Category Archives: Religion

The 2023 Stroppy

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This year’s winner of the Stroppy Git Award for Meaningless Drivel is a Russian man called Ivan Panin (pictured left) who fled Russia for Germany at the age of 18, being condemned as a “nihilist” in his homeland, and then migrated to the USA. He studied Greek and Hebrew at Harvard and made a name for himself by applying numerological principles to the Bible.

The award is made posthumously because Ivan died in 1942. Fortunately for him the Stroppy is not subject to the same irksome requirement as the Nobel prizes, which can only be won by the living.

He was commended to me by a man called Greg whom I met in Rundle Mall. He was proffering a pamphlet titled ‘Searching for Truth?’ and I was intrigued enough to stop for a chat. He turned out to be a member of the Revival Fellowship and he invited me to one of their meetings, where I would find people speaking in tongues and thereby be convinced of the existence of God. I asked which tongues they spoke and he explained that “tongues” meant a special language used to converse with God, which ordinary people couldn’t understand. I’d always thought that the Holy Spirit gave the apostles the power to speak foreign languages so they could go out and proselytise, but apparently not.

Anyway, I recommended that he read ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins (pictured right) which I’d just finished, and he recommended that I read Romans chapter 8 and Google Ivan Panin. Ivan wins the Stroppy for this passage, but pretty much anything he wrote could be a contender:

Looking once more to the 7 periods from Adam to the Christ by themselves, covering as they do the whole Bible Chronology lacking only 33 years, we find that they cover 3999 years, a number unexpected: since man would have made it an even 4,000. But 3999 is 3 x 31 x 43. The sum of its factors is 77, itself 11 sevens, with 14, or 2 sevens as the sum of its own figures, 7, 7. The sum of the figures be factors 3, 31, 43, is also 14, or 2 sevens: of which the first two have 7, and the third has 7. This number 3999, though itself not a multiple of seven, is nevertheless found to be marked with 4 features of sevens, one for every one of its four figures.

A worthy winner, I think you’ll agree.

PS  I was nearly misled in my search for Ivan Panin, because he has a namesake who is still alive and is a noted mathematician. Amongst other feats, according to Wikipedia, he found a proof of Gersten’s conjecture in the case of equal characteristic and an affirmative solution of the “purity” problem for quadratic forms. So… no meaningless drivel there.

Cats and Tribes

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We have a cat staying with us at the moment, so I was thinking about posting about that species. Then last week we saw a documentary about life in a black suburb in the USA, and I thought I should write something about that. Then I realised that what I would write about one is pretty much what I would write about the other.

The fact is that my relationship with Bella (the cat) is characterised by mutual bemusement. She rubs around my leg in the morning and is pleased to have me stroke the top of her head – once. Then she stalks off shaking her head as if to rid herself of parasites. Later in the day she alternates between rolling voluptuously on the carpet in my path, bolting in apparent panic at my approach, and ignoring me.

I’d like to have a conversation with Bella, to find out how she sees the world, human beings, and me in particular. Is she conscious of her own mortality? Does she distinguish between the humans she knows, or is it just a matter of who last topped up her food bowl? Above all, is she curious about the things she sees humans doing? Curiosity killed the cat, as my prep school teachers would say to any wayward child who exhibited curiosity about anything that wasn’t on the immediate syllabus; but are cats curious about things other than the next meal and the warmest place to sprawl?

And it was exactly the same with the American documentary. I found myself at a loss to understand the ways, manners, habits, choices and even the speech of the people on the TV screen – fortunately the programme was subtitled. It wasn’t just that they were black; it was that they seemed to live in a parallel universe in which drugs, gangs, guns, unemployment, promiscuity and incarceration are normal.

Of course, it’s not unusual for a certain neighbourhood to contain a preponderance of one ethnic group or another, but it seems to me that in the USA (much more than in Australia or the UK) the black population has seceded from the Union and developed their own culture, language, values, forms of religious expression, even their own de facto laws.

My mind went back to 1966, when I used my university vacation to travel around North America. It was the year after the infamous Watts riots in Los Angeles, and I was curious about the term “motherf***er” – new to me at that time. Did negroes (an acceptable word at that time) really believe that white mothers were in the habit of having sex with their sons? I sought out the neighbourhoods I’d read about – as well as those I’d heard about through songs (Kalamazoo, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Buffalo, Laramie…). I hoped to come home with insight but gained little.

I was brought up when the British considered their empire to be a great civilising force, replacing the ball-and-chain of tribalism with the institutions, laws and infrastructure of a modern nation state, illuminated by the glory of The Enlightenment. It looks to me as though that high-minded project has ground to a halt and shifted into reverse.

Top up . . .

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I did find myself composing another song about Enid Blyton, but sought distraction before it could be perfected. Then, while cycling home from the gym, I passed a petrol station and started involuntarily singing to an old hymn tune:

Top up, top up for Jesus
With ninety-five octane –
It may not be a dollar
Twenty-eight again . . .

Thankfully (you may say) lyrical inspiration gave way to a serious thought. People raised in the Christian tradition are often shocked by the violence that seems to be condoned in the Old Testament and the Koran. “How good it is,” they think to themselves, “that Jesus replaced that jealous, vindictive, racist Yahweh with a loving god, arranged in three neatly-fitting pieces. And what a pity it is that Mohammed conjured up that narrow-minded Allah, obsessed with rigid rules and slaughter.”

In fact all three of the Abrahamic faiths are pretty nasty if looked at closely. A Jew or a Muslim might listen to “Stand up, stand up for Jesus …” or “Onward Christian soldiers…” and look around in alarm for an approaching horde “with the cross of Jesus going on before!”

And how should Muslims react when a representative of a heavily-armed predominantly Christian nation talks of embarking upon a ‘crusade’?

ISIS Brides and Babies

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There are thousands of them: foreign women who married Daesh (aka IS, ISIL or ISIS) men and who are now sitting in refugee camps, in many cases with their children.  Some are alleged to have attacked other refugees whose behaviour does not conform to Daesh norms, and even to have set firs to those people’s tents.

Mother and Child in a Kurdish-run Camp

Their home countries are reluctant to take them back, for understandable reasons. It’s hard to believe the claims that they were too young to know what they were getting into, or were taken in by the propaganda about the creation of a perfect Islamic state and somehow missed the bits about murder, torture, rape and slavery.

The case of Shamima Begum has hit the headlines in the UK, whence she fled at the age of 15 to join Daesh. Her Dutch husband survived the fighting and has renounced Daesh. Shamima wants to go home with her baby. The UK doesn’t want either of them. It’s a similar story with Australia Zehra Duman. An estimated 9,000 are nationals of the Russian Federation (mainly Chechnya) and other former Soviet Republics.

My view is pretty simple. These people, however wicked, deluded or gullible they may have been, are citizens of countries which have laws, institutions and financial resources far beyond those of the Kurds and others who are holding them. It’s our responsibility to receive them back, subject the adults to due legal process, and care for the children in such a way that they will grow up sane, productive and law-abiding. This will not be cheap, but it will surely be cheaper than letting stateless extremists and their hapless offspring roam the world working mischief.

I just checked, and Australia still has a law dealing with treason. It is contained in Chapter 5 of the Criminal Code. The penalty for intentionally assisting, by any means whatever, another country or organisation [my emphasis] that is engaged in hostilities against the Australian Defence Force is life imprisonment.

The law is specifically framed to include terrorist organisations. One would hope that the phrase “by any means whatever” is broad enough to encompass making one’s way into a war zone to marry an enemy combatant and bear his children, who will be educated in extremism and brought up to be Daesh’s foot soldiers – and martyrs if they’re lucky.

Asylum for Apostates

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We just got the news that Rahal al-Qunun has been granted asylum in Canada. Indeed, the 18-year-old Saudi woman is already on her way to her new home.

Rahal al-Qunun

Most people applaud her courageous escape from an oppressive regime, under which the renunciation of Islam (apostasy) is punishable by death. One hopes that by her action she will embolden other women to rebel.

One can also feel sympathy for her family, who will surely be condemned for letting this happen while they were on holiday in Kuwait; and for Canadian authorities who will be responsible for protecting Rahal from vengeful attacks by Muslims who consider death a necessary punishment for apostasy.

How likely are such attacks? According to the Independent newspaper there are twelve Muslim-majority countries in which apostasy carries the death penalty. Scholars are divided over this issue. As often happens where religious belief is based on a very old book, texts can be cited to support any point of view; and because the Quran has been supplemented by a body of writings known as the Hadith (meaning ‘tradition’) Islam is especially vulnerable to this phenomenon.

Asia Bibi

But judging by the scale of violent outrage when Asia Bibi, a Christian woman in Pakistan, was acquitted of a charge of blasphemy against Islam, views that most non-Muslims would consider extreme are not necessarily rare. (Blasphemy is a capital offence in Pakistan, but apostasy is not.)

Given that a) most people in the world would rather live in Western Europe, North America, Australia or New Zealand than in their own countries, and b) some of the nastiest countries to live in have Muslim-majority populations, should we not expect a blossoming of apostasy in the expectation that it will confer immediate refugee status and resettlement somewhere nice?

Muslim readers are especially welcome to comment on this post. I claim no theological expertise.

Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome

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An Australian federal politician, Fraser Anning, has just made his maiden speech in the Senate, in which he called for a return to the White Australia Policy and a ban on Muslim immigration. Just to make sure he had everyone offside he talked of this being the ‘final solution’.

When it was pointed out to him that the very phrase ‘final solution’ was indissolubly linked in everyone’s mind to Hitler, Nazism and the attempted annihilation of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other undesirables, he said his words were taken out of context.

Either he doesn’t know what the ‘final solution’ is in historical terms, in which case he may be considered too ignorant to be a useful member of the legislature; or he’s too lacking in sensitivity, political savvy and common sense to be a useful member of the legislature. Either way . . .

Mind you, Mr Anning is not alone in his choice of infelicitous words. How often, even now, do we hear politicians and activists claiming to be on a ‘crusade’?

Yes, I know, in in our nice liberal secular democracies the word ‘crusade’ just means a passionately executed campaign – nothing to do with the repeated Christian assaults on the so-called Holy Land in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. But to a great many Muslims, even today and even in educated circles, the word is still burdened with its original meaning. Its casual use only confirms the suspicion that The West has hostile intent towards Islam and its followers.

Is This Racism . . . ?

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I don’t think I’d hear of Valerie Jarrett until CNN told me that Roseanne Barr had insulted her and lost her TV show as a result. The offending tweet was “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”

Valerie Jarrett

The story was accompanied by a photo of Ms Jarrett, in which she did bear some resemblance to the masks used in the Planet of the Apes films. But Google Images has no photos like that, and the one reproduced here shows her as 100% human.

I’ve since done some online research and found that a false rumour had once been spread by her political opponents, saying that she was Iranian (she was in fact born in Iran of US parents) and a Muslim and having proclaimed an agenda to “help change America to be a more Islamic country.”

But Roseanne’s offence was, according to the media, racism. And I don’t get it. Being a Muslim or an advocate of Islam is unrelated to race. Resembling a fictional non-human primate is unrelated to race. Roseanne was undoubtedly guilty of ‘passing personal remarks’ (which I was taught to avoid) and perpetuating a false rumour. But where’s the racism?

Musings from Bangkok

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That’s not a very informative title, but I’m posting about two separate things and I happen to be in a transit lounge in Bangkok with a lot of time to spare.

I just came off a flight where I watched a film I’d vaguely heard about and a documentary about the Cassini mission to Saturn. Both affected me to the extent that I want to share.

The film was ‘Downsizing’, starring Matt Damon. It has been described as sci-fi satire but I don’t think that does it justice. The title relates to a scientific breakthrough that reduces people to 1/14 their height, and consequently 1/2744 their volume and mass. The aim is to reduce humankind’s environmental footprint before we destroy our habitat, but it has the side effect of allowing the ‘small people’ to use their savings to buy huge mansions in special resort-like communities and live lives of leisure and luxury.

I want you to see the film, so I won’t say any more – except to laud the actress who was for me the de facto star (see photo). Her name is Hong Chau, born in Thailand of Vietnamese refugee parents and now living in the USA. She plays a Vietnamese activist and amputee and she is superb.

The Cassini documentary starred the gallant little spacecraft itself, which was sacrificed at the end of a spectacularly successful mission. It was vaporised in a fireball in Saturn’s atmosphere, with eerie echoes of ancestral sacrifices to uncaring gods. This sacrifice was necessary to avoid the danger of terrestrial contamination of an environment where life already exists or one day may.

I found myself tearing up, not because of Cassini’s death, but because the whole enterprise showed what our species can do and be at our very very best. NASA had a huge team of specialists, men and women, young and old, from many nationalities. They had a common goal to know, a dedication to science, and no malign intent.

The NASA team’s goodness contrasted starkly with the recent horror in Indonesia where a whole family, young children included, wiped itself out in coordinated murderous attacks. This was a team effort too, but instead of being enthused by science their minds were infected by a perverted ideology that thrives only on ignorance and superstition. This was our species as its very very worst.

Hate Speech

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Yesterday I was paddling a kayak on the Dnieper River. I was in the back seat, Tamara was in the front. Out of the blue she asked me about my religion. I replied that I was an atheist. After a moment’s thought she said, “So what do you love?” She gestured upward, as much as one can while paddling a kayak, so clearly “My wife” or “My family” would not do as an answer.

Not really us – our kayak was red.

“Truth and justice,” I said eventually. That seemed too short a list and I searched for more things that I could express in Russian. But even in English I decided those two were enough.

Ashore, I pondered my answer. Does loving truth and justice necessarily mean hating untruth and injustice? After all, untruth and injustice encompass ignorance, superstition, indoctrination, exploitation, tyranny, cruelty… all things to be hated, surely.

Then today I was listening to a podcast: Phillip Adams interviewing US journalist Glenn Greenwald, who when practising as a lawyer had defended extremists’ first amendment right to express views that most people found abhorrent.

“What about hate speech?” asked Phillip. I found myself agreeing with Glenn when he said that freedom of speech cannot be qualified. Who defines ‘hate speech’ – the Government? Facebook? Google? He cited German cases where criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has resulted in prosecution as anti-Semitic hate speech.

But is there a distinction to be drawn between hatred of abstract ideas and hatred of the people who subscribe to those ideas? We all (I hope) hate what is done in Daesh’s name: murder, kidnapping, rape, slavery and the rest. But is it alright to hate the perpetrators? And is it alright to express that hatred publicly?

From kayaking to cognition. From paddling to pontification. What do you think?

 

Are They Terrorists?

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Communists are devoted to the ideology of Communism. Capitalists snuffle at the trough of Capitalism. Platonists follow the philosophical teachings of Plato.

But what about arsonists, cyclists and saxophonists? They are –ists without –isms. So it is with terrorists. ‘Terrorism’ is not an ideology or a philosophy. Terrorists are simply bad people employing a tactic of war, designed to demoralise an enemy and sap his will to fight. When good people employ this tactic they call it ‘shock and awe’.

So are the Muslims who drive vans at unsuspecting people or set off suicide vests in crowded places terrorists? I don’t think they are, not in the literal sense of the word. They do not seek to create terror, but hatred – hatred of Muslims.

This is not my own original thought. It is the published strategy of Daesh, which recognises three kinds of Muslim. There are the fanatical fundamentalists who support, fund and fight for Daesh’s cause. At the other end of the spectrum are the morally corrupt people who call themselves Muslims but are no better than Infidels: men who drink beer and women who wear makeup, and most of the royals who run the Middle East.

In the middle are the silent majority of Muslims who sort-of believe the dogma and sort-of observe the rituals, much as most people who were brought up Christian sing Christmas carols and eat hot cross buns, but are more interested in giving their children a good education, paying off the mortgage and going somewhere nice on holiday. This is the target. The silent majority. Daesh’s aim is to create hatred of them, causing them to feel alienated and eventually withdraw from the secular societies they have happily inhabited.

If all goes according to plan they will withdraw into the welcoming arms of the True Believers, who will take their children into their madrassas, veil their adolescent daughters, and teach their adolescent sons the take revenge on the societies that rejected them.

So the way to thwart them is to refuse to hate.

There is a terrible battle going on within Islam – or rather several terrible battles, very like the battles that raged in Christendom 500 years ago. They may take as long to be resolved. They may never be resolved. But if there is a way for the rest of us to hasten a happy outcome, it will involve engaging with and supporting the people whose values most closely resemble our own.