Tag: islam

Written with a heavy heart!

Such a need to learn from our dogs!

A couple of items that recently landed in my ‘in-box’ had me in pain; emotional pain that is. I agonised over republishing them but then thought it felt like a duty to promulgate this particular terrible aspect of life. Trust me, today’s post is going to generate a deal of passion (see reference to TIME magazine at the end of the post). Also it is not something that should be read by a young person under the age of sixteen.

The first item was an email sent to me by dearest Suzann and is republished here with Suzann’s kind permission.

(For those that may not know or recall, Suzann, and her husband Don, invited me to spend the Christmas of 2007 with them at their home in San Carlos, Mexico. Suzann and Jean, who then lived in San Carlos, had been good friends for many years working together to rescue the many feral dogs found on the streets in San Carlos and surrounding areas. Indeed, Suzann continues to rescue those needy dogs and find loving homes for them. Out of the 9 dogs here at home in Oregon, 6 are ex-rescue dogs from Mexico.)

This is what Suzann sent:

I am so sorry to have to send this to you, but it needs to get out there for people to know.
What can we do?
1. Make others aware of this atrocious and vile assault on innocent people, so people will WAKE UP to the evil that is happening in this world!
2. PRAY!
3. If you are not a believer, send to others that you know who are, so they can send it on.
The whole world needs to see this!!
Thank you.
suzann

YOUR PRAYERS ARE THE NEED OF THE HOUR.

PLEASE SEND THIS TO AS MANY AS YOU CAN.

PLEASE LOOK AT THESE PICTURES. ISIS IS KILLING CHRISTIAN CHILDREN. ONE WAS CRUCIFIED. PLEASE PRAY.
Be sure to see the 4 photos below. The whole world needs to see what kind of people these ISIS terrorists are.

Su1

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Su2

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Su3

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Su4

Here is an urgent prayer request for all of us!!
She asked that it be forwarded ASAP to as many people possible:

Dear Friend: Just a few minutes ago, I received the following text message on my phone, from Sean Malone who leads Crisis Relief International (CRI), We spoke briefly on the phone, and I assured him that we would share this urgent prayer need with all our contacts.
We lost the city of Queragosh. It fell to ISIS and they are beheading children systematically. This is the city we have been smuggling food to. ISIS has pushed back Kurdish Forces, and is within 10 minutes of where our CRI team is working. Thousands more fled into the city of Erbil last night. The UN evacuated its staff in Erbil. Our team is unmoved and will stay. Prayer cover needed!!!.

Please pray sincerely for the deliverance of people of northern Iraq from the terrible advancement of ISIS and its extreme Islamic goals for mass conversion or death for Christians in this area.

May I plead with you not to ignore this email? Do not forward it before you have prayed through it. Then send it to as many people as possible.
Send it to friends and Christians you know. Send it to your prayer group. Send it to your pastors. Any one you can think of. We need to stand in the gap for our fellow Christians.

I was still struggling to ground, as it were, my emotional response to Suzann’s item when a second item came into my ‘in-box’. It was a new post over on Patrice Ayme’s blogsite. This, too, is republished in full with Patrice’s kind permission.

ooOOoo

Savage, The Franks? Islam Is Worse

Our friend the half-philosophers may start to huff and puff, as “Franks” were citizens of a federation (actually two of them, the one of the Sea, and the one of the River; the one of the Sea, or more exactly, Salt, is now known as Salian, or Salic).

Whereas “Islam” is a thought system, devised by some Arab warriors (PBUH), who got a good gig going for themselves.

To put in the same basket an ethnicity and a religion is what some half-philosophers would love to call a “category mistake”. The irony is that I know (the basics of) Category Theory, and they don’t.

In Category Theory, there is a concept called a functor, which allows to go from one category to another.

islamists

In other words, because I know of functors, I can mix and match different categories such as Franks and Islam, and be relaxed about it (instead of being all gripped and unimaginative, as is the average constipated half-philosopher. Notice in passing that the concept “functor” was invented by the philosopher Carnap in linguistics).

The historian Pirenne, long ago, suggested the thesis that the collapse of the economy in the High Middle Ages was caused by the Islamists (Islam confiscated most of the Roman empire, and imposed a total embargo, cutting not just the Paper route, but the Silk Road as well).

In other news, On Fascism, Russian & Islamist Edition, Feb 26, 2015, a plan surfaced for the invasion of Ukraine, written more than a year ago, by some major Russian plutocrats, who have influence on Putin and are best buddies with the leadership of the Russian “Orthodox” Church.

Don’t worry, anybody involved will soon die, and things will calm down; this is Putin’s way.

There is a clear self-censorship going on throughout the West right now, because people are scared of these fanatics, the Putinists, and the Islamists. This, in turn, is deleterious to any critical mood, thus discourse, thus adverse to fixing any problem.

One cannot have a sane public discourse if one cannot even draw a human being. Having public insanity in place of public discourse will affect the Republic, to the point it will die, and that is why it died in all and any nation that submitted to Submission (aka “Islam”).

TODAY’S ISLAMISTS: MORE BARBARIAN THAN THE FRANKS, SIXTEEN CENTURIES AGO:

As it rose, Christianism destroyed the Roman Republic (or what was left of it). In 363 CE, under fanatical emperor Jovian, an ex-general, a systematic policy of burning libraries got started (Jovian may have been behind the assassination of laic emperor Julian; I am speculating). In 381 CE under ex-general Theodosius, then emperor, laws were passed to enact a “War Against the Philosophers“. Heresy (“making a choice”) became punishable by death.

The Roman empire, which still had many characters of a Republic (which officially it was… Now a “Christian” Republic) exploded.

However, in the next century, in the West, the Franks took control and build a Catholicism so moderate that it made Paganism, Judaism, and Apostasy all legal (and conversions in all directions).

Interestingly, the Franks, who soon built what they called “Europe”, as an empire, have the reputation of uncouth savages. “Frank” means Ferocious, not just Free.

But the Franks had no problem with Catholics becoming Jews, entire villages converted, until the priest was the only Christian in town. Charlemagne himself, four centuries after the Franks acceded to power, had his friends call him “David”, because he wanted to be like Israel’s King David (not a friend of God, according to the Bible).

Compare with the savagery of Islam: Somebody who leaves Islam is to be killed, say the Hadiths.

So what of the supposed great intellectual tradition of “Islam”? That sounds strange, on the face of it. What about the great intellectual tradition of Christianism? Well, the answer is that there is no such a thing. As soon as he became a fanatical Christian, Pascal produced nothing. All great “Christian” intellectuals are intellectuals first, and, second spent the reminder of their mental capabilities avoiding the fire in which the church wanted to throw them.

In France alone, around the year 1530 CE, three major philosophers were burned alive for having contradicted Catholicism. This explains why Descartes, a century later, preferred to live in the Netherlands.

Contrarily to repute, the situation with Islam was even worse. At least, in the West, intellectuals could engage the Church in full combat, and they often won. This is a direct consequence of the Frankish leadership submitting the Christian leadership, starting in the Fifth Century. After that time, the Church was never again the government of the West (except inside the Papal states, a gift of Charlemagne, later de facto rescinded).

Famously, around 1300 CE, Philippe IV of France and his vassal the English king engaged in full submission of the Pope and his army. The Pope and the Templars both ended judged, dead, and, more importantly, taxed.

So what of these great Muslim thinkers? The answer is that most of them were, truly Jewish or Christians, or very recently “converted”, or then did not finish too well.

ISLAMIST SCHOLARS WANT TO KILL YOU:

The fact is, the greatest Muslim university, Al Azhar in Cairo, is definitively founded on what the Franks, 15 centuries ago, would have viewed as barbarian principles. It actually refused to condemn the “Islamist State” as not conforming to Islam.

Al Azhar has decided that those who renounce Islam and their children ought to be killed:

“In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful

Al-Azhar

Fatwa Committee

A question from Mr. Ahmed Darwish who presented the question through Mr. (Blanked out) of German nationality:

A Muslim man of Egyptian nationality married a Christian woman of German nationality. The two spouses agreed that the aforementioned Muslim man would enter the Christian religion and join the Christian creed.

What is the ruling of Islam regarding this person’s situation?
Are his children considered Muslims or Christians and what is their ruling?
The Answer:

All praises are due to Allah, lord of all the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the greatest of all messengers, our master Muhammad and upon his family and companions all together. As for what follows:

We inform that he has apostatized after having been in a state of Islam, so he should be asked to repent. If he does not repent, he should be killed according to the sharia.

As for his children, so long as they are small they are Muslims. After they have attained maturity, if they remain in Islam then they are Muslims. If they leave it, then they should be asked to repent. If they do not repent, they should be killed. And Allah knows best.

President of the Fatwa Committee of Al-Azhar

Seal of the Committee

September 23, 1978”

http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=24511.0

Our civilization was founded on rejecting this sort of savagery on the part of Christianism. When the Islamists appeared, the Franks considered them to be a Christian sect, the Sons of Sarah (Saracens). Let’s persist in rejecting the savagery.

Antique Greece was not just defined by what it built, but what it rejected: the Barbarians (those whose talk sounded animal-like: barr… baa). One cannot be positive all the times, otherwise positivity itself loses meaning.

Patrice Ayme’

PS: After publishing the preceding essay, it came to light that the Islamist State, applying literally the savage texts that guide them, destroyed Mesopotamian art more than twice older than the invention of Islam by the raiders (Muhammad and the father of his six-years-old child bride, etc.). 

There is no savagery but savagery, and Islam is its prophet?

ooOOoo

Not to have upsetting reactions to these items from Suzann and Patrice would be abnormal. Both Su’s item and the post from Patrice had me going round in emotional circles. Ranging from seeing our species as cruel, barbarous creatures to thinking that maybe there are times when the only proper course of action is to take up arms against savages. Along the lines of that quote about the only thing that evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

Finally, it was the editorial in the latest (March 9th.)  TIME magazine, written by the Editor, Nancy Gibbs, that had my head nodding.  Here’s a little of what Nancy Gibbs wrote:

Analyzing a threat as complex and diffuse as ISIS requires a global effort, and so our special report reflects the work of dozens of journalists on three continents with decades of experience reporting on the Middle East.

………

We invited Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations and Karl Vick, our former Jerusalem bureau chief, who is now based in New York City, to argue the case for and against the U.S.’s sending ground troops into the fight.

It was the next sentence that underlined for me why I had so many conflicting emotions (my emphasis).

“The hardest thing about confronting a group like ISIS,” Karl observes, “is seeing past the fear they delight in projecting to discern the threat it actually presents. But they make dispassion really difficult.“

Makes our dogs look like profoundly straightforward, loving animals! Why, oh why, can’t the human race essentially be as straightforward and loving!

Peter Russell

Life is such a learning experience!

A good friend of Jeannie and me in Payson is John H.  John has stimulated much wonderful thinking and reflection through conversation and the sharing of books and DVDs.  It was John H. who introduced us to Joseph Campbell about whom I wrote on the 14th February.

Well the other day, John handed us a DVD of Peter Russell giving three talks.  We watched it on Sunday evening. An amazing and inspiring experience.  But first some information about Peter Russell from, of course, his own website!  Peter describes himself as follows:

 

Peter Russell

Peter Russell is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, of The World Business Academy and of The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest. 

At Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation.

His principal interest is the deeper, spiritual significance of the times we are passing through. He has written several books in this area — The TM Technique, The Upanishads, The Brain Book, The Global Brain Awakens, The Creative Manager, The Consciousness Revolution, Waking Up in Time, and From Science to God.

As one of the more revolutionary futurists Peter Russell has been a keynote speaker at many international conferences, in Europe, Japan and the USA. His multi-image shows and videos, The Global Brain and The White Hole in Time have won praise and prizes from around the world. In 1993 the environmental magazine Buzzworm voted Peter Russell “Eco-Philosopher Extraordinaire” of the year.

Now in terms of the video that we watched, it contained three films: The Global Brain; The White Whole in Time; From Science to God.  In a very generous act the talk entitled The Global Brain is available to watch online – just click here. (Haven’t been over the website in detail but I suspect more of Peter’s material is available online.)  That online version is the full talk of 35 minutes but you will get lost in time as you watch it!

But if, for now, you want a feel for Peter’s approach then here are a couple of YouTube videos.  But a health warning, you may never look at the world around you in quite the same way!

and here are the first two parts of Waking up in Time (just over 6 minutes in total)

 

Dogma, Lies and Truth ….

Humans are often both so funny and tragic at the same time  that one does not know whether to laugh or cry on hearing a particular news item. Thus it was for me when reading about Cuba’s apparent ideological U-turn.

The Cuban dogma of the last 50 years has been “State good; private bad.” This is familiar “Communist” territory, so Cubans have been born, grown up and died while being told that “capitalism” was evil, private ownership was bad and that the state was best suited to running everything.

This then was “the truth” for 50 years. But suddenly, amazingly, it seems that this was NOT the truth after all, since now entrepreneurship is to be encouraged in a bid to breathe life into the dinosauric Cuban economy. So, for 50 years Cuba was living a lie? And if so, will those responsible take the blame for these lies?

Errrrmmmm … the heirs and cronies of the apparent lie of over 50 years are the very same people (apart from the conveniently-sidelined Fidel himself, who can of course take the blame whether explicitly or implicitly) who are now proclaiming a new “truth”. So are they admitting their lie, or to be charitable – since XMAS is approaching – their total wrongness?

This is of course the big problem for those enforcing dogma. If there comes a time when the dogma is so manifestly absurd that it has to be changed then the long-time enforcers of the ridiculous are clearly seen to have been wrong for as long as the dogma has been enforced. And of course, the LONGER the dogma has gone on the MORE wrong the enforcers of same are seen to be. So for the dogma-enforcers there is every incentive to NEVER admit the nonsensicality of the dogma, whatever the evidence. Hence the ossification of dogma, when in the end enforcing the dogma is seen as more important than the actual dogma itself.

This is also one reason for the extraordinary conservatism that Humans are often “guilty” of. “Why do we do it that way?” -> “Errrmmmm … we’ve ALWAYS done it that way …”

Well, some credit has to go to the Cuban regime for admitting – tacitly or otherwise – that the last 50 years’ dogma was wrong. Kind as I am,  I do not use the word “idiotic”, though some would say that would be more appropriate …… Kind? Am I too kind in giving them any credit at all? After all, in a dictatorship, the only true definition of “truth” is “that which the leadership says is true.”

I haven’t worked out yet whether they are using the common ploy of dogma-changers, the only one in fact that gets them off the hook. This is to say: “Yes, we’ve always believed A was good and B was evil and now we believe the opposite. This is because CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE CHANGED.” Has anyone worked that out yet? The problem with the “Circumstances have changed” argument is of course that circumstances are ALWAYS changing and so dogma PER SE would seem to be a ludicrous way to manage our lives.

Well whatever, the latest pronouncements could have been made by the British centre-right Coalition Party rather than the old-style Cuban Communist Party:

“Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls [and] losses that hurt the economy,” said the official Cuban labour federation, which announced the news.

George Osbourne, rightist British Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have been quite proud of that newsbite.

One has to wonder how this redefining of “the truth” will go down with the Cuban people. As has been argued, the main problem with changing the dogma is that you have to admit being wrong before, and often massively and for many years. And the longer-term ticking time-bomb is that once you allow questioning of the dogma then you open a door to the questioning of everything. This is why people who enforce dogma don’t really like any sort of questioning whatsoever. Encouraging it is like opening Pandora’s box; where will it all end? And the most hideous question of all of course is: “Don’t we deserve more say in our own government.” or – in the case of a “world-religion”, “Is the whole basis of our “beliefs” (for which we are prepared to kill people for) plain WRONG? Have we been living a LIE for over 1500 years? ” This question is a terrible one for individuals to face, so terrible that their leaders will do ANYTHING to prevent them ever facing it, including of course kill them if the questioning becomes too loud.

This is the real reason why dictatorships don’t like questioning of any kind; mindless sheep would be their preferred populace. A populace that asks too many questions is – frankly – to be avoided like the plague. They are currently plagued in Iran by sheep with very much a mind of their own, which is why oppression is great and increasing of course.

Anyway, I for one rejoice at the Cuban change of direction, even though one has often seen leaders tempted to open Pandora’s box only to violently slam it shut again when they see what starts to happen.

I always admired the Cuban revolution; chucking out a nauseating “Capitalist” mafiosi-style American-backed regime. The problem has been the extreme ossification of Cuban political and economic thought and development since the day Castro took over. Are better days ahead and will Cuba one day end up as a role-model for South America, much as Scandinavia is for the world in general?

The comic in all this? Listening to previous apologists for the former “lie” having to find linguistic justifications for their previous wrongness. This is marvellous for lovers of language as the arts of spin are brought fully into play justifying the previously unjustifiable.

The tragic? Knowing that the livers of the previous lie suffered both from living a lie and from the practical consequences of it, in Cuba’s case a quite unnecessarily high level of poverty in many areas even if there were some compensating factors. As Cuban apologists often say (said?) “The people may be poor but they are happy.” We might say (I assume): “Better to be much better-off and also happy ….”

PS Is the Pope watching all this (and the Islamic hierarchy come to that?) There is plenty of room for dogma change in the Vatican and Mecca …..

By Chris Snuggs