Refugees from Syria and other troubled lands.

The stories and pics of refugees, migrants, call them what you will, arriving en masse in Europe from Syria, North Africa and other unhappy places, has produced a mass of extreme reaction. From extreme generosity to outright suspicion and hatred, there is hardly anyone who has not some opinion on the subject and few views seem to be moderate.

I am not a refugee and have yet to encounter any of the recent arrivals. Nor am I likely to in the near future, as I live in Moscow which, for the moment, is not a favoured destination.

My reflections here are based, however, on two experiences. I am the son of a refugee. My father fled Paris in 1940. He was Jewish, and a threatened Nazi invasion hardly promised good times for him. He enlisted in the Free Polish Army, and while the British Expeditionary Force retreated to Blighty via Dunkirk, the Free Poles, including Dad, were picked up in Spain by the Royal Navy and given sanctuary in Britain.

The other experience is a childhood as a victim of an ugly mind control cult.  ISIS is not the only factor driving thousands to seek a new and safer life, but is definitely a major cause of the current surge in movement.  Masoud Bani-Sadr in his 'Destructive and Terrorist Cults'observed that though not all cults are terrorist groups, there are few terrorists who are not the subjects of cult mind control. Indeed to behave in the foul and barbaric ISIS manner  whilst imagining you are obeying the will of Allah, can only be carried out by those whose minds have been captured and manipulated.

Jehovah's Witnesses, the cult that imprisoned my childhood mind, differed from ISIS in that mega violence was delegated to Jehovah. He was due to execute all the world's non Jehovah's Witnesses before the end of the 20th century for the capital crime of not being active Jehovah's Witnesses.

The reactions to the current wave of refugees have been mixed, to say the least.  Hospitality is, of course, admirable, and demanding large sums of money for journeys in lethally unsafe boats is utterly and unquestionably despicable. There are two widely held reactions, however, in the blogosphere and the trad. media which seem utterly divorced from reality. It is on these I propose to comment.

1.  THIS WILL LEAD TO THE ISLAMIC TAKEOVER OF EUROPE

The attached vid. is just one alarmist piece, and although it is stuffed full of stats, most of its premises are flawed. The idea that the Muslim population of Europe will soon be a majority as opposed to a minority is based on two erroneous assumptions.

The first, that Muslim birth rates will continue to vastly exceed those of 'infidels' is not borne out by studies of recent history. In the mid 20th century, for example, the birth rates in Southern, largely Catholic, Europe, and Mexico, vastly exceeded those of Northern Europe and the United States. In the 21st century these contrasting rates  no longer pertain.

There is also the assumption that babies are born as followers of the family faith. Sure, it is difficult, sometimes to leave Islam. It is, though, significant that there are groups, worldwide, of Ex Muslims. 'Ex' groups, religionwise,  only form with regard to organisations that have produced ugly experiences, or  that give leavers, aka apostates, a hard time. In Christendom it is only in extreme fringe groups, like Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Amish, where apostates are shunned, and thus seek support from others who have suffered in similar fashion. Shunning, however, appears to be the default position in Islam. The idea that a Methodist or Anglican parent would reject any children who rejected their childhood creed is all but unthinkable.  Muslims are, nevertheless, despite the sanctions, becoming ex Muslims in increasing numbers.

Mine cannot be the only extended family where religious chopping and changing seems to be the norm.  In the last few generations there have been children of Orthodox Jews who have become, respectively, Liberal Jews, Atheist Jews, Roman Catholics and Humanists. There have been children of extreme Protestants turning to Anglicanism, an Anglican becoming a Jehovah's Witness as well as Anglicans turning to Agnosticism,  Atheism and Romanian Orthodoxy. Children of Catholics have become Atheists and Humanists. Children of the Jehovah's Witness have become Anglican and Agnostic. Regarding Islam my family has seen the child of a Muslim become an Evangelical Christian, another become an Agnostic and a third a follower of the Guru Maharaj Ji.

The  hospitality shown by secular and Christian Europe, relative to the barred door of the Islamic States of the Gulf, may well enlighten some Muslims as to to the benefits of a way of life that some have considered to be utterly Haram. That, coupled with Europe's relative prosperity and freedom may well persuade some Muslims that all is not evil in the land of the Infidel.

This is the link for the alarmist Muslim Takeover vid. 
  

https://youtu.be/9E50JaCQNng

 

2. THE REFUGEE CRISIS IS ALL AMERICA'S FAULT

 

This assumption is equally silly. Sure the USA has not helped itself or the West in this regard. The notion that the enemy of America's enemy is America's friend has had awful consequences. During the Cold War, the 1953 election of a Socialist in oil rich Iran  made America and Britain fear for their oil interests. Thus Mossadeq was ousted with US and British help, and the Shah was planted on the Iranian throne. Mossadeq, the Socialist President had viewed Shiite Islam as a symbol of Iranian culture, much as an English agnostic might have an affection for church bells and choral evensong. The Shah, though, like his father, was determined to marginalise Islam and banned Islamic dress altogether. Thus, as the Shah became ever more dictatorial, Islam could be viewed, albeit erroneously, as a force for liberation.  

More significant was America's arming of the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan. Little had the US imagined that a resurgent Islam, once it had driven out the atheist Commie Russkies, would turn on its infidel benefactor.  And then there was the misguided and blood soaked notion that bombing a corrupt dictator out of a job would open the democratic gates.  The binning of Saddam and Gaddafy opened some gates alright, but it was the gates of the current murderous chaos. 

Sure, America and Britain must own up , indeed in large part have owned up, to their negative role. Islam, though, cannot be exonerated.  For 1000 of its 1400 year existence, its destiny to conquer and purify the world by spreading, through the sword if necessary, the word of the one true god and his message, appeared to be on course. Since the late 17th century failure to take Vienna Islam's route has been steadily downhill. The dream, fantastical and ridiculous though it is, to purify humanity via Islam in readiness for Judgement Day, has never died.

For most of Islam's existence, no Muslim or Christian even knew there was such a continent as America. Latterday America did not create this crazy creed. The US has simply blundered into aiding and abetting Islam's destructive mission. Although the direct and overt military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq may be well past its peak, the friendship with Saudi Arabia, the world's principal promoter and exporter of radical Islam, is an utter scandal. Apart from the finite nature of oil and its polluting effects, there is a strong case for promoting green energy, if only to divest the Saudis of their murderous and barbaric power. 

For all of America's myopia, this does not exonerate ISIS and co. from their guilt in the current refugee crisis. One might as well blame Imperial Germany for militant Irish nationalism as they shipped arms to the IRA to aid them in the 1916 Rising. Germany also sent Lenin into Russia in a bid to cause trouble behind the lines on the Eastern Front. Germany, however, was not the father of Bolshevism any more than it begot violent Irish Republicanism or America gave birth to militant Islam.

Finally, to make generalisations about a vast array of arrivals from different countries, of different ages and different skills, is plain silly. Some may be an asset to their new European homes. Some may settle; others may return whence they came when peace breaks out. By the law of averages there may indeed be some spongers or even a few terrorists. My family's history of migration, like its history of religious diversity, illustrates this point too. My dad never became a naturalised Brit. He never felt at home in the country that had given him refuge. His siblings and cousins, though, became respectively, thoroughly integrated Italians, French, Americans and Israelis. Poland is now  but a piece of ancient family history. 

The Saudis have  promised to finance a load of European mosques for the new European Muslims that it refuses to admit to its own territory.  Building them is one thing. Filling them with believers is another.  We in Europe must lead by example.   Democracy, for all its limitations, offers more than Sharia ever could. Many of Europe's current arrivals have already implied that. They have risked their lives to flee from Sharia to the relative safety of  democratic shores.

 

Predicting the future is a dodgy pursuit, but history can sometimes tell us a little. Before the Ayatollah's victory in Iran in 1979, it had seemed that religion, as a factor in politics, had disappeared into history. Its current ascendancy, buoyed up by the failure of communism/socialism to deliver, and the fortuitous wealth occasioned by oil, has given Islam a new lease of life. It was not Islamic education that gave birth to the internal combustion engine and the current power of oil. When it becomes obvious that Islam per se offers the world even less than bolshevism, will Islam, no matter how many cradle Muslims come to  Europe and America, continue to proliferate?

Of course I do not know, but am filled with the optimism of deep doubt.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Destructive-Terrorist-Cults-Followers-Manipulation/dp/1502384795/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441902782&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Masoud+Bani-Sadr+-+Destructive+and+Terrorist+Cults

A N Wilson, Rabbi Sachs, Karen Armstrong and Reza Aslan  are all fans of established religious institutions, and for reasons which I fully feel and understand. I love, for example,  the Anglican music tradition; I am also an admirer of the Church of England's latterday lack of certainty, indeed its celebration of doubt. I have enjoyed, as a tourist, visits to magnificent mosques in Istanbul and Sarajevo. My Orthodox Jewish uncle and aunt were a very kind and hospitable couple.The commitment of  members of all three Abrahamic branches, lay and clerical, seems largely concentrated on this earthly life, the only one we know, as opposed to some post mortem ethereal eternity for the faithful few. And as A N Wilson and others point out, the stories of the Flight from Egypt and the Jews' release from exile in Babylon have been the inspiration for worthy political campaigns like slavery's and apartheid's abolition as well as Martin Luther King's work for Civil Rights in the United States. As for hellfire and damnation for unbelievers, they seem long consigned to the history books.

Where I take issue with the four writers listed at the top, the two Christians, the Jew and the Muslim, is that they seem unaware of the potential danger of venerating old books.  This veneration is a fundamental feature of the three Peoples of the Book.

Youssef Choueiri  summed up this danger very neatly in his  book 'Islamic Fundamentalism' : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islamic-Fundamentalism-3rd-Islamist-Movements/dp/0826498019/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441889878&sr=8-1&keywords=Islamic+Fundamentalism+-+Youssef+Choueiri

'So long as revealed text is constatnly judged to be the final arbiter of human affairs, or of truth and falsehood, fundamentalism is bound to apear under various labels and systems of thought'.

It is all very well to point out, or indeed live by, the relatively peaceful Koranic verses from the early Meccan period after Mahomet's initial revelation, but vaunting the entire Koran as the incontrovertible word of the Almighty is asking for trouble.  Attempts to redefine Jihad as an inner spiritual struggle as opposed to forcing a new creed upon the world at the point of a sword will not convince everyone. 

'Hermeneutics' and 'Exegesis' are fancy words whereby benign theologians from all three Abrahamic branches try to convince themselves, if nobody else, that the Koran and Hadiths, as well as the Bible do not mean what they say.  They have come in handy in the last 25 years in the Church of England, for example, which has defied its founder,  St. Paul's edict that women in church should stay silent. The church now has women bishops.

The retired Chief rabbi of Britain's Orthodox Jews acknowledged in his latest book, 'Not in God's Name' that without elaborate and tortuous 'interpretation' (he could not bring himself to write denial or distortion) Bible study can lead to violence.

The Publicity vids of ISIS justify, indeed glorify, every barbarous action of their 'Caliphate' with quotes from the Koran and Hadiths.

Clerics of all three Abrahamic branches need to take several steps bolder than 'exegesis' and 'hermeneutics' and knock their Holy texts off their divinely issued and infallible shelves. There are precedents for acts equally radical. Catholics have acknowledged that Galileo was right, and have jettisoned the Limbo idea. Jews, for all that they ceremonially venerate the Torah, have no plans to implement its law code. It is only relevant, some say, when a Temple stands in Jerusalem. There have been attempts, since the Temple's destruction in A D 70, however, to rebuild the thing, so the Jews had better be prepared for something more fundamental.

That leaves the Muslims. Their Koran and Hadiths are  currently a much bigger obstacle to peace than is the Bible.  Sure there are plenty of clerics prepared to do the necessary semiotic contortions to try and make the sacred texts of Islam messages conducive to peace and harmony. Who in the world, though,  is there that could persuade them that their old writings are an obstacle to any such mission?