Letter by Emir Feisal to Felix Frankfurter, President of the Zionist Organisation of America 1919
We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in race, having suffered similar oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, and by a happy coincidence have been able to take the first step towards the attainment of their national ideals together.
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.
A map marked with crude chinagraph-pencil in the second decade of the 20th Century shows the ambition – and folly – of the 100-year old British-French plan that helped create the modern-day Middle East. Courtesy of the BBC
Really?
‘None of the most notorious post-Ottoman borders were drawn by Sykes and Picot…even the ones they did sketch out were jettisoned after the war.’
Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor and master story-teller. Who would have thought that this somewhat short tempered, tubby, egotistical Napoleon of TV and Radio could produce such sublime, experimental and artistic narratives to inform and entertain us? Who knew that he was capable of such avant-garde productions, new and original thinking, cutting edge experimental techniques and ideas that probed the world and over-turned stale truths in the search for a genuine understanding of the underlying facts that shaped the Middle East? Who knew?
Nothing is written…that can’t be rewritten… the Bowen mantra.
This was posted on this site in January 2016….
The BBC narrative on events in the Middle East has always been that Britain, and actions Britain has taken over the last century, has been to blame for events today….this narrative takes on more urgency for the BBC as the refugees flee the Middle East and head for Europe…the BBC needs to pin the blame for the war in Syria on Britain in order to induce guilt about the plight of the refugees and make them our responsibility…after all we ‘carved up the Middle East’ in a secret agreement with the French, didn’t we? We’ve looked at this several times on this site, here for example, and the BBC’s remarkable ability to ignore the actual facts and make up their own account of history to suit their own agenda.
Nothing has changed of course, Bowen is still the puffed up, pompous, self-regarding and economical with the truth story-teller that we know and disdain…so wrapped up in himself and his own self-importance that he has produced a new series on the BBC about the ME…which you may think as being about the Middle East but is in fact about Me, Jeremy Bowen…
Our Man in the Middle East
Over these 25 programmes, Jeremy reflects on the present and the past of the Middle East, after reporting from the region for more than a quarter of a century. He combines first-hand accounts from the front line with an in-depth look into the region’s history. In that time, the past has always been present, providing motivation and political ammunition . Bowen has made headlines himself and he has paid a personal price, coming under fire and losing a colleague in the course of reporting – on the worst day, he says, in his life.
If the first programme is anything to go by then it will be an incredibly dishonest, misleading and dangerous account of history, Bowen taking us on a journey fraught with historical clichés and false narratives that are so often his stock in trade. This is history ala Stalin. This is history rewritten to manufacture a narrative, to spread a message, to spin a great big shining lie…..that Britain is to blame for everything that is happening in the Middle East. This is dangerous stuff from the BBC feeding as it does directly into the Muslim grievance industry, the victim mentality, which provides a conveyor belt of willing recruits to radical and violent Muslim groups who are eager and committed to take on the West not only in the Middle East but in Europe and America as well…..aiming to Islamise both.
Bowen’s history is a flagrant distortion of real events as he bends and twists the facts to make a deadly trap for the less alert, the less aware, the less critical. Bowen approaches this from only one perspective and even then doesn’t get that right…naturally it is from the ‘Arab’, or Muslim, perspective to whom all the events are a catastrophe…no doubt a word chosen carefully by Bowen knowing full well that the Palestinians use the word to describe what they call their own ‘Holocaust’…ie Israel.
The whole thrust of Bowen’s narrative is that it was the ‘duplicitous British that did not keep their word whilst the Arabs did.‘ Hence all that is happening in the Middle East today is the result of British scheming in World War One…always surprising how the BBC can focus in on exactly one point in time and say...’that’s the one and only cause of this disaster’.…no thought that the invention of Islam and the subsequent conquest and colonisation of so much of the Middle East and North Africa is the real root of the problems today or at least a major contributory factor?
But no, it was the Great Powers who are the problem and especially, as he tells us, ‘two Grandees [Sykes/Picot] who created, and some say cursed, the Middle East today when they carved up the Ottoman Empire’ [again..no thought that the Ottoman Empire might have been the problem…as the Arabs wanted to escape from it and so joined the British war effort?]…and of course the other problem was the Zionists and the British promise to them which was completely at odds with Arab wishes…a deadly contradiction we are told…er…see top of post….‘The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement.’
However, Bowen tells us that the Balfour Treaty was apparently a ‘milestone on the road to catastrophe for Palestinians.’ Guess we now know exactly where Bowen is coming from….the Palestinian side of the argument.
That narrative, of the West attacking countries because they are ‘Muslim’ or of Islam under attack is the widespread narrative that Muslims in this country, not just the ‘extremists’ or ISIS followers, but the majority in the community, believe in and this creates the underlying atmospherics, an anger and feelings of hate for the West, that leads to radicalisation and then for some, joining ISIS or carrying out a terror attack in the UK. The majority may not believe in violence but they certainly believe the narrative, believe Muslims should be angry and should ‘protest’ in some shape or form.
This is the narrative that the BBC pushes, as illustrated perfectly by Bowen. It is ultimately the terrorist narrative, one that feeds the anger and the Islamist cause. It is also an entirely false narrative that you would expect a professional journalist, the BBC’s expert on the Middle East, to know is false and to counter given the importance of that narrative to the Islamist cause and its deadly consequences…but instead what we have is a man determined to support, nurture and spread that dangerous narrative giving untold help and encouragement to what are terrorists.
The BBC prefers to lay the blame for the rise of massive unrest in the Middle East, the disaster that is Syria, the rise of ISIS, on the doorstep of the Americans and Blair after Iraq 2003….which is odd really…as the BBC told us this:
“We had a clean revolution [In Tunisia]. The former president turned out to be a coward. He just ran away. Not like the others – like the poor Libyans, or in Syria – but it lit the fuse to all the other revolutions” Wassim Herissi, radio DJ
The downfall of Tunisia’s President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali inspired pro-democracy activists across the Arab world.
I mean…Bowen should know the truth….he wrote the book on it….‘The People want the fall of the regime‘..not ‘The British Empire wants the fall of the regime’ then?….remember that time when the BBC were cheerleading the Arab Spring [and the subversive, anti-regime nature of the internet and social media…now hated and blamed for Trump and Brexit]….
What is going on in the Middle East and now across the world as Muslims build communities within other countries is that the 1400 year old religion of Islam is having a renaissance, a back to the fundamentals rebirth…it has had several of these over the centuries but this latest incarnation is one that grew out of the deserts of Arabia in the 18th century not the 20th….
‘This alliance formed in the 18th century provided the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion and remains the basis of Saudi Arabian dynastic rule today.’
It grew from the union of the Sauds and the Wahhabis which intended to create a strict Muslim state, hence they joned forces with the Allies to defeat the Turks and the Ottoman Empire…this was a willing union, one negotiated at length and one in which Sykes-Picot ultimately had little to do with [The Arabs knew of Sykes-Picot before the Soviets ‘exposed’ the deal…they were negotiating around its terms before then as revealed by Lawrence of Arabia in his letters…if only Bowen had read them]…the layout of the Middle East was in the end the result of long negotiations post-war involving all sides including Turkey…Turkey which insisted the Kurdish areas were to be part of Iraq so that no Kurdish state would be created. The local leaders welcomed the British to maintain an ‘interest’ in their countries, helping to keep order and build infrastructure, knowing that the agreement was the Brits would leave in several years time. This was not an ‘occupation’ nor a tyrannical imposition by a colonialist master of borders ‘crudely drawn with chinagraph pencils’ that ‘carved up the Middle East’.
Lawrence thought that the outcome was the best that could be achieved and thought it, in the end, quite good all things considered…
In March 1921, Lawrence travelled to Cairo with Churchill, to create a new settlement. With the Arabs they created a new order. Feisal, recently banished from Syria, received the throne of Iraq and British troops were removed.
Feisal’s brother, Abdullah, received the throne of Transjordan. Lawrence was convinced this settlement gave the Arabs all Britain had ever promised.
Finally, his long war was over. ‘
Lawrence himself said in letters to trusted friends…..
‘The settlement which Winston (mainly because my advocacy supplied him with all the technical advice and arguments necessary) put through in 1921 and 1922 was, I think, the best possible settlement which Great Britain, alone, could achieve at the time.’
‘As I get further and further away from things the more completely do I feel that our efforts during the war have justified themselves and are proving happier and better than I’d ever hoped.’
The Sunday Telegraph had a book review of ‘Baghdad’ by Justin Marozzi…it tells a much more rounded tale of the history of the Middle East….
Baghdad, long portrayed as the centre of the Muslim ‘golden age of science’ had, of course, a much more chequered history, most of it soaked in blood…and much of that ‘science’ being inherited by the Muslim conquerors fom the previous civilisations and kept alive by Christian and Jewish scientists and scholars….‘much of this was in spite of Islam, not because of it.’
What it also says, which is of interest here, is that after WWI the British took over and ‘busily set about improving things, from sanitation, bridge building and road repairs to irrigation, constitutions and government’….also stopping cruelty to animals and abolishing slavery that was still rampant there.
History is not what the BBC so often likes to portray. Which brings us onto Mardell’s Britain ‘greedy for oil’ comment with which he pins the blame for the Middle East’s troubles on.
Oil played little part in the thinking. The only known oil was in Iran at the time. Iraq was suspected to have oil…only found in 1927, and the Brits, so greedy for oil, gave Iraq independence in 1932.
The Arabian peninsular was also known to have areas where oil was seeping from the ground and yet was not added to the Imperial ‘want list’, being allowed to form its own government.
Another book, this time in the Sunday Times, reveals the BBC’s anti-British narrative…..here’s what the Times said about that ‘infamous carving up of the Middle East’ narrative favoured by terrorists and the BBC….
ISIS proclaimed itself as the Islamic State caliphate with two propaganda videos, one of which was entitled ‘The End of Sykes-Picot’.….a gunman in the video said ‘This is the so-called border of Sykes-Picot. We don’t recognise it, and we will never recognise it……Inshallah we break other borders also but we start with this one Inshallah.’
The Sykes-Picot agreement is thus an integral part of ISIS’s philosophy of hatred and resentment…..‘feeding people’s own narratives of themselves as playthings of outsiders.’
However, ISIS’s Sykes-Picot narrative is a myth, as the historian Sean McMeekein has persuasively argued in his book, The Ottoman Endgame.
ISIS’s propaganda ‘bears little resemblance to the history on which it is ostensibly based. The partition of the Ottoman empire was not settled bilaterally by Britain and France in 1916 but rather at a multinational conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1923’. Neither Sykes nor Picot played a significant role at Lausanne where the dominant figure was Kemal Attaturk, the Turkish nationalist leader.
‘Even in 1916,’ McMeekin points out, ‘Sykes and Picot played second and third fiddle to Russian foreign minister Sergei Sazonov who was the real driving force.’
‘None of the most notorious post-Ottoman borders were drawn by Sykes and Picot…even the ones they did sketch out were jettisoned after the war.’
In short, the ISIS myth about the Sykes-Picot agreement might animate its followers profoundly, but historically it is simply bunk.
Simply bunk….the ISIS/BBC/Bowen narrative, simply bunk. Dangerous bunk but bunk.
The BBC encouraging and feeding the Jihadist line….more recruits…terror in Syria, terror on the streets of Britain.
Hilariously the BBC told us that…
The creation of the Middle East editor’s job in 2005 had “significantly improved the BBC’s coverage of the ‘Arab world’.”
Surely in today’s pc newspeak it hold be:
Lawrence of Asia.
and
Bowen of Asia.
Bowen is one of the vilest Beeboids.
Or, to paraphrase George Orwell’s Animal Farm:
“All Beeboids are vile, but some are viler than others.”
Ian,
LOL !
I am watching a DVD of the 1970’s ITV series “The Christians” by Bamber Gascoigne at the moment (I am halfway through) and watching that series it is clear why we are in such a mess. Gascoigne not only has no sense whatsoever of the spiritual (it is like inviting somebody who is tone deaf to present a history of music) he also does not (as far as I can recall) make a single positive reference to Christianity.
Now I am not a Christian, but I can think of numerous positive contributions which Christianity made (from closing down the arenas of Ancient Rome to the abolition of slavery in modern times to give just two examples) but he apparently struggles to find anything positive to say about Christianity.
It is not that he is anti-Christian (or at least not consciously) it is simply that he is always looking for the absurdities and evil and hypocrisies of human beings. Now of course (if you are a Christian) you expect to find sin among the fallen, but the Christian (and Jewish) origins of notion completely escapes him. He has internalised Christianity and entirely secularized it.
What is also noticeable is that when talking about Islam he has nothing but praise. I cannot recall a single criticism. The narrative is always, the evil West. A tiny bit of objectivity about Islam would have been welcome, but after studying history of Islam he apparently cannot find anything to criticize.
So we have a complete absence of spiritual vision, an absence of anything positive to say about the West, combined with uncritical praise for our enemies. Gascoigne prefaces the DVD release with a new introduction. He tells us that given recent events he would talk more about Islam. He limits himself to remarking that he forgot to mention in the series that Christianity produced some nice art and music (which the programme makers relied upon when making the series) but that Islam is “by far” the more tolerant religion.
In short the series is complete crap. It is worse than superficial it is pernicious. The Lefty Seventies at their worst. I don’t know if the more recent BBC series by Diarmaid MacCulloch about the history of Christianity is any better. I am reading the accompanying book by Bamber Gascoigne (it is the same script) and also have the (much thicker!) book on Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Not having read the latter yet it yet my impression is that (unlike Bamber Gascoigne) he actually has some understanding of the subject. He is certainly much more intelligent (not hard I admit) than that smug and ignorant public school boob.
I understand that Bamber Gascoigne was educated at Eton. If he and his chums have been running the Country over the last few decades it is easy to understand what is going wrong. I can make a wild guess what he thought about that Grantham grocer’s daughter Margaret Thatcher.
I could Google it but I won’t. I seem to recall her father was a Methodist. If only he had been a Muslim. There would have been none of this nonsense about believing in the West. If only she had been properly educated like what he had been done at Eton.
Wild, the triumph of marxism in the education systems of the west means that Christianity is simply a no-no for any serious academic. You will note that any presenter, writer etc has to make it clear that he is not religious if he is to talk about Christianity. An interesting series from the 80s, ‘The Sea of Faith’ presented by former anglican clergyman Don Cupitt is worth a watch on Youtube. It shows the decline of formal Christian belief and asks whether it can be made more compatible with modern thought by focusing less on supernaturalism (the programme led to the founding of the Sea of Faith Network, still going today).
It is not the absence of praise for Christianity (which of course is a rival faith to Marxism so naturally nothing good can be said about it) but the praise for Islam which is so nauseous. Theoretically, oppression of women, religious intolerance, killing gays, and enslaving blacks, is everything they are against, but in reality they only just fall short of advocating that all Christian institutions should be pulled down and replaced by the true religion of peace.
I am used to Leftists being full of hate, supporting the enemies of the West, and speaking with forked tongue, but even by their standards (before any enemy we must disarm and if it is claimed that there are objective standards of excellence they should be undermined) but their constant promotion of the notion that reflecting critically upon Islam should be banned as a thought crime (Islamophobia is the word they use for it) is borderline sick.
Wild,
Quite right. We can insult any other religion with impunity, but not Islam which is the only one which is truly evil. Total perversion.
Humans are naturally tribal. A tribe or people though can never achieve civilization if they live by the ethos of an “eye for an eye”. Arab tribes, even before Islam, lived by the principle of even “two eyes for an eye”. In fact, they went one better, and took revenge for future acts of violence they knew would be visited on them sooner or later. Islam merely codified these traditions.
Thus a vicious cycle of revenge and greater counter-revenge, was automatic in all societies that live by the ethos of an “eye for an eye”. In such societies, a civilized nation, that is one that lives by the rule of law, can never take birth.
Now it is known, that Europe was inhabited by some of the fiercest tribes known in history ( Vandals, Vikings, Berserkers etc). We know from Roman historians that Rome faced its most fierce and ruthless enemies, not from Arab people, but from the north of Europe. The fall of Rome was not due to Arabs or Jews, but these same barbarians – mainly Germanic tribes.
What happened soon after was nothing short of a miracle. Europe, in a very short period of time, in what is now known as the Dark ages, was imbued by an ethos that preached a diametrically opposite ethos never seen anywhere in the world before. This ethos is easily stated but hard to practice.
1. Love your neighbour as yourself
2. Love your enemies. Do good to those that hate you.
3. Render unto Caesar things that belong to Caesar etc
Slowly first, then increasingly quickly, the ever increasing vicious cycle of revenge and counter-revenge that was in Europe, became a virtuous cycle of letting the law takes its course.
The problem we have now is that we have imported millions of tribal people who believe in an “eye or an eye”, into a society that does not subscribe to that ethos.
I recently read through translations of the surviving Anglo-Saxon literature. I expected to like the pagan bits (after all that is all we are directed to these days) and find the Christian bits boring and irrelevant. Actually I found the opposite. All the he-man and monsters stuff is just puerile, and all the misery poetry about you suffer and then you die bleak and tedious, but the Christian stuff about a vision of a gentler and more civilized way of living is moving.
The best work of Anglo-Saxon literature is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. I know he wrote it in Latin (although it was translated into English by King Alfred) but it is the best expression of Anglo-Saxon hopes. Christian hopes. I had the same experience reading the Icelandic saga Njal’s Saga. It is grim and bleak, but at the end (under the influence of Christianity) there is a vision of the world in which the endless blood feuds can be ended, and we can escape from endless cycles of violence and have higher aspirations. It is an inspirational ending.
Kenneth Clark’s 4 DVD set for just £12 is a must see. Clark points out that Western civilisation ,all of it would not exist without Christianity. It was a close run thing, in Clark’s view.
Almost everything – music, art, science, engineering, architecture,. philosophy, the lot. Mercy in justice, and thus modern judicial systems, is a Christian invention.
But why all this. Underlying Christianity is the abrogation of an eye for eye. No longer “tit for tat” society., but forgiveness of injury. It is this that the led to the civilising of even the warring Germanic and Viking tribes. The settled and forgiving nature of the Christian faith, as commanded by our Lord Jesus Christ, led to what we are today. But we will lose all that.
In fact, this civilisation is one off, and has no right in the normal conveyance of human discourse, to exist. In short, it is a miracle. It is a double miracle – one that it took placer. And the second, that it went from virtually nothing to the civilisation we have today, in a very short period of time. The pace is astounding.
The re-assuring thing is that China realises the “secret” of the success of the West – the Christian faith.. It may die in the West, but China will take up the banner. Lets hope they are not as stupid as us, regarding Islam.
.
On the other hand NCBBC, some argue that the Christian church put/held back scientific development by a thousand years, their views on astronomy for example being a case in point. Goes without saying though that the beauty of devotional art, architecture and music may never have come to pass without the existance of Christianity and the church.
ToobiWan
This argument is based I suppose on the treatment of Galileo by the church. ??
He was one example, yes, NCBBC but the where the early church comes in for most criticism is how they ignored the writings and discoveries of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, instead of expanding on them, this lack of such literature, etc., leading to what came to be known as the Dark Ages.
Actually there is a view (defended by people such as Jaki) that modern science derives from Christianity. Greek science was based on the idea that we live in a rational cosmos which we can understand by understanding its principles. Christianity said that the world was created and could have been created in endless other ways. The only way to find out about it is not to think about it (by reading philosophy books) but do experiments and find out how it actually works. Because God made it we will be able to figure it out.
It is also the case that the Greeks were not interested in technology, but the Christians said that we were created to rule over the Earth and make it more productive. This is why it is the Middle Ages rather than the Ancient World that adopted so many technological innovations.
The Church (rather than Christianity) aspired to political power. The Protestants argued that they were returning Christianity to its roots by focusing on how we ought to live not the craving for political power. Scientific inquiry largely took place in the Protestant north and stagnated in the Catholic south because the Church wanted to control everything.
The church in the middle ages were a bunch of bastards, Wild, they didn’t just aspire to political power, they were the political power in most of Europe. Emperors and kings went in fear of excommunication (Henry VIII wasn’t too bothered) should they choose to ingnore the bulls and whims of capricious and debauched popes.
My agument is the with the early church, who were probably more intersted in missionary work, conversion, and expansion of the faith to concern themselves with writings etc., from earlier times. On the other hand, the middle ages saw the building of some of the greatest universities in Europe, staffed by some of the leading churchmen/minds of the time.
Most interesting thread and makes a change from talking about Abbott. 🙂
Toobi,
Abbot is better than Abbott
There is another possible explanation for “The Dark Ages”.
The Romans enjoyed a warm climate (The Roman Warm Period) which allowed the production of surplus food. Not everyone had to work in the fields or defend what was produced and the most intelligent could take civilisation forward. Then the climate changed, there was no surplus food, barbarian tribes migrated looking for food and Rome fell – The Dark Ages. Hundreds of years later the climate improved (The Medieval Warm Period), surplus food was again produced and the most intelligent were freed up from drudgery to take civilisation forward. They were so successful that civilisation was strong enough to survive The Little Ice Age.
The whole world climate changed in the sixth century, RJ, following two volcanic eruptions which happened in quick succession. Crop failures were reported as far afield as China, South America and Ireland amongst other places. Could have also been resonsible for the extinction of the Mayan empire. 100 years later Islam turns up!
Certainly puts manmade climate change into perspective!
Especially one with a vow of silence, Grant.
ahh the dark ages, and what the happened, ISLAM is what happened
the destruction of mediterranean trade, the destruction of north african agriculture
as we have said before
definition of an arab
a man who can grow two strands of grass in the desert
where there used to be three!
Dorothy Sayers
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”
This is what we are.
Yes a value neutral liberalism that invites our enemies into our city and then seeks to arrest anybody who points out that they come to destroy us. Indeed as Kenneth Clark said in Civilisation, actively hopes there will be destruction in order to fill their spiritually vacuous lives.
This is a wonderful thread.
So much good stuff above me here…there`s a few theology degress to be had even with a superficial once-over all that`s being said.
I gave up on the BBCs best efforts on “Christianity” when Rageh Omar referred to Pauls letter to the Galicians, as opposed the Galatians. If the BBC can`t be arsed to even check these basics-then Christianity needs to go elsewhere for understanding.
To my mind, we`re past Christians and Muslims-it`s a battle between the Life of Jesus and the life of Muhammad. Both were Semites-one died and rose again, fought no battles, killed no people. And was Jewish. The other`s tomb is still here(not that we`d be able to see that, seeing as we`re not allowed to go to it)-slashed burned, raped his way into glory for the Arabian peninsula as it infested the Mediterranean and crept inland a long, long way. He`s the idol of Islam today-the perfect life lived to copy.
One gives true freedom, the other is a license to kill.
One leaves you breathless with the mystical possibilities and ever new ways of inventing and reinventing yourself as a true child of God, and perfectly made in His own image
The other is a sinister tribute act, that comes from half baked Chinese whispers from a camel train-and whose anodyne violence and trite cliches is unchangeable on point of death.
Both know and teach of Gods anger, but only one speaks of God`s love-and God being love too. One is pitiless to the outsider, the other wants the gospel lived out, not spouted or brought at the point of a sword.
Islam moves through the circles of hell, claims Jerusalem because Muhammad made up some dream sequence of ascending up to heaven from there on a winged horse . The other has been there since Davids time, is the Jewish capital and Jesus taught and dies there-then rose again as I say.
Only one faith here speaks of your freedom under Gods love-and the likes of Solzhenitsyn, Walesa, Martin Luther King , Cash and Dylan knew what was meant.
The other is Paul Pogba, Prince Naseem and Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X.
Yep, it`s Jesus or death…and Islam knows this too…which is why they choose death over life as did the IRA, as do Hamas and IS.
We are now without excuse.
Thank you ChrisH.
I’m going to dissent from this display of admiration for Christianity. To my mind it is the ‘turn the other cheek’ principle that underpins the Left’s inability to respond to the threats we face. Militant muslims fly aeroplanes into buildings, rape, slaughter and extort across the world and the West’s response is to ‘understand’ and ‘explain’, to accommodate and apologise.
I am not being in the least facetious when I suggest that a little bit of good old pagan smiting is what we need right now, not this mawkish kumbaya nonsense, for which we are already paying dearly and look set to pay considerably more.
GCooper
This same problem arose when Islam, after expunging the Christian ME, set about on its trail of slaughter and plunder to the West.
The Crusaders under the guidance of the saintly Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), did not think that they should lie down, and offer their daughters to rape, and their necks to slaughter.
Regarding Islam, violent to its core, the Judeo-Christian commandment to ‘love your neighbour’ demands military action in the face of brutal aggression. It is not love to watch the helpless being slaughtered. If a pagan’s use of the sword is valid (see Romans 13:4), is it less so for governments guided by Christian values?
This is why it was right to wage war on Nazi Germany in WW2. Despite a few regrettable defects of the Crusades, such was the initial reason for going to aid the Eastern Churches. This is not using the sword to promote one’s faith, as in Islam. It is ‘loving an afflicted and persecuted neighbour- a Christian neighbour too’. It would be a dereliction of duty, commonsense, and ‘hate’ to do otherwise.
Thanks GCooper.
Good post GCooper.
A common failing of the Church is to choose cowardice , but with the secular states rebadging this as “tolerance”. The shills who do this for the church are very much the house trained poodles so beloved by the Chinese State…blessing the iron rice bowls, as the nation starves.
The REAL Christians of this country will never get onto the BBC, never get to write in the Guardian-and, in truth, hardly have any church links at all.
I do say that “you can`t understand Gods love without His anger”.
Applies exactly to the life, death and resurrection of God in human form too-Jesus.
Jesus is the only gospel writer who preaches on hell, the theology of hell can really only be drawn from Him. Hence the churches wish to ban the mention, silence over the topic itself,
As I say-we all have free access to the raw sources, it`s a golden age of information.
Good News-not fake news.
But when we Christains are finally worth persecuting in Europe, we will be,
Until then, here`s Giles Fraser and pictures of Billy Graham at Wembley in 1984. Islams chosen path now can`t be understood without Old Testament referral. Let the BBC find out-but we need not suffer the same fates if we are armed first with “truth”.
Pilate asked what it was-not really progressed in terms of the elite we saddle ourselves with in summer 2017 have we?
Excellent post NCBBC.
Got thinking re Trumps “Muslim travel ban”.
The MSM referred to it as being aimed at “mainly Muslim” countries ceaselessly.
With the exception of Yemen-all were once Christian majority, populated with large Jewish centres of learning, scholarship and successful integration.
Muslims sporadically flooded regions, committed terrible pogroms and religious purges; but it was normally tolerable between the waves of persecution. Bad, horrific though they were.
Since the end of the Ottoman Empire-and especially since WW2 and Israel becoming a nation-the wipe out of Jews and Christians is as good as total. Will be finished very soon.
My point-does the MSM have ANY questions or documentaries on what the hell has happened to the Judeao-Christian traditions and history? Why are the only Christians we see in the Middle East either dead, in fear of their lives; or being led onto Libyan beaches to have their throats cut?
These “majority Muslim countries” are 99.5% and more now-totality and genocide of 5000 years of Judeao-Christian history bleeding into the Med, sponged in sands?
About time we took the BBC etc on.
We need to pray. The Crusaders, the Knights of St John ( The Ambulance Brigade now), Charles Martell, Prince Sobieski etal, Vallette, all of them fell on their knees and prayed. Despite the odds, they secured a nascent Christianity, that gave rise to Western civilisation.
The Left and seculars have plagiarised the fruits of Christianity, and claim that it was the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment didn’t grow in the desert, it grew in the fertile and welcoming soil of the Christian faith. There would be no Enlightenment but for that. Or for that matter Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Michelangello, da Vinci etc. Or Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and hundreds of others, all devout Christians ,who investigated nature, because the Judeao-Christian God was not a perverse god, and changed the rules of nature on a whim. It became possible, and fruitful to investigate nature.
Thank you ChrisH. Its a pleasure to read your comments.
Appreciated NCBBC. There really is no more important issue to me, it affects all others in my way of doing things.
When you fear God, yoe have little room to fear much else. And I`m hopeful that Jesus will be my judge and be gracious to me. Don`t really fancy the alternative that is Moses as I recall.
I came of age as the Shah was going, and only had vague memories of Munich 1972 with the Israeli Olympic team.
Until becoming a Christian in dramatic Damascene terms in 1993, I knew nothing of God or Israel. And was by nature a natural supporter of Islam(too many ANL/Rock Against Racism marches). 9/11 changed that-but not before I got a good grip on Islam by way of study with Islamic militant types in Manchester-so learned that they were literal, scholarly and deadly serious.
Coming from the far left, IRA etc, could identify fully.
So it`s Jesus or nothing. And humour, humility and His working through politcis, news and culture is a joy still to behold. Hoping for a thumping May victory-crap though she is, I`ll get another election to get rid of her if she fails. Can`t say that about any of the others.
Your comments are always of value, keep them coming too sir!
I suspect Lawrence of Arabia were he still alive might take issue with a line from this post. I don’t think there is any evidence for the claim that … they [the Saudis/Wahabbis] joined forces with the Allies to defeat the Turks and the Ottoman Empire.
Britain joined forces with Sharif Hussein, of the Hashemites family, formerly of Mecca, until booted out by Ibn Saud in 1924. He was neither Saudi nor Wahhabi but an opponent of both.
As far as I am aware the rest of the Arabs in the Ottoman Empire, including both the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula did nothing at all to defeat the Ottoman Empire in alliance with the Allies.
The Hashemite tribe that ruled Mecca was under severe threat from the Saudi tribe. To check this threat they joined and supported the British army. We welcomed them, as it gave credibility to our campaign against the Ottoman Turks. Too, it was not an anti-Islam thing.
Much the same now. Tiny Arab statelets joined Allied forces in the liberation of Kuwait, Iraq. To the Americans it was just political cover of no real physical value, but to these Arabs, a very useful strategy, as it gave them American protection if the future turned nasty. Qatar is finding it very useful right now. No one dares invade Qatar, as it houses US Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC)