Tendring Topics......on Line
‘When
will they ever learn*?
It isn’t very
often that I find myself 'on the same side' as a feature writer in
the Mail, but I have to admit reluctant agreement with at least some of the sentiments expressed by Peter Hitchins in the Mail on Sunday at Whitsun.
‘Why do William Hague and the BBC want to
help Saudi Arabia set up a
fanatical Islamist state in Syria Egypt and Libya
I had been shocked
earlier when I had discovered that Saudi Arabia
was among the most fervent supporters of Syria ’s ‘freedom fighters’. Surely
we all know that, at least prior to the current uprising, Syria was an oasis of
tolerance and liberalism compared with Saudi Arabia, with its subjugation of
women, its medieval laws and punishments, and its total prohibition of any kind
of religious worship other than its own extreme version of Islam. Far from supporting ‘freedom fighters’, Saudi
Arabia’s ruler had sent troops into neighbouring Bahrain to help the brutal
efforts of the government there to suppress its own ‘Arab spring’ of rebellion.
Had
any other two countries been similarly involved in the suppression of popular
rebellion, there would have been outrage in London
and Washington .
Both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
though, are not only sources of oil, they are also wealthy and reliable
purchasers of armaments. Plausible
excuses can always be found for their excesses and their rulers welcomed as
honoured guests when they deign to visit us.
Do you
remember the high hopes when Saddam Hussein was overthrown in Iraq – and of
their outcome? Saddan Hussein was a cruel and ruthless
dictator – but under his dictatorship Iraq
was a united country in which terrorist groups like El Qaida scarcely had a
foothold and in which there was a degree of religious freedom and tolerance
unusual in the Middle East . There was a thriving Christian community and
well-attended Christian churches. Our
‘victory’ (do you remember George Bush proclaiming it from the bridge of a US
Aircraft Carrier?) has produced a divided country with a ruined infrastructure.
Kurds are seeking independence and Sunni
and Shia Muslims are at each other’s throats. Christians are under constant
attack and are emigrating as quickly as they are able to do so. There is a
constant threat of terrorist bombs.
Then there was
the Arab Spring first in Tunisia , then in Egypt
and finally Libya . It really seemed that parliamentary democracy
would triumph, that these countries would throw off their ancient legacies of
autocracy and embrace government of the
people, for the people, and by the people. I did, at the time, suggest in this blog that
it was at least equally likely that a militantly Islamic government, comparable
with that of the Taliban in Afghanistan ,
would emerge. Currently the Egyptians have
elected an Islamic parliament and are faced with the choice of an Islamic President
or a representative, albeit a milder one, of the old regime. My guess is that the Islamic candidate will
win. The moderate, liberal, secularist,
and freedom-seeking Egyptians who had been the backbone of the Arab Spring have disappeared. Their various factions had varying ultimate
aims. They were divided. The Islamists and the Traditionalists had
clear and understandable objectives and were united. It is they who have
triumphed.
I am not
surprised that the Coptic Christians, one of the oldest traditions of the Christian
faith, established in Egypt
long before the arrival of Islam, are full of foreboding.
As for Libya,
where ‘the west’ played an active role, having secured a mandate from the
United Nations on the dubious grounds of protecting civilians from air strikes by the Libyan Government. In Egypt there may have been some doubt, but
in Libya we know perfectly well than among the ‘freedom fighters’ we have been supporting are terrorists trained
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnia and
Pakistan. At least some of them
have proved themselves to be as competent as Colonel Gaddafi’s minions at
torturing and murdering their captured and helpless opponents.
I have no idea
when, or even if, a credible government will eventually emerge in Libya
but I have little expectation or hope that it will be a freely elected, liberal
and tolerant one.
Today (6th
June 2012) has been a bad one for Afghan civilians. In Kandahar
three Taliban suicide bombers have killed scores of civilians. Elsewhere in that unhappy country, an
American air strike (not for the first time) has accidentally managed to
slaughter everyone at a wedding reception - collateral damage, innocent victims
of our ‘war on terror’. Can we wonder
that ordinary Afghans hate us foreign
infidels even more than most of them hate the Taliban?
History (the
French Revolution of 1789, the Russian revolution of 1917, the Spanish Civil
War of the 1930s) has shown that foreign intervention has the effect of
increasing the bloodiness of civil conflict.
We should, I am quite sure, offer humanitarian aid where we can to
alleviate the suffering of civilians on either side of the conflict, and mediate if and when asked to do so. For God’s sake though (and I mean that
reverently not blasphemously!) let us
otherwise keep out of other people’s armed conflicts!
*’When will they ever learn?’ was the
refrain of a popular protest song of the 1960s entitled ‘Where have all the
flowers gone?
Secularism
In
the United Kingdom those of us who, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, ‘profess and call ourselves Christians’ have
come to take it for granted that the greatest enemy of Christian faith and
tradition in this country has been the apparently inexorable advance of
secularism. We no longer have a public holiday
at Whitsun. It has been replaced by a
fixed-date secular late spring public
holiday. Christmas, the time at which we
celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, has been systematically secularised. Happy
Christmas! is being replaced on our greetings cards by Season’s Greetings or some such similarly meaningless phrase. Ask
at a Post Office for the special stamps issued as Christmas draws near and
you’ll be offered secular ones. However, as a rather patronising concession to
a minority interest, there will be some ‘religious
Christmas stamps’ kept ‘under the
counter’ for those who specially ask for them! We are encouraged to speak
of ‘the festive season’ or ‘the mid-winter holidays’ rather than of Christmas!
The most popular Christmas images are no longer a baby in a manger,
a young mother lovingly holding her new-born child or wise men following a
star, but of Santa Claus and his reindeer, holly and ivy, or young children
playing in the snow.
Easter
has become a celebration of hot cross buns, cuddly bunnies, chocolate eggs and
dancing daffodils, rather than of a suffering man on a cross and his glorious
resurrection.
We
are encouraged to abandon referring to dates as BC (before Christ) or AD (Anno
Domini or ‘Year of our Lord’) but as BCE (before Common Era) and CE (Common
Era). Determined secularists would like
to see the abolition of prayers in schools or at public meetings and the
departure from radio and tv of such popular religious programmes as Songs of Praise, Thought for the Day and
Prayer for the Day.
Yet, as an article
in the Church Times reminded its
readers a few weeks ago, while we in the UK
deplore the advance of secularism, Christians in Egypt
are fervently praying, probably in vain, that they may have a secular
government in Cairo !
I
have listed above some of the things that proselytising secularisers have done
and are doing. It is only fair to add
some of the things that even the most determined secularists, however misguided we may think them to be,
don’t
do. They don’t throw bombs into
religious gatherings or explode them fixed to themselves in public places,
convinced that – if only they can take a few believers with them – they will be
rewarded. Nor do they persecute,
ostracise, punish, or threaten to kill members of their families or communities who convert to
one of the religious faiths available, or who marry into a believing
family.
I
am, of course, describing the activities of some
Muslims. I know perfectly well that none of those things is compatible
with ‘true Islam’ and that Jihad is really all about the struggle between good
and evil within oneself. A great many,
probably a large majority, of Muslims in this country find the activities
listed above as abhorrent as I do. But some
Muslims do believe they are an
essential part of Islam and that jihad doesn’t mean an inner struggle but an
outward war against the infidel. When Britain and the USA
covertly funded the ‘gallant mojihadin’
in Afghanistan ,
they hoped they would use our money to kill Russians, certainly not to conduct
a struggle within themselves! They are now realising that to the mojihadin, one lot of foreign infidels is much the same as another.
I
am not selecting Muslims for condemnation. Christians have been as bad, if not
worse. I know that the Christian
faith is one of love and compassion, of forgiveness and reconciliation. In the 16th century though, when
Christians were torturing each other and burning each other alive in the name of Christ – who would have
believed that?
Similarly
in the 17th and 18th centuries pious Puritans in New England as well as in Britain imprisoned,
tortured and hanged unfortunate women denounced as witches. They would have
quoted Biblical chapter and verse against any who protested. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ was, so they believed, the Word of the
Lord. Even today there are those who
proclaim themselves to be fundamentalist or Bible Christians, who eagerly hunt
through obscure passages in Leviticus or Deuteronomy to justify their fierce
opposition to practices or attitudes with which they disagree
In their
enthusiasm for the small print of the Old Testament they seem to have missed
the words of Jesus Christ. He told us that the whole of the moral teaching of
the Old Testament is encapsulated in just two simple commandments – Love God with all your being and love your
neighbour as much as you love yourself. Jesus clarified that second commandment by explaining that we should treat other people in
exactly the same way as we would like them to treat us. When he reminded his
listeners that they should not attempt to pour new wine into old bottles or sew
new cloth onto an old garment, he was surely referring to the many rules and regulations of the Old Testament
How strange
that some Christians prefer to live by
the multitudinous prohibitions and demands of the old dispensation rather than by the
two straightforward and simple commands of the new!
Like Egypt ’s Coptic Christians, I would
not wish to be ruled by an ostentatiously religious government, whether Muslim
or Christian (no, not even Quaker!). I am happier with a secular government, that may well include individual Christians or Muslims; one that is tolerant of all religions whose followers are prepared to comply with the
law of the land; a Government that is always prepared to listen to and take
seriously the advice of religious leaders.
Its members, religious, agnostic and atheist, should act in accordance
with the reason that God has given them and in the light of the dictates of
their conscience, which, as a Quaker, I believe to be inspired and enlightened by the Inward
Light of Christ, God’s gift to every
man, woman and child on this earth.
‘Of
such is the Kingdom
of Heaven
I
am afraid that there has been nothing very cheering or uplifting in anything
that I have so far written in this week's blog.
I thought therefore that I would end it with the latest picture of my
‘honorary German niece' Maja. Isn’t she
a truly beautiful child? Although not
yet six years old her eyes seem to be full of intelligence, love and trust. It was surely such a child as this that Jesus set in the midst of his disciples and told them that this was the example they needed to follow if they wished to enter God's kingdom.
Maja’s
great grandfather was a lieutenant in the German Army in World War II. He was killed on the Eastern Front at the
same time that I and my comrades in the British Eighth Army and his compatriots
in the German Afrikakorps were trying to kill each other in Libya . My greatest hope for the .future is of lasting peace in Europe spreading throughout the world so that such
circumstances may never arise again.
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