Mike Jackson, I am not a theologian, or a religious person, but had a christian upbringing and education. Through work and personal life I have encountered 'issues' around religions, much of it founded on ignorance and mistrust, but some of it founded on hatred going back through many generations.

It is absurd to assume all Christians have the same set of right/wrong values and integrity, but Christians tend to assume Moslems do, and Moslems make the same assumptions about Christians.

Some white people don't 'understand' racism until they have travelled abroad and been treated as a second class citizen, because they were white. I have been abroad and been discriminated against for not being a Moslem. I thought it funny, then I felt annoyance and frustration, then I thought about my attitudes. This was before 9/11.

Since 9/11 an awful lot more info is available about Islam, but it tends to concentrate on exposing the hypocrisy of Islam, rather than the hypocrisies of Christianity. I have no desire to live under Islamic Law!

It is VERY difficult for one Moslem to denounce another for being mad/bad/stupid. UK media do not slag off a convicted criminal for being a bad christian, even if they have had their hands in the collection money. It would be wrong to denounce all Moslems for not denouncing the minority of Moslems who are evil.

Mike Jackson (contd)! Sorry had to post and dash!

A goblet raised from the Mary Rose has a Latin Inscription "With God on our side, how can we lose?"

I presume the goblet was made after Henry viii had declared independence from Rome, but England was not a Protestant country. The Mary Rose was not built to do anything but fight in battles in the Channel/North Sea/Irish Sea etc. Certainly no further. There is no reason to suppose that their opponents would not have had similar goblets with the same Christian message.

Robert Christopher

Thanks for that.

Powell was about 37 in 1949 and was thought to have become anti-imperialist a couple of years earlier.

Mike Jackson, people use religion to justify hatred. It is reasonable to fear anyone who has sworn to kill, whatever their motivation.

The Thread is about Enoch Powell, and I assume his original comment was about immigration, at that time from the West Indies and Indian sub Continent. I doubt that Powell envisaged Religious hatred, just cultural/racial, and I suspect it was the average white anglo-saxon that he feared would hate/distrust the immigrants -and he was right initially.

I don't think Powell envisaged how a minority of Moslem extremists could create so many problems around the world. OBL may be dead, but his fanatics can point to his legacy, and smile, thanking God. In the 1400s, Joan D'Arc was no Saint to the English!

Alan Reed, Powell only became anti colonialist after the failure of his first great cause. He opposed granting independence to India, which he later claimed was the impulse that led him to stand for Parliament. He wanted to be Viceroy of India. He learned Urdu so as to be prepared.

diogenes

Quite. So Powell was imperialist first and later anti-imperialist.

Wiki sums it up:

"Little Englander" is an epithet applied in criticisms of British nationalists, English nationalists, or English people who are regarded as xenophobic and/or overly nationalistic and are often accused of being "ignorant" and "boorish". It is sometimes applied to opponents of globalism, multilateralism and internationalism, such as those who are against membership in the European Union.

Originally it applied to a wing of the Liberal Party opposed to expansion of the British Empire in the 19th century, who wanted "England" to extend no farther than the borders of the United Kingdom.

I think Enoch became a Little Englander of the original kind.

Mike Jackson, I'm no theologian either, but I've long enjoyed this passage:

"There is one more anecdote which sounds authentic and relevant. We have no date for it, but it would be odd if it were not at least a year or two after 1588. Philip was walking in the inner garden of San Lorenzo when he heard the gardener declaring that after so much work done to train the pear trees on the south wall, God simply could not allow the promised fruit to be blighted. Philip called to him in a sterner tone than he commonly used among his monks; 'Brother Nicholas! Brother Nicholas, mind what you say! It is impiety, and almost blasphemy, to presume to know the will of God. It comes from the sin of pride. Even kings, brother Nicholas,' he went on more gently, 'must submit to being used by God's will without knowing what it is. They must never seek to use it.' "

from 'The Armada', by Garrett Mattingly.
============

diogenes, thanks for that info about EP. I am not sure whether to feel impressed or appalled that his motivation for entering politics was to be Viceroy of India.

I don't think EP foresaw the Green Blob enforcing fuel poverty on rural India, (and elsewhere) so that many would keep dying of 19th century problems. If the impoverished of the world could wage war on modern Green Imperialists, many more lives in India could be saved/rescued. The Green Blob would rather focus world attention on how the Indian Government wants to impoverish them.

Golf Charlie
Re Mary Rose goblet
God on Our Side

golf c

I suspect that Enoch would have been strongly in favour of the people of India doing everything in their power to deliver economic success. But, he was a strange man, Whenever I saw in-depth interviews with him on TV, he came across in a very strange way - such as delivering quotes from Goethe in a German accent that was unrecognisable. Who else would do a translation of a book of Herodotus in the style of the Authorised Version of nthe Bible? Clever but not knowledgeable.

Or should that be knowledgeable but not clever...

awaiting the usual sort of response from dung....now tht his idea has been exploded, he was correct all along

SandyS, thank you for that link. It neatly sums up the present position, with the added twist that the Christian West is now subjected to another faith's war.

During his lifetime, my memory is that he was viewed as a bit of an oddball. In hindsight, I can understand why politicians of all parties were happy to have his support on an issue, but didn't necessarily want to share a platform with him.

Is anything more known about why he saw Viceroy of India as his destiny/birthright? I am not sure whether to think delusional, pretentious or simply the highest office he could hold as a British Citizen.

I have never been to India, but separately, both my parent's families had interesting connections in the 15(?) years upto and including Independence

Rereading this thread, I think that Martin A is right in suggesting that Powel probably was autistic to some degree. I think I read once that he was a fine pianist but because he was not good enough to make a career out of it he gave it up altogether and never touched a piano again. Kingsley Amis is amusing in his memoirs. This was his last encounter:

"My last meeting with Powell, and I mean last, as the reader will see, took place at the Spectator party in 1988. I spotted the great man standing by himself, wearing his familiar look of slightly resentful slight bafflement, went up to him and said: "Hallo, Mr Powell, it's Kingsley Amis", all unaware that I was about to receive the most economical put down of my career. So far. Julian Barnes, who was standing next to me, confirms that I pronounced my name loudly, slowly and clearly.

Powell pursed his lips like a flautist's. The notation does not exist that would indicate how short a time it took him to pronounce his next vocable. "Who?"
"Kingsley......Amis", as before or more so in all respects.
"Oh."
That was it and no wonder that within the next three seconds I had spotted someone I knew standing nearby with whom I simply had to go and have a word.

Again what can one say? ........But it also perhaps needs saying that that the world is built on people babbling things like, "Of course, my dear fellow, how very absurd of me not to have recognised you", when they have no idea whom they are talking to, and if you are going into politics with hope of success, instead of some obscure branch of the truth-at-any-price business, you had better come to terms with that widely grasped fact."

Amis is surely right, and it does illustrate the lack of empathy and I would suggest the reason why Powell seemed to have no notion how people would react to his words, which may have been right but were also inflammatory. As a consequence he made it very difficult to address these issues without stirring up the determined to be offended brigade.

Robert Christopher, we have reached the position in the UK around equality awareness, that a white anglo-saxon would not be allowed to say what Trevor Phillips has just said.

If more publicity could be given to moderate Moslems who are able to denounce the extremists, and their views and actions.

Those who wanted to appease that nice Herr Hitler back in the 1930s, thought that was the way to secure peace.