Bartholomew's Notes

For some reason, whoever runs the website of Burma’s Ministry of Religious Affairs hasn’t felt the need to update it for the past few weeks. The New Light of Myanmar, though, has been keeping up-to-date, and gives the text of a “supplication” made by Minister for Religious Affairs Brig-Gen Thura Myint Maung:

…Some global powers who practise hegemonism totally dislike the proposed Constitution as it contains stipulations assuring self-determination and prohibiting the stationing of foreign troops on Myanmar soil. Hence, those powers in collusion with a group of destructionists from inside the nation are stirring up disturbances.

The protest walk occurring in Myanmar is one of the plots systematically manipulated from abroad.

Internal and external destructionists do not even spare the religion if it is in their interest. They dare instigate young monks, who are trying hard in the religious studies, to stage street protests.

First, those internal and external saboteurs tried to penetrate and instigate students, workers and the public. The people who still remember the beheadings of persons of own race alive in crowded places during 1988 unrest due to their instigation are against unrest. Hence, the people are able to resist all agitations.

Thura Myint Maung’s personal involvement in those events is recorded in a statement in this Congressional Committee record:

I would now like to talk briefly about the events surrounding the attack against Suu Kyi and her NLD members on the evening of May 30th in Depayin Township…The assault was a carefully planned attack against [Aung San Suu Kyi] that, according to first-hand accounts, resulted in the murder of upwards of 100 people who were clubbed to death or impaled on iron rods. Scores of others were severely beaten and women accompanying Suu Kyi were dragged off and raped. The culprits were several hundred thugs recruited from jails and members of the regime’s local political apparatus who were directed by high-level SPDC officers. We now know exactly what happened and the names of those responsible for organizing the assault thanks to the courage of many people in Burma who risked their lives to make sure the truth was made known to the international community. These murders lie squarely on the shoulders of Gen. Than Swe who ordered the attack and his subordinates who carried it out. Their names are Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung and chairman of the junta’s district branch, Lt. Col. Myint Lwin. A local village leader, Thein Aung, also played a key role in the massacre.

This sanguinary background doesn’t appear to have inconvenienced his foreign travel too much – in 2004 he took part in the Fourth World Buddhist Summit in Japan.

Meanwhile, backing the government is the impressively titled – deep breath – Magway Sayadaw Abhidhaja Maha Rattha Guru Abhidhaja Agga Maha Saddhammajotika Bhaddanta Kumara. According to his statement

I hereby give Ovada (enforce rules and regulations) for all members of the Sangha [i.e. Buddhist monks] to strictly follow the directives articulated in Directive Nos 81, 83, 85 and 65 prescribed by prominent and eminent Sayadaws…not to commit any activities that are not related to Gantha Dhura (teaching and learning the Teachings of the Buddha) and Vipassana Dhura (meditation).

Magway Sayadaw Bhaddanta Kumara is a committee Chairman of the State Sangha, and he takes part in various ceremonies with members of the government. Last summer, Minister Thura Myint Maung seemed to think all was going very well with government control of the monasteries:

The minister said it is heartening to see that Sayadaws and members of Sangha, the government and disciples are taking part in their respective roles for the perpetuation of Buddhism.

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Stock down from to

Hal Lindsey still a shareholder

Brown claims some evangelicals “a little crazy”

Staying with Israel, Portfolio magazine has an interview with John Brown, CEO of Zion Oil & Gas:

Between sips of Diet Coke, he begins to tell me his story, occasionally interrupting our conversation to leaf through his Bible, which is embossed with Zion Oil’s logo.

Brown describes his early life in business, his past alocohism and failed marriage, and his conversion to Christianity at the age of 41:

In 1981, with his alcoholism worsening, Brown’s marriage began to dissolve, and he moved into a one-bedroom apartment across town. The mover Brown had hired, a laid-off autoworker, began preaching Christ’s salvation as he unpacked Brown’s belongings. He invited Brown to accept Jesus into his heart.

…Soon all vestiges of Brown’s former life fell away. He began attending a nondenominational church after his divorce became final. A few months later, he sat in on a lecture by Jim Spillman, a journeyman minister who was traveling the country preaching that the Bible documented undiscovered oil reserves in Israel. Brown listened with rapt attention to Spillman’s exotic tales. On his first visit to Israel two years later, Brown decided he would quit G.T.E. Valeron to fulfill Spillman’s vision. Two years after that, in his resignation letter, Brown wrote that “it is with deep regret that I must resign…However, I am involved in an oil project that God blessed me with in Israel, and will now devote all my time to the oil business and doing God’s work.” Brown says he spent his life’s savings in his effort to launch his oil company. By the 1990s, he didn’t have enough money to visit a dentist, and he even worked as a fitness-club janitor for a while.

This is actually a story which this blog has been following for a while, and I looked at Spillman’s ideas here. But although Spillman’s reasoning was somewhat dubious (Deut 33:24, “Let Asher be blessed … and let him dip his foot in oil” supposedly refers to a geographical feature where the oil is waiting to be found), there are some more rational reasons to be optimistic:

In 1962, Lewis Weeks, Exxon’s former chief geologist, issued a report commissioned by the Israeli government that estimated that as many as 2 billion barrels could be recovered. A 1979 study conducted by a Shell Oil geologist, reached a similar conclusion. (Israel says it can only confirm proven reserves of 2 million barrels.)

Indeed, some Israeli geologists say the nation hasn’t had a fair test of its onshore oil potential, because only two dozen wells have probed as far down as the Permian layer, a stratum of rock 250 million years old located more than three miles below the earth’s surface.

On the other hand, Zvi Alexander, who used to direct Israel’s state-owned oil company, says that “no oilman in his right mind would put money into the business”. According to the report,

Zion Oil stock, which topped $12 a share on its first day of trading, in January, had slipped to below $6 by July.

Portfolio also tells us that

Shareholders include Christian leaders such as Hal Lindsey, a bestselling evangelical author…In March, four chartered coach buses pulled up to Zion Oil’s white-stucco office building in an industrial park a few miles from the drilling site. In the unyielding glare of the midday sun, Hal Lindsey, author of the prophecy book The Late Great Planet Earth, discharged the 200 evangelical Christians traveling on his nine-day tour of Israel. As part of an itinerary that included visits to Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Mount of Olives, this unusual, secular-seeming detour was especially thrilling. For Lindsey’s followers and Zion Oil’s evangelical backers, the company is not just a business to invest in. Rather, Zion Oil is evidence that the Bible’s prophecy is actually being fulfilled.

That is particularly interesting, since – as I exclusively blogged in 2005 – one of Zion Oil’s major shareholders used to be a certain Ralph DeVore, a cousin of Lindsey who also helps to run Hal Lindsey Ministries. DeVore and Brown had a spectacular falling-out: DeVore accused Zion Oil of “syncretism” for its close links with Jews, while Brown suggested DeVore was anti-Jewish. I always wondered how this had played out with Lindsey himself.

According to a SEC document, Lindsey himself became a shareholder in 2002:

In October 2002, we gave Hal Lindsey 50,000 shares of common stock upon the recommendation of our chairman, John Brown. Mr. Lindsey has been a supporter of Israeli development for more than forty years through the Hal Lindsey ministries and we wanted to recognize that support in our gift. The gift was recorded in our books as a $50,000 general and administrative expense.

The issuance of securities above were made in reliance upon Section 4(2) of the Securities Act, which provide exemptions for transactions not involving a public offering. We determined that Mr. Lindsey accepted the gift for his own account and not with a view to any distribution thereof to the public. The certificate evidencing the securities bears a legend stating that the shares are not to be offered, sold or transferred other than pursuant to an effective registration statement under the Securities Act or an exemption from such registration requirements.

In 2004, Lindsey, who is regarded by a substantial number of American Christians as a Bible expert, used his column in WorldNetDaily to promote Zion Oil, which, in his opinion, had a good chance of success:

Investment in oil exploration is always a big gamble. But, I believe this is a gamble worth taking for the sake of Israel. Besides, I believe God’s Word is giving some pretty good clues here.

For some reason, the gift of 50,000 shares and his cousin’s then-involvement in the company isn’t included in the article. However, there are many who apparently agree that “this is a gamble worth taking”:

During its I.P.O., Zion received letters from evangelical shareholders who said they had taken second jobs and worked midnight shifts to earn enough money to make the minimum $700 stock purchase…[Anson] O’Connor invested $30,000—almost 10 percent of his life’s savings—in Brown’s company. Despite the fact that no oil has yet been pulled from the earth, O’Connor isn’t worried about losing his money. “It was an act of faith. I needed to do it,” he says. “I wouldn’t risk $30,000 if I didn’t believe.”

But despite this, and despite Brown’s close link with Hal Lindsey, Portfolio includes the following paragraph:

Rapture fantasy has become a multibillion-dollar business, and for a certain type of Christian, Zion Oil provides proof that a global confrontation will soon unfold on the battlefields of Armageddon, as prophesied in Revelations (according to evangelicals’ literal interpretation). For his part, Brown bristles at the apocalypse mania. “I don’t see us as people that are in Israel trying to get this oil because that’s going to make the Messiah come. Some of these evangelical people—they get a little crazy,” he says. “You know I just don’t buy into it. Is he going to come back? Yeah. When? I don’t know.”

A slightly unlikely statement from a man who believes that “a stranger” from “a far country” who comes to help Israel mentioned in 1 Kings 8 is actually a prophetic reference to himself.

(Hat tip: Christianity Today Weblog)

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New Book from Group Endorsed by Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, Baroness Cox:

“The Holocaust, then, was necessary in order to preserve the soul of Judaism.”

“What has long been known by only a select coterie of kabbalists must now move from the realm of esoterica to exoterica.”

“First it was a red chariot – Communism; next, it was brown – Nazism; and now, green – Islam”

“The universal soul is a kind of magical crystal, divided into seventy distinct segments”

As I’ve blogged before, the Jerusalem Summit brings together neo-conservatives like Daniel Pipes and Baroness Cox with Christian Zionists like Mike Evans and members of the Israeli right like Benyamin Netanyahu. Based in Jerusalem, it holds meetings in various parts of the world (such as South Africa and Japan), and is bankrolled by the controversial Uzbek billionaire Michael Cherney. The director is Dmitry Radyshevsky.

The Jerusalem Summit takes a hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Radyshevsky has now published a short book, Universal Zionism, which gives the theological underpinning to the organisation’s thinking. The book is available from the Jerusalem Summit website, as a Microsoft Word document download (which is why there are no page refs for the quotes following). Take a deep breath:

For the third time this century, the Adversary has harnessed the Pharaonic chariots of totalitarian ideology, hoping to deprive humankind of its spiritual freedom. First it was a red chariot – Communism; next, it was brown – Nazism; and now, green – Islam… Islam today has surpassed “the long arm of Moscow” and gained a foothold everywhere, sowing death on every side, from the Philippines to New York, from Moscow to South Africa.

…A death wish accompanied by homosexuality of SS and death cult of Nazi doctrine in Germany, Communist asceticism in the Socialist camp, and a longing for death on the part of Islamic jihadists are all the very essence of the Adversary, who strives to put an end to Creation, and to life.

Nice gratuitous reference to homosexuality there. Radyshevsky’s (not particularly original) thesis is that there are two paths in the world: the “Path of Jerusalem”, which is God’s plan to bring about global unity, and the “Path of Babylon”, which is Satan’s (who is described as “God’s ape”) plan sow division while preaching unity through false doctrine. Further, the way God brings about the true path to unity is through the essential nature of the Jews:

Instead of the primacy of a single, monolithic ideology, the Jew with his Shema insists on the primacy of conscience, on hearing God’s voice in man’s free heart…Instead of Nazi Ordung, Soviet pravoporyadok, or Islamic sharia, the Jew strives for liberation from the spirit of Egyptian slavery that survives in every totalitarian ideology.

This Jewish striving naturally includes “The visionaries of the early twentieth century…– from Herzl to Jabotinsky”. While rejecting the idea that Holocaust victims were being punished for sin, Radyshevsky still argues that they brought it all on themselves:

God created the Jews to fulfill a universal spiritual mission. If they refuse to exert themselves and to realize that mission, they become superfluous and die off, like any bodily organ that ceases to perform its designated function. God’s mission – more precisely, the horrible perversion of that mission (“God’s ape” mentioned earlier) – is then taken up instead by the Adversary, whose first task is to amputate Judaism, now “dried and withered.” The pain of the knife then compels that organ to remember its calling, and to begin functioning anew.

…The Holocaust, then, was necessary in order to preserve the soul of Judaism. The gas ovens consumed (or, more precisely, weakened) both the ghetto mentality and the assimilationist mentality, thus liberating the Jewish soul for a new ascent – the creation of the State of Israel – in order to advance the world to a new, unprecedented level of consciousness.

However, and rather bizarrely given his rejection of the idea of Holocaust victims as sinners:

As for the souls of the Nazis: they, no doubt, have been reborn in Kampuchea, Rwanda, or Kosovo, to be themselves victims of genocide, to atone for their own sins.

The mystical purpose of Israel and Zionism is then explained in terms of pop-Hegelism:

The solution that Israel will show the world consists not in the wide dissemination of form (democracy), but in the penetration of its actual essence into the very depths of the individual and of society. The essence we mean is an integrated consciousness, imbuing the West’s civilized forms with a thirst for the spiritual values of the East, while channeling the East’s religious zeal into humanitarian, constructive civilized forms…The culmination of that History will be the creation of a perfect social organism – a unique spiritual-political construction that will realize the Eastern ideal of a community of love, while preserving Western human rights and personal freedoms.

The only small snag is that “Unfortunately…, Israel today is very far from understanding its new Mission.” Things then get rather mystical:

Human evolution can be viewed as a process of harnessing increasingly more powerful energies: from sexual energy, to mechanical, to thermal, to electrical, and finally – atomic energy.

But it does not stop there. After those comes mastery of the most powerful energy: spiritual (or, if you prefer – mental-psychical) energy… What will save Israel is not mastery of nanotechnology, but mastering the technologies of creativity through the spirit. What has long been known by only a select coterie of kabbalists must now move from the realm of esoterica to exoterica.

Like the laws of physics, every schoolchild must understand the laws of spiritual science regarding proper goal orientation (teleology) and proper focus of will (known in the Kabbalah as kavvanah). A sufficiently powerful creative mindset, when fortified by steadfast determination, will invariably be realized concretely.

…The universal soul is a kind of magical crystal, divided into seventy distinct segments, each representing one of the seventy nations…Israel is a small diamond of seventy facets, each of which is particularly close to one of the nations’ seventy facets.

After much rambling along these lines, the rather bland punchline is that Israel contains immigrants from around the world, and so could show the world how to get along. There’s also a further reference to “the hidden powers of human consciousness and psychic energy”. A call for some political reforms in Israel follow until, at last, we get to the meat – his analysis of Islam and the Palestinians. He begins rather obscurely:

“I?Slam” is the demon which possesses Islam and compels it to abuse all peoples indiscriminately.

Freud then gets a look-in:

The Islamic world consists of hundreds of millions of men tormented by two basic instincts: sex and murder, Eros and Thanatos. Sharia, which suppresses that first passion, sublimates it completely in the second, and — as luck would have it — global jihad provides the opportunity. While the consciousness of these unlucky slaves of I-Slam is subjugated totally to the sword and the phallus, at the very bottom of that consciousness lives a yearning to be rescued from that yoke. Moreover, the more savage that consciousness becomes, the more savage and impassioned is the subconscious yearning for liberation.

But what about the Palestinians?

…countries that demand that we create a state of Philistines in Judea and Samaria and hamper Jewish progress – on which their very own well-being likewise depends – are in fact only seeking to perpetuate the fragmentation and diabolization of humankind.

…Not for naught do the Palestinians of our day call themselves “Philistines”. While not consanguineous descendants of the ancient Philistines (despite their pseudo-historians’ futile attempts to convince us otherwise), they are the spiritual descendants of Goliath. They have resurrected not only the Philistine hatred of Israel, but also the ancient Philistine abomination of performing human sacrifices, particularly child sacrifices: preparing their young boys for shahada, a sacrifice on the altar of the new Moloch, the jihad.

In other words, resolving this conflict peaceably by reaching a compromise with Evil and agreeing to co-exist with it, is equally impossible as co-existing with Nazism was.

So what’s to be done? Radyshevsky rejects the standard “transfer” solution of the Israeli far-right, and instead lays out the Jerusalem Summit approach, which we’ve seen before: offer Palestinians money to leave, allow them to remain as non-citizens in a “municipal enclave”, or allow them to become citizens if they can prove loyalty (Radyshevskey is opposed to racial exclusivity):However, it is also hoped that the Palestinians will be transformed:

This land is our land. Ishmael here has no claim, but if he will acknowledge Israel’s dominion over this tiny land, then we will be very happy to let him remain.

Israel must consistently integrate the Palestinians into the civilization of the House of Abraham. This means a steady deprogramming of the Palestinians, whose youngest generation has been brainwashed by Arafat’s propaganda machine and the jihad ideology for thirteen years since Oslo – all with Israeli and Western funds!

Israel and the West must establish control over education, the mass media, and the clergy.

…It is difficult of course to imagine that the age of Islamic Zionism is near. But a mere fifty years ago it would have seemed fantastical to think that someday there would be hundreds of millions of Christian Zionists — as there are in the world today.

We’re also told that

The Jerusalem Summit’s recommendations have earned the enthusiastic acclaim of many of the world’s social and spiritual activists, from members of the United States Congress and the British Parliament’s House of Lords, to the Chief Rabbi of Israel and the Dalai Lama.

The book also contains standard musings on the dangers of Muslims in Europe, and calls for a “Council of Civilizations” based in Jerusalem.

Radyshevsky divides the world into twelve “primary civilizations”, and declares this to be “likely” to be an omen, since there are twelve gates into Jerusalem and twelve tribes of Israel. This seems to me to be symptomatic of the main problem with the whole book: there’s a sheen of general knowledge, but everything is run through the grinder of one mystical idea. Of course it all fits together wonderfully – because everything is defined according to Radyshevsky’s predetermined political and religious agenda. Although ranging widely through history and across geopolitics, there is very little real engagement with what people believe or why – and despite his supposed opposition to the “primacy of a single, monolithic ideology”, all he has to offer is a rather eccentric grand narrative which he imposes over all human motivation. If Palestinians object to living under occupation, there’s no need to ascribe real human desires to their complaints: rather, we can diagnose morbid psycho-spiritual reasons which also just so happen to show that Radyshevsky’s Greater-Israel Zionism is the exactly the same thing as the will of God.

Radyshevsky’s book is far from unique: Hal Lindsey, Mike Evans, and a whole slew of Christian Zionist paperbacks have a similar Manichean perspective. Unlike those books, however, Radyshevsky’s religious Jewish Zionism does not require the intellectual incoherence of pushing America to be active in the Middle East when God is about to wrap things up through an inevitable Last Days scenario anyway. But how acceptable will this be to the summit’s main allies, the evangelical Christian Zionists? Talk of kabbalah and “psychic energy” will not play well, and he also writes that

After the inevitable victory over Islam, mankind will understand the prohibition of considering any one religion exclusive.

While some evangelical Christian Zionists see validity in Judaism through the idea of a “dual covenant“, this will be pushing things too far (although, of course, there are also non-evangelical Christian Zionists who may be more agreeable). In this context, calls for a world council based in Jerusalem may even stoke Last Days paranoia…

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(minor correction: one webhost is involved, not two)

Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who is currently negotiating the purchase of a British football team, has succeeded in getting a webhost to pull high-profile blogs that made allegations against him.

In the 1980s, Usmanov was imprisoned in his homeland – he claims this was for political reasons, and that his record was expunged in the post-Soviet era. Blogger (and former UK ambassador) Craig Murray disputed Usmanov’s spin on his past; Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads reported the story. Their webhosts have now received nasty legal letters, and have pulled the plug. In Ireland’s case, this has had a knock-on effect to several other blogs hosted on his site – including that of London mayoral candidate Boris Johnson.

One UK blogger particularly offended by this attempt at censorship is Conservative Party activist Iain Dale, who has been attacked on Ireland’s blog on numerous occasions:

You would think that I would be highly delighted if Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads site was shut down by his webhost, wouldn’t you? After all the abuse he has directed my way you’d think I’d be taking great pleasure in the fact that that is exactly what has happened. But you’d be wrong…Despite the fact that a large part of his front page is taken up with wholly unjustified smears against me, I defend his right to say what he wants about me. It’s called freedom of speech. And if he does it to me, why should a Russian Oligarch be any different?

It’s most refreshing to see someone who may not like what someone writes about him nevertheless defending his critic’s right to free speech. Let’s hope the example catches on among Dale’s fellow Tories –  in particular, for example, Paul Staines, the supposed “libertarian” who threatened Pickled Politics a few months ago over a 1980s newspaper report retrieved from Lexis-Nexis.

This is the second high-profile libel threat to hit the blogosphere recently: a few weeks ago, US businessman Stuart Pivar, who had written a very strange book about evolution, filed a lawsuit againt scientist PZ Myers and Seed magazine after Myers referred to Pivar as a “crackpot”. Pivar, along with his lawyer Michael Little and PR agent Matthew Rich, were then subjected to widespread mockery, and Pivar withdrew the case (although Little, who trained in the UK, is now threatening to sue the distinguished legal scholar who told Pivar his case had no chance).

Meanwhile, my own investigation into another Uzbek billionaire can be seen here.

UPDATE: A television news report:

UPDATE 2: Tim Ireland is back on-line.

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Conwebwatch’s Terry Krepel reviews the latest dispatches by WorldNetDaily‘s Jerusalem correspondent Aaron Klein. There are basically two aspects to Klein’s work: on the one hand, he interviews Palestinian militants and Islamists and “exposes” their views to the world; while on the other he visits honest Jews trying to get by in “Judea and Samaria”, while for some reason overlooking their equally sanguinary political connections:

An Aug. 3 article by Klein…features quotes taken from an Aug. 1 Jerusalem Post article about Shlomit Bar-Kochba, who moved back into the [Hebron] market with her husband and eight children.

…But Klein leaves out one important detail that the Post reported: Shlomit Bar-Kochba is the daughter of Moshe Zar, who purchased large amounts of land in the West Bank to develop Jewish settlements. Neither the Post nor Klein, however, tell the story of Moshe Zar’s terrorist past.

In the 1980s, Zar was a part of a “Jewish underground” group that targeted violence against Arabs in the West Bank and plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem. Zar served a short prison term for his role in the bombings of the cars of three Arab West Bank mayors. Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka lost both legs in the bombing. A July 22, 1985, Washington Post article noted that Zar and 14 others put on trial over the bombings were “vigorously supported by leaders of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank and by many Israeli members of parliament from the Likud bloc and other right-wing parties.”

And so on. Krepel also notes that Klein joined the chorus against the recent documentary God’s Warriors, which was supposedly biased for having mentioned the above incident, and for recalling the massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein in 1994. This was unnecessary, according to Klein, because:

Goldstein’s actions were widely condemned by Israelis and worldwide Jewry. The organization he was a part of was outlawed in Israel.

And which organisation would that be? Klein doesn’t burden us with that information, but it was none other than the far-right Kach movement, which was made illegal along with an off-shoot, Kahane Chai. The funny thing is, though, that a number of Klein’s Israeli contacts are linked to these groups – but he rarely, if ever, feels the need to mention these affiliations, let alone note their illegality. In fact, their illegality slips his mind again just today, in a piece where he mentions a Palestinian who undertook a

shooting attack in northern Samaria in December 2000 that killed Benyamin Kahane, leader of the nationalist Kahane Chai organization.

Meanwhile, Klein’s interviews with Islamists provide fodder for his debut book, Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans–to a Jew! Blog Sadly No! has some details.

My own forays into Klein’s writing can be seen here, here, here, and here.

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“With the financial help of Moon, he is planning something”

Asia News reports on a statement by the Roman Catholic Korean Bishops’ Conference:

The former Archbishop of Lusaka, Emmanuel Milingo, “is a danger for South Korea’s Catholics, who must avoid him and above all not become involved in his activity, clearly condemned by the Universal Church”.

…A source in Seoul told AsiaNews: “Since he allied himself to the Unifi[cation] Church…Milingo has considered Korea as excellent hunting grounds…[H]e also married a native of Seoul, Maria Sung, who has pushed him to carry out apostolate work among Koreans. On many occasions the former archbishop has tried to contact us, but has never received an answer. Now we know that, with the financial help of Moon, he is planning something, but we don’t quite know what”.

Apparently Milingo has spent most of 2007 in South Korea. UCAN has further details:

Father Peter Pai Young-ho, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, told UCA News Sept. 12 that…the excommunicated archbishop fraternizes with Catholics and visits Catholic institutions as though he still holds episcopal office. “It was reported that he has shown himself in Catholic archbishop’s attire and held prayer meetings with local Catholics in several shrines in the country,” the church official reported.

“The shrine authorities, who did not recognize him, welcomed him, thinking he was a foreign archbishop visiting Korea,” Father Pai added.

Earlier this month, Milingo contacted the Times of Zambia to refute claims that he had joined the Unification Church, and to complain about the way the Roman Catholic church had suppressed his God-given healing powers (“because they considered me a mere poor black guy”):

In his correspondence with the Times via email, Archbishop Milingo says he has not become a Moonist but states that Reverend Moon referred to him as a “unique person and a gift from God to humanity.”

“It is a lie that Milingo has become a Moonist. Neither will such a fact satisfy Rev. Moon that Milingo becomes a Moonist. But if Milingo is thrown away from his cradle of faith, someone who understands who Milingo is picks him up as the Daughter of Pharaoh in Egypt saved the baby Moses thrown in the river Nile.

“Not even a wee bit of my Catholic Faith has accepted an inkling of change in my Catholic beliefs,” Archbishop Milingo said.

However, the piece ends with a possible Freudian slip:

“God loves everyone with his defects. Don’t judge,” Archbishop Milingo said.

Milingo’s statement to the Times comes several months after he gave a lecture in Korea, in which he said that:

“Looking at True Parents’ life and his current achievements I realized that this person is the messiah sent by God.”

And if his Catholic beliefs have not changed, it is rather odd that he was quoted a year ago as saying that he had travelled to Korea

“to join the many Catholics and Catholic married priests who are in the Unification movement”

So what exactly might Milingo be “planning”? Perhaps we can find a clue in his 2002 account, when he temporarily split from Moon (and Maria Sung) and returned to the Catholic Church:

…the Moonies had plans: to found a well-financed parallel Catholic Church in Africa, autonomous from Rome, with its own hierarchy headed by Milingo. “I would not have gone along with the plan,” says Milingo.

Given the amount of bizarre flip-flopping since then, that last sentence shouldn’t be taken as authoritative.

(And in related Moon news: Portfolio has a profile of Kahr Arms, a gun manufacturer run by Moon’s son, while Ed Brayton is currently exploring Moon’s activities in Michigan)

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Arutz Sheva reports on allegations that Christian Zionist groups in Israel have missionary intentions:

Ze’ev Shtieglitz of the anti-missionary Lev L’Achim organization has presented evidence of actual missionary activity by ICEJ [the International Christian Embassy] to the Chief Rabbinate. “For instance,” he recently told Arutz-7, “ICEJ Liaison Officer Doron Schneider is the head of the Messianic Jewish community in Maaleh Adumim… Dr. George Giacumakis, the one-time Chairman of the Board of Trustees of ICEJ, has said straight out that it is hoped, through various ‘friendship’ organizations with Jews, and by giving financial and political support to Israel, that Jews will start showing interest in Christianity.”

Lev L’Achim is apparently distinct from Yad L’Achim, an anti-missionary group that featured on this blog here.

The report focuses particularly on a quote from David Pawson (emphasis in report):

“One day the people of Israel as a whole will become Messianic Jews…  Prayer for Israel is not enough; preaching is also necessary. The church’s silence over the holocaust was bad enough; her silence about hell would be a worse betrayal… True lovers of Israel will speak on behalf of Jews to Christians and on behalf of Christ to Jews…We cannot help but be missionaries, and I have discovered that some Jews despise us if we pretend not to be…”

Further:

…Jack Hayford, was one of 1,100 Christian Zionists and Messianic Jews who took part in the Road to Jerusalem conference in California last year.  He spoke there of “helping the church understand what God’s doing among Jews today and how to relate to it.”  Co-speakers at that Road to Jerusalem event were co-founder Rev. Raleigh Washington — who said, “when a Jewish person recognizes that Jesus is his messiah, he becomes a Jew who has now found his messiah” — and Rev. Mike Bickle of Kansas City, Mo., who used the phrase “unsaved Jews” and said a Satan-like leader “will be required to exterminate the Jewish race.”

The result of all this is that the Chief Rabbinate Council’s Committee for the Prevention of Missionary Work in the Holy Land has now announced that it is forbidden for Jews to participate in Christian Zionist events, particularly the Feast of Tabernacles, which is usually addressed by high-profile Israeli politicians.

This is a controversy that has been running for some time, and the Rabbinate told Jews not to attend a Christian Allies Caucus event in May. One Christian Zionist leader, Janet Parshall, complained in March that Israel’s attitude was

“We’ll take your aid, your support and your tourist dollars, but we won’t take your Jesus.” Christians should not have to “choose between the cross or Israel,” the American evangelical says.

However, Christian Zionist organisations have been cautious to avoid causing offence, which is why Lev L’Achim’s “evidence” against the ICEJ is rather lame. Indeed, some Christian Zionists have avoided the subject altogether, despite Pawson’s blunt formulation of Christian exclusivity – that non-Christian Jews face a worse fate than the Holocaust, namely, hell itself. For Christian Zionists who believe that the end of nigh, the impending return of Jesus paradoxically means that converting the Jews is less urgent, since many of those living now be converted miraculously. One quote attributed to John Hagee (I haven’t been able to track down the source, although someone has spammed it over numerous blogs) is that he and a Rabbi associate

“…both know that one day when we’re dancing in the streets of Jerusalem together, one of us will have to seriously reevaluate our beliefs.”

Hagee has also at times apparently made statements supportive of “dual covenant” theology (at other times he has denied it). Christian exclusivity is problematic as regards Judaism, since, unlike Islam or paganism, Judaism was salvific before the coming of Jesus. Where does this leave God’s covenant with the Jews? The “dual covenant” concept means that Judaism and Christianity remain equally valid today, and therefore Jews who follow Judaism do not need to be converted to Christianity (although what this means for non-Jewish converts to Judaism remains murky). Some have seen this as a way forward for Jews and Christian Zionists, and there was an attempt last year to ascribe this belief to Jerry Falwell – which Falwell denied vehemently.

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Frontpage magazine turns to theology with an essay by conservative Israeli-American scientist Michael Anbar. Anbar explains why Christians ought to be opposed to “Palestinian” (his scare-quotes) sovereignty over Arab areas of Jerusalem. As well as giving strategic reasons, he argues that:

Like in Judaism, Jerusalem is central to Christianity, which expects Jesus to reappear in Jerusalem. This belief makes every Christian a Zionist. Conquest of the Holy City by Muslims should be, therefore, as devastating to believing Christians as it would be to religious Jews.

How exactly an all-powerful being returning to earth at the end of time would be inconvenienced by Arab non-Christians, rather than Jewish non-Christians, running part of the city is not explained. Further,

The fall of Jerusalem would have far-reaching theological implications. Notwithstanding the recent reconciliation of Christians and Jews, frustrated Christians might accuse all Jews for having willfully given up the Holy Land, after God has helped them to regain it. It could than result in unprecedented misojudaism (hatred of Jews) by religious Christians. The worldwide Jewish remnants of the new impending catastrophe will not be supported and consoled, but scolded and despised by frustrated religious Christians. Christians might also accuse the Jews for the onslaught of Islam on Christianity that will not fail to take place following the fall of Jerusalem.

This was also an argument made by Herb Zweibon of Americans for a Safe Israel in 2004, in relation to the West Bank. One wonders how Christian Zionists react to the claim that the only reason that they don’t hate Jews is because they admire the expansionism of the Israeli right.

Anbar, apparently, is

Professor of Biophysics and Chairman of Dept. of Biophysical Sciences, Sch. of Medicine, Univ. of Buffalo (1977-2002, now retired). Previously, he was professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Deputy Director of the Soreq Nuclear Research Institute, in Israel.

He also founded OmniCorder Technologies, now known as Advanced BioPhotonics Inc.

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A bit of dry humour from “His Disgrace” Anglican Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, in an interview for the Zimbabwe Herald. Kunonga has announced his intention to secede from the Province of Central Africa over the issue of homosexuality, despite the fact that the Province has taken a stand against it (emphasis added):

Q: How do you respond to the view that your withdrawal was strategically planned to coincide with Archbishop Malango’s retirement, particularly assertions that you want to form your own province in which you will be Archbishop?

A: Oh, it was not planned, it was not done to coincide with the retirement (of Archbishop Malango). It is not even my ambition to become the Archbishop of any province. We stand by the scriptures, we stand by the will of God, it does matter when this comes in.

It so happens that it coincides with Archbishop Malango’s retirement, but it has nothing to do with my ambitions because when deacons become bishops and bishops become archbishops, we are elected. It is a matter of power and you cannot be sure that you become archbishop in the process because elections can go anywhere. So it has nothing to do with that.

Kunonga, as I’ve blogged before, is a major beneficiary of Mugabe – in return for describing the dictator as “more merciful than God” in the run-up to the 2002 election, he was rewarded with two farms that had been appropriated by Mugabe’s militia (and which are now reportedly being mismanaged). Kunonga also boasts of baptising children “in the Zanu-PF way”. In March, Malango suggested that Kunonga might like to distance himself from Mugabe – despite the fact that the Archbishop had previously stepped in to stop a corruption prosecution against him.

So, is it the case that ecclesiastical “elections can go anywhere” in Zimbabwe? When Kunonga became Bishop in 2000, not everyone thought so:

Anglican supporters of Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party were on Thursday accused of breaking church canonic law to block the election as the new Bishop of Mashonaland of a prominent white critic of Robert Mugabe’s human rights record…Supporters of the election of Timothy Neill, 47, vicar general of the diocese, want to nullify the alleged last-minute nomination on December 22 of a theologian, Reverend Norbert Kunonga…

“I have put this in the hands of lawyers. I have told Archbishop Bernard Malango that the process was a disgrace,” said Neill. “The church has to set a moral tone for the nation. If the church conducts its business in the same way that Zanu-PF does, then there is no hope.”… Kunonga, a theology lecturer at Africa University, Mutare, could not be reached on Thursday for comment but Bishop Sebastien Bakare of Bulawayo described the allegations of electoral impropriety as “very serious”. “There is no way the counting could have been rigged,” said the bishop.

Supporters of Neill said Kunonga was not among three approved, short-listed candidates put before 21 electors who met in the Zimbabwean midlands city of Gweru on December 22. They allege canonic law was breached by intense lobbying for Kunonga and by circulation of a highly defamatory letter accusing Neill, one of the short-listed three, of racism. Neill was prominent in an April 1 march by human rights activists that was attacked by ex-guerrillas while police looked on. In October, he helped launch a new pressure group demanding Mugabe’s resignation as an essential first step towards ending corruption, Zimbabwean participation in the Congo civil war, and the violence by “war veterans” that has claimed 40 lives since February…

Of course, other elections in the country have also had remarkably predictable results.

One Kunonga supporter is journalist Caesar Zvayi, the Herald’s political editor (see here for a hostile profile):

Bishop Kunonga only has two “crimes,” the first is defeating a whiteman, Timothy Neill, to head a white Church; and the second is “abusing” his position in a white church, to fight for the dignity of the blackman…Bishop Kunonga was attacked in the local opposition and western right wing media for refusing to join the bandwagon of narrow minded hypocrites who always parrot baseless claims of alleged lawlessness, land grab, corruption and so on that the western world makes about Zimbabwe.

A rather more critical assessment of Kunonga’s election and reign can be found in a recent posting to the blog Takudzwa, which is run by Masiiwa Ragies Gunda of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Zimbabwe.

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…or maybe not

On the anniversary of 9/11, Charles Colson uncovers a conspiracy:

But as a Muslim convert to Christianity notes, we have more to worry about than violent attacks. We should be just as concerned about the quiet inroads Islam is making in Western societies.

Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, who was born into a Muslim family, is now an Anglican priest living in England.

…To Sookhdeo, the signs are not good. He notes that a book “published in 1980 by the Islamic Council of Europe gives instructions for how Muslim minorities are to work towards achieving domination of European countries through a policy of concentration in geographical areas.”

In England and France, this has already begun.

But what book is this? Here’s Sookhdeo himself, writing in 2005:

In 1980 the Islamic Council of Europe published a book called Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States which clearly explained the Islamic agenda in Europe. When Muslims live as a minority they face theological problems, because classical Islamic teaching always presupposed a context of Islamic dominance; hence the need for guidance on how to live in non-Muslim states. The instructions given in the book told Muslims to get together and organise themselves with the aim of establishing a viable Muslim community based on Islamic principles. This is the duty of every individual Muslim living within a non-Muslim political entity. They should set up mosques, community centres and Islamic schools. At all costs they must avoid being assimilated by the majority. In order to resist assimilation, they must group themselves geographically, forming areas of high Muslim concentration within the population as a whole. Yet they must also interact with non-Muslims so as to share the message of Islam with them. Every Muslim individual is required to participate in the plan; it is not allowed for anyone simply to live as a “good Muslim” without assisting the overall strategy. The ultimate goal of this strategy is that the Muslims should become a majority and the entire nation be governed according to Islam. (M. Ali Kettani “The Problems of Muslim Minorities and their Solutions” in Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States (London: Islamic Council of Europe, 1980) pp.96-105)

Not all Muslims would support this action plan. The more secularized are happy to become integrated within the majority society…it is not hard to recognize the different stages of the Islamic Council of Europe’s strategy being put into practice within today’s Europe…Sweden’s third largest city, Malmø, is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslims…

Sookhdeo’s “discovery” has been reposted widely since then as evidence of a “Protocols”-type conspiracy; a poster to one site presents the first paragraph I cited as being a direct quote from Kettani’s essay, which it’s not.

Actually consulting the book – a collection of essays derived from a 1978 conference –  itself is difficult. It is long out-of-print, and unavailable through either Amazon or Google Books. However, I had a bit of free time yesterday and tracked down a copy to a public library in London. I had time only to browse the book as a whole, but I did manage to read the Kettani essay, which I noted that Sookhdeo refrained from quoting directly. Having seen the text first-hand, I have to conclude that Sookhdeo is a scaremongering demagogue who has misrepresented the book for his own purposes and indulged in shameful quotemining.

Firstly, it should be noted that the book has a global context: as well as Muslim immigrants in the West, it deals with historic Muslim minorities in places like India, and with locations where Muslims have to deal with hostility – particularly the USSR. Some of the material in the book is arguable – there is a defence of Muslim Personal Law for Muslims in India, and the way the authors contrast Islam’s universal values with the “ethnic religions” of Judaism and Hinduism is problematic. However, the essays do not speak with a monolithic voice, and, while the perspective is conservative, the tone, although slightly preachy, is moderate. Here’s what Kettani (who was the Special Advisor on Muslim Minorities to the General Secretary of the Islamic Conference, Jeddah) actually writes:

Once a Muslim finds himself in a non-Muslim environment it becomes his Islamic duty to get organized with other Muslims…Islam is a ‘social religion’ in the sense that a person cannot become a Muslim unless he actively cares about his Muslim brothers…The organization should not be an elitist gathering consisting only of those who are the ‘best’ Muslims. (97-98)

To Sookhdeo, this becomes

Every Muslim individual is required to participate in the plan; it is not allowed for anyone simply to live as a “good Muslim” without assisting the overall strategy.

Is the Rev Sookhdeo also indifferent as to whether Christians ought to come to church, or to socialise together? And by adding “not allowed”, of course, Sookhdeo hints at some kind of coercion – which is not suggested in the essay.

Kettani also has some negative things to say about assimilation, although it’s clear from the context he means assimilation as complete dissolution into the majority way of life:

It is the “Organization” of the Muslim minority that can help it resist the different assimilative trends. In order to be able to do so, the community should have, geographically speaking, some area of concentration…Moreover, social interaction between Muslims should be kept as a maximum all the time, not only at the mosque, but also by exchange of visits by families [etc]… (103)

As a practice to maintain a minority identity, this is hardly sinister or even surprising. Of course Muslims don’t want their children abandoning their heritage – and the same is true of members of most minority groups (particularly religious groups) anywhere. To paint this as some sort of covert “strategy” is unwarranted. Kettani also writes that:

Islamically, it will not harm the Muslim community to absorb the characteristics that are not contrary to Islamic principles. Some of these characteristics are: the learning of the language of the majority;…the wearing of its dress, if it does not violate the decency of dress advocated by Islam; and the absorption of minor social habits that are Islamically unobjectionable. (102-103)

Not exactly enthusiastic, but again unexceptionable. One statement Sookhdeo could have made something of follows:

Muslims should continue to believe that Islam is the only true religion and that all other religions, as stated in the Holy Qur’an, will be rejected by the Creator. (103)

But I suppose many Christians think the same thing about their religion, so Sookhdeo discretely passes this by. Instead, he fixes on the following:

However, Islamically, a Muslim community cannot be enclosed in a ghetto-like mentality. It should be capable of interacting with members of the non-Muslim community so as to fulfil its duty of da’wah…A Muslim community should try to move from a position of mere defensive concerns, and try to spread the message of Islam outside the community. If successful, such a community would grow constantly in influence and numbers as to become a majority community in course of time. (103-104)

The Christian Sookhdeo finds it a bad sign that Kettani believes his religion to be true and would like to see more people follow it. Kettani also argues that Muslims should seek official recognition as an “entity” – pointing out that various groups enjoy official status in particular countries, such as Jews and Roman Catholics in Sweden.

In all, Kettani’s essay is somewhat limited in outlook – but it’s far from being the kind of sinister and conspiratorial document which Sookhdeo would have us believe it to be. And as for this being “the Islamic Council of Europe’s strategy”, that is simply untrue if you look at the book as a whole. Another essay, by Syed Z. Abedu, is more progressive. He calls for:

A total reconstruction of our mental attitudes and social behaviour…There is nothing wrong in emphasising in what ways we are different, or what is unique about us. But we also need sometimes to focus on our common humanity. (25)

…[the Muslim minority’s] destiny is, to a considerable extent, interwoven and interlocked with that of their countrymen. (26)

Abedu also takes a more liberal line on the validity of other religions (35). Sookhdeo, however, doesn’t feel the need to include any of this in his “analysis”, since that would undermine his scaremongering purpose.

Ismail R. Faruqi, meanwhile, suggests that just as non-Muslims in Muslim states have certain obligations, but also rights, the same should be true in the non-Muslim world:

The principle is that just as dhimmis have to submit to and support the Islamic state, of which they have covenanted to be members, the Muslim minority ought to submit to and support the alien state in which they have taken residence. (60-61)

Of course, from a modern secular perspective this again has limitations, but once more we can see that this is a long way from the false impression created by Sookhdeo, who has concocted a silly conspiracy theory designed to spread fear and resentment of Muslim communities based on an obscure and unremarkable book published nearly thirty years ago. For Sookhdeo’s cheerleader Chuck Colson, the moral of the story is doubtless that Americans should be fearful of Europe and of immigrants, and should re-assert Christianity as the culture of the USA. However, he’s not the only one to have been inspired by Sookhdeo’s essay; the website of the far-right British National Party also tells its readers about the sinister book “published in 1980 by the Islamic Council of Europe.” (1)

But even if Sookhdeo had managed to find a text truly preaching separatism and hostility toward the majority community (and doubtless such works exist somewhere), what exactly would that prove anyway? We know why minority communities usually tend to congregate together: to protect cultural and religious heritage, to maintain kinship links, and because such communities offer networks of support which make life easier. To see the existence of Muslim communities as some kind of “strategy” to “achieve dominion” (Colson’s term) is both paranoid and sociologically illiterate.

This blog has covered the negative consequences of Islamic extremism on numerous occasions, and I consider the phenomenon to be a subject of urgent public enquiry. I’ve also been supportive of critical investigations that some have tried to dismiss as “Islamophobia”. However, efforts to understand the growth and baneful influence of Islamism are not helped by disinformation and distortion such as that in which Sookhdeo indulges.

(1) bnp.org.uk/columnists/chairman2.php?ngId=27

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