Christians' support will eventually come to the Counterjihad as it came to the issues of abolishing slavery, of civil rights and of ending the Soviet empire. Our Counterjihad is a matter of 'charity and justice'.
It is worth remembering that St John the Baptist rebuked King Herod for his illicit affair with the wife of his brother. 'Speaking truth to power' was one of the core principles of the Byzantine Christian empire. Links on the left panel of this blog point to special posts on great saints of the Church, who fearlessly denounced Islam as a false religion and heresy, and openly condemn the violent, twisted character of Muhammad which set Islam in motion.
We don't need to pick fights or deliberately stir up hostilities, but we Christians today must stand for truth, justice, and specifically for the exalted Christian anthropology around which all people, Christian or not, should be able to rally to repudiate and defeat the evil of Islam.
But we will never convince or inspire anyone if we ourselves are not striving to absorb and live in our own lives the divine vision of man's destiny in Christ. The exalted call which God has given to mankind is the most radical paradigm shift of human history. It is contained in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Glorification of the God-Man Jesus Christ. We are called to abide in Him, to become like Him, to become by grace all that He is by nature.
If Christians can't make the case for the absolute criminalization and censure of Islamic jihad, no one can.
Counterjihad, Solzhenitsyn and Righteous Indignation
by Kenneth Roberts, Political Islam — Feb 27, 2014
We in the Counterjihad need to show more righteous indignation, as did Martin Luther King, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their various righteous struggles. We should study their examples to see what our approach should be to defeat political Islam.
The Counterjihad is, in fact, young, only about 13 years old. We have so much to learn about getting our point across effectively and to make it reality.
Why would our struggle be safe or easy? After all, it wasn't easy for the anti-slavery abolitionist movement or for the American civil rights movement or for the democracy and freedom movement behind the iron curtain of the evil Soviet empire. Nor did it seem obvious or easy to the Abolitionists or to King's civil rights marchers or to the Samizdat movement in the USSR as to what they should do next! One thing that is common to those three struggles is the unrelenting moral indignation that led them to victory. Righteous, moral indignation was their strongest method.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn used this method in the dying days of the Soviet Union to oppose Godless totalitarianism. For one, he never smiled for the camera for several years, because he knew smiling photos would receive wide circulation and be used against him by the Soviet authorities to suggest 'things aren't so bad'. Secondly, he stayed close to the problem and refused to diminish contacts with other intellectuals or leave the Soviet Union when asked to leave. Finally, having him in the Soviet Union was causing too many public relations problems. Soviet authorities forcibly expelled him from the USSR in 1974.
There are a number of BIG factors from 1968-1990 that led to Solzhenitsyn's vindication and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union:
- 1960s 'Samizdat' (self-publishing) movement: Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as, "I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and get imprisoned for it."
- 1960s Solzhenitsyn, author of best-selling books, 'Ivan Denisovich' and 'Gulag Archipelago' (Russian 1968) (English 1973)
- 1968 January Prague Spring
- 1970 Solzhenitsyn wins Nobel Prize for 'Ivan Denisovich'
- 1973 energy crisis and birth of small-is-beautiful, opposing Soviet gigantism
- 1974 Solzhenitsyn expelled from USSR
- 1975 Margaret Thatcher, opponent of communism, head of Conservatives from 1975 to 1990
- 1977 Václav Havel, signatory of Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism (launching the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism), dissident and famous playwright, imprisoned from May 1979 to February 1983
- 1978, Pope John Paul II, an opponent of Soviet communism, elected October 1978. In June 1979, Pope John Paul II travelled to Poland where ecstatic crowds constantly surrounded him. This first trip to Poland uplifted the nation's spirit and sparked the formation of the Solidarity movement in 1980
- 1979 Margaret Thatcher elected, PM from 1979 to 1990
- 1980-Solidarno, anti-Soviet patriotic Polish trade union federation, formed August 1980. Pope John Paul II supports Solidarno and identifies the concept of solidarity with the poor and marginalized as a constitutive element of the Gospel and human participation in the common good
- 1980 Lech Walesa, co-founder of the Solidarity trade-union, prominent in the establishment of the 1989 Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989 and to a Solidarity-led government
- 1981 Ronald Reagan, American president 1981-1989, spokesman of freedom, enunciated righteous indignation against totalitarianism
- 1985 Mikhail Gorachev General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, began Glasnost (openness) in 1988-89. During an interview in 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev is quoted as saying "I detest lies"...showed internal doubt about totalitarian communism at the top
- 1991 office of General Secretary CPSU abolished
The above shows that Solzhenitsyn built on the work of Samizdat. That is where the Counterjihad Movement is now. I believe an inspiring writer will soon come on the scene to galvanize public opinion against political Islam.
My conclusion regarding the present state of the Counterjihad is that many factors are required for it to succeed, including 1) a big book (similar to 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' or 'Gulag Archipelago') and 2) some big politicians such as Lincoln, Thatcher, John Paul II and Ronald Reagan and 3) sufficient time for the fire to incinerate political Islam.
As I pointed out, we are only 13 years old. It took 23 years from Prague Spring until the abolition of the Soviet Union, but from the death of Stalin and the beginning of the Soviet dissident movement in the 1950s and early 60s...that would be 35 years.
We are now 13 years after 9/11. We are probably only one-third of the way in the Counterjihad. We are in the Samizdat (self-publishing) phase right now. We are abandoned by powerful interests and contradicted by them. But we believe in the cause of freedom and we are not wrong. We do not yet have any great politicians (save Geert Wilders) or great novelists to inspire popular imagination, but as sure as night follows day, that will come.
Christians' support will eventually come to the Counterjihad as it came to the issues of abolishing slavery, of civil rights and of ending the Soviet empire. Our Counterjihad is a matter of 'charity and justice'. Politicians will eventually see too that Islam is unable to detach itself from strangling the state and human rights, so they will have to oppose it. It's a matter of time. Time is on the side of Counterjihad because of the Internet and a plumetting Muslim birthrate. However, we should not stop our efforts, but intensify them.
A new generation is growing up imbued with the wisdom of us the Counterjihad pioneers. Very soon, they will reach maturity and they will make their presence felt on the international stage. Writers will write novels, politicians will make speeches, political parties will call for reform of immigration policies, laws, international agreements and technologies that helps Islamic supremacism and misogyny. There will be a growing awareness of the evils of jihad and Islamic hatred of the Kafir and women. It is happening now.
Our moral and righteous indignation should be stirred up intensely in this historic struggle that we in the Counterjihad Movement are bringing to fruition. Islam has no moral arguments to defend itself, so it will fall. We have valid moral arguments against Islam, so we shall overcome.