Bartholomew's Notes

On several occasions, this blog has taken aim against Islamophobia – the absurd decision to ban Tariq Ramadan from the USA on the word of Daniel Pipes; the inflammatory and racist rhetoric to be found at Little Green Footballs and JihadWatch; the way newspapers ask nutty fringe Islamist groups for their opinions and then present these as “the Muslim view”.  I have also defended Palestinian rights and, while I was living in London, I was involved with anti-war activism.

But the heart sinks when I read this, on the website of the Muslim Association of Britain (emphasis added):

In one of the most repulsive and disgusting attacks on Islam and Muslims, Charles Moore wrote in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph in defence of those who wish to suggest that the Prophet Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, was a paedophile.

…Anas Altikriti, speaking on behalf of MAB, commented early this morning: “…Almost 15 years on from the infamous Salman Rushdie affair, one would have thought that the likes of the Daily Telegraph and its editors would have known better than to allow such filth and drivel to adorn their pages. Unfortunately not. “More than a billion people around the world will be shocked and horrified by this attack, and every single Muslim in Britain and beyond will feel deeply offended by the remarks made by Moore”.

There are two issues here. Firstly, Moore’s article is seriously misrepresented in the MAB piece. Moore is discussing the proposed law against incitement to religious hatred in the UK, and uses the example of Muhammad’s marriage to the nine-year-old Aisha:

To me, it seems anachronistic to describe Mohammed as a child-molester. The marriage rules of his age and society were much more tribal and dynastic than our own, and women were treated more as property and less as autonomous beings. Aisha was the daughter of Mohammed’s right-hand man, and eventual successor (caliph), Abu Bakr. No doubt he and his family were very proud of the match. I raise the question, though, because it seems to me that people are perfectly entitled – rude and mistaken though they may be – to say that Mohammed was a paedophile, but if David Blunkett [the British Home Secretary] gets his way, they may not be able to…Incitement to violence, after all, is already an offence, and so it should be.

Moore follows this up with a survey of the treatment of non-Muslims in various Muslim countries, which, although polemical, is not inaccurate.

But more alarming is the reference to Salman Rushdie. Altikriti appears to be saying that because Rushdie was forced into hiding for daring to criticise Islam and offending so many people, the Telegraph should have known better than to risk the same fate. This is shocking not just because it is totalitarian, but because Altikriti is a fairly well-known Muslim spokesperson in the UK. He is a former chair of MAB, and he has written articles for the Guardian. He has also stood as a European Parliamentary candidate for Respect, a recently-formed anti-war political party that is supposed to be broadly socialist (George Galloway is perhaps its most famous representative). Respect sees the MAB as efficient at mobilising British Muslims, and has been allied with them for some time. There have been complaints in the past that this has meant overlooking unpalatable aspects of MAB, such as homophobia, but the general view seems to have been that of you are going to have an anti-war coalition involving immigrants, you have to deal with religious people who have a few unfortunate views from a progressive perspective. OK – but just how much of a platform can you give to a demagogue and bully-boy before he undermines everything you stand for?

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Once again, Doug Giles asserts his manliness and heterosexuality with a call for men to accept independence and responsibility: a point Giles demonstrates by, er…whining about men who are different from him (or, at least, different from his self-image). Doug is fascinating for three reasons. Firstly, in his weekly column he consistently reveals his insecurities with a complete lack of self-awareness (last week it was a complaint about the “culture of castration”). Secondly, there is the massive disjunction between the man and the message: while obsessive-compulsively asserting rowdy masculinity week after week, in his photo he appears preened and coiffured, while his church meets in a plush hotel in a rich part of Miami.

But thirdly (and this is why I keep coming back to him), Giles likes to appear as a regular guy putting commonsense ideas before the conservative public, when in fact his role to promote specific ideological trends within Christian fundamentalism. Giles himself is a hack with little of his own to say – all of his ideas are derived from others.

As noted previously, Giles’s views on masculinity derive from both the Charismatic and Reformed traditions. His brother-in-law, Mell Winger, is a Charismatic, and is the author of Fight on Your Knees: Calling Men to Action Through Transforming Prayer, which appears to bring together ideas of Christian masculinity with “spiritual warfare” ideology. Giles has also studied at James Kennedy’s Calvinist Knox Theological Seminary.

Today, Giles presents us with a reading list which takes us further into the world of the Christian masculinists:

It is up to us middle-aged old boys to preserve and perpetuate the grand testosterone fog God created us to live in for the next generation of young warriors.

One great way to do this is by buying these killer books:

Future Men by Douglas Wilson
The Church Impotent by Leon Podle
Raising Modern Day Knights by Robert Lewis
The Code of Man by Waller Newell

Well, I won’t go that far, but I will check them out.

First, Leon Podle. In fact, it’s “Leon Podles”, not “Podle”. The full title of his book is The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, in which he argues that changes in Roman Catholicism in the Twelfth Century have made Christianity more attractive to women (and, his articles suggest, homosexuals) than to most men. A review in John Neuhaus’s conservative Christian First Things journal (not my usual reading) had this to say:

Masculinity is not a mere function of biological maleness, Podles tells us…Boys become masculine only if they break this oedipal attachment, thus opening a “psychic wound” that is the basis of their inchoate masculinity. If a boy fails to “dis–identify” with his mother and identifies instead with his father, he fails to achieve masculinity, and is likely to become homosexual, masochistic, misogynistic, or pedophilic…Podles takes these scientific conclusions and misapplies them, essentially arguing the following: Psychoerotic separation is characteristic of the masculine; a psychoerotic separation is a separation; therefore, separation itself is characteristic of the masculine. He implausibly generalizes that any separation of any sort indicates masculinity—and he perpetuates this logical error throughout the book, reducing his argument to a kind of caricature: Because He transcends creation, “God is, therefore, utterly separate from creation…A transcendent God is a masculine God.” Podles claims that God’s separating the light from the dark proves his masculinity. The Israelite patriarchs sinned whenever fleshly “communion with the wife” led one of them to “feminization, to the loss of separation that makes him a man,” as with Adam, David, and Solomon. Abraham “fell prey to uxoriousness” and had to recover his separation by sacrificing Isaac. In Exodus, God makes a distinction between the Israelites and Egyptians, continuing “to act in a masculine way.”

One might think that the unprecedented “communion” of the persons of the Trinity might indicate that the New Testament offers a less separate, more “feminine” version of God. Not so, says Podles. The New Testament tells us explicitly that God is Father and Son, and that we are all called to “initiation” (i.e., baptism) and martyrdom. Jesus introduces “a new principle of separation: no longer observance of the Law, but faith in him,” and takes the cross like a man. (“Masculinity entails initiation; initiation involves pain—the greater the pain, the more profound the initiation.”) In the Apocalypse, we discover that Christ’s enemy is Satan, and the true Christian life is shown to be spiritual warfare (a masculine image).

This is pretty silly stuff. Podles has other historical missteps as well, too numerous to mention here.

Here is Podles’ bio:

Leon Podles is president of the Crossland Foundation and a contributing editor of Touchstone magazine. Among the numerous journals for which he has written are America, The American Spectator, Crisis, and American Enterprise…He earned his doctorate at the University of Virginia and his bachelor’s at Providence College. He has also studied Old Icelandic at the University of Iceland.

Other bios add that he used to be a federal investigator. Touchstone can be seen here. The Crossland Foundation appears to be some sort of regular charity.

Second, Robert Lewis. Lewis’s book is published by Focus on the Family. He runs the Men’s Fraternity, which sells “Proven Manhood Resources” with titles like The Quest for Authentic Manhood and The New Eve. To make sure only real men come to his weekly meetings, he holds them at 6:00am.

Third, Waller Newell. Newell is a sort of Canadian Mike Adams, based at Carleton University. His website has a blurb for the book Giles recommends:

The Code of Man examines and answers a little understood yet pivotal conundrum facing Americans today: why, after winning the Cold War and defeating the evil empire, American men began to wage a war on themselves. Newell uses scores of fascinating sources to explore the variations of how the manly heart has been understood throughout recorded history. He discovers a fundamental consistency to how, until quite recently, our ancestors understood manly honor and pride.

Newell has been interviewed by the Dallas Morning News, and the interview has been archived on Free Republic. His thesis seems to be usual one that everything was great until the 1960s. However, many of the Freeper commentators were offended by his positive words about John McCain and Nelson Mandela.

Finally, Douglas Wilson. As it happens, Wilson is currently echoing around the blogosphere, following an article in the North Carolinian News Observer (link snagged from Steve Gilliard’s News Blog and Jesus’ General):

Students at one of the area’s largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived “a life of plenty, of simple pleasures.”…One of the authors, Douglas Wilson, a pastor in Moscow, Idaho, wrote a book on classical education upon which the school bases its philosophy. Wilson’s Association of Classical and Christian Schools accredited Cary Christian, and he is scheduled to speak at the school’s graduation in May…

“Doug Wilson and Steve Wilkins have essentially constructed the ruling theology of the neo-Confederate movement,” said Mark Potok, editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report.

Wilson runs Credenda Agenda, and seems to be a kind of Christian Reconstructionist (although he dislikes Gary North). According to the publisher’s blurb for Future Men:

Future Men is a Christian guide to raising strong, virtuous sons, contrary to the effeminacy and sentimentalism of contemporary culture.

As we look to Scripture for patterns of masculinity for our sons, we find them manifested perfectly in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who set the ultimate pattern for friendship, for courage, for faithfulness, and integrity.

A philosophy professor who has had dealings with Wilson gives his account here. Wilson is a contributor to the work of Coral Ridge ministries (e.g. here, and here), which is run by James Kennedy, the man who awarded Giles his MA at Knox.

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From the AFP, at bit of irony from Bauchi State in Nigeria:

An Islamic Sharia court in northern Nigeria has overturned a death sentence imposed on a 29-year-old woman, who gave birth after a divorce and was convicted of adultery.

Daso Adamu was acquitted by the upper Sharia court after the judge, Yusuf Suleiman, ruled that her being pregnant was not enough evidence to warrant a sentence that she be stoned to death.

…Under the interpretation of Sharia, which is in force in much of northern Nigeria, it is regarded as possible that a “dormant pregnancy” might last up to five years from the end of a marriage.

Perhaps the next venture for the Sharia courts will be stickers on biology textbooks, warning that the dogma of nine-month human pregnancies is a theory, not a fact, and should be critically considered. But what about the man Adamu was accused of committing “adultery” with? Reuters quotes from an earlier hearing:

“There is no evidence to link him with the allegation and consequently the court acquitted him for lack of evidence.”

Sharia has been enforced in Bauchi since the end of March 2001, after governor Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu (or Ahmadu Adamu Muazu) signed the Sharia Bill. The Guardian suggested last month that:

Appeal judges and state governors have proved reluctant to sanction stonings, floggings and amputations in the face of outcries from the federal government and foreigners, and also because the political value of such sentences has dwindled. Analysts attributed the rise of sharia partly to northern politicians seeking to tap Muslim discontent with Christian elites and a slow, corrupt judicial system. As those politicians became less popular, so did the sharia they championed.

However, This Day Online (also writing last month) has a different perspective:

Bauchi State Governor Alhaji Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu has restated his administration’s commitment to strengthening the Sharia legal system in the State, maintaining that the Islamic legal code has come to stay.

The Governor said that contrary to the erroneous impression in some quarters that Sharia had been scrapped its implementation would continue to receive full backing of the present administration.

…He added that his administration would render financial support to clerics to correct the moral decadence in the society, noting that its level among the youths was a reminder that all hands must be on deck to correct the ills through the Islamic legal system.

The Christian Post also reported in September that:

The Bauchi District Church Council of Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) has called on the Nigeria state government to withdraw the bill it sponsored to the state House of Assembly on the compulsory teaching of Arabic language and the establishment of Arabic/Islamic Board in the state.

In a letter to the state governor and signed by the chairman and secretary, ECWA Bauchi district, Rev. Dauda Gambo and Dauda S. Galadima, the council said the move was meant to consolidate Sharia in the state.

Well, given that ignorance of basic biology appears to be saving people’s lives just now, perhaps emphasising Arabic language teaching instead would not necessarily be a bad thing…

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The Revealer, drawing on Sojourners and Chuck Currie, brings to my attention this opportunity at FedBizOpps (Federal Business Opportunities). Alas, we’ve missed the deadline:

This is a notice of intent to issue a sole-source purchase order to International Bible Society, 1820 Jetstream Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80921 for custom-printed Bibles. The Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under authority of FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii). Responses to this notice will be used to determine whether bona fide competition exists. Responses must be in writing, including technical and pricing information. The items being purchased are 10,000 New International Version (NIV) Bibles with a custom-designed cover. The Bibles include Army-designed color photographs and text inserts. The Bibles are being purchased as a follow on for compatibility with previously-purchased Bibles. All responses must be received by 4:00 pm EST on 30 November 2004.

Competitors, though, are likely to have had an uphill job: according to the Christian Post, writing last year, the IBS has supplied the US army since the War of 1812. Camouflage covers came in during the 1980s, although there is no information about any text inserts. The IBS also has a military representative, Rev Chuck Adams. However, the IBS is a venerable and respected institution, so I would agree with the Sojourners commentator that:

It’s hopefully safe to assume that though the Bibles are new, they will not be “improved.”

(Pic via a commentator on Free Republic)

UPDATE (22 March 2005): The Greater Birmingham Progressive Media Center reports that the army has now cancelled the order rather than answer a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

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Jizo shrine, with Koala:

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Commentator “ulyankee” brings to my attention (cheers!) a column by Tim Chavez in The Tennessean. Chavez is discussing evangelicals, and he exhorts us: “Don’t Buy Stereotypes”:

After President Bush’s re-election, lots of pundits and self-acclaimed experts have been talking about evangelical Christians — who went to the polls in record numbers — like a blended species of The Beverly Hillbillies and Jim Jones of Guyana cultist infamy.

Chavez, like David Brooks in several much-discussed columns for the New York Times, wants us to understand that evangelicalism is more complex (and less weird and scary) than that. However, while David Brooks recently introduced non-evangelical Americans to the British evangelical intellectual John Stott, Chavez presents us with Rice Broocks, who in fact is a neo-Pentecostal revivalist. Of course, here Chavez is just following recent popular usage of the term “evangelical”: although I would say that the evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic traditions should be distinguished (Stott eventually rejected the Charismatic movement at his church, All Souls), there is clearly a significant (and increasing) overlap. And using “evangelical” to cover conservative Protestants as a whole is at least an improvement on “fundamentalist” or “religious right” (which I would only use for specific individuals or groups).

Pentecostalism, like evangelicalism, can boast some intelligent and moderate leading figures. Even the Charismatic-run news service ASSIST, which is terminally credulous when it comes to miracle healings and such, manages a generally spontaneous and thoughtful approach to its reporting of world news. But why has Chavez chosen Rice Broocks as his exhibit A, a man linked with the controversial Maranatha Campus Ministries?

Describing a dinner hosted by Broocks, Chavez is impressed by the diversity he finds there:

the evangelical Christians on hand last Saturday night were of practically every race and ethnicity. One minister and his wife were originally from Singapore…Yet here it was in one home. And in these evangelical ranks were lawyers, ministers, a Texas Supreme Court justice, a former NFL player, authors, lobbyists, real estate executives, three Tennessee elected officials, local judges and so many others more educated than me — a puny pundit.

But what really surprises him is this:

Then, among attendees and guests of honor, were people of the Jewish faith, who felt free in remarks to several hundred Tennesseans on hand to talk of the connection between faith and politics…This budding relationship between Jews and evangelical Christians is more natural than we’ve been led to believe.

What a discovery, and only a mere 26 years after Yona Malachy published American Fundamentalism and Israel and 18 years after Grace Halsell’s Prophecy and Politics: The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the U.S. Christian Right (to give just two examples, and leaving aside the many best-selling books published by Christian Zionists themselves over the last thirty years, as well as several decades of more thoughtful Jewish-Christian dialogue based on other foundations). Apparently the fact that his “evangelicals” were hosting some Jews and saying nice things about Israel proves the moderation of conservative Christianity.

But what Chavez completely misses is the “why”. The “people of the Jewish faith” dining with Broocks and Chavez actually represent the Israeli far right: MK Yuri Shtern is a former settler leader, and his National Union party advocates “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians from their homes in the name of “greater Israel” (1). Chavez says to us “Don’t Buy Stereotypes”, while the only reason Shtern met with Broocks’s Christian guests is because he wants to encourage stereotyping: the stereotype of the Jew as basically being God’s puppet, and the stereotype of the Arab as Muslim fanatic, the “wild man” descended from Ishmael (plus, in Chavez’s report, the stereotype of the godless European Arab-lover). These stereotypes are central to Christian Zionism, a movement that now appears to be gaining appeal beyond its premillennialist roots.

Broocks has been considered on this blog before. He is the President and co-founder of Morning Star International, a neo-Pentecostal denomination. Morning Star in turn oversees His People Ministries, a South African grouping that has churches in several other countries, including some that bear other names. Doug Giles’s Clash Church used to be called His People Miami, and it is not clear what links he maintains with this group or with Morning Star. Giles’s Clash Church site (under “pastor”) is cagey, saying only that he is overseen by unnamed “local, national and international leaders within the greater body of Christ”; he also still “speaks regularly” in South Africa, according to his Clash Radio site.

Recently, I came across a titbit about His People and Kenneth Meshoe’s African Christian Democratic Party (which has seven South African MPs and seventy councillors, and is also robustly Christian Zionist):

The ACDP is funded mainly by the Louis Group of Companies, who also publishes the ‘charismatic Christian’ magazine Today. To further complicate the picture, the Cape Town headquarters of the ‘His People’ movement, consisting of ‘charismatic’ extremists, is based in the buildings of the Louis Group in Century City. It can thus be presented as an interlocking organisation, with the ACDP as the political front, Today magazine as the propaganda mouthpiece, ‘His People’ as the religious front, and the Louis Group always in the background as financiers.

The site where this came from is run by South African Randian-libertarians, who are not my cup of tea, and no footnotes are included, so I decided to check this out for myself. Sure enough, the Louis Group describes itself as a Christian company, and lists under its “Social Responsibilities”:

NGO affiliations: The Ark, ACDP, Jabez Community Project, Transformation Africa ; His People Christian Church

Further, in an undated profile, CEO Dr Alan Louis identified his minister as Paul Daniel, who used to endorse Giles’s products until Daniel resigned from His People leadership after admitting adultery. How far these connections support the contention that the Louis Group “mainly finances” His People and the ACDP, or that the two must therefore be “interlocking” is impossible to judge, but these links are worth keeping an eye on.

*************

(1) According to IsraelVotes, the National Union does say that “Arabs choosing to remain in [the West Bank and Gaza] would become full citizens of Israel”, but comments by former party leader Rehavam Zeevi (who was murdered in 2001) suggest that the “voluntary” nature of the transfer should not be taken too literally. At any rate, any Palestinians remaining would become “full citizens” of a Jewish state, not a bi-national one.

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Free Republic (hold your nose) links to a number of obits for Reed Irvine, co-founder of Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. According to Wilson “Nukem” Lucom in Newsmax:

Over 30 years ago, Reed and I were two letter writers to the New York Times and other major newspapers. Each week Reed and I, along with several sincere Washington conservatives, would meet for lunch. We would discuss the issues of the day and how biased the media were.

Remember, this was during the height of the Cold War. War was still raging in Vietnam, and our brave soldiers were dying in the rice paddies as the New York Times helped the communists…One day I suggested to Reed we start a non-profit organization that criticized the major media when it made mistakes…I told Reed that if he would devote the time to make it work, I would donate the seed money.

Thus was born AIM, which, according to the NY Times:

paved the way for the tide of conservative talk shows, Web sites and news programming that would follow decades later.

The Times adds:

And while AIM occasionally lived up to its name, it also spent much of its time pursuing conspiracy theories.

In recent years, for example, Mr. Irvine turned his attention to such speculative topics as whether the death in 1993 of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel in the Clinton administration, was really a suicide. He also challenged the government’s explanation of the crash in 1996 of T.W.A. Flight 800, alleging that it had been caused by a rocket.

The Times also says that

In 1985, Mr. Irvine started Accuracy in Academia, which was presented as an effort to challenge the teachings of college and university professors in the same way as AIM had done with the media. In this case, an indignant response was widespread, with a number of prominent conservatives joining liberals in the defense of academic freedom. A.I.A., as it was called, was never able to achieve the sort of influence that AIM had demonstrated.

AIA produces a newsletter, Campus Report, which for some years was edited by Lucom. More recently, AIA was headed by Dan Flynn, an anti-war conservative and friend of Mike Adams, and the current AIA website includes a prominent endorsement from anti-Kinsey crank Judith Reisman.

Irvine’s financier (also known as Chuck Lucom) has been an occasional subject for Pete M at The Dark Window. Lucom is a great humbug: while anyone who has any misgivings about US policy in the Middle East must be a terrorist sympathiser, Lucom himself is a cheerleader for General Pinochet, whose regime was responsible for a car bomb in Washington DC in 1976 that killed two. There is also a weird discrepancy on his Newsmax bio. On his bio page we read:

For over 25 years he was Chairman of Concerned Voters, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative organization. During the same period he also served as President of the United States Anti-Communist Congress in Washington, D.C.

But at the foot of most of his articles it says:

Wilson C. Lucom is a former president of the World Anti-Communist League

WACL is, of course, better-known and, like Lucom, has serious links with South American dictators, but despite numerous studies of WACL online there is little mention of Lucom. It seems likely, therefore, that the latter profile is an error. Also, files at the Library of Congress link the rather more obscure United States Anti-Communist Congress with Herbert A Philbrick (covert anti-communist member of the CPUSA), and Philbrick with Lucom.

One aspect of AIM that the reviewers all miss is a rather dodgy connection brought to my attention by blogs Ethically (Abhorrent) and Take Back Our Campus. Using Wayback to look at the AIM website for the end of 2001 we find:

AIM Events
..In Defense of Western Man
American Renaissance Conference
February 22 – 24, 2002, Herndon, Virginia
Speakers include Jared Taylor, Sam Francis, Glenn Spencer, Dr. Phillipe Ruston of the U. of Western Ontario, Prof. Michael Levin of CUNY, Nick Griffin of the British National Party, and many others.  Click here for more info…

American Renaissance is a racialist organisation, and clicking on the link takes us to an archived American Renaissance site which reveals the following, among much else:

In all parts of the world, whites are afraid to speak out in their own interests. The costs of “diversity,” racial differences in IQ, the threat of non-white immigration—politicians and the media are afraid to discuss what these things mean for whites and their civilization.

We are different…Speakers will include:

 J. Philippe Rushton — “In Search of the African IQ.” Prof. Rushton is the world’s leading theorist on the nature and significance of racial differences

…Nick Griffin — “Racial Friction in Britain and Europe.” Mr. Griffin is chairman of the British National Party. He is a graduate of Cambridge, and has been editor of several British nationalist magazines, including The Rune and Spearhead.

The profile for Griffin is too modest by half. A friend of David Duke, Griffin has the political savvy to appear anti-immigration rather than racist when appearing on the BBC, but he has a long history of anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial (he has attacked David Irving for not going far enough) and authorship of a booklet Who are the Mindbenders? on supposed Jewish control of the media. The BNP leadership is full of other charming characters, many of who have been convicted for violent racially-related crimes. StoptheBNP has many more details. AIM appears to have dropped its endorsement for this event by Jan 2002 (the next archived page), although there is no explanation as to why.

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The Jerusalem Post reports on some non-US Christian Zionists at the Jerusalem Summit:

Israel is not getting out its political message to millions of Christian supporters around the world who have a skewed view of the conflict with the Palestinians, Christian leaders who are attending the Jerusalem Summit said Tuesday in a meeting with the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus.

Dr. Miles [sic – should be “Myles”] Munroe, the head of the Bahamas-based International Third World Leaders’ Association, said Israeli spokesmen should be better at exploiting Christian broadcasting stations to get their message to the hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide who are pro-Israel. He said Israel should also be sending emissaries to Christian conventions such as those his group holds. “Christians are not getting a correct perspective on Israel,” he said, explaining that they have to rely on “biased Western media.”

Does the “biased Western media” include Israeli human rights groups like B’TSelem and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions?  Munroe does not say, but his concerns were echoed by Kenneth Meshoe, president of South Africa’s African Christian Democratic Party, and Rijk van Dam, director of the EU lobby group the European Coalition for Israel.

As it happens, I saw Munroe in London a couple of years ago, but managed to escape the prosperity preacher with my wallet intact. Meshoe is a former associate of Reinhard Bonnke, the German faith healer who holds regular revivals across Africa, (Meshoe’s ACDP also appears to have some links with Doug Giles’s old “His People” denomination). Vam Dam is a former Dutch MEP with the ChristenUnie Party (click on the British flag for English) and his website links him with various Christian Zionist organisations such as the International Christian Embassy (which calls the EU “a colossal amoral and anti-Semitic stronghold”).

The Knesset Christian Allies Caucus is a cross-party attempt by Israeli politicians to liase more closely with Christian Zionists. According to ASSIST:

The Knesset Christian Allies’ Caucus is the outgrowth of an idea that had been brewing over recent years among Israeli lawmakers, particularly after broad segments of Christianity aligned to stop the construction of a provocative mosque next to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. But through MK Shtern’s efforts, the caucus was rushed into being in recent weeks after a number of Christian expatriates residing in Israel ran into difficulties renewing visas in the second half of 2003.

In return for helping the Christians, the MKs want the Christian Zionists to spread the pro-Israeli perspective among the churches, and to hand over some cash:

In one instance the co-chair of the newly formed caucus, MK Yair Peretz of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, who represents a segment of society that maintains little contact with Christians, made a sincere appeal for Christian assistance to help Israel meet the needs of its poorest communities during these tough times. Peretz suggested that due to the nation’s budget constraints, Christians could perhaps distribute Passover baskets to needy secular families this spring and school bag kits to underprivileged children at the start of classes next fall.

Maintaining all those settlements in the West Bank is quite expensive, you know. But what is the “Jerusalem Summit”? According to its website introduction:

On the cross-roads of history Jerusalem has produced new ideas which changed the world and advanced it towards the great ideals of Truth and Peace.

Now is the time of a world-wide crisis when the new ideas are especially needed for developing an alternative to the twin dangers of modernity: religious totalitarianism of the East, as represented by radical Islam, and moral relativism of the West, as represented by atheistic globalization.

New ideas, even the most efficient and needed, are accepted with great difficulties.

Jerusalem Summit strives to gather in the capital of Israel the best minds and souls from around the world to present the most innovative socio-political ideas, so that the combined wisdom of participants will propel the best of these ideas to the global status.

And who are these “best minds and souls”? Erm, a bunch of neo-cons and Christian fundamentalists (as if you were surprised). Reporting on its first session last year:

Among featured participants were many of today’s most gifted policymakers – Richard Perle, Senator Sam Brownback, Congressman Eliot Engel, Prof. Daniel Pipes, Amb. Alan Keyes, Cal Thomas, Benjamin Netanyahu and Uzi Landau.

Meanwhile, the banner across the top of the site gives prominence to Mike Evans, the absurd racist who believes (among much else) a) that God did want Arabs to exist in the first place – they were only created because Abraham disobeyed God’s will and b) that God killed Franklin Roosevelt because Roosevelt made some friendly overtures to the Saudis after World War Two.

This year’s conference, which finished just two days ago, was on the subject of a “humanitarian approach” to the “Palestinian Problem” (their choice of wording): “humanitarian” being a euphemism for racist, extreme-right, self-righteous, pro-Likud, and historically dishonest:

Palestinian conduct over the last six decades proves they neither genuinely desire nor genuinely deserve statehood.

…the entire Palestinian narrative must be discredited and de-legitimized as a historical hoax, totally at odds with historical facts.

How that discrediting is to be achieved, since the narrative has been confirmed even by a number of Israeli scholars such as Ilan Pappé and Benny Morris (the latter of whom asserts that even so, Israel should have expelled all the Palestinians in 1948), is not described, but one suspects shouts of “anti-Semitism” will do the trick, especially with Pipes running his politically-powerful “Campus Watch”.

So should Palestinians be given equal citizenship with Israelis instead then? No, of course not: the “humanitarians” prefer an offer that can’t be refused:

Generous financial compensation to Palestinians who relocate and resettle elsewhere in the Arab or Muslim world.

For the individual Palestinian, the alternative to rejecting the offer of the generous relocation and the chance of a better life for him and his family would be either life under continued Israeli control or life under a Palestinian regime which has proven even more onerous and oppressive.

Since the Palestinian regime option would be unacceptable to the “humanitarians”, what Pipes, Netanyahu and the rest are really offering is ethnic cleansing or continued political disenfranchisement under Israeli military control.

However, another part of the site looks particularly odd from a conservative Christian viewpoint:

The Jerusalem Summit to be held on November 28, 2004, will launch the development of the Council of Civilizations, which is intended to evolve into a new model for unifying the international community and providing it with an ethical compass.

Admission to the Council of Civilizations is subject to recognizing the following realities:

1. The spiritual laws that serve as common basis to all religions must also serve as basis for taking decisions in all the human activities. Most important of these laws are:

Consciousness defines Being

Human life is sacred

People have equal rights and freedoms

Religions are diverse and all equally lead to God

Jerusalem has always served as a source for the universal concern for all the nations on earth. The Bible indictates that in addition to Israel, there are seventy ancient nations which are the roots of the diverse national groups and cultures which exist today and which are based on the number of descendants of Noah which are listed in the Book of Genesis, after the story of the great flood. Seventy names are recorded, and at the end of the section it states, “These are the families of Noah’s descendants, and from these nations were separated on on the earth after the flood” (Genesis 10:2). The Bible commands the people of Israel to bring seventy offerings on behalf of the seventy nations to the Temple on the Festival of Tabernacles to pray to the Almighty for continued life, sustenance and blessings for the seventy nations. Representatives of the seventy nations were present in Jerusalem at the time at the presentation of these offerings. The seventy nations are the main players in the modern world. Today they are categorized as the major superpowers that represent separate civilizations. Other individual civilizations are represented by the clusters of countries, or regional groups. The major threat to the world peace comes from the clashes of these civilizations.

Of course, the purpose of this statement is merely to cloak the Summit’s extremism with a bit of moderate language. But surely, the claim that “Religions are diverse and all equally lead to God” should have every conservative Christian hopping: and for those who subscribe to the Tim LaHaye fantasy of the anti-Christ setting up shop in Jerusalem and announcing world peace I would have thought the whole agenda would be setting off alarm bells. But perhaps, as I suggested before, with Christian fundamentalists finally tasting real power, the last thing they want is to be raptured. And what’s one sentence about religious universalism when stacked against the chance to share in the space-cadet glow of Israeli militant expansionism?

UPDATE: WorldNetDaily has an unsurprisingly gushing report on the summit from David Dolan.

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