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Suffering’s Stewards

Scott Douglas Jacobsen
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Suffering’s Stewards

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen

The Roman Catholic Christian Church Pope Francis – the guy who thinks he is the only Pope should look into the Discordians, adjacent to the Church of the SubGenius and its SubGenii – remarked on the problems with drug abuse or, less moralistically, substance misuse in the context of Duterte (Romero, 2018).

But this requires some context on Christian conceptualizations of suffering through time right into the present, which will, in due course, include commentary on Christian ideas of suffering, substance misuse, drugs, and the brain, and harm reduction in the Philippines and global context.

The image of pain, suffering, and misery sits at the Cross of the Roman Catholic Christians and other Christians, with the assumption of the redemptive work in a sacrifice of God made flesh, where the Salvifici Doloris states the meaning of suffering “illuminated by the Word of God” and reflected in the words of “Saint Paul” (John Paul II, 1984).

In this Christian context, of the largest sect and others, the meaning of suffering and pain, the purported mystery of suffering evokes “compassion,” “respect,” and intimidation and retains its plumbed linkages to a “need of the heart” and the “deep imperative of faith” (Ibid.).

Within this framework of the world, the alleviation of suffering is seen as only through Christ at the Cross and through no other, as this, simply put, is an emotional need and an imperative of religious faith and, therefore, an inexplicable and mandatory part of faith in Christ for a true Christianity.

Christianity, and its representatives in the largest sect and its highest offices to the supposed Vicar of Christ on Earth become guardians of this suffering, because without such sacrament of suffering and pain the redemptive power of Christ in a fallen world, so-called, would remain unneeded; the Roman Catholic Christian Church would become outmoded and irrelevant to the concerns of a mature and critical-minded, empirically informed, and logically coherent person of the future.

Intimations of this can be seen within the advanced industrial economies of the world which, historically speaking, were predominantly Christian and serious in their faith but, over time, they began to lose hold and slipped in their adherence to the faith, in degree and raw numbers. Throughout the 20th century, we witnessed a historic rise of the non-religious, of the individuals without the need or even basic want for a traditional religious life.

In this, we also, at least in North America, developed the post-WWII Healing Revival Movement with a wide range of people preaching the Gospel with renewed vigor and proclamations of the end times and purification of the world for the benefit of the Good and Christian – synonyms within the framework propounded for centuries, hence the sociocultural assumption of nonbelievers as amoral if not, worse, inherently immoral – including Rev. Billy Graham, Oral Roberts – who some during the higher heights of faith in Sigmund Freud labeled “Anal Roberts,” William Marion Branham, Jack Coe, Jack Moore, A. A. Allen, T. L. Osborn, Gordon Lindsay, F. F. Bosworth, Ern Baxter, Paul Cain, Kenneth Hagin, and O.L. Jaggers (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018).

All lunatics, charlatans, or ignoramuses in their own rights. The fourth option, of course, is knowledgeable; however, these individuals did not know much about the world but had, as per the statement by Hawking, neither ignorance nor knowledge but the illusion of knowledge, which, in the end, analysis, is far viler and the enemy of real knowledge about the reality abounding around us. To quote the late cosmologist once more, religion is based on authority. Science is based on evidence. Approximately, one can apply the same categorization sweep in the analysis of prominent creationists in history including Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, Immanuel Velikovsky, Duane Gish, and others. A lesson in life, learn to detect pseudoscience and nonsense and then move on, which saves time.

Famously, even the within-the-faith beloved supposed Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta, also known as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the writings of the late purported saint remain littered with commentary on suffering and the importance of pain and suffering, as this retains a sense of the redemption of Christ.

Bojaxhiu states, “Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy. Remember that the Passion of Christ ends always in the joy of the Resurrection of Christ, so when you feel in your own heart the suffering of Christ, remember the Resurrection has to come—–the joy of Easter has to dawn. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Risen Christ” (Lau, n.d.).

Suffering shall be accepted as a joy; a joy as the “Risen Christ” (Ibid.). The nature of the framework represents an assumption of a resurrection from the dead, i.e., the death, burial, and three days later resurrection of Christ in so-called defiance of death.

The only crux, so to speak, of the issue of suffering from Christian theology, remains with the supposed resurrection and in the power of the sacrifice of a God-man, of God made flesh, on a Cross, through a form of Roman capital punishment.

Without veracity to these claims of a resurrection and to its panacea power for the supernatural moral blights of sin for all time – past, present, and future, the notion of Christian alleviation of suffering, or need for recognition of suffering as joy in realization of its reflection in Jesus’s or Yeshua Ben Yosef’s murder, becomes nothing.

It’s true, then, the Roman Catholic Christians did it: ex nihilo. They created something from nothing, more suffering than necessary through its enshrinement and as guardianship for access to the joy of Christ’s self-sacrifice at the Cross. Unnecessary suffering within a secular referent frame becomes immoral because of the tacit premise of a supernatural moral realm; whereas, to the Roman Catholic Christian Church, the secularly seen unnecessary suffering becomes necessary suffering via reflective qualities with the penultimate sacrifice of Christ for the so-called sins of humankind. That is to say, the well-being moral matrix of humanism stands opposed to the meta-physicalistic ethic of Christianity; although, if one takes the words of the Utilitarian ethicist and political philosopher John Stuart Mill seriously in Utilitarianism, the foundation of the ethics of wellbeing writ broad and deep with a eudaemonistic view of human life and their relations with one another becomes the moral nature of the Nazarene:

I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human being’s sentient existence.(Mill, 1863)

This could lead into commentary on the ongoing and overwhelming sexual abuse of children and nuns entering into the news cycle at a rapid pace; however, this will not be the focus of this article (Dancel, 2018; Gomes, 2018; Pierce, 2018; Regencia, 2018; Macdonald, 2018; Long, 2018). Mill took a naturalistic frame of the Nazarene reflective of the morals of Utilitarianism, where the Roman Catholic Christian Church holds fast to the notion of supernatural lessons and an ethical gradient within this meta-material world of grace to sin.

Of the many foci within the categorization of pain, misery, and suffering of the Roman Catholic Christian Church, we can, also, come to the realization of the ongoing and international problem with the pain and death created through the substance misuse crisis around the world (WHO, 2018a; WHO, 2018b).

If we look at the deaths associated with the drug epidemic around the world, we can find approximately 70,000 to 100,000 people dying from opioid-related overdoses, alone, per annum, and as many as 99,000 to 253,000 deaths from to illicit drug use, circa 2010 (UNODC/WHO, 2013).

The main deaths from these substances are men (NIH, 2018a; NIH, 2018b). These statistics from the National Institutes of Health in the United States replicate to other parts of the world. This does not seem like a spiritual problem, as in some spiritual-moral realm corrupted and influencing the men to become addicted in the short- and long-term. One which damages families and communities, and leaving men to die alone.

The basics of addiction, rather than a spiritual-moral framework in years past filled with theological arguments and references to revelation, comes from a functional comprehension of the architecture of the mind, of the brain as an organic sense input receiver and information processor, as we are evolved organisms with imperfectly coordinated but good enough consciousnesses; where these systems can be hijacked by the substances, the neural networks can be, without context, activated based on the ability of the addictive substances to cross the blood-brain barrier and remain active and suitable for locking into neurotransmitter sites at gap junctions. It is well-known as the “biology of addiction” (NIH News in Health, 2015). One common and among the most lethal substances, and which is legal in several nations around the world, remain alcohol, which makes for a good example.

Dr. George Koob, the Director of the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, stated, “A common misperception is that addiction is a choice or moral problem, and all you have to do is stop. But nothing could be further from the truth… The brain actually changes with addiction, and it takes a good deal of work to get it back to its normal state. The more drugs or alcohol you’ve taken, the more disruptive it is to the brain” (Ibid.).

The Director of the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkow, notes the decreased activity in the frontal cortex in individuals who harbor addictive tendencies or outright addictions, whether to alcohol or other substances; they take the substance in spite of the costs of losing “custody of their children” or real threats of a potential rightful entrance into a penitentiary (Ibid.).

These experts in the functional neurological and behavioral aspects of addiction do not mention the spiritual world or spiritual problems, or alternate and inexplicable dimensions apart from the ordinary, but these medical professionals and research directors at the highest level in the world direct attention to organized matter, a brain, and its malfunctions, e.g., the poor functional capacity of the frontal lobes and, in particular, the frontal cortex of the unfortunates suffering with or through addiction.

As Professor Adele Diamond of The University of British Columbia explains with regards to the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, the poor functioning of the DPfC, in particular, or the PfC, in general, can impair function in most important areas of personal and professional life, and associated with many mental disorders, including attention and conduct disorders, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorders, even schizophrenia, and can impact physical health with poor health habits in either exercise or diet, reading and writing achievement, dependability, violent and emotional outburst events and degrees of said moments, retaining of a job let alone a career, levels of productivity, and success and harmony in work or marital life, and so on (Diamond, 2012).

A material, physical, or natural structure with impairments expresses widespread life problems, i.e., not a spiritual-moral issue by necessity and, by the principle of parsimony or Occam’s Razor, far more probable as a neurological impairment issue. This leads to some implications in the legal and social, and law enforcement, aspects of substance misuse epidemics. There has been a wide range of calls for the decriminalization of drugs to deal with this international problem, as would be a humanistic orientation based on evidence of the reduction in harms to the general public at all levels. That is to say, compassion- and science-based solution to this international problem. [Ed. I have written on this before and reference common knowledge within the international community on this subject matter, as well as prior references from other articles.]

The calls have been from the UN General Assembly Session on the Approach to the World Drug Problem (UNGASS) in its 2016 unanimous conclusion, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, through drug policy and the Sustainable Development Goals, and others (UNODC, 2018; Yakupitiyage, 2017; UNODC, 2015; Sustainable Development Goals, n.d.).

The United Nations and the World Health Organization issued a joint statement calling for decriminalization of all drugs in 2017 (WHO, 2017). The Former Portuguese Prime Minister and Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres called for the decriminalization of all drugs while the Prime Minister of Portugal; same while the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the prior Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon did the same (Secretariat to the Governing Bodies UNODC, 2018).

Some nations made continuous calls for decriminalization. They enacted the changes, including the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Portugal, and other countries (Travis, 2014; Vastag, 2009). The questions about this issue of drugs or substances with deadly or addictive potentials around the world remains the ways in which the substances are dealt with via the criminal justice system, the system of jurisprudence, and the assumptions floating within the public consciousness influencing the conscience of the general populace of a nation, including the Philippines.

If we look at the situation with the nation for me, Canadian society, in other words, we can note the ways in which the punitive approach to substance misuse has been an utter failure, even worse in the nation south of our border, i.e., the United States of America.

The punishment of the misusers, in fact, based on the firm and robust evidence showing the increase of the use, the severity of the outcomes, and how this punishment methodology simply leaves more people without support and possibly addicted/deceased, and the prison population filled more than before within the nation-state, based on the implementation of policies set forth with a punitive approach.

Most often, the poor and minorities within a state are the majority of the victims here; thus, if poor, male, and a minority within a nation, then the greater the likelihood of falling victim to injury, addiction, or death via illicit substance intake, whether orally, anally, or injections (Fellner, 2009; NIH, 2018a; NIH, 2018b). In general, this is counter-complemented by an evidence-based methodology towards the issues of substance misuse: harm reduction, which amounts to both a philosophy and a methodology (Harm Reduction International, 2018).

Much akin to the humanistic approach, as noted, harm reduction provides a basis for the implementation in societies around the world with a reason, science, and compassion foundation in the management of substance misuse as a human issue and a social health problem primarily, and secondarily as an issue of law enforcement. For example, if decriminalized, the black market in this sector becomes nullified.

The alternative to mostly punishment is harm reduction (Harm Reduction International, 2018). One major aspect of compassion would be the implementation of decriminalization, as per the national and international calls, and compassion oriented policies, programmes, and initiatives in order to alleviate the suffering of those at the bottom of society.

These methodologies can be as simple as needle exchange programs or safe injections sites. Others, if the population of young postsecondary students, can be an emphasis on naloxone kits on campus, which blocks the opioid receptors of the body and stalls overdoses for time to return the young person to the hospital. These remain solutions bound to a realistic view of a free country, likely, harboring illicit substances or licit substances that will be misused, and then the role of the government should be to protect and help the public in the most evidence-based way possible, which means the harm reduction approaches, while also respecting the bodily autonomy and choices of the Filipino/Filipina.

More than 1,000 Canadian citizens died in the province of British Columbia alone, which prompted an emergency task force to examine the issue and the evidence. This led to the proposals for more extensive harm reduction approaches, not less, where this mirrors the situation with Portugal under Guterres.

Humanistic approaches do not imply for all time or inherent completeness of philosophical foundation, in a symmetry with the logical findings of Kurt Godel about the incompleteness of any standard mathematical system proclaiming consistency or the inconsistency of any mathematical system proclaiming completeness, because the fundamental basis in science – process, discoveries, and substantiated empirical theories – amounts to a philosophy of discovery about the natural world and, therefore, an ethic, by implication incorporating it, becomes one of a wondrous continual searching, probing, retaining, integrating, and refining of inherent compassionate sentiments of the human heart reflected in the Golden Rule to the advanced scientific and technological landscape of the world today.

This brings us back into the subject matter of suffering and the context of Christianity, the Pope, Duterte, and harm reduction. As the Roman Catholic Christian Church from the previous Pope to a saint noted on the Christian conceptualization of suffering, as they live in a worldview of the teleological bound within this notion of God as a Logos or the source of absolute truth without room for deviancy – the Logos way or the highway (to hell, even paved with good intentions, presumably), the suffering in the world must have some God-given purpose.

Suffering comes from a fallen world but is extant due to some ultimate teleological purpose with God’s divine plan, even while the standard position of the Roman Catholic Christian Church is acceptance of Theistic Evolution with, in many eyes, humanity as the crowning achievement of creation. From an evolutionary viewpoint without teleology, a naturalistic worldview, the pain, suffering, and misery remain products of evolution carved via natural selective processes from natural disasters to reciprocal altruism to mate selection to kin selection to punctuated equilibrium and so on, without teleology. Kropotkin noted the factor of mutual aid in evolution at any rate.

The pain and suffering are seen as necessary and, potentially, needing encouragement or even praise as reflective of the joy identified with the notion of a crucified Christ, i.e., the ultimate in suffering and sacrifice then victory over the death of the mortal coil.

However, lacking the evidence or firm evidentiary basis for the claims in the narratives of a Christ who died and rose from the dead a la Lazarus, or the biological evidence to show natural means by which death has ever been forestalled indefinitely and even reversed then or now, the teleological view of suffering becomes less cosmic, more parochial, and akin to the Evolution by Natural Selection posited by Darwin in 1859 (On the Origin of Species) without a teleological lens on the development, adaptation, and speciation of species.

Suffering becomes another unavoidable aspect of the evolved organisms of Earth useful for long-term species survival while also, given the aforementioned sentiments and inquiring ethical discovery linked to science, becoming something human beings can alleviate, not only in themselves but in others as per the Golden Rule.

Some individuals seem to have less of this. Duterte, in particular, admitted to extrajudicial killings, stated, “What is my sin? Did I steal even one peso? Did I prosecute somebody who I ordered jailed? My sin is extrajudicial killings” (Human Rights Watch, 2018a).

In the anti-drug fervor of the nation, of the Philippines, more than 12,000 people have been killed, including men, women, and children (Ibid.), based on conservative estimates from “the nongovernmental groups Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates and the International Drug Policy Consortium, as well as media outlets including the Sydney Morning Herald” (Ibid.).

There has been, also, the efforts to push an independent investigation via the UN into the killings associated with this so-called War on Drugs, which amounts to the punitive or punished oriented approach, in contradistinction to the harm reduction approach, mentioned before (Human Rights Watch, 2018b). This harsh tone and tough talk are not new from Duterte.

In a May 2015 election campaign rally, he, in a strong suggestion of a punitive approach to drugs, exclaimed, “If I became president, you [alleged criminals] should hide. I would kill all of you who make the lives of Filipinos miserable. I will definitely kill you. I do not want to commit this crime. But if by chance per chance God will place me there, stay on guard because that 1,000 [killed in Davao City] will become 100,000” (Rappler.com, 2015).

Golez quoted the Roman Catholic Christian Pope spokesperson, Salvador Panelo, stating, “This is precisely the rationale behind the President’s war on illegal drugs in the Philippines: to save the young and future generations of Filipinos from the drug scourge… Laudable developments have been achieved by the current administration in this regard, notwithstanding the noise coming from the loud minority composed of his detractors and critics here and abroad” (Golez, 2018; Romero, 2018).

In short, Duterte and the Pope speak in different tones but support the same social and law enforcement right-wing ideological perspective, which, in accordance with all evidence available to us, will not only maintain the terrible conditions but make them worse or exacerbate them for individuals and society.

As per the calls for decriminalization and the empirical robust support for harm reduction methodologies, the Pope and Duterte should take a complete about-face in their commitment, as they currently rely on an anti-science conservative agenda that harms the public and has resulted in, potentially 12,000 or more killings when a perfectly functional and evidence-based approach sits before them with support from the international community from the United Nations to the World Health Organization.

The implications of more suffering and then working to stamp this out does not sit apart from the work of mostly male world leaders working to maintain a tough-guy image and in the Christian conceptualization of human suffering as a derivation of a good reflective of the redemptive self-sacrifice of Christ at the Cross; but for God’s sake, the evidence and the naturalistic ethics bound to the sciences of the mind better suit the modern world and will, in fact, do what the purported holy figure and strongman want in their triumphal declarations: reduce the drug abuse or substance misuse problem – so, stop being the guardians of unnecessary suffering and death, and misery, and pain.

Then, maybe, we can thank heaven, literally or metaphorically.

References

Dancel, R. (2018, December 5). American priest arrested in the Philippines for alleged sexual abuse of up to 50 boys. Retrieved from https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/american-priest-arrested-in-the-philippines-for-alleged-sexual-abuse-of-up-to-50-boys.

Diamond, A. (2012, September 27). Executive Functions. Retrieved from http://www.devcogneuro.com/Publications/ExecutiveFunctions2013.pdf.

Fellner, J. (2009, June 19). Race, Drugs, and Law Enforcement in the United States. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/06/19/race-drugs-and-law-enforcement-united-states.

Golez, P. (2018, December 2). Pope’s drug remarks ‘relevant, timely’ in Philippines drug war: Palace. Retrieved from https://politics.com.ph/popes-drug-remarks-relevant-timely-in-philippines-drug-war-palace/.

Gomes, R. (2018, September 3). Philippine bishops vow to prevent clerical sexual and other abuse and cover-ups. Retrieved from https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2018-09/philippines-bishops-clerical-abuse-valles-cbcp.html.

Harm Reduction International. (2018). What is Harm Reduction?. Retrieved from https://www.hri.global/what-is-harm-reduction.

Human Rights Watch. (2018a, September 28). Philippines’ Duterte Confesses to ‘Drug War’ Slaughter. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/28/philippines-duterte-confesses-drug-war-slaughter.

Human Rights Watch. (2018b, February 1). Philippines: Endorse UN Inquiry into ‘Drug War’ Killings. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/01/philippines-endorse-un-inquiry-drug-war-killings.

John Paul II. (1984). Apostolic Letter Salvific Doloris of the Supreme Pontiff John Paull II to the Bishops, to the Priests, to the Religious Families and to the Faithful of the Catholic Church on the Christian Meaning of Suffering. Retrieved from w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html.

Lau, J. (n.d.). Mother Teresa on Suffering and Death. Retrieved from www.jameslau88.com/mother_teresa_on_suffering_and_death.html.

Long, H. (2018, December 6). 13 Catholic clergy connected to central AL accused of sexual assault of children. Retrieved from https://www.wsfa.com/2018/12/06/catholic-clergy-connected-central-al-accused-sexual-assault-children/.

Macdonald, N. (2018, August 26). By secular standards, the Catholic Church is a corrupt organization: Neil Macdonald. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/grand-jury-report-1.4798291.

Mill, J.S. (1863). Utilitarianism. Retrieved from https://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.htm.

NIH. (2018a, July). Sex and Gender Differences in Substance Use. Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/substance-use-in-women/sex-gender-differences-in-substance-use.

NIH. (2018b, August). Sex and Gender Differences in Substance Use. Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/substance-use-in-women.

NIH News in Health. (2015, October). Biology of Addiction: Drugs and Alcohol Can Hijack Your Brain. Retrieved from https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2015/10/biology-addiction.

Pierce, C.P. (2018, December 20). The Catholic Church Is a Worldwide Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice. Retrieved from https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25643425/catholic-church-sex-abuse-scandals-michigan-oregon-alaska/.

Rappler.com. (2015, May 25). Duterte: ‘Am I the death squad? True’. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/94302-rodrigo-duterte-davao-death-squad.

Regencia, T. (2018, December 5). Philippines’ Duterte: ‘Kill those useless bishops’. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/philippines-duterte-kill-useless-catholic-bishops-181205132220894.html.

Romero, A. (2018, December 2). Palace welcomes Pope Francis’ statement on need to combat drug problem. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/12/02/1873580/palace-welcomes-pope-francis-statement-need-combat-drug-problem.

Secretariat to the Governing Bodies UNODC. (2018). 61st session of CND, video message by Mr. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=kF-6t0FdYG0.

Sustainable Development Goals. (n.d.). 3 Good Health and Well-Being. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/health/.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2018, September 1). Mother Theresa. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mother-Teresa.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2016, July 14). Revivalism. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/revivalism-Christianity.

Travis, A. (2014, October 30). Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion — the drug laws don’t work. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/30/drug-laws-international-study-tough-policy-use-problem.

UNODC. (2015, November). Drug Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved from https://www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/Health_Poverty_Action/HPA_SDGs_drugs_policy_briefing_WEB.pdf.

UNODC. (2018, June 26). World Drug Report 2018: opioid crisis, prescription drug abuse expands; cocaine and opium hit record highs. Retrieved from https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2018/June/world-drug-report-2018_-opioid-crisis–prescription-drug-abuse-expands-cocaine-and-opium-hit-record-highs.html.

UNODC/WHO. (2013). Opioid overdose: preventing and reducing opioid overdose mortality. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/opioid_overdose.pdf?ua=1.

Vastag, B. (2009, April 7). 5 Years After: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/portugal-drug-decriminalization/.

WHO. (2018b). Management of substance abuse: Facts and figures. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/information-sheet/en/.

WHO. (2018a). Management of substance abuse: information sheet on opioid overdose. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/information-sheet/en/.

Yakupitiyage, T. (2017, June 22). “Big Reflection” Needed on Opioid Crisis. Retrieved from http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/06/big-reflection-needed-opioid-crisis/.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com.

Original publication in Humanist Alliance Philippines International.

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

A Secular Women’s History Moment

Scott Douglas Jacobsen
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A Secular Women’s History Moment

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Rev. Gretta Vosper of West Hill United Church in Scarborough, Ontario, went through an approximately 3-year ordeal – almost 4 in fact – in the uncertainty of station in the Christian denomination The United Church of Canada, arguably the most progressive sect in the nation and much of the world (not my opinion alone).

Take, for example, the fact of the matter as the first church to permit the ordination of women, circa 1936 with Lydia Guchy (University of Toronto, 2017; BC Conference of the United Church of Canada, 2018).

Also, we can take Vosper stating that The United Church of Canada is the “most progressive denomination in the world, as far as I’m concerned” in a podcast with Ryan Bell (Garrison, 2016).

In a conclusion-of-the-ordeal article, following the first article a couple years prior, Garrison (2018) notes, “Vosper hopes to create resources for the development of secular communities that have these multilayered social connections within them.”

A community was the point the entire time. Vosper remains a person oriented around the construction of community. She has also been labeled a “brave woman,” and rightly so (Thomas, 2018). The reason, as noted by Thomas, “… her situation grabbed headlines when she wrote a letter to the church’s spiritual leader after the January 2015 terrorist massacre at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office in Paris. Her point: Belief in God can motivate bad things” (Ibid.).

More pointedly, Vosper denounced the belief in a supernatural “being whose purposes can be divined and which, once interpreted and without mercy, must be brought about within the human community in the name of that being” (Longhurst, 2018).

This was, in part, a basis for Vosper, personally, to be unable and unwilling to reaffirm the original vows during ordination in The United Church of Canada. There was supposed to be a hearing for Vosper, and then delays in the hearing occurred for some time – until recently.

As reported by Longhurst, “…before that hearing took place, the Toronto Conference and Vosper reached a settlement on Nov. 7 to let her keep her job” (2018). However, the church released another statement in reaffirmation of some beliefs following the announcement of the reaching of a settlement (The United Church of Canada, 2018a).

“In a brief joint statement, the Toronto Conference, Vosper and West Hill Church said the parties had ‘settled all outstanding issues between them,’” as reported by Longhurst (Longhurst, 2018; The United Church of Canada, 2018b).

The articles, since the November 7 press statement, continue to come out, even more than one month later (Stonestreet, J. & Morris, 2018; Bean, 2018). According to Vosper’s lawyer, Juliana Falconer, there was a rational calculation on the costs and benefits of a continuation of the disagreement, for all parties (Ibid.).

Douglas Todd, a long-time religion and belief commentator, lamented the lack of open reasoning for the decision by The United Church of Canada (Todd, 2018).

Todd argues The United Church of Canada is the main source of “worm theology,” which amounts to engagement in identity politics and followers who “perceive themselves as fundamentally flawed, guilty and unworthy” (Ibid.).

While also considering the prior statement of The United Church of Canada, we can see the earlier tone, as declared:

The Committee read the submissions and listened very carefully to determine whether Ms. Vosper’s beliefs are in essential agreement with the statement of doctrine of the United Church. This is a crucial question asked of all potential ordinands to determine whether they are suitable for ministry within The United Church of Canada.

We have concluded that if Gretta Vosper were before us today, seeking to be ordained, the Toronto Conference Interview Committee would not recommend her. In our opinion, she is not suitable to continue in ordained ministry because she does not believe in God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit. Ms. Vosper does not recognize the primacy of scripture, she will not conduct the sacraments, and she is no longer in essential agreement with the statement of doctrine of The United Church of Canada. (Henderson, 2016)

But with some cultural knowledge or research into the belief of clergy in congregations around North America, there is a long history of doubting leaders alongside the larger disbelieving laity, who may simply suspect but not explicitly know about one another.

One such project was set forth by Tufts University Professor Daniel C. Dennett and Independent Qualitative Research Consultant Linda LaScola, called The Clergy Project (The Clergy Project, 2018). (If you look close at the banner collage image at the top of the main webpage of the website, you can see Vosper’s photo.)

Vosper simply becomes another in a long line of brave individuals, as noted by Thomas (2018), working to expand the landscape of Christian and other spirituality in the early 21st century. A woman freethought pioneer within the tradition of The United Church of Canada.

The conclusion of the ordeal for Vosper has left some letters to the editor with laments, including the following from Steve Thorkildsen, “What will be next? School principals who don’t believe in the value of educating children? Doctors who don’t believe the natural progression of diseases should be interrupted? Engineers who spurn precision and believe that approximations are close enough? Our new Age of Reason doesn’t seem so reasonable to me” (Hamilton Spectator, 2018).

But even within The United Church of Canada, the head of the denomination is happy to keep Vosper (Stonestreet & Morris, 2018). Discomfort from some on the outside and resolute comfort, even happiness, on the inside.

One commentary, by Antonio Gualteri (2018), openly opined, “Now I wonder if the terms of the settlement between the two parties were based more on labour law than theology, though we may never know given the condition of confidentiality.”

In a nuanced view, he considers the critical issue not the atheism of Vosper but the approach to the Bible. While, at the same time, Vosper has spoken to these subtler concerns in prior writing, as cited in the article by Gualteri (2018).

That is to say, she (Vosper) states, directly, the problematic contents of the texts comprising the Bible with the “obscure,” “irrelevant,” and “dangerously prone to misguiding” contents of it (Gualteri, 2018; Vosper, 2016).

Perhaps, in other words, the issue remains not Vosper’s approach to the Bible, but, rather, with the applicability of the purported holy text to much of modern secular life and spirituality in standard interpretations, in contradistinction to the noteworthy but, likely, wrongly – inversely so – placed concerns of Gualteri (2018).

Vosper, in response to a question about “atheist minister” being, supposedly, an oxymoron, stated, “Not if you understand the history of biblical and theological study. For well over 100 years, we’ve questioned the authority of the Bible and recognized it was written by humans. When you do that, everything is up for grabs, including the idea of a supernatural God.”

She seems correct, in part, but this tradition of questioning of the Bible by prominent and intelligent women exists much farther into the historical record, including back to some of the earliest women geniuses in the Western philosophical tradition (Adler, 2018).

I speak, of course, of one of the few great women polymaths permitted to flourish, for a time, in the ancient world: Hypatia of Alexandria. She had a number of distinct statements about fables, myths, miracles, superstitions, and religions:

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

Taking the historical account and comparing to the current, we can see, at a minimum perhaps, an amicable solution, as per the joint statement, to the updated (a-)theological stances of Vosper within the “most progressive denomination in the world” and another woman, Hypatia, outside of the church in the ancient world, i.e., cut to pieces and mutilated to death by a Christian mob.

Both “brave” but, certainly, different contexts. In a sense, for the church and the Western critical tradition, and the popular reactionaries to freethinking women, this is, certainly, progress, of a kind, once more – and within a suitable Western tradition and Christian denomination.

References

Adler, M. (2018, November 23). Atheist minister Gretta Vosper is free to continue her West Hill work. Retrieved from https://www.toronto.com/news-story/9042831-atheist-minister-gretta-vosper-is-free-to-continue-her-west-hill-work/.

BC Conference of the United Church of Canada. (2018). Rev. Lydia Emelie Gruchy. Retrieved from https://bc.united-church.ca/rev-lydia-emelie-gruchy/.

Bean, A. (2018, December 12). Lost in the debate over Trump’s silence during the Apostles’ Creed: a bigger issue for progressive Christians. Retrieved from https://baptistnews.com/article/lost-in-the-debate-over-trumps-silence-during-the-apostles-creed-a-bigger-issue-for-progressive-christians/#.XBokr2hKiM8.

Garrison, B. (2016, October 4). Atheist Pastor Deemed Unsuitable for Ministry. Retrieved from https://thehumanist.com/news/religion/atheist-pastor-deemed-unsuitable-ministry.

Garrison, B. (2018, December 3). Case Against Atheist Pastor Dismissed. Retrieved from https://thehumanist.com/news/religion/case-against-atheist-pastor-dismissed.

Gualteri, A. (2018, November). Gretta Vosper’s atheism isn’t the problem. Retrieved from https://www.ucobserver.org/columns/2018/11/gretta_vosper_united_church/.

Hamilton Spectator. (2018, November 22). Nov. 23: Pardon the turkeys, jail the kids, gender identity isn’t a theory and other letters to the editor. Retrieved from https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9046012-nov-23-pardon-the-turkeys-jail-the-kids-gender-identity-isn-t-a-theory-and-other-letters-to-the-editor/.

Henderson, S. (2016, September 22). A Message from the Sub-Executive of Toronto Conference Regarding the Review of the Rev. Gretta Vosper. Retrieved from https://torontoconference.ca/2016/09/message-sub-executive-toronto-conference-regarding-review-rev-gretta-vosper/.

Longhurst, J. (2018, December 1). Opinion split after atheist minister keeps job. Retrieved from https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/faith/opinion-split-after-atheist-minister-keeps-job-501694981.html.

Stonestreet, J. & Morris, G.S. (2018, December 18). When “Christianity” Is Pointless: Why Real Faith Makes Demands. Retrieved from https://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/breakpoint/when-christianity-is-pointless-why-real-faith-makes-demands.html.

The Clergy Project. (2018). The Clergy Project. Retrieved from http://clergyproject.org/.

The United Church of Canada. (2018b, November 7). Statement on the Rev. Gretta Vosper. Retrieved from https://www.united-church.ca/news/statement-rev-gretta-vosper.

The United Church of Canada. (2018a, November 7). The United Church of Canada Responds to the Joint Statement on the Rev. Vosper. Retrieved from https://www.united-church.ca/news/united-church-canada-responds-joint-statement-rev-vosper.

Thomas, W. (2018, November 30). How to tell if your minister is also an atheist. Retrieved from https://www.niagarathisweek.com/opinion-story/9060407-how-to-tell-if-your-minister-is-also-an-atheist/.

Todd, D. (2018, November 17). Douglas Todd: Atheist Rev. Gretta Vosper’s case reveals a church’s ‘worm theology’. Retrieved from https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-atheist-rev-gretta-vospers-case-reveals-a-churchs-worm-theology.

University of Toronto. (2017, February 2). Changing roles of women in the Canadian churches. Retrieved from individual.utoronto.ca/hayes/xty_canada/xn_women.html.

Vosper, G. (2016, June 30). My Answers to the Questions of Ordination. Retrieved from https://www.grettavosper.ca/answers-questions-ordination/.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com.

Original publication in Canadian Atheist.

Photo by Michael D Beckwith on Unsplash

Einstein’s Pantheity: The Mind of God in Structure, Form, and Mathematics, Not in Superstition, Revelation, and Narrative

Scott Douglas Jacobsen
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Einstein’s Pantheity: The Mind of God in Structure, Form, and Mathematics, Not in Superstition, Revelation, and Narrative

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen

*Full letter at the bottom.*[1]

Einstein’s recent letter to hit some of the popular press headlines references “God” in addition to the Bible (BBC News, 2018a). At the age of 74, Einstein wrote a 1.5 page “note” or letter to Eric Gutkind, a German philosopher of the time (Ibid.).

Often, it is titled the “God Letter” (Barron, 2018). At times, Einstein identified with the term “agnostic” while rejecting atheism (Rense, 2018). Some interpret this as an open rejection of religion as a whole by Einstein, not necessarily true (Osborne, 2018).

Indeed, flat wrong, Einstein, two months after the letter to Gutkind, stated the personal sensibility of a deeply religious non-believer (Christie’s, 2018). In youth, though, Einstein “manifested… a sudden but passionate zeal for Judaism, a short but memorable phase that reached its conclusion with Einstein’s exposure to science at around the age of 10” (Ibid.).

Einstein, as written years later, through the reading of popular science textbooks and upon reflection of the contents of the texts comprising the Bible, stated the “impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression” (Ibid.).

The letter, in a New York-based auction, acquired a worth of 2.9-million-pound-sterling (or GBP), equivalent to about $4 million Canadian dollars (CAD) (Sherwood, 2018). The common interpretation of the letter, given the clarity of time and new generations, remains a rejection of traditional conceptualizations of a God and the standard interpretations – literal and metaphorical – of the Bible (Willingham, 2018).

Einstein did not adhere to an atheistic viewpoint of the universe, as many of you know. Interestingly, the letter was written in response to a book written by Gutkind entitled Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt (Johnson, 2018).

Letters from other individuals from Einstein garner similar renowned and monetary valuation, not including one to a young female scientist while, certainly, another to the late Theodore Roosevelt with the one to Roosevelt’s worth estimated between $1.2 to $0.8 million (USD), approximately $1.63 to $1.09 million (CAD) (BBC News, 2018b; Christie’s, 2002).

To claim Einstein as a traditional religious individual would disserve Einstein’s intellectual legacy, even cheapen the worldview, some labelled the Einsteinian, rather direct, stance expressed in the letter a “diatribe” (Robinson, 2018).

Peter Klarnet, senior specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie’s auction house, argued, “…one of the definitive statements in the Religion vs. Science debate” (Willingham, 2018). A note from the auction house stated, “This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein’s death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views” (BBC News, 2018a).

Important to note, since the letter was written one year prior to Einstein’s death, this may, indeed, reflect the antiquated cosmologist’s advanced age religious and theological views as stone tablet (Willingham, 2018). That is to say, Christie’s, though seemingly bold in the declaration, seems correct in the assessment.

One dissenting voice was noted by Gillespie (2018) on the definitude of the religious and theological views of Einstein, which was the biographer of Einstein, Walter Isaacson – who is prominent and respected.

Richard Dawkins stated, “This letter was about something very important to Einstein, I suspect” (Sherwood, 2018). Something of which Einstein thought about in a critical manner since the age of 13, saying he had “abandoned his uncritical religious fervour, feeling he had been deceived into believing lies” (Ibid.).

Atheists and theists alike partake of name-dropping in history to bolster positions for themselves. Willingham (2018) touched on the vein here. The notion of an authority figure of world renowned representative, in some frame, of one’s own views and, therefore, the famous smart person reflective of a similar level of intelligence or respectability of oneself.

The more accurate view about Einstein’s worldview reflected the mathematical harmony and apparent beauty in the simplicity of the principles of nature, of its logical parsimony and precision. One found in Baruch de Spinoza, a Jewish-Dutch 17th-century philosopher, known for a pantheistic view of the universe without magic or miracles.

Some characterize the non-interventionist God of Einstein as either a Deity or a Pantheity. Simply Nature or the laws thereof, God does not care about individual human beings’ lives in this idea of God. Such an important question, thinker, and answer, to so many, the auction went for 4-minutes (Gillespie, 2018). Intriguingly, but, perhaps, not surprisingly, the Gutkind family owned the letter until 2008 prior to a former auction of the letter in a Bloomsbury Auctions in London (Ibid.; CTV News, 2018).

Einstein, born in Germany and with Jewish heritage, went straight to the point in the letter, as elderly men have things to do and things to think about, e.g., a Theory of Everything. He did not have time to read the full book by Gutkind, though he read most of it (Letters of Note, 2009). Gutkind disagreed with Einstein on free will and the role of God in an individual’s life (Mejia, 2018).

Because Einstein’s famous metaphorical words about God not playing dice with the universe represented an image of absolute truth in the world glued to determinism without an intervening God and, therefore, no movement for freedom of the will or a role of God in the life of each person for all time (The Week, 2018; Christie’s, 2018).

Einstein in the letter reflects on the lack of “ego-oriented desires” as an “un-American attitude” aligning the sentiments of Gutkind and Einstein, i.e., Einstein started on a non-confrontational point of view after reading “a great deal” of Gutkind’s text (Letters of Note, 2009).

Alas, Einstein set the word “God” as a derivation of human frailties and the Bibleas “a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish,” where no interpretation can alter this conception and “the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition” (Ibid.).

In the latter case, narratives and superstitions intended for children; in the former case, not hostile inasmuch as descriptive of the limited organisms, in time and in space, grasping at what little light the rules of nature will permit of themselves, principles of existence glimpsed through an evolved and bounded mind with proportional limits in ability to know the cosmos.

Taking on the stance of humanity writ species, Einstein understood the Jewish peoples as simply another group, rather than “chosen,” and no better than the others and, in fact, “are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power” and not some divine decree or selection (Ibid.). Although, other early life written sources represent more racist views (Roos, 2018). He may have recanted personal opinions over time.

In the concluding half of the letter, Einstein leaves the boxing gloves at home to gather chalk dust flaking off the equation-filled board and then offers an olive branch. At first, he states:

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary. (Letters of Note, 2009)

In this reference to Spinoza as a solution to the faux superiority posited by Gutkind, we find echoes to a consistent view of the universe as a mathematical harmony without a wink lost over human affairs and parochial belief systems, or claims to racial superiority. He then stated:

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e; in our evaluations of human behavior. What separates us are only intellectual “props” and “rationalization” in Freud’s language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things. (Ibid.)

In this, we can see a distinct split between the intellectual and emotional common sentiment.

On a rather thoughtful, though not entirely unbiased but probably mostly true, note, Christian thinktank Theos senior fellow, Nick Spencer, stated, “Einstein offers scant consolation to either party in this debate. His cosmic religion and distant deistic God fits neither the agenda of religious believers or that of tribal atheists… As so often during his life, he refused and disturbed the accepted categories. We do the great physicist a disservice when we go to him to legitimise our belief in God, or in his absence” (Sherwood, 2018).

References

Barron, J. (2018, December 2). Einstein’s ‘God Letter,’ a Viral Missive From 1954. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/nyregion/einstein-god-letter-auction.html.

BBC News. (2018a, December 4). Albert Einstein’s ‘God letter’ sells for $2.9m. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46438116.

BBC News. (2018b, March 6). Albert Einstein note to young female scientist sells at auction. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43308400.

BBC News. (2018c, June 14). Einstein’s travel diaries reveal racist stereotypes. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44472277.

Christie’s. (2018, December 12). ‘The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weakness’. Retrieved from https://www.christies.com/features/Albert-Einstein-God-Letter-9457-3.aspx.

Christie’s. (2002, March 27). Sale 1032. Retrieved from https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/einstein-albert-typed-letter-signed-to-3886884-details.aspx.

CTV News. (2018, December 5). Einstein’s ‘God letter’ fetches $2.9M at auction. Retrieved from https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/einstein-s-god-letter-fetches-2-9m-at-auction-1.4206380.

Gillespie, E. (2018, December 6). After a Tense 4-Minute-Long Auction, Einstein’s ‘God Letter’ Sells for Nearly $3 Million at Christie’s. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2018/12/06/einstein-god-letter-sold-price-christies-auction/.

Johnson, B. (n.d.). Albert Einstein’s “God Letter” Taken in Context. Retrieved from http://www.deism.com/einsteingodletter.htm.

Mejia, Z. (2018, December 5). Einstein’s famous ‘God letter’ sold for a record-breaking $2.9 million — here’s why. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/einsteins-god-letter-sold-at-auction-for-2point9-million–heres-why.html.

Osborne, S. (2018, December 5). Albert Einstein’s ‘God letter’ in which physicist rejected religion auctioned for $3m. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/albert-einstein-god-letter-auction-sale-religion-science-atheism-new-york-eric-gutkind-a8668216.html.

Rense, S. (2018, December 6). Albert Einstein’s Letter Calling God a ‘Human Weakness’ Netted $2.9 Million at Auction. Retrieved from https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/money/a25422404/einstein-god-letter-sells-auction/.

Roos, D. (2018, June 14). Albert Einstein’s Travel Diaries Reveal Racist Comments. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/albertin-einstein-racist-xenophobic-views-travel-journal.

Robinson, M. (2018, December 5). Einstein’s ‘God letter’ breaks record and sells for $2.9M at auction. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/05/us/einstein-god-letter-christies-auction-scli-intl/index.html.

Sherwood, H. (2018, December 4). Albert Einstein’s ‘God letter’ reflecting on religion auctioned for $3m. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/04/physicist-albert-einstein-god-letter-reflecting-on-religion-up-for-auction-christies.

The Week. (2018, December 4). What’s in Albert Einstein’s ‘God letter’?. Retrieved from https://www.theweek.co.uk/98254/what-s-in-albert-einstein-s-god-letter.

Willingham, A.J. (2018, December 4). Einstein’s famous ‘God Letter’ is expected to fetch $1 million at auction. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/us/einstein-god-letter-auction-trnd/index.html.

Endnote

[1] The word God is a product of human weakness (2009) in full states:

Dear Mr Gutkind,

Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me. What struck me was this: with regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element. This unites us as having an “unAmerican attitude.”

Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and whose thinking I have a deep affinity for, have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e; in our evaluations of human behavior. What separates us are only intellectual “props” and “rationalization” in Freud’s language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes,

Yours,

A. Einstein

Letters of Note. (2009, September). The word God is a product of human weakness. Retrieved from http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/word-god-is-product-of-human-weakness.html.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com.

Original Publication in Canadian Atheist.

Photo by Ugur Peker on Unsplash

Islam’s 7th Century war-time Arabian mindset needs to change. Now.

Sultan Shahin
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Islam’s 7th Century war-time Arabian mindset needs to change. Now.

It appears Muslims actually stopped thinking and questioning with the defeat of Mutazillah, the rationalists, in the middle of ninth century, a little over two centuries after the demise of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him). They were told by the ulema to close the doors of Ijtihad, the Islamic principle of creative rethinking, and they did.

Even after the closure of doors, ijtihad has continued to be used by individuals but without sanction from the larger community. It’s only when ulema themselves accept some innovation that it becomes acceptable to the community. Take for instance, the use of photos for a passport to go to Hajj, loud speakers or radio to recite Quran or that of internet for purposes of Dawah (inviting others to the religion of Islam). These have become acceptable to our religious divines after long debates. So, it would appear some measure of rationality does dawn upon our ulema after long, excruciating debates. It seems the time it takes for their minds to get illuminated is also getting shorter. It took ulema of Khilafat-e-Osmania (Ottoman Caliphate) almost four centuries to give religious sanction to the import of printing presses from Europe, but only a few decades to accept passport-size photographs, loud speakers, radio, television and internet.

It is not difficult to see why the world of Islam is mired in deep darkness of ignorance while the world is making progress by leaps and bounds. Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Adonis (born 1930) called it “a phase of extinction, in the sense that we have no creative presence in the world.” Tunisian thinker Abdelwahab Meddeb (1946 –2014) prophesied “Arab (civilisation), constrained by the framework of Islamic faith, will join the great dead civilisations.” What constraints of Islamic faith is Meddeb talking about? Can you imagine Khilafat-e-Osmania (1517–1924), the rulers of one-third of humanity for centuries, not importing a printing press, not even to propagate holy scriptures, because religious scholars thought all new inventions were works of the Shaitan (Satan). Probably, our religious scholars thought that God had lost His creativity after revealing the religion of Islam and now only Devil could invent new things.

In fact, in the view of our ulema even Quran is not created by God but is uncreated and co-eternal with Him, lying in the divine vaults for aeons; He merely revealed a pre-existing Quran to humanity through Prophet Mohammad in the seventh century (C. E).

It was largely on the question of createdness or uncreatedness of Quran (khalq al-Quran) that a major conflict took place among the ulema of 8th and 9th centuries (CE), leading to the defeat of rationalist theologians. The rationalists (Motazallah) said that Quran was created by God in a particular time in history; it was a compilation of verses that came from time to time to guide the Prophet and Muslims in the evolving situation in early seventh century Arabia following the appointment of the Prophet as a messenger of God. So, many verses are contextual in nature and cannot be applied to other contexts. But the orthodox literalist ulema would not accept this. They said that Quran was unique like God and co-eternal with Him; God merely revealed the Quran and did not create its verses as the unfolding events demanded, the implication being that all verses are of eternal applicability.

Even Imam Abul Hasan al-Ash’ari, a Motazallah rationalist till the age of 40, joined the orthodox camp, though continued to use Motazallah methodology of logical arguments to support his case. But logic and reasoning were not allowed in the literalist Hanbali creed even to support their own cause. So bitter opponents of Motazallah, the Hanbalis and Ash’aris also went their own separate ways.

The uncreatedness of Quran meant that all the events that led to revelations in the Quran guiding the Prophet and his companions through the struggle and strife of the early seventh century Arabia were pre-ordained and choreographed to create opportunities for Quran’s verses to be revealed. It also meant that all those who supported the Prophet were simply meant to do so and all those who opposed the Prophet tooth and nail, including making attempts at his life, were just doing God’s bidding. How else could a pre-existing Quran be revealed?

This understanding of Islam also means that everything happening in the world, good or bad, is pre-ordained. Where is the question of reward and punishment then, the rationalist (Motazallah) ulema asked? How can God be considered Just, Kind and Merciful, if He punishes people for doing things he Himself chose for them to do? All those opposed to the use of reasoning in matters of religion, the Hanbalies, Ash’aris, Maturidis, Zahiries, Mujassimites and Muhaddithin, said God is all-powerful; He simply does things that he wills to do. In their view, imposing canons of justice and morality on God would amount to limiting his power and this cannot be done. God is not rational or just; He is the embodiment of power and will, he does what He pleases. God is the First Cause in a universe which does not have any secondary causes. No cause and effect for the orthodox ulema, only God’s will and power to do as He pleases.

In the raging theological debates in the 8th and 9th centuries (CE), both groups cited verses of Quran. The group opposed to reason also quoted numerous ahadith (believed to be sayings of the Prophet, even though collected up to three centuries after his demise).

A century and a half after the rationalist group had been defeated and their books burnt, Imam Ghazali (1058 –1111) summed up the Islamic theology of consensus (Hanbali, Ashari, Maturidi, etc. minus Motazallah) in this way. He put the following words in the mouth of God:

“These to Bliss, and I care not; And these to the Fire, and I care not.”

It’s this supposed indifference and arbitrariness of God that Ibn-e-Rushd (1126 –1198), known as Averroes in Europe, countered in his famous book “Incoherence of the Incoherence.” This was a point-by-point refutation of Imam Ghazali’s book “Incoherence of the Philosophers.” But all of Ibn-e-Rushd’s books were burnt down in supposedly liberal Muslim Spain (1195) and he had to go into exile. Some of his books survived only because they had already been translated in European languages and gained a lot of supporters, even though his ideas were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. What gained him most following in Christian Europe, despite opposition from Church, was his ‘unity of the intellect’ thesis, claiming that all humans share the same intellect. As a result, Europe got its renaissance and Muslim world pushed itself into a darkness from which it is still to emerge.

Under this literalist theology, violence, xenophobia, intolerance and gender injustice become acceptable due to an interpretation of Quran and Hadith which deliberately avoided using reason and logic. Early 20th century radical ideologues like Hassan al-Banna, Syed Qutb, Syed Abul Ala Maududi and numerous later ideologues of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, among several others have gone further than the classical jurists and come up with interpretations that even justify horrors of terrorism in the name of Muslims’ religious duty to make Islam victorious in the world. In many mosques even in the non-Muslim majority West today prayer-leaders curse non-Muslims and pray for their defeat and victory for Islam in their Friday sermons. The seventh-century war-time Arabian mindset persists.

In classical jurisprudence Jihad or Qital ordered by the state was considered farz-e-kefaya, a communal duty which some people in the community would perform voluntarily absolving others of this duty. To defend one’s country in the event of an external attack was considered farz-e-ain, every capable individual Muslim’s religious duty. But even this was subject to the guidance and instructions and requirements of the State.  But modern ideologues have made even offensive Jihad (in other words terrorism) a farz-e-ain for all individual Muslims, and even done away with the need for a legitimate Muslim state to order such fighting.

Islamic scriptures and books of fiqh (jurisprudence) and aqaid (beliefs), can always be made to yield some sort of support for almost any position, even positions that are diametrically opposed to each other, as we have seen above in the debate between Motazallah and the Hanbalis and Ash’aris. And these become acceptable to a populace that has been told for a millennium that merely thinking a thought is unbelief or infidelity (al-fikr kufr).

We have seen in the above quotations from Quran cited by the Motazallah that God asks Muslims again and again to think, observe, learn and so on. Occasionally, He gets angry and asks Muslims, why won’t you think? See, for instance, the following verse from Quran: “Truly, the worst of all creatures in the sight of Allah are the deaf, the dumb, those who do not use their reason/think.” Quran 8:22

And here we are, a community that has accepted for a millennium that merely thinking a thought amounts to denying God’s divinity. We, the Muslims, are where we are today largely because we have accepted our dominant theology of al-fikr kufr, leading to violence and exclusivism. Blind, unthinking adherence to the dogma (taqlid) has been our practice since the 9th century. Even the Salafi/Wahhabi who call themselves ghair muqallid (those who do not follow any school of thought) actually follow equally blindly the Hanbali jurisprudence and Ibn-e-Taimiya and Mohammad Abdul Wahhab’s theology.

I hope Muslims states that are signatories to the UN Charter take the issue of terrorism seriously, understand its link with our current taqlidi theology of consensus, make serious efforts to evolve a new ijtihadi theology of peace, pluralism and gender justice, and revise our madrasa text books accordingly. The new theology should be more rational, coherent and internally consistent, over which a consensus of the global Muslim community can be gradually evolved.

(This is the concluding Part-2 of the two-part series by Sultan Shahin. This article was first published in New Age Islam and is being reproduced in News Intervention with due permission from the Author)

Click here to read Part-1 of this two part series

Six ‘Romantic Terrorists’ eliminated in Kashmir’s Pulwama

Vivek Sinha
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Six ‘Romantic Terrorists’ eliminated in Kashmir’s Pulwama

One of the dark secrets of Kashmir’s society is the regular sexual assaults on hapless Kashmiri girls by ‘Romantic Terrorists’. The Kashmiris seek their revenge by informing about terrorist hideouts to security forces. The peace-loving Kashmiri does not want international terror groups in the Valley.

The encounter killing of terrorist Soliha Akhoon along with his six other accomplices in South Kashmir’s Pulwama provides yet another evidence to the world that Kashmir’s terrorism is a subset of global Islamic terror module. The grand design of the likes of Soliha who have waged a war against India is not to fight injustice, rather they want to see the picturesque Kashmir Valley as part of the Islamic Caliphate.

A senior Army officer said that a large cache of arms have been recovered from these six slain terrorists. Remember, these six are no misguided youths. Soliha Akhoon alias Rehan Khan was the deputy chief of Zakir Musa-led terrorist group Ansar Ghazwat-ul Hind. The other five terrorists who were killed in Pulwama were also active members of Musa’s Ansar that works under direct command from the global terror outfit Al-Qaeda.

That the “Kashmir struggle” has nothing to do with Kashmir and is a subset of global Islamic terrorism was always talked about and discussed, albeit in hushed tones, for lack of evidence. As the world gets to know about direct links between global terror outfits such as Al-Qaeda and Kashmir-based splinter groups this façade of “Kashmir struggle” is falling gradually.

In fact, Zakir Musa has himself openly advocated for Ghazwa-e-Hind and exhorted Indian Muslims to rise up in revolt against the Indian state. Musa had clearly stated that terrorism in Kashmir was actually a part of the ongoing global war to establish Islamic Caliphate and has nothing to do with Kashmir’s Azadi. Musa even threatened to behead Hurriyat leaders if they continued to demand Azadi for Kashmir and seek a political solution to the Kashmir issue.

Soon after this statement, Musa was ousted by Hizbul Mujahideen as chief of its Indian chapter. Musa, on his part, remained defiant. He stood by his comments and announced the set-up of a new Islamic outfit Ansar Ghazwat-ul Hind reiterating that “Mujahids” like him are fighting only for greater Islamic Caliphate and Kashmir struggle is a cog in this grandiose plan. Hizbul’s firing Musa as its India Chief is a mere eyewash. It was done with the intention to fool the local Kashmiri into supporting their rank and file. Hizbul Mujahideen, Al-Qaeda, IS (Islamic State) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) remain committed to establishing an Islamic Caliphate.

The concept of Islamic Caliphate dates back to sixth century wherein the newly formed Islamic kingdom in Middle East (West Asia) was ruled by a Caliph according to Sharia laws who enjoyed absolute power. This Caliphate persisted in various forms across the Middle East (West Asia) and frittered away by the 19th Century. Radical Muslims have always dreamt of re-establishing the Caliphate and bringing new lands under Caliphate rule and consider this as Jihad. The set of laws under Caliphate include severe restrictions on a woman’s freedom and dissent to the Caliph is almost always punishable by death.

Terrorist organisations such as Al-Qaeda, IS (Islamic State), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen, among several others recruit youth with an impressionable mind into their ranks for the Islamic holy war to fight for the Caliphate. However, politically they put up the mask of fighting for oppression and injustice and hence try to turn the international opinion in their favour.

Ditto in Kashmir.

Over the years, various factions of Hurriyat Conference have used mosques and madrasas for recruiting young Kashmiri boys into joining their fight for Islam. They are were subsequently indoctrinated into fighting the infidel Indian State. Thereafter these boys are segregated according to their commitment and inclination to be a terrorist and subsequently join ranks with LeT or Hizbul Mujahideen or the Al-Qaeda. The less virulent are asked to lead the mobs of stone pelters.

In public, Hurriyat leaders and other splinter groups of separatists talk about Kashmir’s Azadi thereby drumming up international support in favour of the right of Kashmiris to have self-determination. This double speak had continued for years. As the world knows more about these group’s active association with Islamic terror organisations the mist is slowly but steadily clearing off.

Apart from our security forces doing a commendable job in eliminating Kashmir’s terrorism there’s another dimension to this crackdown. And that’s the silent support of local Kashmiris who provide credible intelligence and pin-pointed locations of terrorist hide-outs to J&K Police, CRPF or to the Indian Army.

The local Kashmiris know that these gun-wielding boys are sexual predators who fulfil their carnal desires by forcing themselves upon hapless Kashmiri women at the point of their guns. Kashmiris loathe these ‘romantic terrorists’ and take their revenge by silently informing the security forces about the precise hide-outs of their assaulter. The security forces conduct the cordon and search operation (CASO) and then eliminate these ‘romantic terrorists’. It’s due to this reason that there has been a spike in elimination of terrorists in the Kashmir Valley over the last couple of years. In this year alone around 250 terrorists have been eliminated.

Even in this encounter it was a tip-off from a local Kashmiri that helped Army and the J&K Police to launch a search operation in Awantipora. The terrorists fired upon the police and in retaliatory cross-fire all six were killed.

The Battle of Chamkaur: An epic that changed the course of Indian history

Jaibans Singh
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The Battle of Chamkaur: An epic that changed the course of Indian history

In Western history, battles that have changed the course of history are well chronicled. They also form part of the folklore of the country. Two such examples are the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 and the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

If a similar chronicle of great battles which changed the course of Indian history were to be compiled, the Battle of Chamkaur would be given a position of great significance.

The battle was fought over three days from December 21 to 23, 1704 between the Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh and the coalition forces of the Mughals and Rajput hill chieftains.

In the Battle of Chamkaur, Guru Gobind Singh along with his two sons and forty followers withstood the might of a Muslim and Rajput coalition from a small Haveli (House) which providentially had high mud walls surrounding it. The enemy force comprising of Infantry, horse cavalry and artillery guns was about 1000 strong.

Background and After-effect

Guru Tegh Bahadur, the father of Guru Gobind Singh, embraced martyrdom on November 11, 1675 for the sake of the Kashmiri Pandit community that was being forcibly converted to Islam by Emperor Aurangzeb. Though of young age, Guru Gobind Singh, on becoming the spiritual leader of his sect, was determined to convert his community into a force that would fight against all forms of evil and oppression. It was in furtherance of this thought that he created the Khalsa on March 30, 1699.

The Khalsa was enjoined to maintain a brotherhood of arms and take decisions collectively to fight the oppressor for the sake of the helpless. Much after Guru Gobind Singh had attained martyrdom, his Khalsa carried on with their symbols which made them distinguishable to the enemy among the population; this made them stand and fight while being ever conscious of the legacy and responsibility that their Guru had bestowed upon them.

Once the Khalsa was formed, it started attracting people in vast numbers. The hill princes got nervous of the rising power and military strength of Guru Gobind Singh and they called upon the Mughals to quell the same.

Accordingly, the joint forces of the Mughals and the hill princes attacked the Sikh forces that were tactically dispersed in five forts. Guru Gobind Singh with a small force and the women and small children of his family was in the fortress of Anandpur Sahib.

The coalition forces could not gain the quick victory that they were looking for and were forced into laying siege on Anandpur Sahib to isolate the Guru from his forces. The Sikhs attacked the invading forces with artillery fire and subjected them to lightning raids in which supplies were seized and terrible casualty inflicted upon the invaders.  All attempts to storm the citadel were unsuccessful.

The situation went on for seven long months and the coalition forces started feeling the pressure of stretched logistics and massive losses.

It was at that stage that a proposal of safe passage to the Guru, his family and his followers along with negotiation for peace on honourable terms was sent in the name of Emperor Aurangzeb himself, the other chieftains likewise gave their sacred word.  In view of the suffering of women and children and pressure from his mother the Guru agreed to take the safe passage.

Guru Gobind Singh with his family came out of Anandpur Sahib Fort on a cold night in December. No sooner were they out in the open that they were attacked by enemy forces on the banks of the River Sarsa.

The Sikhs, about 400 strong, fought a rear guard action that has no parallels in the annals of military history and successfully made their Guru cross the River along with his two elder sons Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh and forty Khalsa. Unfortunately, his mother, Mata Gujri and two younger sons, Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh got separated. They were later captured by the Governor of Sirhind and the young Sahibzadas (Princes) were interned alive in a brick wall. The Sikhs forming the rear guard perished in the battle.

It was then that the contingent took a stand at the Haveli in Chamkaur. The Sikhs rained arrows at the enemy forces from within and sallied forth in small batches in what would today be called suicide missions. They struck terror among the enemy and killed them in large numbers before falling to a hero’s death. The young sons of the Guru, Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh, also went out and fought to their last breath.

When the strength was totally depleted and only eleven Khalsa soldiers were left with Guru Gobind Singh, they invoked the oath of the Khalsa which makes it incumbent for the Guru to heed the advice of five of his disciples and leave the fortress. The Khalsa then fought to the last with one dressed as the Guru to deceive the enemy. The Guru was helped by many disciples, including Muslims, to escape and managed to reach the safety of a place called Dina.

The Battle of Chamkaur laid bare the moral degradation, cowardice and vulnerability of the Mughal imperial forces. The fact that they used deceit to defeat an adversary much weaker in strength indicated their unwillingness to fight with determination. Their inability to attack and overcome even forty Sikhs in a mud fortress pointed towards the inefficiency of the military leadership.

The proclivity of the Mughal rulers to terrorise its subjects into submission became apparent, it also became quite obvious that when faced with determined opposition they did not have the will to fight back.

The Khalsa, on the other hand, got converted into an ideologically driven and motivated fighting force of such fearlessness that they volunteered to follow the path of martyrdom shown to them by their Guru and this gave them the upper hand despite all odds of numerical inferiority.

The Battle of Chamkaur resulted in infusing a strong military ideology among peasants which led to the ultimate downfall of two of the strongest empires (Muslim and Afghan) seen in the history of the world and creation of a new one – the Sikh Empire.

While celebrating Christmas, it is also important for the Nation to remember this epic battle that changed the history of Indian Sub-continent, broke down a tyrannical regime and brought forth a force that has forever lived on the path of righteousness.

Evolve a new theology to defeat Islamism and Jihadism

Sultan Shahin
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Evolve a new theology to defeat Islamism and Jihadism

A War on Terror has been raging for 17 years now, but we are no closer to defeating Islamist terror. Jihadism continues to attract Muslim youth. This is because the world has not paid enough attention to the ideology of Islamism and Jihadism.

Mainstream Muslims have considered Islam a spiritual path to salvation, one of the many. Islam aims at reforming society for a peaceful, harmonious, pluralist existence. However, due to certain historical factors, the theology and jurisprudence of Islam that evolved in the 8th and 9th centuries (CE), present Islam as a political, totalitarian ideology of supremacism, xenophobia, intolerance and gender discrimination. It is this theology of violence, exclusivism and world-domination that is taught in madrasas and sustains Islamism. But despite the Islamist violence against peaceful Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the community is still not focussed on the need for evolving a counter-narrative of Islam.

It is imperative that Muslim countries that have signed the UN Charter look into the issue urgently and work towards developing a new theology of peace, pluralism and gender justice. While several countries like Morocco and now Saudi Arabia appear to be moving in this direction, the one country that has made a solid contribution is Turkey. In a decade-long exercise 100 Turkish scholars have managed to limit the number of authentic ahadith to just 1600, out of over 10,000, and provide each hadith with context and suitable interpretation. This book of authentic Hadith has been provided to all mosques in Turkey but I hope it is made available to the global Muslim community in their own languages as soon as possible.

The present theology is simply not compatible with the requirements of living in complex, plural societies of the 21st century. Allama Iqbal, a poet-philosopher of the South Asian sub-continent had called for the reconstruction of religious thought in Islam almost a hundred years ago. Let us at least start working on it now.

But first, it’s important for us to understand what has led to the present state of affairs. Why have the Muslims ulema (religious scholars) become so tolerant, if not actually supportive, of the militant Jihadis in our midst, despite the horrendous toll, in which tens of thousands of Muslims have themselves been killed, not to speak of events like 9/11, and repeated terrorist violence in a number of cities in Europe and North America.

The so-called Islamic state which is known for broadcasting its brutalities in chilling detail has been ousted from its control of territories in Iraq and Syria, but its ideology appears to be gaining ground in Africa and South Asia. Al-Qaeda may be down but is not out; it continues to exert ideological influence on sections of Muslim youth. The Taliban which harboured al-Qaeda in Afghanistan are resurgent and the world community appears to be gradually coming round to the view that they should be allowed to share power in the Kabul administration from which they were ousted soon after 9/11 in 2001.

Islamist terrorist organisations like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad in Pakistan, Boko Haram and Al-Shabab in Africa and Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia, indeed all across the world, are continuing to gain strength.

While the world community may have gotten involved in issues related to Islamist extremism since 9/11, this is essentially a war of ideas within Islam which has been going on for centuries. Both God and His Prophet wanted Muslims to be a moderate, justly balanced community. An ummat-e-wasta, Holy Quran 2:143, said. Numerous verses in the Quran and narrations of Hadith,  exhorted Muslims never to take to extremes, not even in matters of fulfilling religious obligations like prayers and fasting. The Prophet actually expressed his anger specifically against a group of people who wanted to pray all day and night, fast continuously for weeks, abstain from marriage, give up eating meat in order to control their lust and to renounce sleeping in beds, etc.

And yet, not long after the demise of the Prophet in 632 (CE), extremists started emerging and taking it upon themselves to decide who is a Muslim and who a Murtad (apostate), Mushrik (polytheist) or kafir (infidel) and also taking it upon themselves to punish and kill people for perceived apostasy or blasphemy. The first group to do so were called the Khwarij (the excluded). They killed thousands of Muslims including Hazrat Ali (RA), the fourth rightly guided caliph. Today our religious books, belonging to all sects in Islam, give scores of grounds on which a Muslim can be declared an apostate (Murtad), Mushrik (polytheist), or infidel (Kafir) and punished with death.

These theological views empower even individual Muslims to start delivering justice to Muslims who, they think, have committed acts of apostasy or blasphemy. The divine justice that was to be delivered by God on the Day of Judgement is dispensed here by individuals who have been brainwashed with extreme ideas of the scope and authority of divine commands like Amr bil Maroof wa Nahi ‘anil Munkar (Enjoining good and forbidding wrong).

Quran, Hadith, and classical Fiqh (jurisprudence) all agree that while there is no concept of an Islamic state in Islam, only the rulers of a legitimate Muslim state can take decisions for perpetrating any kind of violence, either in a war against another state or against individuals in order to impart justice. In classical fiqh (jurisprudence) no individual or group is empowered to take any violent action on its own. But today, violence in various forms is tolerated by the community in the name of Islam. A terrorist has only to quote something from scriptures in justification, without even a reference to context, and his vile acts are forgiven. After all, Osama bin Laden never faced a fatwa of apostasy or blasphemy, while religious reformers like the famous educationist Sir Syed Ahmad (1817—1898) of India were issued scores of fatwas of apostasy by Indian Deobandi ulema as well as the Mutawalli of Khana Ka’aba in Makkah. Indeed, dissenters and reformers in various parts of the Muslim world continue to be killed by individuals and groups. So-called Islamic State chief Khalifa Baghdadi’s statement that “Islam was never a religion of peace, not even for a day,” was greeted with complete and resounding silence from Muslim ulema around the world.

This apathy to growing Islamist extremism is so great that even some highly educated Muslims ask: “What if 30,000 Muslims from 86 countries joined the Islamic State in just one year? What is their percentage in a community of 1.7 billion people? How can you cite this miniscule percentage as evidence of growing extremism?”  One doesn’t know how to respond to such “intellectuals.” The fact is that even if one Muslim thinks that going to a mosque in the form of a human bomb and blowing oneself up to kill fellow Muslims during prayers will bring one divine reward, the community should have been wondering what is it in our religion that lends itself to such dastardly crimes in the hope for reaching Heaven. Radicalisation has grown exponentially, but even after thousands of terrorist crimes having been perpetrated, one or two being reported practically everyday from some part of the world, we remain unconcerned.

Indeed, the man who killed Governor Salman Taseer of Pakistani state of Punjab for showing kindness to a Christian lady accused of blasphemy, is glorified as a saint. After his judicial execution, the Sufism-oriented Barailvis of Pakistan have built a shrine in his name and hundreds of thousands visit it, seeking this vile murderer’s intercession with God for ending their woes in this life and beyond.

What is the source of this glorification of crimes committed in the name of religion? What lies behind this indifference, this unthinking, unquestioning acceptance of any crime that is perpetrated in the name of Islam? It seems Muslims actually stopped thinking and questioning with the defeat of Mutazillah, the rationalists, in the middle of ninth century (CE), i.e., a little over two centuries after the demise of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him). They were told by the ulema to close the doors of Ijtihad, the Islamic principle of creative rethinking and they did. Ijtihad had been used from the time of Hazrat Umar (RA) the second rightly guided caliph who assumed office merely two years after the death of the Prophet (peace be upon him).

(This is Part-1 of the two-part series by Sultan Shahin. This article was first published in New Age Islam and is being reproduced in News Intervention with due permission from the Author)

Click here to read Part-2 of this two part series

The Death Rattle of Liberal Values

Terri Murray
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The Death Rattle of Liberal Values

American Author and Philosophy Teacher Terri Murray explains in her new book, “Identity, Islam and the Twilight of Liberal Values” why liberalism is in a deep crisis

In 2017 I had begun blogging regularly for Conatus News, a website that was founded by philosophy graduate Benjamin David to provide a platform for progressive liberal politics as well as commentary on culture, religion, society, science and technology.  I was keen to engage some of the changes I saw occurring in Britain’s political discourse, because it reminded me of similar ‘culture wars’ I had seen played out in the United States in the eighties and nineties. 

The U.S. culture wars were in large part orchestrated by American religious conservatives who were discontent with the social revolution of the 1960’s and its aftermath, which included welfare, affirmative action, greater civil liberties afforded to women, homosexuals and atheists and a greater cultural currency given to liberal academics, intellectuals and media personalities.

A 1994 electoral sweep gave Republicans a majority in both Houses of Congress. The incoming Republican “freshmen” were so far to the right of the New Right that they were dubbed “new Republicans”.  The backlash against liberals and civil rights organizations like the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) was often fought openly, largely through the use of talk radio, cable television and church pulpits as well as through the Republican Party and public policy think tanks like The Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation.  Social conservatives also exploited the language of civil rights to roll back actual civil rights advancements, such as when a November 1996 California anti-affirmative action initiative, Proposition 209, was misleadingly titled the “California Civil Rights Initiative’ (CCRI). Many other far right organizations used similarly misleading language and labels and distorted statistics to sell their regressive politics to a liberal public. 

In 2016 and 2017 I began to notice that in the UK (where I live) a host of neologisms were being introduced into the political discourse or old terms were being resurrected with completely new referents. Lots of this Newspeak was suddenly going mainstream: “cis gender”, “Trans kids”, “intersectionality”, “TERFs”, “the AltRight”, “AntiFa”, “Islamophobia”, and “populism” all made their way into millennials’ everyday language.  And yet so many of these terms seemed to contain within them unstated assumptions or conclusions that had not been argued for, so that once you treated the words as meaningful, you had already conceded the point.

This peremptory use of words to beg important questions frightened me, because I saw how ill-prepared young liberals were to analyse the many rhetorical ploys and fallacies being flung at them. Because of my background as a teacher of critical reasoning I was able to recognise many of the fallacies being deployed and felt that I could offer the younger generation of liberals some useful analytical tools, but my attempts to cope with the onslaught of misleading language and political posturing left me feeling that I was playing a very intense game of intellectual whack-a-mole. The sheer scale of misleading political spin was truly epic and reminded me of the United States military strategy when invading Iraq, which they called “shock and awe”.  The aim is to paralyse the opponent by bombarding them with such a massive, sustained attack that they will have neither the time nor equanimity to respond. 

It seemed to me that so much of what was being peddled as liberal, left-wing policy was in fact eroding key aspects of liberal political philosophy while simultaneously giving inordinate cultural cache to religious conservatives and offering no challenge to neoliberal economics. Again, my background in teaching political ideologies allowed me to discern inconsistencies between the appealing ‘liberal’ labelling and the regressive contents of these new political ‘products’.  

The primacy of the individual and the protection of her civil rights was giving way to communitarianism and collectivist social arrangements, which give more importance to social hierarchies that constrain individuals to a subordinate status vis-à-vis cultural traditions and customs.  This agenda, however, sounded nice when described as “religious freedom” or “multiculturalism”. Where self-appointed community representatives speak on behalf of “the community” as a whole, however, the type of cultural imperialism of which ‘the West’ stands accused is not avoided but perpetuated and officially sanctioned by Western governments, while also being immunized from criticism. In Britain, many leadership roles from the so-called ‘Muslim community’ are assumed by ultra-conservative Salafi-Wahhabists who do not represent Britain’s large secular Muslim constituency but drown its voices. 

Tolerance for intellectual dissent and diversity of opinion on moral and social norms was replaced by a totalitarian state-sponsored demand for “diversity” that replaced the neutral state with a top-down demand to show deference and positive esteem for difference (from the West) with any refusal to do so punished as a thought crime.  The new meaning of ‘diversity’ was the obligatory divergence from Western liberalism and its secularism and a unilateral, rather than reciprocal, demand for tolerance, with each intolerant action against Western targets followed by apologetics explaining why all acts of terror were the inevitable consequence of legitimate grievances against the West and its imperialism.  

Moral relativists disseminated the view that moral beliefs that respect self-determination and authoritarian, theocratic or fundamentalist ideologies that do not, are equally legitimate value systems. They rejected ‘Western’ understandings of ethics and human rights, claiming that there can be no “master discourse” on such matters, while simultaneously assuming that their relativist view on the matter is correct, or at least morally superior to that of their “Eurocentric” opponents. Colonialism is itself treated as an objective moral evil to the extent that former colonial powers and their heirs should experience guilt and shame, irrespective of their cultural positioning or traditions. Yet this expectation of guilt implies the very kind of objective morality that relativists and pluralists reject and deem impossible.

LGBQI rights were extended to a new category of ‘transgender’ person who, contrary to all past progressive sexual liberation movements, claimed that gender is not a social construct after all but a real, intrinsic aspect of human psychological identity, so essential to his inner being that any refusal to acknowledge his inherent  psychological state of “masculinity” or “femininity” amounts to a hate crime. This despite decades of dismantling these stereotypical concepts (“masculinity” and “femininity”) as socially-circulated fictions designed to keep biological men and women bound to their traditional roles within a patriarchal heterosexist society. 

‘Trans’ became the moniker for any child who did not conform to the stereotypes expected of “masculine” boys or “feminine” girls and the style of play expected of a person if their biological sex, so that now non-conforming girls and boys could be diagnosed with a clinical label that could fast-track them to a chemical and/or surgical cure as well as giving them legal recognition as a member of the “correct” sex (the one corresponding to socially conservative, sexist stereotypes about preferences in play and/or manner of dress).       

What if a ship’s planks were replaced one at a time while the ship continued to sail? The Ancient Greek philosophers used this hypothetical assumption (they called it the ship of Theseus) to consider whether the new vessel, with an entirely new set of planks, would be the same ship? If the planks substituted for the originals were materially identical in size, shape and type of wood then it seems fair to say that the new ship, while not identical to its predecessor, would still be ‘the same make’ of ship.

If we use this metaphor to contemplate a political system that replaces all of its core values (“planks”) with entirely new ‘materials’ (principles), then we cannot be talking about the same political system, and this is what I believe is currently happening to political liberalism. While many well-meaning and ostensibly ‘left-wing’ activists fly the prestigious colours of the liberal flag at every port, their neoliberal Titanic is a ghost of the vessel that set sail in the second half of the 18th century.

The book is available on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk
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Terri Murray has offered News Intervention readers a discounted price of £11.99 for her book “Identity, Islam and the Twilight of Liberal Values” . The price is valid till the stocks last. For your copy write to newsintervention@gmail.com with the words “News Intervention discount offer” in the subject line.

Shifting your company’s IT services on cloud requires a perspective change

Vibhuti Sinha
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Shifting your company’s IT services on cloud requires a perspective change

Strategizing and implementing cloud compliance with a traditional enterprise mindset is detrimental

As organizations continually move their workloads on cloud platforms, they need to ensure their data, workloads and processes meet compliance requirements. Traditional mindset to achieve compliance on cloud is the biggest hurdle organizations face and to overcome the same requires a perspective change.

Understanding challenges is the first step.

Challenge #1 – Demarcating responsibility in ‘shared responsibility model’ across cloud service models– IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service)
Despite significant effort from cloud providers in creating awareness of ‘shared responsibility model’, providing security controls and trainings, organizations still struggle to understand the same and make mistakes in defining and demarcating the responsibilities. Organizations end up with critical security gaps on their cloud assets assuming it’s the Cloud service provider’s responsibility leading to potential breaches.

Challenge #2 – Responsibility shift and varied realization of compliance mappings for different cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
Compliance requirements or objective remains the same across cloud computing layers. However, the accountability to achieve a specific requirement on a SaaS versus an IaaS platform may be completely different with one requiring the Cloud Provider to implement the same whereas other requiring the customer. For example, data at rest encryption requirement to meet compliance objectives on a SaaS platform as compared to an IaaS service has different responsibility models and implementation sets.

Challenge #3 – Enterprise focused ‘risk signatures’ and ‘compliance mappings’ do not translate/fit into cloud specifications
Organizations try to retrofit their existing enterprise security controls for assessing and meeting their compliance needs on Cloud to save on costs and time. This leads to erroneous results and will cost more in terms of time and effort to fix the failed compliance objectives and security mis-configurations.

For example, PCI compliance mandates assigning a unique ID to each person with computer access which is a straight forward use case in a traditional enterprise. However, this specific requirement translates into several key use cases in the content of an IaaS service. A person can access IaaS resources via its management portal, APIs, Command Line or even from an end workloads via native IAM Roles.

Challenge #4 – Security and compliance checks done at the very end in the software production life cycle

Traditionally security and compliance policies are documented in large and difficult to comprehend paper documents. Post software production, security officers/personnel validate the software to ensure they meet the documented policies which often fall short due to time constraints on delivery, go to market pressure and incorrect understanding of software. Security and Development team’s relationship get affected in the due process which attributes to creation of non-resilient and insecure software most of the times.

Challenge #5 – High velocity of drift management

Cloud ecosystem is ephemeral in nature leading to an extremely fast environment and making it extremely difficult to manage and track the drift. Enforcing security controls to maintain the compliance standards in a rapid changing environment is complex, requires discipline, redesign of legacy applications and can be a costly affair if not done correctly. Always remember, meeting cloud compliance requirements is difficult, staying compliant is more.

Following are the salient ways to enable organizational changes which are instrumental in bringing a change in perspective, change in culture and eventually leading to achieving and staying compliant in a Cloud ecosystem.

Understanding of shared responsibility model across cloud service models is paramount to understand ‘responsibility shift’

Cloud providers have invested a lot in creating awareness and knowledge base articulating the responsibilities. Cloud adoption strategy should include investment in learning and training the teams about responsibility shift.

Delineating and defining responsibilities for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS service models as early as possible is the mantra to success. Moving to Cloud does not mean organizations are off the hook to secure their workloads or data on cloud.

Shifting security and compliance checks to left

The rise in devOps adoption have significantly impacted the ways in which organizations are producing software. With this change in methodology, security and compliance controls need to shift left and not be implemented closer to production. Conversion of paper based security and compliance policies to code templates is the fundamental change, organizations should be willing to adopt.

Starting early and converting security as code is the answer to achieve compliance at cloud scale.

Automation is key to managing drift and staying compliant

Managing drift in cloud is difficult due to its ephemeral and high velocity nature. Automation and real time enforcement of compliance policies is the mantra to stay compliant.

Automation allows organizations to enforce security policies and security controls homogenously in an ever-changing cloud ecosystem. This could further be augmented with real time enforcement of compliance policies, which is an absolute necessity to stay compliant. In-house automation as well as products like Chef, Puppet, etc., can be used to automate and manage drift and meet compliance objectives.

Third-party products for compliance framework mappings help in reducing complexity and expedite the process

Organizations in the regulated industries are spending significant time in defining security and compliance controls to meet the stringent and complex compliance mandates. Investments in external consultation or third party products not only expedites the process but also ensure the correctness of the mappings. Allgress RPM is a great tool with comprehensive compliance mappings in the IaaS space, which could help organizations to find the security products which would fit or meet their compliance needs.

Organizational change in culture and mindset are fundamental shift which needs to occur at the grassroots level to ensure a successful, secure and compliant cloud adoption.

Investment in real estate assets should be strategic, not emotional

Ramesh Menon
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Investment in real estate assets should be strategic, not emotional

Scores of people hold multiple real estate assets in their portfolio with no cash flow. Deeper analysis reveals these realty investments were led by emotions, rather by strategic analysis

Whatever be the product, marketers have always sold three things — Fear, Hope and Greed. Real estate has been no exception.

The two most worrying problems plaguing the stakeholder in the Indian real estate industry are — inventory pile up and devaluation of an asset or non performing investment.

I have been deliberating about the cause and remedy of this phenomenon over the past three years, and I have found out that investors haven’t exactly captured three essential factors in real estate, which are (a) Tax efficient monetization, (b) Capture value from the real estate assets (c) Impact of new policies on overall efficiency of investments.

Let us admit that this prolonged slowdown wasn’t exactly predicted by many investors, and that the emotion led investment strategy into a few low hanging segments like residential, retail, commercial and land weren’t exactly backed by a strategic entry and exit plan. Most times, multiple agencies have represented real estate projects or products to the investor community and the purchased assets haven’t formed a part of the ‘Managed assets & wealth’.

Policies make a big impact on real estate investment and conclusively put to rest the speculative element from investments, and also de-risks both the investor and investee. Said that, it also becomes the way forward for unlocking the value from non-performing real estate assets.

To exemplify the point, let us take the example of Delhi and critically re-look at three policies which have been notified, or are likely to be notified within the month of July’ 2018.

Notification titled “Regulations for enabling the planned development of Privately owned lands”
You would recall that there has been a lot of debate on the sealing and unauthorized developments within Delhi, with the highest policy making bodies and the Supreme Court involved in the same. There are private lands in Delhi, pre-1962 master plan, which hitherto were not eligible to be monetized or developed by the land owning entity/ individual. When these assets are read with the Master Plan Delhi-2021 and the building bye laws they can now be unlocked to their full value.

“Notification for allowing permitted changed land use in Industrial plots for non Industrial use”
With the change in policies, lack of investment into hard manufacturing projects, environmental norms and escalating costs and price of Land, many industrial houses and owners find it unviable to manufacture in Delhi. Said that, they still hold on to Real Estate Industrial assets which can be monetized for non industrial use. Why not re-look at the asset portfolio dispassionately and create a profitable manufacturing business.

Land-pooling & Farmhouses in MPD 2021
DDA recently concluded the public hearing against the 735 objections and suggestions towards Land Pooling in Delhi. This is also significant against the suggestions put forth by the Supreme Court in the matter of sealing as well as Urbanization of Delhi to accommodate the demand for more than a million housing units to be developed.

If you ask the wish list of any investor into real estate, it would be to monetize and own assets simultaneously; to derive tangible and intangible benefits.

If one scans through the business newspaper headlines, it is evident that the importance of “Monetization of Real estate assets” has dawned on Governments, Organizations and high net-worth individuals (HNIs) who are critically and scientifically (not emotionally) re-evaluating their real estate portfolio to convert them into performing assets, and also improve cash flows. Be it Air India, or Indian Railways or any PSU (public sector unit), traditional manufacturing organizations or neo-service entities, or even individuals who have an ‘inventory pile-up’ on their portfolio.

Culturally, Indians have been attuned to believe that monetizing real estate assets is akin to ‘selling family silver’, which, sadly is untrue. Agreed, to sell inherited assets is an emotional decision, but to re-arrange one’s assets following a more scientific methodology is a strategic call. After all, if you’re tracking the performance of your financial assets on a periodic basis, why not real estate? How often have we been emotional about re-arranging our financial portfolio for better cash flow management and enhanced business profits?

Mark Twain had famously remarked “Buy Land, they don’t make it anymore.” He said buy, possess; not hoard. Monetizing assets is about allowing your portfolio to perform at an optimum potential, rather than rest on a residual value.

We have always advocated that the best time to buy is during the ‘low tide’; said that, the best time to monetize is when newer opportunities emerge. And there are multiple new avenues which seek the smart investor who dares to look beyond the traditional avenues and products in real estate.

An interesting facet emanating out of an informal gathering of real estate investors is that “there are MNC brokers, there are domestic brokers, but hardly any ‘customer centric’ consulting organizations with deep rooted understanding of both finance and real estate, who work towards the success of the venture, rather than the transaction.”

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