An appalling story recording the rapid advance of dhimmitude in Spain: the Zapatero government is going to cut state funding for the Catholic Church -- while increasing it for mosques. From the Telegraph, with thanks to LGF:
The Spanish government sparked a furious row yesterday after it emerged that it had drawn up a timetable to halve state funding of the Roman Catholic Church and to ban crucifixes from public buildings. The Socialist government has already pedged to confront the Church ideologically and fiscally and to transform Spain into a fully secular society by scrapping the Church's "privileged position in society".The newspaper El Mundo reported yesterday that the government has now drawn up a timetable to break the bonds, removing any lingering hopes that it might reach an accommodation.
The government plans to put an end to the arrangement whereby Spaniards can offer a percentage of their taxes to the Church. This arrangement contributes £54 million a year to Church funds.
Governments in the past have made up the remainder directly or indirectly through government funds paid to Church organisations. This funding, which was agreed in accords signed 17 years ago, is also now under review.
El Mundo complained in an editorial yesterday that the government's "secularism should not be used as a weapon against half the country". Although only a minority are regular churchgoers Spain continues to be "a sociologically Catholic country", it said. In a reference to the Spanish Civil War the editorial said: "If we should learn anything from recent history that it is a mistake to use secularism as a weapon against believers."...
Further enraging conservatives, the government has drawn up plans to finance the teaching of Islam in state-run schools and to give funds to mosques on the grounds that it will create greater understanding of the country's one million Muslims.
So it becomes more and more obvious that the left in the West are out to destroy Christianity once and for all. Ironic that it has taken the islamic jihad to awaken us to this fact - sad that the leftists see islam as an ally in this battle to dismantle judeo-christian culture. It seems that we are fighting a war on two fronts but I have a feeling that the more the left ties it's future to that of islam the more it is sealing it's own doom.
Throughout the West, left wing factions have utterly failed to understand the difference between the Christian religion and the purely secular aspects of the civilization of Christendom.
I am not a Jew, nor a Christian, nor a Moslem, nor a Buddhist, nor a Hindu, nor any other religious community label that you would want to stamp on my forehead. I am a dyed-in-the-wool secularist with views on religion that are shaped by the great thinkers of Greece, Rome, the Enlightenment and the modern era like Durkheim, Weber, von Hayek, etc. So here's a shocker: I am appalled at the left wing efforts to expunge the the symbols of the roots of Christendom from the cultural, intellectual, scientific, economic and political heritage of our civilization. Why stop at crosses? How about all the pagan Roman symbols like the fasces in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives?
The leaders of this inane crusade to efface the traces of the roots of our civilization from our collective membory are no different than the Taliban fanatics who give new meaning to the concept of profound ignorance.
Today they tear down symbols and burn them. When there are no more symbols to burn, they will burn people.
Hulegu Khan:
You might appreciate the views of this famous secularist:
"But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers."
David Hume (1711-1776) "Of the Standard of Taste: Paragraph 4" (1757) http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/hume%20on%20taste.htm#p4
I went through the Scottish eductation system for 11 years and astonishingly, David Hume was never mentioned. One of the brightest lights in "the enlightenment" was never mentioned and it was only years later I discovered who he was. I have only just recently started to delve into his work.
I don't disagree with the Spanish government stopping funding the catholic church, it is wealthy enough but I do disagree that another "religion" should be provided funding and that all signs of christendom be eradicated. They are crazy.
Rublev's adducing of Hume is significant. Spinoza and Hume are surely two of the most important creators, and sustainers, of the very idea of free and skeptical inquiry. Neither one would have fared well at the hands of the most fanatical Grand Insquisitors. But both lived in, were not harmed but rather nourished by, Christian societies. A recent book by Rodney Stark studies how it was that within Christianity, the rise of modern science was possible, and indeed -- as in the case of Newton -- his physics, and his deep Christian beliefs, were not worlds in collision. The same cannot be said for Islam. "Islamic science" essentially petered out when the Christians and Jews, as significant contributors within Islamic civilization, and when, in Islam, the gates of ijtihad slammed shut for good (and Irshad Manji may tug, and tug, but they are very heavy gates, and besides, they are locked).
The Spanish government thinks that by requiring the study of Islam in state-run schools and by funding mosques with taxpayers' money, it will increase "understanding." No it won't. What it will do is increase the chances for the practice of deliberate deception of non-Muslims, which is religiouslysanctioned in Islam (taqiyya is not just for Shia anymore/kitman). "War is deception" said Muhammad. And the main tool, for Muslims now in the West who wish, unconstrained, to continue the practice of Da'wa.
Zapatero's government is helping to destroy its own civilization. It is the duty, not of believing Christians, but of those who are secular and nonbelievers, to make clear that Islam is a threat not to other religions alone, but to the very possibility of creation, free thought, humor, decency. The intellectual "desertification" -- far more threatening than the spread of deserts or physical "desertification" -- must be: first, recognized as a distinct possibility; second, its sources in Muslim teachings clearly understood; three, its evident effects over 1350 years, for there is not a single place, where Islam conquered, that did not become intellectually poorer for it; four, that this is a real threat, a novel threat, a threat that requires imaginative sympathy to fully comprehend.
Everything the Spanish government is now doing is almost a parody, an extreme form, a speeding-up of the film, of what the Euro-Arab Dialogue, and the French, have been doing for the past 30 years. The miscomprehension, the appeasement, the unwillingness to believe that Islam is something more than merely a religion, the settling of old scores (anticlericals still focussing on Catholicism when the real problem is Islam).
"The Spanish government sparked a furious row yesterday after it emerged that it had drawn up a timetable to halve state funding of the Roman Catholic Church ..."
A secular government has no business funding a reglious entity. Period.
"...and to ban crucifixes from public buildings."
So American.... Continuing,
"The Socialist government has already pledged to confront the Church ideologically and fiscally and to transform Spain into a fully secular society by scrapping the Church's "privileged position in society".
So far, very reasonable and as it should be.
But then this...
"Further enraging conservatives, the government has drawn up plans to finance the teaching of Islam in state-run schools and to give funds to mosques on the grounds that it will create greater understanding of the country's one million Muslims."
This is a duplicitious asseration that suggests intellectual fraud!
Either someone in the government is taking Saudi money or the Spanish government has reached a similiar conclusion that the Vatican itself seems to have reached.
This is VERY bad news indeed. There are war clouds on the horizen and looming over Spain it would seem.
The amazing thing is to see how quickly the white flags have been hoisted by those entrusted to protect their own people; while the people themselves are not so eager to cow!
1: Bomb on spanish train kills hundreds
2: Al-qaeda takes responsibility for it and threatens more unless Spain pulls out of Iraq
3: Conservative Governments voted out, Socialist Government Voted in.
4: Spain Pulls out of iraq
5: Spanish socialist Government, Wants to Kill off ties with Church by removing funding and other christian symbols from public places, and increase funding for Mosques and the "Study" of islam.
5: Al-qaeda announces 95% success of their operations in Spain, the other 5% will come in about 20 years time.
I'll bet that fellow JWer Franze is extremely upset about this!
I can't wait until the jihad comes to the Basque country.
Yes, I'm no fan of govt funding of religion, or any prominence given to religion in society. So it's completely astonishing that Zapatero would turn around and give that to Islam. Somebody must have their tentacles in the Spanish govt. Some smiling, smooth-talking Islamic, taking advantage of your typical self-loathing socialist wuss. I read an article about Zapatero in a recent TIME mag. He's an embarrassment. It was painful reading some of his comments. "I'm a feminist", he said. Oh gawd! He "leads" by following people. Yeah, which people are you stupidly following, and where are they leading you to, dickhead?!
Poor Spain.
Yes I am upset, this Zapatero is a bastard, is a new Mr Bean, we have this cross here, but many people is wakening up with this things and being what is this traitor government that prefer a religion islam because his olds beliefs socialism and communism are dead, they´re anti- christians but they will get that many catholics in Spain coming back to the churches like the persecution in Poland.
Several days ago the PSOE wanted to legalize in this legislature the votes in cities for immigrants, they want that the muslims can vote them for winning elections, they´re bastard.
Well I have to say, I am Catholic, I am spanish and proud of it, I didn´t vote Zapatero and PSOE and I love USA and Western. Greetings
This is precisely why I absolutely despise socialism and socialist thinking. It seeks to undermine Western culture and thinking, hoping that in the process it can subvert the morals and morays upon which Western culture is based on.
Then, in their fuzzy logic way of thinking, they think they will be able to re-educate people into a "better" way of life. What they refuse to see, however, is that they are digging at the foundation of their own house and calling over their more than eager Muslim neighbors to help. Of course, once the house has collapsed, the Muslims will want to take control and the socialists will wake up to find that they have nothing left with which to fight those neighbors who wish to supplant them. Such idiots!
You can only fight a person with a strong ideology by countering them with a strong ideology. Socialism is bankrupt and has nothing to offer. They reduce themselves to bleating sheep, just waiting for the wolf to strike.
Grrrrrrrr