The Hell of Hezbollah

Great demands are being made of our armed forces, and many of the forces in the UN. But we must be mindful that in winning this war on terror we do not turn a blind eye to Hezbollah. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah the leader of Hezbollah threatened Israel with open war two years ago and vowed that the end of the Jewish state was imminent. Nasrallah delivered his threat in the Hezbollah controlled southern suburbs of Beirut. This is a man with a long history of violence and terror to his name - he masterminded a series of kidnappings and terrorist activities that killed hundreds of US and French soldiers in Lebanon in the 1980s; that’s to say nothing of the truck bombing which called the former Lebanese prime Minister Rafik Hariri (murdered because he was an outward objector to Syria’s menacing presence in his country). Nasrallah is overseeing thousands of well-trained and equipped combatants who are ready for martyrdom because of what their holy book tells them. Syria is a major backer of Islamist extremists in Lebanon, supplying arms regularly. The hidden hand of Syria - the brutal hand - is the hand that is writing Lebanon’s’ tragic script, and we mustn’t overlook that, however tough things get elsewhere.

Although there was some success in forcing Syrian troops to leave Lebanon in 2005, one still suspects that the remnant pro-Syrian military intelligence continues to run Lebanon as a private fiefdom. How long can Lebanon continue to endure these assaults on its sovereignty? It seems to me that America can’t seem to decide whether it is more beneficial to remain allied with Syria and Mr Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime - a man whose position is cemented in many quarters by his continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas – or whether to take a risk and go for the jugular. I know which I would prefer, but it doesn’t appear that Barak Obama is a ‘go for the jugular’ type.

WMD or no WMD?

The anti-war folk who claim that we went into Iraq on a lie might have more credibility if they were not the ones vociferously claiming that if we went near Saddam Hussein he would most likely unleash his WMD on Israel. Did Bush and Blair lie? Think back to the time, virtually everybody believed they had WMD - they didn’t believe that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait until it became obvious to everyone (the Americans did nothing to prevent it) - a presumption of innocence would have been foolish and, indeed, dangerous, particularly with Saddam’s track record of genocide. In 1991 Israel was a target of Iraqi scud missiles - Israel did not retaliate.

The provenance of much of these missing WMD was the A Q Kahn network in Pakistan whose huge acquisition was paid for by the blank cheque that America gave them to combat the Russians (much of which was spent building up the Taliban). Incidentally America has been continuing to fund them in their attempts to pretend that the Taliban are their enemy and always have been. You don’t have to look very far to find these things out, these are all provable facts.

Also you don’t have to look very hard to read the works of several people who served under Saddam and openly testify that he had WMD - the most comprehensive of which is the testimony by Georges Hormiz Sada a retired general officer of the Iraqi air force a born-again Christian. He has had a book published (Saddam’s Secrets) in which he talks about Saddam’s plans to destroy Israel, his attempts to control the Arab world and how he aspired to command and occupy much more of it. Mr Sada also talks about his own role in supervising the removal of WMD to Damascus in Syria because Saddam was worried that the Western troops would find them. There have been many other sources which expose Saddam’s complex concealment plans, and the media have nothing credible to say on this.

Even if it does turn out that there never were any WMD (although that seems highly unlikely - probably more likely that we will never find them) it was universally accepted at the time that he did have them. Who in their right mind would risk such a blithe approach to something so serious? A chasm of tautology yawns at the feet of those who wish to have it both ways with their gross rhetorical and argumentative excess. Of course this path will never be a smooth one - the horrors of Abu Gharib should tell us that, it is extremely difficult to ask people to clothe themselves morally if those who are making the insistence are naked themselves, but on this point of WMD we do know, although we haven’t perhaps been able to prove comprehensively, that Saddam Hussein’s plans for WMD and the rest of the Middle Eastern region were enough to send a huge wave of foreboding across the waters. We also know, and now have provable evidence, that Saddam Hussein was in the process of buying nuclear missiles in Syria from none other than egregious rogue from North Korea - Kim Jong Il.

You might also like to know that Saddam once had a reactor but Israel blew it up - we knew he was trying to acquire them but we couldn’t prove it unless we went in. This whole legality factor is thrown in by the anti-war faction to help build up their weak (now moribund) case for objection. If there are still people who feel vindicated by their anti-war protestations back in 2003/4, I am certain that time will vindicate those who had confidence all along that this was the right thing to do.

A stable and democratic Iraq will have a reverberating effect on the rest of the Middle East too (one can hope), it will put pressure on Baathist Syria to democratise, and also give stimulus to the reform movement in Iran (with a little coercion from the West). Perhaps we can even hope for radical changes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Israel too. Incidentally, would Gadaffi have capitulated as he did in surrendering his arsenal to the US if he didn’t think that Libya might be next?

There is, of course, a question that ought to be tackled - why weren’t the WMD found?

The Iraqi government did present an inventory to the UN stating which weapons they did have, none of which have been found since the invasion - so that’s not a substantive case for arguing that they never were there. As the old maxim goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

1. If the Iraqi government destroyed the WMD that would have been a breach of the UN resolution.

2. We do know now, which we wouldn’t have known without the intervention, that Saddam had a nuclear centrifuge - or at least it was in its incipient stages, which was found by US troops thanks to compliant scientists.

3. It could be that the bombing of Baghdad under the Clinton presidency destroyed more than we realise (or indeed in the early stages of bombing in 2003 under Bush). The consequences of which could be that Saddam had been lying about what he really did have, so the Arab world still saw him as a formidable force in the region. Another interesting theory is that Saddam’s own scientists were lying to him - there was nothing in the realm of torture and humiliation that Saddam did not try, perhaps they were too scared to tell him that the weapons had been destroyed.

Moreover, there has of course been emergent information recently about a plutonium-producing reactor in Syria which had been hit following Israel’s air-strike; it was a reactor being built by the Syrians with the help from expert North Korean engineers. Now this incriminates North Korea and makes the culpable for their actions in securing nuclear knowledge to rogue leaders. It is quite worrying that America seems so impotent in the face of North Korea’s nuclear proliferation, and that they have faced no penalties for their criminal activities. And here of course we have the most trenchant argument against reticence when it comes to nuclear weapons in the international community. The much derided doctrine of pre-emption still stands over counter-arguments – and it is supported by the realisation that once a country acquires nuclear capacity it is that much harder to do very much about it. Any exaggeration regarding Saddam’s capability does not detract from the fact that inaction would have been too risky, and any misjudgement on the subject of WMD should not make our case against murderous fanatics any less urgent.

Don’t get too comfy in your armchairs - it looks like we are going to go through the same thing with Iran soon enough. One thing that seems self-evident is this: a fanatical Islamic theocracy with a mission to restore the caliphate and exterminate Israel and other ‘infidels’ must never be allowed to acquire thermonuclear weapons – and I must be pushing at an open door when I say this.

Hillary's In Town

Hillary Rodham Clinton has the most artificial smile I have ever seen, and I must say, bogus displaying of choppers aside, I have never been very enamoured with Hillary Clinton or her husband, and I have never trusted either of them. Bill Clinton's tenure was riddled with mediocrity; he achieved nothing spectacular in his eight years in office. His policy of cutting defence-spending was itself a good thing, but the American government grossly underestimated the insidious rise of Islamic fundamentalism that was burgeoning in the nineties (his government also failed to capture Osama bin Laden after the attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 - a mistake which has had brutal consequences ever since), and also the dreadful error of judgement in bombing Khartoum.

Hillary Clinton's implication that in voting for her the American people will get her husband too might have contributed to her downfall. To her credit she was instrumental in getting her husband to intervene militarily in Bosnia and Kosovo (although why he failed to see it for himself is, or was, perhaps a more significant point to be addressed). But there are several black marks against Mrs. Clinton. In the first place, the enchanting smell of power and prestige was enough for her to put up with her husband's infidelity (one of the biggest black marks against his name). In the second place, she has been trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people regarding Iraq. Without actually repudiating her original support for the war, she has strived hard to dissociate herself from the situation.

Mrs. Clinton, as the author of some of the more judicious arguments to justify the regime change in Iraq, is now being coerced into repudiating her original position - a repudiation which exposes her as weak and dishonest, particularly as her original support for a regime change was both unequivocal and unambiguous (she almost certainly doesn't believe privately that America's position in the Middle East should be ceded).

In 2006 President Jalal Talabani of Iraq met with George Bush and Bill Clinton and thanked them both for their efforts in helping to liberate Iraq (a man who knows the situation better than most, and a man of whom any country would be proud to call its leader). With this in mind, for Hillary Clinton to repudiate her initial support for the war was disingenuousness of the worst kind

At a time when support for the Iraq war is likely to cause dissonance amongst much of the electorate, it would be impossible for Hilary Clinton to accede to such demands without impugning the methodology of her husband's previous position and, of course, her own original position. The behaviour of Bill Clinton has been there for all to see - he has lied about his original position, claiming that he was against the war from the start just to help his wife in her campaign, a contemptible action, and one that hinted very loudly that a repeat of the Clintons in the White House would be a bad thing.

Now it does not especially matter whether you did agree, or still do agree, with her about the regime change in Iraq (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position with a squalid manoeuvre designed to disassociate herself from her original standpoint. We have seen her these past few weeks try, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it.

Voting Qutopianism

So what’s been happening in the world of politics then? Isn’t it great having Ken Clarke back in the Shadow Cabinet? He is one of the few Tory politicians in the past 20 years that I have liked and respected - and anyone that makes Dozy Dave look even more soulless gets my vote. I was sitting at home recently with my sprained knee resting on a table watching Prime Minister’s questions, and I was getting so bored with Dozy Dave’s ramblings that I started writing down a little experiment. I was imagining a poll conducted entirely for the purposes of ‘popularity’ amongst voters - one that had nothing to do with the system of election - but was based exclusively on who was good enough to be considered ‘most popular’. Picking one great leading man from each of the main parties, I realised that I had to go right the way back to Charles Kennedy to find a half decent prominent member of the Lib Dems. As for the other two, I’m quite happy with Gordon Brown and Ken Clarke.

Now imagine all three are running for a national popularity contest, and observe the oddities that occur here. Let us say that a third of the electorate prefers Gordon Brown ( G ) to Ken Clarke ( K ) to Charles Kennedy ( C ), another third of the electorate prefers K to C to G; and the remaining third prefers C to G to K. There is nothing particularly strange about this until we consider what happens in two person contests given the above preferences. Think about this. G can boast that two-thirds of the electorate prefers him to K. C responds that two-thirds of the electorate prefer him to G. Finally, K counters by noting that two-thirds of the electorate prefers him to C.

If the societal preferences in what I’ve just said are determined by majority vote, we have an irrational ordering of preferences; that is, ‘society’ prefers G over K, K over C, and C over G. Thus even if the preferences of all the individual voters are transitive (by that I mean that transitivity holds if, wherever a voter prefers x to y and y to z, he or she prefers x to z), the societal preferences determined by the majority vote are not necessarily transitive and thus not necessarily rational either.

So then that got me thinking, could a general theorem be proved showing that given the foregoing all reasonable voting systems (or equivalently, economic market systems) are subject to such irrationalities?

In one sense, yes. Let me offer you further clarity with a different illustration. Think of our three leaders G, K, and C as cars rather than people, and then think of a woman deciding which of the three cars to buy. Let’s give her three criteria (interchangeable and commensurate with one another) for making this decision; looks, affordability and performance. Car G looked better than car K, which looked better than car C. On the other hand, car K was more affordable than car C, which in turn was more affordable than car G. Finally, car C performed better than car G, which performed better than car K. Since the woman placed equal and commensurate measure on each of these criteria, she would be in a bit of quandary here. She clearly preferred car G to car K (G outscored K on two criteria). She also preferred car K to car C (for the same reason) - yet she preferred car C to car G. And if you are following here you will see that the same problem of non-transitivity holds for individuals, yet it seems more tractable. In the case above one only need induce the woman to declare one of the criteria more important than the others. This is easier than convincing one third of the electorate to change its mind.

The conclusion is this; there are four conditions under which consistency will show that we cannot derive societal preferences from individual preferences…

1) The societal preferences must be transitive (if society prefers x to y and y to z then it must prefer x to z)

2) The societal preferences must satisfy the principle - if alternative x is preferred to alternative y by everyone in the society, then society must prefer x to y.

3) The societal preferences must satisfy the independence of irrelevant alternatives (the societal preference depends only on the orderings of the individuals with respect to alternatives in that environment).

And finally..

4) The societal preferences must not be susceptible to autocracy - there is no individual whose preferences automatically determine all of society’s preferences.

As for the realities of the electoral situation, of course we know that the political portrait of lucidity has been gravely disfigured from the bottom up as much as the top down, so the absolute best that one can hope for is that through the media-manipulating smokescreen the impressionability and cognitive indigence does not wholly impair the view of those gazing in, and that in the absence of a good rationale people’s gut instincts amount to enough in seeing who is, very evidently the best party for the job - at least in the next few years.

Multiculturalism and the Spectre of Islamic Fundamentalism

There is a feeling among many that as left-wing experiments go, multiculturalism was an especially costly failure, and that decades of multiculturalism has left Britain a fractured and disparate nation at risk of splitting up. I think this is true in part, not as a whole. It is of course important not to confuse multiculturalism, the promoting of the combination of distinct cultures, with a much more positive and realistic cultural diversity that accommodates varieties of people and averts ethnic conflict. It is true that ethnic diversity has certainly enriched our society (as it does most others) – and multiethnic states are mostly vibrant and dynamic places that are strengthened by the varied contributions of their inhabitants. But there is so often a price of fragility to pay, as we shall see in a moment.

One of the salutary lessons to be rescued from the multicultural issues is how important it is to have a voice that resounds louder than those whose moral fabric is stained and torn, and whose ideologies are based on religious falsehood. The biggest area of concern is the problem of Islam, the ripples of which we observed in the headlines from Luton’s March For England last week which nearly said it all when the report was released:

“Hundreds of rioters rampaged through a town centre after a march against Muslim extremists”

I say ‘nearly’ because this incident and others like it are only ripples of what is a seismic shift in culture, ethnicity and diversity, and one that needs identifying. The protestors’ anger was, of course, directed at the Muslim fanatics who had jeered and shouted horrible abuse at our heroic servicemen and servicewomen returning from Iraq.

Anyone who wishes to hear my views on Iraq and Islamic fundamentalism can do so by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page – but that is not the issue I wish to discuss in this article. What I want to talk about here is how we need to face up to and tackle the multicultural issues in this country that are already bad, and will almost certainly get worse.

We know from as far back as the writings of Machiavelli that the ways that the democratic state can be manipulated are there for all to see, just as is the case in parts of this country with the creeping force of bad multiculturalism. Knowledge of the true democratic process is de facto knowledge that the process cannot be truly open to those who only assimilate themselves into it for the purposes of ruining it – and it has to be said, there are Muslim extremists in this country that wish to do just that - by enforcing as much as they can their own brand of religious doctrine, and not a very nice one either.

It is important to remember that multiculturalism is not about treating everyone the same, it is precisely the opposite, and it is so often contrary to good and peaceful cultural coexistence. It says that if you have a tribal ritual or a religious precept we will strive for the implementation of these things - they will be part of your law. When it goes wrong it leads to ghettoisation and non-assimilation – and if given too much ground it could portend a system where sharia law runs contemporaneously with the constitutional law of the country in question (although thankfully I’m almost certain that that will never happen in this country).

I think one should always bear in mind the multiculturalism never should have been such an issue in the first place and at least recognise the good sentiment at the root of it (in a similar way to the way we can appreciate some of the tenets of Socialism in its ideal form, without ever espousing it as a doctrine).

We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values over the contemptible and opprobrious values of fundamentalist Islam. Moreover we should be quick to remember that Western values is the only system in human history in which the individual is genuinely free (in the undying words of Thomas Jefferson) to ‘pursue happiness’. Having said that, I do not think that happiness is a virtue in itself – the Christian message has much more substantive claims and much greater benefits attached to its core principles. But principles such as the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, equalities, and freedoms of expression and conscience are too often taken for granted in a nation that so often only sees their qualities by the absence of them in other nations.

We have become far too furtive about our moral superiority; if we can’t assert the superiority of our values at home, what hope is there that our values would ever extend to, for instance, Iran, where women are stoned for owning their own lives? And if that isn’t bad enough, under Islamic law the Iranian revolutionary guards are forbidden to execute a female if she is a virgin, whatever crime she has committed - but if sentenced to the death penalty and still a virgin she can be raped by the Islamic revolutionary guards and then executed - a piece of sadistic activity that would not have been out of place in the Nazi party or the practitioners of any of the evil regimes in world history.

If we in the West don’t speak up for pluralism, democracy and the rule of law, who will? If we don’t, what chance do reformers have in other countries? Those who oppose this viewpoint often propound the fatuous question: who are we to impose democracy on countries whose citizens live under tyranny and oppressive murderous regimes? This implies the corollary – if others live in benighted societies in which half their population can be treated as chattel, then why should we disturb them? Like the multicultural edifice before it, this genuine prejudice — the refusal to discern or assert moral difference — is finally collapsing, and although it would not be good to endorse the behaviour of those who took umbrage in Luton, one can understand why people are fed up with living in a country in which ranting Islamic fundamentalists continually preach their bile and hatred in public, seemingly with virtual impunity. Moreover, the Muslim extremists that regularly preach in the heart of their community were recently confronted by moderate Muslims and driven off the streets, so the patience is wearing thin even among their fellow believers. The suspicion that the extremists represent nobody but themselves is a suspicion that is beginning to be realised among the wider communities.

But aside from being afraid of being branded ‘culturally imperialist’, the minority who think we should remain silent have long ago reached the point where everything they say on this matter is self-discrediting, and are easily exposed or ignored. Perhaps the major predicament is that the West’s inability to assert the superiority of its values is beginning to look not so much coy and respectful as irresponsible and selfish. Because of some of the West’s shameful imperialist activities in the past, we seem to assume nowadays that any assertion of superiority must lead to assertion by force or imperialist thrall, but it need not be so. Rights are spread as much by confident example as by force, and nowhere is this exemplified better that in Christianity.

But in this country there is a problem; decades of intense cultural relativism and designer tribalism have made us terrified of passing judgment. The callow racial exclusivity of our values is already felt. But it’s time we spoke up. All systems are not equal. Across the non-Western world there are millions of people who would give almost anything to have a chance of believing in our values and having our rights. It is time we believed in them too – and said so.

We must never forget that equality before the law arose out of Judaeo-Christian ethics. Our unwillingness categorically to condemn Islam, and in particular, sharia law (in its formal or informal practice) at home or abroad seems to me to be an expression of defeat rather than an expression of sensitivity. And although we should not take it to the extremes that the protestors did at Luton, we must recognise that as Christians, the problem of militant Islam in this country is one that needs tackling.

It is true to an extent that when it comes to Islamic fundamentalism, it is the fundamentalism with which we are at war not Islam itself. But this makes little difference if many Muslims in this country believe that we are at war with Islam - the results of which are that a large majority of Muslim children in this country wish to grow up in segregation and in some cases with sharia law introduced to Britain. While it is true that peaceful coexistence of different values and traditions depends upon a high level of toleration from the country’s inhabitants, it is equally true that it is the responsibility of those living in such areas to discourage segregation and ill-feeling towards the indigenous population.

Here an important question must be asked, as I’m sure many will have considered it; do I demarcate between the two types of Muslims – the moderates and the extremists? Yes and no. As a British citizen the demarcation between extremists and moderates becomes a question of law and order, but as a Christian when it comes to the Islamic faith, I have to say that it is all bad. People talk of moderate Islam but this is in the strictest sense a contradiction in terms, given that anyone who has read the Qu’ran (I have) would see the continual incitements of hatred, intolerance, oppression and murder. One cannot use double standards and have it a la carte -either these words were given to Mohammed from the Archangel Gabriel or they were not - and if anyone believes in Allah as god and Mohammed as a prophet then one must surely believe all of it, including the Surahs which incite hatred, intolerance, oppression and murder. Given the foregoing, one must then ask why the moderates are moderates when the Qu’ran is so extreme and nasty and, in many places, teaches the complete opposite of the love and peace and grace and togetherness that Jesus taught. This is the question for which no Muslim seems to have an answer.

Becoming alert to the proliferating dangers of Islamic fundamentalism
The twentieth century was dominated by the contest between Communism, Capitalism and Fascism. With the end of the Fascism as we knew it coming in 1945 (excepting Franco’s dictatorship in Spain), and the end of Communism (as a forcible threat) coming in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have reached a significant point at which Liberalism and Capitalism (ideally synthesised) has emerged victorious. But as the ideological conflicts between the world’s biggest superpowers has been gradually diminishing, there has been a new force to contend with - a cultural battle and a religious war - between fundamentalism Islam and the West. The problems in the Middle East, in South America, in Serbia and Kosovo, and the turmoil in central Africa, have introduced us to new kind of viscous struggle. They have shown that the perceived stability which resulted from cold-war politics was a mere foundation for the problems that we are faced with today. The collapse of international Communism at the end of the eighties left a vacuum which has been filled by another vicious form of totalitarianism - one which has the potential to be much worse than either Communism, Fascism, or (if the fundamentalists have their own way) even worse than Hitler’s National Socialism.

Those who were alert to the dangers when they were beginning will know that the first seismic echoes of this are what took place in the early nineties when Islamic fundamentalism began to creep into society. The philosopher Hegel once remarked that the owl of mineover doesn’t take wing until dusk; in other words they don’t fly until it starts to get dark. What he meant was that it is very often only at the close of an epoch that you can really say there was an epoch at all; you can give it some kind of measure and depth – it happened in 1989 with the fall of Communism and the fading out of the last seismic echoes of the cold war. The owls of fundamentalism are beginning to anticipate the dusk – there is much worse to come. The next stage is already discernible, and not only do we have a fight to establish human rights throughout the world, as Christians the fight is on to have the truth made known a lot better than is presently the case. We do not simply want these people to be brought within the orbit of law; we want them to know the truth about the love and grace of Jesus.

The mistake is often made by Christians that Christ’s instruction to love everyone is incompatible with any desire to rid the world of fundamentalism. What is implied is that a gracious and loving Christian would not speak ill of these things. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very embodiment of love is that it recognises the futility of the ghastly hateful disposition by which the fundamentalists seem to be infected – the whole wisdom of Christians is to love the sinner but hate the sins, and hating them naturally wills the removal of them.

Dispelling a myth about other people’s beliefs
This gives me the opportunity to be clear on something else – as Christians our problem with Islam is not just that it is horrible and dangerous and oppressive and (in the worst cases) murderous – our objection is that it is a false religion that denies the Divinity of our Lord Jesus. Therefore it is not that we should simply speak up against terrorism or oppression – anyone can do that – even the atheists. No, what separates the diffident Christians from the truly courageous Christians who have put on their armour of God is that the latter will be prepared to speak up against even the very best tenets of Islam because Islam itself still denies the real nature of Christ. We must not forget that their subscription to a false belief system does not preclude them from our witnessing – that is to say, with Christ’s love we need to reach out to those who are worshipping false gods as well as those who have no belief in God at all - and I think this is a point that is often overlooked nowadays.

The true measure of a good thinker is one who can say (as St Paul did) that it is incumbent upon a man to depart from his opinion of something if better falsifying evidence comes along. Yet sadly many people would try to change or suppress the evidence rather than examine their deep-felt beliefs, and that is why religion has carved out for itself a protective niche whereby it becomes difficult to question, criticise or argue against someone’s religious beliefs. George Orwell said our prime responsibility, and thus our greatest asset if we can master it, is being able to tell people what they do not wish to hear - what Orwell himself called ‘the power of facing unpleasant facts’. Other people let themselves off this elementary task, but they see as well as you and I the lengths that people will go to in order to avoid analytical thinking; the contortions people will go through not to see a point. They are wedded to fooling themselves, and it is our job to prick the balloon of illusion that surrounds them.

Those who seek solace in the comfort of their beliefs are entitled to do so but solace does not always imply ‘true’. It is on this point at least that Karl Marx was right - that, while not applying to Christianity, spurious belief systems can bring some form of spirit into spiritless lives; the illusions in false religion is at the same time the demand to give up the condition that requires the illusion. He went on to say that criticism of such beliefs had plucked the flowers from the chain, not so that we could wear the chain with consolation, but so that we could break the chain. And that, I think is what we are called upon to do. Christ called us to help others break the chain.

And as I said a moment ago, one must also be careful with frivolous references to loving your neighbour and respecting each other’s beliefs – it is frivolous in the sense that to overlook the perniciousness of futile beliefs systems is to overlook the compassion and respect too. We must not duck the obligation upon us by the strength of the motion before us. Falsity is after all a sub-division of perniciousness.

So you see as Christians it seems to me that many who profess to accept Jesus as Lord have overlooked the fact that this false feeling has been allowed to congeal in many Christian minds; a kind of view which is happy for people to carry on believing in whichever (non-Christian) faith they have chosen to believe in so long as they are not part of a group which causes harm to others. Let me reiterate - this seems to me to be a far too relaxed position to take; particularly as Christ told us to take the good news to all nations.

On this position alone, as a Christian one must be forced to admit that all other religions are therefore equally bad and at least latently equally harmful to the minds of those who subscribe to them. It should be remembered that virtually all of the adherents of other faiths are adherents for one of two reasons. Either the belief system has been inculcated at such a young age that they have never known, or never been introduced to, any better belief system; or secondly, they have adopted a belief system based upon a personal partisan almost always due to a misleading outside influence. It is true that to adopt either of these approaches is a bad thing; that is, both positions are a surrender of the mind, simply because they promote a keenness to discard the very thing that makes us higher primates - the faculty of rationale. So it is not simply a matter of how evil or murderous the belief systems are it is a matter how false they are. The Jehovah’s Witnesses do little harm compared with, say, the fundamentalist armies of Uganda, but they certainly do a lot of harm to those who are born into the faith and operate within a stultifying hermetically sealed discourse (a brief discussion with any one of the vast majority will show what I mean). And of course as Christians we are not called to insult them or harass them or ridicule them or persecute them we are called to love them. And, in my view, the best way to love them is to try to bring them to Christ with love, grace and respect. But to overlook their position and say ‘well they do no harm to anyone’ is to disregard the words of Jesus and judge their position irresponsibly.

This issue does not just come down to the rights and wrongs of scripture either. It’s not very likely that a Quaker is going strap a bomb to himself and drive into a government building; but it is true, however, that Quakers preach against resisting evil - which is itself a hugely irresponsible position to take (as anyone who has seen Somalia or Zimbabwe or Uganda or Rwanda will tell you). It is true that most of us wish to live in a world where peace prevails. But peace itself can give rise to mental enfeeblement, examples of which include, for example, the Dalai Lama - a man who runs a stultifying dictatorship in Dharamsala - a population who thinks he is a god-king. Again, it is true that they are doing little harm to the outside world, but as a man who has had his life transformed by knowing Christ, it is has to be admitted that they are doing quite a bit of harm to their inner-selves, basing their beliefs on lies; lies which are, thankfully, fixed by his own limited scope.

Whenever I’ve debated this issue of falsity with Muslims, they almost always claimed that by casting aspersions over their belief I am offending all the Muslims in the world (over 1 billion). But if we want to speak honestly (tactfully, of course) we have to admit that Islam is the result of either a big lie or a big con trick. The evils of Islam are apparent for all to see, and it is getting worse. Also there are the Jewish extremists who tried to bring on Armageddon by apocalyptic aggression. Numerically they are extremely small but the consequences their actions have had have been severe. We didn’t used to think that Judaism would be a threat in this way, until the Zionist movement fused with the messianic (the messianists didn’t used to be Zionists). You never can be sure what will rise next.

As people we can make a difference
If ever we are to underestimate the difference that ‘the people’ can make, we shall limit ourselves in a very unhealthy way. This country has a long history of people who have made a difference by speaking out, and aside from through our democratic right to vote, there are countless examples of situations in which the power of the people have caused a change. Opposition to the poll tax (both legal and illegal) helped bring an end to Margaret Thatcher’s reign and indeed, to poll tax. Pressure groups and opinion polls were successful in persuading the government to ban handguns. The fuel protests, somewhat dubiously, did at least show that collectively the populace has the power to bring the country to a virtual standstill if it so wished. Edwina Currie was sacked as Health Minister in the late eighties over her comments about salmonella which infuriated many retailers. Pressure from Railtrack owners and shareholders brought about compensation when none looked likely, although admittedly it was a bit of a double indemnity (the government would find it more difficult to raise private finances for other public investments if they were seen to be unmindful of the Railtrack shareholders’ cause).

These incidents and many like them show just how the public can make a difference if such a difference is required. The voice of the minority can soon become the voice of the majority if the cause is worth speaking up for.

Some of the most disparate aspects of politics now involve identity politics rather than simple material differences. Many of the differences have arisen over cultural, national, religious, and ethnic identity - yet it is this shift which lies at the very heart of our influence. The identity politics which predominates in central government is the very thing which the public can use to their advantage; that is, we too can be architects of our own success by finding a unified identity as potential sons of God, one which transcends our cultural and ethnic identities (Galatians 3:38). We are, after all, much the same in our desire for equal opportunity, prosperity, tolerance, mutual respect, liberty, freedom and equality. We have much that we can be very proud of in this country. Those who seek to diminish the aforementioned qualities must be drowned out by the resounding voices of those who wish to live in a peaceable society. The discordant voices will only penetrate if the moderates allow them to.

I said earlier that I would provide a link to another site in which I expound my views on some of the subjects covered above, and it is here that I will finish by stating that what I have said in this article does not even scratch the surface of the challenges ahead and the true horrors of Islamic fundamentalism – so let me encourage all of you to take some time to listen to my account of the full extent of what we are faced with and just how bad it will get. You can do so by clicking on the link here - http://www.youtube.com/user/jamesknight1976