Category Archives: 9/11

Living with lacunae

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I’ve recently had cause to ponder situations where my need to understand something has been bouncing up against limits. Where it has become clear that there is no explanation to be had, that, instead, wisdom requires a living with the absence of an explanation – what philosophers call a lacuna, a gap in the understanding. I think this is healthy, but it has made me reflect on some areas in my life where I have come to what I now think of as premature certainty, a premature closing off of the gap, a refusal to live with the lacunae.

Two examples from the United States, as they are matters far from my daily life, and therefore quite clearly areas where there is no need for me to seek any certainty, where it is easiest.

The first is the collapse of WTC7. This does not make sense to me. The official explanation is that it was brought down by fire. The official explanation has been proven false. To an outside observer it looks very like a controlled demolition, but positing a controlled demolition requires a large amount of other hypotheses which very rapidly enter into the realms of madness. If I ponder this for too long then I end up in a place of extreme cognitive dissonance. So now I say: I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand what happened. It’s a gap.

The second is the 2020 election. I remember when it happened thinking that it was odd, and in particular I remember the fact that 18 of the 19 hitherto ‘bellwether’ counties had voted for Trump, so Biden winning in that context seemed very odd (the conventional explanation for that oddness is here). The ‘down the rabbit-hole’ explanation is here. Pondering the way in which US elections are carried out – and the role of the ‘voting machines’ – makes me think that, if there isn’t fraud, that is a result of divine grace rather than a robust system. I have no idea what the truth is. I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand what happened. It’s a gap.

I’m coming to see that desire for premature certainty as the high road to delusion (and also all sorts of conflicts), and I interpret it now in the light of lateral hemispheres. The desire for certainty is a sign of left-hemisphere capture, a hall of mirrors. Whereas sitting with paradox, with ignorance, with acknowledged lacunae – this is the way.

I am slowly becoming healthy again. Thanks be to God.

I don’t want to sound like a crazy person

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I don’t want to sound like a crazy person – which is an acknowledgement that I know I sometimes do.

However, I also know that sometimes the crazy person is right, and not just in a ‘stopped clock is right twice a day’ sense. Sometimes the crazy person is right simply because they are outside the social consensus, in the way of children and naked emperors; sometimes also the desire to be a child, and mock the nakedness of emperors, is a temptation for those who are more cynical than innocent.

So I accept the hazards involved in speaking from an unusual perspective. I accept most of all that ‘of course I could be wrong’ and perhaps what I most want from speaking about what I see is a refreshed dialogue, new perspectives that can show me where I am wrong. I am thirsty for the truth.

I have my own biases, most of which flow from a profound commitment to the Christian tradition, which has given me a respectful scepticism towards “the science” and a realistic appraisal of the nature of human evil.

All of which is a bit of throat clearing. This last year – these last few years – have been difficult ones. I have often proclaimed that I wanted to write more, and then not done so. So I’m not going to proclaim anything about how often I shall write. All I want to say is: I’m going to write some things that will make me sound like a crazy person. This is me trying to find the truth, and providing updates along the way – I am a work in progress.

The dilemma facing British Muslims after Westminster

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isis barbarity
I write these words the day after the horrific terrorist atrocity in Westminster. Khalid Masood was a person who subscribed to a militant form of Islamic thought. As such, the attack on the civilians walking along Westminster Bridge fits with the pattern of other recent ‘attacks-in-the-name-of-Islam’ in Berlin and Nice.

The British Council of Muslims released a statement saying “We are shocked and saddened by the incident at Westminster. We condemn this attack and while it is still too early to speculate on the motives, our thoughts and prayers are for the victims and those affected. We pay tribute too to the police and emergency services who handled this with bravery. The Palace of Westminster is the centre of our democracy and we must all ensure that it continues to serve our country and its people with safety and security.” The head of the Council, Harun Khan, said: “This attack was cowardly and depraved. There is no justification for this act whatsoever.”

There are no grounds for doubting the sincerity of these words. From the earliest times of Islamic military conquest there have been clear guidelines prohibiting the use of force against non-combatants. The companion of Mohammed and the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, taught the Muslim army “You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man.”

Even more than this, surprise attacks – which the attack in Westminster certainly was – are explicitly forbidden. Does this mean, then, that we can share in the liberal consensus as articulated by Western leaders like George W Bush and trust that Islam is a religion of peace? That those who commit ‘attacks-in-the-name-of-Islam’ simply do not understand what it is that they are claiming to protect?

I believe that the situation is more complex than this and that British Muslims are slowly being impaled upon a painful dilemma.

In August 1996, Osama bin Laden was careful to issue a declaration of war against the United States, which was published in the London newspaper Al Quds al Arabi; bin Laden knew his theology! This fatwa (religious proclamation) can be seen as initiating our present experience of ‘attacks-in-the-name-of-Islam’. It was followed two years later by a further fatwa issued by bin Laden and co-signed by several others, amplifying and expanding the declaration of war, and including the following sentence: “to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…”

Given that bin Laden was scrupulously trying to keep to Islamic law and theology, how could he come up with such a conclusion? His answer, when pressed on this, was to say that killing of innocent lives was legitimate if it was understood as retaliation for the killing of innocents by the United States. The Koran is quite clear that proportionate retaliation is fully acceptable, surah 2.178 stating “O believers! retaliation for bloodshedding is prescribed to you: the free man for the free, and the slave for the slave, and the woman for the woman”.

There is therefore a debate within Islam about whether bin Laden and those who have followed in his footsteps are in fact theologically justified to apply the rule of retaliation to the question of murdering innocent civilians. It is surely beyond dispute that the United States and its allies (including the United Kingdom) have been killing innocent people across the Middle East, most recently through the extensive use of drones. Where this situation obtains, what is the response of a faithful Muslim to be?

Some Muslims believe that bin Laden is not justified in applying the rule of retaliation in this situation, some do. Within Britain, according to the most thorough recent survey (ICM for Channel 4, April-May 2015) some 4% of British Muslims believe that it is acceptable to use terrorism for political ends, including suicide bombing. This works out to around 100,000 people.

Khalid Masood was one of them.

The dilemma that British Muslims face is that the theological debate is not some abstract matter without practical consequence; rather it is one that will govern their relationship with the wider British society. Moreover, the need for that community to make a very clear decision and act on it will only become stronger over time, as more and more terrorist atrocities take place.

When the ICM poll results were announced, Trevor Phillips, former head of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, wrote this: “There is a life-and-death struggle for the soul of British Islam — and this is not a battle that the rest of us can afford to sit out. We need to take sides… There is one truly terrifying finding [of the ICM poll]. Muslims who have separatist views about how they want to live in Britain are far more likely to support terrorism than those who do not. And there are far too many of the former for us to feel that we can gradually defeat the threat… Muslims want to be part of Britain — but many do not accept the values and behaviors that make Britain what it is; they believe that Islam offers a better future. And a small number feel that these sincerely held beliefs justify attempts to destroy our democracy. Britain’s liberal Muslims are crying out for this challenge to be confronted. The complacency we’ve displayed so far is leaving them to fight alone, and putting our society in danger. We cannot continue to sit on the fence in the hope that the problem will go away.”

If we wish to fully address the problem of our home-grown terrorism we need to be much more robust in the assertion of our values. That will mean saying that some values are better than others, and therefore some belief systems – those systems through which values are taught and embodied – are better than others. We cannot combat terrorism without a vigorous reassertion of our own inherited beliefs and values. Ultimately, that means Christianity. It is a sign of the painful nature of the dilemma facing British Muslims that the peaceful majority will only be able to root out the violent minority if the wider community becomes much more devoted to a non-Islamic faith.

One land, one law, one language

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77-tavistocksquare
It’s about culture, not race. Whenever there is a discussion about how different people from different backgrounds might be able to co-exist, and potential problems are pointed out – like the fact that ‘co-existence’ might not be the intention of some groups – then the word ‘racism’ gets thrown out.

Racism as an insult has functioned to shut down the debate about immigration that our society really needs to have had. It does that because of the dominance of political correctness in our political conversation. Unless we can signal our virtue by repeating the necessary platitudes then society simply shuns us. (I saw a story that ran before the Brexit vote, about a civil servant that had taken unpaid leave from her post in order to actively support the Leave campaign. It was clearly indicated to her that she had committed career suicide – I hope that the referendum result has changed things for her!)

This is why we need to be clear that the issue is not about race – that is, it is not about particular physical characteristics that a person may or may not have. No, it is about culture, that is, it is about the ways in which we order our common lives together.

Different cultures do things differently. Some cultures encourage free speech and individual creativity; other cultures emphasise the importance of community and shared endeavour. Some cultures prohibit the eating of pork; others delight in bacon butties; others enjoy deep-fried Mars bars (allegedly).

Where there is a healthy distance between cultures, their diversity can be celebrated. Tensions arise when different cultures are required to live in close proximity one with another. At that point, where the cultures clash in significant ways, there is a significant risk of conflict. Put in summary form, if you add cultural diversity to immediate proximity then the result will be conflict.

This is what we have seen in our nation in recent decades. Enoch Powell infamously warned of the ‘rivers of blood’ that would flow from uncontrolled immigration, and that is not a bad description of London after the terrorist outrages of 7/7.

Where I very much disagree with Powell’s analysis, however, is that some groups of immigrants have been able to assimilate into our country immensely successfully, whereas others – a minority – not only have failed in the past but show no indication of succeeding at any time in the future.

So, for example, the ‘Windrush’ immigrants that came in the 1950s came from a distinctly British culture – they were, in general, English-speaking, Protestant, cricket-loving, formed within a state that had adopted British common law. Yes, they faced immense racism on their arrival (to our shame) but in many ways these immigrants were ‘more British than the British’. In other words, once the distraction of racism had been removed, their culture could be seen as profoundly compatible with what already existed here, and the new things that they brought, like reggae, could easily be absorbed.

In contrast to this are cultures with values that are inimical to classical British values, which seem to have established semi-autonomous enclaves within our cities – with horrifying consequences as in Rotherham. Some cultures contain deeply engrained misogyny; worse, that misogyny is particularly focussed on white women who are seen as legitimate targets for abuse, as their behaviour (wearing normal Western clothes) shows that they are not respectable and honourable.

It is not possible to have these two cultures co-existing in one space. In the end, one will displace the other. I would argue that if there is to be any form of healthy assimilation and co-existence between people of different cultures then there has to be an acceptance of ‘one land, one law, one language’. In other words, that if people of a different culture are to live peaceably in the ‘one land’ then the primacy of the existing law has to be paramount ‘one law’ and in order to engage with the wider society there has to be an acceptance that there is only ‘one language’ that can be used in any public forum. To accept that a different language is legitimate is to embed divisions with pernicious consequences over time.

We need, as a single British society, to be very clear about what sort of culture we wish to see affirmed and maintained in this land. The existing culture has been under sustained assaults for many decades, and the Tony Blair-led surge in immigration that has so changed the texture of British life needs to be addressed from a position of strong confidence in classic British values.

What does that look like? I am very fond of the story about Sir Charles Napier, who in the mid-nineteenth Century was the Commander-in-Chief in India. There was an Indian custom called Suttee, which required a widow to be burned alive on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. This had been banned several years before, and Napier was being petitioned by Hindu priests to allow a resumption of the practice. As recorded by his brother William, Napier said this: “Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”

This sort of robust and unapologetic assertion of British values is desperately needed in our present context. It is because we have seen such assertions as ‘in bad taste’ that we have ended up in the predicament that we are in. We need both the scope and the confidence to assert our own distinct English and British identities, in order to ensure that the dominant culture in this land is not eventually eclipsed by the present toxic and aggressive alternative.

I am also convinced that such a robust assertion of ‘Britishness’ would be welcomed by the overwhelming majority of immigrants, who quite often identify more strongly with Britain than many who have been born here. After all, they have chosen to come here as a deliberate act, rather than simply enjoying the good fortune of being born in the best place in the world. Those who hate Britain and all that it stands for are a distinct minority, but they are a minority which need to be engaged with and required to accept that we cannot have different cultures co-existing in the one space, for it can only lead to conflict. One land, one law, one language.

(A Jeremy Creake article for the Courier)

Not all religions are the same

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Courier article

I write this on the day after the attack by militant Muslims on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, where journalists, cartoonists and police were murdered in cold blood – all for the ‘crime’ of causing offence to the Prophet Muhammed. There is much lamentation at this turn of events and, worse, lots of cringeworthy hand-wringing from the politically correct and morally bankrupt who try to say that the cartoonists brought it on themselves, that perhaps they should have been more polite to the violent fascists. The contradictions in the modern secular West are bearing down upon us with a vengeance.

I have written before in these pages (September of 2012) about the ‘taking of offence’, and how that is understood as being a sin in Christianity, as it is a form of pride; and I have also pointed out in these pages (last November) that Jesus himself was often exceptionally rude, most often to those in positions of power and authority who were exploiting the poor and vulnerable. I have no doubt whatsoever that if Jesus had been gifted with the art of illustrating rather than the art of speaking then he would have portrayed the Pharisees of his day with images that were just as rude as those that the Charlie Hebdo journalists have produced.

After all, who are the people who are trying to rule by fear and intimidation? Of course we can point out all the ways in which the oppressive West acts with injustice in areas of the world, as we blindly allow the worship of Mammon to destroy all that makes for a joyful humanity. The point is, however, that we are able to say those things. The West has within itself the possibility of transformation. It is the very fact that we have a culture of open criticism that makes the culture of the West worth defending, even whilst admitting to its many and diverse sins.

What this campaign of intimidation against the West is trying to do is to force us to renounce our fundamental values, to put a boundary around what we can or cannot say. This is not something that the West can tolerate, on pain of self-dissolution. To be the West simply is to be the place where there is freedom of speech, where there is protection for the giving of offence. After all, where is the merit in allowing freedom of speech where that only applies to pleasant speech? No, it is precisely the speech that is rude and offensive and vulgar and obscene and blasphemous that is the speech that needs to be protected. It is only when that form of speech is protected that the dynamism at the heart of Western culture can flourish – and it is that dynamism which allows for so many of our blessings across so many different spheres.

This campaign of intimidation is not new. It has been in plain view for all astute observers since at least the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, and the origins run very deep in Islamic thought. This is not a campaign being waged by stupid people. On the contrary, the intellectual roots are profound and subtle, and not without merits from which we can learn. However, what we in the West need to decide is whether to confront the intimidation or to submit to it. In other words, do we actually wish to retain a culture which allows for freedom of speech or do we not? Let us not be in any doubt that this is what is at stake; that this battle has been waged for at least a generation; and – let us be very clear – we are losing.

After all, how many newspapers have published the ‘offensive’ cartoons this morning? Why so few? The answer is obvious – it is because they are afraid. They have already accepted the status of dhimmitude, which is the term given to those who are tolerated by Islam. Those who wish to subordinate the West can see that our cultural and political leaders lack the testicular fortitude required to stand up to intimidation, and so they pursue their course of action, confident of their eventual victory. They believe that the tide of history is with them and there is, as yet, very little evidence to say that their perception is wrong. They do not have to do much more – simply set the agenda of terror, and allow demographics to do the rest.

I have two questions following on from the atrocities in Paris. The first is: will the West ever recognise that not all religions are the same and that, in stark contradiction to the accepted narrative, the fruits of democracy and free speech in the West are the direct consequence of the deep action of Christian theology within our culture? The accepted narrative, after all, with its fetishisation of Galileo and Darwin, casts the Christian authorities as those who are hostile to free speech, to intellectual exploration, to the vulgar dynamism which is at one and the same time the most attractive and most alarming feature of our society. This accepted narrative is a travesty of the truth, but, much worse than that, it forms part of the intellectual blindness of our political and cultural elite which in itself prevents a full and effective engagement with the fascists who are attacking us. Unless our elite can recognise that we need to rest our values on a religious foundation then we will inevitably lose ground to those who can recognise that reality.

My second question is for those who wish to apologise for the Islamic faith. Does Islam have within itself the resources required to police the violent terrorists? Those resources are both doctrinal and practical. After all, the list of terrorist atrocities that have been carried out by Muslims over the last thirty years and more is extensive, and the YouTube beheadings carried out by ISIS are simply the latest example of a well-established trend. Those who carry out such barbaric acts are explicitly and avowedly doing so as Muslims, in the name of Muhammed, and they cry out ‘Allahu Akhbar’. It is not enough for other Muslims to say ‘that is not true Islam’. The links between the terrorists and long-established Islamic teaching are not trivial. The links between extremist behaviour and extremist preaching, such as the Wahhabi strand of Islamic thought financially backed and promulgated by the Saudi government, are not minor.

Yes, the situation has many complexities which I have not been able to engage with in this article, yet I do find myself wearying of those who take refuge in moral complexity and equivocation, when by so doing they give clear succour and encouragement to the enemy. We need to recover an awareness of our own religious roots, of the vitality and dynamism of the Christian faith – yes, even the Church of England! Without it, all that we most value in our society will pass away. The fundamental clash is clear. We either kowtow and appease those who wish to police what we are allowed to say, or else, with Jesus, we revel in our rumbunctious rudeness and tell the enemy where to go.

Some brief thoughts about that ‘mosque’

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It is proposed to build an Islamic centre, including a mosque, at a site in close proximity to ‘Ground Zero’ in New York.

– All sides agree that this is perfectly legal; that’s not really the issue.
– The issue is whether it is morally right or sensible for this to take place.
– Much fuss about ‘causing offence’ – I tend to think that being offended is a sin and this isn’t a solid ground for anything righteous.
– IF (and it’s a big IF) there is a desire for triumphalism behind the establishment of this centre then it should be opposed, not on grounds of it being offensive, but on the grounds that the war against the khawarij continues, and it makes no sense to gift a propaganda victory to the enemy.
– If, however, the development of the centre is straightforward and above board then I see no reason to oppose it.

My two pennies, for what they’re worth.
BTW I enjoy political cartoons – here’s some that I thought were ‘on point’:

One more thing about 9/11

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James commented that the Popular Mechanics book does a thorough job of debunking the 9/11 conspiracy theories. It doesn’t, and David Ray Griffin does a very thorough debunking job on the Popular Mechanics book. I said this to James in the comments, which is worth bringing up front:

“If you don’t know then you obviously haven’t read it. I have read it and it’s crap. The site that I linked to does a much more coherent and thorough job in debunking the conspiracy theories, can I suggest you read that and become a little better informed?

I could easily be wrong about this – particularly the second as I’m not a physicist or civil engineer – but the pathetic level of argumentation put out by the Popular Mechanics book, mindlessly parroted by other ignoramuses, only encourages the speculation. The best thing about the site that I linked to is that it takes the conspiracy arguments seriously and takes the time to show why they are wrong – and I accept that most of them are wrong.”

In particular, after posting what I wrote yesterday, I watched this video at that site, which I think is very good, and, with the accompanying analysis, goes a long way to answer one of my core concerns about ‘the gravity of the question‘:

I remain sceptical about my scepticism because this whole issue provokes a lot of cognitive dissonance in me, and as I’ve said before I’d be tremendously grateful to be relieved of it.

Two things that I don’t believe about 9/11

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Gave a talk about the 9/11 truth movement to the ‘learning church’ here on Mersea, which has emboldened me to write something more on the blog. (In other words, I’m persuaded that I’m not completely bonkers, even if I remain a fan of Sarah Palin.) Hit ‘full post’ for text.

The first thing that I don’t believe about the official account of what happened on 9/11 is that Hani Hanjour was the pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon. These are my reasons:
1. Hanjour was someone ‘who couldn’t fly at all’ according to the people who tried to train him (source). He was refused permission to rent a Cessna in August 2001 because his flying skills were so poor.
2. The path that flight 77 took in order to crash into the Pentagon was an extremely demanding one that would have taxed an experienced military pilot.

The pilot executed a 270 degree turn whilst simultaneously dropping by 7,000 feet, before levelling off to fly just above ground level in order to hit the Pentagon’s ground floor.
3. This flight path took Hanjour past the White House, past the obvious and immediate wall of the Pentagon (where Rumsfeld’s office was based) and into the only wall of the Pentagon that had – purely coincidentally – recently been reinforced to withstand an impact.

The second thing that I don’t believe about the official story of 9/11 is that the three skyscrapers toppled that day were brought down by fire. These are my reasons:
1. No steel skyscrapers either before or since have collapsed as a result of fire. This includes skyscrapers where the fires burnt hotter, for longer, over a wider area than on 9/11. Fire damage looks like this:

This is the Windsor tower in Madrid, which caught fire in February 2005. Despite having intense fires burning for many hours it did not collapse – indeed, the building functioned in exactly the way anticipated by the relevant fire regulations.

2. The collapse of the three skyscrapers on 9/11 exhibited a large number of features that are inconsistent with fire damage. These include

  • sudden onset,
  • symmetrical collapse,
  • vertical collapse,
  • total collapse,
  • at virtually free-fall speed,
  • within substantially its own footprint.

3. There is an extremely well understood means of collapsing buildings which produces these effects (controlled demolition). If the controlled demolition hypothesis is ruled out then it is proven that the laws of physics can be overcome in the right circumstances (eg conservation of momentum).

I don’t know what this means in a wider sense as I find most of the more plausibly worked out conspiracy theories incredible. Yet as Mr Holmes once said, once the impossible has been ruled out, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the case.

For an alternative view, go here.

If I was really a conspiracy nut…

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In other words, someone who didn’t just believe that we’d been lied to about 9/11, but that it was all a Dick Cheney plot, then I’d be very alarmed by this (H/T OSO) because it would be a signal that the election will be stolen by the Republicans with a view to installing Palin as an Evita-type character.

But of course, Cheney wasn’t responsible for 9/11, so it is all nonsense.