Mark Durie interview - highly recommended

I'm preparing a blog on Islamic antisemitism that will feature, among others, the work of the Australian scholar and Anglican minister, Mark Durie. So I happened across this interview of Durie by Pamela Geller. And I was impressed by Durie's clarity of mind, his learned understanding of Islam and his explanation of the struggle over world views that defenders of freedom in the West today have to engage. The man is a skilled communicator because he is a civilized man, one whose message for Muslims is not of hate. Yet that does not stop him from recognizing the need to speak frankly about opposing a belief system that widely engenders fear among both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Whether or not you like Pamela's style, don't miss this interview. Did you know that this Sunday is the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination? Do your duty!

Why Good Canadians must have nothing to do with York University

Jewish Tribune - York University discriminates against Christian and Jewish coalition ahead of Israel Apartheid Week

On Monday morning, York University informed Imagine With Us campus partners Christians United for Israel (CUFI) that the university was cancelling the event due to the fact that Imagine With Us did not meet their requirements. York had required that the organizers include a formidable police and campus security presence paid for by the organizers, a list of all attendees in advance, a minute-by-minute synopsis of all speakers’ talking points and a ban on public advertising of the event at York and on satellite campuses.

York University has said that the requirements were demanded of the event organizers due to the participation of individuals who they claim invite the animus of anti-Israel campus agitators.

In an interview with the Jewish Tribune, Rob Kilfoyle, director of security at York, confirmed the event had been cancelled and stated that the need for security at events is determined on a case-by-case basis and that the participation of speakers such as Dimant and Pipes was the cause of the stringent requirements. When asked why similar demands were not made of the organizers of Israel Apartheid Week events, Kilfoyle stated that even though the organizers of those events will not be paying for their own security – as the university had demanded of Imagine With Us – York will be there “to monitor the activities.”

Welcome to Egypt. York is now a place where you're either thug or dhimmi - no other way is known to the administration. This of course is not the first implicitly antisemitic decision of the York administration when it comes to defending, or not, the free speech of public defenders of Israel. No one should mistake this place (or respect its degrees) as a genuine provider of education. Boycott! (HT: Catfur)

Italian judges hate women, roll over and die.

Via Ghost of a Flea, my first exposure to this amazing story: Shari'a making inroads in the West | Op-Ed Contributors | Jerusalem Post

In Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating and sequestering their daughter/sister Fatima because she had wanted to live a "Western" life.

In the first trial, the three were sentenced for sequestration and abuse. The court acknowledged that the teenager had been "brutally beaten up" for having "dated" a non-Muslim and, in general, for "living a life not conforming with the culture" of her family. But on appeal, the family was acquitted because the court deemed that the young woman had been beaten for "her own good."

The Bologna public prosecutor's office then disputed the acquittal of the three accused parties, but the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed it and ruled in favor of the charged parties.

Interestingly, two Italian political leaders on opposite sides of the political spectrum - Isabella Bertolini, vice president of the MPs of the right-wing party Forza Italia, and Barbara Pollastrini, a post-communist former minister - condemned the Supreme Court decision, calling it "one of the darkest pages in the history of the law in our country." Bertolini was upset that the court had "allied itself with radical Islam." Pollastrini is now pushing for parliament to pass a law condemning violence against women. "Now more than ever, it is urgent to defend the rights of a large number of immigrant women victims of an intolerable patriarchal culture," she says.

Muslim women were quick to denounce the Supreme Court's decision. Among them was Souad Sbai, president of the Organization of Moroccan Women in Italy. She said, "It is a shame, this verdict is worthy of an Arab country where the Shari'a is vigorously enforced. In the name of multiculturalism and respect for traditions, the judges apply two kinds of rules: one for the Italians and one for the immigrants. A Catholic father who had acted this way would have been severely sentenced."

According to her organization, at least nine Muslim women have recently been killed in Italy by close relatives. The number of young girls forced to wear the hijab "as early as eight or 12" is on the rise, as is the number of female teenagers fleeing home, and "lots of them are looking to flee to France." But France might not be the panacea either...

One wonders how such madness inflicts a judiciary in what was at least to some degree a Western democracy founded on the sacredness of the Christian person: do they suffer some confused idea that recognizing "diversity" in this way is tto maintain social peace and order? But how can any thinking person come seriously to think that a people living under different laws in the same state can come together in anything other but a seriously diminished capacity for building a common order? I fear that Flea has it right:

It is not only the Swat Valley that has been conceded to the Taliban. For many in the West, there is nothing to surrender - no patriotism, no pride, no history, no civilization - so why not get it over with. The nullity they have made of modern life makes the prospect of a new Dark Age appealing to them.

As to their sisters and wives and daughters - let alone their daughters' daughters - to hell with them. Such is the selfish logic of a suicide.

And so our only response is to act and say to hell with those who have given in to nihilism and civilizational despair. To hell with those who would procure our young women, our fellow citizens under our common law, for the brutal trade in sharia.

Condemn the nihilist, wherever you find him.

What is Islam, Part ???

Thoughts on How the West was Lost, Jamie Glazov's interview of Hasan Mahmud, the Director of Sharia Law at the Muslim Canadian Congress:

I have argued here that our understanding of what Islam is should not be exhausted by orthodox interpretations of Islam's sacred texts, although it is very important that we know what orthodoxy and its power over people is. Not only is it a principle of religious studies in the West that we best understand a religion (and/or political ideology) by examining all the understandings, of both insiders and outsiders, that the reality of the religion's presence creates (a religion being understood as something paradoxical that generates much meaning, or meanings). But no matter how committed to following some orthodoxy a believer may be, he still has to interpret that desire for orthodoxy in relation to a larger reality that the religion cannot entirely block from sight, explain, or define away, no matter how much violence it is willing to do to people in trying.

For the thinking believer, this creates an inevitable conflict between the understandings of orthodoxy and the contrary realities of a world that the believer takes to be full of insight into the nature of God. This problem may be lessened in a religion like Christianity whose orthodoxy encourages followers to recognize that holy texts are "divinely inspired" but not the literal word of God, and to question worldly authority, such that successful clerics usually have to be leaders in thought and not mere dogmatists. But it is obviously a huge problem in Islam.

It is inevitable that thinking Muslims in the modern world are going to question much about Sharia orthodoxy. Will this lead them to reject Islam entirely or to develop a new modern form of Islam or "Islam" as some would prefer? I don't know what will be possible, what people will find a useful focus for their mental energy, what the core revelation of Mohammed actually is or can be reasonably interpreted to mean. But I think it important to pay attention to those who are trying to reconcile our God-given reality with their religious and humanistic faith in it. Their efforts may well turn out to be failures; yet this is how we will learn more of what our shared reality is.

I find it a little amazing that Hasan Mahmud, the Director of Sharia Law at the Muslim Canadian Congress can, essentially, 1) reject the entire tradition of Sharia law, explaining it away as the product of a conspiracy to corrupt the true faith as it must have once existed, and 2) still declare himself a faithful Muslim. But he simply cannot reconcile Sharia with the human reality he sees around him. So of what then does his Islam consist? He does not tell us in his interview at Frontpage Magazine and we have to imagine a largely privatized conversation between man and Allah.

Still, Mahmud shows the kind of thing that has to happen when one pays attention to our God-given reality. If the Creation that we can see working itself out all around us is indeed God's Creation, then the thinking believer has no choice but to question received understandings of the faith. But to some degree this must even be true of the minimally thinking person. Whether our instinct is to move towards orthodoxy or liberalization, no one can divorce himself entirely from the revelations that historical change forces on all of us. Eventually this will lead all of us to refine our understanding of the original revelations that found our religion, or our humanity more generally. I say all of us because even the most closed mind cannot be entirely closed to reality and still survive.

At the end of the day I am sympathetic to the thinking believer who recognizes that the truth of his religion cannot be at odds with the truth of human reality, and that study of the latter must be more of a guide to the proper or original nature of the former than any received orthodoxy. And if this questioner still says he is a Muslim, I am willing to respect his belief, even if that means we will have to rethink the various possibilities inherent in the word `submission'.

Of course, one might argue that this "Muslim" is so outside the meaning of Islamic tradition that he is mentally all askew in considering himself a Muslim. But ultimately the test of that is the historical laboratory itself. At present, we can only place bets on how he will be received. Will history judge him a nut, or not, or most likely just ignore him? But the question that tests our own faith in the nature and future of humanity is this: in what kind of marketplace do we want to make our bets?

Sharia's status in the UK

There has been a lot of talk lately in the blogs that Sharia courts are now recognized by higher courts in the UK. What this discussion has not made clear is whether the higher courts will enforce the decisions of Sharia "arbitration" courts if the latters' decisions are themselves contrary to British law.

This article by John O'Sullivan argues that British courts cannot recognize illegal (under British law) rulings and thus helps clarify the issue at stake, which is that ultimately Sharia, with its image of Islamic society (and its outsiders) as a ritually-bound hierarchy of distinct roles that determine each person's place and "rights" is logically and ethically incompatible with a legal system that would treat all members of a nation as free and equal individuals (and would similarly treat all nations as having equal rights and responsibilities internationally).

Thus any compromises made towards Sharia courts in what professes to be a society based on individual liberty is simply a cynical or cowardly deferral of hard choices, and an appeasement of those who refuse to adapt to modernity and its ethical absolutes rooted in the sacredness of the free individual and the kind of society that makes free individuals possible.

The fact that large numbers of the British political and policing classes are just so appeasing at present is not proof of Sharia's present legality in the UK. What we mean, in theory or practise, by "the rule of law" - as something distinct from the rule of arbitrary tyranny, or of multiculti legal pot luck (where you can't be sure which law will be determinative in any given time or place) - cannot be reduced to the political cowardice or bullying of an imperial officialdom. No, "the rule of law," as something freely recognized and widely respected must be ultimately recognizable in terms of a widely-understood revelation about the meaning of history, or its key events. The rule of law cannot be separated from a coherent and freely accepted vision of nationhood (and similarly of a truly inter-national order).

Ultimately, no enduring society, whether Islamic or Western, can be long ruled by bureaucratic fudging by post-national elites invested in an ethic of moral or legal, multiculti, relativism. Inevitably, there comes a place and a time when the meaning of a society and its law has to be clearly represented and renewed by some kind of iconic authority, an authority rooted in revelatory and widely respected events.

This re-presentation should not be dictatorial but rather must renew and hopefully expand the degrees of freedom, e.g. of rational debate, without which the long-evolving social order cannot be sustained. Our revelations thus must be open-ended, never entirely settled, or else they are in need of renewal. But we must not confuse true open-endedness with a kind of multiculti bureaucratic fudging that only limits the growth of a free society by re-ritualizing a system of differential rights.

King John is not yet resurrected as the Sheikh or Fatwa council of every demographically-appopriate British hamlet, if I may mix metaphors without too much bureaucratic incoherence. What is happening today in the UK is just a cowardly and dangerous postponement of some future day of reckoning. Does none of Britain's politicos and police officers have the balls to make clear whether or not all British women have a right to be protected from domestic abuse and third-class status in family law? If not, then the future belongs to others' superior generative capacities. It cannot belong to endless fudge, however distracting the promise of another little chocolate mint is at present.

Born to be Wild

I have seen the boys of summer in their ruin. I put on my bifocals to find out who they are. They look like geezers to me. I would have stopped to chat with them but the nurse called me in for pudding. I like that. I always dribble it down my chin, and she wipes it off with a napkin. I look down her blouse. Ho ho. I'm a clever guy.

One of these days soon I'll get my motor running, head out on the highway. Heavy metal thunder. I was born to be wild.

I remember when I was a boy. Things were different then. We used to worry about getting a date on Friday night. Now a days boys stay home and play video games and girls go out and beat up old ladies at subway stops. All in fun, of course.

Hark, I hear the strains of the organ. It's not my bladder this time, it's Mary-Lou warming up the Hammond in the entertainment room. The director is calling: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me."

Disco night at the old-folks home. There are still some of us left.

Go, Mary-Lou!

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die

Born to be wild
Born to be wild

Words and Music by Mars Bonfire.

No sharia for this guy.

Thanks to CGW for the photo of the chopper.

The Ulema is feeling the heat

I saw the following quoted by Frank in the comments at Ezra Levant's. I thought it was a very useful indication of how even a Saudi cleric can't deny the fact that he is enmeshed in a global civil war for hearts and minds, and that he fears a lot of the Muslims are on the side of freedom. Even the most hard-core defenders of a ritualized law and politico-religious practice can't escape a basic fact of reality: to be aware that one's religion is largely ritual is to beg the question of what the original revelation of one's faith was really all about, at its core, and what happened between the initial moment of revelation and its institutionalization in ritual/law. Sure you can proclaim the Koran eternal and uncreated, but is such a belief really going to stand forever a growing awareness of human reality, among those who are aware that Islam is ritualistic?

In other words, a thinking Muslim who values his stake in the faith can't help but think there might be a better way, in our day and age, to re-articulate and express the kernel of truth he so values, the original core of revelation (and not all that he will see as the excresence that came with politics and old tribal codes in Mohammed's day, an excrescence to be shaved away - in the manner of Muslims Against Sharia).

However, the Saudi cleric, Muhammad Al-Munajid, would beg to differ. But doesn't the fact that he has to articulate such a weak argument already show that the emperor is dropping clothes? MEMRI Clip Transcript:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid, which aired on Al-Majd TV on March 30, 2008.

Muhammad Al-Munajid: Some of these heretics say: "Islam is not the private property of anyone." So what do they want? They say: "No sect has a monopoly on Islam." So what do they want? They say: "We want to issue rulings." Someone who is ignorant, who does not know any Arabic, or who has no knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence wants to issue rulings?! They say: "We reinterpret the texts." There is a very dangerous conspiracy against the religion of Islam in newspapers and in what these people say. A journalist, or one of those lowlifes, wants to... These people are a mixture of Western, local, and imported ideologies, but they want to express their views with regard to religious rulings. This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people, the prerogative of knowledgeable people, not of fools or heretics.
[...]
The problem is that they want to open a debate on whether Islam is true or not, and on whether Judaism and Christianity are false or not. In other words, they want to open up everything for debate. Now they want to open up all issues for debate. That's it. It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief. So where's the conspiracy? They say: Let's have freedom of thought in Islam. Well, what do they want? They say: I think, therefore I want to express my thoughts. I want to express myself, I want to talk and say, for example, that there are loopholes in Islam, or that Christianity is the truth. Then they will talk about freedom of belief, and say that anyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants... If you want to become an apostate – go ahead. Fancy Buddhism? Leave Islam, and join Buddhism. No problem. That's what freedom of belief is all about. They want freedom of everything. What they want is very dangerous.
[...]
Freedom of thought, within some constraints, is blessed. Islam calls for thinking, for interpretation, and for the use of the mind. But as for freedom of heresy, which allows anyone to criticize whatever he wants in Islam, saying, for example, that he does not like the punishment for apostasy, that he doesn't like the punishment for drinking alcohol, or that he does not like the punishment of stoning adulterers – this is barbarism. They ask: Why should a thief have his hand chopped off? Some of them say that this is "too much." Two-three much on you and your rotten mind. If you abolish this punishment, you will see the rise in thefts. On the other hand, people feel their property is secure because of this punishment.

Important Message from the Muslim Canadian Congress

Wednesday, we wondered at the Ontario Human Rights Council decision to declare 1) that they did not have jurisdiction to try Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine for hate speech; but 2) that they know Steyn and Maclean's are guilty, racist Islamophobic bastards anyway.

I suggested that this bizarre approach to the law exemplified "left dhimmi fascism", Dag's favorite term.

Now comes news that it may not have been dhimmi fascists but real-to-goodness Sharia loving ones behind the OHRC decision.

In the words of the Muslim Canadian Congress:

OTTAWA—The Muslim Canadian Congress has welcomed the decision by the Ontario Human Rights Commission not to proceed with complaints filed against Maclean’s magazine related to an article where the Canadian Islamic Congress had alleged that the magazine had violated their human rights.

However, the MCC is disappointed that the OHRC become the virtual organ of Canada’s Islamist organizations and that it has taken sides in the bitter struggle within Canada’s Muslim community where sharia-supporting Islamists are pitted against liberal and secular Muslims.

In a statement, the Vice President of the MCC, Salma Siddiqui said, the OHRC decision had the finger prints of its pro-Islamist commissioners who have close association with the Canadian Islamic Congress. It is not just the commissioners, but we have reason to believe that there are staff on the OHRC that support sharia law and endorse the CIC’s positions.

Had the OHRC restricted itself to the legality of the issue, the MCC would have no prob-lem with its decision. But in editorializing and coming out to bat for Canada’s Islamists, the OHRC is sending a very dangerous message to moderate Muslims who reject Sharia and do not take inspiration from overseas Islamic countries or groups.

On the one hand the OHRC criticizes Macleans for “portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics,” but then does the same thing by perpetuating the Islamist myth that Muslims in Canada are a persecuted group. Those of us Muslims who do not share this addiction of victimhood, seem to have no resonance with the OHRC.

The MCC finds it shameful that the OHRC would use Islamist supplied information in a blog discussion that called for “the mass killing, deportation or conversion of Muslim Canadians” and position it as reflective of the view of media and ordinary Canadians.

The OHRC decision must be cause for celebration in Osama Bin Laden's cave and among the soldiers of the world Jihadi movement that love to spread the falsehood that Canada is at war with Islam and that Muslims in Canada live under a cloud of racism and persecution. Nothing can be further from the truth.

(HT Catfur)

So don't be dismissive next time someone tells you that Canada and Western countries have already institutionalized aspects of the oppressive Sharia law. It's what happens when we fall for the "human rights" world view, and forget about real human rights.

For Queen and Country

The other day I was having a conversation with someone who used the expression "menials". "What do you mean, menials," says I.

"The menials do the ordinary housework that the courtiers won't touch."

So what do the courtiers do?

Well, today comes the answer: they let the world know that the Queen is, how do they put it, not amused by the Archbishop and his calls for Sharia:

According to a royal source, the Queen has not expressed any view on whether Dr Rowan Williams was unwise to say it was "unavoidable" that aspects of the sharia legal system could be incorporated into English law.

But as Supreme Governor of the Church of England she has been dismayed by the controversy that the remarks have generated at such a difficult period in the history of the Established Church, which faces possible schism over the issue of homosexual clergy.

The Queen, who approved the appointment of Dr Williams on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, takes her role as Supreme Governor very seriously.

One royal source said: "I have no idea what her view is on what the Archbishop said about sharia law. But the Queen is worried, coming at such a difficult time in the Church's history, that the fallout may sap the authority of the Church."
[...]
Another royal courtier said: "The whole thing has not been skilfully handled. It can only have undermined the authority of the Church."

A Buckingham Palace spokesman declined to comment.

H/T Up Pompeii who argues:

Statements such as this do not get issued lightly and the words used go much further than a critique of the Archbishop, this is a clear indication that HRH is not happy at all with the Islamic presence in the UK.

HRH is obviously aware of the crisis within her realm and she has now broken her silence, we can only hope for more of the same.

We were happy to note last week that the Royal Family is granting the use of Windsor Castle for a special dinner to mark Israel's 60th anniversary. Again, the speculation is that the Queen is sending the British government a message on what values it should be upholding.

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The Archbishop of Sharia controversy

Adrian Morgan provides a useful overview of the present storm over the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments, and provides some background to recent developments in Britain.

Of course, despite Archbishop Rowan Williams' general political foolishness, and his unwittingly anti-Christian moral and cultural relativism, the Archbishop is at least correct that Sharia law already exists in some form in Britain as, for example,the reports of Muslim police and government officials helping families track down wives and daughters who have tried to escape to women's shelters testifies. When the state is helping to sustain a culture that still performs honour killings, the outrage over Archbishop Rowan William's testing of the Sharia waters is understandable. According to police, there are up to 17,000 women who are victims of honour crimes each year in Britain.

What is becoming more and more clear is that there is growing a very serious divide between the elites or the bureaucratic-academic-journalistic classes and the bulk of (increasingly internet-informed) public opinion in countries like Britain on the questions of "multiculturalism" and Islam and their place in (British) society. This is a highly dangerous situation that could lead to great violence because it testifies to a collapse of a shared conception of what the national covenant of Britain is. If the elites, full of their vague and fundamentally incoherent half-ideas about cultural and moral relativism, "multiculturalism", "European Union", (anti-)nationalism and democracy, are unable to represent the nation and political citizenship in ways that can be used, exchanged, modified, by the large majority of people, under a national political constitution that provides a people the non-violent means to constitute and renew their political identities, it is only a matter of time before there will be serious disorder.

According to a recent report for one of the world's leading elite-liberal-post-nationalist organizations, Europeans think Islam is dangerous:

An “overwhelming majority” of Europeans believe immigration from Islamic countries is a threat to their traditional way of life, a survey revealed last night.

The poll, carried out across 21 countries, found “widespread anti-immigration sentiment”, but warned Europe’s Muslim population will treble in the next 17 years.

It reported “a severe deficit of trust is found between the Western and Muslim communities”, with most people wanting less interaction with the Muslim world.

Last night an MP warned it showed that political leaders in Britain who preach the benefits of unlimited immigration were dangerously out of touch with the public.

The study, whose authors include the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, was commissioned for leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

This divide between "leaders" and "citizens" is indeed frightening. The basis of all human order, the means by which we defer violent conflict, is through the exchange of signs or representations. These signs must emerge and be exchanged on shared scenes, a requirement that has led us in the West to develop shared national cultures, on the realization that multicultural empires have proven less capable of insuring the democratic exchange of signs. But this is a lesson we are always forgetting, due to the unhappy but inevitable history of conflict within and between nations, and due to the appeal of more simplistic Utopian ideas about imperial control and unified deferral to centralized signs of "multicultural", i.e. extra-cultural, rule. To speak of "extra-cultural" rule is to suggest that the "culture" ruling multicultural empires is parasitic on the subject cultures and does not provide a means for much cultural renewal in the long run. If "multicultural" "unity" comes at the cost of a loss to ordinary people's capacity to engage seriously in the renewal of the culture by which they are led, if unity means that politics becomes a game of horse-trading among demagoguing elites who stir up the mobs they presume to represent, focusing their resentment on the other demagogues and the other mobs-cultures of the multicultural empire, instead of engaging one's constituency in a serious exchange of signs, then it is not a unity that will last long the erosion that human resentment effects on any and every form of political order.

Multiculturalism, as a principle of rule, must be parasitic on all the cultures that constitute the political entity, for it cannot fully provide any one culture the freedom continually to renew the terms by which leaders and led will relate to each other. It robs any one culture of the degrees of freedom necessary to that essential human task. Whatever multicultural flourishing we (Canadians) should allow ourselves in the domestic, strictly (privately) religious, consumer, and economic spheres of life, when it comes to public politics, our ideal should be a universally shared national covenant. If multiculturalism means eating Chinese food, or becoming a Hindu, fine. But if it means that our political leaders speak primarily not to individual Canadians as free individuals, but to Chinese, Hindu, etc. "community leaders", then we are going down a road to a political culture that will rob ourselves of the necessary means for renewing our politics non-violently. Only a political order that has a constitution that allows the people the individual- (not group-)based freedoms to be variously involved in renewing their culture(s) can hope to survive long in history, especially at a time when our means of communications and resentment are so great.

Order is never primarily a question of brute force or power, but of shared opinion about the political and social lines that must be respected and defended. It is once that shared exchange of political representations is lost between putative leaders and led that the attraction of brute force to those seeking power and order becomes fantastically appealing.

But those who want to forestall the coming danger will not simply jump on the popular bandwagon of denouncing both Islam as a violent and supremacist cult, and the elites who insist it is a religion of peace. What Islam is or can be is not half as important as what Western nations understand themselves to be. Will Westerners, currently immersed in the religion of White Guilt, give up on renewing and championing their national cultures, both as the basis for a more transparent and effective inter-national mediation of conflict, and for maximizing our individual potential to live free and meaningful lives within the march of history?

The real leaders of society will take it upon themselves to sit down with their friends, neighbours, internet acquaintances - all fellow citizens of good faith - and start asking how we can start representing our nations in ways that can preserve and renew our traditions of individual freedom and self-ruling democracy. When I hear of covenant zones, or something like them, popping up in the UK, I will worry less that out-of-control street violence, or totalitarian government, is in the future of the land that gave Canada the basis of our constitutional freedoms.

Nigerian Archbishop Ben Kwashi responds to Rowan Williams:

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