Oxymorons Aplenty

Modern Islam Is An Impossibility

The chattering classes in the West fondly cling to the idea that Islam can be Westernised.  It can be transformed into the kind of nominalism tolerable to the West.  What is being proposed is readily understandable.

The idea is that the teachings and doctrines of Islam would be filtered through Western humanitarian glasses.  All doctrines which clashed with Western values--particularly socio-political values--would be modified if not discarded.  All Islamic teaching would be filtered so as to exclude or modify every teaching that did not conform to Western values and beliefs.  What would be left would be a nominal Muslim--that is, a Moslim in name only.  But there is a trade-off.  The West in return would honour and genuflect before the butchered remnant of the religion.  The nominal Muslim would be treated with respect.  He would be invited to participate in the highest councils of the land.  He may even get the odd invitation to the White House.

We in New Zealand have seen how this process works.  In fact our nation is built upon it.  We proudly proclaim ourselves to be generally multi-cultural, but specifically bi-cultural.  We have welcomed Maori into the highest councils and counsels of the land.  But every Maori knows that most of the traditional beliefs of Maoritanga have long been left behind.

Rodney Hide Gets It

Re-floated Paganism

Rodney Hide

NZ Herald

December 14, 2014

The four pou erected on the new Waikato River bridge on the Ngaruawahia section of the Expressway, it was explained, tell the stories of Tainui's involvement with the river. Photo / Getty Images

I am quite taken by the striking Maori totems on the new Kopu and Waikato Expressway bridges. I figured the taxpayer was milked for them. There would be outrage if they were Christian crosses but somehow they are okay because they're Maori.

I decided to find out more. A Google search turned up nothing. I emailed the New Zealand Transport Agency. I thought it would have a brochure to explain the history and spiritualism behind what are I now know to be called pou. Nope. Nothing.

A Much Needed Corrective

Credible Messiness

We have just completed reading Keith Newman's Bible and Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori--a New Perspective (New York: Penguin Books, 2010).  The title suggests a post-modernist tome.  If that is the reader's expectation, however, he will end up disappointed.  In fact, Newman's work is only a new perspective to our post-modernist ears which have been filled with repeated extrusions of revisionist wax to where we fear our society can no longer hear the true story of our past.

In that sense, then, Newman's Bible and Treaty is a must read for every Christian in New Zealand.  It is not the definitive word (few things ever are), but at the least it is a healthy corrective to the revising of our history by pagans (both Maori and Pakeha) who have very big axes to grind.

The preface provides an effective apologia for yet another book on early New Zealand history.  Firstly, Newman writes to correct the recent demonising of missionaries:

Test-Tube Superstition

Karakia, Anyone?

Intellectual deceit and rampant hypocrisy crowd the modern Western stage.  Unbelief is not just a nasty termagant, it is also replete with intellectual dishonesty.  Take, for example, the militant insistence that New Zealand be a secular nation.  Religion, we are told, is replete with myths, lies, and deceits.  The only truth is secular truth--which apparently means truth which can be observed and experimentally proven in a test-tube.

But at the same time, and out of the same mouths (albeit from the other side) there is an enthusiastic celebration of spirituality.  In our country this has become institutionalised in the employing of Maori to incant and pray at all public events and gatherings.  In fact, it is pretty well acknowledged now that no event would be a happening at all, were it not accompanied by Maori prayers, or incantations (karakia), or traditional animist chants to invoke the Maori pantheon of gods.  No formal school opening, no commissioning of a public project, no opening of a New Zealand embassy anywhere around the world would be the real deal without an effusive display and contribution from Maori spiritualism.

Apparently Unbelieving secularism has fallen prey to the rationalist-irrationalist dichotomy.  In the end, the rationalist becomes the superstitious irrationalist. 

This is not just a New Zealand failing.