Bartholomew's Notes

Despite the recent rift over The Passion, the alliance between Christian Zionists and Israeli reactionaries is back on track, with a huge effort to unite Christian conservatives in support for Israel and against Muslims being organised for October. According to a report by ASSIST Ministries:

Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders from around the world are endorsing an international “Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem,” to be held annually on the first Sunday of October, this year on October 3. People all around the world will be asked to pray in harmony for the Peace of Jerusalem.

The plan, according to the event’s website

is for all men and women of prayer throughout the world to assemble in New York City for an urgent two-day convocation on May 20-21, 2004 to affirm and sign [the] proclamation [of the October event].

But I’m confused. What’s Pat Robertson doing on the list? Or the International Christian Embassy doing as a sponsor? These are people who’ve been telling us for ages that war is inevitable in the Middle East, and that the only “peace” will be a plot by the anti-Christ (and the UN) before Jesus returns to convert the few Jews who survive all the horrors of the Tribulation. Indeed, Eagle’s Wings, the organisation behind the “Day of Prayer”, is also insistent that these are the “last days”.

The answer is that the plan is not so much about peace as such as trying to persuade conservative Christians across the board to sign up to a “clash of civilisations” worldview where “Judeo-Christian” values stand against the Muslims hordes:

[Rev. Robert] Stearns, co-chairman of the call to prayer, says, “We must realize the hour in which we are living. Throughout the world dark forces are at work, seeking to destroy the Judeo-Christian world and Western Civilization as we know it. This gathering is a strategic time in which both Jewish and Christian leaders can affirm the importance of faith, the value of unity, and a commitment to pray for Israel and the Peace of Jerusalem.”

So praying for Jerusalem means praying for Israel, and not for Palestine or Palestinians. And what does praying for Israel mean? Well, given that the above is as far as analysis of the Israel/Palestine conflict goes, and Stearns describes himself as “pro-Israel”, we can assume it basically means unconditional support for the Israeli government in whatever it does. Indeed, the word “Palestinian” appears only once on the “Call to Prayer” website, where it exhorts readers to visit Israel under its guidance, so as to

Understand and be able to articulate the reality of the current Palestinian situation along with an understanding of the Radical Islamic agenda as pertaining to the Judeo-Christian world population.

That’s it. Deftly put, but the implication is clearly that Palestinian complaints are based purely on a commitment to radical Islamism – and are part of an Islamic plot against “Judeo-Christians”.

Rev Stearns, who heads up Eagles Wings, is a multi-talented individual, and according to the website of his magazine Kairos he

has sung for the last three Prime Ministers of Israel, including a special concert for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

One weird statement on the ASSIST report is that

The Roman Catholic Church was represented [in the endorsement] by Monsignor William Showali, the personal representative of the Latin Patriarch in the Old City.

Given that I can’t find a William Showali anywhere on the internet, I suspect ASSIST means William Shomali, the General Econmo of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Since both he and Patriarch Michel Sabbah have for a long time advocated Palestinian rights (and co-existence with Israel), I wonder if he was fully aware of what the event really aims to do.

Of course, there are actually plenty of Christian organisations out there genuinely trying to build peace in Israel/Palestine, such as Sabeel and Christian Aid. Somehow, though, I doubt Stearns and friends are likely to want to hear from them.

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Vincent at Religion Related Injuries has linked to an article in the Orlando Weekly about the Lawtey Correctional Institute, the “faith based” prison endorsed by Jeb Bush. Although this particular prison does not appear to be linked to the IBLP, the outfit that is soon going to be providing faith-based prison resources across the USA (see my previous entry on this), it gives a flavour of the kind of thing to expect:

the state [of Florida] has drastically cut funding for prisons across the board. Gone are the GED classes, computer classes, vocational classes, even television antennas. The faith-based groups, and their army of volunteers, bring these things back…At the community meeting we attend later that night, three Muslim inmates are siphoned off into an adjacent room, while the Christians sing along to a full band and enjoy the preaching of an ordained minister. No imam is coming for them tonight, and [chaplain William] Wright, a Baptist, is in charge of leading their spiritual journey.

Before the prison went faith-based, [inmate Michael E.] Wynn says, things were more laid-back. “It got worse for us the way the procedures went. We can’t watch Jerry Springer, we can’t watch nothing but news and sports (under the faith-based rules).”

But the biggest complaint from the men on Lawtey’s yard concerns each dorm’s council of inmates, which recommends disciplinary actions to dorm chaplains…In other prisons, the state prohibits inmates from having any authority over each other, lest resentment turn into violence…that’s the case at Lawtey too…But each dorm’s inmate council and each pod’s leaders, called “encouragers,” can recommend to the dorm chaplain that misbehaving inmates be punished via essay-writing or extra cleaning details.

The article also notes that prisoners are picked very carefully – because there are as yet no studies showing that faith-based prisons work, Jeb Bush is desperate to make sure that this project does.

Three churches are named by the Orlando Weekly as responsible for providing the faith at Lawtey: Beaches Chapel, Miracle Mission of Hope and the Church of Jacksonville. I checked out each, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

The Miracle Mission of Hope is an outreach of The Grace Place. The Pastor of The Grace Place, Rick Addison, is a Moody graduate and the church seems to be moderately conservative Evangelical. From their statement of beliefs:

The sole basis of our belief is the Bible. The scripture in its entirety is composed of the 66 books of the Old and New Testament, which originated with God, and was given through the instrumentality of many different chosen authors.

The Church of Jacksonville is more fundamentalist:

We believe in the full historicity of the biblical record of primeval history, including the literal existence of Adam and Eve as the progenitors of all people, the literal fall and resultant divine curse on the creation, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge, and the origin of the nations and languages at the tower of Babel (Genesis 1-11).

This church is run by Michael T. Smith, whose “mentor and spiritual father” is Creflo A. Dollar. The aptly-named Dollar is a Prosperity Gospel preacher in the tradition of Kenneth Hagin, although he also does “motivational” style-sermons. The message of “God will make you rich” naturally supports conservative visions, but the Church of Jacksonville’s website is not explicitly political.

However, Beaches Chapel, which the Orlando Weekly sees as the most significant player at Lawtey, is the most disturbing. The church’s statement of belief is explicitly authoritarian:

Church Government – We believe in church government to ensure order, and we believe in loyalty to those acting in rightful authority as they lead us in the Lord. (I Peter 5:1-5, Romans 15, Ephesians 4:11-13)

It is also the most political. The links page contains six links, the first of which, and most prominent, is a link to a right-wing Christian talk-show host called John Pendleton. The links page of the church’s school website has links to various Bush sites, including Columba Bush’s (Jeb’s wife) homepage…

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A snippet from The Manila Bulletin:

THE renowned journalist Barbara Walters did a story on gender roles in Kabul several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked about five paces behind their husbands.

She returned to Kabul recently and observed that women still walk behind their husbands, but now seem to walk even further back and are now happy with the old custom.

Barbara approached one of the Afghani women and asked. “But why do you now seem happy with the old custom that you used to try and change?”

“Because there are still a lot of unexploded land mines left from the war,” said the woman.

UPDATE: Whoops, this one’s not true:

…During the Vietnam war, the story was presented as a joke about how the Vietnamese were handling the grim the reality of living in a landmined country. In the early 1960s, the tale starred the Burmese who were said to be reacting to the threat of leftover WWII mines, During WWII our tale was told about British troops musing the change in the bahavior of an unnamed desert people…

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Vincent at Religion Related Injuries has noted the announcement of a faith-based prison in Florida, opened with a gushing endorsement from Jeb Bush:

I can’t think of a better place to reflect on the awesome love of our Lord Jesus than to be here at Lawtey Correctional. God bless you.

The news report adds that

Yesterday, Nashville-based Corrections Corp. of America, the largest operator of privately run prisons in the United States, announced that it has teamed up with the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a Chicago-based church group, to bring full-time religious programs to eight prisons next year. There are plans to expand into all of CCA’s 64 institutions.

What’s more:

Two years ago, Mr. Bush fired the head of the [Department of Children and Families] and appointed Jerry Regier, an Oklahoma conservative activist with a master’s degree in Bible studies who headed the Christian Family Research Council…[Regier] has…introduced a program called Character First!, in which government employees are coached in 49 key biblical qualities including deference, virtue, loyalty and meekness. It is modelled after a popular evangelical Christian program called the 49 Commands of Christ.

As ever, the journo does not ask the most obvious questions: who or what is the Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP)? And who’s behind Character First!?

Well, the answer is that both are derived from a controversial and authoritarian figure named Bill Gothard. He founded the IBLP and The Charter School of Excellance, which produces the secular Character First! textbooks. In 1999 these textbooks came very close to becoming standard in all elementary schools in Florida until the link to Gothard was noted by a local newspaper, The New Times Broward-Palm Beach. Quoting a second report from that paper:

Character First! was stripped from the [state legislature] bill after a New Times article revealed that it was designed by authoritarian Christian minister Bill Gothard and includes obedience drills — complete with group salutes and ”hup, two, threes” — demanding that children ”follow orders instantly.”

…Gothard, known to be a media recluse, has refused to speak with New Times, but his teachings can be found in seminars held around the world. He espouses ”universal, non-optional” principles and a ”chain of command,” which holds that authority figures represent God, and therefore wives must obey husbands, workers their employers, and citizens their politicians. He boasts of 2.5 million ”alumni,” who are given rules on everything — what clothes to wear, what music to listen to, how to manage money.

This sounds like the Shepherding Movement, and Gothard is a Charismatic, but although at least one source (here) links him to Reconstructionism, it seems that the late Reconstructionist leader Rousas Rushdoony disagreed with him on a number of issues. One critical assessment of his teachings (by, I think, a Calvinist by the look of it – more academic info is hard to come by) provides an outline to his thought with references to his works and statements. Including his war against Cabbage Patch Dolls…

Prisons, schools, books for government employees…I think this guy needs to become much more well-known between now and November. Very much so.

UPDATE (20 March): Blogger Jesus’ General has more on this in his 18 March entry. He links to an earlier New Times report and quotes this stirring number from Character First!:

Obedience is listening attentively,
Obedience will take instructions joyfully,
Obedience heeds wishes of authorities,
Obedience will follow orders instantly.
For when I am busy at my work or play,
And someone calls my name, I’ll answer right away!
I’ll be ready with a smile to go the extra mile
As soon as I can say “Yes, sir!” “Yes ma’am!”
Hup, two, three!

UPDATE 2 (22 March): More today.

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Following the murder of four missionaries in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times gives us some background, pointing out that Evangelicals are “flocking” to the country (large numbers of Christians always “flock” according to journalists). The article describes a church on an American base where 400 Iraqis worship every Sunday. The article describes the worshippers as

Converted from Islam and from other branches of Christianity

Bit of a difference there! How many from each? I suspect more Christians than Muslims. And were these people previously pious or nominal adherents of their faiths? Our journo fails to ask.

Kyle Fisk, executive administrator of the National Association of Evangelicals, is quoted as saying that:

Iraq will become the center for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to Iran, Libya, throughout the Middle East…President Bush said democracy will spread from Iraq to nearby countries. A free Iraq also allows us to spread Jesus Christ’s teachings even in nations where the laws keep us out.

Sorry to curb Fisk’s enthusiasm, but even if democracy spreads in the area (and it’s a big “if”), there are a few more points to consider:

• Proselytism is legal (albeit difficult) in democratic Turkey. But few Turks have converted and it’s hardly a centre for missionaries.
• Groups like Pat Robertson’s CBN have been active in Middle East for years, based on Cyprus and the Lebanon. Not much to show for it so far, except grief for indigenous Christians across the Middle East.
• Democracy does not always mean freedom to proselytise. For example, in 1996 evangelism came close to becoming illegal in Israel.
• 400 Iraqis at a service is not actually all that that impressive. Why should significant numbers of Iraqis be interested in becoming Christians when most Turks are not?

However, the missionaries do have an advantage when we read of the strategy of the Muslim clerics:

Shiite Muslim leader, Sheik Fatih Kashif Ghitaa…said Shiite and Sunni clerics have discussed issuing a fatwa, or religious edict, against missionaries.

Rather less impressive than an intellectual rebuttal, or a plan to make Islam appear more attractive.

Meanwhile, what do the leaders of the local Orthodox and Catholic churches have to say about Evangelical sheep stealing? Alas, the Los Angeles Times does not even raise the issue.

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A poll of 1003 random American adults has discovered that The Passion is lessening hostility to Jews. The survey, conducted by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, shows that

24 percent of Americans familiar with the film say that Jews alive at the time of Christ’s crucifixion were not responsible for it. Less than two percent of Americans surveyed blame Jews for the crucifixion today…Of the 146 respondents who saw the film, 80 percent said the film had no impact, five percent said it made them more likely to hold Jews responsible, and 12 percent said the film made them less likely to hold today’s Jews responsible.

This is encouraging news. There’s still a question, though: 76% appear to think either that Jews at the time were responsible or don’t know. What does that mean? That Jews alive then in general were responsible? Or just the Jews of Jerusalem? Or the Pharisees? Or the Temple authorities in collusion with the Romans (my own view, by the way, following E.P. Sanders)? How does that translate into views of Judaism or Jewish character, even if “collective guilt” is rejected?

The Institute admits that outside the USA the results might be very different. Given that copies of pirated DVDs are in hot demand in Saudi Arabia, we may soon know the answer to that.

Meanwhile, I note that a new CD is on the way: Songs Inspired by ‘The Passion of the Christ’. This will include songs by Elvis Presley and Ricky Skaggs…

UPDATE (3 April): A new poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (brought to my attention by The Church of Critical Thinking), reveals that

26 percent of respondents believe Jews were to blame for the Crucifixion, up from 19 percent in ABC News poll in 1997.

The greatest increase was among young people and blacks.

Thirty-four percent of those under age 30 now believe Jews were responsible, compared to 10 percent in 1997, the Pew Center said. And 42 percent of blacks hold that view, compared to 21 percent seven years ago.

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The PA headline reproduced in The Scotsman announces shocking news:

British Muslims ‘Back Terror Strikes on US’

Apparently, a poll has discovered that the Muslims of Britain support al-Qaida! However, if you decide to read on, you find that

Attacks on the US by al Qaida or other groups were viewed as justified by 13% of the 500 British Muslims questioned. Another 15% said they did not know whether such attacks are wrong or right.

In other words, as The Guardian (the newspaper that commissioned the poll) puts it rather less sensationally:

The ICM survey…shows that the overwhelming majority of British Muslims – 73% – are strongly opposed to terrorist attacks by al-Qaida and other organisations. But a small minority – 13% of British Muslims – disturbingly say they believe further such attacks on the US would be justified.

This interpretation is rather at odds with the impression given by the PA headline: a headline that many people will not look beyond, and which is currently on the religious news websites.

The Guardian also explains the methodology of the poll in more detail than the PA report gives us:

ICM interviewed a random sample of 500 Muslims between March 3 and 11 2004. The interviews were conducted by telephone throughout the country. ICM also interviewed a random sample of 1,014 adults aged 18 and over by telephone between March 10-11, 2004. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.

That’s fine as far at it goes, but among British Muslims there are Arabs, Pakistanis, West Africans, Turks, white converts and many other ethnic groups, as well as confessional differences between and amongst Shias, Sunnis and nominal Muslims. A random sample of 500 Muslims that may or may not represent all these strands seems to me of limited value.

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Conservative pundit Cal Thomas warns that Britain will soon be dominated by Islam:

According to “British Muslim Magazine” editor Sarah Joseph, by the year 2020 mosque attendance could surpass church attendance in Britain.

She says between 10,000 and 50,000 per year convert to Islam in England and that the country currently has 1.8 million Muslims.

And why is this?

One of the few things I learned in physics was that nature abhors a vacuum. So does the spirit world…In England, where only about two percent of the people bother to attend church, Islam is about to become the dominant faith…Unless it rediscovers the God of scripture, it will be powerless to defend itself against militant, fundamentalist Islam.

This is nonsense. First, the figures: 10,000 converts a year would be very impressive, let alone 50,000. Unfortunately, I do not have access to Sarah Joseph’s magazine (called Emel, by the way), so I can’t check either where she got her data from or even if she has been cited correctly. However, according to a site quoted on British Muslim website Revival:

There are perhaps 10,000 British converts to Islam, predominantly white, middle-class women.

That’s 10,000 in total, not 10,000 every year: a rather more credible figure. According to Nicole Borque, an academic expert in conversion to Islam in the UK (and, I suspect, someone Thomas didn’t even spend one minute looking for on the net, let alone contact):

I would estimate that there are probably around 200 converts to Islam in Glasgow alone, but that’s just a rough estimate. The data is difficult to acquire.

Besides, even if there is currently a rapid increase in conversions, that does not mean the rate will continue for the next fifteen years. As Charismatic Christians discovered in the 1980s and 1990s, there comes a point where most of those attracted to the movement will have joined, and conversion rates drop.

Now, to Thomas’s lack of any analytical ability: here are a few basic points he couldn’t even be bothered to raise:

• Why are people converting to Islam? Some may be attracted to militant fundamentalism, but very many may well be converting nominally purely for marriage purposes. A number will have come via a New Agey interest in Sufism. There may be plenty of other private reasons (Borque has considered some of these). Most of these people will never become fundamentalists.
• How many converts drop out? Many young people join religious or political movements, only to leave after a period of time – there are only three hundred Unification Church adherents in the UK, for instance.
• How many members of ethnic minorities in the UK are, or have become, merely nominal Muslims? Converts may well be cancelled out by secularisation and nominalism within the established Muslim communities.
• Why do so few people go to church? Nobody is stopping them. It seems that most people are happy with a nominal affiliation, encountering church only for weddings and funerals. There is no “spiritual vacuum” for most people. A small minority show an interest in other forms of spirituality, but most of them are more likely to turn to Eastern religions, the New Age or New Religious Movements than to Islam. Of the minority of the minority that does become interested in Islam, only some of them will choose militant forms, and most of them only temporarily.

In short, the idea that Britain is “powerless” against militant Islam is bunk. Most people simply are not interested in religion, and for those who are militant Islam is a less attractive option. But then, I suppose Thomas’s job is fear-mongering for his own purposes rather than writing serious articles.

UPDATE (2 April 2004):

Sarah Joseph has been kind enough to leave a comment in which she clarifies the statistics used in Emel:

Hello Richard Came across your website. I am Sarah Joseph as cited by Cal as cited by Gulf Daily News which seemed to go every where.

What I said was not as dramatic as quoted. The “Islam as dominant UK religion” was the headline given to a rather bland statement about Church/Mosque attendance – where I had cited figures taken from a Church study done in 2001)

The quote re 10,000 to 50,000 conversions every year is inaccurate. There are no numbers on conversion to Islam in Britain. There are “guess-timates” that there are currently between 10,000 and 50,000 people who have ALREADY coverted (I would go with the lower figure but the 2001 census confused us all by the number of people that ticked Muslim and White). There are probably about 1000 new converts per annum based upon Mosque statistics, but these are difficult to gauge.

So hope that helps clarify things – not as exciting I know!

Best wishes Sarah Joseph

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This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain…A lot of the Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they know I am friendly to Israel and so forth. They don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country.

This was Billy Graham’s notorious assessment of American Jews to Richard Nixon back in February 1972. Graham survived the storm when the remarks became public knowledge in the 1990s because of his support for Israel. Now, with debate over The Passion, some Jewish commentators are saying that perhaps they can do without the support of Christian Zionists who claim to be pro-Israel but who have aligned themselves with Mel Gibson’s movie. This comment by the Rev. Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, caused particular annoyance:

There is a great deal of pressure on Israel right now and Christians seem to be a major source of support for Israel. For the Jewish leaders to risk alienating 2 billion Christians over a movie seems shortsighted.

This attitude has led to both conservative and liberal criticism of Christian Zionists. First, Rabbi Smuley Boteach, writing in the Jerusalem Post:

The Passion has forced upon politically conservative Jews like myself a horrible choice: either betray Jewish interests by pretending that a movie making the charge of deicide is no big deal and playing sycophant to the much larger Christian market by praising the film – a choice all too many high-profile Jewish conservatives have made; or be told that you are endangering Israel by undermining Christian support for the Jewish state.

But I reject the choice between the interests of the Jewish people versus the interests of the Jewish state. Any Christian friend whose support can so quickly evaporate when we object to being falsely portrayed as god-killers in a movie is hardly an ally.

From a liberal angle we have Knesset member Yossi Sarid, writing in Haaertz:

Without supportive surroundings, Gibson, who is not exactly known as a modern-day Shakespeare, would not have dared make this movie.

Within these surroundings are to be found the best friends of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, Beni Elon, Nathan Sharansky and Effi Eitam, who are fighting fiercely, as we all know, against anti-Semitism. Sharon, Netanyahu, Elon and their friends have long entered into a blood pact, of ketchup, with the more anti-Semitic Christian groups in America, who pretend to be sworn friends of Israel.

Their friendship is conditional; for the evangelists, the return of the Jews to their land, especially to the Greater Land of Israel, free of Muslims, is a precondition for a complete Christian redemption, which includes, among other things, wiping out the Jews as a people. These evangelicals see the redemption of Israel as a crucial foundation in the return of the messiah Jesus Christ. This is the only reason they encourage Israel and donate a lot of money to it, mainly to the messianic streams within the Jewish state, who view the settlements as the start of the redemption.

Indeed. Christian Zionists go on about their love for Israel and Jews, but their enthusiasm is based on romantic stereotyping rather than reality. Jews who prefer to live outside Israel are seen as going against God’s will: increased anti-Semitism is God’s way of dropping a hint that they should be on their way. Christian Zionists are deaf to Israelis who criticise their government, who investigate human rights abuses, who don’t want the Occupation to continue, or who refuse to serve in the Israeli army (and as for gay Israelis – “pigs defiling the Temple” according to one Christian Zionist newsletter I saw). Christian Zionists insist that the Occupation must continue, no matter how many Israelis or Palestinians will suffer, for no other reason than that the Apocalypse is inevitable. Israeli politicians have indulged all this for a long time – books by fantasists like Mike Evans (China has built a road across the Middle East so North Koreans can invade Israel!) are adorned with photos of the author meeting senior Israeli figures, both Likud and Labour. Perhaps The Passion is blowback.

UPDATE (10 May): Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, one of Israel’s most highly respected halakhic authorities, has declared that Jews should not accept funds from the Fellowship of Christians and Jews. See my entry for today.

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The Nigerian polio vaccine saga rumbles on. As I noted a couple of days ago, a committee consisting of Muslim scientists had reported to Governor Shekarau that the vaccine was safe, but Shekarau rejected their findings for a number of specious reasons. Now Hussain Abdulkareem (or Hussein Abdulkareem/ Hussain Akande Abdul-Kareem), currently a professor at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, puts forward the case against the vaccine in a Nigerian newspaper.

To summarise his position: one in a thousand children are paralysed by the Oral Polio Vaccine; studies show that the vaccine in interaction with other vaccines causes paralysis; Lawan Hassan Bichi, a Pharmacologist from Bayero University, Kano, testified in December that the polio vaccine contains elements “capable of impacting negatively on fertility and causative agent for AIDS”; the committee that travelled to India and South Africa found contaminants; the WHO had previously failed to admit that a tetanus vaccine it introduced to the Philippines in the 1990s caused miscarriage; Polio vaccines were responsible for AIDS in the first place, and also cause cancer. Plus population control is in Western interests.

Given all the above, one wonders where this leaves Shekarau’s “solution” of importing safe vaccines from Muslim countries, a point the professor does not consider.

Adbulkareem’s article also contains some nice bits of purely rhetorical dishonesty. I note particularly this paragraph:

The second committee was set up by Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) and sent to India where they spent 28 days to conduct the investigation in New Delhi under the directive of WHO. The tests in India confirmed that the batches of OPV taken from Kaduna, Sokoto and Zamfara states, contained “undeclared contaminants” which “could cause malfunction of the testes in males and infertility in women as well as toxic substances”. (Daily Trust of Monday 26/1/2004).

But what he committee actually said was that the substances found were normal and in such tiny quantities that they were harmless. The lurid accusations above come from Abdulkareem’s interpretations of the findings (before the tests were even finished), not the committee itself. He is quoting his own previous article (see it also quoted here: couldn’t find original) and writing in such a way that it looks like the committee said it.

So, who are the scientists who uncovered the conspiracy? I couldn’t find anything about Lawan Hassan Bichi, and Abdulkareem’s research background seems to consist almost purely of pronouncements against sex education and condoms. However, Abdulkareem is a bit of a polymath, and may have spent more time in political science and theology. According to this report of the inauguration of the Lagos Independent Sharia Panel a year ago:

Perhaps the strongest speech was that of Professor Hussein AbdulKareem of the Lagos State University College of Medicine (LASUCOM), who branded the opponents of Sharia as agents of Western domination and oppression. The professor of Medical Biochemistry likened the agitation by Muslims for the implementation of Sharia in the country to a liberation struggle and declared that the stiff opposition to the Islamic legal system by non-Muslims was informed by Western anti-Islamic stance.

This will be news to the thousands of Muslims who protested AGAINST Sharia in northern Nigeria just recently as a foreign, Saudi, imposition.

However, although it’s easy to decry self-serving Islamist demagogues like AbdulKareem, we should also reflect on why such a figure can gain a hearing in the first place. While the West battles overpopulation in the developing world, the devastation wrought by overconsumption in the West is treated less urgently. Western politicians lie, and pursue self-serving foreign policies. Biotechnology remains a murky business.  The Vatican also promotes pseudo-scientific information about health issues when it comes to condoms. None of this excuses the demagogues, but we could stop giving them ammo.

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