RUTHFULLY YOURS

Yesterday’s election victory for Catalan separatists, including
humiliating losses for the ruling center-right Partido Popular,
denotes yet another setback for the grand project of European
unification and a challenge for a continent divided between a strong
north and a lagging south. The Catalan separatists won a thin majority
in the regional parliament, leaving them precisely where they were
before the Oct. 1referendum on secession from Spain – with a small
plurality in favor of breaking away and a large minority determined to
stay. The election result, though, has dire implications for Partido
Popular leader Manuel Rajoy’s minority government, and for European
cohesion in general.

Nationalism is a ghost that refuses to be exorcised. As Annette
Prosinger wrote in a front-page commentary in the conservative German
daily Die Welt. “This election was in reality a referendum on the
independence movement. The result will astonish all of those who bet
on the disenchantment of the Separatists. The magic is more tenacious
than people thought: It has overcome everything: The drop in tourism
and economic investment, the flight of enterprise from Catalonia, and
the rejection that the independence movement received from the EC. The
supporters of the independence movement were not unsettled by the fact
that none of the glorious promises of Carlos Puigedemont and his group
came true, and that prospering Catalonia has become a crisis region.”

The term “disenchantment” (in German, Entzauberung) is deeply fraught
in the German language: it was the watchword of the Romantic movement
that incubated European nationalism during the 19thcentury, calling
for the “re-enchantment” of a world left disenchanted by the
Enlightenment.

Exalting Mohammed in churches effectively proclaims that Mohammed is greater than Jesus — The “Archbishop Cranmer” blog.

A school in Lüneburg postponed a Christmas party after a Muslim student complained that the singing of Christmas carols during school was incompatible with Islam. Alexander Gauland, the leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), said the school’s action was “an unbearable, involuntary submission to Islam” and amounted to a “cowardly injustice” toward non-Muslim children.

“The word ‘Christmas,’ a symbol of our faith and our culture, does not discriminate against anyone. Striking the emblems of Christmas does not guarantee anyone’s respect, does not produce a welcoming and inclusive school and society, but fosters intolerance towards our culture, our customs, our laws and our traditions. We firmly believe that our traditions must be respected.” — Milan politician Samuele Piscina.

This year’s Christmas season has been marked by Islam-related controversies in nearly every European country. Most of the conflicts have been generated by Europe’s multicultural political and religious elites, who are bending over backwards to secularize Christmas, ostensibly to ensure that Muslims will not be offended by the Christian festival.

Many traditional Christmas markets have been renamed — Amsterdam Winter Parade, Brussels Winterpret, Kreuzberger Wintermarkt, London Winterville, Munich Winter Festival — to project a multicultural veneer of secular tolerance.

More troubling are the growing efforts to Islamize Christmas. The re-theologizing of Christmas is based on the false premise that the Jesus of the Bible is the Jesus (Isa) of the Koran. This religious fusion, sometimes referred to as “Chrislam,” is gaining ground in a West that has become biblically illiterate.

In Britain, for instance, the All Saints Church in Kingston upon Thames recently held a joint birthday celebration for Jesus and Mohammed. The “Milad, Advent and Christmas Celebration” on December 3 was aimed at “marking the birthday of Prophet Mohammed and looking forward to the birthday of Jesus.” The hour-long service included time for Islamic prayer and was followed by the cutting of a birthday cake.

Fundamentalist Muslims in Turkey — and elsewhere — do not see jihad, forced conversions or other forms of persecution against non-Muslims as criminal. On the contrary, their religious scriptures openly command them “to chop off heads and fingers, and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding,” among many other openly violent teachings.

Hence, what the rest of the world would describe as “genocide,” “massacre,” “terrorism,” or “ethnic cleansing” is viewed by radical Muslims as a “righteous” way of spreading Islam and of liberating kafir (infidel) lands. Erdogan is clearly such a radical, which is why he takes pride in his country’s criminal history, while chastising and rewriting that of other states, such as Israel.

The West’s misunderstanding of this knows no bounds.

Since the Trump administration’s official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been ramping up his anti-Israel rhetoric, calling the country “a state of occupation and terrorism.”

This is worse than ironic. The Jews are not “occupiers” in their ancient native homeland, where they have lived for more than 3,000 years. Turks, on the other hand, 3,000 years ago were most likely in Central Asia, nowhere near the area that is now Turkey. To add hypocrisy to injury, Erdogan also said about his own country, “Let it be known that there has never been any holocaust or genocide in this nation’s past. There’s no campaign of ethnic cleansing, massacres, persecution, or torture in this nation’s history.”

Oh really?

The cities in today’s Turkey — most of which are in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and the Armenian highlands — were actually built by Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians; and Jews have lived there since antiquity. Turkic jihadists from Central Asia invaded and conquered the Christian Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century, thereby paving the way for the gradual Turkification and Islamization of Anatolia and Armenia. The Ottoman invasion of Constantinople (Istanbul) in the fifteenth century brought about the complete destruction of the Byzantine Empire.

Earlier this month, the Pakistani National Assembly (N.A.) slavishly followed suit with most of the Muslim world and the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly in condemning United States president Donald Trump’s declaration that recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “Debate” on the resolution was characterized by threats of violence and knee-jerk condemnation of the U.S. and Israel. The resolution itself called the U.S. move “a direct attack on the Muslim Ummah,” which is a significant term for it to use. Ummah is an Arabic word meaning “community” and is used to refer to a single, supranational community of Muslims with common interests that supersede any others. Its use implies that all Muslims would have the same or similar positions regarding the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Legislator after legislator dutifully condemned Pakistan’s major benefactor (the U.S.). Former – and disgraced – prime minister Nawaz Sharif cried: “To hand over [to Israel] the holy city of Jerusalem, known historically for over millenniums [sic] as Al Quds Al Sharif, is to add salt to the wounds of the people who have been suffering untold miseries for 70 years.” How misguided. The U.S. government did not hand over anything to anybody. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said, the announcement was “just reality” and something “the American people have asked for.” That’s how it works in a democracy but not how it works in places like Pakistan, where people are commanded to take the same position on every issue because they belong to the same, religious community.

Even in a country where dissent often carries a de facto death sentence, however, one member of Pakistan’s N.A. and that Muslim Ummah rose in opposition to the resolution. Mahmood Khan Achakzai, leader of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, dared to stand and speak truth to the lie that all Muslims find Israel odious and are “outraged” to the point of violence by American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Pakistan’s semi-official newspaper Dawn did indeed report that Achakzai “ridiculed” the resolution, but it and the Pakistani government tried to sanitize his comments and ignore his open support for Israel and the United States – for that opposition contradicts the narrative they are trying desperately to promote. Dawn led with a banner headline reading, “NA unanimously assails US move on Jerusalem” (it was not unanimous), and it attributed Achakzai’s opposition to mere procedural matters and his (and his party’s) stance of neutrality on all international matters and focus on Pakistan’s serious domestic issues. How can “a house that could not save the country’s Constitution save the Palestinians”?

According to my Pakhtun (Pashtun) sources, however, “his speech was stopped and cameras turned down.” His fellow party members told me he frequently responds to statements about “oppressed Palestinians” by pointing out that it is the Jews who face oppression and that the real focus should be how “Pashtuns are oppressed under the Pakistani army[.] … Gaza and West Bank [are] none of our concern.” That’s heresy for those who demand fealty from all members of the Muslim Ummah. In fact, one notable distinction between non-radical and radical Muslims, including people who may not throw bombs but provide ideological cover for those who do, is the latter’s insistence that Islam is a Muslim’s single identity of consequence. Achakzai’s public life has been devoted to the cause of self-determination for Pakistan’s various nationalities, as opposed to the single Pakistani state that was created on the basis of religion and is officially an Islamic Republic.

This is not the first time Achakzai has bucked Pakistan’s anti-U.S., anti-Israel wave in Pakistan’s parliament. When the rest of the Pakistani parliament rushed to condemn Israel for its war with Hamas in Gaza, Achakzai said Pakistan itself had become a Gaza and cited “human rights violations, internal strife, aerial bombardment and displacement of tens of thousands of people from North Waziristan Agency.” He refused to support Hamas and the Palestinians over Israel. According to other members of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, his recent actions showed the resolution on the U.S. action and “support for Palestinians [to be] a laughing stock.”