In the face of genocide

11 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Persecution

Tags

Catholic Church, Christian communities, Christianity, controversy, Genocide, humanitarian aid, Iraqi Christians, Kurds, Peshmerga, USA, Yezidi

In the face of genocide for the Yezidi, and, indeed for the Christian communities of Iraq, the Americans have decided to arm the Peshmerga and to provide aid and air-strikes; Her Majesty’s Government has stated that it is committed to humanitarian aid, but has had to abandon at least one flight because of the dangers involved; quite what it means when it says it is committed to humanitarian aid is anyone’s guess. Without what the Americans are doing, at best HMG would be providing the Yezidi on Mt Sinjar with a last supper. If Britain’s military spending was on a par with that of Switzerland, and if it claimed the same world status, then no one would have a problem; but this is not the case. Britain clings to its position on the UN Security Council and spends as befits a Power which wishes to play a world role; yet when it comes to doing so in the case of a genocidal catastrophe, it turns out to be useless. No wonder Mr Cameron will not ask for the House to be recalled.

Some have asked whether the American effort is motivated by humanitarian concern, or by ‘oil’. Apart from burnishing anti-American credentials, the purpose of such a question eludes me. Would one tell those in peril on Mt Sinjar that they could not have aid if the answer to the question was ‘oil’? Of course not, so why the question? Just because the West went to war for the wrong reason last time in Iraq is no reason to refuse to do so for the right reason now. It is not as though the Peshmerga are not willing to do the real hard work and fight ISIS, so there need be no British boots on the ground. Our foreign policy lacks both intelligence and guts. The new Iraqi Prime Minister has said he will look to Iran if he has to for help, and why should he not? The Americans see the danger and have responded in kind. quite why we have a Foreign Office and quite what its advice is are open questions. As Damian Thompson points out ‘religion is the new politics’; perhaps our chaps just can’t keep up?

In the meantime, tens of thousands of Yezidis are dying. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of refugees are taking shelter wherever they can, and the Kurds or Erbil and elsewhere are doing what they can. Both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Nichols have made appeals for help, and Lord Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury has spoken of the dangers of ‘genocidal breakdown’. No Christian advocates war lightly, but ISIS are, as their own videos show, savages in the mould of Tamberlane; they use terror as a (very effective) weapon of war. When Pope Francis, who has also called for help for the Iraqis says ‘one cannot make war in God’s name’, I disagree profoundly. We will not stop ISIS by humanitarian aid, we will stop it by force.

This is not a question of theory, or a common-room debate over moral theology. We are in the presence of genocide, and at least one Power realises it and is acting. I do not care what its motives ‘really’ are – oil or aid – I care only that these suffering Iraqis are saved from the horror they are living. Aid to the Church in need have provided some prayer resources here, and also provide a chance to give aid, whilst British subjects can sign a petition here. Aid and prayer are all most of us can offer. Britain, as a great power, could, and should offer more, and won’t. Thank God for the United States of America.

Iraq: dilemmas

10 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Islam, Persecution, Politics

≈ 40 Comments

Tags

Christianity, extremists, Iraq, Iraqi Christians, Military intervention, moderate Muslims, Vicar of Baghdad

Such is the outrage many feel at what is happening on Mt Sinjar – where there are reports of thousands dying of hunger and thirst and exposure to the elements, surrounded by the savagery of ISIS – that it is natural that there should have been calls for ‘moderate Muslims’ to speak out; the scarcely-concealed implications seem two-fold: if they do not, then they condone what ISIS is doing; and they reveal that, effectively, all Muslims are the same. With the black flags ISIS use on parade yesterday in pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Holland, and in London, many have suddenly become experts on those passages in the Koran which permit the slaughter of the Infidel and the subjugation and slavery of captured women. The conclusion that this is a clash of civilizations is easily arrived at. It may well be so, but I would be reluctant to draw the conclusion that it was clash between two entities called ‘the West’ and ‘Islam’. Indicting a whole religion, like indicting a whole race, for the crimes of its extremists is not only un-Christian and morally wrong, it is counter-productive. The Jihadis thrive on sectarian divisions, and the more ordinary Muslims are made to feel they have to choose sides, the happier the extremists will be; after all, if the ‘West’ proceeds on the assumption that ‘Islam’ is the problem, the more difficult it will become for Muslims not to side with their religion and those who claim to be upholding it. If that is what we wish to achieve, then we are foolish.

None of that is to do anything but condemn the crimes committed in the name of Islam by ISIS. That great and good man, Canon Andrew White, has spoken, movingly, of the unbearable sights he has seen, and has called for military action – now. As one who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 because I could see that what has happened was likely to happen, I would support action now – for the same reason. If we do not act militarily now, the results will be even more catastrophic. But we will summon up another sort of catastrophe if we yield to the anger we feel at what is happening and blame all Muslims for it.

Anyone engaged at all in Christian apologetics is well aware of the way in which Scripture can be quoted out of contexts, or the ways in which our own fundamentalists can sound quite mad to others; as we would not want to be judged by them, or by the misinterpretations of Scripture, let us hesitate before doing that to others. As one anti-ISIS advocate has posted on Twitter:

I am Iraq. Ethnically & religiously diverse. #ISIS wishes to divide my people. Will you stand by me?

Do we really want to send out a message to those Muslims who are being killed by ISIS, and those who are standing with the Christians and the Yezidi that we see them all as one? That is not what our Christian faith tells us, and if we cannot behave as Christ commands when it is hard, what is the point of calling ourselves Christians and doing so only when it is easy to follow his commands? Like St Peter we can walk out to grasp his hand – and fall because our faith is too small.

It is certainly time, and beyond time, to bring relief to those who have survived the horrors of Mt Sinjar (and may the Lord have mercy on the souls of the departed and the martyred), and to bring to bear against ISIS whatever force can be brought. This is a righteous cause. But we make it unrighteous if we reduce ourselves to the level of those savages who would lump all who do not believe as they do together and kill them; what is there of Christ in that? Yes, we should call upon all those who oppose the barbarism of ISIS to speak out – and that does not just include Muslims who have not done so – there are many others in our society who, whilst prepared to march for one cause, will not do so for another. We do not make any of that more likely by stigmatising all Muslims.

Yes, it is easy enough to point the finger at the ‘religion of peace’ when one sees what is being done in its name in Iraq; but we might recall it has been done to Christians where the crimes committed in the name of the Prince of Peace have also been used to condemn all Christians. If we confess the name of Christ, we must not yield to the temptations of Satan. He, and his ISIS disciples, would love nothing better than to set us against each other in the fashion some would call for. Prayer and donating apart, there is little enough we can do as individuals, but, as well as signing petitions calling for action, we can do one thing – refrain from playing the game of the extremists.

Is there much to fear from ISIS? Yes, so ISIS-phobia is natural. Do they represent Islam as they claim? No, they do not, any more than Christian extremists in the past have represented all of us. Let us not be frightened of a religion about which so few of us know very much. If we cannot heed Christ’s counsels in so much, let us at least deny the extremists what they would like; let us not add to the hatred and to the fear. Our prayers and voices should be raised for the suffering and for punishment of the guilty – but to indict a whole religion for the crimes of its extremists is to do the work of the latter. Let us deny them that, and let those who want to let loose the vials of wrath ponder the ending thereof.

Archbishops, persecution and us

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Faith, Islam, Persecution, Politics

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Archbishop Justin, Christianity, Christians, controversy, history, Iraq, Iraqi Christians, Justin Welby

The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a moving statement, which covers not only the crisis in Iraq, but links it up to outrages elsewhere:

“With the world’s attention on the plight of those in Iraq, we must not forget that this is part of an evil pattern around the world where Christians and other minorities are being killed and persecuted for their faith. Only this week I received an email from a friend in Northern Nigeria about an appalling attack on a village, where Christians were killed because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Such horrific stories have become depressingly familiar in countries around the world, including Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.”

He is right, and as Dr Thompson points out in the Spectator (in one of the many good pieces we have had from him there since he was released from durance vile at the Telegraph) it:

is both brave and perfectly judged. What an outstanding representative of English Christianity he is turning out to be – in sorry contrast to his predecessor.

But why the final clause? Dr Thompson is not alone here, and in mentioning this, a wider phenomenon emerges, that of adding our own agenda to a cause.

I can understand the urge to point out that neither Mr Obama nor Mr Cameron have drawn attention to the pattern which Archbishop Justin does, just as I can understand the urge of others to point up the double-standard whereby some on the left cry havoc about Gaza and say nothing on Iraq. The ‘Stop the War coalition’ appears to be misnamed, it is only certain wars which attract its disapprobation. But tempting as all this is, is it helpful? As with those who bring into their comments on this their agenda on Mr Obama – and here I may be alone – I find something jarring. Hypocrisy on the left was best summed up by Disraeli, who said that what he objected to was not so much Gladstone’s habit of playing the ace of trumps from his sleeve, but the claim that the Almighty had put it there; I doubt any conservative arguing with a liberal has not felt the same.

It was the plight of the Christians in Mosul which first drew many of us to the unfolding disaster there, and there was more than irritation felt as the media ignored it and went on about the more fashionable cause of Gaza. For those whose trousers are not nailed to either polarity of that conflict, there was the added piquancy of the fact that a media focussing on the deaths of children, said nothing about Arab children dying on the road from Mosul. These things, like the tendency of Archbishop Rowan to be crystal clear on the rather simplistic old socialist economic beliefs he appears to hold, and to seem to be as clear as mud on the subject on which is is a world expert, theology, irritate some. I am not immune to such feelings myself, although I do remind myself that it might be my mental processes and not ++Rowan’s which are at fault sometimes.

At a time when Christians here in the West, not least those who would identify themselves as being of a conservative and orthodox point of view, feel under pressure, and are coming, slowly, to terms with the unsettling fact that a settlement with the State going back to Theodosius in the late fourth century which has often given them a ‘most-favoured religion’ status is going (in my view it has all but gone in Europe), all of this irritation and desire to hit out is natural; but it needs to be resisted by Christians, who are not called upon to be the jaw bone which strikes these modern philistines.

Yes, Christians and Yedizis are being slaughtered, but if we Christians can adopt the latter as our brothers and sisters to be helped, so too we can with the Shia Muslims who are also being beheaded. That does not take away from the need to emphasise our solidarity with our fellow Christians, but it adds to it the Christian impulse to help all who suffer from persecution. Neither does it take away the natural irritation at the smug, self-satisfied one-sidedness of some of the reactions from some on the left; but that too we can offer up – as we can our own shortcomings and sins.

What it would do, however, would be to detract from an agenda which saw Islam itself as the problem. That is a very tempting route down which to go, not least because it is the religion which ISIS professes, and to deny them their self-description smacks of an attempt to wriggle out of this unacceptable face of Islam. The (not very recent) statement by the Muslim Council of Great Britain is, as most such statements are, worthy, but, unlike Archbishop Justin’s, lacking in punch. It is tempting to ask why its members are not more prominent in public condemnation of what ISIS are doing? But when Islamic leaders say that what ISIS is doing is contrary to the core values of Islam, it invites the caustic response that Muslims have done this in the past, and the people doing it now are Muslims. But down that road we all go to perdition, and cue Dawkins going on about Christian atrocities in the past, and misdeeds in the present. We can all poke each other with barbs until the whole world is jumping around; which would be to the taste of the extremists.

The Archbishop has said what needed saying, and, in the spirit of this post, we shall not mention the fact that the last statement from his opposite number in my own Church was on 31 July, (although he has just said something) but rather rejoice that the Pope has been very active in his support for the persecuted. We can set aside our petty irritations and our own agenda, and pray, with the Archbishop and the Pope, and thank God for their example and the work of those who put themselves in harm’s way to help those in most need.

#WeAreN

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Faith

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

Christianity, history, Iraqi Christians

WeAreN

The Arabic letter ‘nun’ is the symbol for “Nazarene,” or Christian, used by Islamic State militants in Iraq to brand Christian properties in Iraq as part of their effort to drive out its ancient Christian community with threats to convert or die; many Christians on the internet have adopted it as part of their avatar to express solidarity with those being slaughtered in northern Iraq. The family of Christ is all who confess His name; we are all Nazarenes. That great and good Christian priest, Canon Andrew White, the ‘vicar of Baghdad’, ignoring both his own serious illness (he suffers from multiple sclerosis) and the danger to himself, has spoken movingly of the horrors he has seen; but he cannot bring himself to talk of them fully – who could talk about the beheading of babies and children? On his Facebook page he wrote:

“You know I love to show photos but the photo I was sent today was the most awful I have ever seen. A family of eight all shot through the face laying in a pool of blood with their Bible open on the couch. They would not convert it cost them their life. I thought of asking if anybody wanted to see the picture but it is just too awful to show to anybody. This is Iraq today.”

Let us be specific here. We are not, as both the UK and US Governments have carefully phrased it, talking about the persecution of minorities, we are talking about an attempt to exterminate the Christians of Iraq, and, while ISIS are at it, the ancient Yazidi community. That the White House could call this ‘callous’ seems to indicate either that English understatement has taken root in Washington, or that the Administration is struggling with its vocabulary. We are witnessing more than a ‘callous disregard for human rights’ – we are in the presence of evil. These are fanatics whose world view encompasses nothing less than global domination for their type of Islam; and please, whilst we are at it, can we not play into the hands of these sectarians by identifying all Muslims as being at one with them – they would like nothing more, and that is one thing, at least, we can deny them.

They present a challenge to us all. If they secure a base in the territories they control, then they will provide a focal point for further conquest in the region, and a training ground from which our own home-grown fanatics can come back and further radicalise disaffected youth; the existing sectarianism provides, alas, an already fertile seed-bed for this. As the Labour MP, Tom Watson has so cogently put it:

The Islamic State is an emergent entity that combines the most malevolent aspects of a criminal gang, a terrorist organisation, and absolutist despotism. They are setting a new standard for brutality and mayhem: there is not a single principle of international, Iraqi or human rights law by which they abide.

He adds:

It’s hard not to conclude that the murderous activities of IS constitute an act of genocide against the Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Christians and the Yazidis of Iraq according to Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) of which the United Kingdom is a party.

So, what are we going to do? The President offers ‘limited airstrikes’, but there are people dying now. The world’s media (rightly) focuses on the horrors of Gaza, but what is happening in Iraq is an even greater evil, and there, unlike Gaza, there are not two sides to the story. If ISIS is not dealt with now, it will have to be dealt with later. After 1945 it was common enough to say that the British and the French should have stopped Hitler at the Rhineland; but they did not, and the eventual price paid for not stopping him was huge. They say history does not repeat itself, although historians do; well, in this instance, I shall repeat myself and say that action is needed. Certainly humanitarian aid, and now, but that, and limited airstrikes will not stop ISIS.

The Kurdish peshmerga have asked for arms. If they are given them, we cannot, of course, know what their ultimate use will be, but if we do not, then it is hard to see how ISIS will be stopped. We are not willing to put boots on the ground, nor are the Americans – we’ve been badly burned and fear the heat. But some one needs to put boots on the ground. The pershmerga are there, and they will fight; but they are outgunned and out-matched as things stand. The Turks will not like the thought of them being armed, and the Iraqi government may also object; if so, they should be invited to take a firm hand and stop ISIS themselves, or keep quiet.

This is genocide. It is happening now. If the idea of an international community means anything, it must mean, to adopt a phrase of Mr Gladstone, that the resources of civilization are not exhausted. If we act now, we may avert a genocide and the need to act later; if we do not, there will be a genocide – and the need to act later, and in circumstances even less propitious. The choice is ours – but the suffering is theirs.

For those with access, the Telegraph is running a live feed here on the situation in Iraq. If you value your sanity, or with to keep some faith in human nature, do not on any account read the comments.

Crocodile Tears?

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Persecution, Politics

≈ 59 Comments

Tags

Christianity, Iraqi Christians, sin

‘Never again!’ we intone. Whether it is the horror of the first modern holocaust – the Armenian Genocide of 1915 (calling it that will get me barred from Turkey, a privation, but one I can endure), that most terrible indictment of man’s inhumanity to man, the Nazi holocaust in which millions of Jews and other persecuted minorities were slaughtered, or the more recent horrors of Rwanda and Srebrenica, our politicians make emotional speeches and vow ‘never again’ – until, it seems, the next time. Then they do nothing.

As I write humanitarian agencies estimate that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar, in Northern Iraq, where they were driven after leaving their homes on Sunday. The Unicef representative reports: “There are children dying on the mountain; on the roads. There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.” The Islamic State’s forces inspire such fear that people leave when they know they are on the way. The local Kurdish militia are doing their best, but they are outgunned and need to concentrate on protecting their people across a wide front. As Ali Khedery, the former longest-serving US official in Baghdad has said: ‘Iraq is spiralling out of control the centrifugal forces are spinning so quickly. They are on one timeline and Washington is on another.’

As the ISIS fighters try to lure women from the West to join them – and the link seems to be true, there is no word from HMG or from Washington’s chief golfer. As one Assyrian has tweeted: ‘ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE NOW TAKING PLACE IN IRAQ. IF YOU DIDN’T LIVE THROUGH THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST, YOU ARE LIVING IN ONE NOW!’ As Dan Hodges in the Telegraph writes:

“What can we do?” is the cry so often heard as we cast our eyes across these distant battlefields. And as I wrote yesterday, the answer is nothing. Because we choose to do nothing.

As we chose to nothing in Rwanda. As we chose to do nothing in Srebrenica.

Mount Sinjar is not downtown Baghdad. Or even downtown Gaza. Here is an instance – a very rare instance – where the good guys and the bad guys are very clearly defined.

Isis are out in the open. So are the Yazidi.

We can do something. Now. Today. This hour.

We can start to airdrop emergency aid. We can provide arms to the Yazidi and their defenders. We can provide air support to drive Isis form the immediate area. We could, heaven forbid, provide ground troops to construct an impromptu safe haven.

And there is the shame and the horror. All the things Mr Hodges said are things we can do. NATO has bases in Turkey, and says and does nothing. Our Governments in Britain and the USA helped created the situation which is producing the genocide of the Yazidis; we were happy enough to attack Saddam on the assumption he had weapons of mass destruction; we seem to have taken the view that to have intervened and created this mess means we should now pass by on the other side.

The UNHCR is doing what it can to distribute aid, but the numbers are growing, and the most recent estimates I am seeing are that more than 200,000 Yazidis and Christians are fleeing north. But they will soon have nowhere to go. To the south the area is controlled by ISIS. And where are those politicians who told us ‘never again!’?

The United Nations, a body whose credibility as a political (as opposed to humanitarian) force is at an all-time low ebb, needs to meet and to refer to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights – and then DO something. What? It needs to get more aid through the the UNHCR, and it needs to condemn ISIS. That last will have no effect on it, but it should encourage NATO and Turkey to take military action for humanitarian purposes. The Iraqi and Kurd governments need to be give military help and advisors now. Parliament and Congress should be called into special session, and, as Churchill once put it, there should be ‘action this day!’

Until the forces of ISIS meet some decisive military check, they will continue to advance. They take, rightly, the inaction of the West as an invitation to advance – not that they needed one. The British media is now taking this crisis seriously. It would be good if our Government would do likewise. In the meantime, Christians can pray and donate, and those who are not, can donate.

But please, can we have a moratorium from our politicians on the phrase ‘never again!’ – there ought to be a limit even to political hypocrisy.

The Advance of ISIS

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Islam, Persecution, Politics

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

controversy, Iraqi Christians, Israel, Middle East

Recovering from a bout of pneumonia in North Africa in 1943, Churchill mused aloud to Harold Macmillan, who was Minister Resident with Eisenhower’s HQ in Algiers, that he was not sure that history would judge him well. This was an echo of a comment he had made a little earlier at Tehran where he had said history would judge him kindly – because he would write it. Startled, Macmillan asked him why he thought that. In typical fashion, Churchill’s mind went back to English history, and he pointed out that Cromwell had been so obsessed with fighting England’s old enemy, Spain, that he had missed the rise of the new one, the France of Louis XIV; he wondered whether men would say that he had been so obsessed with Germany that he had missed the rise of Soviet Russia? There’s a case to be made for that, but Churchill at least tried to make up for any error. Our current generation of politicians have been so obsessed with winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and obtaining the ‘peace dividend’ that they have missed the dangers that those wars helped make far more serious. Not even in his wildest dreams could Osama bin Laden have imagined that the evil acts he planned for 9/11 would end by radicalising so much of the Muslim world in an arc from Algeria through to Afghanistan and beyond. The news that ISIS forces have now captured territory in the Lebanon, and that they have made gains in Kurdistan ought to be causing more concern in Whitehall and Washington than appears to be the case. It may be that the influx of help from the Syrian Kurds can help stabilise the situation, but if not, then we may see in Kurdistan on a larger scale what we have seen in Mosul.

Whether we like it or not, the only effective armed forces in the region who are capable of dealing with ISIS are controlled by the Butcher of Aleppo, Bashar al Assad. Quite at what point the West is going to say of him as Churchill did of Stalin, that if Hitler invaded hell, I should at least make a friendly reference in the House to the devil, in not at all clear. Churchill saw the need for a pretty ruthless Realpolitik. Few had been more critical of Soviet Russia than he had, but he knew that needs must when the devil drives. Our leaders appear to imagine they have the luxury of a variety of options; they also have elections coming up, and they have been busy reducing the size and cost of the armed forces; they also have public opinions thoroughly war-weary and distrustful of any ‘crying wolf’ over anywhere east of Suez. ISIS is troubled by none of these things and, at the moment, is on a roll. That will continue until it meets with a check. Only then will we get some idea of how stable this organisation is; at the moment it is unclear where the check will come from.

We have a generation and more of politicians and advisers shaped by either the Cold War or its aftermath. They are not used to thinking of the world in terms of religious affiliation, and tend to regard ‘faith’ as either a private matter or an irrelevance. The first step they could take is to begin to remedy this situation. Beyond that, the options are stark. We have ruled out working with Putin and Assad, and we don’t want to work with Iran either; but we are best friends with the Saudis, who are, shall we say, no opponents of the sort of Wahhabite Islam preferred by ISIS. In the meantime the Kurdish forces are finding it difficult to cope, and we are doing precisely what to help? Any policy towards Israel needs to bear these things in mind. We are not dealing with Nasser and the old Arab league here. If the Kurds are defeated by ISIS then our options are few, and none particularly attractive.

This morning Baroness Warsi resigned over the Government’s policy on Gaza; some were amazed there was one; there appears to be none on Mosul.

A Minister Resigns

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Islam, Persecution, Politics

≈ 82 Comments

Tags

Christianity, controversy, Gaza, history, Iraqi Christians, Lady Warsi

This morning’s news brought something that really counts as news – a Minister has resigned from the Government on a matter of principle – yes, news indeed. The Minister is the first Muslim woman to sit in a British Cabinet, Baroness Warsi. As a Minister of State at the Foreign Office with special responsibility for the UN and the Court of Human Rights, she felt that the policy and the language hed by the Government over the situation in Gaza was ‘morally indefensible’. The reaction has been interesting. Those who disliked her from the start, seeing her as a sop by Mr Cameron to political correctness, have been delighted. To this observer, not having supported her position on Gaza, there is something deeply disturbing and distasteful about some of the reactions to her action, with comments being made on her religion, her gender and her status as an unelected peer; it must come as a shock to some to realise that there is an unelected House and that members of it form the Government too, but it seems only to have become an issue with this Muslim woman. Some on Twitter (and I shall not link, you only need to go to #warsi) break that code and are explicit about the racist and sexist agenda it is designed to conceal; that is to their shame. In a democracy, if we lose mutual respect, we lose everything. Democracies survive because of compromise and mutual respect; if that is not there, then nothing stands between minorities and the tyranny of the majority. Seldom having held a popular opinion, I perhaps feel this more strongly than some. That a Minister should have resigned on a point of principle is a good thing for democracy, and should be welcomed, not with sarcasm and juvenile point-scoring (anyone who can find a point to score here needs to get out more), but with relief as a sign that not all Ministers wish to hang on to office regardless. Perhaps the fact that it should take a Muslim woman to demonstrate this makes some feel uncomfortable; if so, they might ponder on why.

On the issue of Gaza itself, opinion is totally polarised, which is why progress is impossible. It is easy (which is why it is done so much) to divide by instinctive or tribal loyalty: it is the fault of Hamas for attacking Israel, and for having their weapons in compounds where children are to be found; it is the fault of Israel for using overwhelming force against civilians; yes, I think it is – that is I think both views are correct. There are grave faults on both sides. It is easy to say Israel should negotiate, but when Hamas wants to destroy it, where is the compromise position? Just what is there to be negotiated? On the other hand, I doubt there is anyone who can view the pictures of the suffering in Gaza without feeling outraged; it is easier to blame Israel for the damage inflicted than Hamas for provoking it.

Israel is the creation of a particular time and mood. In the aftermath of the holocaust, Zionism seemed to have an answer which would both assuage the consciences of the West and deal with the problem of displaced Jewry – the creation of a State of Israel. At that point no one much worried about the Arabs. Their territories had been parcelled up and divided out at the Sevres peace conference, and in some senses, the creation of Israel was the final act of that Western-created drama. in 1948 the Arabs would not accept the UN decision, and Israel established itself regardless. One can do many things with a sword, but sitting on it is seldom a good long-term prospect. But no one should underestimate the problem facing Israel, and by proxy, those who have supported it. What all the wise men in think-tanks said would never happen – that is that Islam would become a factor of major importance – has happened. From Algeria in the west, through to Pakistan in the east, militant Islam is on the march; anyone who imagines that it will want to find a compromise which allows Israel to exist, is wilfully deluding themselves.

What is, perhaps, also worth remarking about Lady Warsi’s resignation is that, apparently, there is a Government policy over which to resign. For most of us, that policy appears to be equal parts vacillation, rhetorical nothings and the deliberate sticking of heads into sand. In the meantime, the Christians of Mosul are still in retreat, and the forces of ISIS have made strategic gains in Kurdistan. It would be too much to hope that someone would resign over this inaction, I suppose.

Iraq: a sense of shame

03 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Bible, Faith, Persecution

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

Christianity, controversy, Faith, Iraqi Christians, love

The media here in the UK and in the USA is, understandably, reporting the situation in Gaza; the deaths of dozens of people, many unarmed civilians, is obviously a cause for concern and something of interest to listeners, viewers and readers. One might almost say it gives the lie to the cynical notion that the British and American public aren’t interested in far-away places of which they know little; but then one might have to explain why the news outlets have said almost nothing about what is going on in Mosul and the rest of Iraq. The cynics will say that the one involves Jews killing Arabs and vice versa, which is always news, whilst the latter is just Arabs killing Arabs, which isn’t; but the cynic, whilst perhaps having a point, misses a wider one. Events in Gaza are only remotely the responsibility of Britain and America; events in Mosul are much more directly linked to our more recent actions. That being so, one might have expected President Obama and Mr Cameron, neither noted for a reticence to appear on camera, and neither famed for having taken Trappist vows, to have said something; they haven’t. That is a cause for shame, a concept to which, perhaps, our politicians are dead, but one which needs reviving in the interests of good government.

Speaking on the radio news this lunchtime, the Bishop of Manchester has called for Britain to follow France in offering those fleeing Mosul asylum; that the Home Office has responded in best officialese that ‘every application is dealt with on its merits’, ought to beggar belief. No doubt 30,000 people fleeing the threat of death have the time to sit down and fill in a form so someone can assess their ‘case’; such a response is another sign of a government dead to a sense of shame. It has not been unknown for these pages to criticise the Church of England, well let it be said to the eternal credit of its bishops that they have issued a call to Mr Cameron to act to offer asylum to the refugees. His Eminence, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster has issued a statement on Gaza, but the same website is silent about Mosul; perhaps the Cardinal has said something, but if so, it appears to have escaped the notice of Google.

There is a splendid piece on the First Things site, which I commend to anyone with an interest in these things, which offers a critique of why we bear a heavy weight of responsibility, and why we should be helping the Christians of Iraq. It also says something which needs saying – which is that it should not be a case that the West allows Christians to be driven from their homeland by ISIS – which echoes an eloquent appeal by the Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad. One of the few politicians in the West to say anything about this, Virginia Republican, Frank Wolf, has called upon the President to act, by giving humanitarian aid to the refugees in Kurdistan. That would be a good start, but the Kurds are not going to be able to hold back ISIS without other sorts of help.

The Christians of Iraq are undergoing a silent Calvary. The other day the saintly Vicar of Baghdad tweeted: “I am sorry to say that the news here continues to get worse.The media seem to have forgotten what is happening..” Canon Andrew White has borne, and continues to bear, an heroic witness to the suffering of his fellow Christians in Iraq. He does not ask which denomination they belong to, he sees Christ, as Christ wanted us to, in all who suffer in His Holy Name. But the good Canon, like the blogger Cranmer, speaks with passion into a moral void. The so-called leaders of the so-called Free World are revealed as moral pygmies. But they are not alone: where are the ‘stop the war’ marchers on this one? Where are the outraged editorials on Channel 4 news? If it comes to asylum, yes, we must offer it, regardless of the domestic political ramifications; but it should not come to that, nor should it have come to this. Countless millions of dollars have been spent equipping the Iraqi army, what is it doing with that equipment? War material promised to the Kurds must be delivered to them, as must any ‘military advice’ we can offer. Anyone who thinks that ISIS will stop at exterminating Christians from one part of the Middle East will find they are wrong.

For those who want to give to the aid efforts, there are a variety of Charities. These are only a few: Aid to the Church in Need; Save Iraqi Christians; Iraqi Christian Relief and Christian Aid.

If our leaders will do nothing, we must, for, as Jesus tells us in the 25th chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel, beginning at verse 35:

³⁵For I hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in;

³⁶naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me.’

³⁷Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we Thee hungering and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink?

³⁸When saw we Thee a stranger and took Thee in, or naked and clothed Thee?

³⁹Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee?’

⁴⁰And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’

And, of course, of your charity, pray for our brothers and sisters in Iraq.

Persecution

27 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Persecution

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christianity, controversy, history, Iraqi Christians, sin

Jessica’s piece, earlier, was a timely reminder that there is more than one way in which the fanatics can ‘win’; their aim is to set communities against each other, and if they succeed, we shall have handed them a significant victory; that we must not do. We can see, all over the world, how their tactics are working: from Nigeria, through to the Southern Sudan, Egypt, the Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan, the methodology is the same – to stoke up inter-communal hatred to the point at which the violence which they crave breaks out. Once that happens, things tend to move the way the extremists want, and ethnic cleansing begins, either by force, or voluntarily. We have, in the former Yugoslavia, an example of how this can work through; it is not one anyone would be wise to follow.

In all of these places we are dealing with the aftermath of Ottoman rule. Although at times both cruel and capricious, and always discriminating against Christianity, the Ottomans were comfortable enough to allow the existing Christian communities to continue to exist. As recently as the Great War, about 20% of the population of Turkey was Christian; then, in 1922/23 came the so-called ‘population exchanges’, when Christian families who had lived in Smyrna since the time of St Paul, found themselves being sent to Greece, and Muslims who had lived in Salonika since the Middle Ages, found themselves going to Turkey. The misery and the suffering, and indeed the sheer madness of it all, are well caught in Louise de Berniere’s marvellous novel, Birds without Wings. Communities of Jews, Muslims and Christians, who had lived side by side for centuries, and into whose religious practices elements of each other’s faiths had penetrated, found themselves taking sides against their neighbours and friends in the name of ideologues whose sole contribution to history was destructive.

We do not serve the cause of God by persecution; the days of mass conversion at sword’s point are, at least for most Christians and Muslims, in the past – and that is where they belong. Yes, in our fallen nature, we tend towards the tribal, but in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and we are called to be one, and to be merciful to the stranger in our gate. What, however, if that stranger wants to blow us up? In that case we might care to ponder why he does, and to wonder whether singling him and his kind out for suspicion is more or less likely to exacerbate that situation? We might also wonder how many of our fellow citizens really want to blow us up?

Persecution is not the way of the Christian, although it is the via dolorosa many of our brothers and sisters are called to tread. We must help them in every way we can; but we give only aid and comfort to their (and our) enemies, if we yield to the temptations of intolerance. Back in 2001/2 there were some of us who counselled against military action against the Taliban, not because we were pacifists, but because we were realists. I recall asking an American audience which nation had found its military involvement in Afghanistan profitable in any way; but anger was high, and sense had flown out of the window. It did not take any great genius, simply a knowledge of history, to predict that where Alexander the Great, the British and the Russians had come to grief, so too would the Americans; nether did it take much to foresee what the effect of the operation would have on relations with the Muslim world. When the madness that was the second Iraq war was launched, some of us despaired. It was clear that none of those at a senior level, had any idea of the complexities of the Iraqi situation, or of the communal strife that was bound to follow the fall of Saddam; but not, even in my worst nightmares, did I foresee that it get so bad that something like ISIS would come to the fore.

The ignorant blundering of Powers which mistake military superiority for an ability to create a successful post-war order has produced what it has produced. It is clear that our leaders have no idea what to do about the results of their policies, except to to to pretend nothing is wrong, and hope that more money, and perhaps more arms, will put it right. These things have already failed, and they will fail again. We must not add to the situation by allowing the fanatics further success by dividing our own communities even further against each other.

When evil prospers

27 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Islam, Persecution

≈ 84 Comments

Tags

Christianity, Iraqi Christians, sin

As some of you know, I have two dear friends from University days who converted to Islam, and with whom I stay in touch. One of them telephoned me on Friday. She has become increasingly concerned at the public displays of hostility to her, and her children; she feels that there is a tide of Islamophobia which is rising. My heart went out to her. I know how unhappy and conflicted she was in her first year at University. The Christian faith she brought with her was not firmly rooted, and it failed to withstand the storms of an aggressive lecturer and the temptations of student life. The loss of her faith made her both unhappy and reckless, and those of us who cared about her prayed for her, and with her, and did what we could to let her know we loved her and were there for her; but none of it helped; not a bit. It was only when she encountered some Muslim students and went along to a Friday prayer group that she found something which helped her, which brought her calmness and peace, and she converted later that year; she later married one of our fellow students, and now has three children and works part-time as a teacher. Like all good people, she is upset at what some do in the name of her faith, and as her husband is an Iraqi, she is especially concerned at what is happening in Mosul. At yesterday’s demonstration in London, there were, as you can see from the picture, Muslims marching with Copts to say that what was happening in Mosul was not in their name.

It is bad enough that the evil being done in Mosul is happening; it would be an even worse tragedy if it were to lead to the belief that these fanatics are typical of Muslims in Britain – or elsewhere. Yes, there are some fanatics, as there are everywhere, but ISIS is as much a threat to many Muslims as it it to everyone else. Senior Muslim scholars have spoken out against the barbarities of what is happening in Mosul, whilst Muslims have declared their support for the Christians:

A day after Christians fled Mosul, the northern city controlled by Islamist extremists, under the threat of death, Muslims and Christians gathered under the same roof — a church roof — here on Sunday afternoon. By the time the piano player had finished the Iraqi national anthem, and before the prayers, Manhal Younis was crying.

“I can’t feel my identity as an Iraqi Christian,” she said, her three little daughters hanging at her side.

A Muslim woman sitting next to her in the pew reached out and whispered, “You are the true original people here, and we are sorry for what has been done to you in the name of Islam.”

That thought is shared by my Muslim friends, and their fear is that community relations, already strained by the activities of terrorists, will reach breaking point. There are millions of Muslims in this country and in the rest of Europe, as well as the United States. We must not let the terrorists win by making the rest of us identify all Muslims as being with this small minority. This Sunday my friend and her family attended an Orthodox Liturgy near where they live; next week some of their Christian friends are going to a Friday prayer meeting. This is not syncretism, it is solidarity – the solidarity of those whose sincerity in their faith leads them to want peace and not war. The fanatics, on all sides, do not speak for most of us. The God who is love does not operate through hate; all those who hate work against the God who is love and have not the truth in them.