FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - God is great!

Rant Number 461 bis 23 October 2011

‘How strange”, my beloved disciple observed, ‘Libyans are shouting “God is great!” and yet the TV News keeps repeating that it is all about democracy.’

Allahu Akbar! Indeed. Libyans have been crying that out ever since the rebellion began. Allahu Akbar! You don’t need a BA in classical Arabic to know what it means. Three words in English, two in Arabic but the same meaning: God is great. Akbaris actually the comparative of kabir, ‘great’, it could just as well be translated as ‘greater’ or ‘the greatest’. A concise, effective statement of faith. Islam in a nutshell. There is nothing greater than God. Wow! The priest will sign up to that any time.

Allahu Akbar! God is great. The unnamed disciple is right. A peculiar deafness affects Western media. Not God, butDemocracy is great, their reports imply. Why? Well, because they mouth the ‘D’ word endlessly, while suppressing the ‘G’ word. Surely a sign of verbal-cleansing paranoia.

A visitor from Mars might wonder: what is this thing ‘Democracy’? A craze? A disease? An actress? A pop star? Who is he/she? Invoked obsessively, all the time, surely she must be the name of some divinity, or of an awesome hero, perhaps, a saviour, a

prophet or some metaphysical entity or a primal principle of cosmic importance, like gravity, or dark matter or...what?

God is great, the Libyans are shouting. Not, note, ‘democracy is great’. Not two mutually contradictory entities, perhaps, but they are not the same. Across the whole vast world of Islam, over a billion souls, echoes this cry: Allahu Akbar! The West does not want to hear it. As if it had an allergy, a disgust, a revulsion, a phobia at the words. (Europe is God-phobic, of course, that is the whole point.) The idea of God powering men’s lives, driving them to struggle, to fight, to risk their lives, to be wounded and even die...they can’t stand it. God is something Western man mentions only in swearing or in jokes. God, in public and polite society, is strictly off limits. Fanatics, lunatics, dangerous people talk of God. Sane, respectable folks do not...

God is great. But democracy, it seems, is Europe’s god. Better, Europe’s goddess. Not just a historical political system, with merits and demerits, like any other system. Like Moloch, like Melkart, the tribal deities of the Canaanites, democracy is now an absolute, unconditional, totalitarian idol. The new tauhid. Saudi Wahabis get a lot of flak for their presumed religious intolerance but so is the West fanatical, in its unreasoning devotion to this strange goddess – Democracy. The deity isn’t working, unfortunately. Europe’s economy and finance are crumbling, yet...more democracy is the cry! Like a drowning man calling out: ‘More water!’ – amazing!

‘Oh, I am so happy! Now we can say anything we like! We are free!’ a Libyan girl called out. That is something the priest understands. Freedom of speech: being free to speak your mind. Under Qaddafi that girl could not go the Tripoli souq and say: ‘Brother Leader stinks!’ Now she can. (Conversely, there are things Brits, supposedly free, are no longer allowed to say, even in universities. Do we need a revolution?) Freedom is the real McCoy. Freedom under God. Freedom to serve Him and to obey Him. That is the highest freedom: deluded atheists, pay heed!

The new Libyan leaders have learnt their lesson. They know the West craves oil, yes, but also expects democracy jabber from them so they, in their new suits and ties – thought reassuring after Qaddafi’s camp get-ups – comply. They are playing along. But the tough young chaps who have suffered and shed their blood in fighting the tyrant are shouting Allahu Akbar. They demand something different.

Qaddafi’s bloody end has shocked Westerners. He was not quite treated according the Geneva Conventions, no. Turning up their noses, they whisper: ‘What primitive, savage, violent people, these Muslims!’ (Raining bombs safely from on high is not quite nice either...) They forget the treatment Romanians, a Christian race, dealt to their own communist dictator, Ceausescu. Or what the devoutly Catholic Italians did to the body of Mussolini – something to put the darkest barbarians to shame. Or, a bit closer to home, what sections of the hyper-civilised (post-Christian, alas) British populace got up to this summer: rioting, looting and burning down town centres, presumably inspired by their marvellous goddess, Democracy.

God is great. Does that mean theocracy? It depends. In Europe that word has actually meant clergy rule. But not even the priest would wish this country to be ruled by the likes of Carey, Sentamu and Williams, hollow men who have driven a formerly great English Church to the brink of the grave. ‘God resigns from the C of E!’ a Private Eye joke ran. In truth, he might. Great God and puny, Laodiceana Church are not compatible. Only, it is the Anglican Church which has let down Christ, not the other way around.

Allahu Akbar! Theocracy is a bogey conjured up by our God-phobes, like ‘Deluded’ Dawkins and his ilk. The world of Sunni Islam knows no such a word. The modern Church-State dichotomy is alien to Muslims but so it was to traditional Christendom. Although it is thanks to Cameron and Sarkozy that the Libyans threw off Qaddafi’s yoke, you can bet your boots that in religious fervour the new Libya will resemble neither France nor England. God swims in the Arab bloodstream, you cannot expel him out of it.

God is great but human beings are not. The West badly needs an awakening, a rebellion, a revolution. Even the lazy hippies camped around near St Paul’s Cathedral have sensed that. Nor that they are fit to deliver it. They are theatre, not reality. Nor will Anglican clergy (laughter) imitate their counterparts in Iran. Nor liberation theology in South America. Priests like the Dominican Camilo Torres, who died wielding a submachine gun, fighting for justice, for the downtrodden – where are they?

‘You are not a revolutionary’ a real revolutionary, an expert in psychology, told me long ago. Perhaps. But, along with the Libyan rebels, I can still shout out this – God is great!

Revd Frank Julian Gelli