I want to leave this up now, but will add comments with a further update.

Nietzche’s statement has been reproduced many times, however all that is remembered is “God is dead,” from that his original “intent” is usually muffled, skewed, misrepresented or unrepresented.

Barack Hussein Plants Tree

The 2008 Presidential election was marred by accusations that Barack Hussein Obama was a “Mooslim,” “Mohammedan” or an “Islamic.”  In response to the accusations, Barack Hussein Obama redundantly pointed out that he had been going to the same Church for almost 20 years and was a committed Christian.  He told Christianity Today, “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian.”

Media personality Sean Hannity of Fox News was quoted as stating, “Barack hoped that if he kept repeating that he was a Christian it would be enough to extinguish the facts and questions creeping up about his associations and history as a Mooslim but we are uncovering leads in his Islamicness.”

Hannity is referring to new startling evidence that sheds light on the direct link between Barack Hussein Obama and what some call his “Mohammedan nature.”

In what experts are describing as another underhanded swipe at American values and mockery of our forefathers Barack Hussein Obama has called for the planting of trees, a well known Mooslim practice.

The President said, “I got into politics for this, to plant trees and one way to conserve energy, reduce carbon emissions, secure our borders and improve our image in the world is for us to plant trees. It’s a win-win for all Americans.”

Not all believe his intentions are to help safe guard America.

“This is an affront to our country and those men and women who died for that flag and the right for Hussein to plant those trees,” said a forlorn Joe the plumber in Real Town America, Texas.

He went on to say, “Let me say it plain for ya: George Washington cut down trees!  We all know he cut down the cherry tree and Husseini wants to plant ‘em. That ain’t Christian, that ain’t American…what more evidence do ya need that he’s a Mooslim?”

George Washington

According to experts on Global Terrorism and Islam such as Robert Spencer of the Foundation for the Reconquista of Anatolia, “The fact that Barack Hussein Obama was educated in a Madrassa [Islamic seminary] should have set alarm bells going…In 2004 when Obama was running for the Senate in Illinois, I was the only one drawing attention to this, like Paul Revere. I was shouting ‘The Mooslims are coming! The Mooslims are coming’ but no one paid any attention…they never do.”

Spencer speculated that the tree planting was evidence of a Mooslim practice known as Taqiyya, or dissimilation, “Taqqiyah is pretty much a practice where Mooslims deceive infidel Christians and others by hiding the fact that they are Mooslim while outwardly apostasizing. It is all part of a stealth Jihad, and based on the Koran and Hadith [Islamic sayings] it seems planting trees is an important part of that. Barack Hussein Obama is hiding his Islamicness while appearing as a Christian–this is Taqqiyah-Tree-Jihad.”

When asked what the connection was between the planting of trees and Obama being Mooslim, Islamic Scholar Daniel Pipes barraged us with Islamic quotes saying,

“It’s quite simple.  If you only go to the texts they speak for themselves.  Look at what their Prophet Mohammed said, ‘If a Muslim plants a tree.. and a bird, a person or an animal eats from it, it will be counted as a charity for him.‘“(Bukhari and Muslim)

‘Whoever plants a tree is rewarded by Allah as much as the produce grown in that tree.’ (Musnad)

‘Whoever plants a tree and diligently looks after it until it matures and bears fruit is rewarded,’ (Musnad)

‘Whoever plants a tree and it matures, Allah plants a tree in paradise for that person.’ (Musnad).

Kahanist chairwoman Pamela Geller author of the forthcoming book Obama’s Father was Malcolm X! vented, “We gotta cut them off at the knees. These barbarians! It’s civilized man versus the barbarians and we got the chief barbarian in the White House now. The Mooslims are taking over–wake up America!”

We contacted the White House for comment and were told the President had “other pressing engagements”.  But a source from the President’s staff disputed the Islam experts telling us on the condition of anonymity that “Barack is just a wily politician and he really knows the threat we are facing and in fact this is a tactical move on his part.  On the one hand he is reaching out to the Mooslim world and saying, ‘Hey I understand you, look I plant trees,’ on the other hand he knows that Islamic texts state that during Jihad it is prohibited to cut down trees.  Barack wants to plant as many trees so that when the terrorists come they won’t be able to fight properly.”

Disclaimer:This article is satire but reflects what’s known as “truthiness.”

Islam Not to Blame for Bronx Terror Plot

Author : Brad (IP: 24.25.207.133 , cpe-24-25-207-133.san.res.rr.com)
E-mail : Ballsyone@yahoo.com
URL    :
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=24.25.207.133
Comment:
Fuck all you asshole mooslims.  I can’t wait until we nuke your asses into oblivion!!!

Look at this guys email! LOL. Guy has no balls because he would never say this in the face of a Muslim, he hides behind a computer. It seems he is from Herndon, Va.

Also, this predilection to want to nuke Muslims is a hallmark of Islamophobes:

http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/04/how-to-identify-a-loon-the-nuclear-card/

Career Hatemonger Steven Emerson Enraged by CAIR-Chicago’s Positive Social Engagement

Notorious Islamophobe Steven Emerson is at it again.

This time the source of his wrath is Christina Abraham, CAIR-Chicago’s Civil Rights Director.

In a hit piece entitled, “Is This Who We Want Representing U.S. Interests Abroad?” published on his fluff website, “The Investigative Project on Terrorism,” Emerson shows once again why his website had better be called, “The Investigative Project on Mainstream American Muslim Organizations.”

The simple fact is that while Emerson desperately tries to run himself off as a “terrorism expert,” a cursory view of his website quickly reveals that, all too-often, the targets of his so-called investigations and reports are not terrorist groups but mainstream American Muslim organizations like CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, MAS, etc.

In considering his own question posed in the title of his piece, “Is This Who We Want Representing U.S. Interests Abroad?” Emerson offers the following answer, “The State Department and a U.S. university seem to think so.”

Right, so now we are left with a choice.

Option A: the State Department and the U.S. University – as well as the countless other institutions, churches, conferences, and universities who have hosted Christina Abraham – are clueless.

Or

Option B: Emerson, the odd one out, is a lying propagandist.

For the self-delusional Emerson, the dilemma is easy to resolve: when Emerson disagrees with the world, the world is wrong and Emerson is right.

Of course, this sort of self-aggrandizement has come to typify the life and works of career Islamophobes like Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes. In attempting to fool others, either they are either really clueless or they put their faith on the chance that the rest of us are really clueless.

Why is a “terrorism expert” so enraged by someone like Christina Abraham working to build bridges between civilizations via a State Department sponsored conference on human and civil rights in the Philippines? Could it be that Emerson is not really looking out for our national security concerns, that instead he is preoccupied with a whole different set of concerns on his mind? Looking over Emerson’s track record, it becomes apparent that he feels threatened by positive social engagement that challenges the stereotypes and misconceptions that he needs kept alive in order to succeed and prosper.

Emerson’s attack on Christina is laughable in many ways.

First, he runs his article off as an “investigative” report.

What, ask you, are the “investigative” techniques that our investigative expert employed to trigger his “exposé” of Christina Abraham and CAIR-Chicago? Answer: he googled “Christina Abraham.”

Question: and where did that lead him? Answer: CAIR-Chicago’s website.

In fact, many, if not all, of the attacks leveled against CAIR-Chicago have been as a result of attacking something CAIR-Chicago itself puts out there on our website or e-newsletter. Clearly, CAIR-Chicago has nothing to hide and is consistently transparent in reporting on its work.

Yet Emerson wrote – as if to flag something unusual – “CAIR was so proud that it issued a press release on February 11, 2009 entitled ‘Civil Rights Director Participates in State Dept. Delegation to Philippines.’”

OK, so let’s break it down for Emerson. CAIR did not issue the press release because it is “so proud,” but because that is what we do, we report on our work to our constituents and the public. (In fact it was not a press release but an “our news” report on our website and e-newsletter)

Only in the warped reasoning of Emerson, who himself operates under shadowy arrangements, are transparency and regular reporting a questionable practice that merits criticism and suspicion.

If anything, the question should be asked, why aren’t Steven Emerson and his ilk similarly transparent in their own work, and instead do all that they can to mask the shady machinations of what they do?

Second, Emerson asks “What was Abraham’s special expertise in ‘civil rights discrimination’ and ‘constructive civic engagement’ that merited her to be selected as an emissary of the United States to underdeveloped nations?”

OK. Again, let’s break down the obvious for Emerson:

Christina Abraham holds two degrees, soon to be three. She has a Bachelor’s in Political Science from DePaul University, a Masters in Social Sciences with an emphasis on Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago, and is set to obtain her Juris Doctorate in Law next month.

Christina has been a founding staff member of CAIR-Chicago’s civil rights department, helping build it into one of the most active and effective civil rights defense and advocacy offices in the country. Since the inception of the department 5 years ago, Christina has overseen the processing of 1600 cases reported to the Chicago office. She has helped resolve hundreds of instances of civil rights abuses, has led countless training workshops for civil rights activists from various other communities, and has led dozens of network and newspaper interviews advocating for our constitutional rights. She is on the board of international think tanks and is the recipient of prestigious social services awards.

Christina – who speaks three languages, is well travelled, and has a healthy bicultural background – earned her way to social relevance in her community and country via a notable academic and professional record of achievements.

Then comes along a pretentious self-promoter like Emerson who has never met Christina, knows virtually nothing about her, yet has the audacity to think he is uniquely privileged to pass judgment on Christina’s credentials and relevance in her own community and to her country. Worse yet, he musters the audacity to attack the judgment of “a U.S. University and the State Department” when they take a pass on his dribble.

Emerson also falsely claims that Christina is spreading allegations of “a US war against Islam.” He offers no evidence to back up his lies because no evidence exists. This view which he attributes to CAIR and Christina is not the view of CAIR or Christina. In fact both CAIR and Christina have spoken out against simplistic theories such as this.

For Emerson – who does not like to waste time thinking too deeply about the facts – criticizing aspects of US foreign or domestic policies, especially as they relate to American Muslims, is akin to declaring “the U.S is at war with Islam.”

Of course, the simplistic Emerson once again stands alone on that view. Many intelligent Americans – Muslim and not – have written voluminously on the Bush administration abuses of domestic civil rights and practices considered unconstitutional, some of which seemed to target Muslims and Arabs. Add to that the Iraq war, Guantanamo, torture, and you get a list of the issues that do not only concern Christina and CAIR but tens of millions of conscientious American citizens of all walks of life.

But in singling Christina and CAIR in this manner and appropriating to them an extreme view that he himself wordsmiths and puts into their mouths, Emerson lends us an up-close look at the sort of hypocritical and disingenuous analysis techniques he employs in trying to demonize and marginalize mainstream voices working within American Muslim organizations.

The rest of Emerson’s hit piece goes on about Hamas. Emerson’s forte has been to link anything and anyone who is publicly critical of the excesses of the Israeli government as “Hamas.” For evidence, he does not point to any court ruling or jury verdict, but to weak circumstantial quotes and the untried opinion of one FBI agent. For Emerson, due process is to be thrown out of the window when it comes to American Muslim organizations against whom allegations are dubbed as convictions.

Yet for every single person harboring the fallacious view that CAIR has links to Hamas, there are a dozen others who speak the truth. Even within the FBI, while Emerson references one agent, he ignores others such as Michael Rolince, a retired F.B.I. official who directed counterterrorism in the Washington field office from 2002 to 2005 and who stated, “Of all the groups, there is probably more suspicion about CAIR, but when you ask people for cold hard facts, you get blank stares.” (Source: New York Times, 3/14/2007)

So, the question before us now is:

Can Steven Emerson and his ilk be trusted as credible sources of information on Islam, Muslims or their representative organizations?

Who is Steven Emerson?

A self-anointed “terrorism expert” whose rhetoric is characterized by charged terminology and a dislike for open debate, Emerson harbors a longstanding track record of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry.

In March of 1995, Emerson told The Jewish Monthly, “nearly all (emphasis added) of the Islamic organizations in the United States that define themselves as religiously or culturally Muslim in character have, today, been totally captured or dominated by radical fundamentalist elements…” Ironically, it took Emerson no more than a few days to demonstrate to the world why his credibility and integrity as an “observer of trends” should never be taken for granted especially when they relate to Muslims.

In April of 1995, Emerson confidently asserted on a live broadcast of CBS News that the Oklahoma City bombing, then breaking news, showed “a Middle Eastern trait” because it was carried out “with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible.”

“Oklahoma City, I can tell you, is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East,” Emerson explained with an enthusiasm bordering on elation.

While Emerson preoccupied himself with indulging his knack for conjecture, real detectives worked calmly and professionally to reveal that, contrary to Emerson’s “expert perceptions”, Timothy McVeigh and company were behind the bombings. Emerson’s incompetence was duly exposed; CBS decided not to renew his contract and blacklisted him for five years.

Then again, Emerson’s aversion to facts and affinity for bias are not breaking news. A New York Times review of Emerson’s 1991 book Terrorist said the book was “marred by factual errors . . . and by a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias.”

His 1994 controversial film Jihad in America caused veteran reporter Robert Friedman to accuse Emerson of “creating mass hysteria against American Arabs” (The Nation, 5/15/95).

John F. Sugg, then of the Tampa Bay Weekly Planet, revealed in a 1999 article that Emerson’s priority is “not so much news as it is an unrelenting attack against Arabs and Muslims.”

“He’s made his life’s work discrediting Arab American and Muslim groups,” James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, told The Washington Post in 2001.

Smear campaigns are not unusual for Steven Emerson; they seem to be his way of expressing disgruntlement with an opposing view.

“He has been run out of many respectable newsrooms. His response was the smear job. When The Washington Post shunned him, he branded the paper pro-Hamas.’ When the Miami Herald strafed Emerson’s shoddy claims, he wrote the city’s Jewish leaders claiming the paper’s reporter was nothing short of racist,’ Sugg wrote (Alternet, 06/12/2003).

So what explains Emerson’s anti-Muslim and anti-Arab spin? The Wall Street Journal provided us with one answer 16 years ago: “Mr. Emerson’s prime role is to whitewash Israeli governments and revile their critics,” wrote Alexander Cockburn.

For whom does Emerson work? Does he represent the interests of Americans, or the interests of a foreign state at the expense of our nation’s own interests and healthy community relations?

Emerson, who has close ties to the Israeli Mossad according to The Jerusalem Post (9/17/1994), has yet to disclose key facts regarding his activities, including his source of funding. While he criticizes Muslim-American organizations that openly disclose their operating and financial details, Emerson shrouds his own in guarded secrecy.

Vince Cannistraro, a former Chief of Operations and Analysis at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center said of Emerson’s closest associates Steve Pomerantz, Oliver Revell and Yigal Carmon: “They’re Israeli-funded. How do I know that? Because they tried to recruit me.”

Of Emerson himself, Cannistraro says, “word has got around on what he (Emerson) is, that he’s a paid polemicist, not a journalist” (Weekly Planet, May 1998); he characterizes him as “dishonest” and “Joseph McCarthy-like” (The Forward, 1/26/96).

Journalist Jane Hunter calls Emerson’s brand of journalism “nimble in its treatment of facts, often credulous of intelligence sources, and almost invariably supportive of the Israeli government” (EXTRA! , October/November 1992).

In short Emerson does not advocate for the interests of the United States and never has. He is far more occupied with the interests of the extreme elements of a foreign government. He picks his battles with that litmus test in mind and draws enemies and friends with those criteria in mind. He continues to masquerade as a “terrorism expert” who cares about the interest of the United States for cover, but a deeper look into the disingenuous nature of his “investigations” and “reporting” and the targets of his work quickly gives him away for what he truly is.

Copyright © 2009, cairchicago.org

Anyway they had a little piece where the VVD complained about this du’a that Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan gave from what seems like must have been the 90′s. They also provide an atrocious translation which prompted me to do another translation even though I have scant time for it, but it pains me to see Arabic abused this way.

Fascist European Party’s (Incomplete/Misleading) Translation:

(0:00) God, we ask for your strength and support whenever we tell the world that you are the only true God. You God you are not born, you are not unborn. Allah, we ask for your approval and count on your paradise.

(0:21) God, let us be of the Mouwahidin. God, let us belong to the people of Tawhid, to the people who recognize that there is no other God except you and that there is no other power without you. God, accept our prayer, and deeds. God, accept our prayers and let us belong to the accepted people.

(1:09) to the people loved by you, to the patient ones, you God, you are the God of this world. You are the God of the weak. Accept therefore our deeds and prayers. Allah, forgive us and be merciful towards us, forgive us.

(1:40) God, you are the God of forgiveness. Will you therefore forgive us? God forgive us because are much disposed towards forgiveness.

(2.05) You are the God of this world. You are the only God. Accept therefore everything of us. God, be merciful towards our parents.

(2:21) Good, be merciful towards our parents and towards the parents of our parents. God, be merciful towards everybody who is guilty of anything in this world and in the last world. God, forgive all sins of the Islamic deceased who witnessed on earth that you are the only true God, and that your prophet is the only messenger.

(2:47) God, let your light and appearance descend on their grave. God, strengthen the belief of our brothers and sisters in Palestine

(3.13) God, Strengthen their belief, those who are in Palestine, and let them celebrate their victory over their enemy, your enemy, enemy of the faith

(3.26) Only with your victory and mercy, you generous God. Allah, strengthen their belief in Palestine, in Chechnya, in Afghanistan, and in Morocco, and in Algeria, and in Tunisia, and in Egypt, and in Sudan, and in Kashmir, and in the whole world and out of the way places, you merciful God.

(4.01) Accept everything of them, and let them stand with both feet on the ground, and give them a place in your paradise, with the chosen believers and with the martyrs.

(4:15) God, strengthen their belief, those who are in prison and who live under torture. They are innocent. God, our enemies, your enemies, and enemies of the faith, let us leave to you.

(4:38) Let the Islam and the Muslims triumph and let your word triumph everywhere.

(4:47) God, let us be stronger than ourselves. God, purify our hearts and strengthen our bones and accept us and let us belong to the patient ones. God, unite us and our hearts and let us be brothers and sisters of each other, for you.

(5:23) God, we ask for your love. God, we ask for your love. God, we ask for your love. God let us belong to the people for whom you have love. God, let us fear you as if we see you.

(6:05) God, purify our hearts. God, we welcome your prophet and messenger.

 My Translation:

(0 min) I seek protection from the accursed Satan, In the Name of God the Beneficent, the Compassionate, O’ Allah we implore You by verily witnessing that You are Allah, The Unique Indivisible One, The Everlasting Refuge, The one who does not beget nor is begotten and there is none comparable to Him.

(17 sec)O’ Allah, we seek Your pleasure and heaven and we seek Your protection from Your punishment and Fire, and we seek Your protection from Your punishment and Fire,

(30sec)O’ Allah make us from those who attest to Your Oneness, O’ Allah make us from The People who attest to Your Oneness, from those who say There is no god except You, There is no Power and might except with You,

(47sec)O’ Allah accept from us our prayer, our bowing, and prostration, and our actions, O’ Allah accept from us our prayer and make us – O’ Beneficent, O’ Most Compassionate from those whose prayers have been accepted, from those who are loved, from the foremost (in nearness to you), from the truthful and the patient – O’ Beneficent O’ Most Compassionate, O’ Lord of the Worlds, You are the Lord of the dispossessed/poor/weak, and so accept our actions and our prayers.

(1:35) O’ Allah forgive our sins, and be compassionate towards us, and forgive us, and relent on to us, and pardon us, O’ Allah verily you are the oft-forgiving, lover of forgiveness so forgive us, O’ Allah so forgive us, O’ Allah forgive us, and have compassion on us, you are the Most Beneficent, Most Compassionate, you are the Lord of the Worlds, our Lord and so accept all of this from us.

(2:20) O’ Allah be compassionate to our parents, and the parents of our parents, and those you have graced over us in this world and the hereafter, Allah forgive all the Muslims who have passed away, who testified and witnessed to your Oneness and with the Message of your Prophet, and passed away upon that, Allah accept it from them, and send down upon their graves illumination and Light, and tranquility and peace – O’ Beneficent, O Merciful.

(3:07) O Allah strengthen the faith of the brothers and sisters in Palestine, O Allah Strengthen their faith in Palestine, and aid them against their enemies and your enemies and the enemies of this religion by your Compassion O Most Generous.

(3:32) O Allah strengthen their Faith in Palestine, and in Chechnya, and in Afghanistan, and in Morocco, and in Algeria, and in Tunisia, and in Egypt, and in Sudan, and in Kashmir, and in all the earth and every far place. O Beneficent O Compassionate accept from them and make firm their feet and enter them into heaven in the company of the righteous, and the truthful, and the martyrs, and your honorable Prophets, O Beneficent O Merciful.

(4:18)O Allah strengthen their faith those who are in prison, and those who are under torture, verily they are the oppressed.

(4:32) O Allah upon you with our enemies, your enemies and the enemies of the religion, and the aid for Islam and the aid for the Muslims and to raise the word of truth and the religion.

(4:50) O Beneficent, O Compassionate, O Most Loving, O Most Forbearing, O Lord of the Worlds.

(4:57) O Allah aid us to overcome our Self, and purify our hearts, and make firm our feet, and accept from us and make us from the patient.

(5:12) O Allah unify our hearts and make us O Beneficent O Compassionate brothers in Your Path, O Allah make us brothers in Your path, and make one our ranks, and make one our ranks

(5:32) O Allah we seek your love, and the love of those who love you, and any action that reaches your love. O Allah we seek your love, O Allah make us from the close loved ones, O Allah make us from your close loved. O Allah make our reverence to you as though we see you, and make us from the close loved. O Allah we seek your love, and the love of those who love you, and any action that reaches your love – O Beneficent O Compassionate.

(6:22) O Most Loving, O Most Loving, O Most Loving, O Allah accept from us and answer our prayers and purify our hearts and purify our hearts and purify our hearts.

(6:48) And prayers and peace be upon our master Muhammad, the prayers of our Lord and His peace, and upon his family and his companions an abundance of peace.

(7:04) Glorified be you my Lord, Honored Lord free from that which they attribute, and peace be upon all the Messengers and praise belongs to Allah the Lord of the worlds.

By Madeleine Bunting, Guardian UK

This is Holy Week. It started yesterday with Palm Sunday and continues through Holy Thursday, Good Friday and culminates this Sunday with Easter Day. One can no longer assume most people will be aware of this, let alone the events these days mark; in a recent UK poll, only 22% could identify what Easter was celebrating. What other system of belief has collapsed at such spectacular speed as British Christianity? One can only presume that the New Atheists are organising a fabulous party to celebrate. Richard Dawkins could stump up for the crates of champagne out of his sumptuous royalties from The God Delusion.

But I’m curious as to how many of the country’s finest minds would join the celebrations. Increasingly, one hears a distaste for the polemics of the New Atheist debate and its foghorn volume, and how it has drowned out any other kind of conversation about religion: what it is, the loss of it, whether it matters, and what happens in a post-religious society? From sometimes surprising quarters there is an anxiety about the evangelical fervour and certainty of the New Atheists: they are so sure they are right, but there are plenty of people – and many of them would not count themselves as believers – who can’t share their contempt for religion.

Just this week, AN Wilson announces in a thoughtful cover article for the New Statesman that he has apostated, abandoning his fellow atheists. Or take another example: in the Third Way, a Christian magazine, the poet Andrew Motion reflects wistfully, “I don’t believe in God – though I wish I did, and I can’t stop thinking about it so who knows what might happen one day?” Wilson and Motion talk of uncertainty, doubt and faith in terms that are probably far more familiar to the vast majority of the British – many of whom still describe themselves as believing in God, whatever they mean by that – than the certitudes used by Dawkins. New Atheism may come to be regarded as winning a battle but losing the war.

What many argue is that the New Atheist debate has ended up down an intellectual dead end; there are only so many times you can argue that religion is a load of baloney. Ask a philosopher like John Gray or a historian of religion like Karen Armstrong and they are simply not interested in the debate; they bin the invitations to speak on platforms alongside New Atheists. Gray dismisses them as offering “intoxicating simplicity”; Armstrong is appalled by their “display of egotism and arrogance”. Both are deeply frustrated by a debate inflated by the media that generates heat but no light. They see the New Atheists mirroring a particular strain of fundamentalist Christianity with no knowledge of the vast variety of other forms of religious faith. In common with their Christian opponents, they share “the inner glow of complete certainty” – as Wilson describes his atheist conversion.

Armstrong and Gray converge again on where they pinpoint the key mistake. Belief came to be understood in western Christianity as a proposition at which you arrive intellectually, but Armstrong argues that this has been a profound misunderstanding that, in recent decades, has also infected other faiths. What “belief” used to mean, and still does in some traditions, is the idea of “love”, “commitment”, “loyalty”: saying you believe in Jesus or God or Allah is a statement of commitment. Faith is not supposed to be about signing up to a set of propositions but practising a set of principles. Faith is something you do, and you learn by practice not by studying a manual, argues Armstrong.

“We need to get away from the endless discussion about wretched beliefs; religion is about doing – and what every faith makes clear is that the doing is about compassion,” she argues. To try and shift the debate about faith into more fruitful territory, Armstrong came up with the idea of a global Charter on Compassion for all faiths (and none), which she is drafting and planning to launch later in the year.

From a different perspective, Alain de Botton, the philosopher and writer, has also been trying to broaden the conversation. He has founded a School of Life in London, which runs courses and events reflecting on how to live. He describes himself as “definitely an atheist”, but readily admits he borrows plenty from religions. His team have instituted the idea of Sunday sermons, and organise contemporary “pilgrimages”. “Even if you’re an atheist, there are a huge number of insights in religion,” he says. “We’re in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

De Botton argues that the decline of religious faith has left behind a real and widespread need for wisdom and insight; the media offers only a “cruel sentimentality” and gives little space to the most difficult of our life experiences, such as failure, death or envy, nor does it offer ways to deal with them. The author Mark Vernon teaches on some School of Life courses. A former priest and atheist, he now advocates a principled agnosticism rooted in an understanding of the limits of human knowledge. He argues that the most interesting conversations about faith are among those just outside religious traditions and those just inside – along the borders of belief, if you like.

It’s a perspective that Gray shares. Describing himself as a sceptic, he looks to another border of belief for deeper insight into the nature of faith: the dialogue between the theistic and non-theistic. Intriguingly, where Gray, Armstrong and Vernon all end up is with the apophatic tradition of theology. Apophatic is a word no longer even in my dictionary, but it’s a major tradition of Christian thought, and central to the thinking of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas: it is the idea that God is ineffable and beyond powers of description. S/he can be experienced by religious practice, but as Armstrong puts it: “In the past, people knew we could say nothing about God. Certain forms of knowledge only come with practice.” It makes the boundary between belief in God and agnosticism much more porous than commonly assumed.

But the modern distortion was to make God into a proposition in which you either did or did not believe. He was turned into an old man in the sky with a long white beard or promoted as a cuddly friend named Jesus. Arguing about the existence of such human creations is akin to the medieval pastime of calculating how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

So the media has been promoting the wrong argument, while the bigger question of how, in a post-religious society, people find the myths they need to sustain meaning, purpose and goodness in their lives go unexplored. What worries Gray is that we forget at our peril that all systems of thought rely on myth. By junking the Christian myths, the danger is that the replacements are “cruder, less tested, less instructive”. At times of crisis – such as the economic recession – the brittleness of a value system built on wealth and a particular conception of autonomy becomes all too apparent, leaving people without the sustaining reserves of a faith to fall back on. The consequences of that will certainly not be cause for celebration, he warns.

m.bunting@guardian.co.uk

In the meantime I want everyone to check out this new site that I have joined and will be contributing to: Gates of Vienna vs. The World vs. LGF.  It’s spearheaded by Lex, the Agent of Chaos and The Sphinx who take a satrical look at the absurd world of Anti-Muslim/Islamophobe sphere.  In the words of Lex most of the time the “Posts just write themselves.” LOL.

Recently we’ve been putting Muslims Against Sharia on blast for being a Pam Geller and Joe Kaufman front. Its days are numbered, I wonder how much money they made in the meantime? Rev. Sutter has done a great job in compiling and detailing data on the absurd group: Follow up to (Non)Muslims Against Sharia .