britain's only Muslim Minister praises the Catholic Church for its apparent role in supporting human rights and laments the absence of any mention of Christianity in the European Union's constitution. Echoing her earlier comments that the British Government now does religion (a pointed rebuttal of officials' advice that we don't do God when Tony Blair wanted to end his declaration of war on Iraq with a Christian prayer), Warsi expresses the hope that the crucifix can be displayed in public buildings in Britain in the future.
Warsi lauds the Catholic Church as an exemplar of European culture - claiming its influence shines through our way of life and "for centuries, Christianity in Europe has been inspiring, motivating, strengthening and improving our societies."
There are plenty of decent, peaceful Catholics and other Christians, but I don't want the Government of my country praising any institution with a pedigree like that headed by the Pope, especially when its leaders continue to be in total denial of much of their history and eschew their responsibilities towards their victims. Nor do I want Christianity - or any other religion - sponsored by the public buildings, officials or services that I pay taxes towards and which are meant to serve citizens of all faiths and none.
The latest census apparently shows a huge decline in the proportion of British people calling themselves Christian - and most of those who do are in fact not practising Christians as they don't attend church, read the bible or pray regularly. But, sounding like a would-be British Tea Party-goer, Warsi spits out her usual ragbag of ignorance with her customary shrill pomposity and uninformed would-be populist rhetoric.
Let's get this right - she wants to impose a religion on British citizens which she does not actually believe in or follow herself? How hypocritical, or just plain stupid, is that?
The Baroness and some episodes from the centuries of inspiration offered by the Catholic Church
I live in a medium sized town in the north of England. One much depressed by a succession of recessions which have seen the heart slowly sucked out of the town until, in the local government ward I live in, two areas register in the most poverty stricken categories possible by EU standard measures. It is also a town that has a large population of Asian Muslims living in particular parts, with strongly white communities elsewhere - a fact that has been seized upon by the BNP who briefly flourished in the town before collapsing amid internecine bickering. Now one of the local papers publishes a weekly column that dwells on highlighting the faith divisions in the town.
The basic rhetoric draws week after week on the same story over and over along the lines of "I'm not allowed to criticise Muslims - crikey, I just have, now I'll be in trouble".
This is no isolated instance- much of the media, local and national, take a similar line. Newspapers regularly lament how in Britain we are no longer apparently allowed to say all sorts of things because of the Political Correctness Police. This is stated at the same time as saying the things they claim are not allowed to be said. Sadly, of course, some people buy into this bizarre nonsense because they still trust what they see in newspapers as conforming to some standard of accuracy.
Except schools continue to put on nativity plays, as they always have - though I have a colleague who still thinks that her grandson's school was breaking some non-existent law when it put one on. And likewise, there are no instances of Christmas trees removed at the behest of Muslim complainants - granted, there have been a truly small handful of times where oversensitive non-Muslims have stopped Christmas decorations for such reasons but they are few and far between and actually betray a dreadful ignorance of Islam and its historic relationship with Christianity - and Judaism.
These three Semitic faiths are of course deeply linked to each other - Judaism, originally a polytheistic faith, coalesced around the idea of a single god, exclusive to the Chosen People of Israel, the Jews, as short a time ago as 300 BC; Christianity claimed to be the fulfilment of the Judaistic belief in a messiah, a Saviour, and initially was a sect within Judaism, exploring beyond that racial faith almost three decades after the death of Jesus when Paul of Tarsus, a non-Jew, became its leading proponent and was responsible for formalising much Christian thinking. Ultimately, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the superpower of Europe and the Near East of its day and from this, its beliefs were carried through the trade routes into Arabia, where some Arabs adopted it as their faith.
In the sixth century after Jesus, however, Mohamed, an Arabian trader, began to formulate new beliefs with which he forged both a political and faith union in the Arabian peninsula - Islam - which held him to be the last Prophet of God (Allah is simply the Arabic word for God), in direct succession from the Christians Jesus (Isau in Islam), and the Jews Moses (Musa) and Abraham (Ibrahim). Given this pedigree, Islam from the outset had to identify its view in relation to its predecessor faiths and in its holy book, the Koran, Mohamed set out the need to both respect and protect the Jews and Christians as People of the (holy) Book.
Consequently, through much of its history, Islam has not only tolerated Christianity and Judaism, but for centuries Islamic states provided havens of refuge for Christians and Jews persecuted by the totalitarianism of the Catholic Church in western Europe. When the Jews were told to leave Spain or die, it was the Muslim Ottomans who sent ships to rescue them and carry them to new lives in the Middle East and the Maghreb. And even today, millions of Christians live and worship freely and generally peacefully in Muslim states which, in the West, are portrayed as brutal theocracies.
You can find more about Middle Eastern Christians in a previous blog here, but suffice to say that whether you look at Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Syria or Lebanon, or Iraq in Saddam's days or Libya under Gadaffi, you will find Christian people and Christian churches, established for centuries and respected by their Muslim neighbours. In many instances, people of all faiths mark each others festivals - even Ayatollah Khomeini issued Christmas messages to Christiansand just last week the head of the Iranian Church met the Pope - notably and discreditably to the surprise of Benedict, who amazingly confessed his ignorance of its existence, although it numbers over 100,000 people and has been in existence for nearly two millenia..
And so we return to Britain, with the bizarre and surreal situations that arise among a white community that is both socially divided between rich and poor and also effectively no longer Christian in terms of any genuine religious beliefs - indeed, there are many times more Christians at church on a Sunday morning in Pakistan than in Britain. And perhaps it is this combination that creates the divisions we face.
Because, coming back to my town, the two poverty stricken areas I mentioned at the start are split - one is predominantly white, one predominantly Asian. Their socio-economic problems are very similar and in effect both are badly let down by the system and feel isolated and neglected, with high unemployment and bad housing and all the attendant problems. In this sense, as the white community for want of a better word like people in any community don't all share the same values to begin with, then the next best thing for those seeking to foment division is to create a shared threat - hence the invention of Winterval and the attendant mythology of the subversion of a "native" culture that has never existed in any unified form in any case.
At their core though, monotheistic religions, even ones linked as intimately as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by their exclusive theologies carry within them the seeds of conflict. If there is only One God and that god is an interventionist god with a set of revealed beliefs, it is not a big step to find believers in all of these faiths who take such thinking to its logical conclusion, which is if my God is right, then yours must be wrong. And so you can find small minorities of people in each of these faith communities who do hold destructive and even violent viewpoints towards each other and, yes, only a fantasist would suggest there is never problems or violence - but in truth most of the time most people of all faiths have actually lived in peace if not always harmony.
And so faiths are both more intertwined than popular belief and the mass media would have it; though non-faith issues and the manipulation of half-truths or the exaggeration of threat mean that there is plenty of potential for real conflict. The obvious strategy for those who wish to keep any potential socio-economic change in check, is of course to stigmatise and scapegoat one particular minority to explain away the failures and poverty of others, deflecting challenges from the real problem - the obscenely unjust distribution of wealth and resources.
This was precisely Hitler's tack in his rise to power - stigmatising the Jews and claiming that there was secret plot to subvert German society and turn it into Israel. The Winterval Myth may be small beer by comparison, but the intent of stigmatising and scapegoating a section of society with false ill-intent is just as dangerous now as it was all those decades ago and so the need to challenge and spike the falsehoods has rarely been as important as it is now.
Tomorrow, Christians will celebrate Christmas. It won't be Winterval anywhere - nor has it ever been.
For me, as a follower of the Hellenic Dodekatheon, yesterday was the end of Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival of what was originally the Hellenic Cronia (held in summer) which marked the Golden Age when humans were equal and shared the bounty of the world in harmony with nature. Many religions have a winter festival and aspects of Saturnalia were assimilated into Christmas by Christianity sixteen centuries ago.
But even there, there is a tenuous unity of sorts. For, just as the Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, now cut off by the "security wall" erected around them by the Israeli army, will tomorrow praise God the Father by singing to Allah, I will thank the gods for my own life and the wonders of the universe by praying in thanks (not in making requests) to Zeus Pater, Father God. Unrevealed natural religions like the Hellenic religion hold that there are many paths to the divine and we each find our route in our own way; so we accept all who will accept each other; we deny and feel threatened by none. And the gods are not individuals hanging around the top of Mount Olympus plucking harps and farting thunderbolts - rather they are metaphorical aspects of the divinity of creation, the wonder of existence, that we can all find within each of us. We only have to look.
So, whatever your belief, your philosophy, your doubts or non-belief, may you have a peaceful weekend and let us hope for a year of peace, justice and progress ahead rather than the one of division and bloodshed that is drawing to a close.
According to the Gospels, Jesus spoke of a Day of Judgment , predicting it would happen in the lifetimes of his followers, and couching it in suitably fiery language subsequently used to justify all sorts of atrocities: "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13, 40-43) and "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" (Luke 12, 49)
By the Rapture theory, created by a Church of Scotland Minister Edward Irving around 1830, all true believers will be taken up to Heaven just before all this nastiness begins. The rest of us who are "left behind" will then be subjected to great tribulations and violence as the so-called End Times gather pace up to Judgement Day, when Jesus Christ will return and judge those who can go to Heaven (after first living with Jesus on a restored Earth - the New Jerusalem) and those due to suffer the eternal torments of Hell.
But this sort of phenomenon can not be set aside so easily. Not only is it tragic that some clearly vulnerable people are taken in by this - the pregnant woman grieving that her unborn child may not be saved; the man who cashed in his life savings to warn others of the impending apocalypse; the terrified mother who slit her children's throats and wrists - it is also the case that, according to one Newsweek poll, as many as 55% of Americans believe in the Rapture at some point soon. Most of these believers also firmly think we are now in the End Times and the consequences, given the well-organised machinery of the wealthy and profoundly conservative American evangelical movement, are deeply political and deeply damaging to the struggle against the very real threats to our species and planet.
Not all dogs go to heaven after all....Evil puppy!
Especially in the Middle East, the evangelicals are at work, desperately undermining any attempts at a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Believing the Al-Aqsa Mosque should be demolished and the ancient Jewish temple of Jerusalem rebuilt on its site as part of the Apocalypse prophecy, the Christian Zionist movement within American evangelism has advocated and even contributed to funding the appalling wall that has been constructed around the Palestinians on the West Bank. Many additionally believe a range of supposed prophecies which identify the restoration of Israel to its Biblical age borders and a great conflagration with its neighbours as important steps on the path to Rapture and Judgement, things to be helped along rather than guarded against. Consequently, they lobby hard and generally successfully for American political and military aid to Tel Aviv.
So this extreme mode of religion closely informs the politics of the most powerful and destructive nation on the Earth. With one in twenty of the world population but gobbling up almost a third of the Earth's resources, the USA is absolutely critical to the survival of our planet as a place habitable by humans and other species of life. It needs to take the lead in environmental action, on cutting pollution, recycling, reducing consumption and distributing fairly.
So, as those of us who deride the nonsense of Mr Camping smugly sip a glass of wine or two this evening, we would nevertheless do well to keep a relatively sober view of the power of the belief in the Apocalypse, and both the ardent desire and all too real ability of many Americans to make one happen, whether God is ready or not.
"People of the Book" - a review of Zachary Karabell's history of Islam and the West
It is always a treat to read something that is tightly written, fresh, and a bit different. This relatively short book (291 pages) is just that - American writer Zachary Karabell captures a broad sweep of history with an exciting gusto that brings periods and places normally obscure to western historians alive and with an immediacy that is explained by his central premise - that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have existed far more in mutual tolerance and respect, and sometimes even harmony, with each other than they have in conflict - whether the conflict of the Crusades or of the contemporary jihadists and neocons.
He takes us through the founding of Islam right up to the 1980s Middle east, yet somehow you do not get the sense of any period being overlooked or short-changed. Whether scholars, soldiers, merchants, priests or philosophers, he brings different ages to life by focusing on individuals of note at various points, though also slips down to take in anecdotes of every day life - how Moses Maimonides, a Jew, felt about working as a doctor at the court of Saladin, the Muslim prince, during the day to go home at night and work on his great treatise of rational Judaism; or how the Muslim caliph, Harun al-Rashid, turned Bagdhad into a centre of multi-faith discourse and learning, where his son held debates with Christian scholars; or how, more recently, men like Abduh argued for a new interpretation of Islam to mirror the Enlightenment process in Europe.
Yet there are dark tales here too - the slaughter of Muslims, Jews and heretic Christians by the Crusaders at the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. The suppression of much of the learning of Islamic centres such as Cordoba and Bagdhad by a more conservative strain of thinking around 700 years ago, one which has persisted in some respects and some societies ever since. And more recently the expulsion of the Palestinians and the creation of an essentially religious based state in Israel in 1948 and subsequently, flying full in the face of history while simultaneoulsy recasting history to justify the present.
Karabell's premise is that, as the third of the three faiths to emerge, Islam has always had to define itself in relation to Christians and Jews, acknowledging them all to have a shared history and a shared God, yet viewing both as incomplete. Mohammed invoked special protection over both Jews and Christians and this is central to the not always easy tolerance shown to both these faiths through history by often politically and militarily superior Muslims.
Contrary to the popular myths in the West of bloodthirsty Arabs forcing Islam on cowed conquered peoples, the book shows how in truth many eastern Christians welcomed the Muslims as they were far more tolerant of their beliefs than their previous rulers, the Orthodox Romans, had been. While in Europe, Jews and Christians who did not hold quite the right beliefs for the official church were persecuted and burned, for centuries, Muslims provided sanctuary to these people, demanding nothing in return other than a poll tax (which excused them from military service, not a bad deal at all). When the Jews were expelled from Christian Spain in the early 16th century, it was the Muslim Ottoman lands that sent ships to carry them to safety - and prosperity under the Sultan and Caliph.
By the same token, Karabell shows that the Crusader states, after their initial belligerence, settled down to a century of tolerance and even interfaith marriage and mixing which worked well for the people in the near east, but caught the inevitable displeasure of the Pope.
So where did this all go wrong?
In one sense of course, it didn't. There are still many societies where people of all three faiths live alongside each other, sometimes integrated, sometimes leading separate lives, in peace. In fact, most of the time, in most places, that is still precisely the case - whether in Egypt with its 10% Coptic Christian populace rearing pigs and drinking wine in a predominantly Muslim society; or in the Lebanon with its multi-religious coalitions, Christian President and Muslim Prime Minister; or in Dewsbury where I live, home to the London bombers but also to the country's first woman Muslim Cabinet Minister.
For most people, their religion is just one aspect of their lives to varying degrees of importance or unimportance. For example, Turkey is portrayed by some in Europe as a fundamentalist Muslim society ill-suited to joining the EU. Yet any visit to Istanbul would show you a city (outside the tourist area) indistinguishable from London, Berlin or Paris, and where a lower per centage of people attend Friday prayer at mosque than turn up at the near empty Churches of England on Sundays. Why then all this talk of a clash of civilisations? And why a desire to rediscover a false history of conflict and despair when in truth the times of togetherness have been far more of the story - and will need to be again for any hope of a future for us all?
There is no neat answer - except that perhaps where there has been conflict, it has been where religion is one of many elements, the central ones being, as ever, social justice and freedom, yet religion has been used sometimes by religious zealots, and often sometimes by populist (or just desperate) political leaders to justify the most dreadful deeds.
If Karabell shows anything, it is that each of these faiths can be and are interpreted in many many ways by their followers. And perhaps there is the one issue he does not tackle - Monotheistic faiths which each claim to be the revealed word and the sole, true, exclusive path to God and Truth, contain within them the seeds of conflict. However hard they may try, either scripturally or as individual believers, to respect, tolerate or even associate with those of other faiths, can faiths which proclaim one God and one way, ultimately live in real peace with each other?
The violence of Bin Laden's jihad and Bush's crusade may sit ill with faiths which proclaim love and peace, but as they each also proclaim themselves as the sole Truth, everything else by default stands ultimately as a lie. And woe unto those who worship a lie when a Believer of a certain ilk, fired up with the zeal of the One True God, steps forward to spread the Word.
Very much worth reading; this book has made and will keep making me think for a very long time.
"People of the Book" by Zachary Karabell is published in the UK by John Murray, isbn 978-0-7195-6755-1
