Archive for Islam

The Fall of Europe and the Contest for Africa

Posted by: Ion | July 27th, 2008 · 3:44 PM

As we’ve previously discussed here on PP, we believe the 21st century will be conditioned by two major economic, political and military events which would have sounded preposterous only twenty years ago (and which still do to many today). The first is the Steynian atrophy and demographic collapse of (coherent) European power, through a lethally toxic combination of mass immigration and low domestic birth rates. Although we won’t live to see a “Eurabia” those forces will destabilize and damage European prospects for effective competition on the world stage to a vast degree in this still young century.

The second and even more unexpected event, will be the rise of Christian sub-Saharan Africa as an economic, military and political power of substantial consequence. While most people in the West focus on Africa’s manifest problems with disease, poverty and unstable autocratic governments, these problems have never looked more like pre-war Asia than they do today.

Africa is changing and changing rapidly. Despite the horror stories you hear, Sub-Saharan African economic growth routinely doubles or triples Western European rates, unlike Europe its population is still growing prodigiously, its governments there are increasingly transforming into more stable market-states and the population is consolidating under a new faith: In 1900 Africa’s Christian population was 8%, today it’s 45% and still expanding. It is already roughly equal to the Muslim population of North Africa and is poised to leave it far behind.

But those events are a long way away. At present, the contest for Africa has a different locus. As with Asia in the 20th Century, resources and labor needs are driving the great powers into Africa. In the 21st century “great powers” means the United States and China.

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Productivity & Christianity in Africa

Posted by: Ion | July 24th, 2008 · 9:16 PM

We’ve often written about how radically the introduction and spread of Christianity is changing sub-Saharan Africa, culturally, politically and economically (for the better, in our opinion). Something that is almost totally ignored by Western media. But too often we tend to focus on the Protestant side of this effect. It should be said that Catholic evangelists are also pushing at these trends with often equal vigor.

Archbishop James Odongo supplies a representative example of this sort of thing in Uganda. Here he was speaking at the Martyrs Cathedral near Tororo, on Catholic Youth Day:

Archbishop Emeritus James Odongo has cautioned the youth against engaging in homosexuality, lesbianism and using vulgar language. He said such behaviour was unacceptable not only in the Christian teachings, but also in the African culture.

He urged the youth to work hard instead of spending time in social gatherings and being influenced by philosophies that state that ‘when something is done, it must, therefore be right.’

Odongo told the youth to preserve the integrity of their faith and be responsible for their actions and thoughts.
(AllAfrica)

Apart from extremely self-confident social conservatism, one of the most striking things one encounters when reading Christian African sermons, is how strenuously they focus on work ethics and increasing worker productivity through strengthened moral resolve.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the lowest man on the global totem-pole in terms of worker productivity, but is gaining faster than other regions. It should be observed too, that the only region of the world where worker productivity is actually falling is in the Muslim Middle East (excluding Israel).

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Scriptural Literalism as a Cause for Islamic Terrorism: A Short Dissent

Posted by: Ion | · 8:43 PM

Ordinarily, citing one of Karen Armstrong’s devotional and haphazard apologias for Islamic Fundamentalism in your introduction, is not a good way to win me over to your essay. However Mahmood Sanglay did manage to keep my interest in his fine editorial for The Brunei Times.

The Armstrong argument selected by Sanglay, is her view that a propensity toward a literalist reading of religious texts is the locus of all violent religious extremism. It doesn’t take much contemplation of the world’s religious texts to recognize that this is fundamentally unsound as a universalist precept.

For a common example, reading the The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount found in the Gospel of Matthew as written, is not going to persuade you to become a suicide bomber. When Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy” that can only be read to advocate things such as euthanasia of the weak or murder to liberate the soul from heresy, when reading it as metaphor, not literally. Or if you prefer, a literal reading the Pancasila of the Buddha (not Sukarno’s), is unlikely to produce the monastic warriors of the Shaolin. A more liberal interpretation certainly can though.

Thus exactly the opposite of what Armstrong and Sanglay separately propose cannot produce violent extremism, clearly does and has. Indeed in many if not most religions, a literal reading of scriptures is likely to be far more pacific than one that is open to more casual and ambiguous interpretation. “Choose what you wish and make of it what you will” is rarely a recipe for judicious outcomes in the broader practice of moral and religious codes.

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The Southern Bulwark

Posted by: Ion | · 8:20 PM

I didn’t see this report on CNN, but wish I had:

Therefore, when recently the CNN Inside Africa crew went to chat with them on the streets of Cairo, their views were expected as all the respondents rejected the notion of being Africans in the first place. It must be emphasized that this same view is shared by all North Africans from Cairo to Casablanca.
(Friends of Ethiopia)

As a matter of physical and ethnic geography this is roughly equivalent to Colombians claiming they are not South Americans. As a matter of national and political identity, it’s quite close to the truth. Above the Sahel is Empire Arabia, the domain of Islam conjoined at the heart to Mecca and the customs and convulsions of the Arab world, through unified religion and language. Wherever Islam goes in Africa, African identity is riven apart from the land. Such is Islam’s marriage to maps.

One of the interesting things to consider, is whether the modern efforts of Arab leaders in Sudan, Libya and elsewhere to expand the zone of Arabization south into the continental interior –efforts which have met with so much failure– would have proven more successful had the rise of Christianity in the 20th century not been so rapid and expansive beneath the Sahara. For force of effect, here’s a compelling little table illustrating how significant this change has been:

(Christian History Institute)

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Hatemail Envy

Posted by: Ion | August 27th, 2007 · 2:23 AM

As befits their somewhat more aggressive blog, Infidels Are Cool sure get some choice hatemail. Check out this sub-literate masterpiece of empty threats. The author appears to have picked up English exclusively from I Can Has Cheezburger graphics:

u punks are nothing but a bunch racist bicthes who[’s] goal [is to] kill all the muslims and
take over their oil . you are the reason why gas prices are high, by the way,u
evil goverment has created civil wars, overthrew demoractic goverments , and
supported dictatorships all over the world. u evil goverment sent zionnazi
mercs to New Orleans to blow up levees during Hurricane Katrina and kill
all of the black people and block food water and medical supplies from reaching
hurricane victims. u evil goverment gave hurricane refief money to the terrorist
state israel so the israeli goverment could buy american weapons and nazi israeli
soldiers and setters kill the Palestinian ,Syrian and Lebanese people and expand israeli borders. we will overthrow your evil goverment and destroy u.

i’m going to destroy u blog
today u celebeated facism in amerkkkia
u better be wearing u bulletproof ,cause i going to hunt u down a kill u
cal thomas is a zionnazi pig who gonna to get the shit beat out of him
the end of israel and zionism is coming
(Infidels Are Cool)

As you can imagine, I’m pretty jealous. The only real hate mail we get around here is from the stupendously unentertaining Ronpaulists and the occasional Chavezista. Neither of those are anything like this.

With the Ronpaulists I’m just waiting for the primaries so they can go back to full-time Illuminati/NAU/ZOG/JFK/UFO/TLC/NWO contheories. The Chavezistas are even more forgettable. It’s like reading a moldy Pravda essay about imperialism in the magnesium industry from the 70s. Sigh.

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An Embryonic Prelude to Religious Conflict in China

Posted by: Ion | August 24th, 2007 · 11:36 AM

While there’s broad agreement that China’s growing economic power augurs substantial geopolitical consequences for our young century, there’s as yet no real consensus on what those consequences will ultimately be. Everyone seems to have a theory for the form the PRC’s ossified political structure will evolve into, from Pacific imperialism and African adventurism, to bifurcated authoritarian market state, with a Singaporean disinterest in non-trade foreign affairs.

However, most theories are predicated on the assumption that China will remain culturally consistent to its historical foundations. But what if China’s very cultural foundation –rather than just its political and economic architecture– is in for the most substantial change of all?

John L. Allen, writing for the National Catholic Reporter, thinks that might just might be situation by mid-century. Citing data from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, he submits that 10,000 Chinese are converting to Christianity every day. 90% of those conversions are to Protestant denominations and most of those to Pentecostalism (well known for its fiery missionary zeal).

Most remarkable of all perhaps, is that this growth is being driven by domestic evangelism, having begun after the Cultural Revolution well after Mao had expelled all foreign missionaries. By 2050, the Center estimates there will be 218 million Christians in China, enough to make the country the second largest Christian nation in the world.

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Iraq, the Right, and why we’ll win

Posted by: Jason | July 12th, 2007 · 11:16 PM

(image: agd)

Even as a staunch supporter of the Iraq War, I’ve found myself in familiar territory with many other Americans lately, disillusioned. Not over any devastating images I see on television every night (I’m seasoned enough to know propaganda when I see it), but in something that came up in discussion between Lee and I today, longevity.

Lee correctly pointed out something, that it’s not the winning or loosing of this war–however you personally see it currently–that’s breaking the will of the American people, but the war’s lasting images on our television screens, in our discussions, on our burdensome minds each and every day. No one likes a war, but we especially hate a war that is perceived as a lost cause, as has been suggested of this one.

But if there is a silver lining to all of this, especially for those in the Republican Party who have felt so down on the cause as of late, it’s that we still have one valuable ally on our side, the truth. Yes… The truth. Not necessarily in our defense of believing that we can bring security to an unstable Iraq, a goal in which I do believe we can debate its attainability, but in our intentions in the fight against terrorism globally. Put lightly, the Republican Party still maintains the moral high ground in this discussion, because we truly believe in Iraq’s significance as an important piece in fighting our most dangerous enemy today, radical Islam.

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Rage Boy Spun

Posted by: Ion | June 28th, 2007 · 4:05 PM

(image: Snapped Shot)

I noticed a handful of incoming links to PP earlier from the IMDb message board. The link in question was our path to Snapped Shot’s hilarious Islamic Rage Boy retrospective.

IMDb poster Alpha Kenny Woun took the photojournalist love affair with Rage Boy a little bit differently that Brian Ledbetter and myself. To Alpha, Rage Boy is an agent of a right-wing media conspiracy, employed to depict Islam negatively:

Media’s Planting Actors looking like Fanatical Angry Muslims in Protests
by Alpha_Kenny_Woun 2 hours ago (Thu Jun 28 2007 08:29:34)
Ignore this User | Report Abuse Reply
UPDATED Thu Jun 28 2007 08:41:32

Anti-Islamic Media has been caught planting actors that look and act like Muslims Fanatics in protests around the world, these hired actors are referred to as ‘rage boys’.
http://postpolitical.com/ppblog/2007/06/21/the-face-of-a-thousand-protests/

Media needs pictures of fanatical muslims, so they are hiring actors to play that part. They’ve actually contacted this actor to scream infront of the camera. How common is this? Sounds like the typical thing the Western Media would do.
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/964-Professional-Protester,-Jihadi-style.html

The fake actor and his face is used by the right wing during the News and news related videos……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCQNeVmT4Bg
(IMDb)

Hmm. Well, there’s little arguing that he imparts an unfavorable impression of Islam. Now if we could just make the media right-wing and hostile to Islam, we might have a motive.

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