St. George: Patron Saint for our Times

St. George with Unicorn-like horse, Ca. 1740-55
(Ethiopian Orthodox illuminated manuscript)

I meant to post on this a few days earlier. I noticed that Melanie Phillips had a painting of St. George killing the dragon on one of her posts titled: "The war for civilisation". I've been using the above St. George's image on several of my blogs, here, here, and even here at Camera Lucida. Like Phillips, I am using the warrior-like imagery of St. George to counter various forces that are out to destroy our civilization.

Saint George is the patron saint of England. He is also patron to these places:

Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Iraq, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Serbia and Russia, as well as the cities of Genoa, Amersfoort, Beirut, Fakiha, Bteghrine, Cáceres, Ferrara, Freiburg, Ljubljana, Pomorie, Preston, Qormi, Rio de Janeiro, Lod, Barcelona, Moscow, Tamworth and the Maltese island of Gozo.

Just as Muslims are working on a global take-over, or a global re-conversion of the human race back to Islam, what we need is a global counter-force that will work concertedly to remove this negative force. St. George is an apt patron for our times.

Muslim Girl Magazine: Gone

Muslim Girl: Growing Up American
(or Canadian, or Western). 6 Girls 
on being Muslim in America

I have added some more information on the side panel titled: Header Images. The links provide the blog posts I did on each of the images I put together as the header for Our Changing Landscape.

I posted on Muslim Girl Magazine on September 26, 2008. I sourced only online material, including the magazine itself, for my research.  I tried to find an online source for the magazine for this (2010 post), but I keep coming up with "this page cannot be found" links. Finally, I found Wikipedia's verdict:

Muslim Girl Magazine was a bi-monthly fashion, beauty, and lifestyle publication marketed for young Muslim women.

Muslim Girl Magazine was founded in 2007, and barely lasted 3 years. I wonder what happened? Perhaps all we have to do is simply wait things out.

Correcting Links for Articles by Alternative Right

In my previous post: The State of Affairs of Our Modern World, I provided two links to Alternative Right's articles, where the second link refers again to the first link. In the original posts, I criticize Alternative Right's choice of author and subject.

Here are links to both posts:

- Manhood without the Validation of Women: Why homosexuals shouldn't write about manhood

- More Strangeness at Alternative Right: A homosexual contributor for Virtus

The State of Affairs of Our Modern World

George Washington
Portrait by Gilbert Stuart

Writers in the various "right" spheres these days are particularly, well, irritating. Here is that infamous "Alternative" Right group, which I've written about here and here, with a convoluted  (hit?) piece on Wilders. The writer, Hanna Saigo, says about his appearance:

[C]ould trying to cover up his Indo heritage be the motivation for Wilders’s absurd dye job? Wilders's hair has always made me suspicious of him, as there's just something not right about an originally dark-haired (I think) but now graying 50 year-old man wanting to be a blond. Now I think I understand.

Geert Wilders

Let's analyze this:

- According to the The Brussels Journal, a Dutch "cultural anthropologist" claims that Wilders's maternal grandmother came from an Indonesian-Jewish family. This means that Wilders's Indonesian (and Jewish, if you want to go that route, and Saigo, ever-so-subtly, does) ancestry is three generations back. Hardly something that defines Wilders's "non-Dutchness." Wilders has said nothing about this distant ancestry. His stand has always been for Holland in particular, and for the West to which he and his fellow-Dutchmen belong.

- I always thought that Wilders was emulating those 18th century powdered wig wearers. George Washington wore one. I think it gives him (and Wilders) a distinguished air. Wilders has said nothing about his appearance. What man (and politician) would?

- Why should Wilders hide, or expose, his Indonesian and, if true, his Jewish background? All that occurred more than three generations ago. They bear no relation, nor  importance, to his current life and mission.

- Saigo has no capacity (or desire) to ask innocent and interested questions about Wilders's appearance. She simply jumps into a derogatory conclusion, aiming to tarnish and harm him: "That racist, politician who (look!) has a non-European ancestor. Imagine him refusing entry to immigrants from Indonesia, or any other part of the world for that matter. Isn't that where he's from, anyway? Who does he think he is!" Allow me to put words in Saigo's mouth. But, I'll bet that I am much more accurate about her thoughts than she is about Wilders's.

- Saigo goes on to say that she thinks Wilders's natural hair color is dark. She thinks. She can't even be bothered to find out. All the more reason to conclude that her piece was more vindictive than journalistic (or informative).

- Of course, the real culprits are the Alternative Right editors. If they keep this up, their magazine will be confined to a narrow (and ugly) niche - like Stormfront.

Such is the state of affairs of our modern world. Truth, and the search for truth, doesn't matter. What matters is getting  your venomously crafted opinion printed for all to read.

Update on Lars Vilks's Artistic Background

Portrait of what looks like a Middle Easterner 
(could it be a sympathetic/complementary portrait 
of Muhammad?) by Lars Vilks which he showed 
his audience at the International Free Press Society 
event on Sunday.

I should emphasize that Lars Vilks (here is a post I wrote on his presentation in Toronto at the International Free Press Society's meeting this past Sunday) is an art historian and an artist. As Mary Lou Ambroglio, Vice President of International Free Press Society-Canada, clarifies to me in an email, his scribbly Muhammad cartoons:

[were] something he did specifically for a small little exhibition which he was invited to make a submission to. I believe the exhibition was entitled, "Oh My God", and was meant to explore the boundaries in art when it came to religion, hence his decision to do something related to Islam.

Here is Lars Vilks's blog. It is in Swedish, so I can only make guesses at what he's saying. But, fortunately, the portrait I was talking about is posted there, although I cannot decipher who the subject is. He looks Middle Eastern. Could he be Muhammad as perceived (in a complementary way) by Vilks?

N.B. I am still working on the correct (appropriate) spelling for Muhammad. The IFPS spells it Muhammad, other writers spell it in various ways, including Mohammad. This latter looks to me the most "attractive," if there can be such an adjective to describe a word. Nonetheless, it is interesting that such a decisive figure in history, whose movement aimed to destroy and reshape so much of the West (and the world), doesn't seem to have a sure spelling for his name in the English language.

Swedish Cartoonist Lars Vilks in Toronto, and Sam Solomon's new book Al Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity and the Jews

Kurt Westergaard (left) and Lars Vilks (right)

(Apologies for the long blog title, but I feel that both are worthy of the same post. Solomon's new book was for sale at the second Toronto event sponsored by the International Free Press Society, which invited the Swedish Muhammad cartoonist to Toronto. At the first IFPS Toronto conference, Sam Solomon himself, along with Bat Ye'or, was present. And both events were held at a Toronto synagogue. It is becoming clearer that those in the line of fire, the avant-garde, are once again Jews. This became clear to me at this second event (and I also attended the first one). I think it is important to point this out. Part of Hitler's success occurred because ordinary citizens failed to recognize Hitler's Götterdämmerung and his hatred of, and his will to destroy, Jews. Of course, next in line was to be everyone else. I think there are parallels with this second, now Islamic, Götterdämmerung. We ignored it once, and we have no excuse to ignore it a second time).

It's been a few days since I attended the Toronto event "Lars Vilks in North America," sponsored by the International Free Press Society. This was meant to be a four-city North American tour of the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks in order for him to discuss and present his Muhammad cartoons. These cartoons earned Vilks a fatwa by the global Islamic community, forcing him to live in hiding. Vilks was to have been present in Philadelphia, Boston and Ottawa, but these venues were canceled due to death threats. The only schedule that went ahead was the one in Toronto. I don't know what this says about Toronto security (and nerve?). But, I went, nonetheless, and was duly impressed by the security guards who kept vigil throughout the program. Lars Hedegaard, President of IFPS-International, and Mary Lou Ambrogio, Vice President of IFPS-Canada made introductory statements before Lars Vilks took the podium.

However rudimentary and amateurish Vilks's Muhammad cartoons appear, he showed us a pencil drawing of a portrait (I didn't have time to note down who it was) that indicated to me that he is an accomplished artist. My only conclusion is: "Who wants to make a good and complementary drawing of Muhammad, anyway?" Scribbled portraits, with Muhammad in various guises, suit our discussions fine. They could even be part of the satire that Vilks is trying to portray.

At the event, I got the chance to buy Sam Solomon's latest book, Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity and the Jews, for a mere CND$10. The book is for sale at Amazon.ca for CND$19, and also at Amazon.com.

Sam Solomon's latest book:
Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity and the Jews

This is Solomon's second book, after Modern Day Trojan Horse: Al Hijra, The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration, which he introduced at a previous meeting in Toronto also arranged by IFPS-Canada, and where Solomon was present. (This book is also available both at Amazon.ca and Amazon.com). I also attended, and documented, this meeting which took place only four months ago in June 2010.

IFPS-Canada held both these events at the Toronto Zionist Centre, one of Toronto's synagogues. This was an apt venue for both events. Muhammad's enmity towards the Jews is fundamental to Islam, as described in Solomon's second book, Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity and the Jews. Here are quotes from page two of Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity and the Jews:

In each of the five daily prayers, they [Muslims] pray the opening Sura of the Qur'an ending in these two verses, "Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom You have favoured with guidance, not [the path] of those against whom there is wrath, nor of those who are astray." [Sura 1:6-7].

In the interpretation of the last verse, Muslims scholars are in unanimous agreement that "those against whom there is wrath" are the Jews, who have incurred Allah's wrath, for though having allegedly received the scriptures and the revelation of the coming prophet, who is the seal of all prophets, namely Muhammad, it is stated in the Qur'an that they concealed this revelation - hence justly incurring the divine and eternal wrath of Allah. While "those who are astray" are identified as being the Christians, who have blasphemed by adding "partners" to Allah.

Though these Qur'anic verses in the opening Sura are in "code" recognizable only by its adherents, in essence this is a concealed but implicit castigation and condemnation of Jews and Christians embedded within the formal daily prayers of all Muslims.

Jews receive the "wrath of Allah," whereas, as I see it, there is possibility for redemption by Christians who simply "went astray." Thus, the animosity toward Jews is far greater than that toward Christians.

More information and writings on Vilk's visit to Toronto can be viewed here at the IFPS-Canada site.