Savonarola and the Carnival of 1497

First, here are some nice collections of Carnival photos:

Joe Marquez (The Smoking Camera)

Anna Pagnacco

Frantisek Staud

drummergrl1310

Silvano Candeo

Alaskan Dude

Oliver F. Lehmann

[I know, I know. These are all pics from the Venetian Carnival, not the Florentine. If anyone knows of any comparable collections of photos from the Florentine Carnival, please let me know!]

. . . . . . . .

The Carnival of 1497

A little later the carnival of 1497 drew nigh. Savonarola determined to celebrate it in a manner Florence had never witnessed. And to this day she remembers it. Some others also recall it—not with approbation, but with astonishment. At that period, probably no other city excelled Florence in wealth. It was replete with luxury.

Among the carnival customs was the making of bonfires on the plaza in the evening of Shrove Tuesday, and the dancing around them while singing songs. The reader will recall that at the last carnival, a great reform was affected through the children. This year Savonarola determined a more sweeping change should take place. To this end he enlisted, under the generalship of Fra Domenico, a band of youths, who should traverse the city, "dressed as angels, and calling from door to door for whatsoever articles were calculated to minister to luxury, or worldliness, to be consumed upon the bonfire."

Many delivered up their possessions, while others considered these "angels" a most unheavenly order. However, the amount of trinkets, ornaments, money, books of bad tendency, pictures, sculptures, and designs accumulated, was marvelous. An immense scaffolding, pyramidal in form, with fifteen tiers of shelves arranged around it, was erected on the plaza chosen for the grand display. The pyramid was filled with fagots; and the shelves, with the articles to be destroyed. Many of them were the works of famous artists and writers. Bartolommeo and Lorenzo di Credi contributed many of their designs.

Women contributed to the senseless waste, costly India shawls, expensive perfumes, and other articles innumerable. Men increased the flames with chess-boards, cards, card-tables, and instruments of music. Burlamacchi relates that for the collection, before the torch was applied, a merchant of Venice offered nearly twenty thousand pounds sterling. But his offer was rejected, and the man's portrait—placed above the colossal figure intended to personify the carnival—was burned therewith. A wild mob danced around the blazing pile to the music of trumpets.

[Savonarola, the Florentine Martyr, by Emma Hildreth Adams, published in 1890]

Lajja means "Shame"

In 1993 Taslima Nasreen's novel Lajja was published. The word Lajja in the Bengali language means "shame." The novel is a dramatized account of the wave of violence against the Hindu minority in Bangladesh that occurred in 1992-93.

In July of 1994, Barbara Crossette wrote the following for the New York Times under the title "A cry for tolerance brings new hatred down on a writer":

FOR much of the last two weeks, Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has been the scene of demonstrations over the fate of a 31-year-old writer, Taslima Nasrin. Now in hiding, she has angered Muslim zealots by calling herself a humanist in a country that calls itself Islamic. Worse, she has written an Asian best seller, "Lajja," ("Shame") that tells a story of the intolerance and violence of Bangladeshi Muslims against Hindus and other religious minorities.

With this theme, she has touched a central fact of life on the Indian subcontinent: For 50 years, hatreds between fanatical adherents of Hinduism and Islam have repeatedly provoked slaughter and undermined the principle of secular government. Bangladesh, which is 90 percent Muslim, separated from predominantly Hindu India as East Pakistan when Britain left in 1947, and seceded from Pakistan in 1971.

Militants have variously demanded that Ms. Nasrin, who was born to a Muslim family, be tried for disrupting religious harmony, or killed for heresy. "Lajja" was banned last year in Bangladesh, but was quickly pirated, translated from Bengali and widely circulated in India by militant Hindus; this year it was published in New Delhi by Penguin Books India.

Bangladesh has a secular civil law code, but it is perennially challenged by Islamic fundamentalists and the Government often bows to the pressure. The Islamic crusade, Ms. Nasrin says, has fallen hardest on women.

Ms. Nasrin, a physician who became a columnist, poet and novelist, has been divorced several times. Her books contain erotic passages that Islamic fundamentalists find especially offensive, though Bengali-speaking culture, which Dhaka shares with Calcutta, is known for sensuous poetry and sophistication.

Officials are seeking her arrest on charges of blaspheming the Koran. Meredith Tax, head of International PEN's Women Writers' Committee, says Ms. Nasrin wants to find haven outside Bangladesh but is afraid to emerge from hiding.

The following is a chronology of the events leading up to Taslima's flight from her native Bangladesh in 1994. This timeline is from the website of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Dec 1992	Muslims attacked and burnt down Hindu temples and shops across Bangladesh and disrupted an India-Bangladesh cricket match following the destruction of the Babri Masjid in India by Hindu fundamentalists. About 5,000 young men with rods and bamboo sticks tried to storm Dhaka National Stadium, but they were beaten back by police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. At least 10 people have died, many Hindu women have been raped, and hundreds of Hindu homes and temples have been destroyed.
Oct 1993	Hindus in Bangladesh have decided to curtail this year's Durga Puja (Hindu religious festival) celebrations beginning on the 21st in view of the "atrocities" committed against them following the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, All-India Radio reported (0245 gmt, 16 Oct. 1993). The Hindus have demanded that damaged and destroyed temples be repaired and that an inquiry be held into the attack on a Hindu religious procession in Dhaka in August.
Nov 1993	Several thousand Muslim radicals marched through the streets of Dhaka to demand the arrest and execution of Taslima Nasrin, a female Muslim author critical of male chauvinism and Islamic fundamentalism. Nasrin, 31, has received death threats for her novel "Lajja" (Shame), which condemns Muslim mobs that attacked Hindus in Bangladesh to avenge the destruction of the Babri Masjid in India. The government banned Lajja last July, six months after it was published. The campaign against Nasrin gained momentum last month after a little known group called the Council of the Soldiers of Islam placed a 50,000 taka price ($1,250) on her head at a public meeting in the conservative north-eastern district of Sylhet. The group claimed that Nasrin's books decried the Koran and the Prophet Mohammad, causing offence to the country's majority Muslim population.
Feb 1994	A 15th century temple housing a priceless record of Hindu history attracts thousands of devotees every year to remote Dinajpur, a town in the northernmost corner of Bangladesh. According to government archeology department records, it was built in 1452 by a Hindu Raja (King), who hired architects and artisans from the Mughal court in Delhi to build the temple. Every autumn, after the rainy season is over, nearly 100,000 Hindus and people from other faiths camp near the temple for a 3-week annual fair. Many also come from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and other countries.
Jun 1994	The federal government has ordered the arrest of Taslima Nasrin, a feminist writer whose novel, Lajja (Shame), led to a fatwa (death threat) being issued against her by Islamicists. 3000 orthodox Muslims marched in the streets of Dhaka on June 3 to protest against her allegedly "anti-Islamic" remarks (Reuters, 06/04/94).
Aug 1994	Taslima Nasrin, the feminist Bangladeshi writer, has arrived in Sweden. She is in Sweden for a writer’s conference and has gone into hiding following death threats by orthodox Muslims. Nasrin's book, Lajja, describes how Hindu homes and temples were destroyed and Hindu women were raped following the 1992 destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in India (Reuters, 08/10/94).

Islam: The Sacred Cow of Indian "Secularists"

I wonder what Martha Nussbaum will have to say about this? The "secularists" of Nussbaum's beloved Congress Party are now attacking Bangladeshi feminist and secularist Taslima Nasreen. Why? Because Nasreen has offended the sacred cow of Indian "secularists": Islam.

You see, in India "secularism" just means Hindu-bashing. Indian "secularism" has nothing to do with freedom of religion, or freedom from religion, or freedom of any kind. It has everything to do with promoting the agendas of Maoists, Muslims, Christians and anyone else who wants to destroy the ancient indigenous religious traditions of India collectively known as Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism.

But let me back up a moment. A few years ago, Taslima Nasreen wrote a very nice feminist critique of the odious Muslim practice known variously as hijab, chador, burqa or purdah. In it's most unobtrusive form this institutionalized subjugation of women is known innocuously as "the Islamic headscarf." But this "accessory" doesn't look so innocent anymore when you realize that in Iran a woman who refuses to wear the hijab will be hunted down and beaten in public by the same Islamic Stormtroopers who crushed the "Green Revolution" of last year.

Taslima Nasreen is well known in India and throughout the world as an outspoken feminist and critic of Islam. And, as already pointed out, the article in question was written years ago. But this week a newspaper in India decided to publish a translation of the article in the Kannada language. Nasreen had no idea the translation (unauthorized by her, and in a language she does not know) was to be published.

After the article was published the offices of the newspaper in question were attacked and rioting broke out in at least three places in Karnataka state. The violence led to two deaths and dozens of injuries. And today the Congress Party has proposed it's answer to these troubles: revoke Taslima Nasreen's asylum status in India. This is the demand of Congress leader from Mangalore, B Janardhan Poojary.

Oh, I forgot to mention something. Nasreen was forced to flee her native Bangladesh in 1994 and was eventually granted asylum in India. Of course the good Muslims of India also threatened to kill her, and eventually she was reduced to living in hiding, and reportedly left India in 2008, although officially she still has asylum status in India, and this was recently extended (see Taslima's website for a chronology of her "travels" in exile up through 2009 -- she currently lives in the US.)

It is good to see the true face of Indian "secularism" exposed so clearly. Those who are unfamiliar with Indian politics probably find this all very confusing. Even more confused will be those who believe themselves to be familiar with Indian politics by way of the writings of such India "experts" as Martha Nussbaum.

Obviously any true secularist would reflexively defend an outspoken feminist under attack from women-hating religious fanatics. Reflexes are important. When we touch something that is burning hot, we do not cogitate on what to do, rather our arm and hand move before we even feel the heat consciously. But Pavlovian conditioning can create new patterns of automatic responses to stimuli. Leftists have trained themselves to unthinkingly associate Hinduism with oppression, while Islam has been adopted as the Left's favorite pet "minority group" to watch over.

Even when Islamic terrorists gun down innocent people, the Martha Nussbaums of the world can only bring themselves to feel concern for what might happen to Muslims in retribution! That was Nussbaum's response to the carnage in Mumbai on 26/11. And when the anticipated (indeed, in the case of Nussbaum and her ilk, hoped for) retributions by Hindus against Muslims did not occur, Nussbaum clumsily tried to mask her disappointment by congratulating the Muslims of India for successfully avoiding victimhood by virtue of their peacefulness and liberality!

And when Islamic misogynists riot in outrage against the "offensive" idea that women should be free and equal members of society, it is the feminists who must be blamed. Islam must be defended at all costs, and even the evil burqa must be "respected," and any criticism of the burqa or Islam is "unacceptable":

Burqa is a system followed by a community and the views by Nasreen on Prophet Mohammed as well as burqa are unacceptable. As far as Nasreen is concerned, she can go anywhere, but she should not be in India.
Janardhan Poojary

google is still evil

According to a report from Agence France-Presse (AFP), google admits that they are continuing to censor search engine results in the Peoples Republic of China, and that they "have no timetable" for ending their voluntary cooperation in censoring the information available to 1/6 of humanity.

Chinese government regulations require that all companies doing business in China block sites deemed undesirable. These regulations include a list of words that all search engines are required to block.

It has been almost two months since google "boldly" announced, on January 12, that they would stop participating (voluntarily!!) in this censorship. Sources inside the PRC reported at the time of that announcement and immediately following that google.cn's search engine results were intermittently free of censorship for a grand total of less than 48 hours. Since January 14, censorship has been fully restored.

Nicole Wong (Google vice president and deputy general counsel) testified today before a congressional hearing on "Global Internet Freedom and the Rule of Law." She told the committee that google is "firm in our decision that we will not censor our search results in China and we are working towards that end," but she also said that "We don't have a specific timetable."

Back in January google proved that it was possible for them to simply and quickly remove their filters on search engine results. But then what happened? Who got to google and how did they do it? Who decided what when? As far as anyone knows, no one at google ever so much as received a turd in their mailbox, let alone were subject to any real intimidation or threats of any kind. Except, that is, for the threat of loosing all that busine$$ in China.

['My Little Cthulhu' toy, designed by John Kovalic, is available from dreamlandtoyworks.com. 'Little victims' action figures sold separately.]

Headscarves, Crosses, Yarmulkes, etc.

Geert Wilders is making the issue of the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, a major campaign issue in the upcoming local and national elections in the Netherlands. Hostility to the headscarf as a symbol of totalitarianism in general and the oppression of women in particular is not a new phenomenon either in Europe or elsewhere. Both Turkey and Tunisia have laws against the wearing of the hijab because of it's connection to "political" Islam which seeks to establish totalitarian theocracies in those countries (and everywhere else on earth). Morroco has no such laws, but there is strong social pressure against the hijab in that country.

Some people insist that the headscarf not be singled out, in the belief that it would be more "fair" to ban all overtly religious clothing or symbolism. This would mean prohibiting the wearing of a Christian cross or a Yarmulke, as well as all other religious symbols.

But opposition to the headscarf has nothing to do with "religious symbols" in the abstract. The hijab is seen, and rightly so, as something that is imposed on women, and, thereby, on society as a whole. It is symbolic of the, at best, second class status of women in societes dominated by Islam. In many parts of the Islamic world wearing the hijab is either enforced by law, or there is intense (and often violent) social pressure applied to women to wear it.

Unfortunately, Wilders has chosen to make this a case of "our" religious traditions versus "theirs." He states that the wearing of Christian and Jewish symbols is OK "because those are symbols of religions that belong to our own culture." In the same breath Wilders says, quite rightly, "get rid of that woman-humiliating Islamic symbol," and also that the headscarf is "a sign of an oppressive totalitarian ideology."

Why is it that Wilders cannot stick to a principled position of opposing the headscarf as a symbol of oppression? Oppression is not dangerous because it is "foreign." The West also has "our own" home-grown totalitarian ideologies, such as Nazism and Communism, and these should be no more welcome to "us" than Islam. And what about other "foriegn" religions such as Hinduism, or even symbols from "indigenous", but non-"Judeo-Christian" religions, such as Thor's Hammers and Pentagrams (both of which have impeccable European pedigrees)?

The only way to make a consistent and principled argument on this issues is to scrupulously avoid even the hint of the appearance of xenophobia. Wilders proudly claims that he has nothing whatsoever to do with racists like Le Pen and the British National Party. But the fact is that he appears to be appealing to many of the same sentiments that openly xenophobic rightists have relied upon for decades in Europe.

We do not need lists of accepted versus banned religious clothing and symbols. Obviously a truly free society, or even one that honestly aspires to that, cannot engage in such an exercise. The general rule in a free society must be that people are free to wear what they want! Personally I think that the hijab is a special case, and it should be treated as such.

It should be emphasized that the "ban" that Wilders wants to impose only applies to people who are paid with public funds, while they are performing their public duties, and even that is to be left to local governments to decide on their own: "a ban on headscarves in municipal bodies and all other institutions, foundations, or associations, if they receive even one penny of subsidy from the municipality." This is similar to other "headscarf bans" either already enacted or under consideration in other places in Europe.

As a not-so-gentle reminder of why it would be better to restrict "Islamic dress" for women sooner rather than later, two people were killed and dozens were injured when riots broke out in the Indian state of Karnataka earlier this week. The cause? A local magazine published a Kannada language translation of an article by Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, titled Let's Think Again About the Burqa. Nasreen, who describes herself as "a physician, writer, feminist, human rights activist and secular humanist", wrote the following:

The custom of purdah [literally "curtain"] is not new. It dates back to 300 BC. The women of aristocratic Assyrian families used purdah. Ordinary women and prostitutes were not allowed purdah.

In the middle ages, even Anglo-Saxon women used to cover their hair and chin and hide their faces behind a cloth or similar object. This purdah system was obviously not religious. The religious purdah is used by Catholic nuns and Mormons, though for the latter only during religious ceremonies and rituals. For Muslim women, however, such religious purdah is not limited to specific rituals but mandatory for their daily life outside the purview of religion . . . .

If the Quran advises women to use purdah, should they do so? My answer is, No. Irrespective of which book says it, which person advises, whoever commands, women should not have purdah. No veil, no chador, no hijab, no burqa, no headscarf. Women should not use any of these things because all these are instruments of disrespect. These are symbols of women's oppression. Through them, women are told that they are but the property of men, objects for their use. These coverings are used to keep women passive and submissive . . . .

Covering a woman's head means covering her brain and ensuring that it doesn't work. If women's brains worked properly, they'd have long ago thrown off these veils and burqas imposed on them by a religious and patriarchal regime.

What should women do? They should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.

[This image and the one at the very top of this post are both from stylecovered.com.]

Carnival: The Beat Goes On

By the 15th century, Carnival in the Italian city of Florence was already a time honored tradition. The city itself was ancient, having been a thriving commercial center during Pagan (Roman) times, as one of the most important cities in northern Etruria.

Although there are obvious Pagan influences, as a Christian holiday the celebration of Carnival in Italy obviously does not go back to Pagan Roman times. Evidence for Carnival does go back at least to the 12th century in Venice, although the first recorded use of the designation "Carnival" is from a little later, in a document dated 1268. Predictably this document was a law written specifically to regulate the activities of the Carnival revelers. Over the centuries such laws provide much of the historical evidence pertaining to Carnival, and that, in itself, tells us a great deal about the nature of this holiday!

But as the century of the Italian Renaissance drew to close, there was a new sheriff in town in Florence. In 1494 Girolamo Savonarola, with a little help from the King of France, overthrew the Medici family and established a "Christian Republic", with himself as it's leader. One of Savonarola's first acts was to increase the punishment for sodomy from the payment of a fine to the forfeit of one's life.

In addition to sodomy, Savonarola also sought to put an end to the frivolity, merry-making and law-breaking that had come to be associated with Carnival. But it should be remembered, though, that Carnival was then, as it is now, much more than just an excuse for lewd behavior and loud partying. It was also an extravagant outpouring of artistic creativity in the form of music, poetry and the visual arts. And it was also an extremely important commercial enterprise!

Florence's new leader wanted to replace all that merrymaking, artistry and money-grubbing with something completely different. Instead of rioutous nocturnal spectacles, Savonarola organized somber processions of boys, dressed in white. These boys went door to door collecting the "vanities" of the good people of Florence. These could be anything associated with moral degeneracy: books on philosophy and science, paintings and sculptures representing mythological themes, editions of Homer and Cicero and other Pagan authors, games of any kind, musical instruments, colorful clothing, perfume, make-up, anything whatsoever that might give pleasure to mind or body.

The word "vanity" comes from the latin "vanitas", which means "emptiness". Savonarola wanted to impress on the citizens of his Christian Republic that these "vanities" are indeed empty of all real value. And what better way to do that than to gather these items together, and set them on fire.

Thank the Gods, Savonarola's rule in Florence did not last long. By 1498 he was dead. In an interesting twist of fate, he was actually burned as a heretic, on order of the Pope, and in the same spot as his own infamous "Bonfire of the Vanities".

Marsilio Ficino wrote a brief essay, Contra Savonarolam, in which he attempted to explain how this madman had come to power, and, in particular, how he had come to enjoy the support of many Florentines. Ficino's answer was simple: Savonarola "had deceived so many otherwise clever and erudite Florentine men for nearly a full five years", but in fact the deception had been the work of "no mortal man, but the most crafty demon, and not a single demon, but a demonic horde." Ficino reiterated this: "Florentines, exceedingly unfortunate especially at this time, have been clandestinely besieged and seduced by a strong horde of demons under an angelic mask." [Quotes from Selected Writings of Girolama Savonarola, ed. Bebe, Borrelli, Passaro, p. 355]

Below are some nice collections of Carnival photos, mostly from Brazil, that others have very thoughtfully place online to hasten and abet our moral corruption:

Boston Globe's pics from 2010 Carnival
Anh Dep's photos from 2009
Colourlovers' 2008 pics
SeLuSaVa's photostream of 2007 Carnival pics

"Christians cannot vote for Geert Wilders"

Despite the fact that Geert Wilders is constantly sucking up to the Christians, Church leaders in the Netherlands are not reciprocating. Fully 75% of Dutch ministers and church workers not only oppose Wilders, but say bluntly that "a Christian cannot vote for" him or his party, according to a poll of a cross-section of Protestant denominations (as reported at the DutchNews.nl website).

Wilders' chumminess with "Judeo-Christians" is one of the primary ways in which he reveals that he is not a true libertarian. While absolutely defending complete freedom of religion, genuine libertarianism is uncompromisingly hostile to both Protestantism and Catholicism, because regardless of whether Jesus is on or off the cross, the Church is among the deadliest foes of individual liberty.

Wilders has obviously been studying American "Libertarians", like Bob Barr. Barr is a past champion of the War On Drugs and the Patriot Act, a man who believes that extramarital oral-sex during working hours is an act of treason, and who has recently had difficulty deciding whether or not the first amendment applies to non-monotheists. At the same time he has been trying to pass himself off as a standard bearer of libertarianism, or at least of the party that bears the name "Libertarian."

You see, like better sex, "liberty" is one of those things that everyone is for, or at least claims to be for. But principled libertarianism, or anything even remotely resembling it, has very little to do with modern party politics in the U.S. Not too long ago, though, there seemed to be some hope that this might not be the case in the Netherlands. Pim Fortuyn, for example, combined his criticism of Islam with a libertarianism that was far more consistent than Wilders'.

For example, Fortuyn supported such traditional Dutch values as legalization of recreational drugs and prostitution, and, more generally (and like a good libertarian) opposed any criminalization of "victimless crimes" or any other kind of government interference in how people choose to lead their lives. This was not only a matter of principle for Fortuyn, but it was also in line with his own libertine lifestyle which was often described as "flashy", or even "flamboyant."

Fortuyn was an openly gay man, and he will always be remembered for his command performance during a nationally televised debate with a radical Muslim cleric in 2002, just months before his assassination, when he baited the Imam by flaunting his homosexuality until the cleric finally exploded in a torrent of anti-gay abuse. Fortuyn then calmly turned to the camera and, addressing the viewers directly (he was also extremely telegenic), told them that this is the kind of Trojan horse of intolerance the Dutch are inviting into their society in the name of "multiculturalism."

[That gorgeous portrait of Pim Fortuyn is by the extraordinary Dutch artist Jean Thomassen.]

A Dutch woman among the throngs of mourners outside Fortuyn's house the day after his assassination proudly pointed to her "well exposed cleavage" and told a BBC reporter, "I want to be free to walk around like this. But they come up to me [Muslim immigrants] and swear at me or even spit at me."

But Wilders is no Fortuyn. In fact, Wilders sounds just like a southern Republican when he talks about "law and order" -- he even supports adoption of draconian sentencing "guidelines" like those that have already turned the US into a literal police-state. And naturally he wants to close the coffee-shops and wage "war on drugs."

But most troublesome of all is Wilders incessant invocation of "Judeo-Christianity," which he claims must be defended against Islam along with "Humanism." Of course the rights of Christians to worship freely are menaced by Islam -- just ask any Christian living anywhere in the world in a Muslim majority culture! But it is an obscentiy to give credit to Christianity for the relative freedom that is now enjoyed in the West. But that is exactly what Wilders does. It ridiculous for people who love individual freedom to make common cause with Christians against Islam: in an ideal world they could be allowed to fight each other until they either come to their senses or they have "extirpated" each other into oblivion.

Wilders routinely declares that freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and individual liberty in general are (1) "European", (2) "Western", (3) "Judeo-Christian", (4) "our", and (5) "Humanist" values. But this is actually very reminiscent of that famed Sesame Street routine: "One of these things (is not like the others)." Europe, including Western Europe, has for nearly all of it's history been ruled by totalitarian states, usually Christian theocracies. "Humanism", on the other hand, was an intellectual movement of the Renaissance that can reasonably be seen as a precursor to modern liberal and/or libertarian conceptions of individualism and freedom.

But those who have fought for the rights of the individual over the last 500 years of modern, western history, have always been opposed by the Church -- both Catholic and Protestant alike. For example, the now famed Statue of Virginia for Religious Freedom (authored by Thomas Jefferson and also strongly supported by his friend James Madison) was opposed by Anglicans, Congregationalists, and other Protestants in Virginia who nearly defeated it. And one of the leaders of that alliance of good Christians was none other than Patrick Henry!

The Christians of Virginia wanted to "establish" approved Protestant denominations who would be officially recognized, and subsidized, by the State! This was the status that Anglicans and Congregationalists had enjoyed, under British law, prior to the Revolution. (It might also be worth noting that Jefferson, Madison and Henry were all slave owners.)

And European totalitarianism is hardly a thing of the far distant past. All of continental Europe lay in the grip of Stalin and Hitler just eight decades ago. And European nations (other than the USSR) prior to WWII were still unabashedly Christian nations where non-Christians were treated little better than non-Muslims are treated today in Muslim countries, and where anti-Semitism and "scientific racism" were virulent, and unchecked, psychic cancers. And these same European "Great Powers", had also savagely conquered and subjugated nearly the entire inhabited world with their colonialism.

So let "us" not be too self-congratulatory about how free "we" and our "values" are. Freedom should be cherished, but so must the truth. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is no friend of mine at all.

We can learn something from those Dutch Protestant leaders who want nothing to do with Wilders. If freedom is really part of "our" values, then why don't those good Christians oppose the very real threat posed by Islam? Perhaps the idea of holding a religion responsible for a consistent track record, up to the present day, of violence and intolerance just makes them nervous?

Wilders is absolutely correct in his criticism of Islam, including his characterization of it as fascistic. And Wilders is not a far-rightist, let alone a neo-nazi or some kind of fascist himself. He strongly supports gay rights and women's rights. As was often said of Pim Fortuyn, it's accurate to say that Wilders is to the left of many members of the US Democratic Party! Not that that is saying much.

But Wilders, apparently out of a combination of his desire for political success and a lack of understanding of Western history, has decided that while Islam is an enemy of freedom, Christianity is on the side of freedom. For now I don't think that this makes Wilders himself an enemy of freedom, but it does make him an extremely unreliable friend.

Secret knowledge, sacred knowledge

"Secrets are to religion what lingerie is to the body."

The verb secrete can denote either "to hide" or "to release." Both derive from the Latin root of se-cernere, to sift apart or to distinguish. Secrets are not buried far from the sacred, etymologically or otherwise, since the value of both lies in their qualities of being set apart, distinguished and defended from the everyday. To view religion in light of the secret entails, among other things, dividing the set-apart quality of the sacred into two distinct movements. The first movement is hiding, the act of classification that removes something or someone from obvious and banal evidence, the act of restricting its flow. The second movement is release, the rare and fragmentary revelation of a secret, its return to circulation. The return is not usually of the secret as substantive information. More typically, revelations are about the secret, words and acts hinting that it exists and is near and powerful in spite of its invisibility, "that which is not said even though it gets around" [quoted from Baudrillard's On Seduction] . . . .

To hide and to unveil, to contain and release -- this is the rhythm of secrets and also of the sacred. Without secrets, religion becomes unimaginable. For religion is in its cultural sense a technology of periodic human access to extraordinary powers, which generally remain concealed, and in its social sense a group of people who share such a technology and exercise it. If it is true, however, that all religions seek human relations with generally mysterious powers, which are revealed only in intermittent staccato bursts punctuating everyday experience, it is not true that all religions embrace secrecy and secretism as fundamental tools in their cultural repertoire and basic social form, nor do all historical contexts equally evoke secrecy as a defense against outside intrusion. Consider the tendency in most forms of Protestant Christianity, where there is no developed language of secrecy at all. God is transparent, revealed, even historically present in person and in text, "fully human, fully divine." One finds no developed ritualization of secrecy, little initiatory fencing off of those inside from everyman, and neither strong taboos nor sanctions guarding against disclosure. Despite the biblical injunction to "pray in secret" instead of for public glorification, in practice congregants are enjoined to make the religion as publicly conspicuous as possible, to "bear witness" in every word and deed so that as much of civic life as possible might be conformed to the religious mold. In theory, at least, there is no priviledged Protestant information, and all share equally the benefits and burdens of proximity to religious powers.

It is hard to imagine a religion less like this than Brazilian Candomble. Here the techniques of wresting power from the Gods (Orixas) are secret, foundational matters (fundamentos) guarded behind layers of graded initiations and strict hierarchies marking off those possessing the knowledge of fundamentos from those who do not. Here the reputation of knowing the deepest, most authentically African secrets is a hotly contested, fast-trading form of prestige, highly dependent on a consensus of pratitioners and networks of gossip along the channels of the informal "Yoruba post" (correio nago). To gain and keep the reputation of deep knowledge, priests and priestesses must be able to advertise it. They must master the art of flirtation, of accenting the contours of what remains concealed.

There is, then, an unspoken exchange between exhibition and voyeurism to secrecy. It is always socially constructed in a triangle composed of at least two confederates who are watched and envied by a desiring Third. Secrets are to religion what lingerie is to the body; they enhance what is imagined to be present. Even when the secret is known but unspoken, a "public secret", its allure is greater when veiled by shimmering textures. It is this capacity for dissimulation, the fact of a possible disjunction between the reputation and the reality, that renders secrecy a suspect force.
[Paul Christopher Johnson, Secret, Gossip and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomble, pp. 3-4]

Paul Christopher Johnson (on the Anthropology and History faculty at U Mich, and a 2008 Gugenheim Fellow) spent several years doing field research on the Afro-Caribbean religion called Candomble, which is primarily based in Brazil. Greg Downey (Historian, U Wisc-Mad) writing in the journal History of Religions, wrote of Johnson's Secret, Gossip and Gods that "A reader interested in learning about Candomble would be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive yet deftly written introduction to the religion and to the intellectual debates that surround it ...."

During his field work, Johnson was frequently urged, by those he was studying, to be initiated into the religion so that he could see it from the inside, so to speak. One priestess in particular, whom Johnson refers to as "Mother B.", pushed Johnson to undergo the secret initiation ceremonies, despite Johnson's insistence that he did not believe in the Orixas: "While she found that utterly absurd, she found it equally trivial and always reassured me that it did not matter in the least. 'The question is whether you perform the rituals, not whether you believe in them.'"

But Johnson did eventually accept the repeated invitations and took initiation from Mother B., becoming one of the hundreds of filhos de Santo under her spiritual direction. Many of these "children of the Saints" live together in Mother B.'s terreiro, which Johnson describes as a "powerful, genuinely African place" in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro.

Johnson (above) does an excellent job of very succinctly communicating the suffocating psychic limitations of the "Protestant" world view, which literally (if that is the right word) makes religion "inconceivable". This "inconceivability" of genuine experiential religion is what creates the proportionately intense longing for spiritual experience in the modern Western soul. As Socrates explains so eloquently in Plato's Symposium, one only desires what lies beyond one's reach.

Many people have incorrectly interpreted words like those of Mother B.'s (to the effect that it is only necessary to perform the rituals, not to believe in the Orixas) to indicate that "primitive" or "pagan" religions are orthopraxic as opposed to orthodoxic, that is, that in these supposedly un-philosophical, pre-civilizational religions there are no beliefs or ideas worth bothering with, just the mindless performance of rituals.

But you see, Mother B. was not really telling Johnson the truth, or at least not the whole truth. Instead, she was seducing him -- and not in some po-mo lit-crit baudrillardian sense, but in the old-fashioned, everyday meaning of the word. She was carefully choosing her words to overcome his resistance: so she "reassured" him that his concerns were baseless, his hesitation unwarranted, his fears "utterly absurd."

There can be no doubt that Mother B. genuinely believes in the Orixas, so there is no use trying to argue that her Candomble does not involve belief, i.e., that it is purely "orthopraxic." But then why does she insist that Johnson need not believe, and need only perform the rituals? Johnson actually explains this quite nicely further on in the book:

In their ideal form, which only moderately constrains actual practice, fundamentos are not to be known about, knowledge gained through books, but to be known through, learned through practice. It is the doing, not the knowing, of secrets which is the key. Only through long ritual apprenticeship, and especially through progressive initiations, can this ideal form of knowledge be gained. During these years it is not transmitted by the answering of questions, but rather by attentive observation and memory of the surroundings as one enters more restricted places and groups within the terreio and its hierarchy. Hence in the Candomble conception of learning there is an implicit geography. As an adept moves along the initiatory path, he arrives nearer to knowledge (saber) real fundamentos. Spatially he moves closer to the center of the terreio, into the most secretive rooms, where initiates heads are made, and where Orixas are dispatched from possessed bodies. In the metaphoric time-space of secrecy he moves back in time toward the ancestors and, ultimately, the creation of the world and the adventures of the Orixas; across the sea toward Africa; and deeper, down through the layers toward a more genuine, solid foundation. By mastering fundamentos, plural, he arrives ultimately at the possession of fundamento, "having foundation", in the singular.
[pp. 31-32]

Fela Kuti and traditional African religion

Of the 2 billion Christians currently inhabiting planet earth, one quarter of them live in Africa. That was not the case just a century ago, when less than 5% of the African population was Christian, a statistic that had changed little for over a thousand years. At the end of the 19th century, about half of Africa's population still followed the old spiritual traditions of their ancestors, while most of the rest were descended from those who had been forcibly converted to Christianity in the 4th century only to be forcibly converted to Islam in the 8th century.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries brought European colonialism to Africa. Christian missionaries played a vital role in the subjugation of the Dark Continent, and the result was the greatest expansion of Christianity since the genocidal conquest of the Americas.

Fela Kuti was born into a well-off middle class Nigerian Christian family in 1938. According to his 1997 obituary in the Independent newspaper of London "Kuti's father and grandfather were both eminent Christian churchmen and liturgical composers, and his mother was a pioneering African feminist, the first female holder of a Nigerian driving licence." His family sent him to the UK to study, and he received a "classical" musical education at Trinity College in London.

While in London, Kuti and some college friends formed a band (he also became friends with Ginger Baker). After graduation, Fela and his band went to the United States to seek fame and fortune. They found neither. But the band managed to stay together and they finally found steady work in Los Angeles, where Kuti met and fell in love with Sandra Smith, a member of the Black Panther Party.

The British had done their best to instill a deep sense of self-loathing in their colonial subjects in places like Nigeria and India. The goal of the Brits was to turn their colonial subjects against themselves, to convince them that their own cultures were worthless, and that their only hope lay in becoming good Christians with proper, western-style educations. Kuti's family had apparently been text-book examples of the results.

Of course the white Christians of the West were superior to the idolatrous savages of Africa. What more proof could one want of this than the undeniable power and wealth of the British and the other nations of the West? But in the late 60's people were questioning many things that had previously been accepted unthinkingly.

In America, Kuti met Black people, like Sandra Smith, who were proud to be Black, rather than ashamed of their supposed inferiority. This not only influenced Kuti's political views, it energized his music in a way that still resonates powerfully nearly half a century later.

"It was incredible how my head was turned," Kuti told the New York Times in 1987. "Everything fell into place. For the first time, I saw the essence of blackism. It's crazy; in the States people think the black power movement drew inspiration from Africa. All these Americans come over here looking for awareness, they don't realize they're the ones who've got it over there. We were even ashamed to go around in national dress until we saw pictures of blacks wearing dashikis on 125th street."

"I wasn't aware I was sending him," says a proudly reflective Sandra (Smith) Isadore. "I was being myself and so happy that I had met an urban African. I was trying to get to my roots in 1969. In my own mind, they (Africans) didn't have a struggle. It came to me as a surprise when I was in Nigeria [in 76] and Fela gave me this credit, cause I had not given the credit to myself."

[The quotes from Fela Kuti and Sandra Smith in the above two paragraphs are from Carter van Pelt's 1997 Africaman Original.]

At the same time, Kuti also experienced a genuine spiritual awakening that resulted in his rejecting the Christianity of his parents, and their parents, which had been adopted by them as part and parcel of their colonial subjugation.

On the subject of religion, here is one of Fela's son's, Femi Kuti, in a 2005 interview in Ntama, the "Journal of African Music and Popular Culture":

Idiots - my great grand father died looking for Jesus. My grandfather died. Jesus didn’t come. Well, my father said he was wise and that he is not going to wait until Jesus will come. And he too is dead. If I look at both of them I take my father being the wisest.

The following is from an interview with Seun Kuti, another of Fela's sons, done by Banning Eyre, Sean Barlow, and Matt Payne of afropop.org. The interview was done in December 2009, while Seun was in New York City to see the the Broadway play FELA!, based on his father's life and music:

S.B.: One more thing I am interested in… In the play, when Fela was going to seek guidance about big decisions, he talked to the Orishas, the Yoruba deities. I am curious about how that resonates with Nigerians in general. Are they both Christian or Muslim and traditional? There is a line Fela has in the play…” What did the British bring to Nigeria? Gonorrhea and Jesus Christ.” When I heard that, I said, “Well, there goes the Baptist audience for this show.” [Laughs]. You were just talking about how there are churches instead of farms in rural Nigeria today. So what is the dynamic between Christianity and traditional African religion in Nigeria now?

S.K.: Well, you know, the churches are so powerful in Nigeria. These men all have private jets. They live like monarchs. They are all kings as well, in the name of God. They have kicked out the Catholics. Not kicked them out. The Catholics are still there. But these Pentecostal pastors, they have stolen all of their customers. I don’t call them a congregation. They are all “customers,” because they are paying money to these men. God. You know, God can do everything: heal the sick and move mountains. But he just can’t make money. Incredible. This guy gets by. But the main thing about Africa is that most people are in poverty. When you are poor, you are easily influenced. Everybody that is poor only wants to come up. And most of these pastors are also painting pictures of, “Okay, I was poor before the Lord came into my life. I live my life righteously and look at me today.” The part of it that he is leaving out of the story is, “Look at me today. I am just here telling you all of this while you are putting your money in my pocket. And I am getting rich.” So, Africans are religious. Most people actually don’t relate to Fela in Africa because he is not a Christian or a Muslim. And he is telling them that this is wrong.

B.E.: That’s pretty radical.

S.K.: Yeah. And these men are easily able to turn that and use it as a way to say, “If he is a good man, how come he does not believe in God? In our white God?” So that is how most people pushed off his message in Africa. But at the same time, even more people realized that he is the genuine thing, and respect us for that.

B.E.: We have been doing some research on the Nollywood film industry recently. And I realized that a lot of those films are made by the Pentecostal churches and funded by them. They seem to put African traditional music and religion in a very bad light.

S.K.: In a bad light? Yeah, of course.

B.E.: That was kind of shocking to me, actually.

S.K.: You were able to investigate that, man? That is cool because I have been trying to tell people for years that. “Why do you think all of the movies in Nigeria are about churches?” Every time somebody will be suffering because somebody is doing juju, the bad African gods. Then Jesus Christ comes at the end and sets them free. It is crazy. Absolute bull***t. Ninety-eight percent of all the movies have that story line. Trust me.

Upon his return to Nigeria in 1970, Kuti established his own nightclub/commune in Lagos which he first called the Kalakuta Republic and later called The Shrine. In Kuti's mind this club was nothing short of the Headquarters of the Revolution. One observer described the club like this:

It was incredible. It was packed with people. It reminded me of the communal rock vibe in the sixties. It was more than just a musical show. It was genuinely an alternative scene. You had this open air club with a couple of levels to it. Hemp smoke was thick in the air -- flags from all the African nations ringing the courtyard. You had the stage with Africa 70, which was just a pretty awesome spectacle. It would just go on for hours, generally until dawn. There were raised platforms with young women gyrating, almost like go-go platforms. There was a real sense of rapport between Fela and the people in the audience. "Before the performance there would be a ceremony, a libation to the ancestors and sort of a consecration. That's why he called it The Shrine. He would come out with a cigarette or a spliff in his hand and stroll around and talk for twenty or thirty minutes about whatever was going on at that time -- the latest police attack or something the government was doing, anything that was on his mind. Then a small boy would run up with his saxophone, and he would play a solo and then someone else would solo. Then Fela would go over to the keyboards and play there for a while. Then he would take the mike and go into the main melody of the song with a lot of call and response. A typical song would be like forty-five minutes or an hour.
[Randall Grass describing The Shrine, quoted in Carter Van Pelt's Africaman Original]

The Nigerian government took Fela Kuti's revoluationary aspirations very seriously, and The Shrine was subjected to ever more violent police "raids". In 1977, just a year after Randall Grass' visit, described above, Kuti's mother was killed during one raid: she was thrown out of a second floor window by soldiers, and died soon thereafter from her injuries.

Kuti was devastated by the murder of his mother. But if anything it reinforced both his hatred of the government and his embrace of traditional spirituality.

Fela Kuti was Yoruba, and the spirituality that he in part rediscovered and in part invented was both pan-African and at the same time heavily influenced by traditional Yoruba religion. In his biography Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon, Michael Veal relates the following

As much as Fela embraced a Pan-African cultural vision, he tended to draw on icons of his own Yoruba culture for inspiration. In songs such as "Just Like That" and "Give Me Shit, I Give You Shit" he chanted the names of of the mythical Yoruba figures like Oranyan, Orompota, and Oranmiyan. In his own twist on Yoruba Orisha worship, he installed a photograph of his mother on the new Shrine's altar, giving her the name Afa Ojo (She Who Commands Rain) and pouring libations to her along with the other Pan-African heroes making up his pantheon. Fela's occasional lack of distinction betweent the local, national, and continental elements reflects the essentialist tendency in his postcolonial effort to forge a Pan-Africanist identity. The elevation of his mother to Osisha status reflects a systematic personalization and hybridization common in postcolonial African religion; he took this liberty although he was not a traditional priest or adherent in any sense of the term.

Another major theme to emerge in Fela's work during the early 1980's was his espousal of traditional forms of knowledge. In his view, one of the major crimes of African leadership was its reluctance to explore this area, remaining instead dependent on imposed Western forms of expression, thought, and technology. Fela did not explore this theme much in his songs, but it was central to the university lectures he gave between 1979 and 1981, in which, in addition to preaching Pan-Africanism, he extolled the values of naturalism, herbalism, and "African science." Essentially, he was advocating a form of science that operated in harmony with nature and drew on indigenous traditions to create a distinctly African technology. In Fela's view, Western culture was too dependent on a technology that degraded the environment and thus was unsustainable. An African variant could offer a more natural alternative. On the university lecture circuit or on stage in yabis sessions, Fela regularly criticized the government's suppression of research into herbal medicine and other aspects of traditional culture.
[p.176]

Fela Kuti was imprisoned for 20 months from 1985 to 1986. His musical output was less during the 1990's and he was obviously in increasingly ill health. He died in 1997, from HIV/AIDS. One million people attended his funeral at the old Shrine compound in Lagos.

Also see: Heart of Darkness:
Part One: "By This Sign We Prosper"
Part Two: Christian Demographics Fun Facts
Part Three: Doing the Lord's Work In Rwanda
Part Four: Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from Rwanda
Part Five: Preparing the Way for Genocide in Rwanda