Last week's news

I was so busy last week that I've accumulated a bit of a backlog of e-mails and things to read. I'm going to update this post through the day to drop in quick links to various things that were current last week, but probably forgotten in this age of internet-fuelled time-space compression...

First up, John Reid versus Abu Izzadeen. Read this: Muslims Distance Themselves From Abu Izzadeen. Although I'm a bit doubtful about Western Resistance (I hate the name and the crusader iconography), but this post is a good dissection of Abu Izzadeen.

Second, the Pope and Islam. Jogo writes:

Here is an Anglican who, unlike the spineless, mealy-mouth, almost treasonous Archibishop of Canterbury, understands that the problem of Islam needs to be discussed in spiritual terms ... BECAUSE the basis of the conflict we have with these people is SPIRITUAL. Or rather, the conflict they have with us is spiritual.

The discourses of multiculturalism, civil rights and global political issues are not irrelevant to the matter, but they are not at the heart of the matter. From my experience it is virtually impossible for people of the secular left to understand this. Their intelligence is formidable, but their windows of perception are insufficient.

Their sin is Arrogance. They refuse to accept the spiritual terms in which Muslims, an intensely spiritual people, themselves frame their motivations. They replace those terms with their own. How different is this from the "Western arrogance" they generally condemn? Why, it IS Western arrogance! Ontological arrogance. It is precisely that.

Mark Durie, an Australian Anglican vicar, understands things as they ought to be understood. Commieprofs and others mired in secular dialectics should read -- carefully and thoughtfully -- what he has to say.words: Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul, Cardinal Ratzinger

Third, Chavez/Chomsky/Bush. I liked this post at Simply Jews: Deathwish of a Salesman.