Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Wheatcroft, The Church in England: Downright Un-American, New York Times, November 25, 2007

The authoritative Catholic paper The Tablet of London now writes that, some time before Christmas, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair will at last be received into the Roman Catholic Church by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.

The historical resonances and political overtones of this are as significant as the event itself — which also illustrates again the great trans-Atlantic gulf. Not only are the English now a notably irreligious people; in striking contrast to America, religion plays no part in British political life.

For years it has been rumored that Blair would one day convert, the culmination of a journey that began when he discovered religion at Oxford. An Australian clergymen named Peter Thomson introduced him to the work of another writer. “If you really want to understand what I’m all about, you have to take a look at a guy called John Macmurray,” Mr. Blair has said. “It’s all there.”

Little read now, Macmurray was an academic theologian and proponent of “communitarianism” who died at 85 in 1976. Not everyone was as enthusiastic as Mr. Blair. George Orwell, for one, was suspicious of Macmurray as a “decayed liberal” who was even susceptible to totalitarian rhetoric.

However that may be, Mr. Blair joined the High or “Anglo-Catholic” wing of the Church of England, whose adherents, from John Henry Newman on, have been inclined “to pope” (as they used to say) and go the whole way. His wife, Cherie Booth, is a Catholic, and for years he went to Mass with her and their children, even taking holy communion, irregularly and sacrilegiously in Catholic eyes.

All of which sets him far apart from his compatriots. When an interviewer once tried to raise the question of faith, Mr. Blair’s press officer, Alastair Campbell, snapped, “We don’t do God,” and on that occasion at least he was quite right.

THE TRAIN BOMBER Jamal Ahmidan, top left, known to friends as Chino, turned from drug dealing to terror. THE MEN WHO LEFT Clockwise, from top right: In 2006, Bilal Ben Aboud, Muncif Ben Aboud, Abdelmunim Amakchar Elamrani, Hamza Akhlifa and Younes Achbak departed to wage jihad in Iraq.

Andrea Elliott, Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis, New York Times Magazine, November 25, 2007

If there is one outlet for the neighborhood’s wellspring of male energy, it is soccer. In the summer, hundreds of boys gather on bleachers to watch as players glide across a worn, concrete pitch, some of them barefoot. Sitting around the bleachers one afternoon in July, a group of teenagers talked to me about their heroes. They said they worshipped Zinédine Zidane, the Muslim of Algerian descent who conquered the soccer world from France. They loved the Prophet Muhammad. The mere mention of Osama bin Laden elicited a sea of upturned thumbs.

“He’s very courageous,” said Ayman, a short, spunky 13-year-old with honey-colored skin. “Nobody did what he did. He challenges the whole world. He even challenges George Bush.”

Another teenage boy said he would gladly volunteer to fight the American occupation in Iraq if it meant bringing independence to Iraqis. “We want to help our Muslim brothers,” he told me. Of the Americans, he added: “If they kill us, we go to God. If we stay here, there is joblessness.”

Levy, Demands of a thief, Haaretz, November 25, 2007

Israel is not being asked “to give” anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore.

No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants, lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years. Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over giving or not giving.

Israeli students stand at checkpoints as part of their army reserve duty, brutally deciding the fate of people, and then some rush off to lectures on ethics at university, forgetting what they did the previous day and what is being done in their names every single day.

The incarceration must be ended and the myriad of political prisoners should be released unconditionally. Just as a thief cannot present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to the other side as long as the situation remains as it is.

…we have no right to do what we are doing: Just as no one would conceive of killing the residents of an entire neighborhood, to harass and incarcerate it because of a few criminals living there, there is no justification for abusing an entire people in the name of our security.

After 40 years, one might have expected that the real core issue would finally be raised for honest and bold discussion: Does Israel have the moral right to continue the occupation?