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OTOH | Jul 15, 2005 11:25
My 10 year-old hears a lot more than he usually lets on. Earlier this week, we were watching yet another TV item on the Zimbabwe cricket tour, and he piped up: "why can't the government just get on with it and intervene?" [Yes, he really did use the word "intervene".] He said that, from the way he'd heard me and Mum talking, the guy in charge over there was pretty bad.
I explained that Mugabe had once been regarded as a good guy, but had since turned mad and bad. He had turned on his own people. My son suggested that he sounded a bit like Chuundar in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (it's a video game). Chuundar, he explained, was a wookie who sold other wookies into slavery.
Well, I'm glad the kids are getting their archetypes from somewhere …
I explained to my son the complexity of the issue; the fact that one of the things that made New Zealand a free country was that we are free to go where we wish, and it was a serious matter for the government to prevent that.
I haven't ventured here on Zimbabwe because I've been struggling to know what to think. I really don't want the cricketers to go, but I realise that my belief isn't going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars in income, the way it would them. When Martin Snedden said recently that the wearing of black armbands in protest could put the players' personal safety at risk, I thought: doesn't that suggest it's a pretty bad place to go in the first place, then?
The International Cricket Council appeared this week to offer an option that would avoid the atrocious prospect of Mugabe pocketing a $2.8 million fine from New Zealand Cricket or the New Zealand taxpayer: a mere "directive" from the government rather than a legislative ban would do. It then moved to contradict that stance. I know exactly what the ICC is thinking here. Human rights in parts of the cricket-playing world are pretty shabby. It would be easy to make a case against touring, for example, Pakistan. If the ICC gave ground in Zimbabwe, the international game could fall apart. And in the case of the Indian team touring Pakistan, didn't we all think it was a good thing that the teams had been able to put aside the politics of their governments and just meet on the field?
I'm likewise short on certainty when it comes to picking through the ruins of last week's London bombings. Christopher Hitchens was quickly into action with a noisy column for the Daily Mirror, in which he sought to cut off any avenue of argument that encompassed geopolitics and Iraq in particular:
We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.
The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.
For a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.
It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on "our" values or "our" way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation.
Hitchens' argument was anointed, with typical pomp, by Instapundit ("Christopher Hitchens explains the facts of life to the clueless"), as if it were the end of the matter.
On the other hand, Seamus Milne in the Guardian and Christiaan Briggs in his blog have no doubt that it is the presence of "our" troops on foreign soil that drives the jihad. We must quit our "bloody occupations" of Iraq and Afghanistan forthwith.
But the Taliban regime wasn't just a bad government; it was psychotic - and it was harbouring a group that had committed a huge terrorist atrocity. Where's the moral good in walking away from that?
I recall elements of the Left screaming "imperialism!" at the suggestion that the West should wade into Bosnia 10 years ago. Wouldn't it have been better, in retrospect, to have gone in and prevented the systematic slaughter in Srebenica of 8000 Muslim men at the hands of orthodox Christian fascists? Surely there are times when intervention is warranted?
But here's the thing: it's uncontroversial to say now that this or that young Muslim was "radicalised" by the war in Bosnia. Say the same thing about Iraq and you'll have half the world's right-wing bloggers jumping down your throat. While Hitchens may be right to say that at heart the jihadists are too nihilistic, too literally fascist, to ever negotiate with, it's just stupid to insist that Iraq hasn't been used to conjure with the minds of those ordinary kids in Leeds.
However unpleasant Saddam's regime was, there was no imminent danger of genocide. This was also a country that had never experienced a suicide bombing. Two years on, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died and the occupation fosters both the jihadists' recruitment and its own cycle of violence. But if coalition troops started shipping out tomorrow, the country could collapse into an even greater bloodbath. They can't stay, and they can't leave.
The case for the invasion of Iraq was, of course, deceitful and wrong-headed from the outset, and its execution has been staggeringly incompetent. The result has been counterproductive in a way that will surely engage future historians. A few conservative commentators are starting to acknowledge this. In the Washington Post in June, David Ignatius ventured thus:
Here's where the fundamental contradiction in Bush's strategy becomes clear. If Iraq has shown anything, it is that there's no easy equation between democratic government and success in containing terrorism. In the short run, prying the lid off a tightly controlled society such as Iraq may actually make the terrorism problem worse. The cruel instruments of repression are gone, while the constraints of an orderly, law-abiding, democratic society are not yet present.
Most of these commentators (Andrew Sullivan is another one) still hold that the making-terrorism-worse problem is a "short term" issue on the way to a lovely democratic future. To which the answer must be: well, you hope it's short-term, because the way things are turning out that seems anything but certain.
In December last year the British Sunday Times ran this story on al-Qaeda's recuiting strategy in Europe. It was prescient, and it included this quote from a Western intelligence official:
The new land of jihad is Iraq. There, they are trained, they fight and acquire a technique and the indoctrination sufficient to act on when they return.
In January this year, the Washington Post ran this report:
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.
President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.
And then two days before the bombs went off in London, this report appeared in American newspapers:
Iraq's emergence as a terrorist training ground appears to challenge President Bush's rationale for invading and overthrowing leader Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
"To complete the mission, we will prevent al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends," the president said in a nationally televised address last Tuesday.
But Iraq wasn't a source of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism under Saddam and played no role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Critics argue that the U.S. invasion harmed, rather than helped, the war on terror by acting as a magnet and recruiting tool.
"Arguably, it's created new problems that we're going to be dealing with for a long time," said Steven Simon, a senior analyst at the RAND Corp. who served at the National Security Council under President Clinton.
Foreign fighters' growing experience with IEDs, in particular, "is a real problem if you think these guys are going to wind up in the streets of Europe and the Middle East, or even the United States at some point," Simon said.
All that neocon bluster; that stuff about making-our-own-reality; the obsessive focus on military action. Where is it now? And is anybody still up for invading Iran? Those people have fucked up beyond belief.
Two other things to have a squizz at: a Flash presentation stepping through jihadist bombings since 1998. And a good editorial from the Guardian, headed The need for calm.
OneGoodMove has been collecting some great video on the Karl Rove story (which is shocking not in that someone from the Bush White House lied, but that they're actually being called on it). Two Daily Show clips: an eight-minute rundown (6.9MB) and the unexpectedly vigorous White House press conference. And the next day's press conference, from MSNBC. What's behind this sudden growth of a press corp spine? Stem cells?
And finally, I was in New Plymouth yesterday afternoon talking to these people about their product: an uber-geek PC-based PVR/DVR, packaged up as a full home theatre/media solution for ordinary consumers. I was impressed.
PS: Nearly forgot to say: I'm on the Campbell Live book club, TV3, 7pm tonight, talking about Great New Zealand Argument. John's directing it, and got me to do it a bit differently - talking to the camera instead of an interviewer. He also frankly encouraged my promotional tendencies. I'll be interested to see how it turns out ...
Information | Jul 14, 2005 09:52
I had a great Wire show on the b yesterday. I interviewed Scott Ryan, the Australian writer-producer-director-star of a cool little mockumentary called The Magician, in which a Melbourne hitman is tracked by his mate with a camera. It's the reality show you could never actually make.
Ryan - who plays a colourful, mildly psychotic enforcer in his movie - is actually quite a shy little chap who has never been out of Australia before. His next movie will be either a romantic comedy or a zombie flick. The interview is here as an MP3 file, and The Magician is on as part of the Incredible Film Festival at the Village cinemas at 9pm on Friday.
And then I interviewed [25-min MP3 file] the producer-director of The Future of Food, Deborah Koons Garcia. She's the widow of Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, and a nice lady.
The film is a work of anti-GE advocacy, and I could tell by looking at the film's website that I'd be taking issue with her on a number of points and agreeing on others. But I didn't expect her to suggest that the rise in autism diagnoses might be being linked to GE foods. I let that one slide with the intention of coming back to it, but before I could, she raised the thimerosal-in-vaccines-causes-autism claim. Because my kids are mildly autistic, I am sensitive about this: like, why can't these people go away and find another neurological disorder to play with?
It turned out that she didn't really know what she was talking about on the thimerosal issue, but she said she'd been talking to a women at Harvard who was investigating the link. I think she may have meant Professor Marie McCormick, who actually stated in 2001 that there was no evidence for a link between thimerosal (ethyl mercury) and autism - or indeed ADD - but that it was "medically plausible" that thimerosal could cause neurological damage. (She recommended that if a thimerosal-preserved vaccine was the only one available to ward off, say, the flu, children should have the vaccine.)
Well, yes. But the brains of victims of mercury poisoning look completely different to the brains of autistics. This isn't to say that, even given the tiny amounts present in some vaccines (but in no child vaccines in New Zealand), it wouldn't be a good idea to use something other than thimerosal. Canada removed thimerosal from vaccines 6-8 years ago - ample time for autism diagnoses to plummet. They didn't. On the other hand, thimerosal has been present in vaccines since the 1930s, decades before the "autism epidemic" manifested.
The good science points quite clearly to the fact that autism has a genetic basis. This hasn't stopped some truly fucking awful science being carried to to try and prove something else. Autism Diva dealt to one study recently. There's also a new WebMD article on the controversy, which also raises - quite fairly - the question of whether this is actually any autism epidemic at all and offers an update from Harvard's Marie McCormick: " We had five epidemiologic studies. None were perfect. But all pointed in the same direction of no association [with autism]."
I enjoyed talking to Deborah Koons, and I don't doubt her sincerity. But I have to wonder how many other times she has idly speculated about causes of autism to people who might think she was well-informed on the issue.
PS: If you're in an MP3 mood, there's also Noelle McCarthy's interview with Roseanne Liang.
Some behaviour issues | Jul 12, 2005 08:55
There have been some behaviour issues in the local blogosphere since last Friday. In this thread alone on Labour stalwart Jordan Carter's blog, National Party member (and former office-holder) Tim Barclay claimed that the Labour Party "secretly hopes" that Sydney is hit by a terrorist attack (a view he reiterated in subsequent posts). And David Hodo, who usually contents himself with preaching on conservative "moral values", recommended that the West "Send in the B-52s and turn the Middle East into a parking lot. Millions of dead towel heads are no loss to the world."
I've been afraid to visit some of the local right-wing blogs, but to take one example, Murray at Silent Running set the tone for a festival of spluttering hate and bigotry by declaring "Islam is not compatible with modern civilisation. We can either covert them or kill them. Living with them isn't a viable option and that's by their choice. Call me a voice of moderation." Several of his correspondents then went on to urge the mass murder of Muslims. Presumably, too few Muslims were killed and injured in London last Thursday. There's nothing like the moral high ground, is there?
Happily, qualities of grace are much more abundant at St Pancras Station parish church, a mere 30 metres from the bus blast site. And Christian, Islamic and Jewish leaders have gathered at Lambeth Palace to condemn terrorism and reaffirm their belief in a multicultural Britain.
Meanwhile, I also received an abusive email regarding my suggestion that the IRA could have been seen as Christian terrorists. The author claimed that the IRA's "belief set" was in fact closer to my own, which I found highly offensive. I pointed the author to the 1972 Claudy bombing, which killed nine people, including three children. A Catholic priest (and Provisional IRA member) was actively involved, and later provided an alibi for one of the bombers. It has since been claimed that the church cut a deal with British authorities to allow the priest to escape. The church continues to deny its man was ever a part of it, although police seem in no doubt. Doctrines are not the same thing as values ...
It was that way on both sides: In Martin Dillon's book God and the Gun: The Church and Irish Terrorism the brutal terrorist Billy Wright described the Rev. Ian Paisley as his hero, and claimed that he was killing to defend his faith.
The Rev. Paisley, you may recall, was a central figure in the conflict. He helped establish the paramilitary (read: terrorist) group, the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, which carried out bombings. He also justified the burning of Catholic homes in the 1960s and campaigned in the 80s on the catchy slogan "Save Ulster from sodomy!" Amazingly, he's still around fomenting religious hatred. Check out the way he greeted the Pope's visit to Britain last year. Wikipedia has more.
The problems in Ireland were, of course, historical and geopolitical. But those sorts of problems have been solved all over the world: in places where religious enmity did not foul the air. Les Reid of the Belfast Humanist Group wrote quite a nice little essay in 2002. He looked at the original partition after the civil war in Ireland, and said:
That arrangement could have worked if people had been more tolerant. But they were not. The South became officially Catholic and the North became officially Protestant. In the South, Catholic rulings on divorce, education, contraception, censorship, etc., became law, regardless of the Protestant minority. And in the North, politics was dominated by the Orange Order, a Protestant organisation which commemorates ancient victories over Catholics, eg. the Battle of the Boyne, 1690, which they celebrate every July…
If the people had been more tolerant and had accepted that their neighbours followed a slightly different version of Christianity, then the Troubles need never have happened. If they had been friendly, rather than arrogant, then the border might have withered away in time and North and South might have been reconciled. But, instead, the two countries were in a state of tension. Instead of relaxation and reconciliation, there was tension and hatred.
Like Dillon, Reid concluded that peace in the long term will only be achieved if religion is taken out of schools, or at least if schools are integrated. This is not to say for a moment that Catholics and Protestants are terrorists, no more than Muslims are. Or even to suggest that the Irish thugs are of the same stripe as the current Islamic terrorists. Just - if the denizens of Silent Running haven't already proved it - that we're not quite as flash in The West as we sometimes like to think.
Meanwhile, Nick Thompson, who lectures in church history in the Department of Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen, was in touch with an observation on last week's discussions on Biblical edicts:
The distinctions that your Christian correspondents make between the moral codes of the Old and New Testaments is completely arbitrary and historically naive.
Christian expositors of scripture like Calvin were convinced that the moral law and punishments of the Old Testament were still in force and that the execution of adulterers (and of gay people, and even the odd fornicator) represented an ideal, even if not consistently observed in Christian societies. In this respect Calvin speaks for the vast majority of Catholic and Protestant theologians until well after the much despised Enlightenment.
From Calvin's perspective, Jesus' forgiveness of the woman caught in adultery was beside the point. As God, Calvin argued, Jesus was entitled to bend his own rules. Christians, however, weren't, and were culpably slack if they didn't execute such offenders.
The irony is that self-styled "family values" or "traditional" Christians have little sense of how modern their views actually are or of the degree to which they have been influenced by Western Liberal thought.
And that last sentence was pretty much what I was trying to say last week, just more handsomely put.
I'm pleased to report that visiting Lions fans - understandably shocked by the events in London last week - were not letting the terrorists win before Saturday's final test against the All Blacks. Although the bombings were probably in the back of most people's minds, the atmosphere in Kingsland was excellent.
The impressive new Kingslander pub was packed, and, as has been the case through the whole tour, fans of all the nations mingled and conversed. I didn't have a ticket for the test, but I went down for a drink with my Internet rugby mates who did. An old Scottish bloke groped Tracey's bum as he went past. We agreed that if he hadn't been elderly she'd have followed him and administered a smack in the chops, but she settled for being astonished and amused. She has recovered and posted her third test game stats.
One more reason to feel sorry for the Lions fans: that bloody song they had to sing: "It's not even a song," shared one Lions supporter as we filed up the steps to the terraces for Tuesday's Auckland match. "None of us know the words." Poor lads. Come back now, y'hear?
It's a shame that Sunday Times rugby writer and regular Sunday Star Times guest columnist Stephen Jones lacked, till the end, the sporting character of the supporters. Or even the "class and grace" he claimed New Zealanders lacked in victory. This when he wasn't bitching about every referee, the All Black forwards, the Wellington Stadium, the haka and, er, New Zealand traffic lights. He is allegedly the Sunday Times' "senior rugby writer", but, even if he's trying to be funny, I always end up thinking that he doesn't really understand the ethos of the game.
PS: Kevin List's latest A Week of It on Scoop is excellent. Includes pics of Ahmed Zaoui presenting a manifest threat to national security in a bookshop and on the Wellington cable car.
Bloody Murder | Jul 08, 2005 09:32
I lived in London in years when several terrorist bombings were carried out by the IRA. It was easy enough to be stoic; the odds weren't so bad. The King's Cross station fire in 1987 was actually worse. But there was never anything like what has happened in the past 24 hours there; never anything so calculated to disturb.
As the news broke last night - an apparent seven simultaneous bombings in a staged assault - it seemed apocalyptic. I know how bad a mundane stranding in the London Tube can be. How awful and terrifying must this be?
Yet, as TV coverage of the bombings ran past midnight, the composure of London people, and especially those in the police and emergency services, was quite striking. The Spirit of the Blitz is not imaginary. Londoners have a folk memory about what it is to get up and move on.
Tony Blair's initial statement was good; Ken Livingstone's impromptu speech from Singapore, on behalf of and about Londoners - no, he said, we will not surrender to hate - utterly inspiring. Sitting there, in a quiet house in front of the TV, I cried as he spoke. [Bush, with his wooden cliches, I just wanted to slap.] I thought of the people I know in London: they were probably alright. My heart went out to the Lions supporters who are currently our guests: what awful news on what should have been the trip of a lifetime.
I smiled to myself as I wondered where London people went as transport and communications links toppled: to the pub, probably. The cycle couriers I used to know there: riding harder than ever, I figured.
I also thought about all the people who have died in the violence of the past four years, most of them away from the news cameras, in the bloody, unending mess of Iraq. It cannot now be seriously denied that this war has made things much worse.
Katherine Wilson, a New Zealander living in London, has been in touch to share the email she sent to friends after the bombings:
After writing this I spent the evening with some friends and then walked to my home in Piccadilly Circus up from Westminster bridge and so along the houses of Parliament and the royal guards house where there were an awful lot of soldiers behind gates, ordinary police on the streets and an astonishingly quiet population slowly going about their business. Here were my thoughts as events unfolded in London:
I thought I would send an email to you all as I sit here in London listening to and reading about the explosions here. My first sending attempt failed as the networks are quite overloaded, so this is effort number two. I remember vividly the 9/11 attacks and going into Wellington College to teach that day, and the choices that I made about how to talk to my students about what was happening. This time, I am at the heart of it all, and it does feel different. In some ways, it is less of a shock, partly because we have been talking about the likelihood of an attack ever since 2001, and also because 9/11 was so unimaginable. However, the emotional response is stronger, not least because there are still friends I have not yet heard from, and because I cannot travel to be with anybody. The phone and transport networks are not working. The radio and internet news (what a time not to have a television!!) are consumed with eyewitness reports that convey an overwhelming desire to connect with other people, to be reassured that the world is still (mostly) standing and that there are structures that they can still connect to and be part of.
I did think yesterday as I watched the news from the G8 that this was an opportunity for anybody who wished to break the law, but my mind never turned to this eventuality. One of my good friends, Caleb, avoided being in the blasts at Moorgate through running late for work; I was nowhere near Russell Square when the bus exploded as I decided to call friends in NZ instead of heading into university. Daniel is not in London, having gone to a course in Winchester last night. Of course I am extremely relieved that he is safe, but it does make for a rather bleak day and night as I sit alone in my flat behind Piccadilly Circus.
Events like this do refocus the mind on what is important, and just how unimportant all those daily difficulties that drive you mad are. It reminds me to extend and live out much more the most important part of my credo - to love and care for others, for they are individual human beings worthy of attention and response. And I say this thinking of those on both sides of the even - the victims and perpetrators. It is difficult to know what to think or do at a time like this. Still, as I think of the potential 'distractions' to this news - events at the G8 and by extension climate change and poverty in Africa; the Olympics news; the problems in the EU and implications for countries in the east of Europe and those who happen to live in them, and all the other events that mean something to somebody - it seems wrong to try to decide which ones are more important, 'newsworthy' or meaningful. It is this that speaks strongest to me about importance of a lived-out respect and care for other people, which hopefully can balance these competing demands, even in the midst of your own catastrophe.
Dave Crampton has various links to coverage, including London blogs.
And on with the post I was going to write: In my post on Wednesday on the flap about Ashraf Choudhary's comments I consciously went too far in making a point, and I had a number of interesting responses. Including this one from Sumana Islam:
I liked your post. I was wondering if you know that in the Quran there is no mention of stoning as a punishment for any crime whatsoever. You'd think this was quite an important piece of information but no one seems to mention it. The reporter had the perfect trick question though. "The Quran says to stone gay people to death [total untruth but who's gonna catch that in time?]. Is the Quran wrong or is stoning gay people wrong?" I guess the MP could only get out unscathed if he knew the Quran off by heart, which I doubt many people do (I had to look it up and make sure). New low for journalism in this country.
And then there was this from a man identifying himself only as Geoff:
Read your article about Ashraf Choudry's comments on the Koran. You also point the bible supporting stoning for homosexuality & many other things, but, obviously not being a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ you've made a fundamental error. The Bible contains two covenants.
The first one was given to the Jews, the nation of Israel. Apart from the 10 commandments set in stone, there were laws that, if an Israelite broke them, they must be put to death, for death is the only way sin can be made up for to appease God. For many other sins a lamb, or goat, or dove had to be sacrificed and its blood poured out at the altar.
The second covenant also required death for sin. But with a huge difference. The Lord Jesus Christ himself was the one put to death by crucifixion as the punishment for all sin. So instead of the sinner having to be put to death for his/her sins, he bore it instead. This was first offered to the Jews who, apart from a select few, rejected this and kept the old system. So it was offered to all other nations (Gentiles) instead.
The only punishment now is that people who are sinful and disobey God and wont believe in and follow the Lord Jesus Christ will go to a place called Hades (the place of the departed dead) suffering torment from a continual fire and worms that continually eat them. believe me, you don't want to go there.
Then, at the end of this age, they are cast into Gehenna, a lake of eternal fire, with the Devil, the false-prophet, and his angels. Those that believe in and obey Christ will enter eternal life in heaven with Him and His Father, the Great God YHWH (Yahweh). If you read 2 Corinthians 3 in the King James Bible it says that the law in stone was abolished and replaced by something more glorious.
So God swapped a detailed programme of arbitrary brutality (I'm sorry, but rape victims should be murdered?) for an unending panorama of sadism? I think I'd rather not believe in such a deity, thank you. I would note the likes of Geoff seem happy to forget their demarcations when it comes to homosexuality, about which Jesus never said a word. And I find the undertone of anti-Semitism in his statement quite unsettling.
James Keyworth, a pastor at Christian City Church and a longtime Hard News reader, is rather more my sort of believer, and thought I made "some good points" in the post.
Although I feel like you are picking through the Bible, turning a blind eye to the grace scriptures I assume you have familiarity with.
If you have had a Christian phase as the article in this week's Metro [As I have explained, I didn't - RB] - you would know what Jesus' response to an attempted stoning was.
In John 8: But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7: When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8: Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9: At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10: Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11: "No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
I see this as God's heart towards us- we are all guilty of death because of our sins, but he loves us so much that forgives us. We are to have the same attitude and forgive others, as we have been forgiven.
I agree with your point that Christians are hypocrites- we've definitely seen that in the last few weeks in NZ. And I'm guilty of continually being a poor representative of Christ and other Christians.
Humanism is a fallback- that we may use to justify incongrous actions but is inherently selfish and is a philosophy which has many proponents but few critics.
I won't venture too far here, given that theology isn't exactly my strong suit. But I know that Christian teachings did introduce a new, more humble and merciful philosophy that was a great human advance on the covenants that had held sway in that region before. And that that philosophy remains at the heart of the tradition of Christian mission that has directly helped billions of people through history. Men and women of God have gone out and given of themselves in a way that makes my own fitful efforts at charity look insignificant. I appreciate the quiet strength that belief has afforded others.
Would I choose modern Christianity over modern Islam? Of course. But the church has presided over so many of its own horrors. The faith still seems a vehicle for hate in some hands. And it is not unreasonable to describe those IRA bombers, with their insane sectarianism, as Christian terrorists.
Yet I certainly do believe that there are aspects of nature that are best addressed through the religious imagination; just as to see romantic love as simply a series of chemical releases in the brain would be to miss the point. Even if I had the intellectual capacity to grasp what science is saying about the universe, it is so vast, complex and mysterious that perhaps I would still choose sheer wonder as a response. Spirituality as a means of modelling nature, you might say. But I cannot contrive to believe in a Man in the Sky handing down instructions for life. My values - and those that defend us from what has happened in the past 24 hours - are human values. I believe they are strong.
PS: I made this post, went for a walk and came back and changed one word: the last one. The word was "stronger", now it is "strong". I decided that I simply wanted to assert my values, not to elevate them over anyone else's. We have enough of that.
Everybody must get stoned | Jul 06, 2005 09:54
Having now seen the part of the 60 Minutes interview that got Labour's Muslim MP Ashraf Choudhary into trouble this week, I have to sympathise with him. He was not asked whether homosexuals and adulterers should be stoned to death; he was invited to declare that the Koran was incorrect in saying so. That was how the question was asked. For a Muslim leader to say the Koran is incorrect is, I gather, beyond serious.
I, of course, am free to tell you that the Koran is incorrect - and even, in places, mad, bad and positively dangerous. I might also say the same about another text that prominent people hold to be the uncorrupted word of God - The Bible.
The Bible prescribes death - by stoning or otherwise - for blasphemy, straying near the Tabernacle, failing to observe the Sabbath, disobeying or cursing at parents, loss of virginity, disobeying church leaders and - hey! Waddaya know! - homosexuality and adultery.
Of course, even those in Western society who hold that the Bible is the infallible truth do not actually call for the enforcement of those laws, because they know, deep down, that what the Bible recommends in that respect is a grotesque affront to any human value. It's just that in the Muslim world, they're a little more consistent about cleaving to the brutal, irrelevant doctrines they purport to uphold. And, in a handful of countries, the dictates of those doctrines are - horrifyingly - carried out.
Eventually, Choudhary supplanted his original, unfortunate answer - yes, but not in New Zealand, of course - with a statement reiterating that the Koran was not incorrect, but that he personally abhorred the practice of stoning.
Choudhary seems to lack the wit for political life, but I do not for a moment believe he thinks homosexuals should be stoned to death - he voted for the Civil Union Bill, for goodness sake - and we would do well to look at what our own Good Book recommends.
You may care to note that the page I linked to above was posted by a Hindu organisation, seeking to highlight the unacceptable brutality of the doctrine of Christians.
(On the other hand, this page, from an American Baptist church, lists a bunch of other Biblical occasions for putting-to-death, including the killing of women who are raped but fail to cry out. It uses the examples to demonstrate that God is not at all averse to some killing (and thus supports the death penalty), but explains that "We live in America. This is not our law.")
The lesson would seem to be that good old humanism - so readily vilified by religious leaders of various stripes - actually provides a better moral and practical template for the conduct of human lives than either of these books do.
Anyway, that'll do for today. I'm already in the cart for missing a gig this morning, I have a radio show today and my Unlimited column is two days late and missing in action. If anyone from Unlimited happens to be reading, the Business Columnist of the Year is getting there. I just had to get down and write the first words of my next book yesterday. The words turned up, and if I had shown them the door, they might not have come back.
PS: You can now buy Great New Zealand Argument: Ideas about ourselves from our online store at Amplifier, wherever you live. I'm still keen to support those retailers who have stocked the book - and you'll save postage and packing by buying from them - but it seems that some people are having trouble getting it, either because it has sold out or hasn't been provided at some outlets of the big chains. So go ahead. You can buy some CDs while you're at it if you like. (By this time next week, I'll be able to offer an online deal on all three Public Address author books: GNZA, David Slack's Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions and Graham Reid's Postcards from Elsewhere.)
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