KidClasses

From Mountain To Mountain; Children's Classes

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 19, 8 Masa'il, 164 BE

 Yesterday my father had an operation early in the morning and I had to drive him there and back, plus make sure that he did everything the doctors required of him. Then Silvie and Tomaso had their school's Christmas concerts, a dress rehearsal in the afternoon (in which Silvie played the role of "Festive the Cat") and the final performance in the evening. I was so busy escorting people back and forth that I did not even have time to check my email that day. I did however manage to squeeze in time for a Baha'i class with the kids.

Over the past couple of weeks these almost-daily classes have become a highlight of our lives. All I do is read a few chapters from a history of the Faith written for children's classes called "From Mountain to Mountain, Stories about Baha'u'llah," by Hitjo Garst (Amazon features a book review at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mountain-Stories-About-Bahaullah/dp/085398266X), while both Silvie (13 years old) and Tomaso (8 years old) furiously draw their impressions of the events in Baha'u'llah's life. Surprisingly, using this teaching method it is possible to teach kids separated by five years. Silvie comes up with the first draft for an entire comic book, while Thomas takes a more impressionistic and often tangential approach in his depictions. So imaginative and prolific are they in their response that my feelings go beyond mere parental pride -- these two give me a glimpse of the remarkably fecund ground that the lives of the Bab and Baha'u'llah will surely be for artists during the next millennium.

From Mountain to Mountain was written by a teacher of children's classes in Holland for his students, but he seems a pretty impressive researcher in his own right. To my surprise very many of the stories and in this book seem completely new, and his asides are often illuminating for an old timer like myself. Some do not even sound familiar, and here I thought I had read the main histories of the Faith available in English. Unfortunately, being a kid's book, it does not have footnotes so there is no way to check up on its sources. What I would like to do, if I have time, is to scan the book in and make up a comic book (using a program I recently purchased called "Comic Book Maker") using Silvie and Tomaso's very imaginative illustrations.

To give some examples, Tomaso, frustrated with the patience of Baha'u'llah in the face of the plotting of Mirza Yahya in the period just before the self-exile to the Solomon Mountains, depicts a bearded and fearsome and actually quite authentic-looking Yahya being fed into a huge contraption called the "Wedr (Weeder) 9000." In a later lesson, he pictures the crowd at the departure of Baha'u'llah from Baghdad becoming so enthusiastic that they throw themselves higgly-piggly through the air at Him, like bowling pins in a strike. They were sad to see Him go, but probably not quite that demonstrative! Silvie depicts the musical instruments of Mirza Munib, the guy who lightened the severity of the long journey in exile from Baghdad to Constantinople by playing music and singing -- she drew for him a harmonica, a banjo and a piano, though I must say the piano must have weighed down his horse quite a bit.

Our community recently met with our ABM assistant, who suggested that I broaden this class out to other children in the neighborhood. Several factors stand in the way; Silvie is both shy and solitary, she spends her lunch hour walking around the schoolyard alone (which is probably healthier than what my two buddies, Harry and Doug, and I did during Grade Eight recesses and lunch hours: walk around the schoolyard droning on endlessly about how great it would be to be out of there and in High School). Thomas, although he has many friends, tends to be standoffish with them; using a literary reference he understands all too well, I compared his ambivalence to Squidward's uncomfortable relationship to Spongebob and Patrick. Plus, with only them to teach I can time the classes very flexibly, at precisely the moment during the evening when both they and I are relaxed and receptive to a lesson. Still, if the opportunity arises, I would like to bring in other kids.

Save the Plankton

A Monologue With Bill Gates

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 17, 6 Masa'il, 164 BE

I have been an avid fan of Make Magazine's prolific blog ever since that publication first came out a couple of years ago. This hacker's how-to fills a hidden need in my soul at this point in my life. What happened when Make came out was that I had gone full circle, from a total non-practical person who would laugh in contempt at homeowners as I walked by and saw them wasting time repairing and cutting their lawns, to an enthusiastic new homeowner, putterer and tinkerer in the years after we bought this semi-detached house in Dunnville in 1997, and finally I reverted back to the non-handyman I am today.

What happened was that I just ran out of projects that could be done with my spare budget, limited time and unreliable energy supply. One year I made a batch of wooden boxes and gave them to everybody as Christmas gifts. But then the unfinished projects piled on top of one another and my tools were covered in junk and left in disappointing desuetude. Worst of all, as I investigated deeper into how homes could and should be built, I became utterly discouraged with what can and should be done. We should build them right in the first place, not waste our precious time and money trying to upgrade. So, gradually, I went back to my old cerebral ways. For years I collected every project plan and idea I came across for home projects, but now I gave up. Seeing a plan or idea just made me tired and full of regrets.

Then Make Magazine's blog came out. Now I gloried almost every day in the astonishing cleverness of inventors and hackers (their definition of "hacker" is someone who changes a product from its intended purpose to some other purpose). Better still, most projects were so far off the wall that I did not get that exhausting feeling that, "Maybe I should do that too?" I never bought the magazine though and in fact have never even seen it in hard copy, either in magazine stands or at the library.

This fall, though, they came out with a book, so finally I shelled out hard cash and purchased, "Make: Technology on your Time; The Best of 75 Projects from Make Magazine." The first article I read in the book is called "Propeller Chip; Basic Stamp's Chip Gracey puts a new spin on microcontrollers," by Dale Dougherty. It features this Gracey fellow who takes on a task that only multi-billion dollar corporations dare come to grips with, making a microchip from scratch. Really. He buys surplus equipment on eBay and adapts it for his own clean room. More amazing still, like the founder of Microsoft, this fellow is a college dropout. Gracey is working right now on adapting his microcontroller to be used as a dedicated speech processor. The project seems very promising, though I am hardly one to be a judge. To listen to the editors of Make, a new age is dawning where electronics that used to be understood and constructed by a tiny elite will be made, not just hacked, by your average handy-fellow in a garage. In any case, one thing Gracey said struck me as reflective of something Abdu'l-Baha said. It was this:

"Ultimately, everything has to be physical so we can perceive it with our senses. The hardware is like the body and the software is like the spirit. The whole point of the Propeller chip is to make an able body for the kind of spirits you want to create." (Editors of Make, Make: Technology on your Time; The Best of 75 Projects from Make Magazine, O'Reilly, Sebastopol, CA, 2007, p. 88)

This is the miracle of technical advance in our lifetime. What glory it is to live in this day! Whereas before the industrial revolution had made machines that reflect our bodies, now with computers and microchips we have machines that are mirrors to both mind and spirit. Unfortunately, though, as the Master pointed out in the Minneapolis talk that we examined a few weeks ago here, we have yet to get out of the rut of concentrating technical, physical improvements and moving over to making progress in morality or religious faith.

With all that in mind, I want to comment on an article that Bill Gates wrote for the BBC a couple of days ago. He starts off saying:

"One of the most important changes of the last 30 years is that digital technology has transformed almost everyone into an information worker." (Bill Gates: The skills you need to succeed, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7142073.stm>)

Not to niggle, but we have always been information workers. We have these oversized heads because about a 100,000 years ago some upright monkey-like creatures figured out how to work together and use their brains in groups. The difference, as Gracey points out, is that now our tools are reflecting the supreme adaptability of the spirit as well as the physical attributes of the world around us. That is why the computer revolution is so far reaching. Gates continues:

Gates: "A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity. This isn't true at all. In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively. That's true for everyone from the retail store worker who uses a handheld scanner to track inventory to the chief executive who uses business intelligence software to analyse critical market trends."

There is truth in this, but not enough. Yes, it is a pervasive movement and software is made by groups. But we have not used computers to change our consultative methodology for anything other than technical questions. We must use them for moral, political and religious questions as well. Rarely are computers used to visualize data together or to solve new, unexpected problems in groups, problems like environmental degradation, decline of the oceans, and on and on. We use them in an isolated, discrete way to improve on old solutions while we ignore "new" problems like morality and cooperation completely. That is why the computer revolution is only speeding up the handcart to global warming hell that our present economy has become. We have no brakes. We use computers to accelerate, not slow down or turn around.

Gates: "So if you look at how progress is made and where competitive advantage is created, there's no doubt that the ability to use software tools effectively is critical to succeeding in today's global knowledge economy."

With all due respect Mr. Gates (and because of your charity work, there are no moguls in the world that I respect more than you), the very existence of competition is a sign that the crowd values a particular answer. Crowds imitate, and imitation is the reverse of originality. And unfortunately the answer the crowd values is not always worth all that attention. Why is there not massive competition, for example, to save the plankton? Forget saving the whales, the oxygen we breathe comes from plankton and the ocean in which they live is, as reported lately by oceanographers, in steep, precipitous decline. Yet people are still competing for what they competed thirty years ago. Forget competition, we need cooperation, and fast.

Gates: "A solid working knowledge of productivity software and other IT tools has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career. Beyond that, however, I don't think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in maths and science. If you look at the most interesting things that have emerged in the last decade - whether it is cool things like portable music devices and video games or more practical things like smart phones and medical technology - they all come from the realm of science and engineering."

Yes, but do you not find that worrisome? Maybe our best talent should be channeled into other areas, perhaps ones involving moral and spiritual progress, for instance? We give our children about twelve years of math and science training before they graduate high school, but how much do they know about world religions? About ethics and peace studies? Not much; it cannot matter much because we do not bother to teach them about it. We want them to end war, but we teach them nothing about war or peace. And then adults like you go around handing out advice that kids need even more training in science and engineering because these areas have been so spectacularly successful. Is that not a circular argument?

Put a microphone in front of the average person's face and you will get at least some accurate scientific information out of them. They may not be able to name all the planets, but they will be familiar with the Copernican idea that the sun is the center of the solar system. But how about morality? Consider these questions: that `Abdu'l-Baha suggested for the man-in-the-street interviewer in September of 1912,

"If you should ask a thousand persons, `What are the proofs of the reality of Divinity?' perhaps not one would be able to answer. If you should ask further, `What proofs have you regarding the essence of God?' `How do you explain inspiration and revelation?' `What are the evidences of conscious intelligence beyond the material universe?' `Can you suggest a plan and method for the betterment of human moralities? (sic)' `Can you clearly define and differentiate the world of nature and the world of Divinity?' -- you would receive very little real knowledge and enlightenment upon these questions." (Promulgation, 325-329)

Man, I read this and imagined being asked any one of these queries by a street interviewer and I realized with a thud in my heart that even though I have been writing and thinking about just these questions all my life, the only thing you would be likely to get out me would be silence, and maybe some fillers, like, "Um. Ah. You know, I do not know, you know?" What I would like to do is write an entire series of essays, one on each of these questions. That way, even though I would still embarrass myself in front of a camera if I ever were asked the questions, at least I would be able to point to the URL of my blog where on one day I tried my level best to do the question justice. I guess I should not feel so bad, after all, like most people I have thirteen years of formal schooling in science and math, but at most one in religion.

Bill Gates continues under the heading, "Lifelong learning is vital,"

"Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too. A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code. This isn't true at all. Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs."

Right on. The Baha'i principle is: "Work and service are worship." What we often do not realize is that the more we reflect and worship the more effective our service in life will be. Belief in God is the Lex Parsimoniae, or law of succinctness. When we take our anxieties and insecurities to the Source, we find ourselves afterwards fully content with His Will, and more likely to pay attention to the needs and requirements that our calling is meant to answer.

Gates: "I also place a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning. When I was pretty young, I picked up the habit of reading lots of books. It's great to read widely about a broad range of subjects. Of course today, it's far easier to go online and find information about any topic that interests you. Having that kind of curiosity about the world helps anyone succeed, no matter what kind of work they decide to pursue."

That is the first Baha'i principle, search for truth, right there. I have been inspired by how Mr. Gates wooed his wife, by devoting an entire weekend to a subject like microbiology and studying and discussing it together. Pure ecstasy! I remember at 17 years old as a new Baha'i my first Baha'i teacher at summer school showed us how to schedule our reading so that by absorbing only a page or more every morning and evening you can go through all the main Baha'i texts and scriptures in two or three years. This had a great effect on the course of my life. Now I try to bring my broad, not to say promiscuous, reading into this Badi' blog.

Yet every time I talk to a Baha'i librarian or bookseller I hear the same story: we believers buy and read few books, and of those book we do get very few are the core texts, the Writings of the Bab, Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha. Which brings me to my next project cooking away in my blogger's kitchen: a YouTube introduction to Baha'i books, one at a time, starting with the Hidden Words. It will include leftovers thrown in from my abortive essay series, "A book lover's introduction to the Baha'i Faith." Keep an eye out for it.

Washing Up

Taking time out to wash up

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 16, 5 Masa'il, 164 BE

Our topic of late is the principle of justice applied to the investigation of reality. We went over what this meant for certain Ancient Greek philosophers and the Jewish Torah, and the past two essays were devoted to the Christian teachings on justice and search. Our next destination on this journey is the Revelation of Muhammad. However, before we leave Christianity I want to note a new book, published in October, that I have begun reading called "The Dirt on Clean, An Unsanitized History," by Katherine Ashenburg (http://www.thedirtonclean.com/excerpt.asp), which points out some interesting historical points that I had not realized.

According to Ashenburg, in virtually every other contemporary religion washing was central. You did not talk to God unless you washed. Soap is a relatively recent invention, and the expression "the unwashed masses" described what was quite literally the case. The poor and outcasts did not have access to clean water and were always grungy and smelly. Having a clean body was a mark of nobility. Washing was basic to courtesy, and was a social as well as religious ritual. When there was a death or other great grief, the custom everywhere was to intentionally cover oneself with dirt and dust, implying that joy and good times are wrapped up in being clean. The family always washed the body of those who died, which has no practical purpose other than, presumably, to prepare them to meet their Maker. The Greeks washed not only before praying but also at the end of a journey, before talking to a person they respected, when they arrived to stay at someone's home, and on and on.

This, surprisingly, was not true of Christians.

Apparently, Christians wanted to distinguish themselves from other faiths, or perhaps they misunderstood the incident where Jesus refused to allow his disciples to wash His feet, and instead insisted that He wash their feet personally (the standing custom was to have a servant or daughter of the house wash guests, not the master). Instead of taking it as an example of humility and service, they apparently understood him to be saying: do not wash your own body. Whatever the causes, the leaning to dirtiness was minor in the first few centuries but when the faith was corrupted by asceticism and monasticism, body odor became a sign of piety.

"Medieval Christians proved their holiness by not washing. A monk came upon a hermit in the desert and rejoiced that he smelt the good odour of that brother from a mile away."

The dark ages continued this trend, though the ancient institution of public bathhouses remained, in spite of their association with another meaning of what we call "dirty," that is, illicit sex.

"Because so much sex went on in the public baths of the middle ages, the term stew or stewhouse, which originally referred to the moist warmth of the bathhouse, gradually came to mean a house of prostitution."

Then came the Black Death, the most destructive epidemic in history (it killed a third or a half of the population, depending on the region). Because one or two medical experts pointed their fingers at the bathhouses as the plague's cause, for several centuries Europeans were terrified of having their bodies come into contact with water. This became wrapped up with the sexual dirtiness of stripping down to wash, and many Europeans in these times lived their whole lives without seeing their own naked body or that of their spouse. They would change their shirts daily, and keep an immaculate house, but they never washed. When the lice became irksome they shaved their hair and wore dusted wigs to keep the itching down. This custom persists in places like Bavaria and in the Czech Republic (I am speaking from direct experience), though today the advertising of soap and deodorant companies is making inroads at last.

Throughout this time Muslims, whose religious law requires them to wash and pray five times daily, looked upon their Christian neighbors as filthy, and not without good reason. Indeed, may it not be that God, seeing the dirt in which the Christians were rolling, issued this law as a corrective? If the balance swings way out of whack, sometimes you have to put a really heavy stone on the other side just to get the two sides to even out. Our Baha'i law, coming after the Muslim one, is less severe in most ways but we still wash face and hands (but not feet) before praying. Why? Philosophically, it may have to do with what George Townshend calls the "self-Manifestation" of God. The Godhead is fond of creating, but also of purifying Its creation. So it creates the Manifestation of God, and the rejection of Him by most of us shows how easy it is to, as it were, enter into His presence without washing. That is, we fail to clean away all our preconceptions and offer Him the basic courtesy of letting Him speak for Himself in His own terms. As Baha'u'llah says, the greatest proof of the sun is the sun itself. We get a suntan by exposing ourselves to direct light.

What is the result of all this emphasis on cleaning in the religion of God? I think that a big part of it is to realize how utterly dependent we are upon the Manifestation of God. If the lens of the mind is dirty and unfocussed, we look for light and heat from celestial bodies other than the sun. There is only one sun, and we need to turn to that, or like a plant turning away from the source of sunlight, we will wither and die. That is where the Qu'ran starts its teaching, as we shall see soon. But first I want to underline this point by citing what I think is the most important passage from George Townshend's "The Promise of All Ages." Then next time we go on to the Qu'ran.

The Principle of God's Self-Manifestation

"Baha'u'llah represented -- in full agreement with the Christian scriptures -- that the unfolding of God's design is dependent not on the conscious good will of the multitudes but on the concerted efforts of a succession of Great Souls especially appointed and empowered for the task. These Great Souls, who are men and yet more than men, are the key figures of history: it is they who inspire the onward movement of mankind and determine the manifold phases of human progress and enlightenment.

"For the development of civilisation does not proceed in a manner parallel to that which science discovers in the evolution of material life. Humanity does not advance in wisdom, virtue and happiness through the inward urge of some anonymous force or the uplift of some original inborn power of its own. Far otherwise. For all that raises him above the level of a human animal man depends upon a new and special principle that is not found on the lower stages of being. This principle is a part of the creative process, and is the cause of all that is noble and gracious in life. It is active today as it has been active since the time of Adam, and men depend on it now for their well-being as completely as they have done throughout the past.

"This is the principle of God's Self-Manifestation in the human degree of existence." (George Townshend, The Promise of All Ages, George Ronald, Oxford, 1948, pp. 29-30)

My Story of Stuff

Housing and World Federation

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 13, 2 Masa'il, 164 BE

The other night I viewed a short but must-see video on the Web called "The Story of Stuff." It is in a very simple format supplemented by black-on-white line-drawn animations and can be found on the Story of Stuff website, at:

 <http://www.storyofstuff.com>.

 This short film reminded me of "An Inconvenient Truth," in that it is essentially a filmed lecture that brings together disparate research findings about the environment in one place, simplifies them, brings them to life and goads us to contribute to ending the mess. The narrator is clear and colloquial, but she does not eschew academic jargon.

 The Story of Stuff describes one woman's ten-year study of our messed-up manufacturing cycle, and suggests ways to change it from a linear model to a circular one that does not destroy, exploit and spew poisons into our world. Our present linear model is a one way trip to oblivion that destroys nature, that overproduces while pumping toxic chemicals and neuro-toxins, and encourages blind consumption. What is left over is thrown out, or worse, burned. Our recycling is half hearted, and most new stuff is designed to be un-recyclable.

 I was half-way into it when I notice Tomaso watching over my shoulder. I thought it would be way over his head, but animations work miracles and to my surprise it inspired him to draw his own picture, similar to the linear production cycle featured on a white backdrop throughout the Story of Stuff film. It included his own suggested ideas for bringing manufacturing and sales around to a circular, recycling model. Inevitably, it involved contraptions, laser blasters and attack robots, typical eight-year-old boy fare. He was so intrigued that he called a reluctant older sister to come and watch, and she too was inspired. As a result I saw the film more often that I would have otherwise. They were horrified by the part that explains the role of television and advertising in enslaving consumers in an endless rat-race of consumption. I expect to hear fewer arguments about my limiting screen exposure and less ardent regrets about my cutting them off from commercial television. I highly recommend that everybody check this site out.

 Like Tomaso, whenever I see a problem in the world I want to sketch out the solutions, the difference being that I rely less heavily on lasers, blasters and robots. Robots, maybe, but not at first. We who believe that the way to peace is the unification of the world under one confederation are, in my opinion, going about it in the wrong way if we concentrate only on politics. Politics are corrupt, unpopular and restricted in appeal. We need to turn to what works. The problem of stuff is, as the film says, at base a human problem and, as the film says, humans must become the solution too. Here are the ideas I woke up with this morning.

 It seems to me that if we are going to make the stuff cycle circular and non-linear we should concentrate on housing and neighborhoods. The entire linear system pictured in The Story of Stuff points directly here. A huge arrow is pointing from the sources of destruction to you and me in the homes we live in. Here the decision to trash products is made, -- as the film points out, over 90 percent of the trinkets and gadgets we buy is trashed within six months of purchase. Though all arrows point here, the housing arrow itself points in the same direction as the rest of the economy: straight to oblivion. Here designers and scientists are blocked from planning; here the least coordination and standardization are to be found. Here the great tyrant is not big brother but "little brother," that is, parochialism, localism and labor disharmony. Human ignorance and selfishness stymie every attempt to reform the system.

 This happens because housing is the end product of rampant land speculation. Our homes are purpose built to minimize speculator's initial construction costs. Permanent, enduring expenses are created and offloaded to home buyers, who are so heavily in debt that they rarely can afford to bring the houses up to standard, even when they have the knowledge, will and expertise to try to do so. As a result, our homes and apartments are expensive and inefficient to run.

 Because they are purpose-built to ignore long-term costs incurred over the entire lifetime of the building, residents pay slightly less initially but fork out thousands every year for heat and utilities that could have been largely avoided. Owners and residents in these money and resource sinks suffer for lack of improvements that would have cost a pittance to install initially, if only building codes held to a higher standard.

 Now that the planet's resources are scraping at their limits we suddenly realize that we need to conserve heating costs by sealing houses and using heat exchangers to allow efficient air circulation. We see how it would be of benefit to install solar panels, improve our sewers and toilets, and grow food local, in yards and roof gardens. There are dozens of other important ways we could reduce waste, but to do them quickly we would somehow have to retrofit every house and apartment building in the world. Such massive renovations would be disruptive, inefficient and extremely expensive for home owners.

 How do we get around this? Do we tear down every neighborhood and rebuild entire cities from the ground up, doing it right the first time? Perhaps. But if the problem is people, and ideas run people, then we should change ourselves and adopt better ideas first. Otherwise, radical changes could very well make things worse than they already are. And the very act of tearing down and pouring concrete for new buildings releases large amounts of greenhouse gases. So for a while, at least, we are better off reflecting, meditating, praying, consulting, and doing other activities that go to the heart of the problem, the human heart, and do no harm to the environment.

 We should concentrate all our thoughts on better technical standards, especially for homebuilding. If there were a standard home everywhere tremendous economies of scale would kick in, and the billions of displaced souls stuck in substandard slums would gain the necessities of life and hope of advancement.

 I am convinced that higher housing standards would improve the lifestyle of the wealthy even more than the poor. It is astonishing that from a technical point of view even the million dollar mansion is very poorly built. People in the future will laugh at us in the same way we laugh at the drafty castles in which kings and the nobility lived in the middle ages. The reason this happened is the growth of a siege mentality that separates the minds of the elite from what is in their own interests. They shut themselves off in gated neighborhoods, and hold in their minds an excessive class consciousness. Similarly corporations are separated from shareholders, workers and the communities in which they function, and this has led to the vicious circle where poisons are routinely pumped into the process at every stage. We need to unite minds and pocketbooks. The Master has something to say about that, as we shall soon see.

 Isolated from reality, the rich and their corporate minions miss out on a chance to learn life's most valuable lesson, that there are many kinds of wealth, and the best cannot be measured in dollars. Love and wisdom, as the proverb says, are far more precious than gold or rubies. If those living in rich areas renounced their precious, unused, excessive space and lived in the same compact, standard, modular, mobile, high density housing complexes as everybody else, they would find that what they lose out on is a mere pittance compared with what they would gain. Numerous studies have found long term health benefits and reciprocal advantages of living in a diverse, active, vital community, and a gated neighborhood cannot be diverse.

 The area that does the least harm to the planet are changes in software, both that in our computers and that in our own heads and hearts. If we concentrate on giving our planet a better nervous system -- in the form of a responsive Internet -- we will be in a better position to act effectively when the time comes. I have often thought that the first place to start is to have a goal of connecting every person on the planet to a telephone and the internet, which would allow each and all to have an Internet-based bank account. That would allow charities and donors to make direct payments to the poorest people in the world. By assuring that they are financially stable and their rights are secure, we could remove the causes of exploitation of people, all of which are wrapped up in environmental destruction.

 Supplemental Articles

 Article One, "Framing," at the end of this mailing, discusses the idea of making each individual in the eyes of the computerized financial system look like a independent bank or corporation. Although this is discussed in a different context, I think this is what we should be doing as far as the "software" of social reform goes if we are to hope to bring about rapid changes.

 Article two is a website our radical doctors emailed us about, that includes a petition you can fill in to lend moral support to those who disapprove of how the talks at Bali are going. It rings of politics, I know, but I have become such a fervent environmentalist that in spite of my qualms, I signed the digital petition.

 Article Three is financial advice from the Master on how to reform the whacked out monster that capitalism has become. Like most religious people, Baha'is are all for a moderate, regulated free enterprise system. As it is now, any aspect of economics that affects the interests of the few, be they workers or the elite, is politicized and therefore emasculated. Abdu'l-Baha's advice shows how to keep owner worker relations from becoming politicized. He ends with a story of a Turkish worker's revolution that took place in "ancient times." Does anybody know what specific event He is talking about?

 Following these three articles are some short but interesting ideas for solar panels, higher standard houses, and other stopgap ways to make our hopeless dwellings less environmentally damaging.

 Article One, Framing: Securing Very Important Data, Your Own; By Denise Caruso, NY Times, October 7, 2007

  AS long as we are willing to relinquish some personal data, Web applications have long allowed us to create virtual identities that can conduct most of the social and financial transactions that typify life in the real world.

  ONE way to change this, he said, is to make people more like organizations. To this end, Mr. Neuenschwander and his colleagues have floated the intriguing concept of the L.L.P.: the Limited Liability Persona. This persona would be a legally recognized virtual person in which users could invest the financial or identity resources of their choosing. Once their individual personas are created, consumers would be able to use them as their legal alter ego, even in financial transactions. My L.L.P. would have its own mailing address, its own tax ID number, and that is the information Id give when I am online, Mr. Neuenschwander said. Other benefits include the ability for personas to limit their financial exposure in ways that individuals cannot.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/technology/07frame.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

 Article Two, Featured Website and Survey: Stop the Climate-Wrecking at Bali

  http://www.avaaz.org/en/index.php

  Climate negotiations in Bali are in crisis. Things were looking good till now: near-consensus on a delicate deal, including 2020 targets for rich countries, in return for which China and the developing world would do their part over time. IPCC scientists have said such targets are needed to prevent catastrophe. But Japan, the US and Canada are banding together to wreck the deal, and the rest of the world is starting to waver...

  We cannot let three stubborn governments throw away the planet's future. We have until the end of Friday to do everything we can. Please sign our emergency global petition below -- we'll deliver it through stunts at the summit, a full-page ad in the Financial Times in Asia, and directly to country delegates to stiffen their nerve against any bad compromise. Add your name to the campaign below now!

 Article Three, Abdu'l-Baha, Foundations of World Unity, pp. 43-44

"No more trusts will remain in the future. The question of the trusts will be wiped away entirely. Also, every factory that has ten thousand shares will give two thousand shares of these ten thousand to its employees and will write the shares in their names, so that they may have them, and the rest will belong to the capitalists. Then at the end of the month or year whatever they may earn after the expenses and wages are paid, according to the number of shares, should be divided among both. In reality, so far great injustice has befallen the common people. Laws must be made because it is impossible for the laborers to be satisfied with the present system. They will strike every month and every year. Finally, the capitalists will lose. In ancient times a strike occurred among the Turkish soldiers. They said to the government: "Our wages are very small and they should be increased." The government was forced to give them their demands. Shortly afterwards they struck again. Finally all the incomes went to the pockets of the soldiers to the extent that they killed the king, saying: "Why didst thou not increase the income so that we might have received more?"

 Homemade air conditioners:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/11/homemade_air_conditioner_2.html

 Sunshine to Dollars, practical advice on how to get free solar electric panels:
 http://www.freesolarelectricpvpanels.com/?gclid=CMHekdfOy48CFQkxgwodnQHT-A

 Minihomes:
 The Perfect House: Architecture

 "A home built with a clear conscience," by John Bentley Mays, October 12, 2007
 <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071012.MAYS12/TPStory/Environment>

 The Sustain Minihome, the modernist green RV, makes it to TV. I think it is a fabulous thing, the ultimate in green housing.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOAPe0VoK3U

 Overall First Place: Technische Universitdt Darmstadt
 http://www.solardecathlon.org/scores_standings.html

 This team from Germany came to the Solar Decathlon hoping to have an impact on people, and it's safe to say that this happened. Darmstadt won the Architecture, Lighting, and Engineering contests. The Architecture Jury said the house pushed the envelope on all levels and is the type of house they came to the Decathlon hoping to see. The Lighting Jury loved the way this house glows at night. The Engineering Jury gave this team an innovation score that was as high as you could go, and said nobody did the integration of the PV system any better. Darmstadt was one of seven teams to score a perfect 100 points in the Energy Balance contest. All week, long lines of people waited to get into this house. Germany has a "solar feed-in tariff" that provides a guaranteed price for any solar power that is fed into the German power grid. Because the feed-in tariff is high enough to more than cover the cost of the installation over the long term, the university is selling shares to the public to finance these photovoltaic systems. This yields a return for the investors as the revenue from selling the power is split among them.

p19st x2

Search and Justice in Gospel and Pauline Teaching

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 12, 1 Masa'il, 164 BE

I promised to look at how Christian justice mediates the individual and society, and how it reconciles the conflicting implications of compassion and justice.

We have seen that the example of Jesus' sacrifice and crucifixion teaches that as far as the individual is concerned, justice *is* one's search for truth, and self assessment is the first religious duty. "...let a man examine himself." (I Cor 11:28), and, "... every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour." (I Cor 3:8) Yet although Jesus spoke to the individual, He hardly considered it a good thing to narrow one's circle of concern to limited personal considerations. Such a circumscribed attitude would be unjust and unholy, against the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the direct teaching of the Sermon on the Mount,

"How blest are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail; they shall be satisfied." (Matt 5:6)

 Having said all that, it would be pointless to try to contend that justice is the central teaching of Christianity. Such is not the case. Love, spirit and mercy to our fellow man are indisputably the focus. Christians are expected never to avenge themselves, always to turn the other cheek. This set up a need to accommodate the demands of forgiveness alongside justice.

As they became distinguished from their Jewish roots, the early Christians were enabled by faith in Spirit for the first time to set up a cross-ethnic community. Here, judgment of one another was suspended to hold what they called a "love feast." Backbiting and gossip, the habits and ploys of divide-and-rule tyranny, were excluded and each believer held to Jesus' promise that holding to His Word, the truth, rather than force, would in itself make them free.

"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:31-32, KJV)

This was freedom from rectifying their brothers and sisters; they learned to suspend judgment of one another and concentrate upon their own flaws. Withdrawal from justice allowed Christian love to catch flame. "For if we would judge ourselves we should not be judged." (I Cor 11:13) A benign social atmosphere gives moral strength to develop the painful habit of taking a judgmental attitude towards one's own sins and shortcomings, while ignoring those of others. Sustaining this was a feeling, derived from pure monotheist faith, that personal judgment is the province of God only, and that humans are meddling when they presume to lay down the law on others.

"For it is written, 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'to me every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess to God.' So then each one of us will give account of himself to God. Therefore, let us not judge one another any more, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother's way, or an occasion of falling." (Rom 14:11-13, WEB)

Thus the creative thrust of the message of Christ is to trust to God to change others, and to refrain from direct action in judging others, but at the same time never neglecting to respond to the demands of justice by "removing stumbling blocks," or in modern jargon, making systemic, infrastructural changes that conduce to moral progress. The social worker is the first child of Christianity.

Before I finish discussing justice and Christianity I want to bring up a recent series of scientific findings reported in the New York Times. I think they explain why forgiveness, the temporary suspension of justice, is so necessary for a clear spiritual as well as social atmosphere. Mercy requires of us what psychology labels as "denial," that is, temporarily favoring our nearest and dearest by suspending our bred-in-the-bone concern for justice.

"In the modern vernacular, to say someone is in denial is to deliver a savage combination punch: one shot to the belly for the cheating or drinking or bad behavior, and another slap to the head for the cowardly self-deception of pretending its not a problem.
"Yet recent studies from fields as diverse as psychology and anthropology suggest that the ability to look the other way, while potentially destructive, is also critically important to forming and nourishing close relationships. The psychological tricks that people use to ignore a festering problem in their own households are the same ones that they need to live with everyday human dishonesty and betrayal, their own and others. And it is these highly evolved abilities, research suggests, that provide the foundation for that most disarming of all human invitations, forgiveness.
"In this emerging view, social scientists see denial on a broader spectrum -- from benign inattention to passive acknowledgment to full-blown, willful blindness -- on the part of couples, social groups and organizations, as well as individuals. Seeing denial in this way, some scientists argue, helps clarify when it is wise to manage a difficult person or personal situation, and when it threatens to become a kind of infectious silent trance that can make hypocrites of otherwise forthright people.
"The closer you look, the more clearly you see that denial is part of the uneasy bargain we strike to be social creatures, said Michael McCullough, a psychologist at the University of Miami and the author of the coming book "Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct." We really do want to be moral people, but the fact is that we cut corners to get individual advantage, and we rely on the room that denial gives us to get by, to wiggle out of speeding tickets, and to forgive others for doing the same.
"The capacity for denial appears to have evolved in part to offset early humans hypersensitivity to violations of trust. In small kin groups, identifying liars and two-faced cheats was a matter of survival. A few bad rumors could mean a loss of status or even expulsion from the group, a death sentence..."  <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/health/research/20deni.html?ref=science>

Reality as Palindrome

Search and Justice in Christianity

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 11, 19 Qawl, 164 BE

For months we tarried at the intersection of justice and search for truth until we hit upon the chronological approach; last time we covered the Torah and Ancient Greeks. Today let us look over the contribution of Christianity.

The Jewish tradition into which Christianity was born was strictly monotheistic. Judaism banished images and instead emphasized sounds, songs, dancing and the spoken and written word. The name of God, Yahweh, was guarded from profanation. The Word of God was revered not only because God said them but also because it informed their history, legal constitution and cultural expression. For them, what God says _is_ the truth, by definition; a prayer of David says, "All of your words are truth. Every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever." (Ps 119:160, WEB) This high reverence for Yahweh and His law rubbed off on the learned that were given by God Himself the responsibility of guarding and studying the holy text.

Christianity continued in this tradition of high respect for learning and legitimate authority. For example, while still a child Jesus entered into the discussions of the learned in the Temple, calling it "my Father's house"; later, He opened His Mission by entering into discussion with them. He only left the Temple and went out to address the public at large from the Mount when it had become clear that the learned were not going to respond. Nonetheless, the Jewish idea of a God of righteousness continued to shape Jesus' conception of truth. He declared, "If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not tell the truth." (John 1:6, WEB) Later, in the midst of His Passion, Jesus held to what he declared was his core objective, to suffer anything to uphold truth,

"Pilate therefore said to him, `Are you a king then?' Jesus answered, `You say that I am a king. To this end have I been born, and to this end I have come into the world, that I should testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.' Pilate said to him, `What is truth?' When he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, `I find no basis for a charge against him.'" (John 18:37-38, WEB)

Pilate's fence sitting should cannot be mistaken for scientific objectivity nor his cavalier attitude with the detachment of faith. To sit back and say `what is truth?' without serious investigation allows injustice to thrive, in this case the primal, ultimate injustice. We learn from this to define a just person as one who actively investigates the reality of things, no matter what the consequences, who examines self to a set degree but is sure to go beyond navel gazing and wield the Christian criterion of good, "by their fruits ye shall know them."

The teaching of the Gospels offers what could be called a palindromic model of reality. What begins in order ends in reverse order, and vice versa. For example, it predicts that in the time of the end the last would come first, and the first come last. Jesus' own obscurity, expulsion, homelessness, persecution and crucifixion, and after the crucifixion His surprising rise to domination of the religious sensibilities of the entire human race demonstrates the last coming first. The relegation of the predominant contemporary rival gods to the dustbin of history would be the first coming last. The next instance was Paul who went from the last, a persecutor of Christians, to the first, the one responsible for its spread into Europe.

As for the content of His message, Jesus told a palindromic parable of dishes washed on the outside while being left dirty on the inside, suggesting that what is important to the outer eye has nothing to do with what matters for inner, spiritual vision. Jesus also told a palindromic parable of a rich man refusing table scraps to a sick and indigent Lazarus. Dogs are thrown table scraps and even they lick Lazarus's sores, but the rich man refuses him even the scraps from his table. But the situation is reversed in the next life -- hence, I suppose, the expression, "The tables are turned." After death Lazarus's degradation and humiliation is reversed. He is at the height of wealth and power while the callous rich man is banished to "where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth." The wealthy man fails to see the other side of the palindrome, and for this reason he bungles in both justice and compassion.

Christian justice, therefore, demands personal effort and independent judgment, "Yea and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" (Luke 12:57) This is because life is a palindrome, constantly reversing itself like a revolving wheel, and only constant vigilance orients a believer to the heart, to the center of our radius where it is relatively stable and constant. This Jesus Himself did, as evidenced by His defense of Himself when accused of "having a devil," "I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth." (John 8:50) To passively tolerate injustice, or on the other side of the palindromic wheel, to imagine that any but God establishes justice, is to affront the God of righteousness.

Next time we will look at how Christian justice mediates the individual and society, and how it reconciles the often conflicting needs of compassion and justice.

PB podcast

Philosophy Bites

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 09, 2007, 17 Qawl, 164 BE

Since we got an ipod in September, I have become an ever more enthusiastic fan of the podcasts coming out of England called "Philosophy Bites." This is their site:

 <http://nigelwarburton.typepad.com/philosophy_bites/>

The Philosophy Bites web site has a button you can hit to subscribe to their RSS feed, and you can put it on your igoogle homepage, or on Google Reader (you can do the same with the Badi Blog, though I do not know if it is as quick and easy to sign on.)

 The name itself shows how huge a linguistic difference the pond makes, since over here a show called "Philosophy Bites" would be run by disgruntled former philosophy students who detest the discipline. But this is fer, not agin; it is serious, world class philosophy consisting of "bite-sized" -- just long enough to expand your head a little without cracking the skull -- interviews with the best philosophers the UK has to offer. Since all a podcast is is a downloadable, on-demand radio show, my sole exposure over these months to the name "Philosophy Bites" was auditory; as a result, I thought they must be saying "Philosophy Bytes," making that hoary, overdone pun with digital bits and bytes; but no, I went to their site and that is what they call it, Bites.

 I find both hosts of these broadcasts to be so good at what they do that, well, I cannot put it in words. To my philosophical duffer's ears they are almost superhuman in their insight. I am the type who as soon as he stumbles into a serious discussion trips up pronouncing words like "Nietchze" or "deontology." To hear these guys go on it is, well, almost a religious experience for me. I feel like, dare I say it?, praying to them. Silly, I know, they are still alive and far from being the dead saints you pray to, but it has been an eternity since I saw or heard anything like this in any media, be it television or radio. The old media are deserts; they made podcasting into an oasis, for they _are_ podcasting, they are the new internet moderated media.

 I feel I have died and gone to heaven listening to each new broadcast, going avidly over their archive of old shows, hoping upon hope that they will never run out. In fact so incisive are they that as often as not their guests, experts in abstruse branches of philosophical inquiry, just stop in their tracks and say admiringly, "You know, that is a very good question," or, "You just summed this up better than I ever could."

 I love to walk through the streets of Dunnville with my noise-canceling earphones blocking out the traffic noise and enter completely into the sweet world of these minds. I go in and never want to come out again. Why, oh why, is there no such thing as stupidity-canceling earphones? If there were leaving my auditory world of Philosophy Bites would not be so jarring. Television shows would be tolerable, with SCE; I could plug in the earphones and even people would start making sense. Or, maybe the whole world would go dead and all I would hear would be the sound of silence. Sounds lonely. Now I am starting to sound like a Dilbert character.

 At first I thought I would use the twin philosophers of Philosophy Bites as models for any future Badi' Blog podcasts where I plan to read older essays aloud. But the more I listen to Philosophy Bites the higher the bar, the tougher it gets for me to imagine myself doing that. I admit it, I am the type who stumbles over words from time to time. I mess up. I misunderstand. I repeat. I stutter. I spoonerize. I miss things. These podcasts are absolutely flawless; not a word, not a thought, not a phoneme is out of place. These two podcasters are frighteningly like those widescreen, Technicolor movies they made in the 1950's where every hair on every actor was in place and ugliness and missteps just did not enter into their world.

 Having said all that, this would not genuinely be coming from me if I did not have some criticisms, minor as they may be. For one thing, philosophy in general is awfully prone to name dropping. Interviewing experts in their fields, I find that they tend too often to be experts on other philosophers, almost always dead philosophers. Few are original thinkers in their own right. In view of the nature of philosophy, which has to involve thinking for oneself, independently, this rings wrong in one's ears. It is mildly distressing, offensive. And, as the Biters themselves point out at one point, too many philosophers, Kant first among them, were terrible writers. Unlike intellectuals in other disciplines, most modern philosophers have just given up on appealing to a popular audience. This is a grating pity.

 The result of philosophers' exclusively academic rut is an inbred mind-set, and from what I hear Oxford and Cambridge philosophers have a reputation even among other philosophers for their insularity. Brrr... The epitome of this was the Philosophy Bites podcast where they interviewed a rare philosopher who shut up his dead philosopher books and actually went out into the world to make his own observations. In his case, he went on a wine tasting kick.

 Neither he nor the interviewers seemed aware of the double blind studies proving that nobody can tell the difference between vintage wines and dime store plonk (okay, slight overstatement). Wine tasting has little or nothing to do with what people actually taste. Other statistical studies in the early Nineties found that wine tasters and other so-called experts in this area are beaten out in predicting good and bad vintage years for annual grape crops. The scientific consensus is that on the whole the entire "high" culinary experience is in the head, in the psychological buildup before eating. Not that this is not fertile ground. If they wanted to be philosophical about it, they could have discussed the placebo effect, a highly interesting phenomenon, philosophically, at least to me. But to buy into the high brow nonsense spouted by a fellow who makes his living producing words that sound good to other academics, that is a stretch.

 If you want to talk about vintages, talk about Nigel himself, for most mesmerizing of all about this show is his slightly slurred Oxford accent. I so look forward to hearing the interviews given by him, though I must say that I keep wishing the interviewees would just shut up and let me hear him talk some more. If they ever cast a new Bertie Wooster for P.G. Woodhouse's Jeeves stories, they need go no further than this guy. He would be perfect for the role. True, Bertie is a blathering idiot, and Nigel is at the reverse end of the IQ spectrum. But who knows, maybe Nigel can act. Even if he cannot, it would be great to just hear his voice, even if the art does not quite ring true. For decades I devoured one of Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster novels every month, and the voice in my head during that whole time was just what you hear when Nigel Warburton opens his mouth. Wonderful experience, I am speechless with nostalgia the whole time.

My friend Doug just pointed out to me the following philosophical attack ad, at:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-cmNdiFuI

John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Churchill on Muslims

Churchill on Muslims

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 07, 2007, 15 Qawl, 164 BE

I have revised my recent post, formerly called "Total De-carbonization," and renamed it "America Alone, Book Review Part I." I expunged the review of George Monbiot's blog entry, "What is Progress?" I plan to repost that separately, in heavily revised form. I was unhappy with this post, especially the end, where I found myself speaking on behalf of the Baha'is. Something I avoid, normally. I make enough mistakes talking on my own behalf.

Just after I had done much of this revision, I was burned by three flames on behalf of Mark Steyn's "America Alone," which you will recall left a bad taste in my mouth. All three respondents went for the jugular, sizing me up as a bad writer and an evil person; one even accused me of bad punctuation. That hurts. My punctuation is as punctuated as the next man's, and I refuse to hear any different. Here, from anonymous, is the most innocuous of the responses:

 "Failure to address the argument of the book: check.
 "Presence of unsubstantiated accusation: check.
 "Ironic accusation of irrationality, prejudice: check.
 "Nice work."

 Judging by their sarcastic, Ad Hominem approach, their refusal to approach anything like reasoning or argumentation (as opposed to snide asides) I suspect that one or all of these comments were made by Mr. Steyn himself, or perhaps his mother and secretary as well. It must be nice. When your wit is as sharp as that you can sit back and strike at a distance; no reason to get dirty by engaging in messy points at issue.

 The responses that come in from outside the regular Badi' list readership never fail to amuse. One came from scholar Susan Maneck, whom I mentioned in passing a long time ago. Evidently she came across the comment while ego surfing the Badi' blog and years after confronted me with a niggling objection to my assessment of her opinion. Another, written entirely in Persian, came from a Muslim who (I found out when a friend translated for me) objected that the Baha'i Faith is not a religion. Now I know how people of color feel around here. What do you say to a criticism that denies your existence? The bigot does not consider members of other races to be human. Such attitudes proliferate wherever there is not enough diversity, which is why I feel sickened when multicultural policy is held up to ridicule.

 Anyway, I revised the book review of "America Alone" but found myself reposting it largely as written, in spite of the negative comment. Since I have not finished auditing the entire book I may change my mind still. If so I will duck my head and comment more substantively on it in a sequel later on. As mentioned, it was the inadequacy of my comments about Monbiot, not Steyn, that prompted me to make these unusual revisions.

 One of my new critics did not post anonymously and even left the URL of his website. It was hard to read because of the American flags waving in the background. One quote from the bulldog himself, Winston Churchill, by squinting my eyes I was able to make out. I found it quite interesting and searched it out in more reliable locations on the Web. In 1898, after fighting a force of Muslim fanatics, Churchill apparently wrote,

 "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property -- either as a child, a wife, or a concubine -- must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
 "Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science (the science against which it had vainly struggled) the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome." (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50, London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

 This is the best reference I could find on this quote. There is some controversy in Wikipedia because this passage was expunged from the second edition. Even back at the turn of the 19th Century this was considered either inaccurate or politically incorrect, you judge. You can read the gory details at:

 <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Winston_Churchill>

 Recently Churchill's grandson gave a speech where he mentioned the following more recent assessment that his great ancestor once made of the threat of Wahabism in Islam,

 "On 14 June 1921, hard on the heels of the Cairo Conference, at which he had presided over the re-shaping of the Middle East, including the creation of modern day Iraq, he (Winston Churchill) warned the House of Commons:
 "A large number of [Saudi Arabia's King] Bin Sauds followers belong to the Wahabi sect, a form of Mohammedanism which bears, roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europe's] religious wars.
 "The Wahabis profess a life of exceeding austerity, and what they practice themselves they rigorously enforce on others. They hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahabi villages for simply appearing in the streets. It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette and, as for the crime of alcohol, the most energetic supporter of the temperance cause in this country falls far behind them. Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account, and they have been, and still are, very dangerous to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina."

 The grandson does not stop there. I suggest reading his whole speech, at:

 <http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=3158>

 From what I hear, these puritanical Wahabis, still undisputed masters of the holy places of Islam, a few years ago went so far as to level the home and deface the grave of Muhammad, with hardly a peep of protest from the mass of Muslims. They also dominate university clubs and other Western outposts. Everywhere, moderate Muslims can do little to halt their eclipse by an extremist stripe of Islam. The close ties of the House of Saud with the present Administration in Washington probably do not make it any easier.