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Sharia and reality TV

It must be hard coming up with new ideas for  reality shows to put on TV.

But they make good fodder for TV channels being cheap to make and all. And  seeing ordinary folks making jackasses of themselves is a  sure ratings boost.

Nor is finding the stars particularly difficult, there are plenty of wanna be celebrities willing to sacrifice their dignity to obtain their fifteen minutes of fame.

So it is not all that surprising that reality TV has become a staple of twenty-first century stay at home entertainment.

But in your wildest imagination did you ever think that anyone would come up with the idea of making  a reality show involving people living under the sharia  for three weeks in the Yorkshire dales?

It has been done.

Now try and imagine what sort of people might they find to feature  in such a show?

How about a gay hairdresser for starters, or  an atheist taxi driver with a penchant for porn?  A stripper with a flashing hobby also joins a cast of characters who are guided through living life  as a devout Muslims by mentors drawn from that faith.

I suppose the incongruity of a skin care consultant working in a beauty salon in Harrogate wearing a burka for three weeks has some sort of odd appeal but all in all it will turn out to be a fine  example of trash TV  would be my guess.

Still there are limits and I'm fairly sure that  no floggings, amputations, beheadings or stonings of  participants who fail to live up to precepts of Islamic law during the course of the program will be shown, since the English justice system still prevails Northern Yorkshire  and that currently   takes a somewhat dim view of such punishments.

And, as we all surely have realized by now, there not much actual reality  on display when it comes to reality TV. 

Another attempt to re-work the Gospels

Whether or not anything comes of this remains to be seen but Hollywood is teaming up with Bollywood  to make a film about the travels of Jesus in India. This film is tentatively titled "The Aquarian Gospel"

The story is has its genesis in a hundred year old theory that before beginning his ministry as recorded in the Gospels, Jesus traveled to India and learned the religion of forgiveness from Buddhist mystics which he grafted onto Judaism presumably forming the religion that bears his name in the process.

Although this is all fiction, with no basis in fact, there is an attractiveness to this story for those who would deny the divinity of Christ. 

Which is presumably why there is money available to make this film.

A world run by women

This classic line from Camille Paglia - “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts” - kind of sums up Europe's problem, according to Fjordman's latest post.

Sunday Schools become "early childhood development units"

Well I suppose under the convoluted 21st bureaucratic language they might meet that definition.

But this means they have to register with the Government and become licensed. And this of course requires meeting all the regulations pertaining to "early childhood development units" covered by statute. Whatever they are now and whatever they may become in the future.

How long before some bright spark secularist requires equal time for "other religions" alongside Christianity in a Church Sunday school?  After teaching children of Christ's ascension into Heaven it will be mandated that a similar event from Mohamed's, his convenient ascension from Temple Mount in Jerusalem   be given equal time.    

Perhaps safe sex indoctrination may become a requirement  in the near future. Because this would directly contradict the teaching of many Churches  it would probably see the end of Sunday Schools and Catechism classes in those churches.

And that may well be the endgame.

Further reading:  Family Party Opposes Sunday School Licensing

                          National Party Statement from Paula Bennett   as highlighted  by John Boy in a comment

Racist or culturalist?

A post over at No Minister raises some very important questions, because it actually epitomises the Rubicon facing the West.

We are, to a large extent, the second and third generation of Westerners to have been state-educated into the mantra of multiculturalism, globalism and the abolition of national boundaries under some kind of umbrella governance structure like the UN. Our school curriculum is dominated by this particular ideology.

It therefore seems somehow strange and forbidden to be thinking in a counter-cultural way, as many on the right of the blogosphere are starting to, about everything we have been taught to accept.

Is nationalism inherently wrong?

Are people like those referred to in Fairfacts Media's post "racist" because they want to maintain their cultural identity against outside pressures?

I know that "racist" is the kneejerk liberal response to the right on these matters, but personally I think a better term is "culturalist".

Speaking as a Christian, I give you this example. In our church there are Koreans, Chinese, Nigerians, Latinos, Maori, Pacific Islanders, South Africans and pakeha. We come from different backgrounds and traditions, but we all share a common culture - Christianity. Thus, there are no barriers and no place for mistrust. Each of us knows where we stand with the other, equal in the eyes of God, sharing a common vision.

Take a cross-section of a multicultural society, however, that shares no common heritage beyond the flag of convenience we live under, and you'll find a range of tensions.

I would never advocate restricting immigration on the grounds of race, but I think it makes perfect sense to restrict immigration on the grounds of culture, and indeed this is the position of most Western countries given that few have thrown open the migration floodgates like NZ has, and most ensure that a cultural balance is by and large maintained. Of course, this has been thrown skew-wiff across Europe because of the globalist ideals of the European bureaucrats...and Europe is now paying the price for that.

It is perfectly possible to bring in people from virtually all races who share our Western culture. The real question is not race, but culture, and therefore the pejorative "racist" is wrong and should be railed against at every opportunity.

Culture is our defining social structure. Without our own unique cultures, we are nothing more than global citizens under a one-world administration. If it is OK and indeed imperative for the Left to endorse such causes as preserving the habitat of a snail and the exclusivity of particular ecosystems, then why is it wrong to argue for preservation of cultural values within human society?

This, as I said, is our Rubicon. On one side is a world of nations and localised cultures. On the other is the agenda of one-world, and all the turmoil that represents as dominant cultures nonetheless rise to the top by sheer force of numbers and willpower. We should be allowed to debate this.

A halloween stories from around the world

From England

From Russia

From the USA

Are Christians at war with Islam?

A group of 138 Muslim leaders have written a letter addressed to the Pope, the Orthodox Patriarchs, the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and other Christian leaders warning that "survival of the world" is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other.

It is good that these men speak out. 

But are Christians really at war with Islam?

Whereas there has been much blood  spilled in the last few years both Muslim and Christian, who has actually done the blood letting?

Where are the Catholic suicide bombers, the Presbyterian beheaders?

At face value this document casts  current world conflicts  as a wars of religion, Christian versus Muslim.

And while in Christian countries there is no problem with Christians becoming Muslim it is  not so easy in to go the other way in Muslim lands. Try converting from Muslim to Christian in Egypt or Malaysia, so called  moderate Muslim nations.  And even Bibles are illegal in Saudi Arabia.

It seems to me that this document is misleading, many of the worlds troubles are Muslims against other Muslims and if we are in a religious war it is because Muslims have cast it thus.

Warning the Pope and other Christian leaders of the dangers of religious conflict is disingenuous to say the least, since Neither Catholics nor other Christians have made war on Islam or  even called for war with with it, just the reverse in fact.

It is all well and good to selectively cite the commonalities of Christianity and Islam and call for peace between the two but until Christians are accorded the respect in Muslim lands that Muslims are accorded in the west it sounds hollow to me.

Still if these leaders have the same respect in the Islamic world that  the BBC accords them, perhaps moderate Muslims will find their voice,  the bloodshed will cease and people will be free throughout the world to choose their religion or lack thereof according to conscience.

I'm not holding my breath though.

Read the letter from Islamic leaders

From my mailbox

I received from a reader this link to a Reuters story posted on Stuff.

It is the story of the public hanging of three men in Iran for rape.

My correspondent seems to think  that this story in some way undermines something I have written or said about the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I am unsure as to what that might be.

It is well known that public hangings are distressingly frequent in that country and even juveniles have been treated thus.

According to the linked story there were 25 people alone were hanged on the fifth of this month.  Why this trio of rapists  has come to  notice of Reuters and Stuff when others have been hanged without comment is  a bit of a mystery.

Anyway the story lists the following offenses for which you may be hanged in Iran.

Murder, rape, adultery, armed robbery, apostasy and drug smuggling are all punishable by death under Iran's sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution.

It omits homosexual relations as a hanging offense either  by accident or design but that too can get you hanged as two teenagers found out on July 19th 2005.

Jewish leaders declined to attend

The Ahmadinejad circus in New York continues with an interfaith meeting organized by the Mennonites and Quakers.

As the New York Times reports

After two days of prickly confrontations with critics at Columbia University  and the   United Nations,  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held a friendly, even warm, exchange yesterday with Christian leaders from the United States and Canada convinced that dialogue is the only way to prevent war.

Both the Mennonites and Quakers have a long history of pacifism, sometimes being persecuted for this stance and many of their number have served in combat zones in humanitarian roles. They take it seriously and are beyond reproach in organizing this event.

However as the story reports a little further down

The organizers said that they had pressed hard to find a Jewish leader to join the panel of questioners, but that those invited declined because they could not win support from Jewish organizations.

“My heart was broken that there was so little support from other religions to be here,” said Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that helped sponsor the event. “If we don’t walk down this path of dialogue, we’re going to end up in conflagration.”

Mary Ellen McNish is right to grieve but alas despite the NYT writers phrasing of the lack of Jewish support as a symptom of Jewish politics, Jewish non attendance is wisdom on their part.

Just imagine how  Ahmadinejad would use this to bolster his agenda in Middle Eastern countries.

War with this fellow looks more and more likely and we all know which nation is in the front lines, don't we?

Maybe the New York Times doesn't.

 

Dr Butt the dentist from Bury

Dr Butt the dentist has been admonished after a three day hearing before the General Dental Council in Great Britain after he told a woman patient she must wear an Islamic headscarf before he would treat her.

Greater Manchester is an odd place indeed.  When the woman rang to make an appointment she was told informed of Dr Butt's headscarf rule but she went anyway, bareheaded,  only to be "humiliated and upset" when she encountered Dr Butt at his surgery and he insisted she wear the headscarf or go elsewhere.

Are the protagonists in this drama typical 21st  Mancunians?

Its a worry if they are.