ISLAM WINS BY FAILING.

By Paul Merkley.

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One giant clue to the future of us all is bound up in the accredited fact that the world’s Muslim population is growing  twice as rapidly as its non-Muslim population.

History presents many examples of a Muslim minority growing to become a majority within the same boundaries. A current case is Nigeria. With a population of just under two hundred million, it is   the largest country in Africa, and is in fact the seventh largest country by population in the world. Also, according to the Pew Research Center, Nigeria, with more than 80 million Christians, has the largest Christian population on the African continent. Now, set that statistic  side by-side-wide wit this one: “there were more recorded killings of Christians due to their faith in northern Nigeria in 2015 than in the rest of the world put together.” Thus we see a real statistical possibility that Nigeria will become a Muslim nation by 2050 and the method by which that will be accomplished will be the method recommended by Muhammad and adopted by his followers on the day after Muhammad died: conversion by violent force and the menace of death by the sword.

Yes, there is the sword. And there is the cradle. Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate: an average of 3.1 children per woman—well above replacement level (2.1.) Globally again, Christians are second in this matter, at 2.7 children per woman. The global average for all groups distinguished by the population experts is 2.5. Groups having fertility levels lower than this number will require converts to sustain their present numbers.

The fastest-growing religions today are Islam (1.8% per annum, from a very large base), Baha’I (1.7%, from a very small base), Sikhism, Jainism, and Hinduism (all about 1.5%, from a  very large base), and Christianity (1.3%, from a base calculated to include nearly 1\3 of the world’s population.) Thus, while the reproductive rate of Muslims is increasing, the reproductive rate of Christians and all others is declining.

Two scholarly predictions in particular might be noticed: If current trends continue, by 2050 the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world, while in Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population. In the United States, Muslims will be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion (the group presently reckoned as belonging to the largest non-Christian religion.)

There were approximately 19 million Muslims in the European Union in 2010 (about 3.8%). This number is increasing, owing to immigration and higher birth rates. Muslim women today have an average of 2.2 children compared to an estimated average of 1.5 children for non-Muslim women in Europe. At this rate,

Muslims will make up more than 10% of the total population in 10 European countries including Russia (14.4%), France (10.3%) and Belgium (10.2%).

Both In Britain and in France, conversions of nominal Christians to Islam  have doubled in the past quarter century. At the same time, it is equally important to notice that the best studies estimate that significantly more people have converted from Islam to Christianity in the 21st century than at any other point in Islamic history, while the numbers of those who have moved from Islam to “no religion” are also increasing.

In Europe, the debate over immigration has caused drastic reduction of voter support for all of the political parties which participated in the Governments of Europe that welcomed the mass migration of 2011 and following. New “Populist” – that is, anti –Immigrant –parties are now participating in government.

The fantasy of “liberal” or “progressive” Islam, inspired by the Arab Spring of 2011, has dissolved, without a trace, while the menace of Islamic terrorism has been repeatedly validated. Young men have sworn allegiance to the country that has welcomed them and even given them citizenship and have then left the country to pick up training in terror in North Africa or the Middle East – and have then returned and left again and returned again without hindrance.

At the same time, politics in Central Europe, where attitudes towards immigration were already hostile four years ago, has confirmed in power the politicians who stood against “liberalizing” immigration so that Eastern Europe could be seen as matching in “humanity” Western Europe.

East European people are being criticized by more “progressive” Western nations for not wanting to take in Muslim refugees. Chief among them is Hungary, where recent politics has been dominated by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.  Because he stands publicly for the  policy of restricting immigration of Muslims to Hungary – and because he does so in the name of “preserving  its Christian identity,” Orbán  is tarred as “xenophobic.”

According to  Prime Minister Orbán:

We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see….

Orbán makes frequent reference to Islam’s fateful conquest and occupation of Hungary from 1541 to 1699.  Then, Islamic triumphalism and persecution of Christians were the order of the day.

Our Western editorialists are vague about this story. In an article titled “Hungary has been shamed by Viktor Orbán’s government,” the Guardian mocks and trivializes the prime minister’s position:

The Ottoman empire is striking back, [Orbán] warns. They’re taking over! Hungary will never be the same again!

The Washington Post acknowledges that Hungary was occupied by the Ottomans, way back when, but ponders: “it’s somewhat bizarre to think this rather distant past of warlords and rival empires ought to influence how a 21st century nation addresses the needs of refugees.”

It is not edifying to notice how ruthlessly currently- eminent commentators in our midst dismiss appeal to History – not only in the present case but as a general rule. This contempt for history is the largest factor explaining the incompetence of the minds who dominate our media.

Of course, it matters that Central Europe and much of Eastern Europe and the Slavic world were once conquered by Islam, and for the most part, were enslaved by that religion for several centuries until their native rulers rallied the people whom they ruled behind promise of restoring Christianity to their daily lives and drove Islam out of Europe—hopefully for ever.

As for the canard that Orbán is a closet anti –Semite, the best  rejoinder is  Orban’s address to the World Jewish Congress Orbán  opening address to the World Jewish Congress earlier this year.  http://www.mfa.gov.hu /World+Jewish+Congress.]

Is it truly alarmist, as our media masters claim, to speak of Islam’s slow march to majority position in our part of the world?

Fr. Daniel Byantoro, an Indonesian convert to Christianity, has summed up for Western readers the story of Islam’s place in the history of Indonesia.

For thousands of years my country (Indonesia) was a Hindu Buddhist kingdom.  The last Hindu king was kind enough to give a tax exempt property for the first Muslim missionary to live and to preach his religion. Slowly the followers of the new religion were growing, and after they became so strong the kingdom was attacked, those who refused to become Muslims had to flee for their life… Slowly from the Hindu Buddhist Kingdom, Indonesia became the largest Islamic country in the world. If there is any lesson to be learnt by Americans at all, the history of my country is worth pondering upon.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260119/muslim-refugees-and-terrorism-america-daniel-greenfield

The underlying reality behind this trahison des clercs is that our elites long ago turned their backs on Christianity and Judaism  faith. Reference to the historical faith has been expunged from the curriculum – except for stories illustrating our persecution of aboriginal peoples and our liquidation of the ancient wisdom of aboriginal people. This multi-generational policy has laid the foundation of contempt for Christian heritage

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are in flight today from the historical and present ravages of Islam. They are the latest victims of Islam’s incapability to provide the bases for decent civil government. No one ever asks: Why is such traffic one-way? Why are there never masses of Americans, Brits, Europeans flooding into the countries of the East?

It is the incompetence of Islam that explains the flight of Muslim masses from Africa and from Middle East–   and which, incidentally, creates the opportunity for expressions of philanthropic concern that are concocted without reference to the fact of Islam’s incompetence.

Before ISIS had been purged from Iraq, Iraq had lost 80-90% of its Christian population. The city of Baghdad, which had held 600,000 Christians about a century ago, now held only 150,000.

Many ancient Christian churches as well as hundreds of Christian homes had been razed in Mosul, previously an area of major Christian concentration. None of the persons and organizations whom these Christians had hoped to hear express outrage at their condition uttered a peep. In large part, this is because our governments and other authorities, not wishing to appear unaware of the great crime of colonialism, had bought into the canard that churches in then East are the products of missionaries. Of course, they are not! in fact, most of the Eastern churches were in place at least a millennium before the Protestant Reformation happened.

Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II – a priest of one of those indigenous Eastern Churches – says now that there is a “real danger” that Christianity could just become a “museum” in the Middle East.

Only the Government of Hungary, among all the governments of Europe, has committed itself to action for the salvation of Iraqi Christianity from genocide. This it has done by opening a school for displaced Christians in Erbil, Hungary’s Minister of Human Resources, Zoltan Balog, attended the event.

This act provides a powerful clue to what makes Hungary’s official behavior so different from that of other European governments. And that, in turn, provides a power clue to why  Hungary is so routinely despised by our opinion elites.

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WHAT I OWE TO ZIONISM.

By Paul Merkley.

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One day in the early Spring of 1979 there appeared an item on the Department of History of Carleton University bulletin board (just a few steps down from my splendid and spacious office), drawing attention to a forthcoming teaching exchange, open to my University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Just imagine! Me and Gwen and our four children living in Jerusalem, our accommodation paid for by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University – in exchange for a little lecturing on favorite topics!

It came completely out of the blue!  Gwen signed on after minimal discussion, and the children, ranging from six years old to 18, seemed keen – or at least, they pretended to be. Gwen quickly set to the herculean effort of getting six of us packed and organized. Each of us would be allowed one suitcase, for six months! If we forget Amy’s stuffed animal toy (Sylvester) it would be the end of the world. We would have to find  an English or French-language school in Jerusalem that was open to a Canadian child at Grade One level. We would have to get passports and medical records for all six of us. If we failed to get Michele enrolled as an exchange student at Hebrew University; if we could not work out the procedure for Sharon and for Bob to fulfil in Jerusalem the requirements for their High School year here at home — it would all fall apart.

I had originally assumed that there would be many candidates, and that my candidacy would likely be the least attractive to the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University. But already the chilly effect of anti-Zionism was closing down reason in  all of the professional organizations and the chattering class, so that the thought of living in the Jewish State had little lustre – I mean, in comparison with Italy or Spain or Germany. Non-Jewish candidates like ourselves were a special rarity.

In fact, all four of my children, as well as their mother, came away from our semester in Jerusalem with at least a rudimentary  understanding of the Jewish legacy and a strong commitment to honoring the Jewish people.

Years later, I learned that the field of contestants for that exchange visit in 1980 came down to me! The low prestige of Zionism among academics was already being born out by hassles that take place, year after year, in the various professional and academic associations, where Resolutions of denunciation of Israel for its alleged ongoing crimes against the “Palestinian people” and measures intended to make sure that the members of the various associations never have to break bread with visiting Israelis.

Seeking the company of Zionists is considered very poor form by those who provide direction in the company of academics and intellectuals today. Back in the days of my active teaching at Carleton University, I would make my way every day past an array of fierce anti-Zionist propaganda, contributed by the Student Council and affiliated Arab and Muslim advocacy groups. I cannot say that my vocal Zionism has de-railed my career. But it certainly has not helped it.

As for me, that semester began forty years of steadily deepening commitment to the study of Judaism and the History of the Jews.  I have subsequently undertaken ten trips in all back to Israel – mainly to the visit the Central Zionist Archives. Three scholarly-academic books eventually came out of this research.

All of this immersion and re-immersion  in the History of Israel and in the present State of Israel has simultaneously strengthened my Christian faith. It led me, about two decades after my initial visit, to active membership in the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, which  vigorously advocates on behalf of Israel in the churches. Meanwhile the leaders of the so-called called “mainline” churches have been slipping deeper and deeper into pro- “Palestinian ” advocacy – a hegira that inevitably undoes the commitment to history, to theology and  to truth.

Immersion in the History of Israel should not be undertaken lightly. It is extremely difficult to concentrate the minds of European and American and Canadian and British historians on the simple but powerful fact of the immensity of the History of Zion. There are, for example,  roughly three-and-a-half-millennia more History packed into the History of Israel than there is in the distinguished History from which Canada emerges!

We Christians cannot hope to understand the Jewish identity unless we at least make an effort to sort out the story of the Ancient Egyptians, the Ancient Akkadians, the Ancient Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans,  as well as a succession of Islamic Empires and the British Empire.

And then there is the story of the Creation of the State of Israel, Seventy Years Ago this May.

Quite apart from this matter of the longevity of the record of Israel, there is the simple fact that the History of Zionism carries us right down to the present day. It is full to bursting of the biographies of incredibly heroic men who  committed their entire lives to a cause that was generally regarded as hopeless in their own time. I think of Theodor Herzl, who said of his commitment in 1897 to the impossible programme of Zionism: “He who wants to be right in thirty years must be thought crazy for the first two weeks.” And I think of Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben Gurion and the other giants who dominate Israel’s public life in our own time. Heroism on the scale of that which each and every one of these contributed to their Cause is rare at any time and is virtually extinct today – as far as I can see. For this reason alone, I recommend the study of the lives of the major Zionist figures.

The story leading to the establishment of the modern State of Israel is a bright line running through all of recorded History for the last three millennia and more. An understanding of the roots of Zionism takes serious scholars back to Biblical times, when the Jewish people slowly got used to the idea of being a distinct people, separated by God for a particular purpose.

Zionism is the word that correctly describes the process that brought Israel back to existence as a nation in 1948 after many centuries of diaspora. Zionism is the correct word for the spirit of loyalty that has sustained her ever since, despite her patently impossible situation, surrounded by an utterly hostile world which Jews are not permitted to enter.

Working on the story of Zionism is not a matter for the faint of heart. “Zionism” is there in the earlies books of tanaach – Hebrew Scripture. It is the force that gives meaning to the disjointed troubles of the Patriarchs. It is the Cause to which the LORD calls David and the Prophets. It sustained the People of God thereafter through three millennia of challenges. And in my own lifetime it has issued in the re-establishment of the People of Israel in eretz Israel – where their history began.

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VARIOUS DEGREES OF BLASPHEMY.

By Paul Merkley.

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Two recent news items shed light upon the present state of prestige of the Christian faith in   our part of the world.

The first is an item about an ice cream company in Toronto and the part it is playing in the long-standing public campaign to deprive Christian faith of all dignity so that people can feel free to dismiss it altogether.

The second is a news item about the recent death and the solemn all-hands-on funeral at Cambridge’s   prestigious Cathedral of a greatly-admired man who publicly proclaimed contempt for Christian faith.

Some Things Are Not Funny.

NEWS ITEM: “Sweet Jesus ice cream parlour faces

backlash over name,” Toronto Star, March 25, 2018.

Powerful proof of the low estate to which the symbols belonging to Christian faith have fallen is the story of a Toronto of ice-cream company with many branches which calls itself Sweet Jesus For Life www.sweetjesus4life.com. This outfit has come to life so swiftly that nobody seems to have seen it coming, and so the  fact that there  is now a very large petition campaign to get it to cease and desist from its blasphemy has only just caught up to Toronto’s news media.

Everything about this controversy calls out the instinct for frivolity that lies close to the surface in every mind whose thinking-processes have been  flushed away by constant commercial advertizing. In some of the advertising of the Sweet Jesus Ice Cream company we find the familiar scene of a nativity in a manger — with an ice cream cone in the place of the Infant Jesus.

Some thoughtful people are calling upon Christians to “boycott” the Sweet Jesus Ice Cream parlour and its products company https://lifepetitions.com/petition/blasphemous-sweet-jesus-ice-cream. A worthy course of action, but can we not agree that calling upon Christians to “boycott” is superfluous? Any alert Christian will recognize that just to walk up to the counter and utter the name on that menu is gross blasphemy.

What is truly distressing is that the makers of this product are calculating that the number of people who despise Christian faith so greatly outnumber those who cling to it, that getting a giggle out of Christ is a financial winner.  Who can say that they are wrong? But the thought does occur: would they dare put the name of Prophet Muhammad in place of Baby Jesus? They would be dead before sundown.

Open mockery of my faith, the declared but nominal faith of a majority of Canadians, is a proven winner in the marketplace.  In recent interviews, the morons who own the Sweet Jesus Ice company claim that it could not occur to anyone that blasphemy is mockery and that a price should be paid for mocking the name of Jesus in this knuckle-dragging public way. These mockers know that it is hate speech and likewise know that nobody cares. We have  got to the point where getting a giggle out of the baby Jesus will promote sales.

Asking Christians to boycott this blasphemous commerce should be a no-brainer. The mere act of standing up to the counter and asking for this product requires standing with the mockers of Christ – just for the sake of an ice-cream treat.  Has it really come to this?

The Death of A Champion of Atheism.

But then – if nobody cares anymore about what is said and done with the elements of our faith, why is it that people revert to the repertoire of Christian faith and approach the professional  clergy for their services and for the use of their buildings when it comes time to bury atheists?

This thought occurs as I read the news-item about the elaborate funeral held last week for Stephen Hawkin, a prominent champion of atheism, in the Cathedral Church at Cambridge University. There was a procession into the church, complete with senior Anglican clergy in full costumes. Inside, a Christian religious service was officiated by the Rev. Cally Hammond, the Dean of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University. There was organ music and hymns, including He Who Would Valiant Be, Sleep Fleshly Birth, and Jerusalem.

According to the New York Times,

Now Stephen Hawkin, the English cosmologist and black hole maven who died last week, and Sir Isaac Newton, the Englishman who founded modern physics, will rest together for eternity, or at least for its practical equivalent: the lifetime of the stones that make up Westminster Abbey in London.

Are these words  meant to be profound?  Or are they meant for a giggle? Or does anybody understand the difference anymore?

But really this is just blather –totally void of meaning. It does not rise to the level of blasphemy, I suggest a new word: sub-blasphemy – which I will define as blather struggling to rise to the level of blasphemy and failing.

At the funeral, there were testimonies, of course, to Hawkin’s contributions to the deepest science.  The vast majority of people who cannot get their minds around quantum physics or cosmology but who think that, being educated, they ought  to, depend upon the integrity of a very tiny company of people who do understand it (or say that they do) for the verdict that a great work was done by this brilliant man. The rest of us just take as given the judgment about the man’s brilliance and the related judgment about the meaning of this esoteric study. We trust that they are right and that no great consequences will ensue if they are not..

But among other complications is the fact that the great scientist paraded his scientific discovery as proof of the idiocy of believing in God.

According to the New York Times:

Hawkin became one of the world’s best-known and most inspiring scientists, known for his brilliance and his wit. [Hawkin’s] work focused on bringing together relativity — the nature of space and time — and quantum theory — how the smallest particles behave — to explain the creation of the Universe and how it is governed. He discovered that black holes, the fearsome hungry pits of bottomless gravity, were not final death but would leak and radiate, eventually exploding, recycling matter and energy in ways that still challenge physicists’  understanding.

Then comes this thought:

You didn’t need to understand the mathematics to grasp the notion of gaping maws sitting at the bottoms of galaxies or at the end of time, or the six-foot-deep hole with your own name on it.

If you will believe that that means anything, then you will believe anything.

Again, the New York Times:

It is hard not to perceive, peeking out from behind the math and inscrutable space-time diagrams on which this debate takes place, the need and desire of all humans for some kind of reassurance that death be not final, that something is left behind.

For himself, Hawkins has said:

We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

While clearly meant to be profound, these words are simple blather – totally void of any fungible meaning. Because it is so vague, it does not rise to the level of blasphemy, however. I suggest a word: sub-blasphemy.

But look again at those hymns:

He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster, Let him in constancy follow the Master. There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim ….

Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit, We know we at the end, shall life inherit. Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say, I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

Nothing evasive or vague here.  Let’s pray that whatever friend or relative set upon this text as appropriate for singing at the funeral of this courageous man saw something in him that contradicted his professed atheism –something that he withheld from the world.

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