Tim Sullivan: Gwynn's apporval rating shows singles are big hit

San Diego Union-Tribune
January 10, 2007

Tony Gwynn acknowledges fans yesterday at a news conference at Petco Park. Said Gwynn: "I'm proud as heck. All the years I played, I had this day in mind." The element of suspense was conspicuously absent in Gwynn's candidacy for the baseball shrine in Cooperstown. His was a rubber stamp that read, “Well, Duh.” His 97.6 percent approval rating was the seventh-highest all-time and, as such, better than that of Babe Ruth or Willie Mays or Gwynn's pro bono hitting coach, Theodore Samuel Williams.

The question, at least in Gwynn's mind, was whether singles hitters like himself were accorded a lesser form of immortality; whether the sluggers

sneered at the table-setters in some sort of informal Hall of Fame hitters hierarchy.
Obviously, Mr. Padre was overthinking the whole thing. The Padres would not have commissioned a statue of Gwynn (to be unveiled this summer) if he were some second-rate star.
This is a guy, remember, with more batting titles than any man breathing. Yet the idle ballplayer's brain is susceptible to all kinds of claptrap during the five years between retirement and a first appearance on the Baseball Writers' Association of America's ballot.

Gwynn once asked Rod Carew if polling 90 percent of the vote had affected his enjoyment of the induction experience. Carew assured him that simply getting elected was elation enough.

“I saw (the late) Kirby Puckett at this batting champions show a couple of years ago,” Gwynn recalled. “He said, 'Tony, I can't wait until you get in because we have a seat at the singles hitters table with Rod Carew and Paul Molitor and Wade Boggs.' It kind of reassured me. I (didn't) really know where I fit.”

If singles hitters tend to congregate at Cooperstown functions, they are widely dispersed within the Hall of Fame gallery itself. There, the plaques are arranged chronologically, according to the year of a player's induction, and every sawed-off slap hitter since Wee Willie Keeler is accorded the same amount of wall space as Hank Aaron.

Once a ballplayer has been initiated into this exclusive fraternity, there is no formal demarcation between the giants elected on the BBWAA's first ballot and the Veterans Committee's less-qualified cronies. If there is a secret handshake among Hall of Fame singles hitters, Gwynn had yet to learn it as of yesterday afternoon.

He appeared on a platform beyond the outfield walls of Petco Park, “sweating like a slave” (ouch) before a crowd of associates, admirers and his own San Diego State baseball team.
Dressed in a business suit and a ballcap, Gwynn expressed relief that his landslide had not eclipsed Tom Seaver's record of 98.8 percent, and pride that his career had received this ultimate “validation” – and not just for himself, but for contemporary contact hitters such as Juan Pierre and Ichiro Suzuki.

“It's an unbelievable feeling to know that people think that what you did was worthy,” Gwynn said. “... The type of player that I was doesn't get a whole lot of credit in today's game. For a hitter like me, I had to do a lot of what I did (to earn induction).”

With 3,141 career hits and eight National League batting titles, Gwynn's credentials were so strong that many voters were able to check his name without bothering to study the statistics. Yet beyond the sum totals on Gwynn's stat sheet, his career (like that of fellow inductee Cal Ripken Jr.) is a credit to constancy.

In 10 separate seasons, Gwynn was the hardest hitter to strike out in the National League. Though Padres owner John Moores was incorrect when he told the crowd Gwynn had fewer strikeouts than any man with 3,000 hits (even discounting the dead-ball era, there's the matter of Paul Waner), Moores' central point was salient: There is a lot to be said for simply being able to put the ball in play.

Were each of Gwynn's 2,378 singles worth only the 90 feet between home plate and first base, their cumulative length would stretch more than 40 miles. Maybe Gwynn wasn't the most formidable figure to occupy the batter's box. Maybe his relatively modest run production accounts for some of the 13 votes he failed to get.

But if you needed a two-out single to win a ballgame, what batter would you prefer to No. 19?
When Gwynn won his second batting title in 1987, he finished second in the National League with 26 intentional walks. Considering that he swatted only seven home runs that season, this statistic bespeaks respect bordering on reverence.

“I was a good player,” Gwynn said yesterday, “but I knew my place. I was not a game-changer. I was not a dominant player.”

He was, however, the Sultan of Singles. He is, henceforth, every inch an immortal.

Tim Sullivan: (619) 293-1033; tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com

Thomas Boswell: Again Batting Cleanup

Thomas Boswell
The Washington Post
Wednesday, January 10, 2007; Page E01

Perhaps Cal Ripken epitomizes essential human values, like fidelity to a code of duty and honor. Or maybe he's just a decent guy who showed up for work every day, signed a lot of autographs and didn't cheat -- a very low hurdle for sainthood. Either way, Ripken always has been exactly what baseball needed, especially in its darkest times.

From his first day in the big leagues in 1981 until he was voted into the Hall of Fame yesterday with the third-highest percentage ever, Ripken always has been baseball's perfect answer -- even before the sport knew the ugly question. Yes, he's at it again. In an age when jocks show up at midnight in a white Hummer limo, Ripken will ride into Cooperstown in July on a white horse at high noon.

As Barry Bonds stalks Hank Aaron all summer, like Rambo on Bambi's trail, Ripken is positioned to steal the stage: the accidental antidote, the hero by happenstance. In '95, after the sewage spill of a canceled World Series, baseball needed a stench-free symbol of dependability, a hometown boy who understood responsibility and an adult who grasped that players simply were custodians of a game owned by its fans.

The sport got all those things, as the Orioles shortstop broke Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played. Now history is seeking him out again. The steroid-soaked stage is set. Baseball's need for a man with a simple sense of honor is profoundly obvious. Cue Cal. Now we realize that all those years when it never crossed Cal's mind to skip even a single game, something else never crossed his mind either -- cheating. Now, his 431 home runs look larger as the totals of others seem smaller. And we know why Cal never hit a ball 475 feet in his life. "I don't think my numbers are deflated because some other numbers may be inflated," Ripken told me last week.

Just as Mark McGwire brought more unwelcome headlines to the sport yesterday -- by receiving a dismal 23.5 percent of the Hall vote -- Ripken's election immediately helped the cleanup process. There to aid him was Tony Gwynn, the eight-time batting champ who led the league in smiles for 20 straight years.

How does baseball catch these undeserved breaks? For much of the last 20 years, baseball's bosses, owners and union have tacitly condoned and virtually encouraged an epidemic of illegal and dangerous performance-enhancing drugs. And the two superstars of the last quarter century who are least likely to have cheated -- who, if anything, were nagged for not having quite enough "power" -- arrive right on schedule. On an occasion when he was universally contrasted with Too Big Mac and Balco Barry, Ripken tried to make one point perfectly clear -- in his mind, at least, virtue had nothing to do with it. "To me there was no fork in the road.
There was no choice. Those things scare me to death," Ripken said last week when asked about playing clean.

Lest he get too much credit for mere honesty, he adds: "I never had the options. The Orioles were thought of as a bunch of goody-two-shoes. After those guys in Kansas City had [cocaine] problems, our team voluntarily agreed to have drug testing. Eddie [Murray] said, 'Just go along with it.'

"When I came into the big leagues [in 1982, his first full season], the locker room had ashtrays, spittoons and candy bars," adds Ripken, chuckling at a lifestyle little changed since the days of the Babe. "Then the blenders for the protein mixes replaced them. Maybe I had the old-school naive view. People think I had this nutritional regimen. Yeah, my regimen was the four food groups."

Ripken may know plenty about the use of performance enhancers in baseball. What veteran star player wouldn't? "The truth has started to come out. But only parts have come out to this point. The overall thing just saddens me. But it's reality. It is what it is," Ripken said. "I don't resent being asked about it. It's all part of the process of cleaning up. The truth will be known.
Unfortunately, all the stories probably haven't come out yet. I'm for the stories being told."

But don't expect to hear them from him. "I don't think it's my place to judge," he said.

However, the day of his election to Cooperstown was the proper time for Ripken to put the primary moments of his career in perspective. Making the Hall ranked only third.

"Catching the liner for the last out of the '83 World Series was my best moment as a player because you have the joy of completion. But taking that spontaneous lap in '95 was my best human moment," Ripken said.

Playing in his 2,131st consecutive game on Sept. 6 that season, Ripken circled the Camden Yards warning track, shaking the hands of countless fans, many of whom already had his autograph under glass back home. Or did they all? If they did, they probably received that souvenir near midnight in a darkened ballpark with just enough light left to allow the line snaking beside the Oriole dugout to find its way to Cal's indefatigable pen.

"I didn't want to delay the game," Ripken said. "But Bobby [Bonilla] and Raffy [Palmeiro] pushed me out of the dugout. They said, 'If you don't take a lap, we'll never get this game started again.' At the end of the lap I could care less if they started the game or not."

"We need each other in this life," said Ripken, referring to the bond between players and fans, which baseball constantly seems to stretch to the breaking point. "Taking the lap helped to pull the experience together. I was the beneficiary."

Ripken always feels like he's the beneficiary. And he usually is. To a point, his good luck -- his knack of being in the right place at the right time to fall into a bed of roses -- even embarrasses him. But other people, and baseball, always seem to be getting even more in these sappy Ripken love-fests. Is the simple life the win-win life?

These days, Ripken builds baseball at the grass-roots level by teaching the game to kids and owning minor league teams. It's work he loves and it suits him. "When you're a player, the good seasons go by fast. The bad ones seem to take forever," Ripken said. "The last five years have seemed like the fastest of my life."

To summarize what he does these days and how people should imagine his various projects, Ripken puts his fingers a fraction of an inch apart. "This many can be major leaguers," he said. Then he spreads his arms as wide as he can and grins. "This many can love the game."

Thomas Boswell: Taking a Pass on McGwire

Thomas Boswell
The Washington Post
Saturday, January 6, 2007; Page E01

For the first time, I've met a baseball question that is such a karmic train wreck, such a total mess and so unfair to everybody involved that I am proud to say I have no opinion. For now, the least rotten position to take on whether Mark McGwire deserves to be in the Hall of Fame is no position at all. Instead, let's just wait a few years and see.

As doctors say: First, do no harm.

Occasionally, the best decision is no decision at all. Procrastinate. Hope that more information arrives. Maybe we'll get lucky. Sometimes, if we try to frame a question precisely, we get a sense of just how difficult a problem we really face. This is the puzzle that now confronts the court of public opinion as well as the baseball writers' association: Should we "pardon" McGwire for accusations of steroid use that he has never actually admitted and for which no evidence exists?

Usually, we don't have the luxury of ducking ambiguity and returning to tough issues in the future. A winner and loser must be determined quickly. If awards are given, you can't wait until 2010 to decide who ought to be the most valuable player of 2006. Luckily for baseball, the Hall of Fame is different. Players aren't eligible for selection to Cooperstown until five years after they retire, then serious contenders for the Hall stay on the primary ballot for 15 years.

So next Tuesday, when Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn are almost certain to be elected to Cooperstown, we don't have to determine whether Big Mac deserves a bronze bust next to them. We can twiddle our thumbs and let this witches brew simmer. That way, at least we'll be spared one disaster. In August we won't have to watch Ripken, Gwynn and McGwire enter the Hall together at about the same time Barry Bonds will probably hit his 22nd homer of the season to pass Hank Aaron's career record.

The dominant public memory of McGwire's testimony before Congress 22 months ago is of the great slugger saying, more than a dozen times, that he would not "talk about the past." He wasn't taking the Fifth Amendment. But he was ducking direct questions that some others answered -- others such as Rafael Palmeiro, who denied that he'd ever used performance-enhancing drugs, "period." Within five months, he'd tested positive for taking steroids.

Out of fairness to McGwire, who (best guess) won't even get a third of the Hall vote next week, it's worth remembering his actual testimony on Capitol Hill. He didn't make a non-confession confession. He simply said he refused to join a witch hunt.

"I will not participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates. Asking me, or any other player, to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve this problem," McGwire said. "If a player answers, 'No,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers, 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations."

That's still a permissible position in America, right? However, with his moist eyes and repeated expressions of thinly veiled regret, he sure looked like he was saying an enormous, "I'm so sorry." That impression of guilt stuck so powerfully with many people that I was almost stunned to see that the Mark McGwire Avenue signs were still up in downtown St. Louis last month.

The Post decided a few years ago that its writers should not vote on awards, including the Hall of Fame. So I'm spared the impossible job of making distinctions about culpability among players such as McGwire, Bonds, Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa. Almost nothing is what it seems. McGwire appeared to confess before Congress, but actually didn't. Sosa, who was caught using a corked bat (a minor offense), escaped much scrutiny before Congress by giving the impression he spoke little English even though, in reality, those who've covered him know he's perfectly fluent. Of course, Bonds is surrounded by more smoke than a volcano. But so far, all the "fire" comes from grand jury leaks.

Only Palmeiro has seen his Cooperstown chance reduced to next to nothing.

Someday, maybe Cooperstown will have no choice but to open a separate wing with rooms occupied by Hall of Famers who "Might Be Cheaters," "Probably Are Cheaters" and "Almost Certainly Cheated." Then, if somebody hits 800 home runs but explodes while rounding the bases, should he be inducted, too? Can we have a separate room for "Best Chemists"?

From a distance, baseball's problem is a comedy of its own making. The game's punishment -- massive confusion about the meaning of its sacred statistics and suspicion surrounding its stars -- seems to suit the crime perfectly. The game reaped what it sowed. However, to more than a thousand of my writing colleagues who still have their Cooperstown ballots, this is no joke. They study, debate and take their votes seriously. I feel bad for them. Any vote on McGwire (583 career homers) now or on Sosa (588 homers) in a few years seems inherently flawed.

One response is to throw up your hands and say, "Let 'em all into Cooperstown." Just ignore the steroid era. Since the sport itself, as well as an adoring media, were complicit, give everybody clemency. For me, that's no answer. Imperfect justice is better than no justice at all. Every juiced ballplayer knew he was cheating.

In such a disturbing world of half-knowledge and impossible distinctions, baseball will probably get the best available outcome next week. Ripken and Gwynn will go to the Hall with huge ballot counts. And their deeds will seem all the more significant and appreciated because their level of performance -- and their body size -- were the same before the Steroid Age and during it.
McGwire will not reach Cooperstown but will get more than enough votes to stay on the ballot.

This will give all of us time to think, time for the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation to play out, time for more players to retire and write their memoirs. Someday, much less than 15 years in the future, McGwire's name will still be on the Hall of Fame ballot. But our perspective on him and the period in which he played may -- for reasons we may not yet know -- be far clearer than it is now.

Or perhaps not. In either case, there's no harm in waiting, no damage in suspending judgment. Sosa and Palmeiro won't arrive on the ballot until 2010. There's time. Perhaps our picture of this period in baseball will become clearer. One thing is certain: It can't possible be darker and more obscure than it is right now.

Illegals Become Repeat Criminals

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published January 9, 2007


Criminal aliens set free on the streets of America -- instead of being deported after serving their time -- are being rearrested as many as six more times by U.S. authorities, according to a government audit released yesterday.

But the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General said it did not know how many of 262,105 illegals in the audit, who had been charged with a crime and then released, had been rearrested.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that the volume of available files "was too great to search manually and quantify the results" and that investigators instead selected a sample of 100 illegal aliens arrested in 2004 and reviewed their criminal histories for evidence of rearrests.

Mr. Fine noted that although the limited audit did not find any instances of "outright failure" to cooperate with Homeland Security in the removal of criminal aliens from the United States, a review of the 100 criminal histories "produced results that, if indicative of the full population of criminal aliens identified, suggest that the rate at which released criminal aliens are re-arrested is extremely high."

The 91-page audit, which was requested by Congress, said the limited sampling found that of the 100 selected aliens, 73 had an average of six arrests each after being released from custody. They were arrested, collectively, 429 times on 878 charges, ranging from traffic violations and trespassing to drug crimes, burglary, robbery, assault and weapons violations.

The audit found that local jurisdictions "prioritize enforcement of state and local laws, while sometimes permitting or encouraging law-enforcement officers" to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Last year, Congress required an annual audit as part of the Justice Department's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), which provides federal funding to states and localities for the costs of incarcerating criminal aliens on state or local charges. The program is administered by the Justice Department in conjunction with ICE, which is part of Homeland Security.

During fiscal 2005, Justice distributed $287.1 million in SCAAP payments to 752 state, county and local jurisdictions -- nearly 70 percent of which went to 10 jurisdictions: the states of California, New York, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Illinois and Massachusetts; New York City; and two California counties, Los Angeles and Orange.

The report also said investigators identified an official "sanctuary" policy for two jurisdictions that received at least $1 million in SCAAP funding: Oregon, which received $3.4 million, and the city and county of San Francisco, which received $1.1 million and has designated itself a "city and county of refuge."

In addition, an executive order issued in New York City limits the enforcement of immigration law by local authorities, the report said.

The audit defined "sanctuary" as a jurisdiction that may have state laws, local ordinances or departmental policies limiting the role of local authorities in the enforcement of immigration laws.

The audit also examined the level of cooperation among federal, state and local authorities, but found "conflicting views between ICE and local jurisdictions as to what actions constitute full cooperation."

"Congress did not define 'fully cooperate,' nor did our review of immigration legislation disclose any specific steps that localities are required to take to help effect the removal of criminal aliens from the United States," the audit said.

The report also found that among 164 state and local agencies surveyed:

•30 jurisdictions do not generally ask those arrested about their immigration status.

•17 said they do not inform ICE when they have someone they suspect may be an illegal alien in custody. Some agencies said they do not inform ICE about possible illegals in custody because they don't think ICE will respond.

•18 jurisdictions do not alert ICE before releasing undocumented criminal aliens.

Toy Soldiers on the Border

TODAY'S EDITORIAL
The Washington Times
January 9, 2007

It sounds like Iraq or some other foreign land, but it happened on U.S. soil last week. Outside Sasabe, Ariz., a band of armed assailants stormed a National Guard border post and forced the Guardsmen to retreat without a shot. It was a personal affront to the Guardsmen, who should never have been in the unnatural position of being incapable of defending themselves in the first place. But they were, thanks to the Bush administration's look-tough, act-weak immigration policy.

The observation post fell because most Guardsmen at the border are not even allowed to carry loaded weapons, much less defend themselves. The attackers, in this case probably drug or alien smugglers, quickly returned to Mexico after the assault. It's past time to rethink this policy of placing Guardsmen at the border but defanging them with overly restrictive rules of engagement, which now results in a humiliation for the Guard, and for the rest of us.

The center of the problem is President Bush's "Operation Jump Start," which is showcased as a supposed key element of the administration's generally toothless border policy. This farcical "initiative" has placed 6,000 Guardsmen on the border but disallows them the ability to do much of anything -- not even defend their positions. No wonder the uniformed personnel we know are so angry.

In May, when the president announced that these 6,000 Guardsmen would be deployed, some heralded it as a step in the right direction. Then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert called the decision to send the Guard "the shot in the arm we need to strengthen our borders and protect our families."

Well, no. The opposite was true. Even the president said as much. "Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities -- that duty will be done by the Border Patrol," Mr. Bush said as he announced the move. The Guardsmen would assist the Border Patrol by "operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads and providing training." But they won't be able to enforce the law or guard the border.

"The nanny patrol" is how unnamed Border Patrol agents have described the current arrangement to Jerry Seper of The Washington Times, and little wonder. We should point out that this is no fault of the Guardsmen, who are simply trying to do their jobs. Rather, the administration is at fault for depriving them of the means of fending off an attack. Administration policy makes a kind of costume of their uniforms -- just for show.

If the administration can present any evidence whatsoever that "Operation Jump Start" is not simply a gimmick to look tough on illegals, it should do so now. We haven't seen any. Instead, we've seen an utterly ineffectual border policy and an "Operation Jump Start" which places Guardsmen in harm's way without allowing them to defend themselves. That's an abuse of the Guard.

Let the Guardsmen carry loaded weapons, and let them defend themselves. Anything less makes them playthings in the administration's immigration policy.

Robert Spencer: Banned in Pakistan

Robert Spencer
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
January 9, 2007

The government of Pakistan has banned my book The Truth About Muhammad, confiscating all copies and translations. Why? Because it contains “objectionable material” about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Said Shahid Ahmed, counselor of community affairs at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington: “The book is very, very damaging — let me tell you.”
Objectionable material? Damaging? I confess it: they’re right. There is plenty of objectionable material in this book. Here’s a small sampling:

1. The Truth About Muhammad details the triple choice that Muhammad directed his followers to offer to non-Muslims: conversion to Islam, subjugation without equality of rights with Muslims under the rule of Islamic law, or war. Did I fabricate this? No, it can be found in, among many other places, Sahih Muslim, a collection of hadith – traditions of Muhammad and the early Muslims – that Muslims generally consider reliable. In it, Muhammad says:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah….When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them….If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [a special tax levied on non-Muslims]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)

Is Sahih Muslim banned in Pakistan? Of course not.

2. In the book, I discuss how Muhammad’s earlier biographer, Ibn Ishaq, explains the contexts of various verses of the Qur’an by saying that Muhammad received revelations about warfare in three stages: first, tolerance; then, defensive warfare; and finally, offensive warfare in order to convert the unbelievers to Islam or make them pay the jizya (see Qur’an 9:29). Qur’anic commentaries (tafasir) by Ibn Kathir, Ibn Juzayy, As-Suyuti and others also emphasize that the ninth chapter of the Qur’an, in which this call to offensive warfare appears, abrogates every peace treaty in the Qur’an.

I didn’t just dig into old books to find this. In the modern age, this idea of stages of development in the Qur’an’s teaching on jihad, culminating in offensive warfare to establish the hegemony of Islamic law, has been affirmed by the jihadist theorists Sayyid Qutb and Syed Abul Ala Maududi, as well as the Pakistani Brigadier S. K. Malik (author of The Qur’anic Concept of War), Saudi Chief Justice Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid (in his “Jihad in the Qur’an and Sunnah”), and others. It is, of course, an assertion of no little concern to non-Muslims, since it encapsulates a doctrine of warfare against non-Muslims and their ultimate subjugation under Sharia rules, with all that implies, and is being used by jihadists today in the Islamic world to justify their actions and make new recruits.

Are the works of Ibn Kathir, Ibn Juzayy, As-Suyuti, Qutb, Maududi, Malik or Humaid banned in Pakistan? Of course not.

3. Also in The Truth About Muhammad I discuss Muhammad’s marriage to little Aisha, which is specifically addressed in the hadith collection Sahih Bukhari (generally considered by Muslims to be the most reliable such collection). According to several traditions recorded by Bukhari, “the Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88; see also 7.62.65; 7.62.64; 5.58.236; 5.58.234).

It is quite obvious that many Muslims take very seriously and act upon the material on which I depended to write the book. Imitating the Prophet of Islam, many Muslims even in modern times have taken child brides. In some places this even has the blessing of the law: article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”[i]

The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight.[ii] Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”[iii]

Time magazine reported in 2001:

In Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys. The law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move. An attempt by conservatives to abolish Yemen’s legal minimum age of fifteen for girls failed, but local experts say it is rarely enforced anyway. (The onset of puberty is considered an appropriate time for a marriage to be consummated.)[iv]

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that over half of the girls in Afghanistan and Bangladesh are married before they reach the age of eighteen.[v] In early 2002, researchers in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan found half the girls married by age thirteen. In an Afghan refugee camp, more than two out of three second-grade girls were either married or engaged, and virtually all the girls who were beyond second grade were already married. One ten-year-old was engaged to a man of sixty.[vi]

This is the price that women have paid throughout Islamic history, and continue to pay, for Muhammad’s status as “an excellent example of conduct” (Qur’an 33:21).

Of course, in this as with the other instances I have adduced, other Islamic authorities differ. Some claim that in repeating the traditions from Bukhari, I am perpetuating misunderstandings – despite the manifest fact that these “misunderstandings” are quite widespread in the Islamic world. If they are indeed misunderstandings, the problem lies with Sahih Bukhari, which is very ancient and essentially canonical, not with my book, which has been available for less than three months and will be forgotten before too long.

But is Sahih Bukhari banned in Pakistan? Of course not.

4. Finally, in my book I explain why it is today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. False adultery accusations against Aisha led ultimately to the requirement that four male Muslim witnesses must be produced in order to establish a crime of adultery or related indiscretions. In cases of sexual misbehavior, four male witnesses are required to establish the deed — in accord with a revelation that came to Muhammad to exonerate his youthful wife (Qur’an 24:13).[vii] This requirement allows unscrupulous men to commit rape with impunity: as long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim’s account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery.

That accounts for the grim fact that as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.[viii] Several high-profile cases in Nigeria in recent years have also revolved around rape accusations being turned around by Islamic authorities into charges of fornication, resulting in death sentences that were only modified after international pressure.[ix]

Because they’re rooted in Qur’anic dictates, such abuses are extraordinarily resistant to criticism and reform. Witness the recent situation in Pakistan, the same country where my book has just been banned. The new Women’s Protection Act has reclassified the crime of rape so that it can be prosecuted according to modern standards of evidence and testimony, without relying on the four male witnesses required by the Qur’an. But Muslim hardliners have staged protests against the new law, calling it “un-Islamic, immoral and unconstitutional.” And they have a case, based on Qur’an 24:13 and the story of Aisha’s exoneration.

This is just one indication that what I wrote in The Truth About Muhammad about Muhammad is generally what Muslims believe about Muhammad – even in Pakistan. Since I based the book entirely on Islamic sources, the objection that Pakistani authorities have to it cannot reasonably be based on what I report about Muhammad, but only on the fact that I hold him to a moral standard different from the one he delineated for himself, and do not consider him to be an “excellent example of conduct.” But in a society that is not pathologically insecure, this ought to be not an occasion for banning and confiscation, but for free and open debate. After all, the reform of Islam that is so needed today – in order to mitigate the elements of it that are giving rise to violence and extremism -- cannot possibly begin without acknowledgment of the fact that there are aspects of Islam that need reform. But the banning of The Truth About Muhammad in Pakistan is yet another indication that such reform, despite the immense hopes placed upon it by so many in the West, is not on the horizon.

Notes:

[i] Sarvnaz Chitsaz and Soona Samsami, “Iranian Women and Girls: Victims of Exploitation and Violence,” in Making the Harm Visible: Global Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls, Donna M. Hughes and Claire M. Roche, editors, The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, 1999. http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/mhviran.htm.
[ii] Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution, Adler and Adler, 1986, 90-91.
[iii] Taheri, 35.
[iv] Lisa Beyer, “The Women of Islam,” Time, November 25, 2001. Reprinted at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,185647,00.html.
[v] “Child marriage ‘violates rights,’” BBC News, March 7, 2001.
[vi] Andrew Bushell, “Child Marriage in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” America, March 11, 2002, p. 12.
[vii] See also Bukhari, vol. 3, book 52, no. 2661.
[viii] See Sisters in Islam, “Rape, Zina, and Incest,” April 6, 2000, http://www.muslimtents.com/sistersinislam/resources/sdefini.htm.
[ix] See Stephen Faris, “In Nigeria, A Mother Faces Execution,” http://www.africana.com/, January 7, 2002.

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Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of six books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and the New York Times Bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). His latest book is the New York Times Bestseller The Truth About Muhammad.

Mark Steyn: Complaints? Where there's wool, there's a way

January 7, 2007
Chicago Sun-Times

As part of this column's ongoing commitment to in-depth coverage of the issues that matter, we're pleased to present the first of a new series: Sheep In the News. Here are two headlines from the last week.

From the Wall Street Journal: "Ritual sacrifice? Not on my street, some Belgians say."

And from the Sunday Times of London: "Science told: Hands off gay sheep."

The first story is about the 25,000 sheep in Brussels that a few days ago found themselves pointed toward Mecca and then slit through the throat and bled to death. Muslims do this to celebrate Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God and God's willingness to settle for a ram in lieu. The Belgian Muslim population has grown so fast that there aren't enough places in the city to perform the ritual sacrifice, and come Eid it's like sheep drivetime at every Brussels slaughterhouse, with rams backed up ram-to-ram as far as the eye can see. As reported by the Journal, Mohamed Mimoun grabbed his sheep, took a number and realized he was in for a two-hour wait. Even worse, en route to the slaughterhouse, he was stopped by a cop and fined for having the sheep in the trunk of his Toyota. By law, the sheep is supposed to ride in the rear passenger seats. Baa, baa, back seat.

On which note, let us turn to the gay sheep. Apparently, researchers at Oregon Health and Science University and Oregon State University have been experimenting with ovine hormonal balances in order to persuade homosexual rams of the error of their ways. It seems they've had "considerable success" with injecting hormones into the rams' brains. Suddenly the lads are playing the field and crooning a couple of choruses of "Embrace me, my sweet embraceable ewe."

Gay groups (human gay groups, that is: Even America does not yet have a 24/7 gay sheep lobby group with offices on K Street) are not happy about this. Martina Navratilova, the nine-time Wimbledon champ, has called for the project to be abandoned and for scientists to respect, as the Sunday Times put it, "the right of sheep to be gay." Many of us can sympathize. The poor old sheep gets it coming and going. If he's going to end up bleeding to death while turned toward Mecca, he ought at least be able to choose his orientation in the runup to it. Might as well be hung for a ram as for a ewe. Surely a sheep should be able to celebrate his own sexuality without a lot of crazed ovine eugenicists strapping him to a gurney and shooting him the hetero-juice. As they sing in the first act finale of ''La Cage Aux Folles'':

Life's not worth a damn

Till you can say, hey, world

I ram what I ram.

Meanwhile, Udo Schuklenk, professor of Bioethics at Glasgow Caledonian University, has warned that this research "brings the terrible possibility of exploitation by homophobic societies. Imagine this technology in the hands of Iran, for example. It is typical of the U.S. to ignore the global context in which this is taking place."

Nobody in Scotland seems to be spending much time imagining, say, nuclear technology in the hands of Iran, but in Glasgow they're up in arms about the mullahs getting sheep-straightening technology. If President Bush is looking for a casus belli against Tehran, the gay-ram angle may be the best shot at bringing the EU on board. "E U," by the way, is the abbreviation for "European Union" and not what a gay ram says in distaste when the lady sheep come strolling by en route to the dip.

Unlike Martina Navratilova, I'm no expert in sheep sexuality. Who put the ram in the ram-a-lama-ding-dong? I couldn't tell you. But I'm always interested in the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition. If you're a farmer, a ram is an economic asset. So, if he's gay, he's useless. Back in the '80s, Jasper Conran, couturier to the princess of Wales, was said to have glanced out of his train window at some grazing Holsteins and sighed, "Black and white is so last season," an observation which (if somewhat apocryphal) helpfully distills the limitations of the gay sensibility applied to the farmyard. So, on hearing that experts have come up with a nicotine-patch-like sticker that a pregnant sheep can wear to straighten out any potential gayness in her fetus, your average farmer might well think it worth investing in.

And, if that happens, at what point will a woman's right to choose intersect with a farmer's right to ewes? Under Beijing's one-child policy, Chinese women exercised their "right to choose" the sex of their baby so radically that they now have the most gender-lopsided demographic cohort in history: millions of surplus boys for whom all the girl babies were aborted. Professor Schuklenk is right: "Homophobic societies" may well choose to de-gay their offspring. After all, much abortion practice is already explicitly eugenicist: If a woman can decide she doesn't want to carry a baby with Down syndrome or a cleft palate or because she only wanted one of the triplets, why should she be obliged to accept his orientation? Once you've redefined pregnancy in the radically individualist terms that abortion absolutists have, why should the modish pieties of political correctness prove any more effective a restraint than conventional social and religious morality? In 2005, responding to a highly hypothetical possibility of parental screening for a "gay gene," a Maine state representative introduced a bill for the protection of unborn gays. But it's hard to see why, in liberal abortion theology, unborn gays should be any worthier of protection than unborn straights.

Which brings us back to the streets of Brussels. Ann De Greef, a Belgian animal-rights activist, does not enjoy the annual Eid massacre. "It's not normal to have thousands of sheep slaughtered like this in the middle of a major European city," she complained.

Au contraire, it is. And, given Islam's demographic advantage, it's going to get ever more normal. Muslims pay Belgian farmers about 250 bucks to acquire a sheep for the ritual sacrifice, which suggests they're pretty serious about it. Indeed, given Islam's political muscle, it's more likely that the remaining restrictions on ritual sacrifice will be rescinded. Tired of standing in line at crowded slaughterhouses, many Brussels Muslims sacrifice the sheep at home -- which is illegal under Belgian law but which the state already turns a blind eye to.

The left carelessly assumes that the various factions in their identity-group coalition are allies in perpetuity who can be rounded up like sheep and pointed in the same direction. They're not.
The Belgian sheep story is about demographic advance, the Oregon sheep story is about technological advance. But the most potent combination is technology yoked to demography: In other words, how much demand will there be for the latest innovation? Abortion for genetic abnormalities? Quite a lot in America. Abortion to decrease unwanted daughters? An awful lot in China and India.

And a patch to de-gay your baby?

We're poor little lambs who have lost our way. Baa-baa-baa.

©Mark Steyn, 2007

George Will: The Perils of a Surge

January 07, 2007
The Washington Post
George Will

WASHINGTON -- As the president contemplates a "surge'' of U.S. troops into Baghdad, a Vietnam analogy is pertinent. A surge might merely intensify a policy that is akin to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's and Gen. William Westmoreland's policy in Vietnam. A better policy might resemble that of two men who subsequently occupied the offices those men held -- Mel Laird, President Nixon's first defense secretary, and Gen.Creighton Abrams, who in 1968 replaced Westmoreland as U.S. commander in Vietnam.

Richard Nixon won the 1968 election with an implicit promise to replace the McNamara-Westmoreland policy of engagement and attrition ("search and destroy''), which was failing militarily in Vietnam and politically in America. Nixon's policy, formulated with Laird and Abrams, was for phased withdrawals of U.S. forces, coinciding with increased U.S. advisers and other aid for South Vietnam's army. The announced policy of withdrawals gave the U.S. some leverage to force the government in Saigon -- not a paragon, but better than the government in Baghdad today -- to recognize that the clock was running on its acceptance of responsibility for Vietnam's security.

Unfortunately, the political climate in Washington today is analogous to that of 60 years ago. In 1946-47, partisan divisions, deepened by disdain for a president considered in over his head, were threatening to make it impossible to reverse the unraveling of the U.S. position in the region that then was most crucial to U.S. interests -- Europe. In 1946, the president's party lost control of both houses of Congress, in what was partly a vote of no confidence in President Harry Truman. A shattered Europe was sliding toward chaos, with communism gaining ground in Western as well as Central Europe.

Truman, however, embraced a proposal for substantial U.S. aid to Europe, but directed that Secretary of State George Marshall's name, not his, be on it. That was achieved when Marshall made the proposal in his June 1947 Harvard commencement address. Truman also instructed Marshall and his deputy, Dean Acheson, to make necessary accommodations with Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, the Michigan Republican who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee.
Today, no one has a promising idea for Iraq comparable to the Marshall Plan. And who would be the Democrats' Vandenberg, capable of muting Democrats' ferocious rejection of all the president's ideas?

Recently, after his 10th trip to Iraq, Bing West, a former Marine and current correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, noted that 70 percent of U.S. casualties are not from bullets but from roadside bombs. The enemy rarely engages in sustained firefights with U.S. forces, so U.S. forces are killing fewer insurgents than the insurgents recruit. Furthermore, U.S. units spend 15 percent to 30 percent of their time training Iraqis: "If winning is not a direct goal for U.S. units, we don't need so many troops in Iraq. If winning is a direct goal, we don't have enough units in Iraq.''

Under a "Laird-Abrams'' approach, winning would be the "direct goal'' of Iraqi units. There is, however, this sobering arithmetic: Based on experience in the Balkans, an assumption among experts is that to maintain order in a context of sectarian strife requires one competent soldier or police officer for every 50 people. For the Baghdad metropolitan area (population: 6.5 million), that means 130,000 security personnel.

There are 120,000 now, but 66,000 of them are Iraqi police, many -- perhaps most -- of whom are worse than incompetent. Because their allegiances are to sectarian factions, they are not responsive to legitimate central authority. They are part of the problem. Therefore even a substantial surge of, say, 30,000 U.S. forces would leave Baghdad that many short, and could be a recipe for protracting failure.

Today, Gen. George Casey, U.S. commander in Baghdad, is in hot water with administration proponents of a "surge'' because he believes what he recently told The New York Times: "The longer we in the U.S. forces continue to bear the main burden of Iraq's security, it lengthens the time that the government of Iraq has to take the hard decisions about reconciliation and dealing with the militias. And the other thing is that they can continue to blame us for all of Iraq's problems, which are at base their problems.''

Baghdad today is what Wayne White -- for 26 years with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, now with the Middle East Institute -- calls "a Shiite-Sunni Stalingrad.'' Imagine a third nation's army operating between -- and against -- both the German and Russian forces in Stalingrad. That might be akin to the mission of troops sent in any surge.

georgewill@washpost.com

FP Interview: The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister

By Jamie Glazov
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
January 8, 2007

Frontpage Interview's guest today is John O'Sullivan, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former editor-in-chief of National Review, Policy Review, and the National Interest. He was a special advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street from 1986 to1988 and he has held senior editorial positions at the London Times, the London Daily Telegraph, the National Post of Canada, the New York Post, and Irish Television and Radio. He has just published The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister.

FP: John O'Sullivan, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

O'Sullivan: Thanks for inviting me. I read you, so naturally I'm glad to get before the camera.

FP: What inspired you to write this book?

O'Sullivan: I have to admit that the suggestion for the book came from Tom Phillips of Eagle Publishing. Like everyone else, I thought it was a brilliant idea--one of those ideas that strike you as self-evidently necessary as soon as someone else has thought of it. Regnery approached me and I was delighted to accept. I had the advantage over other potential authors that I had worked closely with Lady Thatcher on her memoirs. So I had already done some of the research. But I knew that between the idea and the finished product there would be pitfalls. And, of course, there were.

FP: Expand for us a bit on the three great figures and how each of them changed the course of history.

O'Sullivan: One of the arguments in my book--it's on page one, in fact--is that all three of my subjects were strong, sharp and clearly defined personalities. They were clearly defined both as personalities and as representatives, embodiments even, of the faiths and philosophies they espoused. That led them to be attacked as too extreme. Too Conservative in Mrs. Thatcher's case--well, that's self-explanatory. Too Catholic in the Pope's case--yes, I know it sounds like a joke but this objection to him was a serious one.

A Polish Pope was seen by most churchmen as too rigid, too orthodox and too anti-Communist at a time when the Church was developing its own appeasing Ostpolitik towards the Soviets. And too American in the case of Reagan--which meant that he was fundamentally an optimist about both America and the West and so either ignorant or in denial about such "realities" as limits to growth.

Sharply defined figures are controversial. They very rarely come to power in times of tranquility. Only a grave crisis persuades people to turn to them. Consider how Churchill was outmaneuvered repeatedly by the emollient Stanley Baldwin in the inter-war years. Well, it took the grave crises of the late 1970s--and the mood of despair and "malaise" that they engendered--to persuade people to turn to Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope.

FP: You knew all three of these giants of the twentieth century. Can you tell us a few details of your relationships with them and perhaps share a personal story?

O'Sullivan: I knew and know Lady Thatcher well. I worked closely with her in Downing Street for two years. We got on well then and have become friends since she left office. I met Reagan on five or six occasions--three of them the occasions of substantial conversation. And I have been fortunate in having close friends who worked at high levels in his administration. I was at an audience given by the Pope, but I could not say that I knew him. I tried to make up for that by talking to people who knew him well.

As for personal stories, there's a very funny story in the book about Mrs. Thatcher, a pair of fur-lined boots, and Andropov's funeral. I'll leave it to your readers to look it up. But the really interesting thing about Lady Thatcher is that despite being a towering world-historical figure, she also has the domestic housewifely virtues. When speechwriters were working late with her on a party political speech, the Whitehall rules meant that she was not able to call on the Downing Street staff for drinks, dinner, etc. So she would rustle up a meal herself for us--generally bacon and eggs or shepherd's pie. In general she was an excellent boss--kind and thoughtful in her attitude to those working with her. But she expected senior officials and ministers to know their subjects and she could be very tough, sometimes without realizing it, in her cross-examination of them. On one occasion as the body of a nervous senior advisor was being helped out of the room, she turned to an aide and said: "Why do people take everything I say so seriously?"

One of the occasions when I spent time with Reagan contradicted all we had heard about his not being a details man. At a 1978 Daily Telegraph breakfast in London, Reagan was asked the first question by Bill Deedes, the legendary Fleet Street editor, about--of all subjects--garbage disposal in California. Reagan's eyes lit up as he demonstrated encyclopedic knowledge of garbage disposal and how his administration had reformed the system in California. He went on and on and on. Unfortunately, the eyes of everyone else closed down. It was quite a relief to turn to the topic of nuclear missiles. Another memory of that breakfast is that all the Brit journalists there liked Reagan, but almost no-one thought he would become president.

FP: What lessons did these three great leaders teach us that could serve as guides for us in facing our new pernicious enemy in the terror war?

O'Sullivan: This is a far harder question than you perhaps realize. Of course, in a general sense I can say that they would display courage and realism as they did in the battle with communism. But once you go beyond that level of generality, you risk fathering your own opinions on them. But let me try to answer it as honestly as I can.

They would realize that in the jihadists we are dealing yet again with what Burke called an "armed doctrine." We have to resist and defeat their armed attacks on us by police, intelligence and military methods and also to win the religious and philosophical battles in the mosque and the lecture hall.

Let me deal first with the "armed" half of the armed doctrine as it has emerged in practice. Well, we know that the late Pope was opposed to the invasion of Iraq and that Lady Thatcher has given support to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair over it. Neither position should surprise us. John Paul II always believed that force should be the absolutely last resort even in response to manifest injustice. One of his contributions to political ideas was the concept of "cultural resistance," or ignoring the communist authorities rather than confronting them, which inspired Solidarity and other non-violent revolutions in Eastern Europe. After all, communism was brought down not by war but by ideas, military and economic competition, and a willingness to resist.

Lady Thatcher saw the Afghanistan invasion as very similar to her own waging of the Falklands War--namely, as a legitimate and perhaps necessary response to unprovoked aggression. Her support for the Iraq invasion is on slightly different grounds. It reflects her view that former prime ministers should not second guess national leaders on war and peace when British troops are in the field. Her other thoughts, I suspect, would be very similar to the considerations that I suggest below would influence Reagan.

Reagan, then. I believe he would have seen an invasion of Afghanistan as a necessary response to an attack on America organized by a terrorist group given sanctuary by the Taliban. Just like Thatcher's attitude to the Falklands. He would also have liked the way the war was fought--by a combination of U.S. special forces and local allies--in line with the "Reagan doctrine."

His likely view on Iraq is less clear. Remember that Reagan was cautious and economical in his use of American military force. Many conservatives complained about this at the time. He also saw Iran as both a potential threat to the Middle East and as a potential ally. My guess is that he would have sought every diplomatic avenue to obtain the virtual surrender of Saddam Hussein or at least his neutering as a threat to the Middle East. That diplomacy might have been highly unconventional, involving both Turkey and Iran. If diplomacy failed, Reagan would then have had to face the possibility of the same invasion as George W. Bush. My final guess is that he would have approved the invasion, but only when he had satisfied himself that our forces were sufficient and that we had a clear game plan for what to do after victory. Remember that he doubled the forces in the Grenada invasion because he attributed the failure of Carter's attempt to rescue the Tehran hostages to the fact that there weren't enough helicopters on the spot.
But this is guesswork. Reagan was a surprising politician and he might have surprised us on Iraq. Thatcher too if she was still in charge. She was, for instance, in favor of continuing the First Gulf War to overthrow Saddam Hussein then when it would have been far easier.

FP: Ok, how about the doctrinal side of things?

O’Sullivan: Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope all believed that communism had to be ideologically countered—the "evil empire," "Be not afraid," etc.--and they proved to be right. Their ideological assaults undermined the morale of the communists and encouraged their subject peoples. Doing the same thing in relation to the radical Islamists--exposing their fallacies, separating them from the ordinary moderate Muslims, undermining their own conviction—will be far more difficult because we know less about the ideas in question. But the present Pope has begun this subtle task in his Regensburg speech. There he appealed to Muslims to re-examine their theology and to ask themselves whether a good God would wish His truth to be advanced by violence. He has received a civil and thoughtful response from some moderate Muslims.

But we're at the start of a long road here--and it is not a job for presidents and prime ministers as Tony Blair's recent excursion into Koranic studies shows all too embarrassingly.

FP: Tell us what is embarrassing about Tony Blair's recent excursion into Koranic studies. What is the prime significance here?

O'Sullivan: Prime Ministers and Presidents should probably not get involved in strictly religious arguments unless absolutely necessary. They speak with no authority on such matters. They have to avoid saying anything controversial so as not to offend millions of people. So they spout benevolent-sounding platitudes that offend people anyway because religion is about truth rather than about sentimental benevolence. Mr. Bush's constant refrain that "Islam is a religion of peace" is a good example. It offends many Muslims who know that Islam is more than that and it worries non-Muslims because it seems to gloss over the violence that some Muslims justify on religious grounds.

Sometimes, of course, politicians have to say things with a bearing on religion. Very likely Mr. Bush had to warn prudently against any temptation to violence against Muslims in the aftermath of September 11th. But he should have coupled that warning with a demand that Muslim American leaders issue unqualified condemnations of terrorist violence and make clear their political loyalty to America. Such a demand would have soothed the nervousness of most Americans and given Muslim Americans an incentive to reflect on the distinction between political allegiance and religious commitment--and maybe by those reflections influenced Muslim thought world-wide. When a political leader calls for respect for law and national custom, he is doing his job; when he delves into theology to make his case, he is trespassing dangerously.

Mr. Blair's recent Foreign Affairs article is a case in point. It contains much serious and brave analysis of the radical Islamist threat. But it has two major flaws. First, it has a feel-good section on the history of Islam and the intellectual power of the Koran that sounds like pandering to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. I very much doubt, for instance, that Tony Blair has spent much time reading the Koran. And his stress on the "progressive" nature of Islam will persuade no one, especially the great majority of Muslims who think of their religion as eternally true.

More seriously, his call for "values change"--in effect, the mass conversion of cultures to commonly agreed "global values"--asks too much. "Global values" can only be agreed at a very low level of generality. Different civilizations have very different views on key topics. Attempts by Western liberals like Blair to exploit international bodies to impose their own values on such topics as capital punishment will fail and should fail.

Earlier liberals (and in this context we are all liberals) were more realistic. They adopted the principle of "Live and let live" between different nations and cultures except in such extreme cases as slavery and suttee where the offense to their values was too great to tolerate. And that's another point: they adhered to a harsher version of "tolerance" than that espoused by Blair. He thinks of it as a form of approval; they recognized that tolerance was a stance of disapproval: "I dislike what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This is important because the Blair government has made it plain that "global values" would limit criticism of religion or at least of Islam.

I'm not sure what all this has to do with Thatcher, Reagan and John Paul.

FP: Well, maybe one more question that might not have much to do with Thatcher, Reagan and John Paul. And I couldn’t forgive myself for interviewing such a wise mind and not asking it:

What are your thoughts on the Iraq Study Group's recommendations and the execution of Saddam? Where are we headed in Iraq? If President Bush called you and asked you for your advice on what to do, what would you tell him?

O'Sullivan: I am in general critical of the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations on the grounds that they are unrealistic. They give us no reason to think that Syria and Iran would cooperate to produce in Iraq the greater stability the U.S. wants even though such talks are the main novelty in their proposals. I am also critical of the Bush administration, however, because it has micro-managed the Iraq intervention without first agreeing on a common policy supported by all government agencies. I don't think I will accept your invitation to micro-manage Iraq myself, therefore.

Also, I have never been a soldier, which makes me reluctant to lay out detailed military solutions. And I like the old British Army maxim that when you have a man on the spot, you either back him or sack him. We have done neither, though that may be about to change with the appointment of new generals and admirals, such as Lt. General Petraeus, to senior positions in the management of the war. My overall view is that we cannot leave chaos in the country. It would be morally irresponsible, lead to large casualties, and create the anarchic circumstances for terrorism to flourish. If we are to stay for any length of time, however, we need to appoint a general with clear instructions to establish the law and order necessary for any political stability, let alone democracy, to take root.

All this means, I suppose, that you should put me down as a "surge" man. Oddly enough, I support it inter alia for the same reason as the British anti-war critic, Matthew Parris, in the Times. He thinks any surge of additional troops will fail and that it will therefore discredit completely what he sees as the neo-conservative heresy. Its outright failure after a final military injection would deprive the neocons of any excuse. I hope it will succeed and I think it can do so.
It would be a terrible revelation of American weakness if the U.S. Army and its allies, 500,000 troops in all, could not defeat a small terrorist resistance and restore law and order in Baghdad.
But Matthew is right on one point: we need to know for sure if we can do this. If we allow ourselves to be defeated on the home front, as in Vietnam, and abandon our Iraqi allies to the kind of murder and oppression that we did in 1975, then the post-Iraqi debate would drag on as long as the post-Vietnam debate has done. And in the words of Bernard Lewis (I quote from memory) America would have shown itself to be harmless as an enemy and untrustworthy as a friend.

But we should not allow Iraq to be the sole test of statesmanship. I laid down three criteria for President Bush in 2001: Would he restrain the regulatory state? Would he obstruct the rise of an anti-American united Europe? Would he shape a new inclusive American patriotism to prevent the sharpening balkanization of multicultural America? These are all of greater long-term importance than Iraq. Alas, Bush has done badly on all three tests. He is obviously a brave and decisive president. He has shown great courage in his Iraq policy. But he does not seem to have the strategic vision that the three central characters in my book all displayed in several ways.

FP: John O'Sullivan, it was an honor to speak with you.

O'Sullivan: An honor to be invited.

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Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

Gregory Kane: Rap is the culprit in killing of black men

Originally published Jan 6, 2007
The Baltimore Sun
Gregory Kane

The 800-pound gorilla is back, and as usual folks are pretending the critter ain't in the room.

We'll call this particular 800-pound gorilla Joey, in tribute to that 1940s film about the giant ape called Mighty Joe Young.
I think it's time Joey got his props. I think it's time we acknowledge Joey.

Joey, meet the guys.

Guys, shake hands with Joey.

"The guys" in this case are those Baltimoreans who, for the past week, have expressed angst and dismay about the appalling way some young black men in this city, addicted to the thug life, dispatch each other with such chilling ease. Of Baltimore's nearly 300 homicide victims each year, the overwhelming majority of victims and killers are young black men.

Everybody and everything has been mentioned as enablers to Bodymore, Murderland's culture of death: lack of jobs, lack of recreational facilities, lack of music and art programs in schools, lack of mentors. Everybody's been mentioned, that is, except Joey, who's standing in the middle of the room with a Bloods bandana on his head, a Crips scarf tied around his neck, "grillz" on his teeth and holding a Glock in his hand.

Oh, and Joey's holding a copy of The Source magazine in the other hand with a picture of rapper The Game on the cover. Get where I'm going here?

Joey represents the entertainment industry and, to a lesser extent, my profession, which some folks call "the media." If I may be permitted to use a Bill Cosbyism, the entertainment industry and the media aren't holding up our end of the bargain when it comes to reducing violence. We just don't get the link between rap music and the carnage that's going on not only on Baltimore's streets, but America's streets.

Now before I hear from hard-core hip-hop fans about dissing an entire genre of music, I'll make it clear I'm not talking about all rap. I'm talking about some of it. The stuff that's most likely to be played on the radio. And the videos shown frequently on BET and MTV.

Still, I'm likely to be dismissed as a curmudgeonly 55-year-old "hating on" rap music. But Joseph E. Marshall Jr. can't be dismissed as easily. Marshall is the executive director of the Omega Boys Club in San Francisco. He's worked with hundreds of young black men. He's seen more than 100 of those boys graduate from college under his mentorship.

Marshall knows better than anyone the music the boys who come through his club listen to. And he knows the impact that music has on contributing to black-on-black violence.

"I'm going to have to take on the entertainment industry, particularly hip-hop," Marshall told a group of black columnists in November. "It's killing us."

Marshall's words take on extra meaning when you consider that around the same time, thousands of miles across the country, The Game (pictured above) -- known to his mommy as Jayceon Taylor -- was commenting about hip-hop on a radio station in the Baltimore/Washington market.

"Hip-hop is killing us," Taylor said. Taylor then revealed that he's still a member of the Bloods gang, and that he's in for life.

As if to reinforce that claim, Taylor raps on his latest album that "Game still Bloodin' and Snoop still Crippin'." Snoop is rapper Snoop Dogg, whose mother had the good sense to name him Calvin Broadus. Taylor is a confessed gangbanger and former drug dealer. Broadus is either a former or current Crips gangbanger who narrowly missed being convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1996.

So if "Game still Bloodin' and Snoop still Crippin'," why are we looking at either of these miscreants? I can't pass a magazine rack without seeing Taylor's face on the cover of something. Snoop still gets movie roles and appears in commercials despite his current -- and frequent -- arrests for drug and weapons violations.

Baltimore is now graced with young black men and boys who are doing some Bloodin' and Crippin' of their own. And why wouldn't they? It's not like they see a downside to Taylor and Broadus Bloodin' and Crippin.'

They see lucrative record and movie deals. They see the media giving guys like Taylor and Broadus coverage that is either positive or kid glove. They see rapper Jay-Z -- real name Shawn Carter -- given this paean in a Newsweek headline: "Multimillionaire business exec Shawn Carter ... is 36 and still hasn't lost his street cred."

No word from the folks at Newsweek about one of Carter's latest raps in which he uses the n-word, denounces snitchers and proudly proclaims:

"Y'all respect the one who got shot. I respect the shooter."

Excuse me?

No wonder Marshall is going to war against the music business. Those in Baltimore dismayed about the murders of young black men might consider joining him and heeding his words.

"The industry is definitely the biggest purveyor right now of the disease of violence that's killing our community."

It looks like Marshall made Joey's acquaintance quite some time ago.

greg.kane@baltsun.com

Sam Schulman: Without God, Gall is Permitted

Modern atheists have no new arguments, and they lack their forebears' charm.

The Wall Street Journal
Friday, January 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

When the very first population of atheists roamed the earth in the Victorian age--brought to life by Lyell's "Principles of Geology," Darwin's "Origin of Species" and other blows to religious certainty--it was the personal dimension of atheism that others found distressing. How could an atheist's oath of allegiance to the queen be trusted? It couldn't--so an atheist was not allowed to take a seat in Parliament. How could an atheist, unconstrained by a fear of eternal punishment, be held accountable to social norms of behavior? Worse than heretical, atheism was not respectable.

In the 21st century, this no longer seems to be the case. Few acquaintances of Dr. Richard Dawkins, the world's most voluble public atheist, wonder, as they might have a hundred years ago: Can I leave my wife unchaperoned in this man's company? Indeed, the atheists are now looking to turn the tables: They want to make belief itself not simply an object of intellectual derision but a cause for personal embarrassment. A new generation of publicists for atheism has emerged to tell Americans in particular that we should be ashamed to retain a majority of religious believers, that in this way we resemble the benighted, primitive peoples of the Middle East, Africa and South America instead of the enlightened citizens of Western Europe.

Thanks in part to the actions of a few jihadists in September 2001, it is believers who stand accused, not freethinkers. Among the prominent atheists who now sermonize to the believers in their midst are Dr. Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett ("Breaking the Spell") and Sam Harris ("The End of Faith" and, more recently, "Letter to a Christian Nation"). There are others, too, like Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Brooke Allen (whose "Moral Minority" was a celebration of the skeptical Founders) and a host of commentators appalled by the Intelligent Design movement. The transcript of a recent symposium on the perils of religious thought can be found at a science Web site called edge.org.

There are many themes to the atheist lament. A common worry is the political and social effect of religious belief. To a lot of atheists, the fate of civilization and of mankind depends on their ability to cool--or better, simply to ban--the fevered fancies of the God-intoxicated among us.

Naturally, the atheists focus their peevishness not on Muslim extremists (who advertise their hatred and violent intentions) but on the old-time Christian religion. ("Wisdom dwells with prudence," the Good Book teaches.) They can always haul out the abortion-clinic bomber if they need a boogeyman; and they can always argue as if all faiths are interchangeable: Persuade American Christians to give up their infantile attachment to God and maybe Muslims will too. In any case, they conclude: God is not necessary, God is impossible and God is not permissible if our society--or even our species--is to survive.

What is new about the new atheists? It's not their arguments. Spend as much time as you like with a pile of the recent anti-religion books, but you won't encounter a single point you didn't hear in your freshman dormitory. It's their tone that is novel. Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible, the product of provincial minds, the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote--both of which, the new atheists assure us, they do in lockstep with the pope and Jerry Falwell.

For them, belief in God is beyond childish, it is unsuitable for children. Today's atheists are particularly disgusted by the religious training of young people--which Dr. Dawkins calls "a form of child abuse." He even floats the idea that the state should intervene to protect children from their parents' religious beliefs.

For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins's volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.

The faith that the new atheists describe is a simple-minded parody. It is impossible to see within it what might have preoccupied great artists and thinkers like Homer, Milton, Michelangelo, Newton and Spinoza--let alone Aquinas, Dr. Johnson, Kierkegaard, Goya, Cardinal Newman, Reinhold Niebuhr or, for that matter, Albert Einstein. But to pass over this deeper faith--the kind that engaged the great minds of Western history--is to diminish the loss of faith too. The new atheists are separated from the old by their shallowness.

To read the accounts of the first generation of atheists is profoundly moving. Matthew Arnold wrote of the "eternal note of sadness" sounded when the "Sea of Faith" receded from human life. In one testament after another--George Eliot, Carlyle, Hardy, Darwin himself--the Victorians described the sense of grief they felt when religion goes--and the keen, often pathetic attempts to replace it by love, by art, by good works, by risk-seeking and--fatally--by politics.

God did not exist, they concluded, but there was no denying that this supposed truth was accompanied by a painful sense of being cut off from human fellowship as well as divine love. To counter it, religious figures developed a new kind of mission--like that of the former unbeliever C.S. Lewis: They could speak to the feeling of longing that unbelief engenders because they understood it--and sympathized not only with atheism's pain but with the many sensible arguments in its favor.

There is no such sympathy among the new apostles of atheism--to find it, one has to look to believers. Anyone who has actually taught young people and listened to them knows that it is often the students who come from a trained sectarian background--Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, Mormon--who are best at grasping different systems of belief and unbelief. Such students know, at least, what it feels like to have such a system, and can understand those who have very different ones. The new atheists remind me of other students from more "open-minded" homes--rigid, indifferent, puzzled by thought and incapable of sympathy.

The new atheists fail too often simply for want of charm or skill. Twenty-first century atheism hasn't found its H.G. Wells or its George Bernard Shaw, men who flattered their audiences, excited them and persuaded them by making them feel intelligent. Here is Sam Harris, for instance, addressing those who wonder if destroying human embryos in the process of stem cell research might be morally dicey: "Your qualms . . . are obscene."

The atheists say that they are addressing believers. Rationalists all, can they believe that believers would be swayed by such contumely and condescension? They seem instead to be preaching to people exactly like themselves--a remarkably incurious elite.

Mr. Schulman is publishing director of the American, a magazine of ideas for business leaders.

Bradley Nassif: Will the 21st Be the Orthodox Century?

Fascination with the Great Tradition may signal deep changes for both evangelicals and the Orthodox.

Christianity Today
posted 1/04/2007 08:50AM

Jaroslav Pelikan, the late professor of history at Yale University, wrote of the Christian tradition on a scale that no one else attempted in the 20th century. Then after nearly a lifetime of studying the history of doctrine, Pelikan, a lifelong Lutheran, was received into the Orthodox Church, just a few years before he died last May at age 82.

Related articles and links

Pelikan is just one of a growing number of people who are joining the Eastern Orthodox Church. It makes me wonder if the 21st century will be the century of the Orthodox. Will there be a rebirth of the church's theological vision, if not its numerical growth? I'm not a prophet, nor do I want to evangelize evangelicals or reinvent Orthodox identity. But I would like to (a) offer a theological explanation for why I believe more and more Christians, especially evangelicals, may well be attracted to Orthodoxy in the 21st century, and (b) explain why more and more Orthodox need to become more evangelical.

I haven't merely thought about Orthodox and evangelical compatibility; for most of my life, I have lived it. I'm a Lebanese American who grew up in the Orthodox Church of Antioch and was transformed by Christ during my high school days in Wichita, Kansas, through the leading of evangelical friends. I did my doctoral studies under the late Orthodox theologian Fr. John Meyendorff. A portion of my scholarship over the past two decades has been devoted to introducing the Orthodox tradition to evangelical students and faculty in North America. I've also pioneered dialogues between Orthodox believers and evangelicals, and I have spoken on the subject at World Council of Churches meetings in Egypt and Germany.

Thus, I bring an intellectual and experiential knowledge of both communities, which is probably why I have a love/hate relationship with them. I'm not fully at peace with either one. Although I'm absolutely committed to the theological truth of the Orthodox church, I'm equally persuaded that we have not made that truth meaningful or accessible to our own parishioners or to those who peer inside our windows. And because of my Orthodoxy, I'm also committed to the evangelical faith.

The Rebirth of Orthodoxy

Scholars define the Great Tradition as the theological consensus of the first 500 to 1,000 years of Christian history (there is some disagreement on exact dates). This consensus encompasses the church's universally agreed upon creeds, councils, fathers, worship, and spirituality. Some key teachings and figures include the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Definition, the works of Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa), the spiritual writings of monks like Anthony of Egypt, and certain biblical commentaries and pastoral works.

During the past two decades, mainline and evangelical scholars have rediscovered the creative relevance of the Christian East, with its insistence on the authority of the first 500 years of Christian teaching and practice. One recent sign of evangelical interest is Thomas Oden's The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Life in Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), in which Oden uses the lowercase o in order to embrace all Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians who adhere to the first 500 years of the Great Tradition. Oden sets forth six layers of evidence to show that there is, indeed, a widespread rekindling of "the orthodox spirit" at the dawn of the 21st century. These layers include:

(1) Personal transformation stories. The lives of ordinary Christians and leading academics who have been dramatically changed by the testimony of the classic tradition, including Jaroslav Pelikan and Richard Swinburne, who became Eastern Orthodox, and Robert Wilken and Richard John Neuhaus, who joined the Catholic church.

(2) Faithful scriptural interpretation. Patristic methods of exegesis are receiving more attention now than at any time during the previous century. They are fast becoming a core concern of biblical studies, as evidenced by the growing number of ancient translations and commentaries being made widely available by publishing companies such as InterVarsity, Baker, and Eerdmans.

(3) The multicultural nature of orthodoxy. No modern multiculturalism is as deep or fertile as the ecumenical multiculturalism of antiquity. The cross-cultural richness of the early church is becoming increasingly evident today.

(4) Well-established doctrinal boundaries. After decades of uncritical permissiveness in the church, we are now witnessing a renewed energy for drawing boundaries around questions of religious truth. Thousands of the faithful are together relearning how to say no to heresy on behalf of a greater yes for the truth of classical orthodoxy.

(5) Ecumenical roots reclaimed. Confessing and renewing movements in Protestantism are changing local congregations and even entire denominations.

(6) Rise of a new ecumenism. Actually, what we're seeing is a revival of the ancient ecumenical method of theological decision-making set forth by Vincent Lerins: "We hold to that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all." Laypeople can easily grasp this, and they are doing so.

Organically Connected

The problem with the usual Protestant approach to the Great Tradition, however, is the gaps and inconsistencies in retrieval efforts. To many, the Great Tradition is like a library, a place you go to pick out the books you find most helpful. You can discard the ones that no longer seem relevant, while choosing the ones that have proven to be of lasting value.

So what makes me think that this renewed interest in the Great Tradition may lead to more Christians joining Eastern Orthodoxy, or at least embracing its theological vision? Simply put, I think more and more people will recognize the vital relationship between the major movements and themes of Christian antiquity and the organic life of the Eastern Orthodox Church from whence these themes came.

In two areas, especially, the Orthodox church has maintained its unbroken succession with Christian antiquity, and these areas are particularly attractive to an increasing number of Christians.

Scripture. We all agree that the Spirit's witness through the Bible is the main criterion of the church's faith. Tradition simply witnesses to, safeguards, and corrects itself by the integrity of the biblical message. But it was the churches of the early centuries (both East and West) that decided, piecemeal, which texts constituted the canon of Scripture, by virtue of their apostolic origin and wide acceptance within the worshiping community. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Spirit embraced the believing community through the choosing of the canon, rather than that the church chose the canon. Still, the canon was composed within the context of the believing community by members of the church. Scripture was never "external" to the believing community. This does not mean that Scripture owes its authority to the church, but that the Spirit was inseparably united to the church and its sacred texts. The church functioned as the mediating authority that bore witness to the work of God within it.

So whether they are aware of it or not, every time evangelicals pick up their Bibles, they are relying on the historic church's judgment on the colossal issue of canonicity! Without acknowledging it, evangelicals validate the authority of the Spirit-led tradition in determining canonicity. That same Spirit-led tradition has governed the Orthodox church over the centuries.
I believe an increasing number of people fascinated with the early church will see that the Spirit, the Bible, tradition, and real, historical, identifiable churches are inseparably united, then as now.

Historical continuity. I imagine that the deeper evangelicals delve into church history, the less they will confine the meaning of "orthodoxy" to the first 500 or 1,000 years. They will come to embrace the "whole story" of the faithful, not just the parts they personally like. They will discover that the fullness of Christian orthodoxy does not end with a date in the history books, but lives on in what Georges Florovsky called "the mind of the church" and what John Meyendorff described as the church's "living tradition." Evangelicals will see that the theological and institutional history of the Great Tradition is directly tied to the Great Church—namely, the contemporary Orthodox churches of the Middle East, Greece, Russia, Eastern Europe, and their children in the West. They will recognize that today's "rebirth of orthodoxy" cannot do justice to classical Christian faith without keeping it connected to the church that most fully produced and inherited its achievements. Few will dispute the historical continuity between the modern Patriarchate of Antioch, for example, and the Book of Acts.

Of course, faithfulness to the truth of the Great Tradition, not organizational continuity, is what counts most. My point is simply that those who value classical faith will increasingly engage with Orthodox churches, which incarnate the Great Tradition day by day as a living tradition. I'm not arguing that the Great Tradition is the exclusive property of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is not. Early church fathers, mothers, ascetics, councils, creeds, art, music, and spirituality are the rightful heritage of all orthodox Christians—Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox alike. There is no room here for Orthodox triumphalism or romanticism. All orthodox believers share a common ecumenical heritage. But few historians would dispute the conclusion that in comparison to the 20,000 Protestant denominations in existence today, the Orthodox community can most justifiably claim to be the fullest heir apparent of the Great Tradition.

Evangelical Orthodoxy

At the same time, my evangelical passions prompt me to suggest that this renewed fascination with the Great Tradition may indirectly revive Orthodoxy. And if it doesn't, it should. Little by little, our parishioners are being touched by evangelicals who are rediscovering the creative relevance of the Christian East and repackaging it far more attractively than we have been doing for ourselves.

But revival will not happen automatically. Dialogue at the local church level will help, even if evangelicals learn more from the Orthodox than the Orthodox are willing to learn from evangelicals. The time has come for us Orthodox to rediscover the evangelical character of our faith on its own terms, not defined by using some form of the model of evangelicalism. Because of our maximalist vision of theology, our evangelical identity will look and act very differently than yours. I wouldn't exhort my Orthodox brethren to regain their evangelical focus as passionately as I do in lectures and articles if I didn't think they would respond, and thankfully they are doing so in increasing numbers.

So I suggest that the Great Tradition of our Great Church cuts both ways, and we ourselves are judged by it! Even if the gospel is formally a part of the life of the Orthodox church, as we believe, that does not mean our people have understood and appropriated its message. "Catholicity" (i.e., "the whole and adequate" expression of the faith) must be discerned and applied if the church is to be spiritually viable in today's world.

More and more Orthodox, as they study the Great Tradition, are admitting that our leaders and laity don't have a mature grasp of their own faith. They recognize that the church isn't free from ethnocentrism or religious bigotry, that it hasn't contextualized its faith and liturgy in the modern world, and that it hasn't figured out how to relate to unchurched people in North America (its converts consist mostly of disillusioned believers from other Christian traditions).
More and more Orthodox, as they explore the early church afresh, see that there are parts of its ancient liturgies that seem to have no biblical justification and that we cannot simply regard the Reformation and the last millennium in the West as nothing more than a sideshow.

To be sure, there are countless cases of people whose spiritual lives are flourishing in vibrant Orthodox communities. Still, the most urgent need in world Orthodoxy is the need to engage in an aggressive "internal mission" of spiritual renewal and rededication of our priests and people to Jesus Christ. I know from experience that it's possible to be "religious, but lost." That's why all of us Orthodox—bishops, priests, and people—need to make the gospel crystal clear and absolutely central in our lives and in our parishes. We must constantly recover the personal and relational aspects of God in every life-giving action of the church. Naturally, if this happens, it will lead to a revival within Orthodoxy, which will cause the church to blossom in unprecedented ways.

Yes, these predictions and exhortations are speculative; they may never come to fruition as I hope and imagine. And I admit that my commitment to an evangelical Orthodoxy predisposes me to hope like this. That being said, I still see signs that suggest that these two great expressions of the Christian faith, the evangelical and the Orthodox, are gradually coming together in vision, if not in worship, and that the 21st century may be known as the Orthodox century.

Bradley Nassif is associate professor of biblical and theological studies at North Park University and is currently writing the Westminster Handbook to Eastern Orthodox Theology (Westminster John Knox, 2009). He is a member of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

Related Elsewhere:
The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Life in Christianity is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.
Christian History & Biography's issues Eastern Orthodoxy, How We Got Our History, and How We Got Our Bible are available at Christianity Today Library.

Christianity Today articles on Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism and the Great Tradition include:
Why I'm Not Orthodox An evangelical explores the ancient and alien world of the Eastern church. (January 6, 1997)

A Modest Proposal Nine tasks egalitarians and complementarians can pursue. (November 2005)

Orthodox Unity Autonomous Orthodoxy isn't an oxymoron. It's the fulfillment of a different kind of American dream. (July 1, 2004)

Don't Read the Bible 'Alone' Christopher Hall talks about how evangelicals should approach the church fathers. (November 1, 2003)

The Tradition Temptation Why we should still give Scripture pride of place (November 1, 2003)

The Young and the Restless The next generation rediscovers orthodoxy (Books & Culture, May 1, 2003)

Debate: Where is the Evangelicals' Authority? (Re:generation Quarterly, April 1, 1997)

What is Eastern Orthodoxy Anyway? The Eastern Orthodox faith is at the center of many of the millennial celebrations, but to many of our readers—specially the Western Protestants—it may be a mysterious, unknown quantity. (Christian History & Biography, April 1, 1988)