I am continuing to read Quakers and Nazis. It is a well-researched, fascinating history, but difficult to read. One reason the reading is difficult is that its author tends to wander away from his main subject (the Quakers in Nazi Germany). One example is his brief mention of strong Mennonite support for the Nazis. This surprised me. I found this difficult to believe, since Mennonites are pacifists, and often collaborate with Quakers in projects to promote peace. Here is the passage that disturbed me: (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘religion’
Mennonites and Nazis
Saturday, May 28th, 2016London’s Muslim mayor
Wednesday, May 11th, 2016By voting in Sadiq Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting, the UK capital has provided a much-needed role model for Muslim youth who feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are socially marginalised. Though he is not the only prominent Muslim in the UK, he is the first Muslim mayor of a major western city. The symbolism is important.
At a time of rising Islamophobia, the arrival in City Hall of the son of a Pakistani bus driver and a seamstress, who grew up on a council estate, is a celebration of multiculturalism. It is also a defeat for radicalism, be it the product of populist and far-right xenophobia or the poisonous teachings propagated by Isis.
Roula Khalaf, “Sadiq Khan offers new role model for young European Muslims”, Financial Times, 11 May 2016 (metered paywall).
Sadiq Khan was born in London in 1970 to immigrant parents from Pakistan. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting (a district of South London) from 2005 to 2016.
The FT either overlooked Calgary, Alberta (Canada), or does not classify it as a “major western city”, since Calgary, with a population of 1.2 million, also has a Muslim mayor. The Mayor, Naheed Nenshi, was born in Toronto in 1972 and raised in Calgary. His South Asian parents migrated to Canada from Tanzania. Nenshi was elected Mayor of Calgary in 2010, then re-elected in 2013 with 74% of the vote.
It is more accurate to describe Sadiq Khan as the first Muslim mayor of a major western capital city. (Calgary is Alberta’s largest city, but not the capital.)
Quakers
Tuesday, May 10th, 2016No wonder the Quaker community has always remained small: being a Quaker is difficult.
Hans A. Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness (University of Missouri Press, 1997), p. 10.
Quakers and Nazis – 1
Tuesday, May 10th, 2016In the Victoria Public Library I came across a remarkable book written by the German-American historian Hans A. Schmitt. As I read it, I will post notes, limited largely to excerpts from the book, intended for my own use, and for anyone else who might find them of interest.
Hans A. Schmitt (1921-2004) was raised in Frankfurt and Berlin until 1934, when he was sent by his Jewish mother, Elisabeth Schmitt, to a Quaker school in the Netherlands, now known as International School Eerde. He attended Eerde until 1937, when he moved to the USA to attend college at Washington and Lee (USA), continuing later with graduate study at the University of Chicago (MA, 1943; PhD, 1953). He taught history successively at the University of Oklahoma, Tulane, New York University and the University of Virginia.
Source: http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu01074.xml
The book that I am reading is titled Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness (University of Missouri Press, 1997). Everything that follows is copied verbatim from pages of the book, with the exception of text that I have enclosed in square brackets.
Why the title Quakers and Nazis, not Quakers against Nazis? Was not hostility part of the interaction between the two groups? On the contrary, Hans A. Schmitt’s compelling story describes American, British, and German Quakers’ attempts to mitigate the suffering among not only victims of Nazism but Nazi sympathizers in Austria and Lithuania as well. [excerpt from the jacket of the book]
[Quakers are known for their embrace of nonviolence.] George Fox [(1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers)] rejected
the Spanish inquisition
Wednesday, March 30th, 2016After the conquest of [the Muslims in] 1492, the [Spanish] monarchs inherited Granada’s large Jewish community. The fervid patriotism unleashed by the Christian triumph led to more hysterical conspiracy fears. Some remembered old tales of Jews helping the Muslim armies when they had arrived in Spain eight hundred years earlier and pressured the monarchs to deport all practicing Jews from Spain. After initial hesitation, on March 31, 1492, the monarchs signed the edict of expulsion, which gave Jews the choice of baptism or deportation. Most chose baptism and, as conversos, were now harassed by the Inquisition …. Under papal pressure. Ferdinand and Isabella now turned their attention to Spain’s Muslims. In 1499 Granada was split into Christian and Muslim zones, Muslims were required to convert …. But the Muslim converts (Moriscos) were given no instruction in their new faith, and everybody knew that they continued to live, pray, and fast according to the laws of Islam. ….
The first twenty years of the Spanish Inquisition were undoubtedly the most violent in its long history. There is no reliable documentation of the actual numbers of people killed. Historians once believed that about thirteen thousand conversos were burned during this early period. More recent estimates suggest, however, that most of those who came forward were never brought to trial; that in most cases the death penalty was pronounced in absentia over conversos who had fled and were symbolically burned in effigy; and that from 1480 to 1530 only between 1,500 and 2,000 people were actually executed. Nevertheless, this was a tragic and shocking development that broke with centuries of peaceful coexistence. The experience was devastating for the conversos and proved lamentably counterproductive. Many conversos who had been faithful Catholics when they were detained were so disgusted by their treatment that they reverted to Judaism and became the ‘secret Jews’ that the Inquisition had set out to eliminate.
Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (Knopf, 2014), p. 240.
engineers of jihad
Sunday, February 28th, 2016Among Islamist activists, why do we tend to see a “massive overrepresentation” of engineers and medical doctors, compared to graduates in law, humanities and “softer” social sciences? Two European social scientists joined forces to examine this hypothesis with care, processing an impressive amount of data. Malise Ruthven, an Anglo-Irish academic and writer, reviews their findings.
The final chapter [of the book] speculates on the cognitive and emotional traits shared by Islamists and adherents of other rightwing movements. Students of the humanities, like those of the
abolition of the death penalty
Monday, February 22nd, 2016Returning from his visit to Mexico, Pope Francis once again urges the world to abolish the death penalty.
“The commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ has absolute value and concerns both the innocent and the guilty,” Pope Francis said Sunday, urging that the death penalty be abolished.
Addressing a crowd of the faithful who were gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Pope Francis said, “All Christians and people of goodwill are called today to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, but also in order to improve prison conditions, in respect for human dignity of persons deprived of liberty.”
Bill Chappell, “Pope Calls On Christians To Abolish Death Penalty“, the two-way, NPR, 22 February 2016.
Here is a report on the similar petition made by Pope Francis nearly a year ago:
In a letter to the President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, Pope Francis expressed the Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty, calling it “inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed.” He continued, “It is an offence against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person, which contradicts God’s plan for man and society, and his merciful justice, and impedes the penalty from fulfilling any just objective. It does not render justice to the victims, but rather fosters vengeance.” He acknowledged society’s need to protect itself from aggressors, but said, “When the death penalty is applied, it is not for a current act of aggression, but rather for an act committed in the past. It is also applied to persons whose current ability to cause harm is not current, as it has been neutralized — they are already deprived of their liberty.” He also addressed questions of methods of execution, saying,
Islamophobia encourages terrorism
Sunday, February 14th, 2016I do not always agree with Hungarian-American billionaire/philanthropist George Soros, but one paragraph of his recent column caught my attention:
ISIS (and Al Qaeda before it) has recognized the Achilles
the UK as a Christian country
Wednesday, January 6th, 2016Some days “letters to the editor” is the best section of the newspaper. Today is one of those days. This is a superb letter, from a reader in the UK.
David Cameron
American exceptionalism
Monday, December 28th, 2015The idea of American exceptionalism, together with past American greatness, is often discussed in US politics, most recently in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The concept of American exceptionalism was introduced long ago by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic book, Democracy in America (1835/1840). The following sentence from volume 2, chapter 9 of the 1972 translation is frequently cited: