Honoring Our Pagan Ancestors

"Have you not received from the Gods the faculties
which will enable you to bear all that happens to you?
Have you not received greatness of spirit?
Have you not received courage?
Have you not received endurance?"
[Epictetus, Discourses (Λόγοι), I.6]

Hypatia, being led to her death by Christian thugs
(in the film Agora).

Some we know by name, like Hypatia, Arbogast, Widukind, Krum, and Hercus. But we will never know the names of the vast majority of those who resisted and fought, openly or covertly, with sword and spear, with pen and parchment, or simply with their individual stubbornness and their private prayers, against the relentless onslaught of coercive Christianization.

If it had not been for those Pagans who stood their ground, who fought back, and who even when defeated continued to plot the next revolt, then there would be no point in modern Paganism at all. If our religious traditions had not been worth fighting for at the first encounter with the dark fantasies and darker fanaticism of the early Christians, then these Pagan traditions would certainly not be worth our attention, much less our devotion, today.

But our traditions were worth fighting for, or at least they were to some, and we should celebrate those who chose to fight rather than tamely submit. It is our duty to ensure that their sacrifice is not simply remembered, but that it is honored. A living religion must renew itself generation after generation. And part of that process of perpetual renewal for modern Pagans is retelling the old tales of these great-spirited women and men who are our spiritual ancestors in the truest sense.

Romano-British Temple at Frilford, probably built in the late
2nd century AD. The Temple appears to have been enlarged
during the 4th century and to have been in use at least
until the early 5th century.

Britain, in particular, is a place where Heathenry has fought back more than once against the advance of Christianity, and not without effectiveness. And not only the people of Britain, but the very land itself appears to have resisted Christianization, for even when the souls of its human inhabitants were being harvested by the missionaries with waning resistance, fresh Heathen reinforcements would arrive on her shores, as if called forth by the sacred stones and forests themselves, now that they were being deprived of their rightful worship.

Already during the brief reign of Julian from 360 - 363 AD, there was "a resurgence of [Pagan] temple building in the rural areas" of Roman Britain, according to Dorothy Watts in her Christians and Pagans in Roman Britain [p.140]. Watts also notes that "the demise of some presumed [Christian] churches coincides with this revival of Paganism."

In addition to the reign of Julian, there was the later rebellion of Eugenius and Arbogast in the Western provinces from 392-394, and in her Religion in late Roman Britain: forces of change, Dorothy Watts writes that the "Pagan Revival of the Fourth Century" (the title of Chapter Two of that book), of which Julian and Arbogast are the leading lights, was able "to slow down the spread of Christianity in Britain and weaken the Church to the extent that it barely survived in the following two centuries." [p. 23] Watts' opinion is that, as a general rule, the tide of Christianization was "irreversible", but that Britain was the exception: "There the survival of the Christian faith was not guaranteed." [p. 37] In fact, Britain was the only one of the so-called successor states in which there was a large-scale reversion to Paganism after the "fall" of the Roman Empire in the west.

What remained of British Christianity after the Pagan resurgence of the late 4th century suffered an even greater blow than those delivered by Julian and Arbogast with the influx of large numbers of Heathen Anglo-Saxons during the 5th and 6th centuries. But then, like the Celtic Britons before them, the Anglo-Saxons began to be converted starting at the end of the 6th century, and by the end of the 7th century Christianity once again dominated Britain.

Frankish expansionism, 481 - 814 AD.

But while the Anglo-Saxon Heathens were restoring the worship of the Gods to large parts of Britain in the 5th century, Christianity was on the march to the south. Clovis I (466-511) unified the Franks, converted to Catholicism, and by the time of his death had extended his rule over much of Gaul. After that, the Franks continued to expand their overall territory, although the fragile political unity that Clovis had achieved was lost until the rise of the Carolingians.

Charles Martel once again unified the Franks under a single ruler in 718, although Pepin the Short was the first to openly proclaim himself King of the Franks, the title he held from 751 until his death in 768, when he was succeeded by his two sons, Charlemagne and Carloman. The latter died just three years later, after which Charlemagne ruled alone.

The significance of a politically unified and constantly expanding Frankish imperial state that was not merely Christian, and not even merely Catholic, but which was closely allied with the Papacy, cannot be over-emphasized. Indeed, the so-called Carolingian period (beginning with Charles Martel) ushers in the era of the modern nation-state, and, in particular, the Western European nation-states which would, over the course of the next one thousand years, come to literally rule the world, while spreading their own distinctly European version of Christianity. But first, the Christian Franks had to fight their way through the Heathen Saxons.

Which brings us to 772, when, after repeated attempts by him and his father before him, Charlemagne finally succeeded in capturing and destroying the holy site of the Continental Saxons known as Irminsul. Despite this blow, the Saxons fought on. Then in 782 Charlemagne perpetrated the infamous Verden massacre, in which 4,500 Saxon warriors who had surrendered and laid down their weapons were first baptized, and then beheaded. This was followed by the enactment of the Capitulare de partibus Saxonie, "which imposed the death penalty on anyone who offended the Christian religion and its clergy, and in reality it constituted a program for the forced conversion of the Saxons." [see here for sourcing and more]

In 785, Widukind, the war-leader of the Saxon Heathens, finally capitulated and submitted to baptism. But then in 793 the Saxons rose up in revolt once more. They burned churches, massacred priests, and organized new fighting units based deep in the sheltering forests.

"Or should they fight to defend their culture?"

Widukind the Saxon had had close relations with the Heathen Danes to his north (indeed, the Saxons probably had formal political ties with the highly organized Danes). More than once during the fierce Saxon resistance to Charlemagne, Widukind and others were given refuge by the Danes. The Saxon war-leader was also married to a Danish noble-woman, Geva Siegfriedsdottir, the sister of Siegfried the Dane.

Robert Ferguson, author of the 2009 book The Vikings: A History (published in the UK under the title The Hammer and the Cross), believes that there is a very real connection between Charlemagne's fondness for spreading the Gospel at the point of a spear, and the sudden emergence out of Scandinavia of a strange new variety of Pagan warrior at the end of the 8th century: the Viking.

Ferguson has characterized Charlemagne's war against the Saxons as "ethnic cleansing", and notes that the Danes were well aware of such incidents as the Verden massacre. In Ferguson's opinion, the Danes could have been in no doubt that they could look forward to the same treatment, and on behalf of those ancient Danish Heathens, Ferguson poses the very pointed questions: "Should the Vikings simply wait for Charlemagne's armies to arrive and set about the task? Or should they fight to defend their culture?" But the Danes weren't stupid, so instead of launching a frontal assault on the one unified, militarily powerful, Christian state in western Europe, they attacked elsewhere, and, in particular, they payed special attention to Britain. (Go here to listen to Ferguson explain all this in much greater depth in his own words, or, better yet, get his book and read it!)

I agree with Ferguson that it was no coincidence that as the Saxons, despite their ongoing, ferocious resistance (a resistance that would well outlast Charlemagne, as the Stellinga uprising of 841-845 attests), were being beaten into submission by the Christian Franks, the world witnessed the beginning of the Viking Age, during which British Christendom would, at least for a while, be rocked back on its heels yet again. Indeed, there would still be Heathenish Vikings in the British Isles who refused to convert to Christianity for at least two centuries after the fattened monks of Lindisfarne got their first taste of Danish steel in 793. And in the Scandinavian heartland, at least some Heathens were still stubbornly persisting in worshipping their old Gods into the 13th century.

As Winston Churchill said to his fellow inhabitants of the British Isles (and to the world), during the darkest days of the Nazi advance across the European continent, "Nations that go down fighting shall rise up again; those that surrender tamely are finished." The season of Samhain should be, or so it seems to me, a time when Pagan hearts and minds turn to those Heroes -- in the true, original, Pagan sense of the word -- who refused to abandon their Gods (the same Gods still worshipped by Pagans today). Those women and men of old stood and fought because they possessed and put to good use those precious gifts of the Gods that the philosopher-slave Epictetus spoke of: greatness of spirit, courage, and endurance. The Christians were able to break their bodies, just as they smashed their idols, destroyed their temples, cut down their sacred groves, etc. But the Christians could not overcome, indeed they could not touch, the indomitable Spirit of our Pagan ancestors. And because they went down fighting, in truth Paganism has never been vanquished. Ours is not a religion without a past, and, indeed, it is our past that makes us Pagan.

Also see the follow-up post specifically on Hypatia, and also: "Those that are most stubborn and unbending, She assails", which also discusses the Pagan resistance to Christianization.




[Parenthetical Epilogue: There are many who would like us to think that the Christianization of Europe, including Britain, was a relatively peaceful, and even a "tidy", process that met with little or no resistance. According to this view, Paganism put up no real resistance to Christianity for the simple reason that Pagans themselves felt they had nothing to defend, and, therefore, no reason to resist. Christianity was just so much newer and shinier, more progressive, more moral, more spiritual, more logical, and just better in every way.

And these days the old narrative of Christian Triumphalism is not only coming from those who openly and honestly identify themselves as religious propagandists. Many leading scholars specializing in the study of late antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Early Modern period, are committed to spreading the Good News that Paganism died long ago, peacefully in its sleep, and hasn't bothered anyone since. Even some "Pagan" "scholars" (both sets of quotation marks are necessary), starting with Ronald Hutton first and foremost, have also lent their voices to the choir singing the praises of Christianity's peaceful and irreversible triumph over the bad old Paganism of antiquity. But this is already far more attention than these modern day apologists for spiritual totalitarianism are worth!] .

Also see these posts on the Saxons:
Charlemagne
"A substantialy new Church was allied with a new political system."
Widukind and the Bielski Brothers
"Stridently opposed to abandoning the religion of their ancestors."
Widukind & the Saxon Resistance to Christianity

Ink, the film: it'll give you a good, old-fashioned mind blowing

Yeah, ok, I know, it's corny, but it's still true: these days it really is getting harder and harder to impress.

You've got movies with jaw-dropping 3-D special effects that cost more than WWII to make. You've got cute kittens, juggling otters, and incredible street performers on youtube. You've got prime-cut political spectacles like Christine O'Donnell, Rand Paul, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a nonstop parade of bizarreness coming out of North Korea that would be genuinely hysterical if it didn't scare the shit out of you. And 24 hours a day you've got pundits screaming at each other on cable, bloggers predicting the end of the world on teh interwebs, genuine economic catastrophes, terrorism, environmental disasters, sex scandals, new planets being discovered, The Military History Channel, and other assorted random relentless wtfage.

How the heck you gonna compete with all that? How do you even get freaking noticed? And, once noticed, how do you actually manage to do anything that is able to capture and hold the attention except at the crudest level of base instincts and feral emotionality?

And then along comes something like Ink. If you haven't seen it, don't worry, I'm not going to reveal what happens. But I will reveal this much: for the first portion of the movie you might find yourself wondering, alternatively: (1) what is happening?, (2) what just happened?, and (3) is anything going to happen? But you also will not be able to look away.

Just see it. OK?

Linkage:

• Official website.
• Official Ink Store.
• Interview with the makers of Ink.
• Wikipedia.
• Imdb.
• Rotten Tomatoes.

Positive receptions:

• Existence is Wonderful
• "Ink a smash hit with critics"
• Film Courage
• "Winans wows audience with Ink"

Movies I would put in the same exalted category as Ink:

• Waking Life
• Dersu Uzala
• Irma Vep
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Tideland
• Closetland
• The heart is a lonely hunter

..

Directed by	Jamin Winans
Produced by	Jamin Winans Executive Producer: Kiowa K. Winans Associate Producer: Laura Wright
Written by	Jamin Winans
Starring	Chris Kelly Quinn Hunchar Jessica Duffy
Music by	Jamin Winans
Cinematography	Jeff Pointer
Editing by	Jamin Winans
Studio	Double Edge Films
Distributed by	Double Edge Films
Release date(s)	United States January 23, 2009
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$250,000

Is Islam a Religion of Peace? Uh, no.

On October 6th Intelligence Squared hosted a debate on the proposition that "Islam is a religion of peace." Arguing in favor were Zeba Khan and Maajid Nawaz, arguing against were Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Douglas Murray.

Audience members were polled before and after the debate:

Before: 
41% FOR 
25% AGAINST 
34% UNDECIDED
.
After: 
36% FOR 
55% AGAINST 
9% UNDECIDED

The Intelligence Squared website has the complete debate video, the complete transcript, and also background information on the debate participants (you can also purchase a DVD of the debate for just 20 bucks).

Here are descriptions of each of the four panelists in the debate:

Debaters for the motion:

Zeba Khan is a writer and advocate for Muslim-American civic engagement. Born and raised in Ohio by devout Muslim parents, she attended Hebrew school for 9 years all while actively participating in her local Muslim community. In 2008, she launched Muslim-Americans for Obama, an online network to mobilize Muslim-American voters in support of the Obama presidential campaign. Since then, she continues to work on issues of Muslim-American civic engagement and was recognized for her work by the American Society for Muslim Advancement as a 2009 Muslim Leader of Tomorrow.
Maajid Nawaz is director of the Quilliam Foundation. Formerly, Nawaz served on the UK national leadership for the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), and was involved in HT for almost 14 years. He was a founding member of HT in Denmark and Pakistan and eventually served four years in an Egyptian prison as a “prisoner of conscience” adopted by Amnesty International. In prison, Maajid gradually began changing his views until finally renouncing the Islamist Ideology for traditional Islam and inclusive politics.

Debaters against the motion:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and raised a devout Muslim. She escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992 and served as a member of the Dutch parliament for 3 years. She has since become an active critic of fundamentalist Islam, an advocate for women's rights and a leader in the campaign to reform Islam, establishing the AHA Foundation in 2007.
Douglas Murray is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is also founder and director of the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), a non-partisan think-tank in Westminster, London, which focuses on radicalization and has published work on both Islamist and far-right extremism.

Victory! The Prosecution of Geert Wilders Implodes.

"I do not insult, I do not incite hate, I do not discriminate.
The only thing I do and will continue to do, is to speak the truth."
Geert Wilders

With a big hat tip to the Gates of Vienna blog!! (Also see their detailed updates to this story here, here, here, and here.)

For the last few days, the prosecutors in the free speech trial of Dutch politician Geert Wilders have been arguing for his acquittal on at least one of the counts against him. But now reports are coming out of the Netherlands saying that the prosecution is calling for his acquittal on all charges:

The Dutch Public Prosecutor has sought the acquittal of anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders on all three charges against him. Earlier this week, the prosecution asked for an acquittal for the charge of insulting Muslims and asked the judges not to award damages to the plaintiffs. Today, the prosecution asked for an acquittal on the two remaining charges: inciting hatred and discrimination.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Sources:
Dutch prosecutors seek acquittal of anti-Islam MP (Reuters)
Dutch prosecutor asks for acquittal of Wilders on all charges (Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

"Should Christians in the U.S. support African preachers?"

[I really don't want to editorialize too much about this. The backstory to the issues raised in this article is that Christianity owes its dominant position in Sub-Saharan Africa to European colonialism, and also to the economic and political domination of Africa by western, Christian nations, including, especially, the United States, throughout the post-colonial period. Also, and if nothing else, this article demonstrates just how powerful money is in the world of religion.]

Should Christians in the U.S. support African preachers?
ERIK TRYGGESTAD | The Christian Chronicle (link)

TUBUNGU, SWAZILAND - Christians in the U.S. who provide salaries for African preachers believe they are doing the right thing.

“But unknown to them, they’re slowly assassinating congregations,” Stanley Shereni says.

Shereni, a native of Zimbabwe, is in his third year at African Christian College in this tiny African kingdom. After a day of classes, he and two other students sit under a thatched-roof pavilion and share big dreams.

Shereni and Ruregerero Nyahore, another Zimbawean, want to launch a publication for churches in their home country, to inspire them to keep growing.

Zimbabweans “don’t just want entertainment,” Nyahore says. “They want something that can comfort them, counsel them and give them direction. I think that is … why we have come to further our education.”

But preachers here aren’t guaranteed a living. Moses K. Banda, a 22-year-old student from Malawi, says that almost no congregations in his homeland support full-time ministers. After graduation, preaching alone won’t pay his bills.

The same is true in Zimbabwe, a once-prosperous nation crippled by hyperinflation. People there “now need the Gospel more than ever,” Shereni says.

The three students could appeal to Christians in the U.S. for support. Many of their predecessors have. But, growing up in Churches of Christ, the students have seen foreign aid bless — and curse — the family of God in southern Africa.

When a preacher receives his salary from the U.S., he is tempted to answer only to the source of his support — not the African congregation he serves, Shereni says.

Without proper oversight, it also is easy for evangelists to falsify reports to their supporters.

“We are not saying, ‘Stop supporting us,’” he adds. Instead, he suggests that U.S. and African churches form project-driven partnerships that involve entire congregations.

“Members of the church are the stakeholders,” Nyahore says. “They have fascinating ideas that can help improve the church. But, because they don’t have access to communication with some people who can help, they go nowhere.”

WHEN THE BOSS IS OVERSEAS

In the past century, mission efforts and Bible correspondence programs have yielded thousands of baptisms in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, the continent is home to more Churches of Christ than the U.S.

In such a Christian-rich environment, hiring local evangelists makes more financial sense to many U.S. churches than sending missionaries — especially in the midst of an economic downturn. Supporting African ministers also helps alleviate poverty.

“If you can’t eat, you can’t tell the people that God is able (while) you are suffering,” said Julius Mwambu, an evangelist in Mombasa, Kenya. Mwambu receives support from the U.S., but it is funneled through a ministry overseen by Kenyans.

Across the continent, foreign aid is a fact of life, Mwambu said.

“The Muslims from the Middle East are pumping lots of money into Africa for their religion to spread,” he added.

Funds from the U.S. can help African churches reach the lost, said Charles Ngoje, missions director for Winyo Christian Academy in Kenya. But money also can create disunity and lead to abuse, he said.

“It is common sense that someone will do a better job if his boss were around,” Ngoje said. “A situation in which one’s boss is thousands of miles away — in distance, world view, culture — is not an effective arrangement.”

But Ngoje noted that, in some cases, African church leaders who answer only to their foreign benefactors are mimicking the behavior of their American predecessors.

Ngoje remembers a meeting when African church leaders asked a foreign missionary how he was spending his time.

The missionary replied that he was answerable only to the people who sent him, Ngoje said.

A GAP BETWEEN PULPIT AND PEW

In Kenya, foreign money is one factor that has contributed to “a big discrepancy between the African clergy and the flock,” said Ronald Wasilwa.
Wasilwa works for a non-governmental organization and preaches in Kitale, Kenya.

He cited a survey conducted by a council of churches in his homeland of various Christian denominations. The study found that many evangelists enjoy a standard of living much higher than the churches they serve. As a result, religious leaders often have difficulty motivating their congregations to perform good works, Wasilwa said.

“In Africa, the pew and the pulpit live in two different worlds — and we are all to blame,” Wasilwa said.

DOES FOREIGN AID STIFLE GIVING?

Dependency on U.S. dollars also can discourage African churches from contributing financially to benevolence, said Leonard Chumo Falex, a minister in Nairobi, Kenya.

When U.S. churches support works without contributions from African churches, “the African people are continually denied the opportunity to be blessed as givers,” Falex said.

African culture encourages people to share, even if they live in poverty, and the U.S. church often fails to “harness the beauty of a giving African spirit,” Falex said.

Because of dependence on American money, some rural African churches don’t practice sacrificial giving, said Fielden Allison, a longtime missionary in Kenya and instructor at African Christian College.

Allison informally surveyed Churches of Christ with about 40 members each and found that most collected the equivalent of one U.S. dollar each Sunday.

“That is an average of about 2.5 cents per person,” Allison said. “The same people drink several cups of tea per week (that) cost about 10 cents per cup.” Many pay tuition for their children and own cell phones.

“Will the African church be judged by God for their failure to give to support their own works?” he said. “Will Western churches be judged for enabling African churches to depend on outside help instead of shouldering their own responsibility? Tough questions need tough answers.”

NEW MODELS, BUT RESPECT FOR OLD

The three students — Banda, Shereni and Nyahore — say they dream of a day when American and African churches can function as equal partners, identifying short-term projects and pooling funds to make them happen.

Sam Shewmaker, a longtime missionary in Africa, agrees that there is a need for “inter-cultural, church-to-church partnerships.”

“This will not be easy,” said Shewmaker, who lives in Kigali, Rwanda, and serves as African church-planting facilitator for Missions Resource Network. “It will take a humility and determination to build communication, understanding and trust … . But the payoff can be greater unity in the body of Christ and much more effectiveness in achieving God’s global mission.”

Though American money has created problems in African churches, South African evangelist Chris Burke warned against condemning the model of U.S. churches supporting missionaries in Africa.

Though not perfect, “it’s the model that effectively established the church in Africa,” Burke said.

“God used missionaries to accomplish great things, in spite of their normal, human shortcomings,” he said.

Ngoje agreed.

“We must not forget that there are trustworthy individuals who have been tried and tested and have (done) a great job with direct support from the U.S.,” he said. “The growth of the Kingdom is paramount and must not be jeopardized by paradigm shifts.

“Let the Holy Spirit lead willing supporters as to how best their donations can serve to bring a greater good to the missional need in Africa.”

Where's Muhammad??

The Washington Post and many other newspapers have refused to run a cartoon by Wiley Miller, the syndicated artist who produces the "Non Sequitur" cartoon strip.

The caption of the cartoon says "Where's Muhammad?" But Muhammad is not depicted anywhere in the cartoon.

Get it?

I hope that Muslims around the world will protest against this. By their actions, the newspapers that refused to run the cartoon are implicitly portraying Islam as a religion of bloodthirsty psychopathic killers who can't take a joke.

“A religious axis of evil" (More on Femke Halsema on Islam)

Femke Halsema, the leader of the Dutch GreenLeft Party, has stirred up controversy with a speech she delivered this weekend in Utrecht. In that speech she strongly rejected the most dearly held beliefs of Progressive Islamic Apologetics, including:

(1) That one must be either a leftist multiculturalist true believer who is uncritical of Islam or a right-wing racist Islamophobe.
(2) That leftists must never voice any concern over sexism or homophobia among Muslims, and that anyone who does voice such concerns is guilty of racist hate-speechifying.
(3) That "extremist" views are held by only a tiny, isolated minority of Muslims.
(4) That any restrictions on the wearing of the burqa, let alone on headscarves, is an unacceptable violation of religious freedom.
(5) That concerns about Sharia law are just so much Islamophobic fearmongering by right-wingers.

It turns out that this is not the first time that Halsema has waded into these troubled waters, although it is very possible that she has never gone quite so far in her explicit criticisms of her fellow leftists in general and of the excesses of multiculturalism in particular.

Just a little over a year ago, in September of 2009, Halsema stirred up what she herself called an "internetstormpje" (a wonderful Dutch term that literally means "little Internet storm") over remarks she made in an interview with Kustaw Bessant for DePers.nl (here is the interview in the original Dutch, and here it is in googleized English).

In that interview she had been asked about her views on Islam, to which she responded that "I am one of the few who accuse Saudi Arabia, along with [Geert] Wilders, about the violation of womens' rights. I will always vehemently oppose any alleged introduction of Sharia." ("Ik ben een van de weinigen die Saoedi-Arabië aanklaagt, samen met Wilders, voor de schending van vrouwenrechten. Ik zal altijd heftig ageren tegen elke vermeende invoering van de sharia.")

To emphasize her point, Halsema went on to proudly recount what she called her "most famous attack" against Islam, during a 2006 speech in which she had stated that "fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist American Christians and the Roman Catholic Church ... [are] a religious axis of evil". Halsema also stated in the interview that this particular speech had caused her "many problems".

After the September, 2009 interview, Halsema wrote a blog post on "Freedom of Belief and the Headscarf" (that link is to the English translation via google translator, here is the same post in the original Dutch: Vrijheid van geloof en van hoofddoek). In her blog, Halsema stated that the comments she had made in the DePers.nl interview, on Islam and freedom of religion, had been distorted by the media and by commentators and bloggers on the Internet. She says, quite reasonably, that this should come as no surprise. She was much more concerned, however, with what she described as "some violent, and sometimes downright evil comments from progressive circles," attacking her for defending women's rights and gay rights and for criticizing Islam as oppressive.

In that blog post (already linked to) Halsema focused specifically on two themes: (1) criticism of Islam in general, and (2) the headscarf issue in particular.

As far as criticism of Islam goes, she states very clearly that freedom of religion necessarily includes the freedom to criticize religious beliefs. She also insists that freedom to criticize religion must be upheld "Especially in a movement like the Greens, where there has traditionally been a lot of criticism directed at Christianity, and where religious freedom and religious criticism have always been seen as two sides of the same coin (although a few seem to forget that now)."

Halsema also says that the views she expressed in the DePers.nl interview were perfectly in line with "the right of people to hold orthodox Islamic beliefs, and the right of people to criticize those beliefs." Halsema goes on to say that if she were to criticize the SGP (a conservative Protestant Dutch party) for their regressive Christian attitudes toward women and gays, she would be cheered by her fellow leftists, but when she makes exactly the same criticism of sexism and homophobia among Muslims, this is seen as "too close to home" (literally "is het huis te klein", "the house is too small"). Here she is clearly taking a swipe at the way in which European leftist parties pander to the Muslim vote.

On the specific issue of the headscarf, Halsema had already (in the DePers.nl interview) outraged hypersensitive multiculturalist whiners by saying, "I prefer to see every woman in the Netherlands without a headscarf. And totally free." And she also stated, "playfully", as she herself called it, "I think it's a pity that women hide their beautiful hair."

In her subsequent blog post, Halsema wrote that while she supports the right of a woman to wear a headscarf if she freely chooses to do so, there can be no doubt that many Muslim women in the Netherlands are coerced into wearing the headscarf. She also pointedly quoted a Muslim cleric's "veiled" threat against women who dare to exercise their freedom: "Which women are more often the target of rape, those who are veiled, or those who are not?"

Related posts from this blog:

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "And if they don't meet these demands then you can send them back."
• "most Americans do not buy the 19 fanatics story"
• "Islamism" widespread, deeply rooted among Muslims in Europe, according to Pew study
• The right to oppose Islam
• A Plague On Both Their Houses: Notes Toward a Renewal of Liberal Anticlericalism
• A Moratorium (my proposed answer to the Ground Zero Mosque)
• Brain Dead American Left Can't Get Enough of Arundhati Roy
• Why Does the American Left Hate India and Hinduism??
• The Case of Geert Wilders: Islam, Free Speech, Tolerance, and Politics

Dutch Green Leader Calls for Progressive Critique of Islam (FINALLY!!!)

On Saturday, Femke Halsema, head of GroenLinks (Dutch Greens), gave a speech in Utrecht on the subject of freedom of religion. The speech appears to have been something quite radical: a major European leftist political leader actually calling for criticism of Islam over the issues of women's rights and gay rights.

Halsema diverged abruptly from the "politically correct" orthodoxy of 21st century Progressive Islamic Apologetics on four major points:

(1) She dared to suggest that women and gays are subject to systematic persecution and oppression in Islam in general and in predominantly Muslim communities in the West in particular.

(2) She dared to suggest that "multiculturalism" has gone too far, and is now becoming an excuse for overlooking oppression based on gender and sexual orientation among Muslims.

(3) She dared to suggest that "Salafist" and "orthodox" ideas have strong support among Muslims in the West. That is to say that, "extremist"/"Islamist" ideology is not just supported by a tiny, isolated, minority.

(4) She dared to suggest that even such things as laws banning the wearing of headscarves, at least in some situations, are necessary and justifiable in order to combat the regressive influence of Islam, and to protect basic freedoms and rights for all citizens.

Hopefully more information will be available soon -- like a full transcript of her speech translated into English! In the meantime, here are two links:
http://www.allah.eu/about-islam/netherlands-progressives-should-talk-about-women-gay-rights-in-islam.html
http://www.nisnews.nl/public/121010_1.htm

on retreat

I don't actually leave until tomorrow morning. If you leave a comment before then I may or may not be able to get to it. But after that I will be off the grid until next Wednesday. (All comments on this blog are moderated.)

From: Dinosaur Comics at quantz.com. Ryan North is the creative genius behind Dinosaur Comics.



White crane photo by Daniel Gill.