De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

We are, sadly, watching the latest round of aggression in the Middle East currently as Israel and Palestine exchange rockets night after night. I am deeply saddened by the loss of life and the ease with which those in charge seem to fall into such destruction. Of course the roots of the conflict are as old as historical record can recall. However, here in the UK, the BBC take an overtly pro-Palestinian position which I find disturbing. Part of the reasoning appears to be that Israel has better weapons so it is unfair for them to retaliate when Hamas fire rockets at civilian targets in Israel. I wonder if France was bombing London they would be suggesting we only respond with little guns so we don't kill the aggressors too much? I don't suppose many of those commenting can imagine living in a place where your civilisation is surrounded by enemies determined to exterminate you completely. But when you think about it, they really should, following 9/11 and the War on Terror, we sh...

It seems a lot of people saw the Pope's visit to the United Arab Emirates as an astounding breakthrough. It was reported as "the heartland of Islam" in some places, but this is complete nonsense, Saudi Arabia being the place where Islam spread from. It might in fact surprise readers to know that Christians account for thirteen percent of the total population of the United Arab Emirates, according to a ministry report, which collected census data. The government recognises various Christian denominations. Christians are free to worship and wear religious clothing, if applicable. The country has Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox churches along with Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. I visited a couple of years ago with my family and we were able to easily find a Catholic Church and attend Mass. But all that notwithstanding, this was a landmark visit; the first time a pope had said Mass on the Arabian peninsular. Why did he go to the UAE? The prin...

Giving Amoris Laetitia a rest for a minute, let's go back to 2013 and Pope Francis' first Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium . I've posted before about this troubling passage in the text: "..for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” E.G . n. 253 Is it? Samuel Gregg notes in the National Review that Pope Francis’s fellow Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir (who is no knee-jerk anti-Muslim), writes in his 111 Questions on Islam (2002), Westerners who assert that groups like the Taliban are acting in a manner contrary to the spirit of Islam “usually know little about Islam.” In the Egyptian-born Jesuit’s view, “On the sociohistorical level, from the Qur’an onward, the ordinary meaning of jihad is unequivocal. [It] indicates the Muslim war in the name of God to defend Islam.” Later in the same book, Father Samir underscores that, alongside one tradition in Islam of somewhat limited tolerance towards Jews and C...

Cheers Charlie boy, the red hat is in the post! It's been a busy old week for Archbishop Charles Scicluna in Malta. Well there's lots to do when you are tasked with the dismantling of the Catholic Faith you know! This week the pint-sized prelate has: Capitulated on contraception   Welcomed Islam to Malta  in a manner which has even stunned the Muslims!  And was thanked by Pope Francis for his wonderful guidelines on Chapter 8 of Amorous lacivious  Footnote: Minions are small, yellow creatures who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from single-celled organisms into beings who exist only to serve history's most despicable masters.

Andrew Neil started This Week last night with a refreshing and powerful tour de force on the Paris Attacks. Imagine how powerful it would have been if this had been delivered by David Cameron?

This is precisely what has been missing from the Muslim response to the ongoing atrocities of Daesh . Sadiq Khan, the most senior Muslim in Labour’s ranks, has spoken out  at a Westminster lunch for journalists, about his fears that his teenage daughters could be tricked into going to Syria by online jihadists and disclosed that he had grown up in south London with boys who went on to act in “terrible ways”. Khan is the first Muslim I have heard who has the courage to be honest about the reality of the situation, stating: “Extremism isn’t a theoretical risk. Most British Muslims have come across someone with extremist views at some point – and so have I. “It’s affected my personal life, my friendships and my career. People I knew as a boy have gone on to hold extremist views, and even to act on them in terrible ways.” Mr Khan recalled that when he worked as a lawyer he had the “horrible” task of representing people with extremist views: “I’ve lost count of the ...

I've had quite a black day today. Overwhelmingly, I feel uneasy about this. I feel uneasy that the world has just taken another scary step towards darkness and chaos. Looking at my Facebook timeline I am disturbed by the number of anti-religious comments in reaction to what has happened. I know that we immediately want to find someone to blame (this helps us to understand) and I can recognise that for many peaceful people, going about their day-to-day lives quite without malice or hatred, the sudden and brutal events of Friday night leave them looking for a reason why? How could any human being do something so irrational? The answer? To all intents and purposes, the only tangible explanation would appear to be a murderous ideology which demands fidelity and threatens death or at least, enslavement, for those who refuse to 'submit' ( Islam literally means 'submit'). To the modern secular mind, the only thing that matters is that the madness used to justify t...

Cardinal Timothy Dolan has been someone I have really looked up to as a true Catholic leader for some time. Just search my previous posts. I have stuck up for him on numerous occasions, and defended him against attacks directly, for example after this post I was contacted by Michael Voris who wanted me to go on air with him and discuss it. Recently though...Well...If I'm being honest, since the dawn of the new papacy, I have been growing increasingly worried about my favourite American prelate and some of things he says. I have started wondering why his tone seems to have changed so much. If one were really cynical, one might say he is (wrongly) interpreting Pope Francis as someone who is going to change Church teaching, and jumping on the bandwagon. And so it seems with this latest bit of news , where, in an interview with CNN, Cardinal Dolan said Islamic State militants terrorising the Middle East are a distortion of “genuine” Islam much as the Irish Republican Army w...

OK you might want to make yourself a snack, a nice cup of something and sit down before diving into this blog. If you're going to do it all in one hit properly, it could take some time to read the stuff and watch all the stuff. In the light of recent events, and if you have the time to spare, it might be worth watching/ listening to this from Martin Rowson on The Gift of Offence . I don't agree with everything he says, or, perhaps more pertinently, the way he says it. I am also a little disturbed by his apparent preoccupation with faeces, but despite these minor issues, I do think he makes some excellent points. Points like the fact that killing someone is far more offensive than looking at a drawing, no matter how offensive that drawing might be. Also, that we decide to be offended ourselves, and the way in which religion typically chooses to be offended. I suppose this is intrinsic when you hold something sacred . Rowson himself recounts how upset (offended?) he was at ...

I was really impressed with Pope Francis' insight and courage when, on the way back from his trip to Turkey he urged Muslim leaders to condemn violence done in name of Islam, as Francis X. Rocca reported on Catholic News Service . The Holy Father made his comments aboard the Papal flight from Istanbul, where he called on political and religious leaders across the Muslim world to condemn violence done in the name of Islam. Personally, I have always advocated this fundamental stance should be one we are all united in. All our leaders and politicians should be asking with increasing regularity and volume for Muslims to condemn the violence carried out daily in their name. The more this happens, the more their silence will be obvious and unacceptable. The pope said he told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Nov. 28 that   "it would be beautiful if all Islamic leaders -- whether they be political leaders, religious leaders, academic leaders -- would say clearly ...

I really hurt for our Anglican brothers and sisters this morning as, listening to Today on Radio Four I heard the former Bishop of Oxford, explain how he feels that readings from the Qur'an should feature in the next Coronation, when Prince Charles succeeds to the Throne. No seriously, he did. In a debate on the role of religion in British public life, Lord Harries, now an independent peer, praised what he called 'the hospitality' shown in a service last year at Bristol Cathedral. How desperately disappointing that someone who has dedicated his life (one assumes) to the preaching of the Gospel has so little belief in the objective truth of his religion that he feels it necessary to capitulate to another ideology. Can you imagine Muslims reading passages from the Bible at the installation of a Kalif? It is unthinkable, simply because these are competing ideologies. It is one thing for scholars and intellectuals to argue about the relative merits, the commo...

Today, Aljazeera is running this story: UK Muslims gather to promote tolerance I'm rather cross that Ahmadiyya is being portrayed here as British Islam. It is not. I would argue it is probably what British Islam should be, but the reality is that the opinion among ALL Muslims as to the fact that Ahmadis/ Qadanis are NOT Muslim is unanimous. As such they are NOT allowed entry into any of Islam's holy places, nor participate in prayers or rituals. This is because one of the basic dogmas of Islam (agreed upon by ALL Muslims regardless of denomination) is that the prophet Muhammad (saws) was the LAST and FINAL prophet: the seal of the Prophets. This is in stark contradiction to the Ahmadi belief that Mizra Ghulam Ahmad was a prophet, a messiah, and the mahdi; another contradiction to the belief of ALL Muslims which is that the Messiah and Mahdi are two separate people. In reality, the sad truth is that Ahmadis are being tortured and martyred on a weekly basi...

I am listening to the debate which continues to rumble on about religion in schools subsequent to the Trojan Horse affair , this morning on Radio 4. The effect of the discovery of an extremist agenda within certain schools with a Muslim majority has led to a renewal of calls to remove all religion from schools and instead pursue a secular liberal agenda. The justification is that despite the reality of an established Church in the UK, organised religion is virtually a thing of the past, and more and more people are secular and liberal. Religion is no longer relevant for them. From a Catholic perspective of course, this is strange, given the broad success of Catholic Schools, and their tendency to be over-subscribed. If we don't want religious schools, how do we deal with this inherent dichotomy? From a secularist perspective, faith schools should be abolished and secularism enforced. The issue is a separation of private belief from the delivery of a public good. That is w...