RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/10/febrile-summer-divided-capital/

Even if you ignore the rancorous Brexit debate and Remainers’ predictions that put the seven plagues of Egypt to shame, there have been plenty of entirely unrelated developments to make a Briton think seriously of buying a one-way ticket to the Antipodes or Americas.

The crowds sunbathing in the parks and strolling the shopping streets in their shorts and T-shirts seem so happy and carefree that if you didn’t read or watch the news you might have little sense that Britain may be finally, genuinely going down the tubes. Indeed, their calm and good cheer make you almost wonder if the panic, anger and bitterness so prevalent among the political and media classes might be misguided or at least excessive.

It was different last summer. In June, during the humid, febrile days after the terrible Grenfell fire, which came on the heels of Theresa May’s election debacle and assembly of a shaky coalition government, the capital felt as if it was on the verge of revolution. But then things calmed down and there was nothing like the run of headlines that over the past few months have prompted pundits to wonder if the UK as we know it is falling apart.
This dispatch appears in October’s Quadrant.
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Some of the more frightening ones may well be (consciously or unconsciously) part of the continuing campaign to stop or reverse the dismayingly chaotic Brexit process. These include the reports from both inside and outside the government that warn of catastrophic shortages of food, antibiotics and other vital goods come March 2019.

The UK may well face some difficult times after next spring, but it does seem a little unlikely that the country will be devastated by the equivalent of Napoleon’s naval blockade. It is not obvious that the hostility of M Barnier’s European Commission is shared by all the EU member governments, and surely one thing that has been made clear by various efforts to enforce sanctions on rogue regimes during the last decades is that there is no pariah state so despised and hateful that France, Germany and others won’t fight to trade with it. (As for the dark talk of civil unrest when or if Britain ceases to be a member of the EU, such an outcome seems more probable if the predominantly “Remainer” political class tries to overturn or reverse the referendum.)

However, there have been plenty of developments completely unrelated to Brexit or the EU that might make a Briton think a bit more seriously about buying a one-way ticket to the Antipodes or Americas.

This week, for instance, there was the report that a Birmingham prison whose management had been outsourced to a well-connected private company was actually being run by prison gangs, and was therefore even more chaotic and drug-ridden than the state-run penitentiaries. This was soon followed by an announcement by the Justice Secretary (a slow-witted fellow even by the undemanding standard that the Prime Minister prefers for her cabinet colleagues) that instead of enforcing the prison ban on mobile phones he would hand one to every prisoner. As is widely known (at least outside the Ministry of Justice), convicts use mobile phones not just to run their criminal enterprises from inside but to arrange the intimidation of witnesses and to put pressure on prison guards by targeting their families.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13158/turkey-education-islamization

After the minimum age for Quran studies in Turkey was abolished in 2011, a project named “Pre-school religious education through Koran classes” was piloted in ten cities across the country in 2013. The project teaches “basic Islamic information” to children between the ages of four and six. Since then, the number of “pre-school Koran classes” has continued to rise.

The number of religious “imam hatip schools” has climbed from 450 in 2002 to 4,112 in 2017. Meanwhile, there are only 302 specialized science high schools in the country.

“There are religious organizations… [that] pump their own ideologies on children through classes in ‘values education’ … We know that they use one-sided language that demonizes those who are different. We observe that the students who are exposed to such curricula consider those who think differently to be their ‘enemies.’… When one looks at countries such as Afghanistan, where similar steps were taken, one can see where this process leads to.” — İlknur Bahadır Kaya, chairman of the Parents’ Association.

Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) is set to receive an additional two billion liras (around $350 million), boosting its budget from last year’s 8.3 billion liras ($1.5 billion) to 10.4 billion ($1.8 billion) liras for 2019, according to the newspaper Cumhuriyet. This increase in budget surpasses that of 29 other major state institutions, including the ministries of the interior and foreign affairs.

The Diyanet, the state body regulating the role of Islam in Turkey, apparently has, as one of its main missions, transforming the country’s education system. It is now fully engaged in shaping school curricula.

After the minimum age for Quran studies in Turkey was abolished in 2011, a project named “Pre-school religious education through Quran classes,” implemented by the Diyanet, was piloted in ten cities across the country in 2013. The project teaches the Quran and “basic Islamic information” to children between the ages of four and six. In 2015, the Diyanet decided to expand to program to “all places where physical conditions are suitable.” Since then, the number of “pre-school Koran classes” has continued to rise. It has increased to 150,000 students in five years.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/23/oldest-intact-shipwreck-thought-to-be-ancient-greek-discovered-at-bottom-of-black-sea
Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the world’s oldest intact shipwreck at the bottom of the Black Sea where it appears to have lain undisturbed for more than 2,400 years.

The 23-metre (75ft) vessel, thought to be ancient Greek, was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface. A lack of oxygen at that depth preserved it, the researchers said.

“A ship surviving intact from the classical world, lying in over 2km of water, is something I would never have believed possible,” said Professor Jon Adams, the principal investigator with the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP), the team that made the find. “This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.”

The ship is believed to have been a trading vessel of a type that researchers say has only previously been seen “on the side of ancient Greek pottery such as the ‘Siren Vase’ in the British Museum”.

That work, which dates from about the same period, depicts a similar vessel bearing Odysseus past the sirens, with the Homeric hero lashed to the mast to resist their songs.

The team reportedly said they intended to leave the vessel where it was found, but added that a small piece had been carbon dated by the University of Southampton and claimed the results “confirmed [it] as the oldest intact shipwreck known to mankind”. The team said the data would be published at the Black Sea MAP conference at the Wellcome Collection in London later this week.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/european-human-rights-court-defaming-muhammad-not-protected/

Defamatory statements about the prophet Muhammad are not covered by free-speech protections, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday.

The Strasbourg-based court found that insulting the prophet “goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate” and “could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace.”

In its ruling, the court rejected an Austrian woman’s claim that her previous conviction for characterizing Muhammad as a “pedophile” violated her free-speech rights, finding instead that the Austrian court had “carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected.”

In a series of public seminars, the women cited Muhammad’s marriage to a six-year-old girl, which, according to Islamic lore, was consummated when she was nine, as evidence of his pedophilia.

Muhammad “liked to do it with children,” the woman said during one of the seminars. “A 56-year-old and a 6-year-old? . . . What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/scotland-government-anti-hate-campaign-virtue-signals/

The Scottish government aims to protect people from real harm and also from those dreadful haters who might participate in wrongthink.

My blood is no use in America. What I mean is, as a native of the British Isles, born amid an epidemic of “mad cow” disease, I am theoretically a carrier of this brain-wasting affliction and, accordingly, forbidden from donating my sanguine elixir to U.S. blood banks — on the off chance it’s madly bad (or is that badly mad?).

At first, I thought this rather far-fetched. But when my visiting mother presented me with the Scotsman from last Friday — front page: “four cattle have been slaughtered in efforts to contain the first case of ‘mad cow’ disease in Scotland in a decade” — I reconsidered.

Incidentally, there is a strange quirk in Scots law protecting the bovine. According to the Licensing Act of 1872, it remains illegal to be drunk and in possession of a cow. But I digress. The Scotsman report reassured: “Authorities have said the public should not worry as no infected meat entered the food chain.”

Of course, this slaughter, like restrictive blood donation, is a precautionary measure intended to protect the general public from risk of serious harm. This is an obvious point, perhaps, but it is an important one by way of contrast.

Picture this, if you will: The Reverend David Robertson, a Protestant minister at St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee and author of the delightful TheWeeFlea blog, was riding his bicycle through the lively Scottish city when one of the following signs caught his attention.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/insulting-islam-now-illegal-in-europe/

On September 25, 2012, two weeks after the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama stood before the United Nations General Assembly and said the following:

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

I didn’t like this at the time, because I saw it as a capitulation to Islamic terrorists. Less than a month after his own ambassador was murdered, the president of the United States told the whole world: “Hey, free speech is great and everything, but if you hurt the feelings of these guys, you deserve whatever you get.” He lied about the reasons for the Benghazi attack, blaming it on a stupid YouTube video that had nothing to do with it, and then he doubled down in the most shameless way imaginable. He betrayed American ideals because he couldn’t or wouldn’t admit he was wrong.

And it worked. A few weeks later Obama was reelected, which was the only thing he cared about.

But as it turned out, my concerns were unfounded. Obama didn’t strike a blow against liberty that day. He didn’t embolden tyrants and terrorists. Free speech is just fine, everybody!

Claire Corkery, The National (UAE):

An Austrian woman who was convicted for insulting the Prophet Mohammed did not have her right to freedom of speech violated, a European court has ruled.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that courts in Austria, where the woman was found guilty, had balanced the “right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria”.

The woman, who has been named only as ES, held seminars in 2009 for Austria’s far right Freedom Party in which she made defamatory remarks relating to the Prophet Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha, which is usually misrepresented as being to an underage girl.

In other words: In 2018 Europe, you can’t say that Mohammed was a pedophile or the law will come after you. Punishing you for insulting a man who’s been dead for 1,400 years isn’t a violation of your human rights, because you’ve offended a protected class. You’ve pissed off the wrong people, and now you’ll pay. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13186/europe-crisis-survival

In facing this existential challenge, a downward spiral in which Europeans seem to be slowly dying out by failing to reproduce, it seems that Europe has also lost all confidence in its hard-won Enlightenment values, such as personal freedoms, reason and science replacing superstition, and the separation of church and state. These are critical if Europe truly wishes to survive.

In Western Germany, 42% of children under the age of six now come from a migrant background, according to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, as reported by Die Welt.

“[I]f you look through history, where the Church slept, got diverted away from the Gospel, Islam took the advantage and came in. This is what we are seeing in Europe, that the Church is sleeping, and Islam is creeping in… Europe is being Islamized, and it will affect Africa.” — Catholic Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Cameroon.

“The possibility that Europe will become a museum or a cultural amusement park for the nouveau riche of globalization is not completely out of the question.” This thought of Europe as a vast cultural theme park was presented by the late historian Walter Laqueur, who, for his far-sighted prognosis about Europe’s crisis, has been called “the indispensable pessimist.” Laqueur was one of the first to understand that the current deadlock in which the continent finds itself goes far beyond economics. The point is that the days of European strength are over. Because of low birth rates, Europe is dramatically shrinking. If current trends continue, Laqueur said, a hundred years from now Europe’s population “will be only a fraction of what it is today, and in two hundred, some countries may have disappeared.”

Sadly, the “death of Europe” is drawing nearer, is becoming more visible and is more frequently discussed by popular writers.

“At a time when literature is increasingly marginalized in public life, Michel Houellebecq offers a striking reminder that novelists can provide insights about society that pundits and experts miss,” the New York Times wrote about arguably the most important French author. Houellebecq “speaks” through his best-selling novels, such as Submission, as well as his public lectures. The last conference that Houellebecq attended in Brussels — on the occasion of the Oswald Spengler Prize, commemorating the author of The Decline of the West — was dedicated to that topic. “To sum up,” Houellebecq said, “the Western world as a whole is committing suicide.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boko-haram-put-a-bounty-on-my-head-1540507593

I received a phone call several years ago saying that someone had found my wallet, and I could pick it up at an abandoned racetrack. I don’t carry a wallet. Shortly thereafter, while investigating a story about a massacre of Christians in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, I saw a charcoal message emblazoned on a wall: “Hassan, we know about you and will meet you one day.” A Muslim friend confirmed that Boko Haram had put a bounty of $700 on my head. Such is life for a pastor in modern Nigeria.

Nigerian Christianity is under siege from radical Islam. The country’s importance to Africa, and to Christianity as a whole, makes this siege particularly noteworthy. With a population of nearly 200 million—about 50% Christian, 40% Muslim and 10% animist—by 2050 Nigeria will become the third most populous country in the world, the United Nations estimates. No wonder Nigeria has been a strategic target for radical Islamists for several decades.

Boko Haram, a radical Islamic movement whose name roughly translates to “Western education is forbidden,” has ramped up attacks on Christians this year. Since 2009 when Boko Haram began its rampage, about 20,000 Nigerians have been hacked with machetes or shot. Two million have been displaced. Pastors and their families have been specifically targeted for death.

The government’s response has deepened Christian frustrations. President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim, describes the violence as “clashes” between Fulani tribesmen and farmers, who are mostly Christian. But many Christians, who often become refugees, believe the government is telling the world what it wants to hear, that this has nothing to do with religion. Yet why are all the attackers Boko Haram? And why do they target Christians? We sense that Muslims generally are killed as collateral damage, not as primary targets.