Monday 23 November 2009

Unus Pro Omnibus, Omnes Pro Uno

This Sunday, there is a referendum in Switzerland on whether to add the sentence “The construction of minarets is forbidden” to Article 72 of the Constitution. I wish the Yes campaign every success.

Mosques in Switzerland, in this United Kingdom, or anywhere else in the West must not have domes and minarets, which are triumphalistic manifestations of an Islamised society, culture and polity, and which were in that spirit added to former churches during Islam’s forcible overrunning of the Eastern Roman Empire. I have - in Cardiff, if it matters - already seen them stuck onto a nineteenth-century Nonconformist chapel. I suspect there to be many other such examples, especially in the old Methodist and Congregationalist West Riding. How long before Mediaeval cathedrals and village churches go the same way? It happened to the cathedrals and the village churches of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the Levant and North Africa, all once integral parts of Christendom.

While certainly not without sympathy for opposition to usury, Sharia law must have no legal status in this country. There should not be Muslim schools here, where my own Catholic schools have existed since a good thousand years before any other kind did.

Halal meat is, not least, a serviceable weapon in the armoury against the hunting ban, but animal sacrifice is totally unacceptable. So is polygamy. There is nothing any more acceptable about male than about female genital mutilation. Face-covering - not head-covering, but face-covering - is incompatible with the conduct of British social and cultural life.

We must expunge the influence of the despotic, misogynistic and Jew-hating Gulf monarchies in general, and of despotic, viciously misogynistic and fanatically Jew-hating Saudi Arabia in particular. And the public holidays in this country should be Christian festivals rather than pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks are on holiday; there is no case for non-Christian festivals to be public holidays here, nor, for that matter, for public holidays on purely Catholic feast days.

11 comments:

  1. Female genital mutilation is East African practice carried out by Muslims, Christians and Ahmists alike. It has nothing to do with Islam (the Koran forbids it).

    It is not a practice in any other part of the Muslim world.

    As for "animal sacrafice", surely the Jews carry out the same practices in producing kosher meat?
    And of course the Armenian Orthodox church carries out animal sacrafice and indeed keenly encourages it. That is why the churches in Armenia have a tied butcher to kill sheep outside the church.

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  2. Oh, that old chestnut. The short answer is "no, it doesn't".

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  3. Break Dancing Jesus24 November 2009 at 10:40

    Question: what do you want done to Britain's "Muslim Problem". If they refuse to leave or convert, what do you intend to do?

    Will it be the screams of a little Anglo-Pakistani girl from Yorkshire as she bangs against the steel, air tight doors as the gas takes effect?

    "Mam!!!"

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  4. The Armenian church does not animal sacrifice - yeah right. Here is an account of it in action:

    http://forum.nedarm.nl/index.php?showtopic=211&mode=threaded&pid=7550

    "At the same church, animals are still sacrificed. Sheep and poultry are sold outside the church for this very purpose. The uniqueness of the church is that it is built partly inside a cave, relief and ornaments are carved out of the rock. One of the central motives in the ornament is an eagle with a lamb in its claws, flanked by two lions. Jennifer Teasdale, an English teacher at the American University witnessed the sacrifice of a sheep at Geghard, and was served the meat from a sacrificed sheep by her Armenian hosts at another occasion. She shared the following account with me:

    In March of 1997, I visited Geghard Church in the Kotayk region of Armenia. During my visit, I witnessed a sacrificial offering of a sheep. A family brought a live sheep to the church courtyard. One of the priests stood in front of a khachkar and said a prayer over the sheep. As he was praying, he made motions over the sheep with his right hand, in which he held a cross. After this was done, the family dragged the sheep to an area just outside the walls of the church courtyard. Here, there was a cement floor with a drain in it, poles which held up a tin roof, and a bar that was attached horizontally on the poles, and from which two metal hooks hung. A man was there, ready to receive the sheep. He first tied the sheep's legs together around the ankles. Then he knelt down on the sheep, and cut its throat. The sheep struggled a bit while it bled from the cut. The blood went down the drain. When the sheep had stopped struggling, the man cut off the feet first and then the head. He hung the sheep on one of the hooks and proceeded to skin the sheep. The meat was then cut up; presumably the man was a butcher or at least had an understanding of how to divide up the meat properly.

    In an attempt to better understand the significance of this sacrifice, I will relate the following story that took place during the same year. The three-year-old niece of a friend had been very ill; her family went to church and promised that if the girl recovered, they would sacrifice a sheep on her next birthday. She did recover, and I was present at her fourth birthday party. At this party, we were served mutton; her grandmother told me that this meat was from a sheep that they had sacrificed. My friend then told me the entire story, and indicated that it was common for a family that has sacrificed an animal to take at least some of the meat home and prepare it for a special meal .

    The French-Armenian magazine Nouvelles d'Armenie published pictures of a similar sacrifice, in honor of the release of Vahan Hovannisian, a member of the formerly outlawed Dashnaktsutyun party, from prison. The photographs, taken by Max Sivaslian, show a lamb being beheaded and Vahan Hovannissian having blood smeared on his forehead in the shape of a cross, being embraced by his friends."

    But you will close your eyes in your bigotry.

    "Blood smeared on his forehead on the shape of a cross"

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  5. By the way, what about animal sacrifice and genital mutilation - on both sexes - under the auspices of the Eritrean Orthodox Church.

    You will look away again.

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  6. That's not the Church, it's just something that they have carried over from their pagan pasts. I know the theology of these things inside out.

    Poor, dear, sweet BDJ...

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  7. Like the kourbània in certain Greek villages, Armenian sacrifices are either pagan or possibly Jewish in origin, with the local saint replacing the local god in the Greek case. They are wholly alien to Christian theology, whereas animal sacrifice is integral to Islam.

    In any case, what does it matter? David's point is that animal scarifice is unacceptable here, like polygamy, genital mutilation, and so on.

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  8. The point is that David is trying to smear Islam with these practices.

    He is inferring that female genital mutilation is a matter of routine in muslim communities rather than in some parts of the muslim world. And he fails to mention that it is practiced by Christians and others in the region where the revolting practice is popular.

    As for routine genital mutilation in the UK, it was the practice in the late 60's/early 70's to circumcise all boys unless their parents objected. It stopped.

    In the States however it continued and has continued to do so. Around 70% of American men, regardless of race or creed are "cut".

    As for pagan rituals, I presume you will not be marking Christmas next month since it was plonked there to take over from various pagan festivals.

    Animal sacrifice - as mentioned earlier, there is little difference in the method of producing kosha and halal meat. That is why both practices are banned in Sweden and the meat has to be imported.

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  9. Is Thaddeus says, it doesn't matter who does it. They shouldn't.

    No, neither Christmas as such nor anything culturally do with it has anything whatever to do with paganism. I normally write on that one nearer the time.

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  10. Break Dancing Jesus25 November 2009 at 12:41

    Thaddeus - another of your moronic sock puppets. Do you have any friends?

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  11. Rather more than you have, of course...

    I know that the Thaddeus/Armenia connection is lost on BDJ; I mean, puh-lease!. But Thaddeus, "kourbània" is of course Hellenised Hebrew. Is it from the Septuagint? Is the practice of Jewish origin? Can anyone elaborate?

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