23AR28-38

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AR 28:38 - Spiritual abuse in North African folk Islam

In this issue:

ISLAM - "the burden remains on women to speak up against those hiding behind a healing profession"

WOKE MOVEMENT - "the counterrevolution must begin with hope"

Apologia Report 28:38 (1,635)
October 25, 2023

PLEASE NOTE: Our office will be closed for the next two weeks. We hope to resume publication the week of November 8th.

ISLAM

"Investigating the 'spiritual healers' sexually abusing women: BBC Arabic went undercover" by Hanan Razek (BBC News Arabic, Aug 8 '23) -- "Testimonies gathered by the BBC from 85 women, over a period of more than a year, named 65 so-called healers in Morocco and Sudan - two countries where such practices are particularly popular - with accusations ranging from harassment to rape. ...

   "Three of the 50 women we spoke to in Sudan about exploitation or abuse named the same religious leader - Sheikh Ibrahim." Razek explains how "an undercover journalist working with our team agreed to visit Sheikh Ibrahim in a bid to collect more evidence.

   "The reporter, who we are calling Reem, posed as a client suffering from infertility.

   "Sheikh Ibrahim said he would say a prayer for her, and prepared a bottle of 'healing water' - known as 'mahayya' - for her to take home and drink.

   'Reem says he then moved to sit extremely close to her, and put his hand on her stomach. When she asked him to take his hand away, she says, he simply moved it down her body.... She ran from the room. ...

   "We approached political authorities in both Morocco and Sudan with our evidence.

   "In Sudan, Dr Alaa Abu Zeid, head of the family and society department at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, told the BBC that he had explored its regulation in the past, but that the country's political instability meant it was not currently a priority.

   "In Morocco, Minister of Islamic Affairs Ahmed Toufiq said he did not believe there was a need for any separate legislation regarding spiritual healers. ...

   "Despite all the evidence we have gathered, Moroccan and Sudanese authorities are reluctant to take action. So the burden remains on women to speak up against those hiding behind a healing profession." <www.tinyurl.com/mseche9y>

   This problem is not confined to Islamic societies in North Africa. Sexually abusive spiritual leaders are all too common among many purportedly Christian influencers and entrepreneurs across sub-Saharan Africa. See for example, the collection of resources by The Gospel Coalition Africa under the topic "Man of God" (referring to abusive pastors, "apostles," and "prophets"): <www.tinyurl.com/4z7kmtzu>

   A tract warning women against spiritual predators in African churches is available in English, French, Bemba, and other languages - see: <www.tinyurl.com/heha3wwa>

 ---

WOKE MOVEMENT

"Bring on the Counterrevolution" by Christopher F. Rufo (City Journal, Aug 7 '23) -- "A blueprint exists, from a surprising source" namely, Richard Milhous Nixon.

   "It's as though we have lived an endless recurrence: the Black Panther Party reappears as the Black Lives Matter movement; the Weather Underground pamphlets launder themselves into academic papers; the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas trade in their bandoliers and become managers of an elite-led revolution in manners and mores. The ideology, narrative, and aesthetics of the left-wing social movements of that earlier time, though now often degraded through cynicism and repetition, have maintained the position of a jealous hegemon.

   "The cultural revolution that began a half-century ago, now reflected in a deadening sequence of acronyms - CRT, DEI, ESG, and more - has increasingly become our new official morality. Many conservatives have made an uneasy peace with this transformation of values, even as the culture around them has, in many places, collapsed.

   "This attitude no longer suffices. It is time to break the loop of 1968. We need a counterrevolution. ...

   "Today's counterrevolution is not one of class against class but takes place along a new axis between the citizen and an ideologically driven state. Its ultimate ambition is not to replace the new 'universal class' - the heirs of the 1960s cultural revolution.... [I]nstead, it seeks to restore the nation's founding principle of citizen rule over the state.

   "The current moment can be symbolized as a conflict between the Revolution of 1968 and the Revolution of 1776. And despite the seemingly overwhelming power of their opponents, the partisans of 1776 have some significant advantages. ... But their campaigns inevitably collapse into nihilism. ...

   "The counterrevolution ... strategy has been described as 'right-wing Leninism,' but this misunderstands a key point: while the revolution seeks to demolish America's founding principles, the counterrevolution seeks to restore them; while the revolution proceeds by a long march through the institutions, the counterrevolution works to remove power from institutions that have lost or betrayed the public trust."

   Today's Left "has an Achilles heel: its power is, to a significant degree, a creature of the state, subsidized by patronage, loan schemes, bureaucratic employment, and civil rights regulations. These structures often appear permanent, but they can be reformed, redirected, or abolished through the democratic process."

   Even back in the 1960s, Nixon also saw it: "We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home." Nixon believed "the 'great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators.' He defended this silent majority against attacks that have since become ubiquitous. 'They're not racists or sick; they're not guilty of the crime that plagues the land; they are black, they are white; they're native-born and foreign-born' ... and this ... is the real voice of America. [T]he Revolution of 1776 [is] the antidote to the Revolution of 1968."

   Nixon "believed that the federal government should provide a financial backstop for the American people, but he wanted to curb the power of the government's experts, managers, and bureaucrats, who, he recognized, wanted to remake organic social institutions in the service of left-wing ideology. ...

   "The second element of [Nixon's] counterrevolution ... was the campaign to reestablish 'law and order.'"

   Nixon responded with an appeal to the middle class. "When the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness; when a nation that has been known for a century for equality of opportunity is torn by unprecedented racial violence, then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America."

   "The third element of Nixon's counterrevolution was the formation of a counter-elite. ...

   "Today, ... the institutional Left, both within and without government, has built a vast network of departments, programs, contracts, grants, nonprofits, and service providers that circulate money throughout the system. ...

   "The intellectual descendants of the so-called New Left have warped the national narrative in dramatic ways. Today's master-signifiers, their grounding first developed during the earlier period - 'systemic racism,' 'white supremacy,' 'white privilege,' 'antiracism' - have pushed the Right into a posture of seemingly permanent defense. The Black Lives Matter movement has recast the country's 'greatest heroes as the arch-villains,' as one old-time activist put it. And the managers of America's institutions have ensured that schools, universities, nonprofits, and corporations repeat these themes ad nauseam, transmitting them to the next generation.

   "Conservatives today rarely appeal to Richard Nixon for inspiration, allowing the Watergate narrative and Nixon's own ideological and policy inconsistencies to obscure the potential of his vision for resisting the Left's cultural revolution. This is a mistake - but what would Nixon's blueprint for counterrevolution look like today? ...

   "The bitter irony of the Revolution of 1968 is that it has attained power but hasn't opened up new possibilities. Instead, it has locked major institutions of society within a suffocating orthodoxy. ...

   "The Oval Office can help drive the counterrevolution. Following the [Nixon] centralization-decentralization model, the next conservative president should establish ideological authority over the federal bureaucracy in the White House and, in partnership with Congress, decentralize as much of the federal government as possible, with an eye toward gutting the power of the social engineers. ...

   "The antidemocratic structures - the DEI departments and the intrusive bureaucracies - must be dismantled. The rule of experts must be replaced by the rule of the people; the threat of violence must be met with the power of justice. ...

   "The great vulnerability of the cultural revolution is that it undermines the morality and stability of the common citizen. And as it corrodes the institutions of family, faith, and community, it causes an emptiness in the human heart that cannot be filled with its one-dimensional ideology. The counterrevolution must begin at that exact point. If the culmination of America's cultural revolution is nihilism, the counterrevolution must begin with hope."

   Nixon observed: "The time has now come in America to reverse the flow of power and resources from the States and communities to Washington and start power and resources flowing back from Washington to the States and communities and, more important, to the people all across America." <www.tinyurl.com/3wrmbn4s> 

   For insight on why Nixon fits in here, consider this third volume in famed military history author Stephen E. Ambrose's biographical study - Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1973-1990 <www.tinyurl.com/yck7bbbd>

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