Jihadist Single

Sunday Update: Oooh! The "graffiti" comment I made on another blog was quoted by Mark Steyn. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that he is an awesome writer, so I am flattered.

***
I made the mistake of checking the online news when I returned home from Bonfire Night. The story of the Fort Hood massacre was just breaking; the murderer had been named. To be frank, if his name had been reported as Pte. Robert Lee Smith, I would have gone straight to bed. Just another nutter. But his name was Major Nadal Malik Hasan, so I stayed up and waited for more news.

At the time various news outlets were turning somersaults in their efforts to assure everyone that this had not been a terrorist or a Muslim attack. People were unsure if Major Hasan had been (for the initial reports were that he had been killed) a Muslim and, if he had been a Muslim, if he had been a convert. Apparently, media people thought he "looked white" whereas it was quite obvious to multicultural me that he "looked Arab." He could have been a Maronite Christian, of course, but Maronite Christians don't really jump to mind when bullets are flying.

Early blog comments were divided among people who assumed the massacre was a Muslim thing, people who scolded those who assumed it was a Muslim thing and people who came up with narratives that made Nadal Malik Hasan the principal victim. People suggested secondhand Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, caught from the returning soldiers he, an army shrink, had counselled. His cousin claimed that Hasan had been made fun of by other soldiers for being Middle-Eastern and a Muslim.* And, inevitably, some brainy person observed that Hasan was a devoutly religious 39 year old with no wife and no children.

Aha. The argument ad singleton.

Single women over 30 often complain that Single men over 30 are weird, twisted, crazy. A married high school buddy consoled me with this thought when I was 30 and unmarried. She felt there was simply something WRONG with bachelors over 30. Women over 30, she said, were different. We're fine. It's the men. Bonkers.

But I disagree.

My very first boyfriend was from the Middle East, a refugee, and I remember going for a picnic with him and two of his friends. The friends knew I was Catholic because they had wanted to know if I put out, and Iqbal (not his real name) honestly admitted that I did not and explained why. I think the friends were all amazed since I was, you know, a Canadian girl, and it had not yet occured to them that not all Canadian girls put out.

This Catholicism of mine inspired Iqbal's friends to ask me about it, so I answered, using a clover to explain the Blessed Trinity. (Iqbal, unimpressed, ripped the Son and Holy Spirit from the clover, presented me with the one-leafed clover and said, "THIS is God.") But even more mysterious to Iqbal and his friends than the Blessed Trinity was the celibate priesthood.

"I don't believe it," said one Muslim flatly. "It is impossible for a man. Impossible."

Then, as now, I had many celibate male friends who weren't even priests, and I said so.

"Impossible," said Iqbal's friend. "Or they are gay."

Iqbal often complained that since I was not putting out, his friends were calling him gay. I rolled my eyes. Eventually Iqbal suggested that we get married. My first proposal! I broke up with him.

This idea that celibacy is impossible for men or that celibacy curdles the male brain is not limited to Middle Eastern refugees. When Psychotic Single shot all those women in his health club, the internet featured American men saying, in effect, "Poor guy. No sex for 20 years. What do you expect?"

I expect long-term celibate men to be as non-violent as any other celibate man. I expect them to be like celibate women, for that matter. Set in their ways. Perhaps a little too interested in their creature comforts. Perhaps a bit insular. Either untidy or fanatically clean. Their worst temptation? Self-pity, perhaps. Self-absorption. I do not expect them to get a gun and start shooting.

From all that I've read, I'm inclined to think Nadal Hasan had what Daniel Pipes calls "Sudden Jihad Syndrome." It is quite clear he identified as a Muslim, although he hid this when he first joined the military. And his brand of Islam was a dodgy one. He has been saying seditious things about America and America's war against jihadists for quite awhile. He is alleged to have blogged in defense of suicide bombings. He signed up with a Muslim matrimonial service, but was too picky about the Perfect Muslim Wife to find a match.

In the days before the massacre he walked around in Muslim religious dress, handed out copies of the Koran and gave away his possessions. This was a man who had thought things through in advance and was performing butt-covering acts of dawa and charity before he was "martyred." Amusingly (for me), he didn't quite manage the martyrdom part. He's still alive.

Why Hasam decided to betray his country and his fellow soldiers in a treasonous jihadi fit is still a mystery. I hope we find out if and when he gains consciousness. I doubt it had much to do with being Single and just wanting to collect the 72 virgin sex-slaves some believe are meted out by God to Muslim martyrs. If, however, that's how self-pity took him, I will be completely disgusted. The Single life can be a lonely one, the Single life can be a challenge, but the Single life is no reason or excuse for murderous violence.


Update: Poll: I have been mocked off and on my entire life (including on this Bonfire Night) for having unusual hair. How about you? Is there something about you that has inspired jokes from friends and insults from strangers? If so, please mention below and also tally the number of people you have killed in retaliation.

Backlash Watch: The BBC reports that the Arab-American Institute has had ONE threatening phone call. The population of the USA is over 360 million, so do the math. Why is it that when men claiming to be devout Muslims kill people in the USA or Britain, there is an immediate fear that the majority Christian population is going to slaughter the Muslims in its midst? I mean, has that ever happened? In the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, the only Muslims around who were killed were killed by the Muslim attackers.

Update 3: Unbelievable. Muslim guy on Belief.Net suggests the American soldier of Jordanian-Palestinian descent carried out his massacre because it was Guy Fawkes Day. The stupidity of this will be more clear to British and European readers when I explain that there is no Guy Fawkes Day in the USA (or Jordan or Palestine or Canada or anywhere outside the UK). H/T Kathy Shaidle.

Other Kinds of Poverty

This morning I was awakened by the sound of BBC Radio. I wriggled closer to B.A., who was much warmer than the air outside the duvet, and listened as a woman's old-fashioned BBC voice accused an American woman's voice of "snobbery".

The issue was a prestigious book award, for which a glamour-model named Jordan aka Katie Price was once nominated. The American woman argued that Jordan hadn't actually penned the ghostwritten book, that this nomination was a slap in the faces of real writers, and that this fawning over celebrities would prevent real writers from being published. The money publishers made from celebrities' "books" would not trickle down to real writers but would go to million-pound advances to other pseudo-literary celebrities. A British male voice, belonging to someone in publishing, pooh-poohed her arguments. Novels by real writers account for a small percentage of overall sales. Et cetera. The word "snobbishness" was repeated in the "posh" old-style BBC accent.

Jordan, or Katie Price, belongs to a class of woman that does not exist in Canada. She is, or was, a glamour model, which means a woman who poses barebreasted for tabloid newspapers. Naked breasts are not a staple of Canadian (or, I think, American) newspapers. It is impossible for a woman to launch a lucrative career merely by straightening her hair, painting herself brown and exposing her breasts to the camera. Any would-be porn stars move to the USA. To put all this into perspective, Canada's most high-profile beauty seems to be the Governor-General, upon whom legions of male journalists seem to have a crush.

I don't yet quite understand the workings of Britain's celebrity factory, but it seems to be inextricably linked to visual media. The fastest way to become a U.K. celebrity is to appear on television, usually reality television. Then the celebrity is featured in the kind of semi-pornographic gossip magazines I find in barber shops and our local Chinese takeaway. Katie Price, with her balloon-sized artificial breasts, alleged sexual promiscuity and alleged poor parenting skills, is a staple feature of these rags.

Now, what I find most staggering about Katie Price is that she is a hero and role model not only to women across the UK, but to little girls. Not to all women, obviously. Not to all girls. At the risk of some BBC-voiced Englishwoman accusing me of snobbishness, I will hazard a guess that Katie Price is a hero and role model to neither university-educated women nor the granddaughters of earls.

There is more to poverty than not having bread on the table, than not having a roof over your head. For the most part, the United Kingdom has eliminated homelessness and starvation. Unless he or she is insane or is actually hiding from the welfare system, the poorest man or woman in the U.K. is not going to starve or freeze to death.

No-one in my part of Scotland goes without shoes or a coat. And yet a short walk from the Historical House (which, I hasten to point out, we do not own) leads to a world of poverty, a world of obscenties, screaming mothers, public drunkeness, complexions pasty with malnutrition, obesity, grafitti, shuttered shops--and yet rose gardens of great beauty. They are amazing, those little gardens. And if poor people do not have a bit of land where they live, they can sign up for an "allotment": a bit of public land set aside for people to tend.

Love of gardening and admiration for Katie Price. What a strange juxtaposition. But I find it very strange, this living cheek-by-jowl with council housing and teenagers who curse as they breathe. And I've worked for the Ontario Ministry of Social and Family Services: I've given out support cheques to crack addicts and prostitutes. I've worked alongside madwomen who scooped what they could from the food bank we all volunteered at. But I've never been around people who despise books, good grammar, clear speech, education, good architecture--in fact, most of the things I value--as "posh".

"I asked them, what do you mean by posh?" a British schoolteacher told me of his students. But they couldn't explain. Instead they said, "You're posh."

This hatred of "posh" is as weird and alien to me as the balloon-breasted glamour model Katie Price, as the idea that outrage that she should get a literary award for her ghostwriter's efforts is merely "snobbery".

Remember, Remember...Wait, I'm Offended.

Consoling Updates Below!

So I was eating a croissant the other day, celebrating the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, as one does, you know, and it struck me that Guy Fawkes Day offends me so terribly that my whole life will be negatively impacted if a single neighbour builds a bonfire on the 5th of November. Weep, weep, sob, sob.

I mean, Guy was Catholic, and I am Catholic, so if my neighbours set fires to commemorate Guy's failed attempt to blow up the British Houses of Parliament, aren't they, in effect, burning ME? Is this neighbourly? Is this respecting of my minority rights? Is this at all consistent with Britain Today? I am just so totally offended, I think I'll take my woes straight to the European Court of Human Rights.

Just kidding!

Actually, if you're the sort of Catholic who enjoys getting offended, there are opportunities galore in Scotland to revel in the unfairness of it all. First of all, there's Parade Season, when the 40 or so Orangemen left in Scotland go to a different town every Saturday and march through it. You can hear them coming a mile away. First there's the drums:

BOOM BOOM BOOM

And then there's the flutes:

TWEETLE TWEETLE TWEETLE

And next thing you know there's a youthful marching band tweetling and booming by, closely followed by some fat men of all ages in bowler hats and orange sashes. Behind them are some flags of Britain and the Red Hand of Ulster and the Orange Flag with its clashing purple star. And deep, deep, deep down in my psyche, I hear a panicked voice wailing, "Patrick, Michael, James, come inside anois! Where's your father anois? Oh my God! He'll be after walking to the marketplace! Go bhfoire Dia orainn!"

It's all very historical.

But for some reason, Orange Marches are not confined to Marching Season. The other day I was sitting happily in an Edinburgh cybercafe, slurping coffee and writing notes on Facebook when, from far away I heard:

BOOM BOOM BOOM

BOOM BOOM BOOM

"No way," I said. But sure enough, instead of the friendly blare of bagpipes, there came:

TWEETLE TWEETLE TWEETLE

TWEETLE-DEE-DEE TWEETLE-DEE-OO

People began to gather in the door of the cafe and in the street before the window. And then Benedict Ambrose was at my ear, twittering excitedly.

"I'm going to see if they pass by [the nearest Catholic Church]," he said, eyes kindling with a convert's wrath.

"No you're not," I wailed. Patrick, Michael, James!

BOOM BOOM BOOM

TWEETLE TWEETLE TWEETLE

The young band, uniformed and straight-backed, marched by, followed by the usual assortment of men in sashes and bowler hats, banners and flags.

One of the banners announced its provenance in Kerry, which made B.A. chuckle. Really, if the Orange Order didn't draw upon members from other towns there simply wouldn't be enough of them to make a march. So much for displays of Protestant power.

The first (and last) time I followed an Orange Parade in Toronto, Canada, I was offended and slightly frightened. I was offended that the Orangemen deliberately marched past St. Michael's Roman Catholic Cathedral (which is not on a main street), and I was frightened by the way these men shouted at people who, having no clue what was going on, tried to cross the street. Although the Orange Parades have been going on in Ontario for about 200 years, many of the marchers didn't seem Old Ontario to me. They carried a banner for the Rangers Glasgow football club. Some of them were wearing Rangers jerseys. Okay, the Rangers mean a lot in Glasgow, but they mean zero to almost all Torontonians. The Rangers are just some other foreign body, like the Tamil Tigers or Juzni Vetar, that a handful of immigrants get annoyingly worked up about.

However, in Scotland, I am not particularly bothered by Orange Parades. They are a genuine part of Scottish heritage, dating back to whenever they wanted to start celebrating the defeat of the Scottish Catholic king by some Dutch Protestant king in South Ireland. Which seems odd, but there you go. Over here in south-eastern Scotland, Orange Parades (and football games) do not lead to violence, so what the heck. Let them march, boom and tweetle. Whoever has the most children wins.

As for Bonfire Night, one Catholic Englishwoman, Hilary White of Orwell's Picnic, has provided Catholic Britons with a hilarious option for the whole burning-Guy-in-effigy question.

Update: Cath has protested. She doesn't think that Orange marches are a genuine part of Scottish heritage. "Not in my name," she declares, frowning sternly--or so I see her in my mind's eye. So I checked on Google and lo--it is an Irish Protestant thing, snuck into Scotland by Irish Protestants and most popular where Irish Protestants settled. So, boo to non-integrated Irish Protestants in Scotland and yay for honest, genuine non-marching Protestant Scots like Cath!

Update 2: There is a big bonfire on the beach! And all kinds of fireworks are bursting in the sky all over the place! It looks as if every family around has amassed its big pile of whizz-bangs and are setting them all off at once! I am so EXCITED!!! I mean, offended. That's it. Totally offended. In fact, I am so offended, as is my husband, B.A., that we are going down to the beach to see the bonfire and, um, complain! That's it.

Here's B.A.'s Guy Fawkes Day prayer. I asked him to compose one for the repose of Guy's soul, but then he got carried away on the Language:


V. Put not your trust in Princes.
R. For there is no help in them.

A Collect for November the Fifth

by B.A.

O Holy Spirit of God, who kindlest in the hearts of Thy faithful servants a burning desire to guard and to honour Thy Holy Catholick Church, even unto the shedding of their blood in Her defence; keep alight in the breasts of us, Thy people, that pure fire of faith and holy flame of love for Thee and our neighbour; and let that fire work to make Thy Catholick faith shine forth brightly in this land to the good governance thereof, for the confounding of tyranny and the salvation of souls; who livest and reignest, with the Father and the Son, ever one God, world without end.

AMEN

Spanish Nun vs Swine Flu Vaccine

Well, this nice physician/nun scared the dickens out of me. You can't watch her at work: the video is almost an hour long.

You know, my mother calls influenza "the old person's friend." It's a rather bleak way of looking at old age, but, hey, my mother also says "dree your weird" and "come back with your shield or on it". She comes from a bleak people. Dark. Can you be bleak and dark at the same time?

So anyway, I was not going in for a flu vaccine. And now that I have seen this, I don't know if you should go in for a flu vaccine either. So I have posted a link to the video, so you can decide for yourself. Alisha told me to, but after seeing the video, I was going to anyway.

Meanwhile, I am going to keep on receiving the Eucharist on the tongue while kneeling since I am not in Toronto, where the Archdiocese has suspended the practise a cause de H1N1. I took part in an amusing debate on Father Z's blog yesterday and today on the issue. The sad fact is that when I receive the Eucharist on the tongue while standing I inevitably lick the fingers of the poor priest or extraordinary minister. Germy, germy, germy. However, I can receive perfectly well while kneeling.

wat i lernt in skool

seraphic has finished "the golden mean" by annabel lyon wich she lyked and is now reeding "galore" by michael crummey wat a naim. this morning she red a link on facebuik that trashed skool edukashun so she passed it onto me. Hear it is it is long but guid. in short publik skools are a plot to prodoos obeedeeent slaivs for the MAN and it mite be beter to be homeskooled altho of corse maybe your parrens wud try to mayk you obeedeeent slaves for THEM.

as you kno i hate skool it mayks me shuder just to think about it blek blek blek howevr becos at home seraphic and me were given the valoos of the upper midle klasses of 1804 inclooding pianoforte and embroydery at wich we sucked skool was yousful for intugrating us into modern day sosietee. so i wil list wat i lernt in skool.

elementry skool

-to most peeple sex is the most important thing in lyf
-there is a soshual hierarchee based on how many boys want to fraynch-kiss you
-wat dosnt kill you mayks you stronger
-altho most peeople are stoopider than me it is not a guid idea to tell them
-when arownd stoopid meen peeple it is a guid idea to hyd yore intellijens and just be kynd and smileing in publik
-seraphic kan rite stories lyk grownup riters her fait is sealed wyrd bith ful gerad as her father mite say in his nativ tong of anglosaxon
-relijin klass has xaktly no efekt on playgrownd behaveeor
-the new relijin texbuiks are not as guid as the old ones hiden in the cupbord at the bak of the klassroom
-the old relijin texbuiks hiden in the cupbord at the bak of the klassroom tot me more about relijin than 8 years of cuting up magazines for relijin klass col-loj-ez.
-the alphabet
-sum fraynch
-adingsubraktingmultiplikashundivishun
-sells hav mitochondria
-nobodie is a reel canadian xcept red indians we are all immigants akchooally this is crap seraphic was borned there so was her mum and so was her granparrens and her dad is amerikan wich did not count as an ethnik groop seraphic had to say irish and jerman altho noone in his fambly has been born in irland sinc 1835 or in jermany since 1860 so i lernt that at skool teechers try to mayk you beleev stuff that is not troo

hi skool

-it is eesier to studee away from boys
-reel nuns are not lyk nuns in the sownd of musik
-architekchur is importand our convent was tudor gothik and that has mayd al the diferns
-mary wards first word was Jesus
-sum latin, sum fraynch, much italyan
-how to rite an essay: the most important thing we lernt
-how to sing the salve regina: the second most important it turnd out cos seraphic maried a latin mas junkee
-"berlin wal faling was importand girls i did not xspekt to see this is my lyftime" sed mr stewart
-on les happy ockashuns mr stewart sed "civilisation is doomed girls lern mandarin"
-boys are beter at math than girls wel that is wat the teecher (a laydee) implyed 15 tyms a week
-sells hav mitochondria
-Au means gold in chem klass
-perspektiv drawring
-if you can rite reely well teechers reed yore papers first and giv you good grayds out of graditude
-if yore baby hits you hard enuff you get a blak eye wel that is wat the teecher (a maried laydee with a blak eye) sed.. hmm... i doan kno... gosh the lies we had to swalo
-if you sunbayth outsyd a convent with yore blowse off nuns get mad
-yore relijin teecher wil tawk about soshul justis and then hand out fliers for a strech limo servis throo the worst part of town to the prom so teechers will try to mayk you beleev stuf they doan reely beleeve themselvs
-arranjed mariges to older men kan happen to 18 yr old cathlic girls ifn their fathers are reely reely oldfashoned sicilians wich is why seraphic was crying for her frend on there graduashun day

this is not totaly fare i gess we lerned phonics as well and the kapitals of canadian provinses and all kinds of bedrok stuff like what are the sacraments and confederashun was in 1867 and The Waistland and how to strugle on regardles. english klass and drama klass were guid becos creeaytiv italyan klass was creeaytiv too becos in canada you doan hav to kno it it was pure gift uno regalo puro luik i remember.

okay seraphic needs me to help her with her buik revyewing she is xcited finaly sumthing bad to say. yay! so this is seraphics inner child to tell you that i doan cair wat guid tings seraphic sez about skool skool mostly sucks and BYEE!

KARTUNE by ronald searle he is one of my heros of creeaytivitee.

Here It Comes....

Did you all see this?

Oh boy. It looks like the battle's coming. Are we prepared? Do we have the guts to fight?

I am calming myself down by remembering that European Catholicism--Italian Catholicism--survived Napoleon. The Church in Europe looked like it was down for the count in Europe of 1814, and what happened then, eh? A tremendous flourishing of new orders, the appearance of great saints, and a general renewal. Vocations rose and did not stop rising until the 1960s.

So let us be hopeful and of good cheer but at the same time let us not give a single inch to secularist totalitarians.

Notice to Strasbourg: The Crucifixion is a historical fact and an event crucial to the secular (to say nothing of spiritual) history of Europe. And we still count our years from an approximation of Christ's birth, okay? There is no Europe without Christ. There is no Europe without Christianity.

Update: The woman who brought the action, Soile Lautsi, is a Finn, born and bred. And Italy, which has a non-Italian minority of 7%, is not prepared to stop being Italian to make its minorities feel better about their own quirky values, like mass suicide. (Update. Okay. I take that back. That was too harsh on Finns in general, and I am mad only at this Lautsi woman.)* Italians are really proud of being Italian.

There was an interesting scene I read in a Don Camillo book that reflects this. Don Camillo blackmails his way into an Italian Communist junket to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, he watches as people of every race and nation chatter through his hotel lobby and their very diversity makes him feel sick. Now, as we are supposed to see Don Camillo as a sympathetic, even a saintly character (the kind of saint who uses his fists, however), what are we to make of that?

I think it reflects an Italian belief and respect for separate peoples in separate nations being themselves and not all combining together in one amormous crowd. An Italian does not want his country to turn into Toronto or London. And I sympathize. As much as I love Toronto, I like places to be different too. If all places become "diverse", there will be no real diversity. Europe will become one huge airport, serving curry on chips everywhere and selling American-style goods made by Chinese slaves alongside the "meditation rooms" that used to be cathedrals.

*To be fair, Finland has been working on its suicide problem. See here.

An Edinburgh Hour

To get to a noon All Souls' Day mass yesterday, I boarded a bus bound for Edinburgh. It was a double-decker bus, and after I had shown my day ticket (a thin strip of paper), I hurried up the narrow stairwell before the bus lurched forward. I love double-decker buses; at first they made me seasick, but now I am used to their bobbing and swaying as they roar down the roads. My favourite seat is right up front, and I've lost the dreadful feeling that when the bus stops, the top deck will keep on going and hurtle into the street.

Amusingly, the seats for this particular bus company are upholstered in tartan. I sat in a tartan front seat and enjoyed the view until Edinburgh, where I reopened Mistress of Nothing and began to read. I was distracted, though, by a horrid tinny sound. I looked around and saw my only top deck neighbour--a young man wearing headphones. He looked like a much younger, much handsomer version of the Scottish actor Robert Carlysle. But he also looked so desperately sad, that I stopped feeling so annoyed. Instead I felt sorry for him.

The music got louder and louder--I could tell it was heavy or dark or death metal--and I began to fear for the young man's hearing. What pain did he have--at his age--that he needed to block it out with music cranked so high it would probably deafen him? Whatever pain they feel, middle-aged people never do that on busses. I looked over the glorious 18th century avenue we were hurtling down, and I remembered a letter I saw in the commuter paper last month: "Why should the bus driver say 'Good morning' to us? We're Scottish. We're miserable and we hate each other." And yet Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.

When I alighted from the bus, I was hit with the large, warm scent of boozy oatmeal cookie. It is, B.A. tells me, actually the smell of malt from a brewery tucked back beyond the Haymarket railway station. At first it positively grabs your nose, but then you grow accustomed to it. B.A. says it is the smell of Edinburgh, but actually I have only come across it on that particular street.

It was a nice day for walking, if cold. Sunday's weather was foul: a month's worth of rain, said the papers, in one day. But Monday's skies were clear, and the wind, though brisk, was not unpleasant.

I was half an hour early for Mass in the big, draughty house. (I read Mistress of Nothing in the hall, being curled up under my mantilla.) The chalice veil and the vestments were black for All Souls.

By bedtime last night, I had finished Mistress of Nothing. Today I shall read The Golden Mean, by Annabel Lyon. It is about Aristotle and Philip of Macedon.

"There a naked boy on a horse on the cover," said B.A., sounding disapproving.