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By: Sam Harris

Published: April/May 2024

This article was adapted from a transcript of the November 7, 2023, episode of the author’s podcast, Making Sense.

We have witnessed extreme moral confusion since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking over 200 hostages. Some of it has been just frank anti-Semitism, but much is actual confusion. Most people in the West still don’t understand the problem of jihadism. We often speak about “terrorism” and “violent extremism” generically. And we are told that any link between these evils and the doctrine of Islam is spurious and nothing more than an expression of “Islamophobia.” Incidentally, the term Islamophobia was invented in the 1970s by Iranian theocrats to do just this: prevent any criticism of Islam and to cast secularism itself as a form of bigotry. Islam is a system of ideas, subscribed to by people of every race and ethnicity. It’s just like Christianity in that regard. Unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam are both aggressively missionary faiths, and they win converts from everywhere. People criticize the doctrines of Christianity all the time and worry about their political and social influences—but no one confuses this for bigotry against Christians as people, much less racism. There’s no such thing as “Christophobia.” As someone once said (it was not Christopher Hitchens, but it sure sounds like him): “Islamophobia is a term created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

In any case, fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews don’t tend to be confused about the problem of jihadism because they understand the power of religious beliefs, however secular people generally are. We imagine that people everywhere, at bottom, want the same things: They want to live safe and prosperous lives. They want clean drinking water and good schools for their kids. And we imagine that if whole groups of people start behaving in extraordinarily destructive ways—practicing suicidal terrorism against noncombatants, for instance—they must have been pushed into extremis by others. What could turn ordinary human beings into suicide bombers, and what could get vast numbers of their neighbors to celebrate them as martyrs, other than their entire society being oppressed and humiliated to the point of madness by some malign power? So, in the case of Israel, many people imagine that the ghoulish history Palestinian terrorism simply indicates how profound the injustice has been on the Israeli side.

Now, there are many things to be said in criticism of Israel, particularly its expansion of settlements on contested land. But Israel’s behavior is not what explains the suicidal and genocidal inclinations of a group like Hamas. The Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad do.

These are religious beliefs, sincerely held. They are beliefs about the moral structure of the universe. And they explain how normal people—even good ones—can commit horrific acts of violence against innocent civilians on purpose, not as collateral damage, and still consider themselves good. When you believe that life in this world has no value, apart from deciding who goes to Hell and who goes to Paradise, it becomes possible to feel perfectly at ease killing noncombatants, or even using your own women and children as human shields, because you know that any Muslims who get killed will go to Paradise for eternity.

If you don’t understand that jihadists sincerely believe these things, you don’t understand the problem Israel faces. The problem isn’t merely Palestinian nationalism, resource competition, or any other normal terrestrial grievance. In fact, the problem isn’t even hatred, though there is enough of that to go around. The problem is religious certainty.

It really is possible to be critical of Israel, and to be committed to the political rights of the Palestinian people, without being confused about the reality of Islamic religious fanaticism—or the threat that it poses not just to Israel but to open societies everywhere. My friend Christopher Hitchens was extremely critical of Israel and openly supportive of Palestinian statehood. But he wasn’t even slightly confused about the problem of jihad.

There have been nearly 50,000 acts of Islamic terrorism in the past forty years—and the French group that maintains a database of these attacks considers that an undercount.1 Ninety percent of them have occurred in Muslim countries. Most have nothing to do with Israel or the Jews. There have been eighty-two attacks in France and over 2,000 in Pakistan during this period. Want France to be more like Pakistan? You just need more jihadists. You just need more people susceptible to becoming jihadists, which is a transformation that can happen very quickly—just as quickly as new beliefs can take root in a person’s mind. You just need a wider Muslim community that doesn’t condemn jihadism but tacitly admits the theology that inspires it will be true and perfect until the end of the world. You just need millions of people who will protest Israel for defending itself, or call for the deaths of cartoonists for depicting the prophet Muhammad, and yet not make a peep about the jihadist atrocities that occur daily, all over the world, in the name of their religion.

In the West, there is now a large industry of apology and obfuscation designed to protect Muslims from having to grapple with these facts. The humanities and social science departments of every university are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars—deemed experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other fields—who claim that Muslim extremism is never what it seems. These experts insist that we can never take jihadists at their word and that none of their declarations about God, Paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy have anything to do with their real motivations.

When one asks what the motivations of jihadists actually are, one encounters a tsunami of liberal delusion. Needless to say, the West is to blame for all the mayhem we see in Muslim societies. After all, how would we feel if outside powers and their mapmakers had divided our lands and stolen our oil? These beleaguered people just want what everyone else wants out of life. They want economic and political security. They want to be free to flourish in ways that would be fully compatible with a global civil society, if only they were given the chance. Secular liberals imagine that jihadists are acting as anyone else would given a similar history of unhappy encounters with the West. And they totally discount the role that religious beliefs play in inspiring groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda, or even the Islamic State—to the point where it would be impossible for a jihadist to prove he was doing anything for religious reasons.

Apparently, it’s not enough for an educated person with economic opportunities to devote himself to the most extreme and austere version of Islam, to articulate his religious reasons for doing so ad nauseam, and even to go so far as to confess his certainty about martyrdom on video before blowing himself up in a crowd. Such demonstrations of religious fanaticism are somehow considered rhetorically insufficient to prove that he really believed what he said he believed. Of course, if a white supremacist goes on a killing spree in a Black church and says he did this because he hates Black people and thinks the White race is under attack, this motive is accepted at face value without the slightest hesitation. This double standard is guaranteed to exonerate Islam every time. The game is rigged.

Do not mistake what I’m saying now for anti-Muslim bigotry. I’m talking about the consequences of ideas, not the ethnic origins of people. Not a word I’ve said, or will ever say on this topic, has anything to do with race. And the truth is, I’m not remotely xenophobic. I’m a xenophile. The Middle East has produced some of my favorite parts of culture—some of my favorite foods, music, and architecture. Despite my better judgment, I absolutely love the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. Everything I’m saying about the problem of jihadism is about the problem of jihadism—the triumphal belief by some percentage of the world’s Muslims that they must conquer the world for the one true faith through force and that Paradise awaits anyone who would sacrifice his or her life to that end.

Of course, many religions produce a fair amount of needless suffering. Consider the pedophile-priest scandal in the Catholic Church, which is something I’ve written and spoken about before, I hope with sufficient outrage. One can certainly argue, as I have, that Catholic teaching is partly to blame for these crimes against children. By making contraception and abortion taboo, the Church ensured there would be many out-of-wedlock births among its faithful; by stigmatizing unwed mothers, it further guaranteed that many children would be abandoned to Church-run orphanages, where they could be preyed upon by sexually unhealthy men. I don’t think any of this was consciously planned; it’s just a grotesque consequence of some very bad ideas. And yet the truth is that there is no direct link between Christian scripture and child rape. However, imagine if there were. Just imagine if the New Testament contained multiple passages promising Heaven to any priest who raped a child. And then imagine that in the aftermath of an endless series of child rapes within the Church, more or less every journalist, politician, and academic denied that they had anything whatsoever to do with the “true” teachings of Catholicism. That is the uncanny situation we find ourselves in with respect to Islam.

The problem that we must grapple with—and by “we” I mean Muslims and non-Muslims alike—is that the doctrines that directly support jihadist violence are very easy to find in the Qur’an, in the hadith, and in the biography of Muhammad. For Muslims, Muhammad is the greatest person who has ever lived. Unfortunately, he did not behave like Jesus or Buddha—at all. It sort of matters that he tortured people and cut their heads off and took sex slaves, because his example is meant to inspire his followers for all time.

There are many, many verses in the Qur’an that urge Muslims to wage jihad—jihad as holy war against apostates and unbelievers—and the most violent of these are thought to supersede any that seem more benign. But the truth is, there isn’t much that is benign in the Qur’an; there is certainly no Jesus as we find him in Matthew urging people to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. All the decapitation we see being practiced by jihadists isn’t an accident; it’s in the Qur’an and in the larger record of the life of the Prophet.

Worse, in my view, is the moral logic one gets from the doctrine of martyrdom and Paradise. If you take martyrdom and Paradise seriously, it becomes impossible to make moral errors. If you blow yourself up in a crowd, your fellow Muslims will go straight to Paradise. You’ve actually done them a favor. Unbelievers will go to Hell, where they belong. However many lives you destroy, it’s all good.

Again, most of this horror has nothing to do with Israel or the West. In 2014, six jihadis affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in Peshawar. These jihadis came from outside of Pakistan; there was a Chechen, two Afghans, and three Arabs. They murdered 145 people, 132 of whom were children. They burned a teacher alive in front of her students and then killed all the children they could get their hands on. They didn’t take any hostages. They had no list of demands. They intended to die to achieve martyrdom. And they did die, so they got at least half of what they wanted. It is very difficult for secular people to understand how this behavior could be possible. They assume only madmen would do this sort of thing.

But that’s the horror of it—you don’t have to be mad to be a jihadist. You don’t even have to be a bad person. You just have to be a true believer. You just have to know, for sure, that you and all the good people will get everything you want after you die and that the Creator of the Universe wants nothing more than for you to kill unbelievers. Here is what a supporter of the Pakistani Taliban said when interviewed about the school massacre:

Human life only has value among you worldly materialist thinkers. For us, this human life is only a tiny, meaningless fragment of our existence. Our real destination is the Hereafter. We don’t just believe it exists, we know it does. Death is not the end of life. It is the beginning of existence in a world much more beautiful than this. As you know, the [Urdu] word for death is “intiqaal.” It means “transfer,” not “end.” Paradise is for those of pure hearts. All children have pure hearts. They have not sinned yet … They have not yet been corrupted by [their kafir parents]. We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones in Paradise, where they will be loved more than you can imagine. They will be rewarded for their martyrdom. After all, we also martyr ourselves with them. The last words they heard were the slogan of Takbeer [“Allah u Akbar”]. Allah Almighty says Himself in Surhah Al-Imran [3:169–170] that they are not dead. You will never understand this. If your faith is pure, you will not mourn them, but celebrate their birth into Paradise.

My point is that we have to take declarations of this kind at face value, because they are honest confessions of a worldview—and it is a worldview that is totally antithetical to everything that civilized people value in the twenty-first century. This problem is much bigger than the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.

Taking Anti-Semitism Seriously

I’ve always had a paradoxical position on Israel. I’ve said that I don’t think it should exist as a Jewish state—because, in my view, organizing a state around a religion is irrational and divisive. This follows directly from my views about organized religion in general. So, obviously, I don’t think there should be Muslim states either—or Christian ones, for that matter. However, there are over twenty countries in which Islam is the official state religion and over fifty in which Muslims are the majority—and there is exactly one Jewish state. Given the history of genocidal anti-Semitism, which persists even now, mostly in the Muslim world, given that the Jews have been run out of every other country in the Middle East and North Africa where they lived for centuries, if any people deserve a state of their own, organized on any premise they want, it’s the Jews.

In 1939, the S.S. St. Louis, a ship carrying over 900 Jews seeking to escape the Holocaust, was denied entry into Cuba, the United States, and Canada and then forced to return to Europe, where many of those Jews ended up in the ovens of Auschwitz. In my view, that’s all the justification for Israel one needs. Never again should Jews have to beg to stand on some dry patch of earth, only to be denied one, and then systematically murdered.

I’ve never taken modern anti-Semitism very seriously. I think I’ve done exactly one episode of my podcast on the topic. I’ve studied it. I understand its roots in Christian theology—despite the fact that Jesus, his apostles, and the Virgin Mary were all Jews. I’m a student of the Holocaust. And I’m well aware of the anti-Semitism that existed in Europe and the United States at the time. Read David Wyman’s book The Abandonment of the Jews to understand how widespread anti-Semitism was in America, even as Jews were being killed by the millions in Europe. And, of course, I’m all too aware of the anti-Semitism that is endemic to Islam—and of the way it has been compressed into a diamond of intolerance and hatred throughout the Muslim world by the modern influence of Nazism. There’s some very depressing history there for anyone who wants to read it.

And I’ve been aware that year after year in the United States, no group has been targeted with more hate, and hate crime, than Jews. This is something that many Americans aren’t aware of. As I said, the American Left would have you believe that “Islamophobia” is a major concern. Vice President Kamala Harris is now heading a commission on “Islamophobia” in America, as though that’s the problem we’ve been seeing recently—just a massive outpouring of hatred for Muslims in America by non-Muslims. Has that ever happened?

Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Jews were targeted far more than Muslims. And that has been true every year since. According to FBI statistics, though Jews are just over 2 percent of the population, they receive over half the hate in America and five times the level that Muslims do (and I think it’s safe to say that much of this hate comes from Muslims themselves). Jewish schools and synagogues have always incurred greater security costs than non-Jewish institutions, and for good reason, because the threat to them is greatest.

While this status quo has been despicable, I have always believed that it was tolerable. And I say this as someone who has received death threats for two decades, and many of these threats are often explicitly anti-Semitic. Even given all this, I have felt that anti-Semitism, as a real threat to Jews, certainly in the West, was behind us. I can’t say that now. In the past few weeks, with Jews being openly reviled and threatened all over the world, in the immediate aftermath of the most shocking atrocities committed against them since the Holocaust, I’ve begun to think that anything is possible.

Incidentally, if you ever wondered how you might have behaved had you been a German on the morning after Kristallnacht—if you’ve ever wondered whether you would have just gone about your business or done something to resist the slide of your society into absolute depravity—more or less everyone on Earth is now getting the chance to see just that. There was a mob chanting “Gas the Jews” in front of the Sydney Opera House. We have Jewish students in Ivy League universities cowering behind locked doors in fear for their physical safety. All university administrators, Diversity Equity and Inclusion geniuses, and Hollywood celebrities who rushed to sign open letters in support of the Palestinian cause—without taking a moment to understand what actually happened on October 7, or understanding it and not caring—you are all now part of history.

The outpouring of anti-Semitism that we have witnessed since October 7 really seems to mark a new moment, both in the United States and globally. And for the first time, I now worry that my daughters will live in a world where their Jewishness will matter to people who do not wish them well, and they will be forced to make certain life choices on that basis, choices that I never had to make. Apart from being a public figure and having to deal with disordered people of every description, I have never been concerned about anti-Semitism for even five minutes in my life. I now feel that I have been quite naive. That’s putting it charitably. I’ve been utterly ignorant of what has been going on beneath the surface.

Of course, the boundary between anti-Semitism and generic moral stupidity is a little hard to discern—and I’m not sure that it is always important to find it. I’m not sure it matters why a person can’t distinguish between collateral damage in a necessary war and conscious acts of genocidal sadism that are celebrated as a religious sacrament by a death cult. Our streets have been filled with people literally tripping over themselves in their eagerness to demonstrate that they cannot distinguish between those who intentionally kill babies and those who inadvertently kill them, having taken great pains to avoid killing them, while defending themselves against the very people who have just intentionally tortured and killed innocent men, women, and, yes … babies; and who are committed to doing this again at any opportunity, and who are using their own innocent noncombatants as human shields; who are killing parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents; who burned people alive at a music festival devoted to “peace,” decapitated others, and dragged their dismembered bodies through the streets, all to shouts of “God is great.”

If you are recognizing the humanity of actual barbarians, while demonizing the people who actually worry about war crimes and who drop leaflets and call cell phones for days in an effort to get noncombatants to leave specific buildings before they are bombed, because those buildings sit on top of tunnels filled with genocidal lunatics who, again, have just sedulously tortured and murdered families as a religious sacrament; if you have landed, proudly and sanctimoniously, on the wrong side of this asymmetry—this vast gulf between savagery and civilization—while marching through the quad of an Ivy League institution wearing yoga pants, I’m not sure it matters that your moral confusion is due to the fact that you just happen to hate Jews. Whether you’re an anti-Semite or just an apologist for atrocity is probably immaterial. The crucial point is that you are dangerously confused about the moral norms and political sympathies that make life in this world worth living.

What is more, you don’t even care about what you think you care about, because you have failed to see that Hamas, and jihadists generally, are the principal cause of all the misery and dysfunction we see—not just in Gaza but throughout the Muslim world. Gaza is only an “open air prison” because its democratically elected government is a jihadist organization that is eager to martyr all Palestinians for the pleasure of killing Jews. A rational government in Gaza that cared about the fate of its citizens could have made something beautiful—or at least not awful—out of that strip of land on the Mediterranean. But Hamas has spent billions of dollars on terrorism. The suffering of Gaza is due to the fact that it has been run by a death cult, against which Israel has had to defend itself continuously. The line you keep hearing from defenders of Israel—that “if the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be peace; if the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be a genocide”—happens to be true.

But now we have college students at our best universities tearing down posters of hostages held by Hamas—some of whom are Americans, and some of whom are children—imagining that they are supporting the Palestinian cause. It boggles the mind. We have LGBTQ activists supporting Hamas—when they wouldn’t survive a day in Gaza because Hamas throws anyone suspected of being gay off of rooftops. They’re directly supported by Iran, where gay people are regularly hanged.

We’ve got feminist organizations such as CodePink going all in for Hamas and accusing the Israelis of genocide. Do they understand how Hamas treats women? Did CodePink support the women of Iran who were thrown in prison and even killed for daring to show their hair in public? Do they realize that women are treated like property throughout the Muslim world and that this is not an accident? Under Islam, the central message about women is that they are second-class citizens and the property of the men in their lives. Rather than support the rights of women and girls to not live as slaves, Western liberals support the right of theocrats to treat their wives and daughters however they want as long as these theocrats are Muslim.

If anything good comes from this outpouring of hate and moral confusion, it will be the end of identitarian politics of the Left. A friend of mine was just at an art opening, where they were passing hors d’oeuvres, and someone she knew came up to her and asked if she had any food in her teeth. And my friend said, “No, your teeth are perfectly white and beautiful.” Unfortunately, the woman herself was Black and considered the association of the terms white and beautiful a microaggression. She got greatly offended and stormed off. What, did she want brown teeth? I know nothing about this person apart from this anecdote, but I guarantee you that this prodigy of social justice is completely confused about Israel and Hamas and jihadism. This is the sort of person for whom words are violence but massacring women and children with knives, or burning them alive, is a completely defensible response to “oppression.” Most elite circles in the West—academia, Hollywood, the media, nonprofits—have been poisoned, to one degree or another, by this social justice psychosis where imaginary harms are seized upon as though they were existential concerns, and pure evil is easily shrugged off or even celebrated as a moral victory.

What Jihadists Want

The bright line, ethically, between Israel and her enemies can be seen on the question of human shields. There are people who use them, and there are people who are deterred by them, however imperfectly. Hamas put its headquarters in Gaza under a hospital. Let me say that again: Hamas put its headquarters in Gaza under a hospital. Again, imagine the Jews of Israel doing that, and imagine how little it would matter to Hamas if they did. Hamas is telling people to stay in Gaza and has even physically prevented them from leaving so that they will be killed by Israeli bombs. They are using their own people as human shields—in addition to more than 200 hostages they took for this purpose. No one cares less about Palestinian women and children than Hamas does. However horrible the images coming out of Gaza, it is Hamas who should be blamed for the loss of life there. You’re calling for a ceasefire now? There was a ceasefire on October 6. Hamas broke it by deliberately murdering more than 1,400 innocent people.

Of course, Israel should hold itself to the highest ethical standards for waging war. For two reasons: One, because it should. It is right for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to do whatever it can to minimize the loss of innocent life. And, two, they should hold themselves to the highest ethical standards because the rest of the world will hold them to impossible ones.

Look at these protests we’re seeing all over the world, which began before Israel had dropped a single bomb. Now that there have been several thousand Palestinian casualties, cities across the globe are seething with rage. But Assad has killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow Muslims in Syria. The Saudis have killed well over 100,000 Muslims in Yemen. Where are the protests? No one cares, least of all Muslims. They only care when non-Muslims produce these casualties—and they especially care when Jews do it. Israel is routinely condemned by the United Nations, and the U.N. could not pass a condemnation of Hamas for the atrocities it committed on October 7.

As I said, I don’t know whether a ground invasion is the right approach. But there is no question that Israel had to act; they have to destroy Hamas, and, whatever they do, noncombatants will get killed in the process. Again, this is Hamas’s fault.

But the problem is much bigger than Hamas. Civilized people everywhere—both non-Muslim and Muslim—have no choice but to combat jihadism. This has been glaringly obvious since September 11, 2001, but it should be much more obvious now. For Israel, October 7 was much worse than 9/11 was for America. There’s almost no comparison. The revealed threat to Israel really is existential. However, in the long term, I think the threat of jihadism is existential for the West too.

This demands a much longer conversation about what to do about jihadism. I happen to think that most of our response to it should be covert. I don’t know why the Israelis, the Americans, the British, or anyone else has to take credit for anything. However long it takes, members of Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, al-Shebab, Boko Haram, Pakistani Taliban, and every other jihadist organization on Earth should be made to understand, every day of their lives, that the martyrdom they seek will be granted to them. Jihadism must be destroyed in every way it can be destroyed—logistically, economically, informationally, but also in the most material sense, which means killing a lot of jihadists. We can argue with their sympathizers. And we can hope to de-radicalize them. But we also have to kill committed jihadists. These are not normal antagonists with rational demands. These are not people who want what we want. This is not politics, and it will never be politics. It is a very long war.

Back in 2016, I released an episode of my podcast titled “What Do Jihadists Really Want?,” based on an issue of the magazine Dabiq, put out by the Islamic State. You can listen to that for more detail.2 You can also read the book I wrote with Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, to understand more of my thinking on this topic. Jihadist ideology has nothing to do with Israel, American foreign policy, colonialism, or any other rational grievance, and there is no concession that any civilized society can make to appease it.

We’ve forgotten about jihadism in recent years. But it hasn’t gone away. Whatever one thinks about our withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was surely perceived as a victory by jihadists everywhere—and the implications of that have yet to be felt. In the West, we tend to remain blissfully unaware of Islamic terrorism (which is just another name for jihadism) unless it happens in the United States or Europe. We don’t tend to notice jihadist atrocities committed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or India, much less in the dozen or so countries in Africa that suffer them more or less continuously. And we are totally unaware of foiled plots, of which there have been many.

As I said, we also tend to think in terms of “terrorism” or “violent extremism,” and while I use those words myself, we have to focus on jihadism, because that is the underlying ideological commitment.

Now, jihadists themselves are not a unified front. There is a very deep schism between Sunni and Shia—despite the fact that some groups will collaborate across it, as we see with Hamas and the Iranian regime. And there are internecine divisions even among jihadists of the same faith. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban don’t even get along at this point. And that’s a very good thing. Hopefully, we have an army of smart people with the necessary language skills, sowing hatred and confusion among jihadist groups twenty-four hours a day. But jihadists are all united in their hatred of liberal Western values, in their certainty of Paradise, and in their willingness to turn this world into an abattoir for the glory of God.

We cannot tolerate jihadists. We cannot let them immigrate into our open societies. And by we, I mean not just non-Muslims; I mean all Muslims who want to live sane lives in the twenty-first century. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the Palestinians have to rid themselves of their jihadists. And if that’s not possible, a stable peace with the Palestinians is not possible.

But this problem is so much bigger than Israel, or even global anti-Semitism. Spend some time reading about how the Islamic State treats Shiites. Look at the history of terrorism in Pakistan or India. If you want a totally painless way to do this, watch Hotel Mumbai—it’s a great film that depicts the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 by the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba. If you’ve forgotten, around a dozen jihadists killed over 160 people in Mumbai, many at the Taj Hotel, and the film shows this with brutal realism. And while they killed some Jews too, at a Jewish center, this attack had nothing to do with Israel, America, race, so-called “settler colonialism,” or any of the other factors that Leftist fellow travelers have been fixated on since October 7. Really, this is the least boring piece of homework you will ever be given. Go watch Hotel Mumbai, and once the killing starts, ask yourself how anyone, East or West, Muslim or non-Muslim, can live with these people.

There is an intuition out there that to solve the problems in the Middle East, we must understand them in all their depth and complexity. And for this, the most important thing to grapple with is the so-called “historical context.” But for the purpose of really understanding this conflict and why it is so intractable, historical context is a distraction—every moment spent talking about something other than jihadism is a moment when the oxygen of moral sanity is leaving the room.

There’s no sorting this out by reference to history, because any group can arbitrarily decide where to set the dial on its time machine. In any case, the Jews in Israel are “indigenous people.” The British were colonialists. Colonialists have some place to go back to. Where could the Jews go back to? There has been a continuous presence of Jews in what is now Israel for thousands of years. Most of the recent immigrants—Jews from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and other Muslim-majority countries—were driven from their homes by their Muslim neighbors after 1948, in collective punishment for the founding of Israel. Is anyone talking about their right of return? There are displaced people everywhere on Earth, but only the Palestinians have been turned into a global fetish for their right of return.

Incidentally, if a history of land theft and oppression were sufficient to produce genocidal terrorism, where are the Native American suicide bombers? Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? Do you realize how much oppression they have experienced at the hands of the Chinese? Where are the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers? (I think there has been one.) The truth is ideas matter. It absolutely matters what people believe. Certainty about Paradise, and about martyrdom as a way of getting there, is one of the most potent memetic poisons the human mind has ever produced. Whatever historical, political, or economic context you want to apply to Israel and Palestine, jihadism is real; its intentions toward the Jews, infidels, and apostates are genocidal; and this is a global problem, because jihadism enjoys an appalling level of support throughout the Muslim world despite the fact that it is responsible for far more death and destruction among Muslims than Israel’s acts of self-defense have ever been.

Now, obviously, there are whole populations throughout the Muslim world that are effectively hostages to the religious fanatics who control them—and certainly a large percentage of the Palestinians fit that description, as does much of Iran. But it is very easy to underestimate how much sympathy there is for the jihadist project among Muslims who are not themselves actively waging jihad. And this is a terrible thing to contemplate. When 100,000 people show up in the center of London in support of Hamas, we have a problem. Of course, it’s an open question how many of those people really support jihad. But imagining that very few of them do is pure delusion. We have to win a war of ideas with these people. Because if the future is going to be remotely tolerable, the vast majority of Muslims have to disavow jihadism and unite with non-Muslims in fighting it. When hundreds of thousands of people show up in London to condemn Hamas, the Islamic State, or any specific instance of jihadist savagery, without both-sides-ing anything, then we will know that we’ve made a modicum of progress. When Muslims by the millions pour into the streets in protest, not over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad but over the murder of cartoonists by their own religious fanatics, we will know that an open-ended future of pluralistic tolerance might be possible.

Yes, there are many other problems in the world at the moment. There’s the war in Ukraine and the looming possibility of conflict between the United States and China. Some of these problems appear much bigger than jihadism, but they all admit of some rational basis for negotiation and compromise. However bad things get with the Russians or the Chinese, they are not chanting “We love death more than the Americans and the Europeans love life.” Only jihadism has the power to turn our future into a zombie movie. Jihadists are the enemy with whom there is no rational or pragmatic compromise to make—ever.

As I’ve said many times before, the Muslim world needs to win a war of ideas with itself, and perhaps several civil wars. It has to de-radicalize itself. It has to transform the doctrine of jihad into something far more benign than it is, and it has to stop supporting its religious fanatics when they come into conflict with non-Muslims. This is what’s so toxic: Muslims supporting other Muslims no matter how sociopathic and insane their behavior. And if the Muslim world and the political Left can’t stand against jihadism, it is only a matter of time before their moral blindness fully empowers rightwing authoritarianism in the West. If secular liberals won’t create secure borders, Christian fascists will.

There may be two sides to the past, but there really aren’t two sides to the present. There are two sides to the story of how the Palestinians and Jews came to fight over land in the Middle East. Understanding all that is important—and I think it is important to understand the cynical game the Arab world has played with the plight of the Palestinians for the past fifty years. If there is a stable political settlement to ever be reached between Israel and the Palestinians, it will entail a full untangling of the facts from all the propaganda that obscures them, while keeping the problem of jihadism in view. It will also entail that the religious lunatics on the Jewish side get sidelined. As I said, the building of settlements has been a continuous provocation. But even on the point of religious fanaticism, there really aren’t two sides worth talking about now. Whatever terrible things Israeli settlers occasionally do—and these are crimes for which they should be prosecuted—generally speaking, the world does not have a problem with Jewish religious fanatics targeting Muslims in their mosques and schools. You literally can’t open a Jewish school in Paris because no one will insure it. Yes, there are lunatics on both sides, but the consequences of their lunacy are not equivalent—not even remotely equivalent. We haven’t spent the past twenty years taking our shoes off at the airport because there are so many fanatical Jews eager to blow themselves up on airplanes.

There is a bright line between good and a very specific form of evil that we must keep in view. It is the evil of bad ideas—ideas so bad they can make even ordinary human beings impossible to live with.

There’s a piece of audio from October 7 that many people have commented on. It’s a recording of a cell phone call that a member of Hamas made to his family, while he was in the process of massacring innocent men, women, and children. The man is ecstatic, telling his father and mother, and I think brother, that he has just killed ten Jews with his own hands. He had just murdered a husband and wife and was now calling his family from the dead woman’s phone.

Here’s a partial transcript of what he said:

“Hi, Dad. Open my ‎WhatsApp now, and you’ll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!” And his dad says, “May God protect you.” “Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her, and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands! Dad, open WhatsApp and see how many I killed, Dad. Open the phone, Dad. I’m calling you on WhatsApp. Open the phone, go. Dad, I killed ten. Ten with my own hands. Their blood is on their hands. [I believe that is a reference to the Quran.] Put Mom on.” And the father says, “Oh my son. God bless you!” “I swear ten with my own hands. Mother, I killed ten with my own hands!” And his father says, “May God bring you home safely.” “Dad, go back to WhatsApp now. Dad, I want to do a live broadcast.” And the mother now says, “I wish I was with you.” “Mom, your son is a hero!” And then, apparently talking to his comrades he yells, “Kill, kill, kill, kill them.” And then his brother gets on the line, asking where he is. And he tells his brother the name of the town and then he says “I killed ten! Ten with my own hands! I’m talking to you from a Jew’s phone!” And the brother says, “You killed ten?” “Yes, I killed ten. I swear!” Then he says, “I am the first to enter on the protection and help of Allah! [Surely that’s another scriptural reference.] Hold your head up, Father. Hold your head up! See on WhatsApp those that I killed. Open my WhatsApp.” And his brother says, “Come back. Come back.” And he says, “What do you mean come back? There’s no going back. It is either death or victory! My mother gave birth to me for the religion. What’s with you? How would I return? Open WhatsApp. See the dead. Open it.” And the mother sounds like she is trying to figure out how to open WhatsApp … “Open WhatsApp on your phone and see the dead, how I killed them with my own hands.” And she says, “Well, promise to come back.”

I would submit to you that this piece of audio is more than just the worst WhatsApp commercial ever conceived. It is a window into a culture. This is not the type of call that would have been placed from Vietnam by an American who just participated in the My Lai massacre. Nor is it the parental reaction one would expect from an American family had their beloved son just called them from a killing field. As terrible as Vietnam was, can you imagine a call back to Nebraska: “Mom, I killed ten with my own hands! I killed a woman and her husband, and I’m calling from the dead woman’s phone. Mom, your son is a hero!” Do you see what a total aberration that would have been, even in extremis?

This call wasn’t a total aberration. This wasn’t Ted Bundy calling his mom. This was an ordinary member of Hamas, a group that might still win an election today, especially in the West Bank, calling an ordinary Palestinian family, and the mere existence of that call, to say nothing of its contents, reveals something about the wider culture among the Palestinians.

It’s important to point out that not only members of Hamas but also ordinary Gazans appear to have taken part in the torture and murder of innocent Israelis and the taking of hostages. How many did this? And how many ordinary Gazans were dancing in the streets and spitting on the captured women and girls who were paraded before them after having been raped and tortured? What percentage of Palestinians in Gaza, or the West Bank, many of whom are said to hate Hamas for their corruption and incompetence and brutality, nevertheless support what they did on October 7 with a clear conscience, based on what they believe about Jews and the ethics of jihad? I don’t know, but I’m sure that the answers to these questions would be quite alarming. We’re talking about a culture that teaches Jew hatred and the love of martyrdom in its elementary schools, many of which are funded by the United Nations.

Of course, all this horror is compounded by the irony that the Jews who were killed on October 7 were, for the most part, committed liberals and peace activists. Hamas killed the sorts of people who volunteer to drive sick Palestinians into Israel for medical treatments. They murdered the most idealistic people in Israel. They raped, tortured, and killed young people at a trance-dance music festival devoted to peace, half of whom were probably on MDMA feeling nothing but love for all humanity when the jihadists arrived. In terms of a cultural and moral distance, it’s like the Vikings showed up at Burning Man and butchered everyone in sight.

Just think about what happened at the Supernova music festival: At least 260 people were murdered in the most sadistically gruesome ways possible. Decapitated, burned alive, blown up with grenades … and from the jihadist side this wasn’t an error. It’s not that if they could have known what was in the hearts of those beautiful young people, they would have thought, “Oh my God, we’re killing the wrong people. These people aren’t our enemies. These people are filled with love and compassion and want nothing more than to live in peace with us.” No, the true horror is that, given what jihadists believe, those were precisely the sorts of people any good Muslim should kill and send to Hell where they can be tortured in fire for eternity. From the jihadist point of view, there is no mistake here. And there is no basis for remorse. Please absorb this fact: for the jihadist, all this sadism—the torture and murder of helpless, terrified people—is an act of worship. This is the sacrament. This isn’t some nauseating departure from the path to God. This isn’t stalled spiritual progress, much less sin. This is what you do for the glory of God. This is what Muhammad himself did.

There is no substitute for understanding what our enemies actually want and believe. I’m pretty sure that many of you reading this aren’t even comfortable with my use of the term enemy, because you don’t want to believe that you have any. I understand that. But you have to understand that the people who butchered over 1,400 innocent men, women, and children in Israel on October 7 were practicing their religion sincerely. They were being every bit as spiritual, from their point of view, as the trance dancers at the Supernova festival were being from theirs. They were equally devoted to their highest values. Equally uplifted. Ecstatic. Amazed at their good fortune. They wouldn’t want to trade places with anyone. Let this image land in your brain: They were shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) all day long as they murdered women and children. And these people are now being celebrated the world over by those who understand exactly what they did. Yes, many of those college kids at Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell are just idiots who have a lot to learn about the world. But in the Muslim community, and that includes the crowds in London, Sydney, and Brooklyn, Hamas is being celebrated by people who understand exactly what motivates them.

Again, watch Hotel Mumbai or read a book about the Islamic State so you can see jihadism in another context—where literally not one of the variables that people imagine are important here is present. There are no settlers, blockades, daily humiliations at check points, or differing interpretations of history—and yet we have the same grotesque distortion of the spiritual impulse, the same otherworldliness framed by murder, the same absolute evil that doesn’t require the presence of evil people, just confused ones—just true believers.

Of course, we can do our best to turn the temperature down now. And we can trust that the news cycle will get captured by another story. We can direct our attention again to Russia, China, climate change, or AI alignment, and I will do that in my work, but the problem of jihadism and the much wider problem of sympathy for it isn’t going away. And civilized people—non-Muslim and Muslim alike—have to deal with it. As I said in a previous episode of my podcast on this topic: We all live in Israel now. It’s just that most of us haven’t realized it yet.

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cleverthylacine · 2 years

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wow! an actual cultural Christian atheist!

I don’t like the term “culturally Christian” when it’s used to refer to people who reject religion generally (or specifically Christianity) who can legitimately complain that they have left Christianity because they were abused by it, they do not like the way Christian hegemony abuses people generally, and other good reasons. I think there are better ways we can address people who are stuck in ideas like “belief = religion, therefore you are not a member of a religion unless you ‘believe’ in it” or “actually it is much harder to get holidays off when they don’t happen at the same time as Christian holidays”. I generally don’t have much trouble explaining those concepts to people who are willing to listen, and I don’t bother with the others.

But yesterday I mutually blocked a former follower (illuminator-of-eternal-warfare) because they had such a severe and patronising reaction to being told that “Judeo-Christian” is a bad word, “Abrahamic” isn’t really much better when discussing what people actually believe and practise, and that Messianic Jews aren’t Jews.

This person, whom you may or may not wish to add to your block list, informed me that all “pagan” religions practised human sacrifice and a “might makes right” approach and implied that all pagans are Nazis because apparently native people in the Americas, Australia, Asia and Africa who are targeted for conversion are all believers in social Darwinism and human sacrifice, too, and also apparently, they have never met any pagans or Satanists other than members of white supremacist Odinist groups, LaVeyan Satanists (social Darwinism) and Nazi Satanists.

They also told me my distant ancestors would have stoned me to death for my idolatry toward...

Megatron.

The fictional character whom I admittedly like a lot and in some continuities even admire to a degree, but do not actually believe is real in this universe where we are all living.

They’ve confused Muslim ideas about not making art of people with Jewish laws against worshipping beings that aren’t G-d and somehow they think that this applies to a fictional robot.

All because of what they learned in Catholic school.

Man, I don’t even, but they were mad that I told them that Jews DO NOT consider Christians and Muslims as people who they are responsible for and that Christian interpretations of the Torah, even liberal ones, are divorced from the rest of Jewish law and culture and were never meant to be imposed on everyone whether they’re Jewish or not. Because they think Christianity is the source of all teachings about kindness and the sanctity of life among gentiles, and do not want to hear about the Reconquista and why we have Kol Nidre, or the Native Americans “boarding schools” in Canada and the US, or that the only non-colonised cultures in most of Asia are themselves colonial powers that rejected missionaries, or how white Christians justified slavery using the Bible.

I guess I’m telling you this in case you want to, you know, pre-emptively block them, but given that none of y’all got into this argument with me, I’m guessing you already have.

I don’t normally post drama and this isn’t a call out because I don’t want to engage with this person. Just.

WOW. I didn’t know people like this who thought of white European Christianity as the civilising factor throughout the world, and were unaware of hegemonic Christianity’s harms and refused to believe in them, still existed among atheists. Sure, I knew that’s what Christofascist conservatives believe, but.

MAN. My daily allowance of vitamins W, T, and F has been exceeded for the next two weeks.

#drama #a real 'cultural christian'

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perennialphilosophy · 4 years

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Religion & Its Sphere of Influence

‘How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world’s main religions?’

- Polly Toynbee

Religion is not just about religion. It is not just about the individual. Without understanding religion, you cannot understand culture, a huge amount of history, art, the workings and rulings of a country, international relations, or even whole paradigms of thought. To begin to understand any one of these things, it must be acknowledged first that religion, faith, culture (and even languages to a degree) though are separate entities, are intertwined to create the beliefs and societies we have today.

If you look at the diagram above (it took me a while to choose the colours, because colours are important, right?), I will go through the different parts and explain how they work, probably with reference to my own culture/life.

To follow a religion is not just to follow and worship a divine being, it should be understood as the system by which you have faith and worship. What I mean by system is the way in which you show/present your faith and worship, whether this be Sunday prayers, or prayers five times a day, or not eating dairy and meat in the same dish. I draw a distinction between this and faith; faith for me in not the manner in which you show or practice your belief like you do when you follow a religion, but a faith runs much deeper. It is the personal conviction that you have and the trust you put into a way of life, whether this is a God, or many Gods, or whatever you have faith in. When faith and religion come together, you have a person who puts their faith in X (say, Jesus) and lives their life according to the rules of Y (Christianity). But the difference between a religion and faith is something quite distinct.

And then we have culture. Culture is probably (in some ways) a little more complex to understand than the former two. It is comprised of not just customs, traditions, behaviours, arts etc. but also the actual ideas of a society and group of people. These cultures alter and develop over time as things move forward, as people travel and societies of people merge. The overlap between culture and religion comes where practices are adopted either from a religion into a different culture, or from a culture into a different religion. For example, Bangladeshis have taken on the Hindu practice of touching the feet of their elders as a sign of respect because Bangladesh (a predominantly Muslim country) was once a part of India (a predominantly Hindu country), and somewhere, over time, the Bangladeshi community adopted the tradition of touching feet. There is also a merging of religious practices that have been adopted by cultures of their own. For instance, in Islam, eating pork is haram (prohibited) because when the ruling was first decreed, pigs were the dirtiest animal and carried the largest number of diseases. Eating them would mean getting exceptionally unwell if not death, so the ruling was passed. Following this through to the modern day, Muslims still do not eat pork but more so because it has become a cultural norm that because God has commanded it. You do not need to be a God fearing Muslim who prays five times a day to not eat pork. It is part of culture now.

And finally we have culture and faith as a combination, this is the category that I would fall into, I believe. When asked how I identify myself in terms of religion, I normally answer that I’m a cultural Muslim. What this means for me is that I partake in all the customs of religion that have now become part of the culture such as Eid and Ramadan and I also have faith (according to the definition I provided above), but I don’t wake up at dawn to pray Fajr like the religion says one ought to. (I’m not one to say that any one way a person practices their religion or faith is superior to another and refrain from passion judgment, as I hope you will too.) Most Muslims that I know fall into this category between culture and faith.

Hopefully I have demonstrated somewhat how the three work together to create societies and traditions.

The reason I write this is because I have heard too many Atheists over the last year who argue the classic “I don’t believe in religion because science” – which doesn’t have anything wrong with it other than the obvious flaw. But too many have given no credit to religion, do not want to partake in any conversation around religion or understand the role it plays in the world. Religion is not just about the ‘afterlife’, or God first creating light.

It is easy to understand the world as being divided into groups like Muslims, Jews, Christians etc. but religion is not a cult. It is easy to understand conflict as being “they killed the Jews”, or “the Muslims attacked the US” etc. but what about scenarios where, say, the Muslims attack the Muslims? What then? If we look at the 1979 hostage taking at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia, we find that this was Muslims against Muslims. But why? Because of fundamental differences in beliefs about the Mahdi and the different strands of Islam.

The world is a complex place and we cannot make sense of it clearly without understanding something as ingrained as religion. It is not liberal to think religion is beneath you because you believe it is an oppressive system, it is specifically illiberal to think yourself above it and pay it no heed. Atheism too, arguably, is a religion (by their definition, and faith by mine).

N.B. These opinions are not a generalisation about all Atheists, they are based specifically on vocal ones I have met over the last several months and in relation to things they have said to me. If this causes any offence to anyone, I apologise, this was not the intention.

#religion #culture #philosophy #writing #phd research

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salixj · 3 years

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(December 21, 2020 / JNS) It’s one of the few rap videos around that features a lead singer in frockcoat, tallis and shtreimel—paired with a cascade of gold chains (one bearing a Magen David) and leopard-skin scarf—dancing with guys from the ‘hood facing off against others in Chassidic garb.

As such, “Mothaland Bounce,” where our hero proudly calls himself “Hitler’s worst nightmare,” reveals much about the man behind it and what it means to be a passionate and deeply committed Jew of color.

Because for Nissim Black—successful rapper, father of six and Orthodox Jew—the video makes a strong statement about how Jews of color merge their very disparate identities into a (nearly) seamless whole.

(Fans may want to check out Black’s newest rap video “Hava”—a thoroughly Nissim spin on the traditional “Hava Nagila”—its release timed for the first night of Hanukkah).

Black is perhaps the most famous of today’s Jews of color. (Readers of a certain age will recall when singer Sammy Davis Jr. could claim that honor).

Though the term itself has gained traction in the last decade, there have always been Jews of different races. Scan the globe today, and you’ll find Ethiopian Jews and the African Lemba tribe whose men test positive for the Kohen gene, a marker of the Jewish priests.

What’s more, many Sephardic, Cuban, Mexican and Yemenite Jews consider themselves Jews of color. Not to mention the murky waters surrounding pockets of the Black Hebrews found in Israel (largely in Dimona and Arad in the Negev Desert) and around the Diaspora, many of whom claim descent from the ancient Israelites.

The numbers are equally murky. Estimates range from 6 percent to 12 percent—or even as much as 15 percent—of today’s Jewish population being Jews of color. But there is little in the way of standardized definition of who is a Jew; some studies count all the members of a household as Jewish household when only one member actually is. But when researchers Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin held the disparate estimates of Jews of color up to the light of demographic standards earlier this year, they concluded that the percentage of Jews of color “is almost certainly closer to 6 percent nationally [from the 2013 Pew study] than 12 to 15 percent. And this percentage has not increased significantly since 1990, although it is likely to do so in the future.”

It stands to reason that this year of painful racial tensions across North America could trigger an internal debate in African-American Jews, especially those who came to the faith not through birth or adoption, but who, like Black, embraced Judaism as adults.

And embrace it many of them do—with passion, perseverance and a deep appreciation—often overcoming raised eyebrows, insensitivity and even downright racism in the process. With a surprising number of them finding their spiritual home in Orthodox Judaism.

Nissim Black

Damian Jamohl Black, whom the world knows now as rapper Nissim Black, was born into a family of Seattle drug dealers in 1986. His childhood was pockmarked by FBI raids on his home, his dad was taken away in handcuffs, and he was accustomed to assorted incidents of street violence and crime. By 9, he was smoking marijuana, and plants were growing in his room. By 12, he’d joined the family business.

The only faith Black was exposed to back then was his grandfather’s Islam. His first religious service? A mosque, which he attended until his grandfather went to prison.

But at 13, Black was pulled into Christianity by missionaries. He now says it was the best thing that could have happened to him. “This was the first time I was around people who had normal healthy relationships. No one sold drugs, they had a heart for kids from the inner city, and their summer camp was the most fun I’d had in my life,” he recalls. “Becoming religious saved me from the world of street gangs.”

By high school, he was “the poster child of the missionary center.” That’s when he met the woman who would become his wife. As a Seventh-Day Adventist, Jamie (now Adina) went to church on Saturdays. They wed in 2008 but remarried in an Orthodox ceremony after their conversion five years later.

By 19, Black was making rap music professionally, and his mother died of an overdose. But by 20, Christianity was beginning to feel foreign to him, and he began wondering what the Jews walking in his neighborhood on Saturday mornings were up to. “I went to Rabbi Google and found Chabad.org. And it all began to make sense,” he says. “I told my wife [they were newlyweds] that I didn’t want to celebrate Christmas and Easter anymore. Pretty soon, she was doing her own digging into Judaism.”

The couple’s conversion followed in 2013 and aliyah to Israel three years later. The Blacks now make their home in Ramat Beit Shemesh with their six children, ages 1 to 12. “I wanted my kids to grow up here,” he says, “where they’d see Jews of different shades all praying the same prayers.”

“I’ve checked every box, right?” he says with a laugh. “One rabbi at my yeshivah told me, ‘You have a lot of strikes against you: You’re black, you’re a convert and you’re a Breslov Chassid. And in all these things is your greatness.”

Maayan Zik

Maayan Zik was 13 when her soul woke her up. Growing up in Washington, D.C., with her mom and sister—her parents divorced when she was in first grade, and she didn’t see her dad for another 10 years—she attended Catholic schools and was close with her maternal grandparents, Jamaican immigrants who took her to museums and taught her the value of hard work and education.

Accompanying her Jamaican-born grandmother to church every Sunday, by 13, Zik had “begun to wonder if what my family believes is right for me.” She explored a number of world religions, but when she saw a photo of her light-skinned Jamaican great-grandmother Lilla Abrams, whom family lore says was Jewish, “I realized I had to go way back to find out who I am.”

When she moved to an apartment in 2005 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., she noticed the previous tenant had a left up a poster of a white-bearded man. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to find out who you are.’ The man turned out to be the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Two years later, after courses and a summer seminary program, she converted. Thirteen years later, now 36, Zik remains there—with her Israeli-born husband and four children. “This somewhat awkward coexistence that lives inside me” fades into the background when she begins to pray, she says. “Having a personal conversation with God as part of the Jewish people, it’s who I’ve always been; I just didn’t know it.”

Mordechai Ben Avraham

Black and Mordechai Ben Avraham are both African-Americans from the West Coast (Seattle and Los Angeles, respectively), and both found Judaism in their 20s. But their early environment could hardly have been more different.

Growing up in an affluent neighborhood with a successful businessman father and a professor mother, “my focus was on how someday I could make more money than my dad.”

Ben Avraham’s spiritual journey took him from Sufism to the Kabbalah until at 22 he experienced Shabbat in a Carlebach-style minyan. “It was like I was floating in outer space. This is what Jews do? This is amazing! The Torah, the prayers, this beautiful spiritual system God gave to the Jews for people to transform themselves—they literally grabbed my heart.” His conversion was complete in 2013 with his move to Israel three years later.

Now 39, the former TV producer is living in the heart of Jerusalem’s religious Mea Shearim neighborhood, working towards his rabbinical degree and publishing a book on the joys of Torah as a black Jew.

But why would anyone who’s already making a huge leap religiously and culturally choose to embrace Orthodoxy with its full menu of mitzvot, accepting the Torah as Divine and committing to living within halachah (Jewish law)?

“If someone is going to make this big of a change completely based on their need to go beyond, there’s a very real tendency to go what many would consider ‘all the way,’ ” says Henry Abramson, dean of Brooklyn’s Touro College and author of The Kabbalah of Forgiveness: The Thirteen Levels of Mercy in Rabbi Moshe Cordovero’s Date Palm of Devorah (2014), among other titles.

A shared history

Much of this tendency to search spiritually can be traced to African-Americans’ religious experience in America, adds Abramson. “Since the 1960s, we’ve seen the phenomenon of questioning the Christianity foisted on their slave ancestors.”

And though Islam has attracted many of these disenfranchised souls—in part, he says, because the black Muslim culture permeated prisons beginning in the 1960s—Judaism offers another option.

Ben Avraham maintains that, in a spiritual sense, Judaism may feel familiar to those raised in the black church. “Like Judaism, gospel Christianity is an intense personal relationship with God without any intermediaries,” he says.

This is a connection Ben Avraham experiences every day of his life. “Living in Mea Shearim, in a fundamental way, I’m around people who are just like me. I just connect with my Chassidic neighbors.”

A growing fissure

But after the 1960s and ’70s, when Jews fought alongside blacks for civil rights in the United States and in South Africa, “there’s been a growing fissure between blacks and Jews,” says Rabbi Maury Kelman who, as director of Route 613, a New York City conversion program, has welcomed many students of different races into his classes.

And, with last summer’s rise in violence between the African-American community and the religious Jewish community, primarily in New York,” says Black, “lately, it’s gotten uglier.”

‘I cried all the way home’

Not everyone in the Jewish community rolls out the proverbial red carpet for someone of color.

After working up the courage to walk into synagogue on Shabbat, Zik couldn’t miss the two women glaring at her, eventually yelling at her to get out and threatening to call the police before giving chase.

“I cried all the way home, but my friends would not let me give up,” she says. “I also knew from everything I’d read about the Rebbe, with his emphasis on love and kindness, that eventually this would be the right place for me.”

“Unfortunately, like in all communities, you’ll find the occasional ignorant Jew or racist,” allows Kelman, who offers programs on the importance of accepting the convert.

A time of racial tensions

With this year’s heated racial debates and demonstrations following the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, where does that put Jews of color, with feet in both the African-American and Jewish worlds?

Zik, for one, helped lead a rally in Crown Heights this summer where black neighbors shared their experiences with racism. “It was a reminder,” she says, “that the Torah teaches us to protect the rights of all God’s children.”

And the learning goes both ways, she adds. “When black friends ask me if now that I’m Jewish, do I have money? I tell them about the Jews I know who struggle to pay for rent, food and their kids’ yeshivah tuitions. I tell them that, when I’ve had my babies, neighbors bring us meals and help furnish the nursery. People here always want to do another mitzvah.”

Ben Avraham also says he better appreciates African-American history because he is a Jew. “We can see our own story reflected in the Torah,” he says. “Our two peoples had so many struggles just to survive.”

Adds Black: “Just knowing there are black religious Jews can help the two communities see they aren’t completely separate after all—not to judge each other so quickly.”

Kelman agrees. “Black Jews can be a terrific bridge chiefly because they have credibility on both sides. It’s increasingly important to teach our fellow Jews that we’re a family that comes in different colors, that Judaism is colorblind,” he says. “Once they convert, they’re just as Jewish as any of us—and our diversity only strengthens us.”

‘Something bigger than myself’

By the end of “Mothaland Bounce,” the guys from the ’hood and the Chassids are dancing together with Black as ringmaster.

But it may be “A Million Years” that’s Black’s love letter to Judaism.

In this 2016 music video (with singer Yisroel Laub), Black takes a journey proudly carrying a Torah throughout Israel—archeological digs, mountain caves, a busy shuk (marketplace) and Jerusalem’s Old City—turning heads as he goes. (Don’t miss the moment when Black stops to let some haredi kids lovingly kiss the Torah), finally nestling it inside a synagogue’s ark.

“Since I was a kid, I was looking to be part of something bigger than myself,” says Black. “I prayed and prayed, and finally, I knew who I needed to be, a Jew, and where I needed to be, the Holy Land. It took time but now God’s answered my prayers. And one thing I know is that to God there is no such thing as color. He sees us for who we are inside.”

As he raps:

“I came from a distance Where everything was different … I called out to You And You showed me that You listened … I gave my all to You And You showed me who I am.”

#Israel #Jews of Color

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emstaylorsversion · 5 years

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I wanted to write this to be very clear about the Skam Italia situation. And yes, I’m going to crosstag this post so everyone can see this and hopefully understand where we’re coming from. Not necessarily accepting it, but at least understanding it. This post is probably going to turn out pretty long, but I hope you’ll stick around until the end.

I’m going to start by saying that I do agree with what most of you are saying. I agree on the fact that Sana should have been played by a non-white actress, because what they did is in fact whitewashing. What I don’t agree on is the part about the actress not being muslim, because religion is not something you can see on someone’s face. There are many non-christians that have played christian characters, there are many non-jews that have played jewish characters and so on. So I don’t feel it should me mandatory for characters and actors to have the same religion, just as much as it shouldn’t for what concerns sexuality. That being said, I’m not trying to make up an excuse for choosing a non-POC actress to play a half arabic person, because like I said before I don’t think that was a right move. But what I do want to say is that that happened because of ignorance and not because the people working in the show are racists. They just didn’t think it was going to be a problem, they thought it was somehow normal. They’re definitely not racists because they wouldn’t be fighting this hard right now to have the show back if they didn’t care about the muslim character. Now, they know they made a mistake and Bessegato apologized for it and he said that the next time they’re going to do better. Because now the damage is done and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. But if there’s no turning back it doesn’t mean you should just give up and don’t care about what the character in itself means. Sana is a half-Tunisian teenager living in Italy, a country that has many racism problems. And most of these problems that the country has come from ignorance. So, showing on a tv show a whole 10 episodes about a muslim girl in Italy, struggling with racism and discrimination would be so important for a country like ours. For a country that is this close to bringing the Mussolini period back to life (yes, the situation is this serious). It is important to show it because it’s the only way for people to understand that there’s nothing wrong about muslims, that they’re just people like all of us and they’re not here to steal our jobs or to take the power and make Italy a muslim country or something (yes pt.2, these are real arguments that people in Italy use). And it will hopefully make people understand that they don’t need to trust anything that comes out of the mouths of those motherf****s that we have in our government. So all of you that are happy that our show has been cancelled should really start to understand how important it would be for us to have this kind of representation.

So for me, to see all of you cheering because SkamIt has been cancelled, it really hurt me and it’s frustrating to see people hoping that the show isn’t picked up for another season. Because over here we’re fighting so hard for it to be renewed because we want to prove a point to many people, we want to share the love, you know.

I saw many people on tumblr and twitter who keep on talking about how much they hate SkamIt, how much they hate the cast, how much they hate the actress that they chose for Sana, how much they hate this, how much they hate that. And they don’t talk about anything else, literally. They just rant about how much they hate everything that concerns Skam Italia. They have so much hate inside of them for the wrong reasons, because if you only tried to understand us, even just a little, then maybe you would be able to live a life without that much hatred in it and we would all just live better and we would all be happier.

Hope you understand now and remember, share the love.

#skam italia #skam #skam france #skam nl #skam austin #druck #wtfock #skam espanã #skamfr #skamit #skam og

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acoldfrenchfry · 4 years

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Nothing makes me hate religion more than talking to religious people!

How do you install Christianity? I would love to do it. Thanks to religion, I cannot remember the last time I have loved myself. I have been told my entire identity is a sin my whole goddamn life. That did so much fucking damage. When I was 17 I tried to kill myself because it wasn't worth living a whole life just to go to hell. It was either dying, saying I'm a girl so I could go to heaven and free from my body I hate so much, or go to hell anyway because I'm obviously not a girl. Because the 3rd option of living my whole life in this much hurt, I just couldn't do it. You know what saved me? Not religion!!! While I'm at it, I got some fucked up things to say about Christianity.

The Christian community says that all sins are equal, so some borderline "normal" Christians will say that gays can still go to heaven despite how being gay is sinfull, as long as they believe in god. So by that logic, aren't pedophiles who believe in god going to heaven as well? Idk about you but that doesn't seem right. Child abusers who wreck a whole persons life get to go to heaven too I guess. Basically any shit bag can go as long as they believe.

That "love the sinner hate the sin" stuff some bullshit. If you apply that to trans people ur basically saying "I don't hate you I just hate trans people". Just say you hate me, it's a lot easier to tell you to fuck off that way

If god made everyone perfect how he wanted, why would he purposely make millions of people lgbt only to send them to hell, or, if you believe in the borderline normal mentality, you're just a sin going to heaven anyways. Why would you make someone inherently sinful

The answer to that one is often argued with "you chose to be this way, so you can choose to repent". I would like to say, if being trans was a choice, why the fuck would I choose to hurt this bad. Please tell me how waking up every day wanting to scratch my skin off or how when I look on a mirror and disassociate for 3 hours or how when I was 7 years old I'd go to bed praying to Jesus I'd wake up in the right body, how ALL of that, is a choice??? I would do ANYTHING in the WORLD to not feel like I do every day. Anything. And believe me, I have tried to pray the queer away before excommunication

I am aware that queer Christians, and even a few allies, understand there's nothing wrong with being gay. There's actually just 1 verse in the Bible that says it's wrong and there's about 5 different things in it's original translation it could mean, making the verse irrelevant. So the actual OG book these cultists believe in doesn't even condemn homosexuality. But this isn't the point. The point is the religion SURROUNDING the bible. If the majority of the community is condemning it, then I'm sorry it's simply toxic community that shouldn't be associated with. Why would you want to be with other people who think like that and call yourself one of them

Christians think their religion is the only one. They all think the Bible is the only right book out there simple because they were born in Western civilization. You know that people on the other side of the world exist right? And that if you were born there instead of here, you'd be believing in whatever religion is predominantly more popular right? Christians Hate Muslims but if they ever read the Quran they'd find pretty quick that a bunch of the stories are the same thing, just with different names and some tweaked details. So why is your book the only right one? Why can't you just leave people alone? Interesting how Jews, Buddhist, Taoists, and other religions aren't known for hate, but Christians? 🤔 Hrmmm

Most Christianity holidays are pagan. That tree you chop down every Christmas? Yeah that's from the pagans. Easter? Pagan. New years is pagan, labor day, valentines day is pagan. The Christians stole pretty much everything to make it all about them and most modern Christians don't know they actually celebrate pagan holidays all year round

I could really go on about other fucked up things on Christianity, but overall it sort of just ruined my life and gave me permanent psychological damage and my mental health and self worth has improved ever since I denounced religion.

#long post #i am sorry for the novel everyone #i am aware i have a few Christian followers just be aware this is my experience with religion and i do not hate you #it's like when a girl says i hate men #any rational guy doesn't have to start defending himself because he knows its not about him #but the ones that start up NOT ALL MEN...well you're right but you're not one or them #if you have to feel defensive about it then you might want to check something #in conclusion: no one has ever made me more suicidal than Christians i hate the church #fuck the church #Christians #Christianity #pagan #homophobia #tw homophobia #tw christianity #tw suidice

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shamaste · 4 years

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Some history lessons from a Dutch coach / shaman:

So, whats realy the case is about slavery, and when did it begon? First of all, it aint true what they told you about slavery, it's just because to make you feel bad about yourself, and also to make them feel better about themselves, over you. Making you feeling quilty. This is called: being a slave of the past. Sooo,...!

Lets take a look at this theme, a hot not so pleasant issue these days: slavery. Slavery, it has a long history. It excist much longer before the first Pharao ruled, it's started... With the early Egyptians whom needed work people. By concuring tribes, they've get tose slaves. So it was by warfare. That was 'the normal' in those days. And that will keeping on for millennia until now. And now: We humans, we have slaves. Yes, our slaves, our pets, cats, dogs, horses and more...! Only for our own pleasure, to fill a gap of.....? Having pets? It's for me also a form of slavery. I don't have any. I don't want them either. That's why. Its as a 'higher lifeform' uses a 'lower lifeform' for the need of something, that's missed, to forget, to make money with, to fill a gap. And a life is taken away from its natural habbitat. Just to obey you, for making you happy and even making money with them...! Get it?

Slavery, is old as humans exist and what is realy the case? People are sometimes also treated like pets. To serve a few. A small group gets better by having slaves. That's the case. Now, renew your view in this aspect and ask yourself: is that what i think i know the real truth? Truth.......: Its in the eye of the beholder, just like beauty is. Its a matter of perception. First: It's what you think, what is influenced by others. Therefore its not necessarily the thuth, so it seems.

The first victims of slavery were? Those were the white people. For at least 2500-1500 years, maybe longer! Greeks, Kelts and other people conquered by Romans, worked as house slaves. Everyone seems having slaves. The slaves were transported or to be shipped thru Europe and also Africa. Doing dirty labor, for the wealthy Romans, Arabs, in return for shelter, food, safety etc. Also by Africans, especially from the northern of Africa and Middle East: the Pharao's, Berbers, Arabs, Nubiers (black Pharao's) and other rulers, had their slaves too. When they are in war, with eachother... by conquering them. And mostly, those slaves came from the southern of Africa, and they were negros, very dark skinned and they called them: Lam Lam. The men who can't speak, with no house, meaning, culture etc..! They considdered them as a 'lower lifeform'. And still some do. About this they say: -the negro's- have inherited their slavery and it is therefore in their dna and passed on from generation to generation. "Once a slave always a slave!", they say. just like the castes in India. Once born in a lower vast, always in that. Thats still going, even in these days.

And those people from the North Africa, Middle Eastern still saying: cNegro's , they have inherited their slavery. Its in their blood, and its passed on, to be a slave" ...... so the say. That's racist. . So, is everyone who's a descendent from Africa by nature a slave? Thats cultural divided. Still it happends now in Africa, do you remember the war between 2 tribes, groups, between negro's, and their tribes: Hutu's against Tutsi's. That was then a real heavy clash. 10 Thousends of people died. And still they hate eachother, even now, still they do. Unwilling to forget the past. One tribe feels -because of the other tribe- a form of discrimination. A tribe was considdered by the other one as not... or at least entitled as 'lower humans'. They felt dicriminated by the others. Please note this: It's between by black people.

Thats the way it goes, or still goes on in Africa, for also thousands of years. Yes, even that its going on. A long time before white people came to that continent.

It happends long before white traders bought theirs slaves from them. Then a new wave was coming, to get or make new slaves. This time, because of religion. The moslims, who used black people as slaves, for spreading their believes and the word of the prophets, Allah. Or forced to go to war for them. Also long before 'the whites' had their slaves. Till the year 1200 - 1300, they used slaves. Everyone, who didn't had the same faith as they, didn't believe in Allah was considdered a enemy of them. They were an unbelievers, apostate and unclean. That was for the moslim the only reason, -in that time- a good reason to inslave people. Also the unclean white Christians. Crusader tours had their heydays at that time, heretics against heretics. Or other non-believers.

Slaves, especially those from early Europe, were chosen ..... -not because of their skin color-, but because of their cultural background. By rejection their way of living, or believes. Slavery was everywhere in those days. And it still is, even these days..

Knowing this, that the Africans, Muslims were the great motivators of slavery. Where lays now the confession of guilt?

Christians were well trafficked too and well earned as slaves, as hardworkers shipped to Baghdad, Cairo and Constantinople (now Istanbul) .. those nations, these city's, they trived on slaves. In those days was having a slave: status, prosperity, welth. Like a farmer having a big stock... of cows.

Jews also became a slave trading people. Welth? Is that seen as cultural. I think it. Rich nations develope a culture of welth. Welth created by slavetrades. Until the 14/15th century, only Black Slaves were shipped in Africa, between Middle Eastern Persia, north African and Turkey. 16 th Century.. its the beginning of the golden age im Europe, upcomming nations, Spain, the Dutch, England, Portugal... France. Looking to expand their kingdom. By conquering. War is everywhere in Europe, even in my country, Spanish, France. The Dutch was tryving. Rich, but a small country, but good in trading, they founded the VOC. 16th century. USA doesnt exist that time. Amsterdam was the capital. Means New Amsterdam something to you? Etc.

In ancient Rome were mostly European slaves, mostly white, from conquered countries. In Africa later there were Persians, Egyptians, Arabs, Berbers who shipped Nubiers, Ethiopians etc. They were sold as slaves, they've captured.

That was big busines, slavetrading. Slaves, they were used as war material. To spread the faith. To make money, to make a country welthy and great. Its wasn't about skincolour, but about healthy, muscles, for labour.

So ... A little review: Its a part of mankind for a few thousand years. Especially, later when the Muslims, tribes of North Africa and Middle East thought that they could make you slave as appropriate unbelievers, by different culture or believes. And therefore there were quite a lot of slaves those days, made and traded by them. A long time before white people got that same idea of getting slaves. Not a single white man to be seen.

Only from 16th Century, centuries later: the time those wealthy whites came to negotiate with these groups, black slavetraders, to buy the slaves from them. So, in those days......: slave trade, it was like investing in welth, thru people, they work, you urn it. Prosperity, expansion drift, money. Those days, that were the biggest motivators. Not because of the skin color. Some slaves were realy wanted, very popular and therefore very expensive to buy and they made a lot of money for traders. So what was realy the reason about about slavery? The prosperaty youre living in, was created by all the ancesters. All of us, blacks, whites, reds, yellow. Our biggest lessons is not te blame or making others feeling quilthy, because one cannot be achieved without the other. Prosperaty works both ways. Youve have to work for it, also for your own freedom. As i did for mine. If you are poor? Ask yourself this question: why is that? Is it your believing that it isnt for you? Because of your skin? Well look at Obama, he is Brown. But sees himself not as a victim. Do you?

Thats my history lesson this morning. Umbraise yourself.

That's how it begon and works.......Slavery. It is something else that a small group of people wants us to believe thats its the error of the whites, where black slavemasters sold them on the whites. So i think, It is something Cultural, based on faith and money. Not from skin color. When its skincolour the reason? Then its all about money, and the jalousy of having enough! Why should people plundering those stores? Not because of skincolour, the want that big screen tv , radio, expensive clothes they coulndt effort, so then steel it? Its a pitty to react that way.

Slavery has existed for as long as man has existed, from all over the world. Most of Africa itself., the beginning. This is my vision from a historical reality and what really happend in those days, point of view. But thats the past and we are here, the now, we are the future, not the past. Remember.

Good day.

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ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is · 5 years

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I really hope this doesn’t offend you or anything but I am wondering if you can infer on what type of reasoning my thoughts on religion are or if you think these concepts are completely unrelated. So to me it makes no sense that anyone can believe in hell and a just, living god at the same time. Even just the idea of sinners and nonbelievers being bound to Hell and still being able to believe in god seems crazy to me. Like if you know someone and love them dearly, think they’re kind and good (1)

...but they happen to believe in a different belief system so therefore would be sent to Hell. How could that be okay with someone? To me the image of god just doesn’t seem worth of worship. They’re either unforgiving and spiteful or insanely apathetic to human suffering. Lol ignoring that this is religious ranting but does a certain reasoning type jump out from this. To me it just makes no logical sense to believe this and be at peace with an image or god. is he all powerful and apathetic(2)

Is he kind and forgiving or spiteful? Like how can one believe a merciful god would damn people for all eternity. Torture is cruel for any human being. An eternity of suffering seems overkill for any “sin”

(4) also sorry if that’s not really a format you like. I just wanted to be able to give an example of my thought process. Something else is i very much believe moral considerations should be considered as heavily as “facts.” I want the scientific background of everything but also the ethical considerations as well. Like trying to find a cure to cancer by doing a dangerous/deadly study on healthy humans with no guarantee of success wouldn’t be okay to me. Idk if any of this is enough lol srry

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Hi anon, so I can’t type you for this for a couple reasons but I am not at all offended!

My guesses here are first: you are in your teens, and second, you are from a majority Christian culture even if you personally would not call yourself Christian. For the record, the vast majority of United States atheists are still to an extent culturally Christian (eg: celebrating Christmas as a winter holiday is still Christian even if you don’t believe in God or Jesus; Jews and Muslims explicitly don’t celebrate Christmas for the most part).

Which brings me to my point which is I am way too Jewish to answer this in terms of type because I was not raised in a religion with a fixed concept of heaven, hell, or eternal damnation; I was also raised in a religion where one’s actions on earth are the vastly more important part and where questioning and arguing with established doctrine is part of the culture and tradition. So while I consider myself a somewhat religious person, basically at everything you’re saying I’m like “yeah eternal damnation seems pretty messed up and I too would question it as a concept”.

Which isn’t to say Christianity is monolithic either, and plenty of practicing Christians may very well agree with you too, but the general idea of eternal damnation and torture is as far as I know specific to Christianity.

Anyway my point is that a lot of people across all types feel this way; there are people of all types who are atheists, agnostics, or in various religions that don’t have this same concept, so it’s not something I could derive a type from. It’s also not a particularly original thought - which isn’t to say it’s not new to you or important! Pondering our meaning and place and whether a god exists is a really important thing! But it’s also something a very large number of people do, especially as they hit their teens and early adulthood and realize they don’t need to accept the religion in which they were raised if they don’t want to, or that they can practice their religion differently than they were initially taught. Hence my guess that you’re on the younger side - this is a life milestone, in a way.

I think the final part is also pretty normal; there are certainly people on the “fuck your feelings science at all costs” side of the spectrum as well as science deniers, just as there are absolutely selfless people, horrible stab-your-way-to-the-top people, and most people are in the middle. Ethics in science is a HUGE thing. I’ve assisted in medical-adjacent research and there are classes you need to take to be allowed by most organizations to work with human subjects and a huge number of requirements to ensure that human dignity and agency is maintained. Most scientific organizations of decent size have an ethics board. People major in the field of bioethics. Some are religious, some aren’t - morality can come from many places. And so I think most people would be in favor of working on things like cures for disease, but only if they can be achieved in a way that does not hurt others.

In other words: I think you’re thinking through difficult and fascinating ethical and religious areas, as many people do. I can’t type you from that, but I do support it!

#mbti #Anonymous

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howardschatzphotography · 5 years

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On Seeing, A Journal. Above and Beyond: David Brooks December 11th, 2018

My most recent visitor to the studio for my Above and Beyond project is David Brooks, a Canadian-born American conservative commentator who writes a political and cultural column for The New York Times. He is a regular contributor to the PBS NewsHour and to NPR’s All Things Considered, and has been a reporter and op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal. He is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and also a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic. Brooks has written and edited several books, including the anthology Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing (1996) and Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000), On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense (2004), The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011), and The Road to Character (2015). HS: You've said "politics is being overtaken by tribalism.” Would you expand on that? DB: We used to have community, and community is based on common affection and trust. Jane Jacobs, who wrote Death and Life of Great American Cities, described looking out her window one day and seeing a little girl trying to get away from a guy kidnapping her. And she (Jacobs) couldn't help, and she thought: Maybe I should go down and intervene. And then she noticed that the butcher’s wife had come out of the shop, the fruit stand guy had come out, somebody had come out, the locksmith, and the guy was surrounded. And it turns out it wasn’t a kidnapping, it was a just a dad calling his daughter. But, that's what community is like. And she describes it very famously as a ballet on the street. And we used to have those ballets in a lot of neighborhoods, where people could trust each other, they looked out for each other, they kept each other safe. Over the last 50 years, we sort of lost that, we lost social capital, as they say, and we’re more isolated and alone. And when people are isolated and alone, they do what the revolutionaries tell them to do, which is they revert to tribe. And tribalism looks like community, because it is a kind of bonding and belonging, but it’s based on mutual hatred and not mutual affection. So, it’s always us/them, friend/enemy distinctions. And if you look at polarization today, it’s not that people love their own political party so much, they just hate the other one. That's the motivator, that's tribalism. HS: Hasn’t humanity always been tribal? Isn't it in our bones? DB: Well, it’s in our bones to make friend-enemy distinctions. It’s not in our bones to have a set of communities that rule out other communities, that have to be hostile to other communities. But it is possible to have a set of people where I'm in my community, you're in yours, I've got nothing against you and we’re probably joined by a higher community, which is our national community. HS: How do you find civility? DB: I think you have to get away from that sense that people who have that are naked and alone in a world that's hostile. Where people can't be trusted. And so, my basic view is, you have to start with local dinners with neighbors, where people actually get to know each other. HS: I'm sure that happens, probably all over the United States, in various little towns, but it doesn’t seem to be infectious, it doesn’t seem to last. DB: Yes. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I would emphasize the culture of individualism that says, "I need as much space as I can to be myself." It’s also probably true that as we get more diverse, it gets a little harder to form communities.Then there are some values; we value privacy above all. And so, in most nations around the world and at most times in America, it was very normal to go up to somebody’s house who you sort of knew, and knock on the doorbell, or ring the door. And now that never happens. You would think, no, I'm invading their privacy. I'm not going to do that. We put incredibly high priority on privacy, also on work. We work really hard and then when we get home, we just want to relax, we don’t want to socialize. There's a lot of value put on that.

HS: The gulf between peoples seems pervasive all over the world. Within any country, there are us and them. Muslims and Hindus. Christians and Jews. It’s seems like your dream of a loving, compassionate vision is something that’s not within the human genome. DB: I covered the Soviet Union coming down, the coming together of community there. I covered Nelson Mandela coming out of prison, the end of apartheid there. I covered the unification of Germany. And you saw these surges of people trying to come together across differences. And we had a country here, a political system, where it wasn’t complete partisan warfare, the way it is now. That's been a deteriorating issue we’ve had for 30 years. HS: I think it goes way back, such as famous politicians who hated George Washington. DB: Of course, politics has always brutal, but then politicians also worked together across party lines. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, famously, hated each other, but they served in the same administration. And if you looked at the votes in most parties or most congresses, there was plenty of overlap. If you look at the Supreme Court, only two percent of cases 20 years ago, were decided on party lines. Now it’s well over 20 percent. There are concrete measures of growing tribal distrust. If you’d asked people a generation ago, do you trust the institutions of society, 70 or 80 percent said, yes; and now it’s only 20 percent. HS: Is this deterioration a sign of the end of our civilization? I mean, all empires self-destruct eventually? DB: Yes, it could be. When Gibbon described the end of the Roman Empire, he described it as a collection....Not a really functioning society anymore. Just a collection of isolated individuals. So, it could be, but I sort of doubt it. We go through bumpy times. If you look at 1968, it was way worse. If you look at 1932, it was worse. There have been times in our country where we’ve been in similar circumstances to today. HS: Is Trump as our president a symptom or a cause of our problems? DB: Well, it’s a symptom and a cause. He was elected because so many people are disgusted with Washington and hate what’s been done to them, or are disgusted with outsiders. And now he gets himself at the center of attention every single day by making friend-enemy distinctions, by saying those are evil people, we’re good people. He grew out of this distrust, but he plays on it and exacerbates it. HS: Can we survive him? DB: I think so. It won't be easy, I don't think our politics is going to recover for a long, long time. It will take a social recovery before we get a political recovery. But say he lasts another two years, we’ve endured two years of it, so far nothing. We’ve had a deterioration in norms and how we treat each other and think of each other. If he’s gone in two years, maybe it’ll get worse, maybe we get another version of Trump. But it’s possible that you can snap back. I just think that nothing is determined in life. And there are parts of the society that are actually kind of healthy, our economy, things like that. HS: Nothing’s determined, you can't predict the future for anything ever, really. What bothers me is the silence of good Republicans. There are bright Republican Congressmen and Senators. There are conscientious nation-loving human beings who are mute. They shudder that they have this president, but they relish what he brings them. DB: I've had many conversations with them on this subject. And, of course, I would like them all to speak up. And they say: Well, look at all the people who’ve spoken up, their careers are over. And so, what good would it do the country for my career to be over? Trump would still be Trump. You’d get some lunatic in place of me. And so, I’ll wait for my moment. I give them credit for some strength in that argument; if you speak up against Trump and you're in the Republican Party, you lose your next primary. The loyalty among Republican voters is to Trump. And not even to the party, just to Trump the person. HS: You've said: Trump takes every wound and repeatedly pokes holes in it. What do you mean exactly? DB: In our nation’s history, the most famous wounds are racial wounds. And so, he pokes at any racial prejudice and racial division. Religious wounds, city versus rural, pretty much all the divisions you can think of in society. The native versus the immigrant…he inflames one side or another of these divides. It’s just his marketing strategy. But, partly, it’s hard not to believe that he doesn’t have some level of bigotry. And then, finally, I think he just was raised in a culture of distrust. That the outsiders are out to get us, that life is a do or die battle. HS: What leaders do you most admire today? DB: I like a lot of senators. But mostly the happiest people I know are mayors, because they're actually doing stuff. The unhappiest are members of Congress. For example, a mayor I admire, though he’s controversial, is Rahm Emanuel of Chicago who came into a city that was vastly in debt, with school systems that were totally failing. He got the city out of debt and he closed some schools, and I think graduation rates have increased phenomenally, more than any other city in America. Not only because of him, it’s been through a ten-year project. And he’s just announced he won't run again, so he made a lot of enemies doing this stuff. But I think there are tens of thousands of children in Chicago now who have better education because of what he did. In Washington, you find people who are doing the best they can under bad circumstances. General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, is doing the best he can in a bad circumstance. Some of the senators, Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, a Democrat. Ron Wyden, Ben Sasse, a Republican. They’re trying to do legislation in a bad circumstance. So I give them respect. HS: How would you change these negative circumstances? Obama tried. DB: He had the right feelings, he didn't have the right relationships. He didn't have a relationship of trust with the leaders of Congress, even in his own party. I don't think he liked hanging around with politicians, they just weren't his cup of tea. HS: How do you personally maintain a conservative bent, yet work for the New York Times? DB: I have a worldview. If I didn't have a worldview, I couldn't do my job. It’s informed by Edmond Burke and Alexander Hamilton, both of them conservative-ish guys, at least by the traditional definition of conservatism. So, I think my views are reasonably predictable. When you're writing for The Times, you're writing for a mostly progressive audience. And in that case, you just try to show respect. HS: Can you change people’s minds? DB: I think you can. I really think you can. By saying: Well, you believe X, here are the nine facts to prove that Y is possible. You can give people, a better way to live and their norms and values will subtly change.

HS: But what about the 40 percent of Americans who are pro-Trump, despite the fact he’s allergic to the truth? DB: I wish they would change their minds. But I spend most of my life with these people, and they say: Listen, I needed a change. I know he’s a jerk. I don't pay attention to all that circus stuff, all those tweets. But the economy is doing better, I feel like he’s shaken up Washington. I mean, they have their reasoning and it’s not completely idiotic. HS: You worked on a police beat in Chicago. How did that influence your thinking? DB: Profoundly, even though it was a very short time. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do journalism, I knew I wanted to write. But when I did the police beat, I came home every day with a story, and it was fun and exciting. I was super left wing, and the parts of Chicago I covered were some of the worst parts of Chicago at the time -- Cabrini Green, and the Robert Taylor Homes -- these big projects. And what I saw was earnest, well-intentioned social reform that had disastrous consequences. And it taught me that society is really complicated. And if you're going to do change you should do it incrementally. And be aware that you're probably going to have a lot of bad consequences you can't anticipate. And that's more or less Edmond Burke’s philosophy, so it turned me a little more conservative. HS: What is your process? You must have a time when you write, and then when you read. You must have time when you go to movies or have fun. DB:The fun part is the hard part. My rule is the more creative the profession, the more rigorous the schedule has to be. So I write from eight ‘til noon every day. And my wife knows to get out of my way. Before I've written, I'm just not a good person. After that, I relax. And so, if I've got my thousand words in then I relax. I listen to movie soundtracks. I need music, but I can't have any lyrics, so I listen to music soundtracks. HS: What are your thoughts about immigration? DB: I'm wildly pro-immigration. I was sort of raised by my grandfather, who was an immigrant and had a strong immigrant mentality. So, I admire the hustle of people who are immigrants. And then, just objectively, I think that immigrants are great for this country. They're less prone to commit crimes than natives. They're much more economically creative than the rest of us. Their family values are better. They're much more communal. HS: And our racial division in this country? DB: I'm somewhat optimistic about it. Since Ferguson, there's been a period of truth-telling. A lot of African-Americans saying things they wouldn't necessarily say in public or in mixed company. And that has not always been pleasant. But I think it’s a necessary stage to go through. I travel around the country with a team from the Aspen Institute, and we hold these dinners with people who are working in communities. And sometimes our dinners will be 40 percent African American, and sometimes the mood is really angry. But, I think that has to be expressed for us to move on and understand the situation in the country. HS: Are there opinions you've written that you regret? DB: Oh, for sure. I was a strong supporter of the Iraq war, that was pretty clearly a mistake. When I was young, before my kids were born, I would write hit pieces on people. Really criticizing, making fun of people, taking advantage of my verbal abilities to make others look small. And once my kids were born, then I said, "No, I don't want my kids seeing me as this kind of person." And so, I more or less stopped writing them.

HS: You often talk about the soul and heart and how people have the desire to do good. DB: Maybe that's midlife awakening. A lot of our problems come from giving that desire to be good short shrift.

#davidbrooks interview portrait art photography howardschatz npr politics news

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sharingshane-blog · 6 years

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Why the Bloody Hell a Christian!?

I am religious, self-identifying Christian. This part of me has had significant influence in whom I am today. It is not something that I discuss often; yet, it is also not something I keep secret either. It does usually take people by surprise to learn this fact about me. I just finished writing a blog post about one of my idols, Emma Goldman, who was a staunch atheist. I am transgender and bisexual, and I believe it is okay for me to live fully and authentically as myself. I have date men, women, and non-binary folks happily and without remorse. I am a steadfast leftist and a large critic of the church not just in the United States but around the world too. I am also a critic of organized religion in general. I usually advice against looking for savior figures. That is in part how dictators come to power. I have extremely close atheist and agnostic friends. I also have Muslim, Jewish, and even Satanist friends. I have also suffered abuse and ostracization from my church growing up which contributed to a lot of the psychological issues that I possess today. I do also agree that the Bible does contain homophobic, ethnocentric, sexist, and genocidal content. It also contains slave apology, human sacrifices, and rape defenses. So, the question that may be running through your head at this point may be, “Why would you identify as a Christian?”

Well, let me start with why I do not talk about my Christian faith that often. It is rooted solely in the way people perceive me when I talk about my faith than what I say about my faith. Since Christianity is so mainstream in the United States, there is already widespread knowledge about the basics of the religion. When Christians give out little booklets saying, “Did you know Jesus—?” it comes off like they are insulting the intelligence of anyone who is not perceived to be with the “in-group.” I think sometimes many Christians lose sight of the fact that anyone outside their small group of other think-alike Christians are just as human and capable of cogitative reasoning as them. Many people outside the realm of Christianity know the basic tenets of the Christian faith, and many even know and understand the Bible better than most self-identifying Christians. Evangelism in the sense of educating people about the basics of the faith is essentially unnecessary in the United States, and I want to avoid coming off as an evangelist to other people. When I speak about my faith, I do not want others to perceive me as that evangelist. I want to communicate that I believe they are intelligent individuals with their own interpretations of spirituality that are completely based on valid perspectives of the world. It is demeaning and degrading the way most Christians interact with others outside their little Christian in-group.

Furthermore, there is a level of stigma growing against Christians on the left. I am a leftist and potentially communist even. Most of my friends are self-identified as atheist or agnostic. Also, many of them have dealt with real abuse from the church in the past. This is also true of my LGBTQ+ friends. Unfortunately, in these groups, sometimes I must minimize my references to the Bible because it could potentially trigger traumatizing memories. I can empathize since have also experienced trauma from the church, and I have a difficult time with Christianized language and contemporary worship music. I rather speak of Christianity in a deep philosophical way or in an extremely pragmatic way. Enough with the bullshit abstract concepts with no explanation redundantly displayed in every single church! I get that Jesus loves me, a basic tenet of Christianity. But what does it mean for him to love me? What is love? Does his love have limits? But back to the trauma stuff. Since the church has hurt these communities quite repeatedly in the past, it is absolutely understandable that individuals in these communities have built a stealthy resentment towards Christianity as a whole. I have been an agnostic twice and sometimes I really do doubt whether I want to be associated with the label “Christian.” I do possess strong convictions despite minimizing how much I discuss it. It does still play an instrumental role in my life.

Back to the original question, “Why the bloody hell am I still a Christian?” Before I move forward, I will not and cannot give objective evidence for the existence of God and specifically the Christian God. I am aware that many of my views are dogmatic and originate from anecdotal observations rather than factual content. Many intellectuals cannot agree on a solid argument for the existence of God, so do not expect such an unrealistic feat from me. If you were to go down the route of a strictly logical path I would say that agnosticism is probably the most reasonable conclusion based on factual evidence. The best arguments from the perspective of theism are abductive arguments, arguments that attempt to give the best possible explanation for a phenomenon. Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation taking into account all the facts is the best explanation, is the method in which to find the best possible explanation for a phenomenon thereby strengthening an abductive argument. For example, our ability to comprehend and discover science is one such phenomenon in which arguably the best explanation could be the existence of God or at least intelligent designer. However, there are also many evolutionary explanations for the phenomenon as well. Next is figuring which is the simplest explanation that also takes into consideration of all known facts. Abductive arguments never prove that something is objectively true but merely most likely true. The conclusion is subject to change based on new data that may arise every day. Only deductive arguments if the premises are true and the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises can give objectively factual conclusions. (Example of a Deductive Argument: If A then B; if B then C, therefore, if A then C). All of scientific reasoning exists outside of deductive argumentation even scientific discoveries that are blatantly true.

Sorry, I was once a philosophy student, and I hope to return to school again at some point soon (which, by the way. much of my philosophical curiosity stems from my religious background). My reasons for being a Christian are not objective and not reasons for which you should become a Christian yourself if you are considering the possibility. They are merely justifications for why I consider myself a Christian. For starters, I deal with intense abandonment issues and chronic feelings of loneliness due to my extensive history of trauma. The belief in a loving and caring God who will never abandon me has helped fill those gaps. Of course, that does not mean that I don’t question the reason I have experienced so much evil if such a God exists unless I potentially deny his omnipotence. That is a valid question. I remember though, years ago, I was dangerously suicidal and was taken to the hospital. While waiting for a bed to open in the psychiatric hospital, the doctors put me in a secluded room with no intellectual stimulation, just blank white walls, for about 22 hours. About maybe 16 to 18 hours in and eventually someone gave me a magazine that I would normally not have expressed any sort of interest in except under dire circumstances such as that. My friend who dropped me off at the hospital is Catholic (one of the good ones) and she gave me a rosary as a source of strength. I hid it under my scrubs so as the cameras that were watching my 24/7 would not pick it up. In the room next to me, there was an older man who was belligerent and violent against the nurses. He made quite a ruckus all night, and it was frankly triggering and disturbing. I thought I was losing a sense of myself. I clutched tightly to that rosary all night long. After an ambulance transported me to the psychiatric hospital the next day, two nurses stripped searched me which of course meant that they took the rosary from my hands. I cried profusely because I felt like that was the only part of myself that I had left. So, there is definitely a sense of identity and strength I get from being a Christian; it is at the very least useful or practical for me to identify as a Christian. Christianity, particularly the scriptures involving Jesus, is also the reason why I am a leftist today. It is also surprisingly the reason I became more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community after my extremely conservative upbringing. Acts describes the early church, pre-Constantine’s conversion in 312 A.D., as being strongly communally based. People shared food, shelter, and clothing with one another and no one went without. This strikingly sounds like an anarcho-communist utopia. The understanding of Jesus as the Son of God was of the upmost importance, and Jesus’ denouncing of the ethnocentric ideology of Jewish religious leaders telling his disciples to go out and tell the world about him brought the gentiles into the community with him. One of the first recorded converts in the Bible was a eunuch from what is modern Ethiopia. It was not only a gentile but also a sexual minority. Jesus had a strong message about community and non-judgmental stance towards others. He rebuked people who valued power and wealth over other people. This particularly included the rich, religious leaders, and other people of power. He told a rich man to give away all his possessions to enter the Kingdom of Heaven which the man left distraught. He healed the servant of the Roman centurion and it is highly likely according to Biblical scholars that they were in a homosexual relationship given the historical precedent of that time. Jesus is crucial and central to the Christian faith. Christianity does not exist without him. Why else would it be call CHRIST-ianity? And of course, modern-day Jews and Muslims at the very least recognize Jesus as a great prophet (The Koran also states that Christians and Jews will also be rewarded in heaven alongside Muslims). What sets Christianity apart is that one of the most basic tenets of Christianity is the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. When looking at Christianity, what is essential is looking through the lens of Jesus when interpreting the rest of scripture, what is human-informed and what objectively divine. I believe that much of the Bible is divine to an extent but at times grossly misconstrued by human beings. Christianity has been interpreted in ways in which have wielded immense good and immense harm today. In other words, it is easy to imagine that this would be true for the history of the Judeo-Christian faith. It has been used today to justify genocides, but it has also been used to build free clinics for people who do not have access to healthcare (the church I have been attending). Religion can be extremely dangerous if interpreted in a grotesque way with self-interest plaguing one’s reasoning. I do not think; however, it is something necessarily intrinsically wrong with religion.

I will probably do more blog posts on this topic, specifically on queerness and the Bible. With how I interpret the Bible, I can easily justify living openly queer. I will give a brief synopsis in how I justify the way I live in light of being a Christian. Most of the verses which speak against homosexuality are in extremely specific sections with absurd rules such as never defend your husband in a fight by grabbing other man’s penis or washing yourself three times after a nocturnal ejaculation. Maybe, the most substantive verse would be from Paul in Romans and Corinthians; however, Paul has also said that women should never speak in a place of worship which even by most conservative Evangelical Christian standards is too sexist. We are talking about an extensive history of patriarchy and ethnocentrism, wanting desperately to separate their culture from other cultures by committing genital mutilation and refraining from homosexual acts plaguing the society for many centuries. The Bible was exclusively written by men in this context trying to interpret something divine. I do not believe the Bible is inerrant. The Bible gives little insight in terms of varying gender identities. It speaks against transvestitism a “crime” one cannot commit if they identify with the gender that they are attempting to express. Transvestitism does not equal transgenderism and equating the two would be an invalidation of a person’s gender identity since you are insinuation that a transgender man for example is really just a woman presenting as a man instead of a man in his own right. But furthermore, with the increased greater understanding that sexual orientation and gender identity is rooted in one’s being and not a lifestyle which someone follows by their own volition, one must consider the idea of whether anyone could be excluded from Jesus’ community based on some uncontrollable trait. The obvious answer to this is no, and most conservative Christians would agree with the premise. However, they either deny queerness is an innate trait, or that it is a mental illness, or a trait that must be suppressed. The third is absurd, because you would never tell someone to be a specific race in order to be accepted in the Christian community. It a trans-woman is a woman, then there is no way to change the fact that she is a woman. Even if she dresses masculine and never medically transitions, she is still a woman. She would actually be cross-dressing technically! Since gender has to do with one’s internal identity and not necessarily one’s presentation, no matter how much she tries, even if she comes off as a man is not a man. Telling people to suppress their identity has only led to a mental health crisis in the queer community and high suicidal rates. Is a God who tells people to suppress a portion of themselves that he presumably created for no other purpose but the prospect of getting to heaven one day truly loving? I would argue not. I would go as far to say that if you do believe that queer people should suppress themselves, there is the insinuation that God wants to make certain people suffer unnecessarily (unnecessarily is key here, not that we should never have challenges, but we should never have to suffer unnecessarily) and does not truly love certain people. That last bit is a heretical statement.

Phew! That was a lot and thank you for bearing with me through all of it. Thank you for your time and your patience when reading all of this. Sorry if it mostly sounded like a bunch of thoughts loosely stringed together. That is essentially what my life is at this point. I hope from this you may have been able to get a different perspective of what it might mean for someone to be a Christian or why I am still a self-identified Christian. I also hope that you have been able gain a better understanding of me. Maybe you have more respect for me or maybe you have lost all respect for me. Either one is fine. You may have whatever opinion you want of me. I have heard it all: delusional, deceived, misled, crazy, etc. That is okay. It is sad though in the midst of trying so desperately to fight for a completely egalitarian society. I am comfortable for the most part with the label. I have found a church that accepts my gender identity using correct name and pronouns. I had the fortune of being in the church when I came out, so most of the parishioners knew my birthname but still switched out of respect for me at the very least. The official church directory has my preferred name there. Not every individual is accepting, but the vast majority are including the priest who defended me when someone made some transphobic comments using scripture. The church has been a source of slow healing for me from all the abuse and trauma I have experienced, and they have helped me during some dark times such as when I was homeless and hungry. That is what the church is meant to be, a place of safety and love. I have broken down in tears before during some of the services out of being so overwhelmed by the kindness and acceptance I got from them as opposed to people in my past. In fact, they were more accepting of me than my job who just cut my hours more and I eventually lost the job soon after coming out publicly. After my abusive ex-boyfriend from back when I thought I was cisgender and straight became a full-blown fascist, I decided to dedicate my life to loving others. This is where it has brought me so far, a staunch Christian leftist.

#christianity #community #love #acceptance #identity

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phantom-le6 · 3 years

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Film Review - Wonder Woman 84

Carrying on with my film review interval quickly so I can get on to reviewing the Batman animated series, it’s time to join DC a bit early, albeit in the live-action world of the DCEU as we take a look at Wonder Woman 84…

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

A young Diana (Wonder Woman) participates in an athletic event on Themyscira against older Amazons. After falling from her horse due to looking back at her opponents, Diana takes a shortcut and remounts, but misses a checkpoint. Antiope removes her from the competition, explaining anything worthwhile must be obtained honestly.

In 1984, Diana works at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. while secretly performing heroic deeds as Wonder Woman. New museum employee Barbara Ann Minerva, a shy geologist and cryptozoologist, is barely seen by her co-workers and comes to envy Diana. Later, the FBI asks the museum to identify stolen antiquities from a robbery that Wonder Woman recently foiled. Barbara and Diana notice one item, later identified as the Dreamstone, contains a Latin inscription claiming to grant the holder one wish.

Barbara wishes to become like Diana, which unwittingly results in her acquiring the same superpowers, while Diana unknowingly wishes for her deceased lover Steve Trevor to be alive, resurrecting him in another man's body; the two are reunited at a Smithsonian gala. Failing businessman Maxwell "Max Lord" Lorenzano tricks Barbara and steals the Dreamstone, hoping to use its power to save his bankrupt oil company. He wishes to "become" the stone and gains its wish-granting powers, becoming a wealthy and powerful figure who creates chaos and destruction as his powers trigger worldwide instability.

Barbara, Diana and Steve discover that the Dreamstone was created by Dolos/Mendacius, the god of mischief, also known as the Duke of Deception. It grants a user's wish while exacting a toll unless they renounce the wish or destroy the stone. Although Diana's power and Barbara's humanity diminish, both are unwilling to renounce their wishes. Learning from the U.S. President of a satellite system that broadcasts signals globally, Max, whose powers are causing his body to deteriorate, plans to globally grant wishes to steal strength and life force from the viewers and regain his health. Diana and Steve confront him at the White House, but Barbara, now aligned with Max, betrays Diana and knocks her down, escaping with Max on Marine One. Steve convinces Diana to renounce her wish and let him go, restoring her strength and gaining an ability to fly.

Donning the Armor of Amazon warrior Asteria, Diana flies to the satellite headquarters and again battles Barbara, who has transformed into a humanoid cheetah after wishing to become an apex predator. Following a brutal match, Diana tackles Barbara into a lake and electrocutes her, then pulls her out. She confronts Max and uses her Lasso of Truth to communicate with the world through him, persuading everyone to renounce their wishes. She then shows Max visions of his own unhappy childhood and of his son, Alistair, who is frantically searching for his father amid the chaos. Max renounces his wish and reunites with Alistair and Barbara returns to normal. Sometime later in the winter, Diana meets the man whose body Steve possessed.

In a post-credits scene, Asteria is revealed to be secretly living among humans.

Review:

Unlike a lot of people, I have enjoyed a lot of the DC Extended Universe to date. Granted, most of their films have been flawed to varying extents, more-so than I’ve known with the MCU, and in truth only Man of Steel and the first Wonder Woman solo films cleared top marks. Warner Brothers and DC are clearly trying, and while they might not succeed with live action the way they do with their animated DC films, I think we can all at least commend the effort. Certainly, that effort shows through in this film, which is both sequel to the first live-action Wonder Woman film and a further prequel to Wonder Woman’s present-day self in Batman vs Superman and Justice League. It’s well-cast around a decent plot, and offers both the action and character most audiences expect from films of this genre.

However, the film is not without flaw, and these become more prevalent looking at the behind-the-scenes stories and features than through watching the film itself. First, let’s tackle the couple of controversies that have come from the observations of others. According to Wikipedia, the film has been criticised heavily on two counts. First, Steve Trevor is brought into the film by possessing another man’s body in a plot thread analogous to 80’s era body-swap films like Vice Versa. Because Steve and Diana have sex at one point during this time, this aspect is likened by some to rape despite that not being the intent of the film makers. The second point of controversy is a scene where Wonder Woman saves Muslim children from being run over, something that is apparently controversial because actress Gal Gadot once served in the Israeli Defence Forces and has spoken in support of them.

With regards to the first, I think the film makers needed to make it clearer that while Steve is doing his possession bit, the body’s native soul is totally elsewhere, as that might have changed how some perceived the scene. Me, I’ve taken it from the first as just Steve and Diana without that exposition, and I think we can be a little too quick to assign the concept of ‘rape’ to certain sci-fi and superhero fantasy concepts. This criticism strikes me as people wanting to be louder on a subject that is better tackled by being smarter about it, but I do think it’s probably something story tellers need to be mindful of going forward. If you’re going to set up something that could look like rape if not explained fully, make the time to do that, no matter how it may hurt other aspects of your story.

With the second, I tend to look at every religious conflict now and in the past and think “will you just grow up and stop having such massive-ass hissy fits over a bunch of stories that might not even be true?” Honestly, I don’t get why so many Christians, Muslims and Jews have to have massive conflicts with each other supposedly over faith. You’re all worshipping the same deity, for crying out loud, and odds are 50/50 as to whether that deity even exists or not. That’s honestly not worth keeping up a bunch of rivalry and hatred that started thousands of years ago; these days, it’s just an excuse. Got land that’s holy to more than one religion? Just share it. Don’t like someone else’s religion and want to stick to your own? Just say “thanks but no thanks” and carry on about your business. That’s the mature, adult approach, and by the same token, just accept that it’s Wonder Woman saving some kids and leave the personal politics to your own story-telling.

So, having dismissed the quibbles of the possibly over-reactionary viewers, let’s get into the bigger issues. In terms of adaptation accuracy, the film is mostly good, but falls a bit short on Maxwell Lord. The guy’s supposed to be a pretty irredeemable slimeball going by the comics, and while I can accept the film giving him some justification for taking things too far, I have a hard time buying into him effectively doing the ‘right thing’ at the film’s climax. It feels highly out of character, not to mention a bit anti-climactic. Then again, that’s why I’ve never enjoyed superhero match-ups that pit a massively over-powered hero against a villain who is all about brains. Such clashes make it impossible for the superhero to win in classic physical combat and gain the catharsis that comes from that. It almost feels like that part should have come first and the grudge-match with Cheetah should have followed it.

More significant an issue than that, however, is the idea that the whole wish fulfilment aspect of the plot was somehow people seeking lies and needing to accept the truth. Wishes are not lies; wishes are wishes and have no set place in the truth-versus-lie dichotomy. As such, truth is not by any means the answer to things when wishes go wrong. Wishes going wrong is simply a literary device used to convey the idea that somehow wishing is bad, but it’s not. After all, how many people who worked on this film wished at some point they’d be able to bring Wonder Woman to life on the big screen? Every film, every TV show, every book, every story anyone has ever created is the execution of a wish.

The reality is that wishes only become a problem as a result of greed, which is the problem created by Max Lord in this film. If he’d just wished to hit oil to save his company, he’d be fine and things wouldn’t have escalated. Instead, he takes on the Dreamstone’s power itself so he could exact his own price from future wishers, and as a result he upsets the stupidly precarious balance that keeps the world going. It’s an interesting idea, albeit not all that original; leaving aside the classic “monkey’s paw” legend and others like it, you’ve only got to look at the Jim Carry film Bruce Almighty and Carrey’s character Bruce granting all prayers while using God’s powers to know wish fulfilment is dangerous in excess. However, anything in excess is dangerous, and it’s not like wishing worked out so badly for Aladdin if we go by Disney’s versions of that story.

The reality of WW84 is that it’s a decent film that’s mostly well-acted and has a decent story, but with a flawed underlying message that gets bogged down by various flaws in execution. If I had to pick out a film that illustrates why the DCEU needs the Flash solo film to reboot it, this one would have to be right up there with Justice League, Aquaman and Birds of Prey. Like those films, this one only warrants 7 out of 10, and much of that is down to a lot of the actors performing so well, especially Lilly Aspell as the kid version of Diana in the opening scene. Only 10 years old at the time of filming and she did every stunt herself; an impressive feat to say the least.

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agyaattheunknown · 3 years

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For thousands of years and across countless cultures, humans around the world have been meditating. Whether you're new to meditation, or you've been practicing it for a while, there are always new and fascinating things to discover about this age-old practice.

To the uninitiated, meditation appears mysterious and downright strange. To the well-practiced however, it's just a normal part of their daily routine.

So how does meditation really work and how are you supposed to do it?

Read on to discover some surprising secrets about meditation.

1. Your Mind Will Quiet Itself

As opposed to actively trying to quiet your mind, when you meditate, your mind will quiet itself -- all on its own. Whether you are following your breath or chanting a mantra, you'll eventually start to just be present, to "just be." If you try to tame your thoughts, they'll just multiply instead. When you notice a sunset or you look up at the stars, all of your thoughts seems to disappear as you become more present to the moment. And that is how your mind quiets itself when you meditate, by becoming more present.

2. It Doesn't Have to Take More than a Few Minutes

There are no hard rules that your meditation session has to take 30 minutes. Who says you can't be present and meditate when you have a few spare moments to yourself? While a daily formal practice is preferable, you can be present while you're standing on line or waiting for a friend. You can incorporate meditation into your daily life any way that works for you.

3. It's as Simple as Observing Your Breathing

While meditation can seem mysterious and obscure to someone who has never tried it before, it actually couldn't be more simple. In Zen meditation, you simply observe your own breathing. You sit quietly and keep following and watching your breathing, as it goes in and out. In and out. And that's basically it. Easy, right? However, your mind will wander, you and you'll have to keep returning your awareness back onto your breathing. Simple, but not easy.

4. Noticing How You React When Your Mind Wanders

For most beginners, when you start meditating you'll notice that your mind wanders. Before you know it, you've been thinking about what to eat for dinner for the last few moments without even realizing it. If you get frustrated when this happens or if you beat yourself up, you'll create more distress. Instead, it's important to gently return your awareness back to your anchor (your breath), with the warmest compassion you can give to yourself. This is part of the process of meditation.

5. Anyone Can Meditate

Contrary to popular belief, there are no age restrictions on meditation. Whether you're 90 years old, or your 5-year-old daughter wants to give it a whirl, go for it! There are very few limitations on who can meditate. There's no discrimination on your ethnicity or gender. Even if you don't consider yourself "spiritual," plenty of people who don't consider themselves spiritual meditate just for the health benefits alone. Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike can practice it. And if you have ADHD, research suggests that meditation will help you to concentrate and focus more.

6. You Can Meditate In Any Position

When you picture someone meditating, you usually imagine them in the lotus position, sitting cross-legged on the floor. But you can actually meditate in any position. The lotus position is usually recommended because it helps you stay focused. But you can also meditate while sitting in a chair, laying down, or even standing! Whatever body position you choose, you should feel comfortable and relaxed.

7. You Can Be Present Anywhere, Anytime

While I'm not suggesting that you try to meditate in the middle of a rock concert or while your 2-year-old is throwing a tantrum, you can be present anywhere, anytime. There is a very beautiful walking meditation in Zen, where you stay mindful of each step as you walk. No matter where you are, you can be mindful and aware of how you're feeling and what you're hearing and seeing. You can even meditate on a train or at your desk. Give it a shot.

8. Observe The Feeling Within Your Body

As Eckhart Tolle writes extensively about, being present is natural and actually easy when you bring your attention to what it feels like inside of your body. Even if you don't feel anything remarkable going on inside of you, when you bring your attention to the "aliveness" and sensations you feel within your legs, arms, and torso, you'll become more present, and your mental chatter will begin to quiet down. This is how your dog lives his life -- present to his body.

9. You've Always Known How to Be Present, You Just Had to Re-Learn

Have you ever noticed the look in a baby's eyes when they're looking into your eyes? There's no worry or regret, no disappointment or judgement. Babies are present in a way that seems very appealing to adults. They're not absorbed in their own thoughts like adults are. You've probably had this experience of "no thinking" right when you're about to fall asleep or after waking up. It can be argued that being present is our natural state.

10. There is No "One Right Way" To Do It

There are countless schools and techniques for meditation. According to an ancient Hindu text, the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, there are 112 ways to meditate! In some traditions, you focus on the breath, while in others you focus on a mantra. There is Zen, Transcendental Meditation, Vipassana meditation, mantra meditation, and so on. You can experiment with different meditation techniques or even create your own.

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kiss-my-freckle · 6 years

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Huge focus this season on marriages, divorces, engagements, deaths.

Detective Singleton was married with two kids. Nik Korpal was engaged. The Capricorn Killer went dormant because he met his wife and had a child. Judge Sonia Fisher lied about having an affair on her husband with Howard Ray Bishop. On Dembe's smuggling truck, Budron talked about murdering a man's wife to save air. Mrs. Kilgannon's son killed her husband during an argument over their smuggling business. Garvey is married, When Aram and Liz caught sight of him with Lilly, Aram asked Liz if she thinks he's having an affair. Red reminded us that Scottie attacked Liz's wedding. Liz told Dr. Fulton she felt a presence at her first wedding. Pete lied about being married, claimed he was getting a divorce so he could marry Lena. Analia and Paolo were the married couple who owned the house Red took over for his party in Blaise’s episode. Red invited Basillo and his wife to the party. The son of Mr. and Mrs. Stansbury was shot and killed by a hired cop in Miss Rebecca Thrall's episode. It was mentioned four times that Liz is a widow. The Cook killed a husband and wife in a house fire. The Travel Agency victims - Mitchell David Dunning, murdered in front of his wife. Edward Knobbs was married. Pattie Sue Edward's cleared her husband's name. The woman talking to the Cook cheated on her fiancé. Agent Calhoun's white whale became her family. The Saram ring-proposal dialogues, including Liz's and Ressler's. In the woods, Billy asked Liz why she's still wearing her wedding ring. Billy stated that the witness in Liz's bed is married. Soundtrack: Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat. Soundtrack: Janis Ian - At Seventeen

Garvey: You must be the wife. What’s your name, darling?

Ressler: You must be the wife. Janet: Janet. Ressler: Janet, right. Well, I’m sorry, Janet, but your husband’s been lying to you for a very long time.

The Napoleon Diamond Necklace, Greyson Blaise.

"Thank you, Phoebe. You are truly a patron of the arts. Speaking of patrons of the arts - Napoleon. His first wife was unable to bear him a child, so he dumped the Empress of France for the Archduchess of Austria. He got a child, and she got a magnificent gold and silver necklace consisting of 234 diamonds, and what is widely considered to be the most spectacular jewelry piece of the age. It’s here, and on loan from the Smithsonian. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I give to you the Napoleon Diamond Necklace.”

Red's story about being there at Liz's first wedding.

"I was in the Andes when I heard you and Elizabeth were engaged. Agents in the Columbian government had solicited my help negotiating the release of soldiers being held by FARC rebels. At the time, I was a rare intermediary having brokered sales of arms and equipment to both sides of the conflict. I was unable to return until the day of your wedding. Seeing her that day - She was incandescent. I’d come out of the mountains, blinded by rage, flown 2300 miles, absolutely certain that you must die. And then - I saw Elizabeth. I’m a violent man. A terrible, powerful, violent man. But the way she looked at you, the way she loves you - I’m powerless against that."

Tom's story about his "wife."

“You don’t have to call me Mr. I’m sorry, man. My wife just, uh - just left me. Seven years we’ve been together, you know? And she’s sleeping with her boss? And now I’m the one who has to move out. And I found that apartment, you know? I remodeled it myself, and now I’m sleeping on my buddy’s couch. And she’s banging a guy named Phil! You know, the guy wears a bowling shirt, alright? The kind with his His nickname embroidered right on the front, and it’s - It’s 'Chesty,' alright? She picked a guy named Chesty over me.”

“Phil” came up in Sinclair’s episode.

Brian: Do you know who likes falafel?! Phil. Who was screwing my wife when we started this. When you promised to get me a double. And now he’s moved in with her. He’s living in my house with my kids. And I’m out here waving to falafel guys!

Calvin & Eleanor Dawson, The Travel Agency.

Liz: The wife - he lied to her. Led her to believe he worked at an actual travel agency, had a normal life. She had no idea. After the accident, somehow, somewhere, there was a slip-up, and she picked up on it. She stumbled onto his finances. A congressman from Utah murdered while he was in Salt Lake. A South African police general gunned down while he was in Cape Town. There’s no closure in confronting a man who doesn’t even know what day it is, so she just kept digging. Finally, she figured out his protocols. How the long-defunct Travel Agency communicated with their assets. And she used those same protocols to run her husband. Took advantage of his amnesia, making him believe it was still 1989, using him as her own contract killer to take out those in the Travel Agency. All the while, he had no idea.

Eleanor: You took our girls with you to kill a man. You left them in the car and walked inside the back of a restaurant to do a job which should’ve taken you - what, two minutes? But it didn’t take you two minutes, Calvin. Because the man you went to kill knew you were coming - got a jump on you, left you for dead, bleeding and beaten in the alley while our girls were locked in the car - too young to know any better. The medical examiner said electrolyte abnormalities kicked in and sparked cardiac arrhythmias - and something he called “skin slippage.” Everyone from Seawall is dead. Except Wright. The police got to him. But everyone else. It doesn’t bring the girls back or make me feel as good as I thought it would - but you did it.

Anna-Gracia & Samar's cousin.

Anna-Gracia killed 10 husbands.

Liz: Look at this thread. It includes Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Christians. It’s like a child-bride support group. They’re talking about being forced to have sex, forced to be wives in middle and high school. Aram: That is not all they talk about. They also talk about her - a guardian angel, sort of like a mythic white knight that appears to set them free. Ressler: Set them free - murder their husbands. Samar: They can’t do it through divorce. As minors, they need adult consent, but the adults in their lives want them to be married. Aram: Nine of the girls in Reva’s group have husbands who have been killed or died in accidents.

Anna-Gracia: I wasn’t just married to him! He raped me! He lived near my family’s home. One day, he invited me in to see his apartment, and I reported it. Went to the police. When my parents found out, they were angry at me. For shaming them, for causing a scandal. To make it go away, they told a story. They said we were in love. They went to Robert and made a deal, like I was something to be traded! Samar: I’m so sorry. Anna-Gracia: I survived in his hell for almost three years. Until one afternoon when I freed myself. Salvation from a $10 kitchen knife. I knew then what I would do. That I would die, if necessary, trying to save others. Samar: My parents were murdered when I was 9. My brother and I, we were sent to live with our father’s family. And then, slowly, I began to heal. This was thanks in large part to my cousin Yana. She was 15. She was like a second mother to me. Until one night at dinner, my uncle announced that she was going to be married to a man that none of us had ever met. That night, Yana and I, we sat and we cried. ‘Cause the next day, the man came, and she was gone. I didn’t have the chance to help her. Please give me the chance to help you, Anna-Gracia to tell your story. This isn’t where your story should end.

Dialogues for Tom, Liz, and Red.

Tom: You know what we need? We need to get married. We never got married.

Tom: If you answer your phone, we are getting a divorce.

Tom: No! No, you don’t! Just tell him you’re on your honeymoon. Tell him that your second husband insists you take one day off. Liz: Um, technically - you are my first husband because our first marriage was annulled.

Liz: I’m better than okay. I’m great. We’re great - Tom and I. We got married. See? Now’s normally when people say “congratulations.” Red: Sorry. Tom and I have had our differences, but I believe he wants what’s best for you. And Agnes. Congratulations, Elizabeth.

Liz: I’m only interested in the man who murdered Tom and finding out the secret that got him killed. Red: I’m going to help with the former and prevent the latter. 50-50 split. Like a good divorce. Harold.

Tom: I’m not lying. I got a wife and a kid. I’m not dying here.

"Finding my husband's killer."

Samar: If I were her, I’d do whatever it takes to find my husband’s killer. Ressler: What do you mean, “whatever it takes”? Samar: I mean breaking the rules, ignoring the law - whatever it takes. Aram: To find your husband’s killer? That’s actually sort of sweet. Ressler: There’s nothing sweet about a cop who breaks the rules.

#dialogues #story focus

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safetypinkerton · 3 years

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Hollywood Propaganda by Mark Dice

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hollywood-propaganda-mark-dice/1137833508

Christianity Under Attack

In order to destroy America, the conspirators are determined to eradicate faith in God and dismantle organized Christianity. Attacking Jesus and Christianity is a sacrament in Hollywood because the far-Left hates Jesus and everything He stands for. It’s not an overstatement to say that many in key positions of power in the entertainment industry (and politics) are Satanists who will someday openly embrace Lucifer as the rebel angel kicked out of Heaven for defying God.

“I’m glad the Jews killed Christ,” ranted comedian Sarah Silverman in one of her comedy specials. “Good. I’d fucking do it again!” she declares, as her audience agrees in laughter.158 While accepting an Emmy Award one year Kathy Griffin said, “A lot of people come up here and they thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. He didn’t help me a bit…so all I can say is suck it Jesus! This award is my god now!”159

I’m not saying people shouldn’t be able to make fun of Christians, but no mainstream celebrity would dare make such insults or jokes about Muhammad because Muslims (and Jews) are vigorously protected against any criticism or mockery and only wonderful things can be said about them. Even a slightly edgy joke ignites a barrage of attacks with cries of “Islamophobia” or “anti-Semitism” and gears start moving in the well-funded and massive smear machines like the ADL and the SPLC which quickly move to destroy the person’s career before they can utter another word.

Hating Christians is almost as necessary as believing in climate change if you’re going to be a mainstream Hollywood celebrity. There are very few open Christians in Hollywood, most of them are has-beens like Kevin Sorbo and Kirk Cameron who have been basically blacklisted since being open about their faith.

Kevin Sorbo was banned from Comicon because he’s a conservative and “pals with Sean Hannity.”160 He and other Christian actors are stuck doing low budget films that get little attention. They’re allowed to exist (for now) as long as they never point out the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. Only watered down and generic Christian messages are allowed to be said.

After Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and happened to discuss his “spirituality,” many online began attacking him for being a Christian and attending a church. Actress Ellen Page (a lesbian) from the X-Men and Inception tweeted, “If you are a famous actor and you belong to an organization that hates a certain group of people, don’t be surprised if someone simply wonders why it’s not addressed. Being anti LGBTQ is wrong, there aren’t two sides. The damage it causes is severe. Full stop.”161

Singer Ellie Goulding threatened to back out of her scheduled performance at the 2019 Thanksgiving NFL halftime show if the Salvation Army didn’t pledge to donate money to LGBT causes. She got the idea after her Instagram comments were flooded with complaints from her fans because the Salvation Army was sponsoring the game to announce their annual Red Kettle Campaign (bell ringers) fundraiser for the homeless.162 Since the Salvation Army is a Christian charity, Goulding’s fans freaked out, accusing them of being “homophobic” and “transphobic.”

They quickly bowed to the pressure and “disavowed” any anti-LGBT beliefs, which basically means they’re disavowing the Bible because even the New Testament denounces homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27 and 1st Corinthians 6:9-10. Many critics claim that only the Old Testament does, but the Book of Romans makes it clear that just because Jesus came to offer salvation doesn’t mean God’s law regarding homosexuality changed.

The Salvation Army also removed a “position statement” from their website that had made it clear “Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex,” and replaced it with one saying “We embrace people regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”163 One of the world’s largest Christian charities whose very name “The Salvation Army” refers to the salvation of Christ, cowardly bowed down to the Leftist activists out of fear they would be branded “homophobic.”

Christians are easy targets since they’re much more passive than Jews and Muslims when attacked, and Hollywood loves to stereotype them as a bunch of superstitious bigots who don’t know how to have fun. In the rare case that there is a movie favorable to Christianity that gets widespread distribution, that too is attacked.

Passion of the Christ was deemed “anti-Semitic” because it depicts the story of Jesus’ arrest, sham trial, and crucifixion.164 It was the most popular film about the events to be made and wasn’t a straight to DVD release like most others. With Mel Gibson behind it, the film became a huge success, which caused a tremendous backlash.

The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] denounced the film, saying it “continues its unambiguous portrayal of Jews as being responsible for the death of Jesus. There is no question in this film about who is responsible. At every single opportunity, Mr. Gibson’s film reinforces the notion that the Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob are the ones ultimately responsible for the Crucifixion.”165 That’s because that’s what happened!

Technically, the Romans did it, but at the behest of the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem at the time. The Bible makes it very clear what led to Jesus being crucified. Pontius Pilate is quoted in Matthew 27:24 saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” and “It is your responsibility!” meaning the Jewish Pharisees. They were the ones who conspired to have Jesus arrested and killed for “blasphemy” and being a “false” messiah. Pontius Pilate even offered to release Jesus, but the crowd demanded he release Barabbas instead, another man who was being detained for insurrection against Rome, and for murder.166

A critic for the New York Daily News called The Passion of the Christ, “the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of the Second World War.”167 Many others angrily denounced the film when it came out in 2004. Some in the media even blamed it for a supposed “upsurge” in anti-Semitic hate crimes.168

When the History Channel miniseries The Bible was released in 2013, the same cries of “anti-Semitism” rang out.169 The New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss went so far as to say that it’s a “conspiracy theory” that Jews killed Jesus.170

Even though most Christmas movies aren’t overtly Christian and instead focus of the importance of families reuniting and spending time together, that doesn’t mean they’re not going to come under attack. As the war on western culture continues, the Marxists have set their sights on Christmas too.

Online liberal cesspool Salon.com ran a headline reading “Hallmark movies are fascist propaganda,” and complained they promote “heteronormative whiteness” because there aren’t enough LGBT characters or people of color in them.171

“Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world,” Salon said, “which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive White nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.”172

The article went on to say that because the Hallmark Channel airs so many Christmas movies, it is promoting, “a set of patriarchal and authoritarian values that are more about White evangelicals defining themselves as an ethnic group, and not about a genuine feeling of spirituality…The very fact that they’re presented as harmless fluff makes it all the more insidious, the way they work to enforce very narrow, White, heteronormative, sexist, provincial ideas of what constitutes ‘normal.’”173

The article wasn’t satire. Salon.com has a deep-seated hatred of Christianity, conservatives and families, and is another cog in the Cultural Marxist machine working to destroy the United States.

Comedian Whitney Cummings was reported to the Human Resources department of a major Hollywood studio after she wished the crew of a TV show she was working on “Merry Christmas” when they wrapped up for the year. She made the revelation while speaking with Conan O’Brian the following December. “Last year, I was working on a TV show, [and] got in trouble with Human Resources for saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to an intern,” she began.174

Conan asked her if she was being serious and she said it was a true story, elaborating, “I was leaving, like on the 18th or whatever…and I was like, ‘Bye guys, Merry Christmas.’” When she returned from vacation after New Year’s she was called to HR and scolded. She joked, “I don’t even care how your Christmas was. It was just a formality. It’s what you say when you leave.”175

Conan O’Brien then replied, “In these times we’re in, that could trigger someone or offend them if it’s not their holiday.”176 She didn’t say which network it was, but she’s been involved with some major shows like NBC’s Whitney (where she played the main character), as well as the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls, which she created and was a writer for.

While today it may seem impossible that Christmas movies may become a thing of the past, nobody could have ever guessed that reruns of the classic Dukes of Hazzard would get banned after the Confederate flag was deemed a “hate symbol” in 2015, or that Aunt Jemima pancake syrup, Eskimo Pie ice cream bars, and Uncle Ben’s Rice would be deemed “racially insensitive” and pulled from production a few years later.177

Once someone reminds liberals that the word Christmas is derived from Christ’s Mass and that it is actually a commemoration of the birth of Jesus, they may finally go over the edge and deem Christmas just as offensive as Columbus Day or the Fourth of July. And with the Muslim and Sikh populations increasing in the United States, the American standard of Christmas music playing in shopping malls and retail stores all month long every December may one day come to an end because it’s not “inclusive” and leaves non-Christians feeling “ostracized.”

#hollywoodpropaganda

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