“Studying Islam has made me an atheist.”
I suspect that few readers of this blog also read the Spectator magazine (a Tory rag).
So I make no apology for simply drawing to your attention this extraordinary account by Douglas Murray, of how his study of Islam drew him inexorably to the conclusion that all religion is nonsense. But that doesn’t mean that life is any less wondrous:
“My first non-believing Christmas was different, certainly. Different – but, contrary to my fears, no shallower. Quite the opposite. Things this year seemed both more open and more possible. More fragile and more precious. It also struck me, in ways which are hard to explain – and the religious language cannot be avoided – that it was, if anything, even more miraculous.”
Shiraz Socialist 
resistor said,
January 5, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Denham crawls from the gutter into the sewer of politics.
This is the scumbag that is Jim Denham’s new best friend.
http://www.ukwatch.net/article/the_039enfant_terrible039_of_british_neoconservatism
Murray developed this idea further in a February 2006 speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam, which embraced Baat Ye’or’s concept of Dhimmitude:
‘It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop. In the case of a further genocide such as that in the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a strictly temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively… Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition.’
Jim Denham said,
January 5, 2009 at 7:35 pm
You silly person, “resistor”. The article makes no reference to Murray’s political views and I offer no endorsement of them. It’s purely about religion (and not even mainly about Islam – more about Murray’s own Christianity). If you can’t refer to an interesting article if you don’t agree with the entirety of the author’s political views, you’re condemning yourself to a rather narrow and tedious existance.
KB Player said,
January 5, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Not to mention the rest of us for those nanoseconds when we read Persister’s contribition to the debate.
KB Player said,
January 5, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Anyway, Jim, it was an interesting article. A church with ritual but without too much doctrine and a little moral teaching sounds livable with. The Christmas festival we’ve just had seemed necessary, as something hopeful in the darkest months of the year, bringing in a bit of colour and music as well. It would be hard to make something up like that from scratch.
maxdunbar said,
January 5, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Christmas is fantastic, I don’t know a single atheist who doesn’t celebrate it. It was adapted from early paganism anyway.
Resistor’s comment was so predictable that it might as well have been appended to the original post.
resistor said,
January 5, 2009 at 10:30 pm
There’s no-one too right-wing for Dunbar and Denham it seems.
By the way, how come Denham finds it so hard to comment on the slaughter of Palestinian men women and children by his beloved Israeli army? Has his beloved leader, Sean Matgamna, told him to keep his mouth shut?
a very public sociologist said,
January 5, 2009 at 11:29 pm
V interesting article. And Resistor, stop being a pillock. Attempted smear by association is neither big nor clever.
resistor said,
January 6, 2009 at 12:54 am
Jim Denham has chosen to associate himself with someone who demanded the end of all immigration into Europe by Muslims and for ‘Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board’. Similarly Dunbar promoted a book by the revolting Chas Newkey-Burden (after writing him a fan letter). Newkey-Burden is currently cheering on the IDF war criminals and gloating over the deaths of Palestinian men, women and children.
Socialists used to be inspired by Marx and Engels – you choose Burchill, Newkey-Burden and Douglas Murray. That’s quite a descent down the political waste pipe.
Red Maria said,
January 6, 2009 at 1:29 am
A church with ritual but without too much doctrine and a little moral teaching sounds livable with
Maybe so but such a confection wouldn’t be a Christian Church but a Gnostic frippery.
Christmas is fantastic, I don’t know a single atheist who doesn’t celebrate it.
I don’t think a single Atheist is celebrating anything of any significance at Christmas other than their lamentable pick ‘n’ mix attitude to Godlessness. In such tiny lapses they lose all intellectual credibility. Those who make a habit of denouncing religion – usually grounded in profound ignorance – should eschew all religous customs. They should take up their agnostic and believer neighbours’ slack and make a point of working on Christmas Day.
It was adapted from early paganism anyway.
Max will, in time, learn the advantages of precision. The early Church may have deliberately timed the festival to coincide with Pagan winter rituals but the Feast of the Nativity, which celebrates the birth of the Messiah, God made man, was NOT adapted from early paganism.
In contrast to Douglas Murray, it is my own studying of the horrors of Atheistic and anti-clerical regimes with their gulags and baths without plugs which persuades me of the benevolence of religion in general and Christianity in particular. There neither was nor is a flood of secularist immigration to Brezhnev’s Russia or Hu Jintao’s China.
Murray can at least appreciate the glories of Western Christianity because he was brought up in it.
I still can’t pass a country church or cathedral without going in. The texts are still essential to me. They are just (and ‘just’ hardly does the job here) no more divine than Shakespeare.
But it is this magnificent patrimony which philistine secularist vandals want to deprive children of. No wonder the more immature secularist bloggers flatter themselves that their silly scrawlings amount to criticism of religion. The not so new Atheism doesn’t do quality control or humility before the majesty of history.
navedz said,
January 6, 2009 at 10:38 am
“Will they not, then, try to understand this Qur’an? Had it come from anyone other than God, they would have found in it many an inner contradiction.” (al-Nisa 4:82)
Islam is the only religion that exists in the eyes of the Creator of the Universe, God… and till the end it will remain the only religion. Insha’Allah… everyone will realize this truth sooner than later.
maxdunbar said,
January 6, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Resistor
Jim’s post is not about Douglas Murray’s views on immigration, or my review of Julie Burchill’s book.
If you have a problem with Chas’s book I suggest you email him rather than whining on about it on this site.
And where’s my ‘fan letter’ then?
Django said,
January 6, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Yes navedz, that’s right. That’s definitely right.
resistor said,
January 6, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Dunbar writes, ‘Jim’s post is not about Douglas Murray’s views on immigration,’ as if they were general views on immigration rather than specifically aimed at Muslims – also no mention of ‘Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.’ Since Murray is an ardent Zionist, we can see from the carnage in Gaza what that would mean.
I don’t intend to write to Murray, Burchill or Newkey-Burden, because none of them pose as ‘socialists’ to camouflage their racism. I see Dunbar regards opposition to racism and fascism as ‘whining’ – we know what that indicates.
maxdunbar said,
January 6, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Oh for fuck’s sake.
KB Player said,
January 7, 2009 at 10:52 am
Christmas Day is a national festival day that has gathered all sorts of accretions over the years. It was celebrated in Victorian times with a mixture of sacred observance and also feasting and hospitality, and also moaning about its materialism. If some custom impels me to knock up a vege roast and stick sparklers on a plum pudding to entertain my familyless Dawkins-atheist and Buddhist-married-to-a-Christian friend, good for me. It also impelled the Muslim in the garage across the road to send me a Christmas card signed Mohammad. That no doubt showed total doctrinal impurity on his part but also some goodwill, which I appreciate. So, no, don’t deprive us of our winter feast on some grounds of doctrinal purity.
Doctrinal purity has been a curse anyway. We see it in fundamentalist evangelicalism, we see it in jihadism, there has been murderous Marxist doctrinal purity, and Nazi doctrinal purity. Doctrinal purity turned Scotland into a miserable theocracy in Covenanting times. They have started to celebrate Christmas within living memory and dropped a lot of their Sabbath observance which used to keep kids’ playgrounds locked up on a Sunday. That has cheered the place up no end.
So down with doctrinal purity! Up with the pick and mix which has Christians drop the cruellest parts of their religion (hell etc) and emphasise the kindlier and more hopeful parts.