Post 223--Gentleman Law vs Foreign Thugs

One of the topics on which I collect data, especially newspapers, and even more especially, The Vancouver Sun.  One of the columnists I follow on this topic in that paper is Kim Bolan. She does a great job of reporting on all the shenanigans of criminals, especially gangsters.  Did I use the term "shenanigans?"  That's way to mild a word. These guys are thugs, murderers, professional murderers. For them human life has no meaning or value.  Money, power, lifestyle and girls are more important to them than anything else. If someone stands in their way along one of these lines, they do not hesitate to kill.  Either they do the killing themselves or they'll pay someone to do it for them.  

Now it's bad enough to have local boys engage in all this, people born in the country, but I consider it even more intolerable for immigrants or refugees turn into criminals and gangsters.  I am in no way suggesting that there is a disproportionate number of that scum among criminals and gangsters; that they harbour more than their share of those pigs. I am an immigrant myself and I know that the vast majority of us are industrious citizens that are eager to contribute to Canadian society.  But there are some and I have no use for them.  In fact, I promote the denial of human rights and protection to them.  

I once wrote to Kim Bolan that all members of gangs should be considered free from the law's protection. They have chosen a life of violence and the police and other security bodies are spending fortunes in terms of time, resources and money on these idiot. In the meantime, the killing goes, not infrequently even victimizing innocent people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Kim seemed to be horrified at this barbaric proposals. Absolutely, we don't want to go there, she "yelled" at me in writing. I suggested this once to a retired policeman who similarly reacted very negatively. Perhaps he was trying to protect the interest of the police establishment, for I saw no other good reason for his rejection of the proposal.  

Anyway, I am going to leave you with a link to the latest article from Kim to show you how confused the various government entities are with regard to these barbarians. It's ridiculous, nothing short of it. They obviously have no clear ideas or, perhaps, courage, when it comes to dealing with that underworld. In addition they are hampered by a lot of laws that tend to be contradictory or, at the very least confusing. Gentlemen laws cannot cope with thugs without moral or conscience.  

The title of her piece is "Federal court stays order releasing gangster gunman." The link is:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=kim+bolan+federal+court+stays+order+releasing+gangster+gunman&rlz=1C1AVNG_enCA658CA662&oq=kim+bolan++federal+court+stays+order+releasing+gangster+gunman&aqs=chrome..69i57.20407j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 I will have more to say about this in the next blog. If you've been with me a long time, you may remember some of the things I wrote in times gone by.  You're likely to get some more of the same. 

  

Post 80—Oppression of Muslims

It is claimed by Christian experts that Christians are the most persecuted people in the world. Now those who study Christian persecution may be experts in Christian persecution, but are they also experts in persecution in general? Do they know as much about persecution of Muslims? 

My universe of discourse here is persecution because of their faith, not because of political circumstances.  How many of the Muslims streaming into the West these days are Muslims persecuted for their faith rather than victims of politics or immigrants seeking better economic circumstances?  

In the case of African Muslims crossing the Mediterranean, it is fairly safe to regard most of them as economic immigrants. In the case of Syrians Muslims, I expect that many are victims of their civil war in the same way as are many Christians—in other words economic and political victims, not victims of religious persecution. But many Christians among them have also been persecuted for their faith by the same Muslims who now are their fellow refugees. Remember the story in Sweden a few posts ago?  So, many of them are these three types all rolled into one. 

Syrian affairs are complicated these days. These refugees are not all victims of the Syrian civil war. Many of them, both Christian and Muslim, are also victims of ISIS violence. That is above all a religious war with serious economic and political consequences. Those who are dislodged because of ISIS can be considered persecuted Christians and Muslims.  The same thing is true with Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.  They persecute fellow Muslims as much as Christians. In fact, more, for Muslims outnumber Christians in that far north east of the country. I do not know whether these persecution “experts” study that aspect of persecution. Neither do I know whether there are Muslims who are experts in persecution of Muslims. I guess I could go online and check it out. Perhaps you would find them mostly among human rights advocates.

But one thing is sure, namely that in most Muslim countries in general, Christians are the most numerous among those persecuted, for there is hardly a Muslim-majority country where Christians are not persecuted, whether by government or by the people, whether officially or unofficially, whether by pure violence or various forms of discrimination.   

And yet, in a country like Nigeria, Muslims have for decades complained about persecution. Not the violent kind that kills or maims, though that also occurs during times of demonstrations, but in terms of discrimination in cultural, political, legal and educational forms, persecution by colonialists and by Christians. When the British established the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, the colonial Governor, Lord Lugard, a secular man, promised that the British would not touch their Muslim religion. This is known as the "Lugard promise." There would be freedom of religion for the Muslims. In fact, for many decades Christian missionaries had less freedom to spread the Gospel than Muslims had for theirs. So, why did northern Muslims complain so bitterly about persecution, while Christians suffered at their hands? 

The reason is to be found in the Lugard promise.  He made his promise from his secular perspective on religion, which is a reduced version of religion that is restricted to church/mosque and private life, but not to affect public life, for that is supposedly secular and neutral. His promise was that Muslims were free to attend mosque and practice their religion privately. 

But to Muslims, religion is a wholistic affair that touches on and influences all of life, not just private or mosque life. Without either party being aware of it, they misunderstood each other. Muslims thought they would be free to practice their religion wholistically in all spheres of culture. 

The British proceded to secularize the Muslim community. Though they left sharia (Muslim law) in tact at the level of mosque, the private and family levels, in other spheres secularism became the dominant worldview on basis of which public life was organized. A major tool was education. Another was switching the Hausa language from Arabic script to Western so as to reduce the influence of Arabic ideas.  Ever so slowly the secular spirit took hold among Muslims—until the revolution of Khomeini woke them up. Suddenly they realized they “had been had.”  Suddenly they began to realize what had happened to them and they burst out in anger. They had been fooled, slipped a poison pill and put to sleep, while an antithesis had developed between the two systems. Everything public had gone secular, something that most Muslims reject with a passion, especially in northern Nigeria. Before long, the demand for the revival of sharia came to the surface with a vengeance. They felt discriminated against and, yes, persecuted--and justifiably so.

If you wish to pursue the topic of Muslim persecution, I urge you to read both volumes 4 and 6 in my series Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations. That series opens the Islamica page of my website < www.SocialTheology.com/Islamica.htm. >  You will find a strong sense on the part of Muslims of being persecuted by colonial secular forces, the antithesis to Islam. Boko Haram is an extremist reaction to that secular force. Its central tenet is buried in its Hausa name, which means “Western education (secularism) is forbidden.”  

Post 75--Refugees: The Same Message Without the Scream

I appreciate Ezra Levant. He says it as it is without regard to the politically correct.  I would probably cite him much more frequently if I did not fear losing you, my readers, who may be more gentle in your preferences. I encourage you to tell me what you think of him.

However, today I turn to someone who is more gentle in his expression and who is found in mainstream press of the Vancouver Sun, but who tells the same story. I refer to Matthew Fisher. I see his name and column quite often in that paper but have not read him all that much. But his write up of September 12, 2015 is worth noting. 

Of course, many things happened since, especially the Paris debacle of a couple of weeks ago, but also in other countries with other races to which main stream folks don’t pay as much attention—Nigeria’s Boko Haram continues its onslaughts of bombing attacks in various cities and states, killing innocent people by the dozens at a time, often mostly Muslims; Lebanon just had its turn as did Baghdad. ISIS, of course, doesn’t let up on its tradition of extreme violence, cruelty and chaos.

So, what does Fisher have to tell us?  His title says it all: “Refugees a mix of the persecuted and the opportunistic.”  He begins by reminding us of the siege of Vienna back in 1683, the last time Muslims tried to enter Europe in such great numbers. That time they came as war mongers; this time they come to escape war, most of them anyway. In the 1970s and 80s they came to Western Europe as temporary guest workers, mostly people with little education and few needed skills.  We know how bumpy the ride has been and still is for them as well as their hosts one or two generations later.

Today they come as a mix, many of them highly skilled professionals who can afford the $5,000 or more for the ride. Many of that crowd are taking advantage of the refugee phenomenon; they pretend to be refugees, even though they come from places that do not generate refugees so much as economic migrants. They are economic immigrants no different from myself and my parental family in the early 1950s, except that today’s economic migrants are often better educated and more wealthy. 

The West can use these people, no doubt about it. But I am not so sure that the West should accept them so readily. Their move to the West represents a terrible brain drain on their home countries who have paid for their training. Accepting them in the West implies reversing the results of whatever "foreign aid" the West has poured into these countries--a plain contradiction. But what's a contradiction when it's in your favour? Remember that earlier post in which I described the human race as contradictory by nature?  That's just the way we are.  We just paper it over with lofty oratory.

Then, of course, there are the genuine refugees, the ones who rightly receive all our attention and compassion. Fisher met them in person during his visits to Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan near the Syrian border. He describes the place as a “cauldron of trauma, despair and opportunism.” Those he met there were “genuine refugees,” who “had horrific tales about barbarities they had seen…and awful news stories about life in the camp, where rape and other crimes were rife and many teenage girls had been kidnapped for sold into marriage. They were largely from hardscrabble, war-wrecked cities such as Daraa and Aleppo.”  I am very happy with the reports I read of many Canadian organizations, both religious and secular, including my own church, who are scrambling to find ways and money to adopt families or an individual or two.  That is true compassion that I—and, I hope, you, my readers—share and participate in.

But then, at the end of his column, Fisher gently turns to the politically incorrect. I quote: “Westerners should remember that an unintended consequence of this unprecedented migration might be a step toward Osama bin Laden’s dream that Islam will get its revenge against the West through immigration and birthrate.”  Osama shared this dream with other Muslim strategists, including Ghadaffi, who thundered it out, “We shall overcome you via immigration and birth” (not exact quote). Or that Baghdad sheikh over a century ago who warned the West that one day they will have good cause to rue their haughty, oppressive and secular imperialistic policies in the so-called Middle East.  

Western Europe especially may be near that time with this impossible influx, though I still see little signs of Western regret, recognition, understanding or agreement.  As far as most Westerners are concerned, it’s still all those stupid Muslims who create all this chaos, while we have benignly sought to liberate them from their oppressive stupidities.  Can you imagine such blindness and, yes, stupidity?  It’s beyond my comprehension. I am dumbfounded and highly embarrassed!  May God forgive us and turn this all around.