Bartholomew's Notes

The British Daily Telegraph adds some more details about the “Satanism and Exorcism” course at the pontifical Regina Apostolorum (discussed here a couple of days ago) and Satanism in Italy:

A recent resurgence of interest in Satanism has been fuelled by films such as Exorcist: The Beginning (2004). A respected research institute, Eurispes, has catalogued 650 satanic organisations in Italy, many around Milan and Rome.

Church officials estimate that half a million Italians have had contact with satanic sects.

Exorcist: The Beginning? Could that turkey – a religiously-illiterate mass of clichés that wasn’t even particularly scary – really be an inspiration for anything? And two other questions come to mind: a) how many members are in these “650 satanic organisations”? and b) what does “contact with satanic sects” mean? I’ve flicked through a copy of LaVey’s Satanic Bible – is that “contact”?

I’ve also been unable to track down this “catalogue” that Eurispes is supposed to have compiled. In fact, the only information on the subject from Eurispes that I could find is from a report that came out in November: Infanzia e Adolescenza: Rapporto EURISPES – Telefono Azzurro 2004. The report contains the following:

Satanismo e sette sataniche. Il satanismo «(…) è una religione basata (….) sull’adorazione di Satana che può essere inteso sia come divinità malefica a sé stante, che come avversario del dio cristiano».

Le sette sataniche, a differenza delle altre sette religiose di tipo ordinario, rivolgono la propria fedeltà, più che alla personalità carismatica, alla stessa dottrina satanica.

Nel documento del Ministero dell’Interno del febbraio 1998 vengono individuati nove gruppi “satanico-luciferini” per un totale di 200 adepti.

Il CESNUR (Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni), nel 2002, elenca le sette sataniche in Italia specificando il numero di adepti: Bambini di Satana (50 adepti); Chiesa di Satana – razionalista (20 adepti); Chiesa di Satana – occultista (20 adepti); Gruppi minori (20 adepti).

Sempre il Cesnur parla inoltre di 5.000 adepti nel mondo e stima che il maggior numero di aderenti si trovi negli Usa, seguiti da quelli di Spagna e Scandinavia. È invece impossibile un censimento sul Satanismo giovanile o “acido” per le proprietà di de-strutturazione gruppale che caratterizza il fenomeno.

Infine dai dati dell’indagine campionaria pubblicata nel 4° Rapporto Nazionale sulla Condizione dell’Infanzia e l’Adolescenza (Eurispes, Telefono Azzurro, 2003) emerge che sia i bambini sia gli adolescenti utilizzano Internet come mezzo per comunicare con gli altri.

Tali dati preoccupano soprattutto se si considera che tra i bambini che si collegano ad Internet (47,6%) il 9,4% lo fa per chattare e il 13,8% per usare la posta elettronica, mentre tra gli adolescenti (67,8% di essi si collega ad Internet) la percentuale di coloro che chattano sale al 26,4% e l’utilizzo della posta elettronica al 35%.

La Polizia Postale, attraverso il monitoraggio di siti satanici on line e basando la metodologia sul conteggio dei motori di ricerca, ha evidenziato un fortissimo aumento dei siti satanici tra il 1999 e il 2003.

• Club satanisti su Internet:
• Anno 1999: 114 siti satanici
• Anno 2000: 277 siti satanici
• Anno 2001: 322 siti satanici
• Anno 2002: 502 siti satanici
• Anno 2003: 1.010 siti satanici

Actually, I’ve never learnt Italian, but with a bit of common sense and help from Babelfish, it’s pretty obvious that this “650 satanic groups” does not appear. What’s more, the report cites studies by CESNUR and the Ministero dell’Interno for its information on Satanism, but makes no mention of any other report Eurispes itself (apart from on the topic of internet usage by teenagers), so one suspects that this is all there is. And what’s the conclusion?

Nel documento del Ministero dell’Interno del febbraio 1998 vengono individuati nove gruppi “satanico-luciferini” per un totale di 200 adepti…Sempre il Cesnur parla inoltre di 5.000 adepti nel mondo

In other words, according to the Ministero dell’Interno, there are 200 members in total in Italy, and according to CESNUR, 5,000 in the world. A 2003 report on CESNUR’s website gives a figure of 240 organised Satanists in Italy, but notes this figure does not include isolated Satanists or juvenile delinquents:

from the police data, which concern different Italian regions, we can presume that in Italy the phenomenon in question involves about a thousand people while a more restricted circle (2.000-3.000 people) adopts styles typical of the satanic subculture (clothes, symbols, gestures…) without yet taking parts in any real activities of the juvenile satanism groups.

These statistics are hardly surprising or shocking (and by the way: the fact that not one hack who has covered this story bothered to contact CESNUR is pretty shabby).

Bizarrely, the Telegraph then decides to balance its report, not with a comment from an Italian Satanist, but with the spokesperson of the British branch of the Church of Satan:

Gavin Baddeley, a leading member of the Church of Satan in Britain, which has 4,000 members, and a contributing editor to its official magazine, Satannia, said exorcisms by the Catholic Church sometimes caused serious injury.

More sources on statistics for the UK and the world (but not Italy) can found on Adherents.com (scroll down).

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The US State Department doesn’t hang around: a mere three months after the US Congress passed an Act directing the State Department to study anti-Semitism around the world, the first Report on Global Anti-Semitism is out (link snagged from The Revealer). The project is not without controversy: back in October the British Daily Telegraph reported that:

A three-page State Department memorandum, leaked to The Telegraph yesterday, complained that congressional plans would throw US human rights reporting “out of balance”, and “erode our credibility by being interpreted as favouritism in human rights reporting”.

However, Act sponsor Tom Lantos (Dem) responded that:

State Department talk of “favouritism” as an alarming nod to “the worst stereotypes of Jews perpetrated in anti-Semitic tracts throughout modern history”.

Mr Lantos said the objections from diplomats overlooked existing offices at the State Department dedicated to promoting religious freedom, women’s rights, and Tibetan rights.

So, according to Lantos the State Department is itself anti-Semitic, which puts the report in a peculiar position. It is also unfortunate that just as the USA was casting its disapproving eye over the anti-Semitism of other nations, Bill O’Reilly and William Donahue managed to demonstrate that it is also an all-American vice.

The State Department already produces a useful yearly report on religious freedom, and this new report is in much the same style: an introduction followed by a coolly-compiled qualitative log listing various incidents and trends as reported by various sources, and some notes on governmental attitudes. The methodology is rather ad-hoc, and there is no real overall conclusion. However, there is lots of interesting information: in my opinion, the material about Eastern Europe is especially significant, revealing a lot of worrying and under-reported incidents.

But the report is also problematic, due to a certain vagueness and some assumptions. In the introduction, we read that:

For the purposes of this report, anti-Semitism is considered to be hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity. An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue.

But the report never actually defines “legitimate criticism” of Israel, although the French politician Alain Menargues is singled out as an anti-Semite for having described Israel as “racist”. And besides the “Nazi” caricature, what exactly would consist of “vilification” of a war criminal like Ariel Sharon? We might also ask why “Nazi” caricatures necessarily “indicate an anti-Semitic bias”. Of course Israel shouldn’t be called “Nazi” – but it’s a debased and unimaginative insult that people of many political persuasions have been hurling at their enemies for decades. Are the Israeli Settlers in Gaza protesting in their orange Stars of David anti-Semites? Or the distributors of the thousands of posters of Yitzhak Rabin’s head superimposed on an SS uniform that I saw in Jerusalem in 1993?

This vagueness is also rather alarmist. For example, in relation to Europe we read that:

Also troubling is a bias that spills over into anti-Semitism in some of the left-of-center press and among some intellectuals.

I’m sure that’s true. But how is that statement meaningful without telling us who, what, where and how much? The survey in the latter part of the report does not clarify, and one gets the sense that we should just be generally suspicious. The same can be said about this statement, which apparently refers to the whole world:

Critics of Israel frequently use anti-Semitic cartoons depicting anti-Jewish images and caricatures to attack the State of Israel and its policies, as well as Jewish communities and others who support Israel. These media attacks can lack any pretext of balance or even factual basis and focus on the demonization of Israel.

Yes, especially in the Middle East, but what about the many critics of Israel who are very careful to oppose anti-Semitism? We read nothing about them in this call for “balance”. And surely “anti-Jewish images” and “lack of balance” are two different issues? While we should expect a cartoon not be anti-Semitic, the idea that a piece of satire should be “balanced” misses the mark. We also find the following:

During the 2004 United States presidential campaign, the Arab press ran numerous cartoons closely identifying both of the major American political parties with Israel and with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon.

Bush and Kerry pro-Israel? Surely not!

But, on the other hand, the report does discuss the real problem of anti-Semitism in the Middle East without resorting to the kind of unbalanced finger-pointing one finds at MEMRI. In relation to the Palestinian Authority, anti-Semitic sermons are noted, but the report also tells us that:

In a sign of positive change, the Friday sermon of December 3, broadcast on Palestinian Authority Television, preacher Muhammad Jammal Abu Hunud called for the development of a modern Islamic discourse, to recognize the “other,” to treat him with tolerance, and to avoid extremism and violence.

Syria comes under deserved criticism, although the report manages a factual contradiction and appears to be soft-pedalling on Egypt:

In November 2003, Hizballah’s Al-Manar satellite television channel broadcast an anti-Semitic, Egyptian pseudo-documentary called “Ash Shatat” (The Diaspora) [in France].

But later:

A Syrian production company created a TV series, Ash-Shatat (“The Diaspora”), an anti-Semitic program, and filmed it inside the country. The theme of this program centered on the alleged conspiracy of the “Elders of Zion” to orchestrate both world wars and manipulate world markets to create Israel. The show was not aired in the country, but it was shown elsewhere. The closing credits of the programs give “special thanks” to various government ministries, including the security ministry, the culture ministry, the Damascus Police Command, and the Department of Antiquities and Museums.

So, Syrian or Egyptian? In fact, Egypt was responsible for a different anti-Semitic serial, Rider without a Horse. Although this programme is also mentioned in the report, its Egyptian origins are passed over, and the confusion suggests a hurried redrafting in favour of Egypt. Also, while Syria’s anti-Semitism is included prominently in the report’s introduction, problems in Egypt are only touched on far later (the material on Egypt has also been criticised by the ADL and Robert Wistrich).

The section on Israel also ignores the phenomenon of anti-Semitism among Russian Israelis. The concept may sound bizarre, but it has been reported on in Haaretz (via The Pagan Prattle).

So, overall I would give this report a “B-” or “C+” – but I would still recommend it as required reading.

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The Australian Age has further details on Professor Carlo Climati and the new course on Satanism at the Regina Apostolorum University in Rome. According to Climati:

“The idea is to help priests deal with those youths who are attracted by satanistic cults, or parents who are concerned that their children might have joined some kind of sect…Once, teenagers’ exposure to satanism was limited to the record sleeve or lyrics of a few rock bands. These days, there are thousands of websites dedicated to Satan,”

The media took an interest when the course was first announced a few weeks ago, but the Age has some extra details about Climati’s thinking:

While a simple dictionary definition describes it as “the worship of Satan – the chief spirit of evil and adversary of God”, Professor Climati argues that satanism is in fact an extreme “form of pessimism”.

…Though the concept of Satan is probably as old as humanity itself, Professor Climati says the spread of its popularity in the modern world has been in part aided by the emergence of New Age – which a recent Vatican pamphlet describes as “an individualistic, egoistic and ultimately anti-Christian culture”.

Moreover, satanism cannot merely be confined to the Christian world.“It is a global phenomenon, a human problem that transcends all barriers and which can affect anyone, particularly those with a highly sensitive soul who see their strong ideals betrayed in some way or other,” Climati says.

Climati has a website, which is mostly in Italian, but a 2001 profile by Veritas provides a good introduction:

“Youth and Esotericism,” a best-selling work about Satanism and its impact on young people, is one journalist’s attempt to tear down walls of misunderstanding…This week it was published in Portuguese. It will soon appear in Spanish, published in Mexico by Alba and, in a few months time, will be available in Polish.

Climati’s list of possible Satanic influences will be familiar to anyone who recalls the US/UK “Satanic Panics” of the 1980s:

Satanic rock, discotheques, esoteric secrets of tattoos and piercing, New Age, the Internet world, comics, the film “The Blair Witch Project,” the problem of television magicians, telefilms of esoteric content, games, Japanese cartoons, video games, role-playing.

He does, however, know the difference between Satanism and Wicca, and although he unsurprisingly disapproves of the latter as well, his argument is primarily a rationalistic one (Wicca is “superstitious”).

Climati’s current prominence has come in the wake of three “Satanic” murders by delinquent teenagers in Milan and Chiavenna (the Center for Studies of New Religions (CESNUR) has details about the latter case). According to his website biography, he has written several other books and he works with GRIS, the Bologna-based Gruppo di Ricerca ed Informazione Socio-Religiosa (“Group of Research and Information on the Sects”, according to their own translation). GRIS is a Catholic organisation, and is also involved with the Regina Apostolorum Satanism course. The GRIS website used to have a small English-language section, now only available to view in the Wayback archive. An English summary of the group’s publications on Satanism in their journal Religioni e Sette nel mondo (as of 1996), including an essay by Climati, can be seen here.

However, not everyone is impressed with the efforts of Climati or of GRIS. The Bologna-based leftist writing collective formerly known as “Luther Blissett” (authors of the novel Q, and now known as “Wu Ming“) describes Climati as “del super-bigotto”, and clashed with GRIS quite dramatically in 1997 over the arrest of three self-styled Satanists in Bologna on charges relating to rape and pedophilia. “Luther Blissett” produced a pamphlet, lasciate che i bimbi (an English translation can be seen here), that included scathing comments about GRIS and the Bologna public prosecutor, a conservative Catholic called Lucia Musti. A successful libel action from Musti followed, but the Satanist group, known as the Children of Satan, was acquitted. According to “Luther Blissett’s” analysis (which requires wading through some anti-Catholic rhetoric):

Since the Seventies, in the Italian political discourse “emergenza” means a re-definition and re-description of the “public enemy”, by which the suspension of rights formally warranted by the 1948 Constitution is made not only acceptable to the “public opinion”, but even necessary and desirable in order to ‘defend democracy’…[Bologna] can’t help having the most reactionary Curia, the new Inquisition represented by the GRIS…and the religious intolerance that provoked the arrest and detention of the Children of Satan.

…on January 1997, a few weeks before the beginning of the trial, L’Osservatore Romano (the official Vatican daily paper) started to publish a series of articles about the dangers of Satanism. This series was edited by Giuseppe Ferrari, the president of the GRIS. Ferrari himself wrote the first piece, titled ‘The Phenomenon Of Satanism In The Contemporary Society’. He described Satanism as an absolute emergency, drawing alarmist conclusions from a hopeless mess of rumours, cliches and urban myths. No specific examples, no precedents, no statistics. Moreover, Ferrari extended to excess the definition of ‘Satanism’, including ‘other groups that do not intend to present themselves as Satanists and, for example, claim to practice pagan rituals in order to harmonize with the occult powers of nature. As a matter of fact, these groups are suspect and we can include them in the multi-form world of Satanism’. Such a mysterious sentence was aimed at accusing a whole constellation of various movements, cults and philosophies.

…The emergency of “paedophilia”, thanks to the myth of ‘ritual abuse’, has made possible the present attacks on ‘dangerous cults’. In their turn, such attacks are likely to create a global cultural, indeed “spiritual” emergency.

Perhaps, from an Italian perspective. But for those of us worried that the 1980s might be about to happen all over again, it should be noted that when Scott Peterson tried a “Satanic cult” defence in his recent murder trial, his lawyers quickly thought better of it. And an attempt just a few weeks ago by Jan Schroder (an anti-Muslim “activist”) to use the Peterson case to re-ignite fears of Satanism in the USA appears to have flopped – so far.

UPDATE: More today.

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Despite all the noble post-Tsunami sentiments of global solidarity expressed over the past fortnight, religion and politics continue to remind us of the depressing realities of human nature. First, ASSIST reports from India:

According to the Dalit Freedom Network (DFN), some Indian officials have been refusing Dalits relief help while their families are dying of starvation…in some communities members of the Dalit caste are not even numbered among the dead…According to Reuters [see here], “Locals too afraid of disease and too sickened by the smell refuse to join the grim task of digging friends and neighbors out of the sand and debris. They just stand and watch the dalits work.”

Turning to Indonesia, Sidney Blumenthal at Salon notes that:

GAM [the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or Free Aceh Movement] reports that the Indonesia military is using the catastrophe to launch a new offensive. “The Indonesians get the message when you have no high-level condemnation of what they’re doing,” Tom Malinowski, Washington advocate for Human Rights Watch, told me.

The Indonesian military, in contrast, blames the rebels.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports from Sri Lanka:

The Tamil Tigers, who hold areas in the north and east, have expressed fears that the Sri Lankan government’s claims that it wants to work with the rebels on relief efforts is propaganda and in practice it is not doing so…President Chandrika Kumaratunga dismissed that criticism.

Sri Lanka has already faced criticism for allegedly declining assistance from Israel (publicised widely after Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano incorrectly stated that Israel had refused a request for help), but according to the latest from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (sorry, can’t find original link for some reason – had to go here):

Sri Lanka denied that it refused Israeli aid for victims of last month’s tsunami. In a statement, the Sri Lankan government said it delayed the arrival of the 150-member Israeli rescue and relief team because it couldn’t accommodate team members and because there already was enough manpower on the ground. The statement also emphasized that food and medical supplies from Israel were accepted, and also noted the “friendly and close diplomatic relations” between the two counties.

But no alleged government failing is as systematically crap as that of SLORC, the faceless military junta that controls Burma. The Burma Network has tried to piece together information about how badly things have been affected there, but recalls:

Past experience with how Burma deals with disasters is depressing. Last Summer two people were detained because they filmed a flood in Kachin State in Northern Burma. Dozens of people were killed by these floods, which the government called “normal”.

In September 2003 all news reports about an earthquake causing an unknown number of casualties were censored and no information was released.

In May 2004 a cyclone killed 220 people and made another 14,000 people homeless in Arakan State according to the Red Cross. The government did not report on the disaster until ten days later.

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Richard Bartholomew, “Religious Mission and Business Reality: Trends in the Contemporary British Christian Book Industry”, in Journal of Contemporary Religion, 20 (1), 2005, pp. 41-54. DOI: 10.1080/1353790052000313909

Abstract:

The publishing industry in the UK has undergone significant changes in recent years, with publishers being absorbed into conglomerates and the rise of book chains. These trends have affected the Christian book industry, with some Christian publishers coming under secular ownership and the growth of a Christian retail chain, publisher and distributor, Send the Light. Publishers that wish to sell Christian ideas through books have had to adapt to a culture where there is less explicit commitment to, or knowledge of, Christianity than in the past. Some publishers serve a Christian niche, while others, either through belonging to a powerful conglomerate or an ability to sign prominent authors, retain a presence in mainstream bookshops. Although the ownership of several Christian imprints by Rupert Murdoch and the prominence of Christian consumer products that mimic secular products are causes for concern to some, devotional works and Bible studies remain more significant sellers.

I have a limited number of off-prints available – contact me if you want one.

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Francis Fukuyama is a long way from being my favourite intellectual, but a short article published on the website of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is of interest (link from History News Network). Fukuyama diagnoses a significant shortcoming in contemporary social science:

The scandal that the media has thus far failed to cover is the utter failure of the American academy to train adequate numbers of people with deep knowledge about the world outside the United States. This failure is linked to the decline of regional studies in American universities over the past generation and the misguided directions being taken by the social sciences in recent years, particularly political science and economics.

The story here is one of colonization of the study of politics by economics. Known as the “queen of the social sciences,” economics is the only discipline that looks like a natural science. Economists are carefully trained to gather data and build causal models that can be rigorously tested empirically. The data that economists work from are quantitative from the start and can be analyzed with a powerful battery of statistical tools.

Economists’ powerful methodology has been a source of envy and emulation on the part of other social scientists. The past two decades have seen the growth of what is known as “rational choice” political science, in which political scientists seek to model political behavior using the same mathematical tools (game theory, for the most part) used by economists. Economists tend to believe that regularities in human behavior are universal and invariant across different cultures and societies (for example, the law of supply and demand is the same in Japan and Botswana). Similarly, rational choice political science seeks to create broad, universally applicable laws of political behavior by generalizing across large numbers of countries rather than focusing intensively on the history and context of individual countries or regions.

As a result, regional studies fell seriously out of favor in the 1980s and 1990s. Foundations ceased to fund area studies programs, money for language training and fieldwork evaporated and requirements were changed from knowing languages and history to learning quantitative methods.

This is, of course, another example of Fukuyama’s post-9/11 divergence from neo-conservative orthodoxy; neo-con dogma asserts that American ignorance of the rest of the world is all the fault of Edward Said for having questioned the motives and value of Orientalist scholarship. But it is also significant for religious studies, where a “rational choice” model has gained ground thanks to Laurence Iannaccone, Rodney Stark, and William Bainbridge.

According to Stark and Bainbridge, religions are the suppliers of “compensators”, or future rewards, and potential adherents are potential consumers. Religious organisations, the “supply-side” of religion, do well when they are meeting the needs of consumers. In the case of societies where one religious tradition has a monopoly on religious practice or some kind of special state subsidy, the tradition is likely to become lazy and fail to meet the needs of its “customers”, leading to secularisation. Also, liberal religions that have abandoned certain aspects of supernaturalism have in effect abandoned the market in compensators, which in religion are most successful when they are difficult to verify but also difficult to disprove. Liberal religion will be replaced with more conservative groups better able to meet the universal needs for which there will always be a market. Thus secularisation is a limited process that will be reversed. Stark and Bainbridge presented his theory as a series of “axioms”, and asserted that the study of religion should be deduced from these.

This theory was ripped to shreds by the British sociologist of religion Steve Bruce in 1999, who claimed to have “put a stake through its heart” (quote from memory). Bruce saw the theory as utterly unable to consider religious motivations, and a short version of his critique can be read here. However, Bruce lives in Scotland and is unfashionably qualitative for a sociologist, and his defence of the theory of secularisation is an unpopular position (although I consider it to be the correct one). Fukuyama’s purely commonsense critique of “rational choice” pretensions may have a bigger impact.

Stark, who teaches at Baylor, is also known for his recent attack on evolutionary theory in a bizarre article for American Enterprise. His scientifically semi-literate ramblings there were demolished by The Panda’s Thumb).

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From Islam Online (linked snagged from CultNews.net)

Protestant missionaries are planning to proselytize some 10 per cent of Turkey’s 70 million population by 2020, the Turkish army warned in a report published Friday, December 31.

Erm…what, in a secular democracy, has that got to do with the army?

Up to one million gospels are planned to be distributed among the Turkish people during this period, Turkish daily Zaman reported Friday, citing the “Proselytizing Activities in Turkey and the World” report.

Gosh! The report covers both Turkey and the rest of the world. Is the Turkish army stuffed with scholars of world Christianity, then?

The missionaries are trying to fill the “spiritual void” left by the youths’ ignorance about the basic tenets and rituals of Islam, according to the report.

The proselytizers are playing on pitting the Sunnis and the ‘Alawiyyin against one another to preach about the Christian faith, the report added.

How sinister! But Islam Online was whinging about the subject back in November:

Altin Tonsh, a key researcher into religious affairs said that proselytizing groups exploit Turkey’s request to be a member of the 15-member European Union.

(Altin Tonsh appears to have absolutely no other internet presence)

“As 39 churches have been built in Istanbul alone during the last five years, the missionaries seek to revive the ancient Christian ‘Bontos State’ that had existed along the Black Sea coast in the 11th Century,” said Tonish.

A report presented to the Turkish government, also carried by Zaman, said Christian missionaries were sent to areas hit by the 1999 shuddering earthquake that left hundreds dead and many others displaced.

“These groups target Alawiya Muslim followers, benefiting from their claims of persecution at the hands of the Sunni majority,” read the report.

Yes, I’m sure the “Bontos State” is foremost in the minds of all the missionaries working in Turkey (I think he means the Empire of Trebizond, which was set up by Greeks on the Black Sea coast after Constantinople was conquered by the Latins in 1204. In Latin, the Black Sea is the Euxeinos Pontos, and “B” and “P” are interchangable in Turkish. The Turks defeated it 250 years later).

But what’s that bizarre last line – “benefiting from their claims of persecution”? If there really is persecution, why is it just a “claim”? And if there isn’t any real persecution, how can missionaries “benefit” from it?

Ugar Akinci’s Turkish Torque blog adds some political context (emphases in original):

Freedom to worship” was one of the electoral slogans that have helped AKP [Justice and Development Party] come to power in 2002…AKP wanted to remove the ban on turban in public domain and open up the universities to imam-hatip school graduates as well.

…Now as a result of AKP’s argument of “universalism,” (that they were asking for such freedoms not only for the Sunni Muslims but for all Turkish citizens) Christians in Turkey are also raising their voices to expand their existing religious freedoms as well – like to open new churches, for example.

Take the case of Rev. James Bultema, the Presbyterian pastor from Muskegon, Michigan, who took AKP’s promise literally and has been trying to open a new church in Antalya. The Wall Street Journal front-page story devoted to the “trials and tribulations” of opening a new church in Turkey suggests that although the AKP cannot go back on its promise of “more religious freedoms for all,” it cannot afford to be in a position of openly encouraging the spread of Christianity in Turkey either due its very conservative base. So, from what I gathered from the WSJ story, Rev. Bultema’s church project keeps getting postponed for one bureaucratic reason after another.

…On the surface, AKP cannot go back on its own universalistic promise of “more religious freedoms for all citizens.”

But under the surface, the AKP rank and file’s fear of “missionaries are coming to convert us!” will lead to a clash between the AKP leadership and its very conservative base, on the one hand, and between the same base and people like Rev. Bultema who are taking AKP at its word.

The whole European Union is watching the developments that concern some AKP loyalists as well as the secular old-school Kemalists for whom the anti-Turkish activities of the Protestant missionaries in Anatolia during the years of the National War of Liberation is still an important historical reference.

Here’s a bit of sensible advice to Turks and Muslims worried about Christian missionaries: a) if you don’t want to be converted by them, try saying “no thank you” when they come to the door; b) if you want to lessen the number of people leaving your religion, try making it more attractive. But I suppose getting the military and ultra-nationalist “scholars” to churn out hysterical and threatening reports requires less effort…

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