timeimmortal

Over on the Edmonton Atheists forum, someone else isn’t happy with me:

I get a kick out of his assertion that science didn’t flourish in non-Christian areas. Does he know nothing of history?
Egypt, Babylon, and Greece really got hings going, and Muslim countries in the middle ages were far ahead of the Christian Europe.
When missionaries got to China, they found that the Chinese already had their own science doing well (think gunpowder).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science #Science_in_Medieval_Europe

I’m not unaware of the fact that earlier in history, other societies — China, Egypt and various Arabic (it is especially important, regarding this issue, to distinguish between Arabs and Muslims) nations are excellent examples — had made considerable scientific advancement. I’m aware that, for a time, scientific development in non-Christian areas of the world outpaced scientific development in Christian areas of the world.

But that’s much earlier in history, isn’t it? Looking at those same nations a little later on, what do we see? It was the West, starting in the 12th or 13th century, that began to rise to scientific prominence, while in other parts of the world the early promise of science proved to be stillborn: it’s no accident that when one views, for examples, lists of Arabic scientific innovation, such lists tend to stop abruptly after about the 12th century.

That was my point. I don’t deny that other cultures gave scientific study a good start; I simply note that it also floundered in those places later on, and that it was out of Christendom that modern science emerged.

Wikipedia is not the most reliable of sources, but since it was cited in the argument against me, let’s note what the ol’ wiki has to say about scientific development in Christian Europe, shall we?

An intellectual revitalization of Europe started with the birth of medieval universities in the 12th century. The contact with the Islamic world in Spain and Sicily, and during the Reconquista and the Crusades, allowed Europeans access to scientific Greek and Arabic texts, including the works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Geber, al-Khwarizmi, Alhazen, Avicenna, and Averroes. European scholars like Michael Scotus would learn Arabic in order to study these texts. The European universities aided materially in the translation and propagation of these texts and started a new infrastructure which was needed for scientific communities. As well as this, Europeans began to venture further and further east (most notably, perhaps, Marco Polo) as a result of the Pax Mongolica. This led to the increased influence of Indian and even Chinese science on the European tradition. Technological advances were also made, such as the early flight of Eilmer of Malmesbury (who had studied Mathematics in 11th century England), and the metallurgical achievements of the Cistercian blast furnace at Laskill.

I should pause here and note one important detail: the Church was heavily involved in the development and growth of universities in Europe during the Middle Ages.

But let’s continue:

At the beginning of the 13th century there were reasonably accurate Latin translations of the main works of almost all the intellectually crucial ancient authors, allowing a sound transfer of scientific ideas via both the universities and the monasteries. By then, the natural philosophy contained in these texts began to be extended by notable scholastics such as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus. Precursors of the modern scientific method, influenced by earlier contributions of the Islamic world, can be seen already in Grosseteste’s emphasis on mathematics as a way to understand nature, and in the empirical approach admired by Bacon, particularly in his Opus Majus. According to Pierre Duhem, the Condemnation of 1277 led to the birth of modern science, because it forced thinkers to break from relying so much on Aristotle, and to think about the world in new ways.

The Condemnation of 1277 was issued by Bishop Tempier in Paris, and was a comprehensive response to teachings deemed heretical by the Bishop after due investigation. Its effects were far-reaching, but basically signaled a rejection of Aristotelean Peripatetic physics.

This paved the way for new ways of looking at the natural world. As Duhem went on to note, “if we must assign a date for the birth of modern science, we would, without doubt, choose the year 1277 when the bishop of Paris solemnly proclaimed that several worlds could exist, and that the whole of heavens could, without contradiction, be moved with a rectilinear motion.” And indeed, several principles of reasoning which are still applied today — being, perhaps, the most familiar one — can trace their origins to the philosophical ramifications of the 1277 condemnation.

The Church, then, allied herself with reason even at this early stage. And while at later times, the Church certainly made its share of mistakes with regard to science (the case of Galileo being the most famous example thereof), she also laid the foundations for science to transform itself into its modern form, and to progress with the breakneck pace that has characterized it ever since.

My atheistic detractor is here hoist, somewhat, on his (?) own petard; he notes, among his list of “counter”-examples to my point, that the ancient Greeks made an early start at science. He is correct in this observation…but modern science emerged in part from a rejection of the scientific tenets one of the major philosophical schools of the ancient Greeks.

Wikipedia continues:

The first half of the 14th century saw much important scientific work being done, largely within the framework of scholastic commentaries on Aristotle’s scientific writings. William of Ockham introduced the principle of parsimony: natural philosophers should not postulate unnecessary entities, so that motion is not a distinct thing but is only the moving object and an intermediary “sensible species” is not needed to transmit an image of an object to the eye. Scholars such as Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme started to reinterpret elements of Aristotle’s mechanics. In particular, Buridan developed the theory that impetus was the cause of the motion of projectiles, which was a first step towards the modern concept of inertia. The Oxford Calculators began to mathematically analyze the kinematics of motion, making this analysis without considering the causes of motion.

In 1348, the Black Death and other disasters sealed a sudden end to the previous period of massive philosophic and scientific development. Yet, the rediscovery of ancient texts was improved after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West. Meanwhile, the introduction of printing was to have great effect on European society. The facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. New ideas also helped to influence the development of European science at this point: not least the introduction of Algebra. These developments paved the way for the Scientific Revolution, which may also be understood as a resumption of the process of scientific change, halted at the start of the Black Death.

And the foundation for that revolution? It is a comprehensive thing, which many different scholars contributed to, to be sure. But the Church was certainly one such element, and then a rather pivotal one. And at the core of the modern scientific method, there remains a rather Christian sensibility in the belief that the Universe itself is, to a certain extent, rationally ordered, such that scientific inquiry will in due season be rewarded with evidence or information of some kind. The scientific method, it seems, is built on the expectation that we will find when we seek.

Just as Christ promised.

It is interesting to note how quick many Christians are to take the worldly view and deny that Mary, after giving birth to Christ, remained celibate for the remainder of her days. Exactly why some Christians feel the need to argue against Mary’s virginity mystifies me — did not Paul teach us that to remain celibate for the sake of the Kingdom was a high calling indeed? (c.f. 1 Corinthians 7) Is it not possible that Mary chose this path of devotion for herself, knowing that it was pleasing to the Lord? Is it not possible that Joseph, her faithful and righteous husband, would have been unwilling to defile his wife in the sexual act (c.f. Leviticus 15) after her body had given birth to the Son of God, meaning in turn (as Luke reminds us, in how he structures his account of the Annunciation) that she was the New Ark of the Covenant?

We live in a sex-obsessed world, and moreover we live in a world which has been getting more sex-obsessed as the centuries have rolled along. Look back at the early church; even in Martin Luther’s time, as well as long before that, the virginity of Mary was an accepted part of Christian teaching. Martin Luther certainly believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary, and it should be noted that his tomb is inscribed with an image of the Assumption of Mary, the Blessed Virgin.

Indeed, the mainstreaming of the denial of Mary’s virginity is a fairly recent thing, and I think it has quite a lot to do with the direction the world’s attitude toward sex has taken. Many Christians don’t even want to acknowledge that Mary is, according to the Bible, to be called “blessed” by all nations (and then presumably in all ages). I would wager that many Christians also don’t want to admit, with any kind of frequency, that Mary is the foremost example of Christian devotion to the will of the Lord.

And I’d wager, following along from that, that many Christians, too worldly in their thinking about sexuality, don’t want to consider the possibility that the Mother of the Son, the foremost example of Christian devotion to God’s divine will, she who is “blessed” to all the nations, the woman clothed with the Sun…was also virginal for the remainder of her life on Earth. The Church sets forth this example against the changes of the ages, as a reminder to all that God’s way is a higher way, above the whims and fancies of men. The example of Mary is many lessons all bundled into one, not the least of which is that the world does not revolve around pelvic issues, despite what the magazines tell us.

Lately, though, this special recognition of Mary has been dismissed, by some Christians, as a “vain philosophy” and a “tradition of men”, yet one more example of how Scripture has apparently been “twisted” by the Church. This despite the fact that historically, Christians of all stripes have accepted the perpetual virginity of Mary as factual.

Moreover, the Catholic belief (and, by extension, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox belief) concerning Mary’s perpetual virginity is attacked as being against Scripture. Verses that are often cited in support of this claim are sourced from all four of the Gospels, and much of the rest of the New Testament, and include verses which reference the “brothers and sisters” of Christ (Matthew 13:55-56, Acts 1:14), logistical analysis of e.g. the flight to Egypt (c.f. Matthew 2:13-15), or the implication of sexual relations between Mary and Joseph after the birth of Christ (Matthew 1:25).

Were I of a more facetious bent, I might opt to congratulate an anti-Marian Christian for citing such verses, which the Church has obviously never encountered in its nearly 2,000-year history. Surely the existence of these new-found passages from the New Testament must be immediately brought to the attention of the Pope, I might suggest, and the whole of Catholic doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin must be re-examined (if not cast down entirely). Because we all know that no Catholic has ever read the first few chapters of the Gospel of Matthew!

Actually, the Church is fully cognizant of the existence of these passages of Scripture, and yet stubbornly continues to promulgate the doctrine — long-accepted by the vast majority of Christians, it should be noted — that Mary remained virginal even after the birth of Jesus. Indeed, Catholic doctrine pertaining to the virginity of Mary makes reference to many of the same verses that are often thrown out against it!

How can this be?

Well, as it turns out, the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity is actually supported in Scripture; moreover, it is supported by all of Scripture, not just a handful of carefully chosen (read: cherry-picked) verses. I will be exploring this as thoroughly as I can as the day rolls on, beginning with what might be, for some, an unexpected foray into the Old Testament. But to get there, we have to take a detour through a discussion of hermeneutics.

I’ll second that question: only two-thirds?

Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and a majority say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey showed Thursday.

The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. “Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis,” said the report by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights.

Egyptian women and female visitors frequently complain of persistent sexual harassment on Egyptian streets, despite the socially conservative nature of this traditional Muslim society.

Just disgusting.

And so the trend continues: wherever Islam becomes the religion of the majority, the rights of women are diminished and women themselves come to be seen as little more than mere chattel, existing solely for the gratification of men. In this way, I suppose, an Islamic world might be indistinguishable from a wholly secular world…but I digress.

I wonder what ol’ Shaukat Khawja would have to say about this latest turn of events, given his previous assertion that Islam upholds women’s rights much better than do Western states?

The latest “good guy” in the freespeecher struggle? An engineering prof at Michgan State University:

The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman.

Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student’s Association. The e-mail was in response to the students’ protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were ‘hate speech.’ Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Muslim Association,

As a professor of Mechanical engineeringhere at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called ‘whores’ in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris, France. This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Muslims to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile ‘protests.’ If you do not like the values of the West — see the 1st Amendment — you are free to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,
I. S. Wichman
Professor of Mechanical Engineering

The best part? The university is not getting involved — what the professor said in the context of a private email is his business, and not theirs.

This is the question that bothers Peter Hitchens this week, and it’s a good one to reflect on given the recent confrontation with police had by Christian preachers Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, who were told by police officers that the area in which they were handing out literature was a Muslim community, that their evangelism was a “hate crime,” and that if they returned to the area ever again and were perchance beaten…well, they’d already been warned.

A police constable who was present during the incident in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham is also alleged to have told the preachers not to return to the district.

It comes amid growing concern over the development of Islamic ‘no-go areas’.

The preachers, Americans Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, are demanding an apology and compensation from West Midlands Police.

They say their treatment breaks the Human Rights Act, which guarantees freedom of religious expression.

The preachers, who have the backing of the Christian Institute pressure group, say they will take the force to court for breaching their human rights if they don’t receive an apology.

They have accused the officer, PCSO Naeem Naguthney, of behaving in an ‘aggressive and threatening’ manner. A complaint by their lawyers said he interrupted as they spoke to Muslim youths about their beliefs.

Mr Abraham, 65, who was born a Muslim in Egypt and is a convert to Christianity, said: ‘He told us we were trying to convert Muslims to Christianity and that that was a hate crime.

‘He was very intimidating and it concerns me that somebody holding his views can become a police officer, albeit at PCSO level.’

Mr Cunningham, 48, a fellow American Baptist missionary, said: ‘He realised we were Americans and then started ranting at us about George Bush and American foreign policy.

‘He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said he was going to take us to the police station.’

At any rate, Peter Hitchens — the sane Hitchens brother, mind — muses thusly:

Why did we have to wait for Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, born and raised in Muslim Pakistan, to remind us that, as he put it, ‘the beliefs, values and virtues of Great Britain have been formed by the Christian faith’?

Just as important, why did we have to wait for him to urge us to do something about restoring that faith before we either sink into a yelling chaos of knives, fists and boots, or swoon into the strong, implacable arms of Islam?

Most of our homegrown prelates are more interested in homosexuality or in spreading doubt about the gospel or urging the adoption of Sharia law.

Then again, why did it take the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to explain to us that our parliamentary system was the best guarantee of liberty in the world and to remind us of the courage and valour of our people in war?

This is not what British leaders say or even think, not least because they are busy pulling the constitution to pieces.

It is not what our children are taught in schools.

In fact, any expression of national pride is viewed with suspicion by the state, by the education system and above all by the BBC.

It was not always so. Half a century ago, we had churchmen, broadcasters, academics and military men who thought it normal to love their own country, normal to support the Christian faith which made us what we are, and were willing to defend it.

The question of what happened in the years between is one of the most interesting in history.

I suggest reading the whole thing — it isn’t terribly long, but is a good summation of just what has gone wrong with modern Britain.

There was a time when the British had the gumption and courage to stand up to all manner of menaces, internal and foreign alike, and when the British people took pride in their nation. Those days would seem to have expired, as Britain sinks more and more into two separate chasms: that of rampant, primitive and violent Islam in its immigrant communities, and that of demoralized, nihilistic secularism everywhere else. And the latter does not have the desire, strength, or courage to resist the advance of the former.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Here’s one more example:

In Egypt, there’s another way cell phones can give you a big headache: divorce by SMS.

Here’s the story of a Cairo woman whose husband divorced her by…text message!

She and her husband, an Egyptian army officer away on duty, had just hung up after quarreling on the phone. She ignored his return call, not wanting to continue the argument, the woman recounted in an interview this week.

The electronic chirrup of an incoming message signaled his response. “I divorce you,” her husband had written. “That will teach you not to answer my calls.”

Reconciliation followed, only to be broken by another quarrel, this one over the woman asking her family to mediate the couple’s problems. “I divorce you,” her husband wrote in another message. “Don’t ask other people to interfere in our business.”

Another reconciliation. Another argument. And another declaration of divorce from her husband, this time face to face, late last year.

Islamic law can make the act of divorce stunningly simple for men, even if the ensuing financial settlements often are not. A husband has only to declare to his wife, “Inti talaq” — “You are divorced” — three times, and mean it, to end their marriage.

The couple wants to reconcile, but it’s unclear whether they’re actually divorced:

Her husband wants her back, the woman said, but the religious scholars she consulted tell her she is divorced in the eyes of God and would be returning to him out of wedlock.

But if she refuses to return, and the courts rule the text-message declarations invalid and her marriage intact, she risks losing her claim to her young son.

With the text messages, she said, “the doors of hell have opened on my life.”

Sharia law is, quite simply, just disgusting. The hell this poor woman must be living through is two-fold — not only was it ludicrously easy for her husband to divorce her (and then because she had the temerity to stand up for herself!), but depending on whether the divorce is ruled valid or not, she may either lose her children or (worse, perhaps) wind up branded as an adulteress.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Okay, back when it was just two, it might have been okay to look on this as some kind of accident.

But five severed cables? This is looking less and less like “oops, we dropped the anchor in the wrong place, cap’n,” and more and more like…well…more sinister, at any rate.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: The Jawa Report)

In the wake of that undersea cable failing (it now appears that two cables were accidentally severed!), Egypt has called on its internet-using citizens to curb the amount of time they spend online, and what content they access when browsing.

Egypt’s Internet situation is in dire straits after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean were accidentally severed yesterday, cutting off much of the country’s access to the outside world. 70 percent of the nation’s Internet has been disconnected, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, with phone calls to Europe and the US also being disrupted. As a result, the ministry has launched an emergency task force to deal with the situation and has asked the general public to avoid downloading more bandwidth-intensive items for now in order to allow businesses priority.

It’s not just Egypt, either; other countries throughout the Middle East also suffered outages, with some being completely disconnected. And both India and Egypt, which run high-volume call centers, have taken a major hit in communications because of the disruption.

“Two of our cables are affected; everyone will go onto a third cable,” ministry spokesperson Mohammed Taymur told the AFP. “But that will not be enough bandwidth. [...] People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do.“

You know, in 2006, Egypt was the #3 hotspot in the world from which Google-searches for the keyword “sex” originated. One wonders if this sort of failure would be sufficient to create a noticeable dip in the revenues of the porn industry?

Probably not, unfortunately, but one can always hope.

Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections.

The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online.

Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with the Egypt’s communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe.

The line in question runs under the Mediterranean, from Palermo in Italy to Alexandria in Egypt. It is not clear what caused the break. The cable is one of only a handful of connections, and part of the world’s longest undersea cable, 24,500 miles long, running from Germany, through the Middle East and India before terminating in Australia and Japan.

Oops.

On the plus side, though, I’m willing to bet that incidences of DDOS attacks launched against anti-jihad websites went down a point or two.

David Warren provides a quick, three-paragraph summation of the challenges that the Western world is facing today. In what can’t really be called a surprise (except perhaps by a progressive mind to crippled by multicultural pieties), Islam takes the lead role:

We (the U.S. and allies) are winning in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and losing everywhere else. The Syrians are now murdering independent Lebanese politicians with impunity. The pressure on Iran has been relieved. Pakistan is teetering towards a civil and military collapse from which only the Islamists can gain. Islamist demands for the imposition of Shariah, and for the legal persecution of religious minorities, have entered the mainstream of political life in countries that were once free of religious zealotry — Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia. Islamist terrorists are winning effective control over the remoter Muslim-settled regions in many countries of Asia and Africa, creating streams of Christian refugees from the southern Philippines, of Buddhist refugees from southern Thailand, of Christians and Animists fleeing south across the breadth of Africa.

Saudi-sponsored Wahabi Islam is consolidating its hold over the mosques of the West, and radicalizing the huge Muslim immigrant communities that have congregated in almost every major European city. Across Europe, and increasingly in North America (and as we’ve seen in Canada in the obscene “human rights” trials of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant), the most radical Muslims are exploiting state multiculturalism, to score victories over free speech and win pathetic apologies from anyone accused of the thought crime of “Islamophobia.”

Islam is a broad and ancient religion — we are not discussing that, today. We are discussing instead the contemporary reality. For internationally, Islam has been morphing into a violent and puritanical cult. Yet this very large and very hard fact is being rendered undiscussable, in historical or any other terms.

And a quick note on the current state of affairs in Egypt, a concept which is broadly applicable to the whole of the Muslim world at present:

In Egypt as elsewhere, to say that “the great majority of Muslims are peaceful, unaggressive people, just trying to get on with their lives” is to utter something deeply fatuous. The great majority of Germans were likewise, in the 1930s.

As Kathy Shaidle is fond of pointing out, Paul Revere was not credited with shouting “Some of the British are coming!” And that is because he did not need to, nor did the Minutemen need to be alerted to the impending onslaught with a wordy explanation that the Redcoats about to descend upon them were not representative of the wider majority of British folk world-wide. Likewise, in World War II, we didn’t go to war against some of the Germans, or some of the Japanese.

The common thread between those two examples, which is unfortunately missing from many peoples’ analysis of the current situation of the West vs. the Islamic world, is the concept of war. Whether a war for independence, or a globe-spanning war against fascism, it’s easier to look at the historical examples above and note that while it may be true that while our forebears weren’t so careful as to classify the enemy beyond using broad cultural categories, that is explicable because of the urgency of the conflict taking place at the time. The extension of such an argument, then, is that we in the West today are not currently embroiled in a war with Islam.

Which is true, in a sense…that is, in the sense that no war has formally been declared by means of the normal diplomatic channels. But in a more important sense — objective reality — the war is already on, and has been for some time. If, under Sharia, the average Muslim (even though s/he might otherwise be a decent sort, and quite personable), regards the world as divided into two realms — that of Islam and that of harb (War) — then whether or not any Islamic nation or group has formally issued a declaration of war is irrelevant. If in fact it is the religious obligation of Muslims everywhere to “fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection,” (Sura 9:29), then whether or not any war has been formally declared is irrelevant. Under Sharia, it is the religious duty of every Muslim to strive to bring about the day when Islam rules over all other faiths and demands their submission.

And even the rather typical sidestep that some will attempt to do in regard to the opening like of the passage above — that is, make the argument that the Muslim Allah and the Judeo-Christian God are the same being, so the above passage does not apply to other monotheistic religions — is, at best, a half truth. Even if it were completely true, and even if Christians and Jews get a pass (and if one believes the rhetoric coming out of the two major players on the global Islamic scene, Iran and Saudi Arabia, there is no way that Jews will get a pass), that still wouldn’t bode well for many people in Western society, and so is still an idea which cannot be tolerated.

But here’s the thing: the Muslim Allah and the Judeo-Christian God are, theologically, not the same being. Oh, I’m willing to grant that in the final summation, they may well be the same, but unfortunately that is beyond the scope of human knowledge. And if one looks at the revelation that has come to Christianity (which inherits directly from Judaism), and if one then looks at the teachings that purportedly came to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, there is no way to reconcile the Judeo-Christian conception of who and what God is with the Islamic one.

So even Jews and Christians aren’t exempt from Sura 9:29, if in fact they, and Muslims, stick to their theological traditions and exegesis.

War may not have been declared, but there is a war going on, pitting the ideals of the West — which, unfortunately, few enough people in the West have the necessary courage to defend — against those of the jihad. Already, this war has claimed many lives. But mere exchanges of casualties are but a small part of any war. Territory is what matters. And, as has been pointed out on this blog and elsewhere, in many parts of the West, the West is losing ground to radicalized forms of Islam, especially in Europe. That trend may already be irreversible, as well as the trends being seen in places like Pakistan, which even now teeters on the brink of falling into Islamist hands. When nuclear-armed nations like Pakistan fall into the hands of the jihad, and when nations like France begin to adopt an ever more Islamic character — and then of a decidedly Islamist bent — what will that do for the safety and security of the rest of the Western world?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Tarek Fatah points to a troubling new trend:

It seems only yesterday that Premier Dalton McGuinty declared: “There will be no Sharia law in Ontario.” Many of us, who witnessed the medieval nature of manmade sharia laws in our countries of birth, heaved a sigh of relief back in September of 2005. We thought this was the end of the attempt by Islamists to sneak sharia into a Western jurisdiction. We were wrong.

The campaign to introduce sharia is back. Last time, the campaign took a populist approach, invoking multiculturalism. This time, the pro-sharia lobby is dangling the carrot of new niche markets and has the backing of Canada’s major banks. Such icons of the corporate world as Citibank NA, HSBC Holdings PLC, and Barclays PLC have endorsed sharia banking and have started offering Islamic financing products to a vulnerable Muslim population.

…

The origin of Islamic banking has its roots in the 1920s, but did not start until the late 1970s and owes much of its foundation to the Islamist doctrine of two people — Abul Ala Maudoodi of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan and Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The theory was put into practice by Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq who established sharia banking law in Pakistan.

Proponents of sharia banking rest their case on many verses of the Holy Koran that outlaw usury, not interest.

Verses that address the question of loans and debts include:

Al Baqarah (2:275): God hath permitted trade and forbidden usury;

Al Baqarah (2:276): Allah does not bless usury, and He causes charitable deeds to prosper, and Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner.

Every English-language translation of the Koran has translated the Arabic word riba as usury, not interest. Yet, Islamists have deliberately portrayed bank interest as usury and labelled the current banking system as un-Islamic. Instead, these Islamists have created exotic products with names that are foreign to much of the world’s Muslim population. This is where they mask interest under the niqab of Mudraba, Musharaka, Murabaha, and Ijara.

…

In the name of Islam, deception and dishonesty is being practised while ordinary Muslims are being made to feel that their interaction with mainstream banks is un-Islamic and sinful. As Mr. Saleem asks, “If Islamic banks label their hamburger a Mecca Burger, as long as it still has the same ingredients as a McDonald’s burger, is it really any different in substance?”

Sharia is a barbaric system, a fusion of Islamic religion with political ideals. It is backward and openly misogynistic (a couple of examples that I find particularly odious are (a) how males, under sharia, are free to marry any woman from one of the three major monotheistic religions…but women are permitted to marry only another Muslim, and (b) divorce is a man’s unilateral right, but women must seek their husband’s permission to obtain one). It’s also just plain silly at times. And all of this doesn’t even begin to bring into focus the punishments Sharia prescribes for adulterers (stoning to death) or thieves (forcible removal of the hand). And did I mention the part where wife-beating is permissible under certain circumstances, and subject to certain criteria?

Put more plainly: Sharia and Western principles are wholly incompatible. No person has any business demanding that Sharia become the law of this land, or of any Western nation; any person who desires to live under Sharia is welcome to move/return to the Middle East and any of the nations there which are governed by this ugly system of laws. Yes, I am aware that most such countries are unliveable hellholes. Yes, I do think there’s a connection. No, I don’t think that means what I’m suggesting is unfair.

This will not be the last attempt to sneak principles of Sharia law in the back door of Canada’s legal system, and (as was the case with Sharia courts in Ontario a couple of years ago) must be opposed in no uncertain terms. Put simply, there is no place in Canada for the sort of near-barbarism that Sharia law represents, and it must be openly and plainly communicated that not only do Canadians regard as odious the deceptive and falsehood-laden tactics of Sharia propnents in the case of these banks, but that Canadians regard as odious the very tenets and principles which these would-be bankers claim to be driven by.

Because no sane Canadian should ever desire to see Sharia gain any foothold here.

(Unrelatedly, though, I’ll try not to feel too much of a swell of pride that a phrase which I may have coined is being used in the title of a column in a national newspaper (even if it is just the Globe & Mail).)

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)

Another thing of which I was not aware:

There has been, recently, no “Israeli blockade,” such as has been mentioned ad nauseam in the media. Israel and Egypt conduct more or less the same policies in managing the border, and both are happy to let goods and services — other than weapons — into Gaza. Neither is eager to let anyone or anything out, for obvious reasons.

Take for example the endless media reports of poor Gaza Palestinians suffering from power shortages. Most of the electricity for the territory is supplied from Israel, from a single generating plant in Ashkelon. This has continued to flow, under contractual arrangements, while alas demand has been outstripping supply on the Gaza side. Israel herself has power-supply problems, and one of them is that Hamas continues to fire Kassams daily towards Ashkelon.

Let me parse that out. Israelis working in the Ashkelon power plant routinely risk their lives, to supply electricity to Gaza.

There will be no peace in the region while thepeople — they are people, even if their conduct in biting the hand that feeds them seems more deserving of the term “savages” — who are called, erroneously, Palestinians can abandon their fanatical death-cult ideology. Before too long, it may become necessary for Israel to simply conquer Gaza and the West Bank and wipe out the Hamas and Fatah leaderships and political structures.

Kateland at The Last Amazon has a couple of good articles up about the ways in which Hamas, in Gaza, is manufacturing humanitarian and refugee crises in a bid to turn world public opinion against Israel. By and large, their efforts in this regard have already succeeded — Israel is widely demonized. But isn’t it interesting how the group that is supposedly the legitimately elected government of Gaza uses various tactics (threat of force, looting) against providers of food and fuel in order to create preconditions for a starving, desperate populace…and isn’t it interesting how it is Israel that the world blames for their genocidal oppression of the Palestinians? Isn’t it interesting how the group that is supposedly the legitimately elected government of Gaza blows holes in a wall between Egypt and Palestine, and then encourages thousands of refugees to cross the Sinai…and isn’t it interesting how it is Israel that the world blames for their persecution of the Palestinians?

Hatred of Jews is an old, old passtime that has been adopted, at various times, by different groups for different reasons. But I don’t think there’s ever been an era where it has become so mainstream to direct ill will toward the people of Israel.

TheSpaceAdmiral, whom I haven’t heard from in a while, writes in with a few corrections to a previous article.

I think the premise of your “Egypt had a wall between it and Gaza” post is wrong. You say twice that the wall was built by Egypt, but Reuters seems pretty confident that the portion of wall blown up yesterday was built by Israel in 2004:

Residents of Rafah, a divided town straddling the Egypt-Gaza border, said militants set off explosions that demolished a 200-metre (200-yard) length of the rusting, six-meter-high (20-foot-high) metal border wall put up by Israel in 2004, a year before it pulled troops and settlers from the territory.

Egypt certainly does a lot to keep Palestinians out (and have made considerable efforts to seal the border), so you can argue that your broader point remains valid, but I still think jumping from “there is a wall on the Egypt-Gaza border” to “the Egyptians built a wall on the Egypt-Gaza.border” is a weird leap of logic.

Please note that I’m disputing the historical facts related to construction of the wall. I’m not trying to make some broader political point.

One works with the details one has on hand at the moment, and I didn’t take the time to look for more information about the Rafah wall. If it was built by Israel back in 2004, then it was built by Israel back in 2004 (I’m not usually willing to grant Reuters my complete trust, especially in regard to their objectivity where Israel is concerned, but the historical picture they present seems accurate upon further review).

So it appears that I goofed on a technical detail. My apologies, and I am grateful for the added details.

TheSpaceAdmiral is right, though, that this doesn’t really do any damage to the point of my previous article, which was to point out that there seems to be an awful lot of noise being made about the injustice of the Israel/Gaza wall, but no noise at all about how the Egypt/Gaza wall. There seems to be an awful lot of noise being made about Israel’s use of the wall as a security barrier, and no noise at all about how, until yesterday, Egypt was using the Rafah wall for essentially the same purpose.

That the Rafah wall was built by Israel is interesting, but also irrelevant in the grand scheme; they gave up control of the site when they withdrew their troops and civilians from the area. In effect, if not by act of construction, it was the Egyptians’ wall. Was, that is, until Hamas had a go at it.

Why is it that human rights’ groups (and Islamic lobby groups) criticize the wall that Israel built between itself and Gaza as “inhumane”, “invasive”, and “genocidal”…and yet fail to mention that Egypt had built a similar wall? Of course, Hamas blew that wall up last night, and thousands of Palestinian refugees have since swarmed over the border, leaving Gaza for Egypt.

But still. Did the Reader know that the Egyptians had built an analog to the Israeli wall? Your blogger here did not.