A warm welcome to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

At least that's what I call him. What Stephen Fry and friends call him is "Pope Ratzinger".

Isn't the oafishness of that the most revealing moment in their letter? It reminds me of nothing so much as the Koran-burning antics of Pastor Terry Jones. The same gratuitous bad manners, betraying the same inability to deal on a human level with the existence of persons who sincerely hold different beliefs from oneself - in a word, intolerance.

Unlike Jones, though, Fry and Co. are members of a cultural and intellectual elite who have no excuse for ignorance. Also unlike him, they have not and will not trigger a frantic damage-limitation exercise. They will not need to lose any sleep over the possible consequences of sticking two fingers up at a billion Catholics.


Well, it ought to have at least one consequence. The ayatollahs of secular liberalism have it in for all Christians who are not prepared to swallow their agenda whole; the Pope is just a particularly potent symbol. Deo volente I'll be in the West End tomorrow evening to wave to him, and I hope to have plenty of non-Catholics for company.

NO POPERY: a liberal fatwa

With the round robin letter published in today's Guardian, the anti-Pope campaign cranks up to a shrill crescendo (I'm sure there's worse to come over the next few days, though). That not just the likes of Stephen Fry and Johann Hari but so many of the Great and the Good have deemed it worthy of their signatures is a depressing commentary on the state of intellectual life in Britain.

Practically every sentence cries out for fisking, but I'll be selective.

Among the misdeeds laid at B16's door is...

'Opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of Aids.'

So if you come from a large family in a poor country, you can rejoice in the knowledge that all these movers and shakers consider you surplus to requirements.

Here, of course, we have plenty of condoms and plenty of Aids. Is it too much to ask for just a little humility from the ayatollahs of secular liberalism?

Another grievance, and a decidedly bizarre one:-

'In any case, we reject the masquerading of the Holy See as a state and the pope as a head of state as merely a convenient fiction to amplify the international influence of the Vatican.'

Riiight. So how, exactly, do we identify proper states? By the blushing diffidence with which they surrender any claims to international influence?

This one goes without saying:-

'Failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.'

Now because this is a debate in which no benefit of the doubt is ever extended to anyone who speaks up for the Pope, let me say at once that this is a serious matter which has been dreadfully mishandled by the Church. However, the accusation that he has failed to address it is simply untrue.

And let us take a look at the glass house from which the stones pour forth. Did I mention that Peter Tatchell is one of the signatories? Did I need to? In fact I strongly suspect that the wording is his. Now in 2008 Mr Tatchell had an article published in an Irish paper in which he argued that the law should allow adults to have sexual access to fourteen year olds. As he points out in the article, this is an issue on which he has campaigned since the 1990s. In 1997 the following appeared in a letter to the Guardian from Tatchell (at least Peter Hitchens says it was a letter, I remember it as an article):-

'The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

'While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.'

I'd really like to see some of the Professors, Baronesses and Lords who have signed the round robin letter confronted with this quote and asked to defend their association with its author in a campaign ostensibly motivated by concern over child abuse. If this happens on the BBC or Channel 4 (which recently screened a hatchet job on the Pope fronted by... Peter Tatchell) I'll eat my hat. Mr Tatchell is Teflon Man incarnate.

Doubtless the Professors, Baronesses and Lords would, if put on the spot, counter by asking what this has to do with children being raped by priests. But that would be sophistry. The roll of shame of priestly rapes (and however much exaggeration of the figures has gone on the real ones are shocking enough) includes every case where a child was subjected to penetrative sex. Consent is irrelevant since the law deems children incapable of giving it.

Change the law, though, and you convert large numbers of priests from abusers to legal lovers. For example, in one of the US cases which was talked up in the hope (I use the word 100% advisedly) that the Pope could be incriminated, one of the victims recalled that he hadn't liked to say no because the priest was such a nice guy. Well, consent is consent. Plenty of adult sex happens on the same basis. Of course he had subsequently regretted it, but you can't have it both ways. If consent is valid you can't allow those who have given it to retrospectively cry "rape".

I would not dream of suggesting that Peter Tatchell has ever had nefarious designs on fourteen year olds. If he had, though, he could hardly have supplied himself with a more perfectly self-serving argument than this one (from the Irish Independent piece):-

'This sexual disempowerment of young people [by an age of consent set at 17 in Ireland] plays into the hands of adults who want to abuse them. Guilt and shame about sex also increase the likelihood of molestation by encouraging the furtiveness and secrecy on which abuse thrives.

'One way to protect young people against unwanted sexual advances is by promoting sex-affirmative attitudes which challenge the idea that sex is something sordid, and by empowering teenagers to stand up for their sexual rights. Sexually informed and confident youngsters are more likely to resist sexual exploitation.'

So the way to protect kids from abuse is by redefining it so that adults who succeed in persuading them that they want sex aren't guilty of it at all.

Sexual empowerment is for adults. Children have one sexual right and it is the right to be protected from sex. Blur that distinction and you start sliding towards the rationalizations of the paedophile in denial.

To sum up: I'm not the only person who remembers reading the Guardian in 1997. You can bet that 80-90% of the signatories to the letter did. If the campaign against the Papal Visit was really about protecting children, they'd have quietly ensured Peter Tatchell wasn't invited to sign. My suggestion is that they didn't because it isn't.

I have more on the letter but this is already a longish post. Another to follow, time permitting.

Farewell Daleep Mukarji, Israel-baiter

In April Dr Daleep Mukarji ended a 12-year stint as Director of Christian Aid. So this is not a bad time to stumble on a Guardian Society interview with Dr Mukarji, published in May 2004 but still distinctly topical.

I started my campaign to challenge Christian Aid's bias against Israel by writing to Dr Mukarji in 2003. I received a courteous and considered response. When I wrote again a couple of years later he was enjoying an extended holiday in India, and the response promised by his PA never materialized. That I could never have expected to get any change out of him becomes clear in the first paragraph of the Guardian piece:-

'The church in Britain may once have been perceived as the Conservative party at prayer but its humanitarian wing offers a world view that embraces cross-cultural action against poverty, criticises Israel and the US, supports peasant occupations of land in Brazil, and lobbies Tony Blair on aid for Africa.'

Well, you see why I wanted to cover it, don't you? I don't think there has ever been much risk of Christian Aid being confused with the Conservative Party at anything, but just to rule out any possible doubt, here is the Guardian's seal of approval: this guy is One Of Us. How do we know this? Because he criticises Israel and the US. Because he criticises the two countries in which four fifths of the world's Jews live. In 2004 this was the way you established your credentials as a good Leftie and it still is in 2010 only more so.

And so it goes on:-

'Reality matches rhetoric, he insists. "Liberation theology has inspired many of us; we want to be part of a movement to change systems and structures, including the use of civil disobedience and protest, though never the use of violence."

'So Brazilian peasants seizing land have Mukarji's backing, while a Christian Aid report said Israeli policies deepened Palestinian poverty. "We must not be in sympathy with anyone who uses violence," he says, "but we do have to look at the root causes, respect people's rights and ask how we can find solutions."'

Need I say that Dr Mukarji apparently felt no need to accuse any other state (apart from the US) of having policies that deepen poverty? Here, too, we have the key equivocation which enables Christian Aid to disclaim sympathy with violence whilst steadfastly declining to explicitly condemn the violence of Hamas. That violence has its "root causes" in the Israeli occupation, therefore the proper response to it is not condemnation of Hamas but condemnation of Israel. Of course this is a game in which the moral parcel is only ever passed in one direction, so that Israel is never to be exonerated by an appeal to "root causes".

Perhaps I am being too hard on Dr Mukarji, though?

'One example of that movement is the UK Interfaith Humanitarian Group, which Mukarji helped set up after 9/11 to bring together Christian, Islamic, Jewish and other faith agencies, as well as Oxfam and Save the Children, to work together on common concerns such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.'

Very laudable in principle, but how does it work out in practice? Perhaps that concern with Islamophobia is the reason why Dr Mukarji did not use the interview to criticize any of the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Not even Sudan, whose regime was in 2004 still engaged in its 20-year war against the non-Muslim populations of the South of the country, deploying brutality on a scale massively exceeding anything the Palestinians have ever suffered at the hands of Israel.

But it's Israel, not Sudan, that is fair game for "criticism". And I'll say it again: whenever Israel is singled out in this way, anti-Semitism is legitimized. When the singling out is repeated time after time after time, anti-Semitism creeps stealthily back into the mainstream. Enough drops of water will hollow out a stone. Read here an example of how the mood is changing among supposedly intelligent and educated people.

"I don't think this would have happened 10 years ago" writes Eve Garrard of the outburst of "bloody Jews" academic anti-Semitism she encountered. No indeed; and Dr Daleep Mukarji has spent the past decade being part of the problem. Too many of those drops of water have dripped from Christian Aid on his watch. It's not a record that encourages me to regret his departure.


Postscript

On a different tack, it's worth noting the extraordarily deferential tone of the Guardian piece. If the interviewer had any aspirations to be a Humphreys or a Paxo one day, he was keeping them under wraps. Whatever the normal hue of his nose, it was surely browner than Dr Mukarji's by the time he switched the tape recorder off. Guardian Society knows which side of its bread is buttered with advertising revenue.

Here's the executive summary of Mukarji's CV:-

'Mukarji's background mixes both the frontline of human need and leadership roles in development challenges, from working as a doctor with lepers to taking on the Christian Aid job in 1998 and becoming an influential voice in many networks, notably as chair of the Trade Justice Movement. He once described himself as "city-bred, slightly westernised, secular and cosmopolitan".

'Why is he running a multi-million pound global charity from small offices near Waterloo station, London? "I made a personal and professional choice," he answers. "I could have stayed a doctor in India, but I saw that poverty and injustice could not be solved by medical treatment alone; that needed everything from clean water supplies to women's rights. That inspired me. I'm very lucky: I get paid for doing what I enjoy, and I believe in what I'm doing."'

Practically an Albert Schweitzer de nos jours. Here, though, is the same in a little more detail at the end:-

'Career 1971, qualified as doctor; 1972-74, worked with lepers and then ran mission hospital; 1975-76, post-graduate study in London, diploma in tropical public health, and master's in social planning; 1977, returned to India to establish a rural health and community development programme; 1985, appointed general secretary of the Christian Medical Association of India; 1994, became executive secretary for health, community and justice at the World Council of Churches in Geneva; April 1998, became director of Christian Aid, seeking to expand the organisation's influence and to change public perception of the charity's work.'

So two years at most as a frontline medic, followed by some 35 years as a desk wallah! I hasten to add that I who have never entered a leper hospital have no business pointing to the mote in Dr Mukarji's eye. No doubt every one of his career moves has been motivated by a zeal for serving the poor (though it must be said that he was in no danger of joining their number during his time at Christian Aid). But I don't much like newspapers that try to manipulate me. Better just make that "I don't much like newspapers".

Two takes on moral responsibility: part 2

Can you believe that Simon Tisdall of the Guardian has written a piece about the plight of Christians in much of the Muslim world? Don't worry, normal service has been resumed by the time the article reaches its conclusion: it's all the West's fault.

No need for a long post since Mr Eugenides is in sparkling form on this one. A small touch of irony from self can be found nestling among the comments.

Appeasers, resisters and a Sandalista Mass

Honestly, it wasn't just that I forgot the clocks were going forward. I'd been meaning for ages to pay an exploratory visit to my local Catholic church, and with 11 o'clock Mass substituting nicely for 10 o'clock Holy Communion it seemed clear that a suitable occasion had arrived.


I can't deny, though, that low expectations lay in large measure at the bottom of my procrastination. I also can't say that those expectations were exceeded. On this evidence the wasteland created by the trendy lefty interpretation of Vatican 2 is as dire as Damian Thompson says it is.


The church was full, mind, but that's no great achievement in a city as cosmopolitan as this one now is. A solitary parish priest is obviously grossly overstretched and, as he reminded us this morning, with blocks of flats springing up on every pocket handkerchief of empty land the parish is on track to double its population, recession notwithstanding. With a church packed to bursting-point with Africans and Poles, what chance is there that mission to the heathen natives will get a look in?


A special dishonourable mention must go to the music. It was like the drippiest variety of Evangelical happy-clappy with added Valium, a fitting counterpoint to the puke-green wall behind the altar. The fact that it was still being rehearsed at three minutes past eleven merely added insult to injury.


So it is with increased fervour that I join Damian T in his approbation of the Scots Catholic composer James MacMillan. He has proved that contemporary music need not contribute to stripping the liturgy of reverence and mystery - try his sublime Mass. And for good measure he has his head screwed on politically as well. Last week he laid succinctly into the editor of the Guardian over the paper's support for Islamism.


Support for Islamism? Some mistake, surely? You've been at the Melanie Phillips again, Grumpy, haven't you? What about this...

'It is also true that a document signed by Mr Abdullah [deputy general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain] at a recent international conference is in many ways offensive, with sweeping threats against those who stand with Israel and a slip into racialised language in relation to the Jewish state.'


So far so good, but I reckon if I ask you to guess what the next word is you won't have too much trouble. Close your eyes, and read on when you've had a stab at it.

'But '


Well done! You'd certainly have seen it coming if you've already read this in the leader:-


'Hazel Blears, had decided to cut contact with the largest Muslim civil society group until its deputy general secretary, Daud Abdullah, was sacked - a perverse decision if the aim is building the broadest possible alliance to take on the extremists.'


So someone undeterred by anti-Semitic language from signing a call to Jihad on behalf of Hamas is an invaluable member of the anti-extremist alliance. To coin a Wodehousean phrase, this is vastly well. There seems to be genuinely no limit to what we may be enjoined to accept in order that still worse things may be warded off:-

'A month ago the Guardian revealed that the government was considering setting arbitrary criteria to define extremists, such as support for sharia law - an approach that would have branded many mainstream Muslims enemies of the people. Thankfully the idea was ditched [...]'


Get that: 'mainstream' Muslims think it is not extreme to call for the introduction of a parallel theocratic jurisdiction in Britain, therefore nobody else has any business thinking it is.

Can you imagine the Grauniad telling us that in the interests of building an alliance against the far Right we must take care not to alienate 'mainstream' BNP voters by telling them their views are extremist? Of course not - the BNP aren't nearly scary enough.

Continuing to scan the papers, Ruth Gledhill of the Times is admirably robust on Dr Abdullah. I agree with her that this quote from David T of Harry's Place is telling:-

'The exposure of one faux-moderate as an extremist creates a domino effect. You just watch for the statements of outrage, and of support for the poor maligned nutter, and you uncover their constituency.'

But then we come to Damian T's Torygraph colleague, the dashing trendy vicar George Pitcher. Barely able to contain his glee over Dr Michael Nazir-Ali's decision to hand in his mitre, he writes:-

'It is said he was disappointed not to have been made Archbishop of Canterbury, but in truth he would have been awful in that role; his comments on British Muslims alone, had they emerged from Canterbury, could have left blood on the streets.'

'Blood on the streets'. No need to ask whose blood, or who'd have spilt it. Dr Nazir-Ali witnessed how Christians were intimidated into compliance in his native Pakistan. Has he given up hope that a repetition of the process in Britain can be prevented? It would be tragic if he has, though this kind of official flannel from the C of E would make such a conclusion understandable.

'As we rejoice in the power of his Spirit,
may God grant us today the faith of the apostles,
the boldness of the prophets
and the strength of the martyrs.'

When the Society of St Francis included this prayer for Pentecost in its office book, published in 1992, being a Christian in Britain was still pretty much the same cosy business it had been for a couple of centuries. Seventeen years on, it begins to look as if the prayer ought to have that well-known warning appended to it: be careful what you pray for - you might get it. Personally, I don't have the boldness of the prophets or the strength of the martyrs, and I'm not at all sure I want them, thank you very much. But how much longer is meaningful Christian witness in this society going to be possible without them?

Nobody told them

'If Hamas is not an antisemitic organization how does Seumas Milne explain the fact that on Thursday night Palestinian fighters thought it was a smart political move to walk into a Jewish Yeshiva in Jerusalem and kill eight Jews who were studying their religion?

'Perhaps nobody had told these Jew-killers that Hamas has commissioned a re-drafting of the Covenant?'

- asks David Hirsh.

It doesn't seem to be doing a great job of briefing its own spokesmen, either. But doubtless Comrade Seumas can explain everything.

New kid on the blog

The views expressed round here about the Grauniad are, shall we say, not uniformly favourable. But it is, after all, a house with many mansions, and it's pleasing to note that at least the paper's gossip columnist has the measure of Mad Mahmoud:-

'Possibly the world's unlikeliest blogger has been revealed by the New York Times as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, who has apparently promised to work on his site for at least 15 minutes a week. US readers have not been slow to post their comments - "You are an evil leader," says one contribution which would count as meek indeed on the Guardian's Comment is Free - but the site lacks a certain irony. The president apparently praised a protest against him at Amir Kabir University last year: "It was a joyous feeling to see a small group insult the elected president fearlessly amid a majority," he wrote, without adding that many of them ended up in prison as a result.'

Bears of little brain

'This sad little Sudanese tale is part of a larger story, from the Rushdie affair to the storm over the Danish cartoons, in which some Muslims, and some Muslim governments, seem to be almost searching for slights and fights, to be almost determined to be insulted, pushing aside those ready to take a more tolerant and relaxed view.

'There are objective reasons why Muslims are now more prickly about their rights and about what non-Muslims say about them than they used to be. But the resulting process is one in which the lines which non-Muslims must not cross are being repeatedly redefined, always more restrictively, at times with dire penalties threatened. The majority of Muslims may be much less concerned than the activists and radicals, but it is the activists and radicals who often set the pace. This constant raising of the bar does not increase respect for Islam but instead makes it appear coercive and threatening. In Sudan, it is not the bear which is of little brain.'

You can push even the Grauniad (for that, believe it or not, is the source of the above) too far. Norm comments perceptively.

A major reservation: the last sentence only follows from the one before on the assumption that the Sudanese government's concern is with increasing respect for Islam. On the contrary, it is very happy to appear coercive and threatening, because that is precisely what it is.

The Muslim dead

'This is not the only manner in which [Ronan] Bennett gives himself away. He refers to the "Muslim dead from Iraq to Afghanistan" and conscripts them for what he imagines is his side. How dare he? Has he even begun to tot up the number of Muslims murdered by the Taliban? Or the total slaughtered in Iraq since al-Qaida began its campaign to level the Shi'a mosques? Does he think that the forces of the Northern Alliance, or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who fight on "our" side against barbarism, are somehow inauthentic Muslims because they prefer Bush and Blair to Mullah Omar or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Something in his tone makes me suspect that this may well be his problem, just as I might have preferred him to mention that it was also the Provisional IRA, and not just the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act, that left "the Irish community in Britain feeling like a suspect nation".'

- C. Hitchens in cracking form in the Guardian. Read it all.

Six dead, liberal love affair with Hamas unharmed

Deadly clash at Arafat Gaza rally

Six dead after shootout at Arafat rally

Five killed during Arafat rally

Security forces open fire on stone-throwing Palestinian protesters, six killed. Stand by for global outcry over disproportionate use of force by Israel.

Or, as it happens, not. Even if you didn't already know, there'd be a whopping great clue in the coyness of the headlines above about who was doing the shooting. Can you guess which major British media outlets they come from? (Compare and contrast with this and this)

One of the three economy-with-the-truthers redeems itself somewhat by carrying another piece of news from Gaza which is fairly difficult to blame on the Israelis. Not a dicky bird from the the other two, however.

Is it any wonder that well-meaning liberal Christians are prejudiced against Israel?

No big deal

When does the trade journal of the equality industry think that racist bigotry isn't something to go overboard about?

No surprises: Denis MacEoin, a scholar in the field of Islamic Studies, wrote a piece for the Grauniad's Comment is Free on anti-Semitism in the Middle East. It was rejected on the grounds that it was exaggerated - to which Dr MacEoin responds concisely but comprehensively with a list of the Middle Eastern newspapers which carry anti-Semitic material.

Stephen Pollard points to a truly sickening example of the kind of material which does pass the CiF censor (see also the assessment here). What kind of mindset believes it has been consistent in these two decisions?

(via this and this - note the illustration)

Grauniad in 'Steele backs Bush' shock

Seriously. George W says it's high time Kosovo got its independence, and Jonathan S is right behind him.

To which Grumpy's immediate reaction is 'yes, that's all very well, but what's to stop an independent Kosovo going from 90% Albanian to 100% Albanian before you can say "ethnic cleansing"?' What's Jonathan's answer? I wish I could tell you, but since he doesn't address this aspect of the problem at all I'm in the dark. Veteran Steele-watcher though I am (see my old blog) I confess to being just a little surprised. I don't get the impression that giving the majority its head is always his preferred solution to ethnic conflicts of this kind. Certainly not, for instance, when the minority are Northern Ireland's Catholics or Iraq's Sunni Arabs.

Must have been a tricky call for the Man of Steel. He must have been sorely tempted to side with Putin, if only for old times' sake. But there's no room for sentimentality here. Never let it be said that al-Grauniad is less Muslim-friendly than Bush! Tactics, comrades, tactics!

An argument against Islamophobia

Better late than never department...

If there's one thing that could raise Ed Husain higher in my estimation than when I first wrote about him, it's seeing him achieve the distinction of being patronized by Maddy of the Sorrows:-

'One of the book's shortcomings is its failure to acknowledge that just as Husain has been on a dramatic journey, so have some of the UK's different expressions of Islamism.

'It is as if, just as Husain once swallowed large chunks of Hizb ut-Tahrir propaganda, he now seems to have swallowed undigested the prevailing critique of British Muslims. He has no truck with the idea of Islamophobia, which he dismisses as the squeal of an Islamist leadership pleading special favours; he criticises Asian racism and castigates Muslims "who go back home to get married" and produce "another generation confused about home". On issues such as segregation, he is confident it is the fault of multiculturalism.

'One suspects the naivety which took him into Hizb-ut Tahrir has blinded him as to how his story will be used to buttress positions hostile to many things he holds dear - his own faith and racial tolerance, for example. A glance at the blog response to a Husain piece in the Telegraph reveals how rightwing racism and anti-Islamic sentiment are feasting on his testimony.'

He means well, poor chap, but why, oh why couldn't he have just kept quiet? Or if he really had to tell his story, couldn't he have let someone with a bit of political nous ghost-write it for him - our Maddy, for instance? And why does he have to let evil Tony Blair off the hook by retreating into apolitical Sufism? Doesn't he know how many cuddly varieties of Islamism there are for him to choose from?

Maddy doesn't let us into the secret of which the OK 'expressions of Islamism' are, but I rather suspect she may be among those who see Tariq Ramadan as a paradigmatic figure. In which case it smacks more than a little of asking somebody who's just bailed out of a neo-Nazi paramilitary group why he doesn't sign up with a good, solid, reputable organization like the BNP.

As for the charge of inflaming Islamophobia, well, of course confirmed racists will register only what confirms their prejudices. But for those of us who fear some 'expressions of Islamism' because we have good reason to fear them (yes, Maddy, really), Husain's courage, integrity and humanity, combined with his continued devotion to his faith, constitute an argument against Islamophobia of the best possible kind.

Congo, Darfur, Palestine: the numbers game and the politics of racial blame

It's not every day that someone who's had a book published by the Social Affairs Unit also gets an article published in the Guardian. This distinction has, however, been enjoyed by one Roger Howard, author of What's Wrong with Liberal Interventionism and now of a piece entitled 'Where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference'.

Googling suggests that it is the SAU which is Mr Howard's natural habitat. So what's the pay-off for the Guardian?

The place where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference is Darfur. Howard's thesis is that a simplistic racist narrative of the conflict there is being invoked to serve at least three purposes: firstly to justify an intervention in Darfur actually motivated by western economic interests; secondly to give indirect reinforcement to the racist scapegoating of Arabs for the Israel-Palestine conflict; and thirdly to provide a diversion from the disastrous outcome of the invasion of Iraq. He seeks to prove the point that professed concern over Darfur is hypocritical and self-serving by drawing a comparison between western attitudes to two African conflict zones: Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In a nutshell, in the latter the killing is on a much larger scale, and yet it is almost totally ignored by western media and public opinion. Why? No oil to grab, no Arabs to blame.

There are some fairly obvious problems with this comparison. Crucially, Howard's rigged the evidence by homing in on Darfur rather than looking at the Sudanese regime's record in relation to the country as a whole. Once you add the 1.5 million dead in the 20-year conflict in the South to the 200,000 in Darfur, the contrast with the 3-4 million killed in the DRC isn't so very glaring any more. These are two human rights catastrophes on a massive scale, and using the numbers to play one off against the other is a less than appropriate response - both should be at the top of the international community's agenda.

One might also note that the DRC does actually have rich mineral resources, and that there has in fact been a limited intervention there: a UN peacekeeping force helped enable the holding of a presidential election last year which was successful to the extent that the loser accepted that he had been fairly beaten (there are, of course, no presidential elections in Sudan). Sad to say, the fighting continues regardless.

None of which makes it any less true that the DRC conflict is shamefully ignored. It's hard to disagree with Howard when he explains this by characterizing it as a conflict in which 'black Africans are killing other black Africans in a way that is difficult for outsiders to identify with'. Crudely, one might say that the Right isn't interested because the victims are Africans and the Left isn't interested because the killers are Africans. And it's plainly true that we would hear a lot more if there were any significant great power interests at stake. The typical vicious circle operates where media coverage is concerned. Reporting from the combat zones would be immensely arduous and dangerous. Who wants to take that on just so as to file copy that gets spiked before it has time to settle on the editor's desk, because the DRC is a far away country of which we know little? And the less we are told the less we demand to know more.

Howard's call for this to change would be laudable - if that were what he was saying. But that's not the point at all. In fact the DRC per se doesn't seem to interest Howard very much. He certainly has nothing whatsoever to offer in the way of positive suggestions as to what the rest of the world could do. As per the title of his book, he doesn't believe in 'liberal interventionism', and what is the use of demanding that more attention be paid to a situation we can do nothing to change?

Really the DRC seems only to serve only a rhetorical function in the article. The comparison is drawn not in order to draw attention to the DRC but to draw it away from Darfur. Having served its turn the DRC can be re-consigned to oblivion, as Howard directs our gaze to... wait for it... that most scandalously neglected region of the globe, the Middle East!

Here's the passage in which he makes the switch:-

'In Darfur the fighting is portrayed as a war between black Africans, rightly or wrongly regarded as the victims, and "Arabs", widely regarded as the perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is through such a prism that the conflict is generally viewed.

'It is not hard to imagine why some in the west have found this perception so alluring, for there are numerous people who want to portray "the Arabs" in these terms. In the United States and elsewhere those who have spearheaded the case for foreign intervention in Darfur are largely the people who regard the Arabs as the root cause of the Israel-Palestine dispute. From this viewpoint, the events in Darfur form just one part of a much wider picture of Arab malice and cruelty.

'Nor is it any coincidence that the moral frenzy about intervention in Sudan has coincided with the growing military debacle in Iraq - for as allied casualties in Iraq have mounted, so has indignation about the situation in Darfur. It is always easier for a losing side to demonise an enemy than to blame itself for a glaring military defeat, and the Darfur situation therefore offers some people a certain sense of catharsis.'

I want to draw attention to some things that are not said here.

Firstly, setting up and implicitly knocking down a straw man of racial prejudice gives Howard a neat way to evade the question whether the particular as-it-happens Arabs who rule Sudan are guilty of malice and cruelty bordering on genocide, and whether the particular as-it-happens Arabs who deliberate in the Arab League are guilty of disgraceful collusion with malice and cruelty through their uncritical support for the Sudanese regime. No, if Darfur bothers you, you must hate Arabs, if it doesn't you're OK. It's a rather extraordinary piece of moral inversion.

Secondly, there's the way Howard has suddenly stopped playing the numbers game. 200,000 civilians dead in Darfur? Chickenfeed compared with the millions in the DRC! So when he turns to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with between 4,000 and 5,000 Palestinians (civilians and combattants) dead since the second intifada began in 2000, he will naturally want to make the point that in comparative terms this hardly registers on the radar at all, and to ask why so much of the world is so obsessed with it, won't he? Strangely, though perhaps not altogether surprisingly, the answer is No. Apparently the rules of the numbers game state that it may be played for the benefit of the Sudanese regime and Arabs generally, but not for the benefit of Israel or the Jews.

Thirdly, consider this:-

'In Israel and Palestine the fighting is portrayed as a war between Arab Palestinians, rightly or wrongly regarded as the victims, and "Jews", widely regarded as the perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is through such a prism that the conflict is generally viewed.

'It is not hard to imagine why some in the Muslim world have found this perception so alluring, for there are numerous people who want to portray "the Jews" in these terms [...] who regard the Jews as the root cause of the Israel-Palestine dispute. From this viewpoint, the events in Palestine form just one part of a much wider picture of Jewish malice and cruelty.'

Sound familiar? With fiendish cunning, I've changed the names in part of the passage I've just quoted from Howard, which in its pristine form refers to Darfur. The point here is that there are two competing narratives of racial blame and demonization available as explanations of the 'root cause' of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Howard rightly rejects one of them; he could have done so in terms that rejected such racist discourse on principle, affirming instead that this conflict is no less complex and confused than that in Darfur. But he doesn't, and by this omission he leaves open the possibility that a picture of Jewish malice and cruelty provides the correct diagnosis of the conflict's root causes.

I'm not saying he positively endorses this view - he doesn't. But he doesn't explicitly reject it either, although he must of course know that many, many people do indeed think this way, and also that nowadays one cannot assume that such people do not read the Guardian.

So, three significant omissions. They bother me, but apparently not the folk at the Guardian. And if he'd filled in the blanks, would they still have printed his article? These days narratives of racial blame have their uses, even for the Left.

Unseen helper

Isn't it nice when you find that somebody else has taken care of one of those tedious little jobs that you never get round to? Like rationalizing the irritation you feel whenever you read a piece by Karen Armstrong in the Grauniad. So thanks, Norm; I don't suppose you fancy cleaning the fridge for me, do you?

Still Time for a Quickie

'The Pope's expression of regret is welcome, even if there is some doubt as to whether it goes far enough to soothe Muslim sensibilities. Several burnt-out churches and a dead nun have, we must hope, taught him a painful but necessary lesson. Any utterance which can be interpreted as implying that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion is as unwise and unhelpful as it is incorrect.'

(all the usual suspects)

'How many fingers, Winston?'


Update: the first quote was kindly produced for me by my personal copy of the Grauniad Editorial Generator. Whereas this is the genuine article:

'When he digs out a 700-year-old sentence that could not be more damning of Islam - "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached" - he has to know there will be consequences.'

Muslims in 'Pope is a Catholic' storm

Well, I'd been planning to link to the Pope's Regensburg lecture since I saw him delivering it live on TV. In my humble opinion it's a fine piece of theological reasoning. I was also impressed by the sermon he preached earlier the same day.

And, yes, I did have a feeling there was going to be trouble. Funny, isn't it, that although the lecture contains a lot more criticism of western secularism than of Islam, it somehow never occurred to me that the trouble might come in the form of enraged atheists firebombing churches? Or that Catholics would interpret the lecture as giving them the green light to shoot an imam or two?

It's one of those occasions when I look to the bloggers to preserve my sanity.

At Harry's Place Brownie simply puts the 'offending' quote in context and asks 'So...what exactly is the problem?'

Shuggy is spot on:-

'At the close of his speech he said:

'"It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university."

'It wouldn't be this task of the university - to join the general conversation of mankind - that the Islamists are afraid of, would it?

'No doubt the usual 'liberals' will, in that special pained sort of way they have, 'regret' the insensitivity of the Pope's remarks. In anticipation of this I can only insist on the following. We are not talking about a few infantile cartoons being published in a provincial European newspaper now, this shifts it to fundamentals: you either believe in free speech or you do not; you either believe in academic and intellectual freedom or you do not; and you either believe in the freedom of religion or you do not. And if you chose the censorious path, let's hear a respectable intellectual argument that does not rest solely on accusations of racism. Oh, and don't call yourself a liberal - don't you dare.'

As is Laban Tall:-

'Because this isn't about peaceful co-existence. This is about imposing one's will on the spiritual enemy. In fact, the greater the apology, the less likely it is to be accepted - because it's taken as a sign of weakness, to be exploited further.

'No religion has been mocked and vilified more in the last 40 years than Christianity. And it continues - because the consequences don't involve bodies with knives pinning notes to their chests, decapitation, explosions, burning buildings or trains.

'Faced with such things, Western society retreats, draws back, self-censors - engendering a sense among the bad hats (and among those who share the aim even while having reservations about the method) that there is no limit to the retreat - no ground on which the enemy will turn, stand and fight.'

In a situation where the Pope is simultaneously being compared with Hitler and accused of Zionism, satire is pretty much superfluous here, but Simply Jews are not to be deterred.

Thank heaven for the blogs, because without them we'd be left at the mercy of the msm.

Take, for instance, today's al-Grauniad. Not only do we have Karen Armstrong grinding out her one tune (Islam is peaceful, and if it's not it's our fault) but John Hooper is encouraging the Jews to show a bit of solidarity with the Muslims. Because now the Pope's been quoting the rabidly anti-Semitic St Paul. This must take the biscuit for cynical opportunism even by al-G standards. Mr Hooper prefers not to spoil his point by mentioning that Paul was, like Jesus, his disciples and all the authors of the New Testament, Jewish.

Ruth Gledhill in the Times claims that the Pope's Quranic scholarship is suspect. Well, that's fair enough, and he's positively inviting dialogue with Muslim scholars on that level. But let's spell out once again the precondition for that kind of conversation: all sides are free to speak their mind without facing the threat of violence. In Ms Gledhill's piece that takes a back seat to Pope-bashing.

In the real world outside the blogosphere, is there anybody manning the barricades for freedom?

Not the trendy Christian liberals who've seized the opportunity to stick the boot into Ratzi -dishonourable mentions for Giles Fraser, chaplain to al-Grauniad, and the Pope's old antagonist Hans Küng (see the Ruth Gledhill piece). Here's a vintage Fraserism:

'For in claiming that Islam may be beyond reason, and then to claim that to act without reason is to act contrary to the will of God, is pretty close to the assertion that this religion is godless. And that's not how different faiths ought to speak to each other - especially when we all have each other's blood on our hands.'

So, Dr Fraser, scourge of the conservative evangelicals: when Iranian zealots string up gay teenagers, do they serve the living God or an idol of their own imagining? Tricky one, huh? Remember: engage brain before opening mouth.

Who's manning the barricades? In German politics, not Renate Künast, leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, who called for an apology, and thinks that the Pope has not only the Crusades but the Irish civil war (sic) and the invasion of Iraq on his conscience (German source here). Bad news for Germans who want to save the planet without surrendering their democratic rights.

You'd expect the Christian Democrats to do better and they do. Chancellor Angela Merkel has stood up for the Pope, whilst the party's General Secretary, Ronald Pofalla, says: 'All those who are now attacking him don't want dialogue, but an intimidated and silenced West'. (German source here)

Credit is due too, perhaps less predictably, to Lale Akgün, Muslim Affairs spokesman for the Social Democrats:

'Look, there are three and a half million Muslims living in Germany, over 20 million in Europe. These are not small numbers. That means we have no alternative to convincing the majority of comparatively apathetic Muslims of the need to accept and show the peaceful face of Islam. [...] We must simply ensure that those who are rather indifferent to religion, who tend to fight shy of religion, take an active stand, that we persuade them to join with us in developing an Islam in Europe which is compatible with democracy, with human rights, with women's rights. And which is also prepared to submit itself to discussion, prepared to accept other opinions or at least agree to disagree.'

(my translation, original here)

OK, it's not a great advertisement for a belief system if you have to look to the apathetic to salvage some basic decency. Never mind, he's on the right side.

Returning to the UK papers, the Observer's Will Hutton gives us a mixed bag. He's been reading a book by a progressive Muslim, and he desperately wants to believe its message:-

'Nor is Islam less able [than Christianity or Judaism] to accommodate reason or Enlightenment values.'

Well, I'd very much like to believe it too. Mr Hutton should carry on reading, and if he will add the New Testament and the Quran to his reading list he can, I hope, correct his impression that they are both equally guilty of glorifying violence (see below).

Still, he does get it to this extent...

'Aslan is persuasive, but the reaction of some Islamic leaders to the Pope's incitement belies his optimism. They can choose to ignore the pontiff, challenge him or demonstrate through reference to Islam's own teachings that he is wrong. Instead, they stress the enormous offence that has been given. There is no sense here of a commitment to pluralism or mutual tolerance.

[...]

'The principle of tolerance is one on which the West can never compromise. The Pope was right on one thing, though; the West, its religions included, accepts the grandeur of reason. So, ultimately, must Islam.'

And there's William Rees-Mogg in today's Times. 10 out of 10. I fear he may be a little long in the tooth to be manning the barricades, but then so is the Holy Father, and with so many 'liberals' deserting the cause of liberty we need everyone we can get...

'The Pope’s actual quotation is not just a medieval point of view. It is a common modern view; even if it seldom reaches print; it can certainly be found on the internet. “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and then you shall find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

'Is it true that the Koran contains such a command, and has it influenced modern terrorists? The answers, unfortunately, are “yes” and “yes”.

'The so-called Sword Verse from Chapter 9 must have been in the emperor’s mind: “So when the sacred months have passed away, Then slay the idolaters wherever you find them.

'“And take them captive and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in every ambush.”

'This does shock many Muslims: extremists are angered by the implied criticism of those who quote it, while moderates who cannot disavow the terms of the Koran prefer more evasive interpretations. The shock it creates shows the importance of the doctrine.'

Lest the barricades stuff comes across as a mite hysterical, let a correspondent to the same paper have the final word:-

'Sir, The Pope did not give offence (reports, Comment and leading article, Sept 16): his enemies took it.

'Taking offence is a blackmail strategy and any excuse, real or imagined, will do: it is seen in the belligerent drunk, growling “What are you lookin’ at?” or the gang member who draws a knife because he has been “dissed”. It works because polite, educated respondents try to treat this as a real question, to apologise and negotiate.

'You cannot negotiate with a drunk or a knife, and you cannot negotiate with those who manufacture offence as a weapon.'

People in glass houses

Every so often a certain member of the South African government pops up in the Guardian to help beef up the campaign to brand Israel as an apartheid state (here's a sample of his writing for the domestic audience, and here's a fisk of a previous article by a SA blogger who earns immediate inclusion on my blogroll). Well, next time an article by Ronnie Kasrils appears in al-Grauniad, perhaps some readers will remember what the paper's man in Jo'burg had to say about the glass house from which Mr Kasrils throws his stones.

How many lives have been lost as a direct consequence of the criminally incompetent handling of the HIV/Aids crisis by Thabo Mbeki and his 'health minister'? Tens of thousands? Or more? Some might feel this is in itself sufficient grounds for a boycott.

Comrade Steele again

The massacre of 40 Sunnis in Baghdad is of course an appalling crime. But it's funny (and I don't mean ha ha) how this immediately 'revives fears of civil war' and sets Comrade Steele fretting about 'sectarian pogroms', whereas the massacre of 66 Shias last weekend passed - like scores of similar incidents - without any comment from him. Well, the Sunnis were killed by a 'rampage', which is presumably much. much worse than merely being blown up by a bomb - and in any case Comrade S. was far too busy last week talking the Israeli offensive in Gaza up into a terrorist outrage (so far the only deliberately murdered non-combattant has been an Israeli teenager) to spare a thought for victims of the legitimate resistance struggle in Iraq.

In the post I linked to on Friday, Eve Garrard writes 'It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr Steele's opinions about how to respond to political violence (and indeed about how to describe it) are entirely dependent on whether the violence in question is being practised by the side he supports.'

And it keeps getting harder.

Fisk of the day

OK, taking al-Grauniad's Jonathan Steele apart is perhaps not the most intellectually demanding of tasks, but Eve Garrard does it in style.

(update: I've been debating with someone who is less impressed than I am by EG's piece here)