I FEEL THEREFORE I AM

We all ask, ‘Why?’ Why do some men think themselves entitled to compete in women’s sports? Why do people seem to hunt out supposed micro-aggressions in order to be offended? Why have institutions suffered a drop in membership? Why is there such an increase in identity politics? There are many subsidiary responses but the core answer is that when you turn your back on Christ you turn your back on more than Christ.

SEX MATTERS

Why is Western civilisation collapsing? The answer depends on whom you ask: every group and ideology has its own response. If only there was a disinterested social scientist willing to thoroughly examine many different cultures to see if there were any common factors in their decline.

Step forward J D Unwin, an ethnologist and social anthropologist at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, who a century ago painstakingly studied 80 primitive tribes and six known civilisations through 5,000 years of history. Unwin described his 600+ page book Sex and Culture as a ‘summary’ of his decades of research; a full disclosure would require seven volumes.

THE ACCEPTABLE PREJUDICE

Facing the alarming rise in anti-Christian prejudice and attacks throughout Europe, it is worth asking the question: Why do politicians and the mainstream media ignore this?

Don’t Mention The … This is the acceptable bigotry rarely addressed in the West. Marches are held in European cities to protest against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, week by week tens of thousands march through our cities in support of Palestine, but when was there a rally in defence of Christians? On rare occasions the mass media will report on atrocities committed against Christians in countries such as North Korea and Nigeria, but are Christians, never mind the wider populace, even aware of the extent of anti-Christian prejudice throughout the West?

A CLEAR EYED CHRISTIAN

What happens when the world’s most renowned Muslim apostate and leading New Atheist confesses she has become a Christian? Rejoicing and praise to God? Yes, but tempered by a cold shower of scepticism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Background Born in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali lived in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia before settling as a teenager in Kenya. Radicalised by a charismatic Saudi-funded teacher she became a devout Muslim who lived ‘by the Book, for the Book’. A member of the militant Muslim Brotherhood when ‘The Satanic Verses’ was published, she endorsed the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and took part in a public book-burning. Faced with a forced marriage she fled to the Netherlands as a refugee. She enrolled at  Leiden University and graduated with an MSc in political science.

UNHOLY ALLIANCE

The West is a civilisation in decline and is confronted by two major cultural movements determined to replace or fundamentally restructure it. We have witnessed our twin nemeses literally on the march since October 7 as militant Islamists and equally radical woke activists have led tens of thousands of the well-meaning on pro-Palestine and anti-Israel marches through our cities.

Militant Islam sees the West as decadent and is determined to supplant us. They are ably assisted by the metropolitan liberal elite who control our institutions, and their foot soldiers of the woke Left. They may seem unlikely bedfellows: the slogan ‘Queers for Palestine’ defies logic when homosexuals are thrown from tall buildings in Palestine. But different as they are, they have a unifying principle: a determination to undermine the culture of Western civilisation. Both ideologies are deeply hostile to individual freedom.

THE CHURCH IN A FALLEN WEST

The fourth and final part of ‘The State of the West’.

We are forced to acknowledge that from Sweden to Italy, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, the West is in dire straits. It is easy to highlight the obvious features producing social breakdown: uncontrolled immigration, identity politics, intolerant progressivism, supine politicians, the list goes on and on. The results are depressing.

The West Can’t Hang On For Much Longer

When we say immigrants should integrate with the settled community, just what are we asking them to integrate with? Here in the UK we  lead the world in family breakdown. Families composed of married couples are decreasing and cohabitation and single parent families increasing, with consequent results for children in terms of education, delinquency and teenage pregnancy. The level of loneliness among the elderly is a national embarrassment. We are renowned for our rates of binge-drinking. If you were a Muslim immigrant, would you wish to integrate with this?

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

The only good thing to emerge from the events of the past few weeks is that the moral bankruptcy of leftist progressives has been highlighted. Mobs of well-meaning ‘liberals’ have gathered to justify the carnage of Hamas, as though beheading babies ripped from the womb is understandable if done in the sacred name of a ‘rebellion’ to bring down the oppressor.

This is more than a natural support for the underdog, a David vs Goliath re-enactment. We are witnessing the ultimate outworking of the morally idiotic pursuit of ‘social justice’, the simplistic offspring of identity politics, in which the Bad People are those with power, and the Good People are those without it. In this scheme, the line between good and evil passes not through each human heart, but between identity groups, and it has infected every sector of our culture.

A DANGEROUS FAILURE

Second in a series looking at ‘The State of the West’.

Failure Those of us who can remember past conflicts involving Israel such as the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) can recall news clips from far away followed by conversations with family and friends admiring Israel’s determination not to be destroyed. What we don’t recall are mass demonstrations throughout the West with calls for jihad against Israel and support and justification for the evil acts of Hamas. What changed? The conflict is the same: it is the West which has changed.

‘Diversity is our greatest strength’ – we have heard this ad nauseam. But no one ever points out any verifiable benefits for all the West. Surely there must be something more than being able to eat khuushuur or boortsog in a Mongolian restaurant in Islington? Seen as a way of welcoming immigrants to the West without exacerbating tensions between indigenous people and newcomers, it is evident that multiculturalism has failed and is instead the cause of increasing tensions.

THE WEST IS FALLING

First in a series looking at ‘The State of the West’.

We may not like it but our culture is changing dramatically. The evidence is clear. Over the past few days thousands of people throughout the West have marched in support of Palestinians with the cry of ‘Palestine free, from the river to the sea’, a call for another Holocaust, the extermination of the Jewish people.

Pro Palestine Protestors

They are mostly young, idealistic, passionate and sincere, and few are Palestinian. Yet they want the extermination of the state of Israel: according to them Palestine must be Judenfrei. How did we get to the situation where our young people take to the streets with cries last heard on the lips of Nazi genocidal mass murderers?

WHO RULES?

We are told that to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise. The British people now know who rules over them, and it is not the British people.

Pro-Palestine Demonstration in London

The appalling events last weekend when Hamas terrorists broke into Israel slaughtering any Jews they could find, infants and elderly, men and women, individuals and families, evoked revulsion across the world. Except in certain quarters.