More of the same.....

from Melanie Phillips in "Londonistan".   It breaks my heart to see what has happened to England's green and pleasant land.  Some towns in the north are all Muslim.  She speaks about the rise of militant Islam in Britain and how it has been allowed to be taught in the Mosques there.  British born youths whose loyalty is not to the country they were born in, but to Muslim countries.  She tells how the Underground bombers went white water rafting in Wales the weekend before the attack, and how they were all born in Britain.  She also speaks of institutional reluctance to name and confront the problem.  It does not speak well for the future of Britain, I hope it's not too late.

A book to entertain and frustrate.......

"America Alone" by Mark Steyn.  It had me convulsed and it had me shaking my head in disbelief.  Bracing, brisk a call to common sense in our confused world.  To be read to be believed.

For a better understanding......

of the war in Afghanistan I took out a copy of "Descent into chaos"  by Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, who seems to be on friendly terms with many of the crucial players.  He paints a tangled picture of intrigue, corruption, mistakes in judgement and general incompetence of those involved in the  American invasion of Afghanistan, and its consequences.  It's hard to believe that peace will ever come to this region, including Pakistan and central Asia.  It's a fascinating read and I came away with a better knowledge of the people and places involved, and even admiration for the ordinary people who have endured so much, and for those who continue the struggle, against many odds, to bring some kind of stability here.

Long Hiatus......

....Not sure why but I've had trouble accessing my blog in recent weeks.  So I have quite a number of books to review.
The first is a book by the well known British Atheist Antony Flew.  At least the blurb says that he is a well known atheist, but I had never heard of him.  I guess I haven't been moving in the right/wrong circle.  The book:  "There is A God".  Apparently Antony Flew was the first to come up with a systematic theory of atheism.   He tells in this book how he came to change his mind, from atheism to a belief in God, a Creator.  He says:  "I have followed the argument where it has led me.  And it has led me to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being."  He also says about Christianity that:  "If you are wanting omnipotence to set up a religion, it seems to me that this is the one to beat!"
One thing that puzzled him was consciousness:  how could matter give birth to consciousness, another was rationality and conceptual thought:  "How is it possible to evaluate data at all?"
A good read, which I intend to go back to, if ever I have the time.

Change of pace......

...Wanting to read more Canadian books I saw this one recommended on Salt and Light TV.   "Mercy among the Children" by David Adams Richards.  It's the story of a New Brunswick small town in the seventies and eighties, and of a poor family that becomes the community scapegoat for everything that goes wrong there.  The grandfather, Roy,  is found guilty of setting fire to the local mill (he was found drunk at the scene of the crime), and the story is told years later by the grandson, Lyle,  to the ex policeman whose car the grandfather happened to stumble into, to sleep, on the night of the crime.  The father, Roy,  basically a very good man, well read but not schooled, had made a promise to God that he would never try to defend himself again when he almost accidentally killed a schoolmate.  Years later when he and his wife are unjustly accused of crimes he keeps his promise and the family is plunged into a nightmare of poverty, accusations and threats from almost the whole town, including the ones responsible.  There are few redeeming features in the book, but it is very well written and a real page turner. The author probes the motives and actions of all the characters and  you are kept in suspense wondering what can happen next and how will it all turn out, gripping is the word I would use to describe it.  Richards has written other books and eventually I will read more of him but "Mercy...." will last me for a while.
Two favourite quotes:
"Those who lift a hand against you do so against themselves."  Roy
"For the river was hurrying on, like the world, and had no time to stop to reflect on the greater ideas of where it was going." David Adams Richards

In the same theme......

as the previous two books (Islam, the Middle East), I took out "Fifteen Days" by Canadian journalist Christie Blatchford. She spent several visits with the Canadian troops in Afghanistan in 2006 and writes their stories and the stories of their families.  The book gives a vivid picture of life in war torn Afghanistan.  The troops are always in danger from IED's, RPG's and suicide bombers and work in temperatures of 50 degrees and over, in isolation and with minimum or no creature comforts.  They work long hours and days over periods of several weeks, but they are loyal to each other do their job well.  She writes of the soldiers killed and injured and their families so that they become people and not just names on the evening news.  Most of the book is about the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry 1st Battalion from Manitoba, soldiers that all Canadians can be proud of.  Hopefully their work there will leave the Afghan people better off in the end.

Two more books....

.......on the middle East.  First "The Lost History of Christianity" by Philip Jenkins.  He talks about the Church that has been mostly forgotten.  A Church that was larger than the Church of Europe in the early centuries....in Iraq, Syria, even Yemen and Bahrain, to Persia, India across Asia to China.  These Christians were mainly Nestorians and to a lesser extent Monophysites.  Declared heretics by one of the early Church councils.  But for centuries they survived in the East until..... they were largely conquered by Islam.  He quotes one of the early Saints, St John Damascene, who considered that early Islam was a Christian heresy.  Something that I read Hilaire Belloc as saying.  The Mosque as we know it today is a copy of the early Syriac Churches.  Even the minaret is a copy of their square Church towers.  (He who controls the landscape controls the culture).  He quotes one scholar who, writing under a pseudonym, claims that the Koran is a copy of one of the early Syriac Christian liturgical books.  The name that they used for their liturgical books is similar to the word Koran.  Perhaps that is only in the realm of speculation and we may never know, but he also states that alternative copies of the Koran were burned by one of the early Caliphs, and some have resurfaced today that are being studied in secret by scholars.  In secret because such work is dangerous for obvious reasons.  The Muslims believe that the Koran is co eternal with God and that there is a Koran in Heaven, that it was not created but has always existed.  It's a very interesting book, "The Lost History.." that is, I haven't read the Koran.
The second book was "A woman among the Warlords" by Malalai Joya.  She was born in Afghanistan in the late 1970's and spent 16 years in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.  Her family left the refugee camp in Iran and went to one in Pakistan where she could go to school.  At age 20 she taught young children in the camp and later went back to Afghanistan to teach there.  She was elected to Parliament but because of her criticism of the Government, many of whom were Warlords guilty of crimes against the Afghan people,  she was thrown out.  One of the first acts passed by the Parliament, formed with the help of the U.S. Government after the Taliban were forced out after 9/11, was to grant themselves amnesty from prosecution!  Many countries are involved in Afghanistan,  Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nato and the Americans, but security, human rights and women's rights do not exist, in many parts of the country.  She has no good words for NGO's either, whose aid comes with strings attached.  One gets the feeling and she says quite plainly that the Afghanis would be better if all foreigners left and allowed the Afghanis to  sort the country out for themselves; as it is foreign countries are propping up the warlords, and making them more rich and powerful and above the law.  A sobering book.