Dear atheist

My wife was watching a video on her new smart phone the other day and from a distance I heard some of its text. So I jokingly yelled at her: ‘you’re not watching evangelical propaganda are you?’ Much to my surprise she wasn’t. It was this video:

Every time I find atheist propaganda, I can’t but sigh and think of Dostoyevsky’s dictum: ‘When I discuss faith with an unbeliever, he’s talking about something else.’ Still, as the Dutch protestant theologist Miskotte said: ‘Atheists are our natural allies, because they ask the right questions’ and at least some questions posed in te video are worth answering. So here I go…

Dear believer, have you ever stopped to consider why you believe what you believe? Have you ever thought about why you chose the religion you chose? Why do you believe in Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal salvation and not in karma, or reincarnation? Why do you believe that Allah is the one true God and Mohammed is His prophet and not in the four noble truths of the Buddha? Why do you hold the Thorah as the only revealed word of God and not the Baghavat Gita?

I’m perfectly happy to explain to you why I married my wife. I’m also perfectly happy that I’ve never been required to explain why I did not marry the 3,5 billion other women in the world.
In fact I do not expect anyone to oblige me to explain my choices – of spouse, of profession, of breakfast cereal even – in terms of an exhaustive list of reasons for excluding every conceivable alternative.
No Samaritan should be required to explain his rejection of the Baghavat Gita and all other holy writs in favour of the Thorah, before being taken seriously. Nor should any Muslim be compelled to first convincingly reject Buddha and all other religious founders before his viewing Muhammad as Gods prophet can be discussed.
Flooding people with an exhaustive list of alternatives to tackle first is – at best – an obsessive deviation and – at worst – a dishonest trick. In my language there’s a proverb for this: ‘One fool can ask more questions than a thousand wise men can answer.’

Dear believer, do you ever wonder why your heaven resembles a utopian earth and is composed of same base elements found right here on this planet? Do you ever wonder why your dede governs within a power structure that resembles that of the specific time and place in which your holy text was written? Do you ever wonder why your God looks just like you, or the animals with whom you share the planet?

My heaven certainly does not resemble a utopian earth, just as my hell doesn’t resemble a distopian earth, for the simple reason that I have no idea what the afterlife, in whatever form, may look like. I don’t even know whether it can ‘look’ or be ‘like’ anything we know. The same goes for other concepts, like – just to name a random example – God who does not ‘look’, nor is ‘like’ anything. That idea is common to an alarmingly large number of believers of whatever denomination.

Dear believer, is the faith you practice the dominant one within your culture? Do you not find it at least a little suspicious that the overwhelming majority of all religious believers adopt the religion of the society into which they were born, yet remain convinced they’ve locked out or been divinely admitted into the one true faith? Does it not make you at least somewhat apprehensive that allmost every person of faith chooses belief, not because of its virtues, supporting evidence, moral codes or expression of worship, but rather because it was what they were born into? Why out of the abundance of faith choices available does almost every believer on the planet choose the faith that’s within arms reach? Are you a Christian because you were born in America or Europe? A Muslim because you were born in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia? A Buddhist because you were born in Japan or China? A Hindu because you were born in India? Can it be that faith is, in almost every case, just an accident of geography? Do you sincerely believe that had you been born in another country, you’d undoubdedly still be practicing the same faith you now embrace?

And did you know that a vast majority of lovers out of an abundance of choices of partner, choose a spouse from the same country that they were born in? Even if they live in another? Even worse: most of them choose a spouse that speaks the same language, practices the same religion, grew up in the same social class and enjoyed the same level of education. In short: they choose a spouse that is within arms reach. Yet they remain convinced they’ve been – for some of us more or less divinely – admitted into a true and unique relationship. Does it not make you at least somewhat apprehensive that love is – in almost every case – an accident of geography, linguistics, education and social class? Yet the majority of couples live complete and fulfilled lives without ever being sure they’ve chosen the best spouse for themselves.
Most people are born into a religion that they stick to for the rest of their lives, judging by mere labels that is. But during their lives they have to regularly make the choice of remaining in there or changing their faith. Most do change it because they grow up, become adults, gather new life experiences, grow old and gather even more. Changing your faith however hardly ever requires you to change your religion. It depends a bit on the religion: in the white Anglosaxon and protestant corner of the world every disagreement about an iota or comma requires founding a new church, in the Hindu corner of the world, and many others, anything goes.
The point is: those that ultimately do not change their religion discover their faiths virtues, supporting evidence, moral codes and expression of worship in the course of their lives. So it is not correct to say people choose their religion because they were born into it at the exclusion of its virtues, supporting evidence, moral codes and expression of worship. Both are important, decisive even, at varying points in life.

Dear believer, is the faith you practice that of your parents and their parents before them? Is it the first to which you were exposed? Did you know that nearly all religious devotees end up believing what they were taught to believe by their parents? Why is it that we scoff at the idea of labelling a young person a Republican child or a Marxist child or a Keynesian child, understanding he or she lacks the intellectual discrimination, life experience and wisdom to make such a complicated and nuanced decision, but we do not raise so much as an eyebrow when a youngster is referred to as a Christian child? Surely a choice no less complex. Could it be that there’s no such thing as a Muslim child, just a child of Muslim parents?

I could not possibly answer your first question, as the faith of my dad differed vastly from that of my mom and mine again differs a lot from both, although by mere denomination we’re are all three Roman Catholics. So no, even though we share the same label, I did not ‘end up’ believing what my parents taught me to believe and I happen to know neither did they, even though all four of my grandparents shared the same label.
Everyone’s faith changes though life because people – and the world –  change: they grow up and grow old and meanwhile they gather the intellectual discrimination, life experience and wisdom that goes with their age – or so we hope – and faith cannot do anything else but change with that. It doesn’t ‘end up’, not if you look close enough, not if you look past the labels.
We scoff at the idea of calling a child Marxist or Keynesian because it is clearly nonsensical. Most of us get to know Marx and Keynes in our teenage years at the earliest, when our society thinks it’s time for our youngsters to learn about economical theory. But we get to know humanity – or the lack thereof – from the very first day of our lives, maybe even earlier. We get into contact with humanity though the filter that are our parents – in the first place – and our culture at large. Whether we like it or not, this is what defines us. So we rightly do not raise an eyebrow when a child is called Catholic or Muslim just as we do not mind calling it English, Arabic, Catalan or Kurdish or even ‘lower class’ or ‘nobility’.
Making choices with regards to faith is, in essence, as easy as dealing with other people. Adults do it, but kids do it too, both in their own way. It’s not like choosing a Marxist approach to economy, it’s more like choosing to smile. And that decision can be made as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.

Dear believer, you are supremely confident in your faith, you know it is the right one and all others are wrong. You are literally willing to bet your eternal soul on that very fact. And yet, have you ever stopped to consider that there are two dozen major religions and literally thousands of different faiths practiced on this planet? Did you know that within Christianity alone there are more than 45.000 different denominations, each claiming to understand ultimate truth better than all the others? Do you realise that each member of every faith practiced is just as devout, just as sincere and their conviction every bit as sure as yours? Did you know they too read infallible holy texts, have airtight apologetics, have experienced miracles, feel God’s presence, sense His still small voice, obediently follow His perfect will for their lives, love Him indescribably and can defend their belief with the same fervency as you do yours? (armed Israeli soldier pictured here) And yet, since every religion is mutually exclusive and contradicts the others in matters both large and small, they cannot all be right, right? You know, you just know, your faith is the exception and yet, if every member of every faith feels just as you do, what are the odds you’re right?

I am not supremely confident in my faith, nor do I think all other religions are wrong. Only a fundamentalist thinks like that and as everyone who reads a newspaper now and then knows, fundamentalists may be the group that manages to make the largest amount of fuzz, they are also a minority.
Among the 45.000 denominations in Christianity I know of a few that explicitly claim the very opposite of what you claim them to believe. And even on a larger scale you are quite wrong: Christianity – in whatever form – cannot consider Judaism ‘wrong’ by definition. It would undermine their own faith to do so. They can regard Judaism as incomplete, at most, but not as wrong. It’s even worse for Islam which cannot view either Judaism or Christianity as wrong, although here too ‘incomplete’ is an option.
Neither will you find that all Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and other monotheists reject Islam as wrong, and vice versa, for the simple reason that if you both believe in one God, it necessarily has to be the same One.
And with Islam we haven’t seen the end of this. Hinduism has a tendency towards syncretism to such an extent that my teacher of oriental history thought only one definition of a Hindu was valid: a Hindu was anyone who claimed to be a Hindu. Buddhism too turns out to be a religion that in some cases is perfectly compatible with other religions.
Then there are the ethnic religions of which there are many more than global ones. They have no missionary zeal whatsoever and lack any of the claims you describe: their religion is for their own group, and for nobody else. You couldn’t get in there even if you wanted to. They’re usually small and unknown and only get into the news when religious fanatics threaten their existence: Yezidi’s and Mandaeans for example.
Not all religions use holy texts, in fact, the majority doesn’t. And those religions which do use holy texts, do not always hold them to be infallible. They are generally held to be sacred, true, inspired or inspiring, or any combination of those, but infallible holy texts are the hallmark of fundamentalists, again.
And last but not least: when will atheists finally learn that 99.99% of all believers worldwide have never seen a miracle, never felt Gods presence nor ever heard His voice. For the love of God, get over this obsession with the supernatural, will you?

Dear believer, I’ve often been told that my unbelief is a guarantee of missing out on heaven and ending up in hell, but who’s heaven, who’s hell? I’ve often been told that I should – just to be safe – accept God, after all, what have I got to lose? But whose God? Given so many options, aren’t I more likely to choose incorrectly? Might not I be better off wagering on no God rather than on the wrong God? You put it to me: what if you’re wrong? But what if you’re wrong? What if, rather than Jehovah, Allah is the one true God, or Shiva or Wu Tan, or some God on the other side of the planet you’ve never even heard of yet? The truth is, you already know what it’s like to be an atheist in regards to every other faith, but your own. It’s clear to you that adherents to other faiths are mistaken, deluded or deceived. But they think the same of you. The way you view them is exactly the way they view you. Every devout Hindu has embraced his faith for the exact same reasons you have embraced yours, yet you do not find his reasons compelling, nor do you lose sleep at night, fearing that if you die, you’ll wake up in his hell. Given this, is it so hard to see why some of us just take our atheism one God further?

This is an easy one. See, the point is – to complicate matters further – you don’t have to choose among the many available religions, you can come up with your own faith. In fact: you have no other choice. Because the answer to your question: ‘whose God?’ is: ‘your God’ and the same goes for heaven and hell. As long as you stick to that you cannot go wrong, even if you are. There must be things, principles, values in your life that you hold sacred, maybe not in a religious sense, but still: you hold them to be somehow sacrosanct. Without them life as you see it would be hell (but not in a religious sense necessarily), with them, it could become heaven (ditto). And they may not be arguable or supported by empirical evidence or battle proven, but still, you prefer them over anything else. They may be as simple and irrational as ‘always be kind’, ‘if in doubt, choose life’ or ‘as long as it liberates people, it’s ok’.
If that eventually means you’ll be an atheist, chapeau to you, because it is always preferable to be a good atheist than a bad Amish, or any of the other 45.000 denominations.
The only thing I hope you’ll not end up with, is thinking that all others are mistaken, deluded or deceived, because that’s not what believers think, it’s what a fundamentalist thinks, or Richard Dawkins.

Dear believer, I wonder if religions aren’t just ancient constructs in which early humans attempted to both explain and control the chaotic world around them. Though irrational in content, their emergence certainly isn’t. We do not blame our ancestors for inventing religion. There is no shame whatsoever in stumbling when you are blind or failing to properly construct a puzzle in the dark. But we no longer live in the dark. Science is ablaze in our world and illuminates our way, dissipating shadows and exposing even the deepest of crevasses. We no longer live in a cave, we have crossed the valley, scaled the mountains and have begun to make out the magnifcent vista on the other side. We no longer require comforting stories to make us feel safe or valued. Is it not time that our beliefs match our discoveries? Is it not time that our ideas reflect our new perspective? There is equal, if not greater awe in reality than there is in fantasy. Perhaps it is time to stop telling ourselves that we are the reason the universe was made, that our culture is somehow better than other cultures, that our tribe was chosen over all other tribes (pictures of orthodox Jews here). It is time to learn how the universe really is, even if that deflates our conceits, wounds our pride, humbles our point of view and forces us to admit that we do not have all the answers.

Some religions may have originated that way, specifically the ones we tend to label ‘pagan’. But – contrary to a widespread misunderstanding – early humans were smart enough to realise that they really were not capable to control the chaotic world around them by whatever means. It took a bit longer to discover that the explanation part was just as impossible, but still, we found that out too.
As a result, most of the major religions on the planet developed into beliefs that were anything but comforting and reassuring. It questioned our deepest religious convictions and practices. It introduced us to uncomfortable concepts like human inadequacy, guilt, obligations and prohibitions. It taught us annoying things like law and obedience and just when we had gotten the message and had settled into our new habit, it taught us to question the Lawgiver and the value of disobedience. It also taught us to question our ideas about superiority, of our tribe, of our religion, our culture, even of ourselves. Most of all, it taught us the rather unpleasant idea that we might still be living in the dark, despite all the mountaineering metaphores.
Sure, we know about the beginning of the universe, but that does not help us to say sorry to our spouses. We can split an atom, but we cannot end a war. We can put a man on the moon, but we cannot end homelessness. And when our fellow man is dying, we are just as speechless and helpless as early humans were. For all our knowlegde and enlightenment, we still stumble as often as ancient man and we still suck at solving the puzzles life confronts us with.
Deflating our conceits, wounding our pride, humbling our point of view and forcing us to admit that we do not have all the answers; really, it was religion that got there first.

Believer, if you honestly value the truth of all things as you claim, as I truely know you do, you must confront these fundamental questions, ‘far better’, Carl Sagan said, ‘to embrace a hard truth than a reassuring fable.’

That, however, is not the choice: it’s between a reassuring truth and a hard fable. The faithful aim higher than mere reality.

Dear atheist, do you ever wonder why you get told by believers that you think like a fundamentalist? Do you not find it at least a little suspicious that this keeps popping up from people of various walks of faith? Because I know, I just know this has happened to you and if it didn’t, it should have.

In my answers above I’ve referred frequently to fundamentalists and I mentioned ‘white, Anglosaxon and Protestant’, because when listening from afar to your video I picked up texts that gave me these clues. The clues that at first made me think my wife was watching some televangelist.

In the way you adress us in your video, you sketch a picture of believers who hold their own ideas as the only correct ones, as the best possible understanding of the Truth at the exclusion of all other ways of understanding. You assume people of faith are supremely confident, would even bet their eternal souls on being right, and regard those who differ from them as mistaken, deluded or even deceived and destined for a rather unpleasant hereafter. You talk about the inerrant holy scriptures we have and the infallible truths we hold. But these are characteristics of just one tiny corner in the vast and caleidoscopic world of faith. It’s the corner roughly indicated by my clues I mentioned earlier: white, Anglosaxon, Protestant and fundamentalist.

Out there, in the real world, not all religions have gods or a God. Not all religions consider themselves revealed by the God or gods they believe in. Relatively few religions know a hereafter, let alone a heaven, even fewer know hell and those that do have a hell, don’t necessarily believe there’s anyone in it. Not all religions consider themselves infallible or their holy writ inerrant, if they even have a scripture. Only among white, Protestant fundamentalists will you find people who believe that their only true God condemns the souls of those who do not believe exactly what – according to them – is written in their inerrant holy scripture to an eternal stay in hell.

Outside of that cramped and noisy corner, you will find believers who are not so sure about their faith, who shrug at even thinking about the possibility that others might be barred from going to heaven for holding different convictions. Away from the bigots, wou will find Catholic parents who find peace with the conversion of their children, because it is better to be a good Muslim than a bad Catholic. You will find Muslims who’ll tell you they are Muslims, even though they do not believe the Koran, Protestant pastors that subscribe to atheism and are not barred from preaching in their churches. Away from the world that knows of no other shades than black and white, Hindu guru’s have no trouble preaching Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and even evangelical Christians still knock on wood.

Dear atheist, has it ever occured to you that your atheism is remarkably similar to your idea of what ‘faith’ is, with just one tiny difference: the word ‘not’? Might it be that you are actually – and maybe even for good reasons – criticising and rejecting a faith that is within your arms reach? Is the idea of religion you reject that of your parents? Have your dealings with believers been limited mainly to missionary televangelists, protestant fundamentalists or born-again Christians? Could it be that you idea of what faith is, was shaped by the outliers from the religious population?

Or do you find the world of faith away from where right is right and wrong is wrong too imprecise, too unclear, too blurred or fuzzy to have a meaningful discussion about it? Is grey too nuanced a shade for you to talk with those for whom black is never as dark as it can be, and white an unattainable form of purity? Because in the world of faith it is possible to find believers who are able to recogise thruth in a statement they consider wrong, and vice versa, people who – like the poet – manage to lie the truth. In the world of faith you’ll find paradoxes, contradictions and mysteries, people who’ll talk about their deepest thoughts not in terms of mathematical proofs, but in the stammer of people who are in love and basically incapable to express their feelings with the adequacy you seem to long for.

Dear atheist, all over the world you’ll be able to find believers who see that there’s more to be said for atheism even though they do not share your views completely. Believers who consider atheism a reasonable choice people can make, without seeing you as mistaken, deceived, deluded or hell-bound. Believers who still see you primarily as a fellow human being with whom they might have more in common that they’d expect.

It is those faithfull you might want to adress and listen too. As you so eloquently said: there’s a whole valley out there, beyond the cave.

I can’t breathe

There’s been quite some upheaval in the US recently as a result of the killing of black people by white policemen, who subsequently do not get punished. I am not familiar enough with the cases themselves to have an opinion, but I did see the video that featured Eric Garners last minutes in this life. Something struck me that seems to have gotten less attention than it deserves.

The point that Eric Garner was the victim of racist violence may or may not be warranted, I simply do not know. But from watching the video it struck me that he is in any case the victim of unnecessary violence. It seems to me be another structural problem for the police in the US.

I’ll try to disregard the way US police is depicted in film and on TV, that may be an exaggeration of real life. But judging from what Americans have told me about attitudes of their police, and the attitudes of US civilians towards their police, it seems to me these attitudes are prone to cause violence of an unnecessary nature.

US policemen – I am generalising now for the sake of clarity – seem to expect that civilians obediently follow their instructions, without questioning. If that doesn’t happen, discussion is not what follows, but coercion. I’m not going to claim that my country does not know police violence, it does, but whenever I’ve seen our police handle ‘situations’, I’ve always been impressed by their tenacity in trying to solve the problem by discussion. I’ve never seen that happen in the US, nor heard about it.

I’ve seen the same tenacity depicted in US films, in hostage-situations or other occurences where the suspect had a position of power over the police. Where the police – in other words – had no other choice but to negociate. Again, I’m not sure whether these films reflect real life, but the fact that it’s depicted means that the concept of negociating between police and civilians is known.

Yet from what I know first-hand about US culture that concept is not applied with the same diligence as over here. I think this is a second, nay first, problem that needs to be solved.

Funny searches (2)

Time for an update on searches that get you to this blog. It seems the funny ones are less frequent nowadays, so let’s also have a look at the big-time hitters.

Sharia law, punishments, stealing

Several search-entries that got viewers to this blog have to do with sharia law, punishments in general or the punishment for stealing. They were all referred to this post about a picture of a child street artist who has his arm run over by a car without getting hurt. The picture is recycled on the internet by people who falsly claim the kid is being punished for stealing under sharia law in Iran and will never be able to use his arm again. It’s not Iran, it’s not the punishment for stealing, it’s not sharia law and the kid escapes unscathed (as planned), but that doesn’t prevent these people from lying to the world.

Geert Wilders

This infamous, virulently anti-islamic and by far the most untrustworthy Dutch politician is the subject of some of my posts, but it is not a big subject on this blog. Still, viewers get here to these posts by various search terms referring to said politician.

Inarah group

A fair amount of viewers were looking for information on this research group from Germany, that specialises in revisionist views on the origins of islam and seems to have gone off track. It’s explained here.

(Square) Kufic, Arabic calligraphy

The most favorite subject among my posts, even though only one actually deals with it.

Hijazi, old qur’an manuscripts

I blog regularly about old qur’an manuscripts, Hijazi being one of the styles in which these are written.

Hijazi women nude

I guess it’s a by-product of my blogging about old qur’anic manuscripts, so I’m really curious to which post this viewer, who was clearly looking for something else, was directed.

Canis lupus sapiens

The wise wolf? Seriously: people got to my blog by searching for this. It baffles me why…

Fucker photo 2010

This one may sound like someone who was looking for pornography and strayed to my blog. Actually it does get you to a totally different subject: my post about a World Press Photo picture from 2010 featuring some young jewish colonist on the West Bank throwing wine at a older Palestinian woman. The title of the post is the Ignorant Little Fucker.

 

Atheism & Christianity

A long time ago my mom told me a story that had reputedly happened in a concentration camp. Prisoners were forced to watch the hanging of a man. But he was too light and the hanging didn’t work quick enough. The prisoners were forced to watch the poor fellow die slowly for the better part of an hour. While the man was still writhing, someone asked aloud: ‘Where is God now?’, and a voice from the back of the group of prisoners answered: ‘He’s hanging there, on the gallows.’

My mom told me this to illustrate a central point in Christianity: God suffers with those who suffer, quite literally. Whatever you do to your fellow-man, you do to God. Basically she told us a Midrash on Mat 24:40 and Mat 24:45. The story always impressed me, because it makes God so very human and because with an idea like this, you don’t need follies like voluntarism, or hollow phrases about God’s ways not being ours (a gross misinterpretation of Isa 55:8 by the way) to explain it all away.

More importantly, if my mom’s exposition were correct, then the idea of the incarnation was something far more magnificent than what I had hitherto understood about Christianity. ‘Magnificent’, however being a totally wrong choice of word. Compared to this Nietzsche‘s Umwertung aller Werte was just child’s play. Ever since my mom told me this story, I’ve considered the Christian idea of the incarnation a brilliant one.

It took me years until I finally found the original source of the story. It’s a passage from Eli Wiesel‘s Night, a book I consider required reading for everyone. The story is different in its details:

One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains – and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel.
The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him.
This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him.
The three victims mounted together onto the chairs.
The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses.
‘Long live liberty!’ cried the two adults.
But the child was silent.
‘Where is God? Where is He?’ someone behind me asked.
At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.
Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon the sun was setting.
‘Bare your heads!’ yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping.
‘Cover your heads!’
Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive…
For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.
Behind me I heard the same man asking”
‘Where is God now?’
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
‘Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows…’

The story is also very different in its intent. It does not show from this particular passage, but from what Eli Wiesel writes in the rest of Night, it is clear that this was one of the key events that turned him into an atheist. My mom had heard a rendering of the story that had been Christianised to the bone. The last quoted line above was definitely not ment as a confession of (Christian) faith, rather the very opposite!

Still, I think Wiesel – or my  mom – made a valid point about Christianity: where there is no humanity, God is dead, truly dead. ‘Truly dead’ in the exact same sense in which Christians confess that Christ is ‘truly God and truly man’.

I found this post- some four years old – among my many unpublished drafts, and thought I might as well post it…

Nobel prize 2013

It’s a run race if you ask me…

But apart from that I want to draw attention to the speech itself, it is smart, very smart indeed, well written (text here) and very well delivered.

Malala starts her speech with the bismillah – which is a normal thing to do for Muslims – but she does it with ever so slight emphasis. She carefully and slowly recites the Arabic formula and then translates it into English. By doing so she not only presents herself as a believing Muslim, she also emphasises the prime qualities of the God she believes in: the most benificent, the most merciful.

Malala emphasises that Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood, that it requires its adherents to get education for their children. Conversely she accuses those opposing education for all to misuse Islam for their own personal benefit. This way she claims Islam for herself: it’s hers, not the Talibans, it backs her up and what she does is Islamic to the core.

Just before that, she poses four important concepts that guide her: compassion, change, non-voilence and forgiveness. With all she mentions her inspirators. Mohammed, Jesus and Buddha stand for compassion, change she was taught by Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and for non-violence she looks towards Gandhiji, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa. These nine inspirators – not counting her parents, whom she mentions with ‘forgiveness’ – come from various walks of life,  different nations and diverse religions.

This way she positions herself very much as a global citizen, as an heir to various religious and social traditions. On a smaller scale, by mentioning Jinnah and Bacha Khan, she also does not neglect the fact that she is a daughter of Pakistan and the links she has to Pashtun culture.

Her hopes and aspirations – in other words – are the hopes and aspirations of all: not just people of all religions and nations, but even God.

Dear Mr. Erdogan

May I be so bold to suggest an answer in response to your rhetorical question whether you should kneel to the protesters in Taksim Square (and other places)?

Without wanting to belittle your own personal achievements in politics, I would point out that greater politicians than you have done it, so why not you?

It would not end the protests. It would not solve any of Turkey’s problems. It would not even solve any problem any Turk might have. It would change nothing in Turkish politics of society. It would not even change or solve anything at all.

But it would do you a world of good. You personally. Seriously.

Timbuktu

An old Quran from Timbuktu: the beginning of the first chapter of the Quran, written in Maghribi script and featuring the recitation of imam Warsh, which differs slightly from Qurans that are mostly used nowadays.

It seems we can sigh with relief: most of the old and invaluable manuscripts in the Timbuktu libraries seem to be safe. The rescue operation was already on it’s way last january. At this stage however nobody can mention any figures, so our sigh should not be too big yet. The manuscripts that are now missing, may actually not have been burned, but looted for trade. That is bad news of course, but at least they’re not totally lost for posterity.

Still, some burning of manuscripts seems to have taken place. If it weren’t for the rescue operation, more harm might have been done. It is this fact that made me wonder during the past few days. Apparently, among the books in the Timbuktu libraries, there are old copies of the Quran. This means that militant Islamists may have been willing to burn Qurans. And maybe they already have.

Of course, for the really religious, nothing is sacred, so we can expect things like this happening. My real wonder is the fact that nobody seems to worry about it, not even in the Middle East. Where are the enraged Muslims when you need them?

The pope’s address

Half the world got angry at the pope for allegedly speaking up against gay marriage in his Christmas address to the Curia. Yet, I cannot find anything in his speech about gay marriage, not even obliquely. Am I the only one who’s puzzled?

I have two reasons for assuming the pope was nog speaking about gay marriage at all. This twelve-paragraph speech devotes two paragraphs to ‘family’ and the threats the pope sees to it. In the first paragraph he sketches the problem in a series of questions:

[…] the question of the family is not just about a particular social construct, but about man himself – about what he is and what it takes to be authentically human. The challenges involved are manifold. First of all there is the question of the human capacity to make a commitment or to avoid commitment. Can one bind oneself for a lifetime? Does this correspond to man’s nature? Does it not contradict his freedom and the scope of his self-realization? Does man become himself by living for himself alone and only entering into relationships with others when he can break them off again at any time? Is lifelong commitment antithetical to freedom? Is commitment also worth suffering for? Man’s refusal to make any commitment – which is becoming increasingly widespread as a result of a false understanding of freedom and self-realization as well as the desire to escape suffering – means that man remains closed in on himself and keeps his “I” ultimately for himself […]

If you ask me, questions like these might just as well apply to gay couples as straight ones. The problems the pope indicates are neither typical for gay couples nor do they occur more often among them. In fact, I think his speech is about divorce, broken families and the growing lack of commitment between spouses. I’m quite sure the pope is not including gay couples here. He may think gays too are a threat to the family, but what he’s talking about is a problem that might -if you share the pope’s views on the sanctity of marriage- actually be a real threat, given its much bigger size.

There’s a second reason why I think the pope cannot possibly be referring to gays. In the second paragraph he offers an explanation in the form of his ideas on gender. According to his diagnosis mankind is shifting its view on gender, and in the wrong direction.

According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.

The pope is describing the views of his opponents here. But if he were referring to the opinions of homosexuals or gay rights activists, there is nobody -literally nobody- to be found among them who claims that being homosexual is a choice. Instead the claim gay rights activists make all over the world is that homosexuality is drafted into the very nature of gay people. They are born with it. Their argument is exactly the same as the pope’s, it only points in the opposite direction. Homosexuality according to them is -in a religious sense- an ‘act of God’ that should be respected as such.

I find it hard to believe that the pope would be unaware of the fact that he and his opponents use the very same argument about ‘nature’ when discussing homosexuality. So when the pope comments on the idea that gender role is a matter of choice, I think he must be referring to something else: the choice people want or claim to have to release themselves from certain commitments.

Of course the pope’s views on gay marriage are well-known. I happen not share them and many others don’ t either. I won’t argue with those who claim the pope’s views on the matter are old-fashioned, outdated or backward. Yet Joseph Ratzinger is an intelligent and smart man. His holding on to backward views is no reason at all to assume he must be the village idiot, who is completely unaware of what people say. That’s too easy.

Frightened

There is this theory that all violence is ultimately fear. Apart from recreational violence, usually perpetrated by young men in groups and often under the influence of alcohol or drugs, I have yet to find a form of violence that isn’t.

Still, reality keeps being more fantastic that fiction because who would imagine being afraid of a fifteen year old girl?

Yes, they are there: adult men afraid of a fifteen year old, afraid enough to shoot her twice at close range…

…and fail to kill her. You have to be very, very wrong -and know it!- to feel that afraid of a fifteen year old.

As I write this, the news has it that Malala Yousafzai is doing very well, considering her circumstances.

Next years nobel peace prize candidate?

Dear Mr. Prosor,

Your contribution in the Wall Street Journal of March 23th 2012 baffles me. You are the ambassador to the UN of the state of Israel. Have they not provided you with a spin doctor? Is no one available to comment on your drafts? Do you not have enough staff to check your facts? Propaganda is a profession mr Prosor. It’s not a job for mere ambassadors. You need to leave it to the experts.

You claim the international community is blatantly, and unjustly, disregarding the rockets Hamas terrorists are firing into Israel from Gaza. In you contribution you lament:

…over the past decade, the ratio of rocket attacks to words of condemnation from the United Nations Security Council is 12.000 to zero.

Here’s a word of advice. If you want to play the underdog, you should always understate you case. Not overstate. Because some people reading your text will start checking your facts. Bastards like me. If they find out that it’s even worse than you say, you can sit back and relax. But if they find out you’re exaggerating, you spent your time writing for nothing. They just won’t read on and even if they do, you’ll have lost their confidence.

Just five minutes of browsing delivers the figures for rockets fired from Gaza. They’re from your own ministry of foreign affairs: 4.728 rockets between 2001 and 2010, less than half. If you want to get close to your statistics you have to add 4.442 mortar attacks during the same period. And even then you still are 2.830 short of your claim of 12.000 ‘rocket attacks’.

Five extra minutes of browsing and you find figures that come a bit closer to yours.  That’s mainly because they’re up to date: 11.625 attacks, just 273 short of your 12.000. But again we need to count rockets and mortar-grenades together. Only 7.222 attacks really are rockets.

What’s worse, the newly found figures also include the fatalities. We didn’t ask for them, nor were we looking for them. But now that we found them, what does it tell us? A mere 31 dead for 11.625 attacks. That’s a disastrously bad perfomance (less than 0,5%). These are no terrorists as we know them, these are bunglers. I almost felt sorry for them. Even Israeli traffic does a better job. No wonder the UN Security Council is not paying attention.

You try to paint a gloomy picture of impending doom and by accident we find out it’s by far not as bad as you want us to think. What you say is just propaganda. What else may be wrong that we don’t know about?

See what harm a bit of browsing can do when you don’t do your job properly? And that’s not all. Because when average readers find out someone is being careless about his facts, or worse, they start reading your text much more attentively, but this time to find more mistakes.

Here we come to the central argument in your contribution, in which you claim that an Israeli attack on Gaza is imminent and only depends on a stray rocket hitting the wrong place, i.e. causing a lot of casualties:

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that if rockets fall on your head, you have a right to defend yourself. It’s a simple equation. Calm will return to Gaza when rockets stop falling on Israel. However, one rocket that explodes in the wrong place at the wrong time -in a grocery store, shopping mall or school- and Israel will be forced to respond in a completely different manner. Time and time again, Israel has warned the world that Gaza is an disaster waiting to happen.

But an Israeli intervention is not ‘inevitable’, nor it is ‘a disaster’ waiting to happen. Regardless how devastating, no rocket attack ‘forces’ an intervention. No Hamas terrorist has the ability to push an Israeli red button. And no Israeli officer is ever going to say: ‘Oops, look what happened, we intervened!’

You are portraying Israel as a victim, helplessly kicked around by circumstances and completely out of control. This is a blatant misrepresentation of the situation. Israel is not helpless, it has a choice, it can and does decide for itself. We all know decisions like that are hard and at times even cynical. Nobody likes to make them. But that does not mean the choice isn’t there. Israel is in control of itself, not Hamas. The devil did not make you do it, it was you yourself.

By trying to shift the blame in advance of its actions you have done the state of Israel a disservice. You should resign or hire some people who know about manipulating public opinion and who are metriculous about facts. Because with enemies like you, Hamas doesn’t need friends.