by Peter Mullen
Even the drowsiest people recuperating from Christmas and New Year revels must have been jolted into wakefulness by the loud crash. Have you heard it yet? It’s the sound of the penny dropping – at last. I’m talking about the persecution of Christians throughout the world. Even Labour shadow ministers have mentioned it. Prince Charles – would be “defender of faiths” – has written about it. Most surprising of all – and welcome – the BBC has joined in, albeit very belatedly. Over Christmas there was an excellent and shocking report by File On Four which for once told a straight tale about the murderous persecution of Christians in half a dozen African states, from Somalia to Sudan, from Mali to Nigeria and from Libya to Egypt where Copts are in danger of being wiped out.
Moreover, the BBC report did not mince words when it came to placing the blame squarely where it belongs. Naturally, they used the word “Islamist” for the perpetrators which made me wonder whether the word “Islamist” is ever admitted to have some connection with “Islamic.” Of course it does. The atrocities taking place are religious persecution. This is a rare phenomenon for usually where there is sectarian strife – as there was in Bosnia in the 1990s and in Northern Ireland for forty years and continuing – the religious element masks the true causes of grievance which tend to be about land, resources and political freedom. But in much of Africa, in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, Christians are being slaughtered and dispossessed, their homes and churches burnt to the ground, merely because they are Christians.
It is a relief finally to see that the political correctness which has for so long obsessed the western media and caused them to play down the persecution of Christians has abated somewhat, allowing a clear picture of the horrors taking place to emerge at last. For so long we have disgracefully ignored the persecution of Christians for fear of offending Muslims. It calls to mind the old Fawlty Towers sketch and the injunction, “Don’t mention the war!” Not before time, Christian leaders have spoken about these persecutions. It would be good to think that the Archbishops and Bishops have at last adjourned their useless everlasting talking shop with “moderate Muslims” and given up their absurd insistence that terrorism and slaughter have nothing to do with Islam but are only the wicked deeds of a small number of “extremists.”
In his book Without Roots, the philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate says:
“Christianity is so consubstantial with the West that any surrender on its part would have devastating consequences.”
And he proceeds to ask the crucial question:
“Will the Church, the clergy and the faithful be able to and want to be purified of the relativism that has almost erased their identity and weakened their message and witness?”
Many times in the past – thank God – Christians rose up to defend the faith against its enemies: At Tours, Charles Martel saved northern Europe from Muslim conquest and Don John of Austria and the papal states triumphed at Lepanto. Three hundred years ago Muslim armies were at the gates of Vienna where they were resisted and finally turned back by Christian forces. We must pray and so nerve ourselves that such courage will not be found wanting in us to repel the threats we are facing today. But there is another feature, insidious and most worrying. This is best illustrated by citing historical precedent. When the barbarians were bent on sacking Rome, the emperor called into his private chambers his philosopher Sidonius and told him: “I know what I will do, Sidonius. I will close and fasten the gates of the City.” To which Sidonius replied, “Too late, Sir. There are too many of these enemies inside the gates already.” We must draw the moral from that precedent and not lapse back into our suicidal political correctness.
There is a terrible sense in which this persecution of Christians is beside the point. We can resist any number of external enemies, but once we lose our confidence in our own civilisation and way of life, then nothing on earth can save us from destruction. Former Archbishop Carey and Bishop Michael Nazir Ali have spoken fearlessly about this greater danger. But these courageous men are scorned by our liberal prelates, the Synod’s progressive bureaucrats and the cultured despisers of our religion. No one puts this more starkly than Pastor Wale Babatunde in his new book Great Men and Women who made Great Britain Great. He speaks prophetically about our national apostasy and the secular terrorism which seeks to obliterate Christian culture from our national life. This, he says, has been largely achieved by a ten points strategy:
1: Remove God and prayer from state education
2: Reduce parental authority over their children
3: Destroy the Judeo-Christian family structure
4: Make sex free and abortion universally available
5: Make divorce easy
6: Make homosexuality an alternative lifestyle
7: Use the mass media to enforce this new secular mindset
8: Create an interfaith movement
9: Debase art
10: Get governments to make all these laws and the churches to endorse the changes.
This was largely the agenda of the Frankfurt School of Marxist intellectuals who sought to “…undermine national institutions from within and so extinguish the spirit of Christianity in western man.”
Job done, I would say – and shamefully largely owing to the weakness and cowardice of the “liberal” hierarchy which rules throughout the church. But we have stoned all the prophets. We shall pay no more heed to Pastor Babatunde than that we paid to T.S. Eliot back in 1934 when he wrote in Choruses from the Rock:
“Men have left God not for other gods, they say, but for no god; and this has never happened before. The church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?”
Babatunde’s book is published by RoperPenberthy. Read him!
Interesting – a lot too think about.
I think it was a tragedy that the former Archbishop retired – a fixed age system is rather absurd for such positions.
I am also an admirer of the former Bishop of Rochester.
As for Italy – I would advice people to go and visit whilst it still safe to do so. There is so much too see – and things are not going to get better there.
Sadly I see little chance for a recovery in Italy – the tide of Islamic immigration and general economic (and demographic) decline, is matched (indeed caused) by cultural decline, especially decline in basic (foundational) beliefs.
This is mirrored in most of the West. The power of the international “Progressive” ideology is astonishing – even in (supposedly ultra conservative) Utah, the left control the education system and (in large measure) the courts.
For those of us who believe in God – there is still the hope that, in some strange way, help may come (but remember it does NOT always come – my-kingdom-is-not-of-this-world).
I think it’s too late now. Britain for sure is to be the first country to be de-Christianised, and it will be done on purpose by the ruling GramscoFabiaNazis, who hate us.
I’m not, here, trying to say that Christianity was good, while it lasted. Obviously it was and is, but it may not be “as good” as , say, something else which has not yet been invented. But that thing has not yet been invented, so we might as well stick with what we have, and defend it against all the other very very much worse things. (If I said what these are, then I’d have to kill you all.)
I think it may be not quite right to link what is happening in the West with what is happening in the East. In the Islamic world, they are in the grip of a phase of fanatical religious violence somewhat similar to the worst of the Reformation, and as a result Christians and Jews in those countries are almost historically inevitably going to be targets, sadly. In such situations, often the only solution is to get out. I know I’m always going on about puritans, but the neo-Islamics are trying to “purify” their own societies and thus anything different is a threat that needs purifying away. See also, Hitler, Jews and purifying the German volk.
I don’t think that that has much to do with the Frankfurt School or anything Western. It’s an ultra-reactionary force; most of us know the history of the Islamist movement, Hassan Al Banana and Saieed Qutb and so on. Neither of them were much inspired by Gramsci or Marcuse, it seems to me. West of Constantinople, yes, we can discuss our Gramscians; East of Constantinople, it’s good old fashioned religious mania.
Point is, I don’t know that it would be very feasible to protect non-Islamic minorities in situ, any more than it would have been possible to protect Jews within Nazi Germany. Either you have to entirely destroy the Nazis, or help the Jews leave, or else you’re standing by watching a pogrom.
Also, to nitpick things historically, Church attendance across teh West had already gone into precipitous decline before anything recognisably Gramscian had gained significant power in our societies; I suspect that this is less clear in the USA which has remained uniquely religious among Western nations. In America, with its Bible Belt, one can see a battle between the Class of ’68 and the religious right. But everywhere else, the decline had already happened by the time of the rise of the 68ers.
In that sense, it probably is more helpful to see the void left by dechristianisation being filled by the new “progressive religion” as a replacement justifying ideology. In 1960s and 70s Britain, there was no visible war on Christianity. The churches were still there, the doors still open, Stars On Sunday and Highway still on the telly, religious assemblies conducted in schools, etc. People just stopped going to church.
Actually the “religion declined with the advent of modern industrial society” stuff is a bit of a myth.
Even in the 1950s (one and half centuries after the industrial revolution) church attendance was quite normal in most or Europe and (at least to outward observation) the Churches of Europe appeared strong and active.
The debate is really how much of the decline since the late 1950s-1960s has been from external attack – the Frankfurt School taking over from the Fabians (and so on) of the late 19th century and early 20th century.
The Frankfurt School (and the followers of the Italian Gramsci) have (unlike the Fabians) concentrated on taking over institutions – schools, universities, even the legal system. Whereas the Fabians (such as G.B. Shaw and H..G. Wells) were “its all about ME” types – neurotic self obsessed people, always out to shock (hence there open talk about their desire to eliminate many millions of people – talk that Frankfurt School people would only have in private and in academic code). Watching such things as Mr Shaw boasting (on camera) about he wanted everybody dragged before a government board to “justify their existence” and if they failed to give the “correct” answers be executed does make me long for the modern left to be just as BONE-STUPID as Mr Shaw was. It has taken a hundred years of propaganda to turn people like Mr Shaw it heros – most people at the time knew they were vile.
The other point of view is that the Churches basically committed suicide in the 1960s – with “Vatican II” in the Roman Catholic Church. the “Honest to God” absurdity in the Anglican Church in the England (and on and on).
However, this raises the question of why the Church elites lost their faith – surely this connected to their time in the brain washing universities (dominated by…..).
By the way….
I happened to turn on Indian television news yesterday (it is on at the half hour – because of the time zones).
Instead of the news – “NDTV” was running a show on how noble homosexual acts are (how it is all about love – and they dug up a nice couple, one a European the other an Indian….).
No I am not making this up – it really happened.
This is because of the long standing campaign of the elite in India to change the law (the law on “sodomy”) without actually VOTING on it.
The Supreme Court of India refused to do this (change the law in an arbitrary fashion – like an American Supreme Court) and since then there has been a massive media (and general cultural) campaign against their judgement.
Is this an Indian thing?
Not really – it is a part of a vast international movement – and homosexual acts are only one aspect of it.
To pretend that this international elite does not exist, and that its aims are not primarily POLITICAL is simply counter factual.
And I write (for the record) as someone who is in favour of homosexual acts being legal – but not for the political cult reasons (the desire to use this as a weapon) of the international elite.
Surely libertarians should endorse most of the Frankfurt school’s ideas while naturally opposing Islamic totalitarianism?
Will the file on four piece be made available on line? I cannot find it on their site at the moment, although other ones are there.
I have to wonder if the penny really as dropped.
The news of various conflicts, even recent ones, have tended to omit the historical causes of the conflicts. Nobody listening to the news, for the most part, would be able to understand the context of such wars – as was what happened with Serbia / Kosovo. (One which, in my opinion, we were on the wrong side as usual – not that I think it was any of our business to get involved at all).
Call me suspicious, but I have always wondered if this lack of context in conflicts of partition and wars in these kinds of countries – (usually borne from massive immigration and rapid subsequent demographic change (from Muslims) who want to break off their territories as independent nations (or Islamic nations)) – is because the media here are complicit in not giving the general populace any clues as to why it might be a bad idea to be importing the same demographics and incubating the same kinds of future trends here.
Enoch Powell warned about it in the 1960s and said the ingredients for calamity and nation-wrecking were being set into motion. I think he was accurate, for it never ends well – and examples still show this to be the case all over the world.
It was a preventable thing, but of course, the establishment and liberals thought they were superior and that they could tame these kinds of nation wrecking elements that all the rest of the world has suffered and what we were relatively free from, particularly as an Island.
So to hear in this article that the BBC, of all people, dared touch on some of this fate of nations at the hands of Islamic growth and inherent instability sounds too strange to be true!
“Surely libertarians should endorse most of the Frankfurt School’s ideas”.
Errr no Mark – not a terribly good idea really.
Considering the Frankfurt School people (and the Fellow Travellers they picked up in the United States to write Communist agitprop such as “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” whilst loudly claiming to be “non Communist”) were Marxists dedicated to the utter destruction of “capitalist” society and the civil society principles it is built upon.
By the way the Frankfurt School did not (and do not) care about homosexuals or any other of their “victim” groups – other than as WEAPONS (that is Frankurt School 101 really).
The whole concept of group rights and government “policies” and regulations to promote these group rights is exactly what libertarianism is against.
One good thing is the following…
In some parts of the world (only some) the alliance between the modern Frankfurt School people and the followers of Islam (an alliance that might well have shocked the original founders of this school of Marxism – as they were Jews, but was forged by modern leftists such as the late Edward Said) seems to be breaking down.
If this conflict was actually to spread to the West (with the Marxists and the followers of Islam fighting each other in universities and so on – instead of cooperating) then there would actually be some hope.