Danish (anti)-Islamic Cartoons
- Thread starter IdleRich
- Start date
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
Pearsall said:
Pearsall said:
Yeh, sign me up for Islamophobix anonymous, those figures are absolutely TERRIFYING...
To be serious now, that is uh an interesting spin on those figures, to say the least...
The 'sympathy' issue: even posed a question as vague and broad as 'do you have ANY sympathy with the feelings and motives of the bombers', only 24% assented. That is surprisingly low, given that one imagines that presumed feelings of alienation, frustration, anger at Blair's foreign policy are actually very widespread, and not only amongst the Muslim population. Note: the question did not ask 'do you sympathise with their ACTIONS?'
As for the laughable question 'how sure can we be that that won't change?', well, how sure can we be that anything won't change - and we are being asked to believe that extremist views are held by a majority of muslims NOW, so speculation about how views might change in the future doesn't really cut it. (btw I wonder how many fundamentalist Christians would think that 'Western society is decadent and immoral?')
If you don't think it is significant that 1/3 of British Muslims think Western civilization should be destroyed, then I am not sure what to say really. And yeah, things change over time, but the current trend ain't exactly towards greater happy-clappy friendship-bracelet multicultural utopia, is it?
Given that no European country has managed to really integrate their Muslim populations, no matter what their approach, whether multiculturalism (Britain, Sweden, Belgium, etc), 'pillarisation' (Holland), individualist assimilationism (France), ignoring it and hoping it will work itself out (Germany), my personal inclination is to question whether any of the new prescriptions will actually work, and to worry that nastier stuff is on the way, especially if the regional economy badly falters, too. It's not like the history books are lacking in episodes of inter-communal conflict.
This recent episode doesn't exactly provide many answers as to how reconcilable our differences with the Muslim world really are, either.
Given the events of the last several years, and the fact that even beyond the ghastly racist West there have been quite a number of conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims in recent years (in places as different as Nigeria, India, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Thailand, Ivory Coast, etc etc etc), I just don't believe it any more that all will be well if we just 'embrace diversity'. If you aren't worried about the future, that's your call, though.
Given that no European country has managed to really integrate their Muslim populations, no matter what their approach, whether multiculturalism (Britain, Sweden, Belgium, etc), 'pillarisation' (Holland), individualist assimilationism (France), ignoring it and hoping it will work itself out (Germany), my personal inclination is to question whether any of the new prescriptions will actually work, and to worry that nastier stuff is on the way, especially if the regional economy badly falters, too. It's not like the history books are lacking in episodes of inter-communal conflict.
This recent episode doesn't exactly provide many answers as to how reconcilable our differences with the Muslim world really are, either.
Given the events of the last several years, and the fact that even beyond the ghastly racist West there have been quite a number of conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims in recent years (in places as different as Nigeria, India, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Thailand, Ivory Coast, etc etc etc), I just don't believe it any more that all will be well if we just 'embrace diversity'. If you aren't worried about the future, that's your call, though.
milkandhoney
Well-known member
Pearsall said:
so what exactly do you suggest we do?
jenks
thread death
from lenin's tomb:
"But Orientalism and antisemitism were never separated at birth. They are conjoined, two forms of the same sickness."
http://www.leninology.blogspot.com/
dunno what i think - i start off:
course am all for freedom of speech.... but those cartoons are racist but... of course all faiths should be able to cope with being mocked but... i did want griffin to be sent to gaol for being racist but.. i do believe in freedom of speech but... and so it goes
"But Orientalism and antisemitism were never separated at birth. They are conjoined, two forms of the same sickness."
http://www.leninology.blogspot.com/
dunno what i think - i start off:
course am all for freedom of speech.... but those cartoons are racist but... of course all faiths should be able to cope with being mocked but... i did want griffin to be sent to gaol for being racist but.. i do believe in freedom of speech but... and so it goes
Well, this is inconvenient. I've just found out I'm going to the Angola v Iran match in Germany this summer, and I wanted to knock up a banner of an Angolan child soldier holding the World Cup aloft with his boot on Mohammed's head. Guess I'll just have to get a load of Angolan flags and sew stars of David across them with ANGOLA YIDS slogans
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
Pearsall said:
But who DOESN'T think that western civilization is immoral and decadent and should be brought to an end? This view is not only held by Muslims. As I said before, I'm more worried about the eschatological fantasies of the US bible belt, i.e. people who actually do have power in the world. Only 11% of British muslims were prepared to commit to a CONDITIONAL endorsement of violence, i.e. 'IF necessary by violence'; presumably even fewer would actually act violently.
Depends on how you measure trends really. And the onus was on you to prove that things would get worse, that all, most or a significant proportion of those not now pledged to violence would change their views or, more importantly, their actions.
What do you mean by successful integration though? And are the problems to do with religion or poverty? What are you suggesting actually? That there's some innate and inevitable tendency towards violence in Muslim people? What is your account of how this tendency got there? Is it biological, cultural?
Meanwhile, 'ours' are full of sweetness and light. If it weren't for those towel-heads (who by the way we have just got back from bombing to kingdom come in two of 'their' countries), we could go back to our own peacable history of pogroms, holocausts and world wars, I suppose.
Of course if you posit a monolithic 'Muslim' world that is a priori intolerant and bent on apocalypse, what could be the solution?
Surely some perspective is required. Take the situation in the UK. The UK bombs two 'Muslim' countries, killing thousands. There are some terrorist reprisals on the UK mainland, killng about fifty. Who is more of a threat to whom here? To really believe that the causation of these tensions is religious and not socio-economic is to buy into the very theocratic logic you presumably oppose.
And what then do you want? Mass deportations? What about the Muslims who were born here? Banning of the practice of Islam? Camps for those who resist? Or would you just be happy continuing to bomb poor people in faraway countries and to issue Enoch Powell-style Jeremiads about white man's burden?
Don't get me wrong, however. There are clearly infantile tendencies within certain currents of Islam; those with a confident faith could surely have laughed off or ignored such trivial caricatures. But I, for instance, would not be surprised if Infinite Thought's suggestion about MI5 involvement in those protests was warranted. They seem a little convenient to me. Once again, though, how many people were involved: a hundred, at most, judging by the pictures. And how many people were involved worldwide, from the vast population of muslims? A tiny, tiny minority.
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Yoghurt Sothoth
Lord of the files
Well, this is a new angle on it...
Not sure of the veracity of this, but...
Imams showed pedophile Mohamed
The Danish newspaper, EkstraBladet, has obtained a copy of the secret case file, which Islamisk Trossamfund (Danish Islamic Community) has distributed on their "road show" in the Middle East: (Viste pædofil Muhamed - the text is in Danish but the article links to all 43 images).
It turns out that the 12 drawings in JyllandsPosten weren't sufficiently bad - at least not to justify a trip to the Middle East - so the imams have inserted a few extra images to make sure their trip wasn't a waste of money.
http://bibelen.blogspot.com/2006/01/imams-showed-pedophile-mohamed.html
Not sure of the veracity of this, but...
Imams showed pedophile Mohamed
The Danish newspaper, EkstraBladet, has obtained a copy of the secret case file, which Islamisk Trossamfund (Danish Islamic Community) has distributed on their "road show" in the Middle East: (Viste pædofil Muhamed - the text is in Danish but the article links to all 43 images).
It turns out that the 12 drawings in JyllandsPosten weren't sufficiently bad - at least not to justify a trip to the Middle East - so the imams have inserted a few extra images to make sure their trip wasn't a waste of money.
http://bibelen.blogspot.com/2006/01/imams-showed-pedophile-mohamed.html
Paul Hotflush
techno head
k-punk said:
Most of that post was hilarious, but this really does it for me.
very long (apologies)
Apologies, I've been busy today. I'll tone down the sarcasm, and be more serious. Honestly.
Well, I would disagree strongly that this is any kind of majority or mass view held by Westerners in general.
Two points: (1) the actual political power of the fundamentalist Christians is, in my opinion, overstated. They are a vote farm for the Republican party in the way that blacks are for the Democrats. In power the Republicans pay little more than lip service to their fantasies; for the most part the last twelve years of Republican control of Congress has relentlessly about servicing corporate interests. That's my take. (2) (and this relates to one of your later points, too) Committed minorities are of greater importance than apathetic majorities in setting the agenda. As an example, see the US government's hard-line position on Cuban relations over the last forty-five years - essentially dictated by the exile leadership in Miami, because they are the ones who care. More particularly on this topic, it is not so simple a matter as saying "well, even fewer would be prepared to act violently", because what characterizes violent movements are a relatively small pool of people prepared to commit violence, larger groups of active supporters, larger yet numbers of sympathizers, and larger yet numbers of those who feel passive on the issue.
Well, it is impossible for me to prove that things will get worse, because I can't predict the future. All I can do is try to make an informed guess as to how things will turn out.
I am pessimistic, though. Why am I pessimistic? Well, I see evidence of greater polarity between the West and the Muslim world (I will return to your question about monoliths later), as well as greater internal polarization between Muslims and non-Muslims within Europe.
How so? Internationally, we see: the American military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the festering sore of Israel-Pakistan, recent election triumphs by Islamists such as the election of Ahmadinejad in Iran, the landslide victory by Hamas, the far-better-than-expected results by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the triumph of sectarian religious parties in the Iraqi elections (of course, much of this success is attributable to domestic issues, particularly corruption), and the current imbroglio over the cartoons, which in some cases has a strong whiff of dictatorial types fanning the flames of popular passions.
Internally to Europe, I see several main causes of concern. One is the growing strength of far right parties across most Western European nations, as a by-product, in my opinion, of the fear of the consequences of demographic change, which has been explicitly linked to the growth of the Muslim minorities by a number of these parties (for instance, this article is quite good on how the Danish People's Party became the third biggest party in Denmark). Two, changes in communications (particularly the internet and satellite television) have not only facilitated the spread of Western ideas and concepts to the rest of the world, but have also brought ideas from the rest of the world to the West. In the context of the Muslim minorities of Europe, this has meant more direct contact with the wellspring of Muslim orthodoxy in the Middle East. Third, Islam has become tied in with identity politics, which means that these identity crises become tied in with the wider issues. For instance, Islam has begun to supercede ethnic ancestry as the cornerstone of identity ('French Muslim' for 'French Arab', or 'British Muslim' for 'British Asian'). In cases like the French riots, the rioters are identified (and identify themselves) as 'Muslims' when they may be 'Muslim' to the degree that many Troubles-era Ulster gunmen were 'Protestant' or 'Catholic' (ie not much at all), but this identification ties in with the wider issues.
The creation of DIY Salafist ideology is also important, especially when it is adapted and acted on. Finally, actual violence in the name of Islam within Western Europe has changed things. It is a new phenomenon, something that few people probably thought of only fifteen years ago, and it has already changed the political and social landscape. My opinion is that more of these attacks are coming, and that the process of polarization will continue to worsen. Of course, I could be wrong.
Successful integration generally means achieving parity economically and educationally, but also means things like success in politics and high rates of out-marriage (particularly for the second-generation). With regards to Muslims within Europe, we see that these things are not happening; that unemployment rates are well above the national averages (particularly for young men), that educational achievement is abysmal compared to national averages, high proportions live in poverty, inter-marriage rates are low, and housing segregation, in some places more than others, is on the increase. The seeming intractability, involving different ethnic groups in different European societies, is at least partly to do with the effects of the religion, as well as to discrimination (although racism is not the whole explanation; if it were, why do Hindus and Sikhs perform so much better in employment and education than South Asian Muslims?)
Well, it is not biological, because 'Muslim' is not a biological category. Islam is a religion with a strong theocratic strand, sharia, and there are plenty of people who believe in its implementation, and a portion who are prepared to use violence to impose it and enforce it. Numbers and proportions may vary from place to place, but it is clear that you can pick out arguments from the Koran to make the case that violence in the cause of the Islamic state is justified (for instance, consider the Abu Hamza case, where the defence hinges on the fact that Hamza was merely quoting and interpreting the Koran and the Hadiths in the speeches for which he is being charged).
Are all Muslims indelibly inclined to violence? No, clearly not. Can the case be made that, at least at this point in time, there are more Muslims than members of other religions that see violence for religious purposes as justified? Yes, I think so.
I wasn't excluding European history from that point at all. The history of inter-communal violence in Europe is truely gruesome.
Apologies, I've been busy today. I'll tone down the sarcasm, and be more serious. Honestly.
k-punk said:
Well, I would disagree strongly that this is any kind of majority or mass view held by Westerners in general.
Two points: (1) the actual political power of the fundamentalist Christians is, in my opinion, overstated. They are a vote farm for the Republican party in the way that blacks are for the Democrats. In power the Republicans pay little more than lip service to their fantasies; for the most part the last twelve years of Republican control of Congress has relentlessly about servicing corporate interests. That's my take. (2) (and this relates to one of your later points, too) Committed minorities are of greater importance than apathetic majorities in setting the agenda. As an example, see the US government's hard-line position on Cuban relations over the last forty-five years - essentially dictated by the exile leadership in Miami, because they are the ones who care. More particularly on this topic, it is not so simple a matter as saying "well, even fewer would be prepared to act violently", because what characterizes violent movements are a relatively small pool of people prepared to commit violence, larger groups of active supporters, larger yet numbers of sympathizers, and larger yet numbers of those who feel passive on the issue.
Well, it is impossible for me to prove that things will get worse, because I can't predict the future. All I can do is try to make an informed guess as to how things will turn out.
I am pessimistic, though. Why am I pessimistic? Well, I see evidence of greater polarity between the West and the Muslim world (I will return to your question about monoliths later), as well as greater internal polarization between Muslims and non-Muslims within Europe.
How so? Internationally, we see: the American military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the festering sore of Israel-Pakistan, recent election triumphs by Islamists such as the election of Ahmadinejad in Iran, the landslide victory by Hamas, the far-better-than-expected results by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the triumph of sectarian religious parties in the Iraqi elections (of course, much of this success is attributable to domestic issues, particularly corruption), and the current imbroglio over the cartoons, which in some cases has a strong whiff of dictatorial types fanning the flames of popular passions.
Internally to Europe, I see several main causes of concern. One is the growing strength of far right parties across most Western European nations, as a by-product, in my opinion, of the fear of the consequences of demographic change, which has been explicitly linked to the growth of the Muslim minorities by a number of these parties (for instance, this article is quite good on how the Danish People's Party became the third biggest party in Denmark). Two, changes in communications (particularly the internet and satellite television) have not only facilitated the spread of Western ideas and concepts to the rest of the world, but have also brought ideas from the rest of the world to the West. In the context of the Muslim minorities of Europe, this has meant more direct contact with the wellspring of Muslim orthodoxy in the Middle East. Third, Islam has become tied in with identity politics, which means that these identity crises become tied in with the wider issues. For instance, Islam has begun to supercede ethnic ancestry as the cornerstone of identity ('French Muslim' for 'French Arab', or 'British Muslim' for 'British Asian'). In cases like the French riots, the rioters are identified (and identify themselves) as 'Muslims' when they may be 'Muslim' to the degree that many Troubles-era Ulster gunmen were 'Protestant' or 'Catholic' (ie not much at all), but this identification ties in with the wider issues.
The creation of DIY Salafist ideology is also important, especially when it is adapted and acted on. Finally, actual violence in the name of Islam within Western Europe has changed things. It is a new phenomenon, something that few people probably thought of only fifteen years ago, and it has already changed the political and social landscape. My opinion is that more of these attacks are coming, and that the process of polarization will continue to worsen. Of course, I could be wrong.
Successful integration generally means achieving parity economically and educationally, but also means things like success in politics and high rates of out-marriage (particularly for the second-generation). With regards to Muslims within Europe, we see that these things are not happening; that unemployment rates are well above the national averages (particularly for young men), that educational achievement is abysmal compared to national averages, high proportions live in poverty, inter-marriage rates are low, and housing segregation, in some places more than others, is on the increase. The seeming intractability, involving different ethnic groups in different European societies, is at least partly to do with the effects of the religion, as well as to discrimination (although racism is not the whole explanation; if it were, why do Hindus and Sikhs perform so much better in employment and education than South Asian Muslims?)
Well, it is not biological, because 'Muslim' is not a biological category. Islam is a religion with a strong theocratic strand, sharia, and there are plenty of people who believe in its implementation, and a portion who are prepared to use violence to impose it and enforce it. Numbers and proportions may vary from place to place, but it is clear that you can pick out arguments from the Koran to make the case that violence in the cause of the Islamic state is justified (for instance, consider the Abu Hamza case, where the defence hinges on the fact that Hamza was merely quoting and interpreting the Koran and the Hadiths in the speeches for which he is being charged).
Are all Muslims indelibly inclined to violence? No, clearly not. Can the case be made that, at least at this point in time, there are more Muslims than members of other religions that see violence for religious purposes as justified? Yes, I think so.
I wasn't excluding European history from that point at all. The history of inter-communal violence in Europe is truely gruesome.
continued!
Well, quite clearly the West has an overwhelming edge in terms of arms; but I am not worried about a conventional war, but rising instability within Europe.
I don't buy the 'it's all socio-economic' line, as it goes. People are willing to kill for a lot of reasons besides money. Consider Omar Saeed Sheikh, who orchestrated the killing of WSJ correspondent Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. He was the son of successful businessman, attended public school, and graduated from LSE. Did he join the jihad for socio-economic reasons? Or Omar Khan Sherif, who tried to blow himself up in Israel a couple years back; his father was a successful businessman in Derby. And you can go through lots of the other characters through the years, from OBL himself to the 9/11 hijackers and so on, and see that many of them were not from the bottom of society.
Nah, just a reduction (not moratorium) in immigration (it would probably have to be across-the-board, not just of Muslims) to give Europe more time to assimilate and employ those already here, and to figure out how best to react to this historic change. America's drastic reduction of immigration in 1924 played a major role in integrating the tens of millions of European immigrants (and their children) who had arrived in the previous several decades. This would be similar.
Also, more fancifully, I'd like to clamber out of the snakepit of Middle Eastern politics, get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, close the bases in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and whatnot, disengage from the internal machinations of the various states, and adopt a more neutral stance vis-a-vis the Israelis. Do business as needed, but no more.
Well, quite clearly the West has an overwhelming edge in terms of arms; but I am not worried about a conventional war, but rising instability within Europe.
I don't buy the 'it's all socio-economic' line, as it goes. People are willing to kill for a lot of reasons besides money. Consider Omar Saeed Sheikh, who orchestrated the killing of WSJ correspondent Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. He was the son of successful businessman, attended public school, and graduated from LSE. Did he join the jihad for socio-economic reasons? Or Omar Khan Sherif, who tried to blow himself up in Israel a couple years back; his father was a successful businessman in Derby. And you can go through lots of the other characters through the years, from OBL himself to the 9/11 hijackers and so on, and see that many of them were not from the bottom of society.
Nah, just a reduction (not moratorium) in immigration (it would probably have to be across-the-board, not just of Muslims) to give Europe more time to assimilate and employ those already here, and to figure out how best to react to this historic change. America's drastic reduction of immigration in 1924 played a major role in integrating the tens of millions of European immigrants (and their children) who had arrived in the previous several decades. This would be similar.
Also, more fancifully, I'd like to clamber out of the snakepit of Middle Eastern politics, get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, close the bases in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and whatnot, disengage from the internal machinations of the various states, and adopt a more neutral stance vis-a-vis the Israelis. Do business as needed, but no more.
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
Pearsall said:
No, it is, presumably, held by a significant minority in the west. But in any case, the point is that - as the YouGov figures show - it is not a majority view held by muslims in general either.
Personally, I'm distressed that only 30% of any group want western civilization to end.
Point partly taken re: fundamentalist christians, though surely issues like abortion/ stem cell research/ Terri Schiavo indicate the influence of the Christian right, to say the least.
I accept what you are saying about the importance of committed minorities in the case of violent movements, but you have now shifted the grounds of the debate. The original issue was: do those protesting on the streets of London demanding the beheading of those who insult Islam represent majority opinion amongst Muslims? Quite clearly, if we are using the YouGov statistics as a yardstick, no matter how you interpret them, then such views, far from being ubiquitous amongst Muslims, are actively opposed by most believers.
It is a quite separate issue how much of a threat committed groups with minority support pose. But I should have thought that one thing that was essential in the struggle against any such groups and their claims for legitimacy would not be to exaggerate the extent of the support they command; far from opposing them, that is doing their work for them.
Surely most of these issues are territorial and or economic, not essentially religious - once again, to group these conflicts together under the aegis of a struggle between Islam and secularism is to do the work of the Islamists for them. The problem is not straightforwardly the Islamists, but the support the Islamists gain as a result of the US occupation etc. One conclusion is obvious: end the US occupation.
Yes, all of these things are serious problems - but they are not essential and not necessarily permanent. It didn't require Islamism to make the Far Right in Europe an abomination; what needs to be unpicked is the deadly and symmetrical logic whereby the Far Right gain support because of Islamism and vice versa. Partly that means resisting the claim that BOTH would make that Islamist eschatopolitics are the dominant voice of Islam.
The question of identification is contingent upon the current political situation, and the vacuum where anti-status quo politics should be. If there were a non-religious form of idenfication for the disaffected young, Islamism would not have quite the appeal it does to many young Muslims.
(cont'd below)
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
I agree with all of this, and myself, in the aftermath of 7/7, drew attention to many of these facts. But they do not seem like a reason to attack Muslims or to paint them as dangerously violent. On the contary. It suggests that these problems need to be reframed as socio-economic rather than religio-ethnic. For instance, the complex reasons why Muslims under-achieve need to be understood and dealt with.
I can go with some of this; though what is meant by 'religious ends'? Many Christians (and especially American Christians) are clearly happy to endorse violence - the fact that the violence they endorse is for economic and or territorial end rather than for 'religious purposes' doesn't make it any better and whether such violence is 'for religious purposes' is largely a question of interpretation. No doubt many in Iraq and Afghanistan see the bombing to which they were subject as 'violence for religious purposes', happily justified by the 'Christian' populations of the west. I don't of course need to point out that people can and have justified more or less anything on the basis of the Bible.
See, what troubles me is partly that this Muslim scourge/ Eurabia thesis has only two real practical political consequences: garnering support for yet more draconian immigration laws and acting as a justification for the bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan. One person who won't be losing any sleep about these all-too-convenient demonstrations of rabid Islamist intolerance is Tony Blair. Which is why if MI5 weren't involved in organizing them, they might as well have been.
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Ness Rowlah
Norwegian Wood
Isn't Western European secularism (as in a separate church and state, not as in religious freedom) a myth? France clearly is secular, the rest of Western Europe probably not.
Denmark and Norway (the frontrunners of this riduculous fight and those whose embassies were first torched) are Christian countries, not secular ones. The monarch has to be Christian (constitution), both countries have a state church (officially 80%+ are Christian in both countries) and the Danish prime minister is a Christian (Stoltenberg of Norway is an atheist, I suspect one of the world's very few stateleaders who is).
England is not secular (seats in House of the Lords, HM Queen as governor etc) and Scotland is not secular.
Most Eastern European countries seem to be secular though - so why do we bang on about secularism when Christianity is part of the State in so many Western European countries?
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k-punk said:
And it's interesting how a number of right-wingers have responded to a perceived lack of outrage against the Muslim "attack on free speech." The problem, according to the right, is that the Western left are immoral and decadent for not opposing those who call them immoral and decadent.
I, for one, think the problem is that the West isn't nearly decadent enough; or, rather, there's a kind of, as Žižek would say, "decaffeinated decadence," a decadence that needs to be maintained by constant, grim, work from all concerned.
bassnation
the abyss
Wrong said:
i'm with you on that - and if it annoys the bigots then all the better.
borderpolice
Well-known member
Ness Rowlah said:
your analysis show mostly that you misunderstand the state-religion connections and differences, and hence some of the real loci and mechanisms of power. It is true that some european states my be formally non-secular, but that's largely irrelevant. what matters is the permeability between religion and politics, and in two ways.
* how acceptable, how successful are religeous arguments in political discussions?
* how easy is it for religeous personal to cross-over into positions of political influence.
the answers to such questions can be measured in various ways, but it seems unavoidable to say that in north-western europe, religion is not very relevant, in the sense of not having a direct, reliable influence on politics. in the middle east that is quite different.
borderpolice
Well-known member
k-punk said:
well what are these complex reasons?
k-punk said:
and exactly why can they not become homeboys, christians, atheists, pornstars or trainspotters?
Ness Rowlah
Norwegian Wood
And I think the opposite is the case - the previous Norwegian prime minister was a leader for the "Christian People's Party" (the party is not just Christian in name+Bondevik is a Lutheran priest), both Tony Blair and his successor Brown are deeply Christian and the Christian Democrats (CDU) is a massive political influence in German politics.
To me this is the Christian God and religion having a direct and reliable influence on top level north-western European politics. Maybe not in the everyday debate and as badge to be worn - but surely the Christian God has an influence on politics if Blair and bundeskanzler Merkel (the daughter of a priest) both say their prayers to him.
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bassnation
the abyss
Ness Rowlah said:
whilst both blair and brown are religious, they are extremely careful never to bring their faith into politics. the furore that happens every time theres even a hint of this makes it politcally dangerous to do so.
on the other hand, i think religion is on the move once again - bouyed by things like the recent hatred bill and the popularity of faith schools. you can literally see the bigots coming out of the woodwork - sikhs demanding an end to plays by a female sikh playright, christians demanding an end to a range of things including jerry springer the opera and of course the recent row about the prophet. they seem to becoming more and more sure of themselves.
i think its time for people who believe in secularism to become more militant.
we are in danger of following fundamentalists on both sides of the fence into a new dark age where the search for truth is forgotten and the powerful create their own reality.
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