Sheep and Goats

Tag: CESNUR

  • Jehovah’s Witnesses: The World’s Most Persecuted Religion—Part 1

    Don’t persecute them! a certain foe with no use for Witnesses urged Russia. You’ll just feed into their “persecution complex.”

    Well—sure. The best way to feed a “persecution complex” is to persecute whoever has it. On the other hand—which came first: the chicken or the egg?  If there really is persecution, who says it is a persecution complex? Isn’t reality the word he is searching for?

    In December 2020, there came an United States Commission on International Religious Freedom report—it is a bipartisan commission, and thus not a product of any one political administration—entitled: “The Global Persecution of Jehovah’s Witness.” Religious scholar Massino Introvigne digests it and issues the obvious byline: “Jehovah’s Witnesses: The World’s Most Persecuted Religion.”

    The report serves to erase all doubt, even among Witnesses themselves, that theirs is the most persecuted religion today. It is not that other faiths do not suffer persecution from place to place—they certainly do—at times more brutal than that of the Witnesses. It is that no matter where you go, the Witnesses face it in one form or another. The USCIRF focuses on nine different nations—they are all assigned subheadings: Eritrea, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Singapore, and South Korea, but makes clear that these are just the tip of the iceberg, which does “not include the many other countries where the faith is banned or faces official harassment. The situation is ultimately even bleaker than our survey might indicate.”

    Those many verses about persecution?

    “You will be objects of hatred by all the nations on account of my name.” (Matthew 24:9)

    “All those desiring to live with godly devotion in association with Christ Jesus will also be persecuted.” (2 Tim 3:12)

    If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you..  If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own….Bear in mind the word I said to you, A slave is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” (John 15:18-20)

    and others? They are fulfilled upon the group whose members approach persons one-on-one to speak “about God and bearing witness to Jesus.” (Revelation 1:9) There were repercussions when John did it—exile to the island of Patmos. There are repercussions today. In Russia, it has been exile to Siberia.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses are pacifists—why shouldn’t non-pacifists earn the ‘extremist’ label? They’re industrious. Why shouldn’t those who leach off society top the list? They’re obedient to government authority. Why shouldn’t the disobedient be ‘extremist?’ They live, work, and school in the community; they visit their neighbors with Bible thoughts. Why shouldn’t the reclusive and secretive hermits take top ‘extremist’ honors? Even those who dislike them will describe them individually as “very nice people.” Why shouldn’t those not nice win first ‘extremist’ prize? The easiest gig a cop will ever pull is to be assigned traffic control outside the Regional Convention. Everyone smiles at him or nods a greeting. No one calls him a pig. Why doesn’t a group where people do call him a pig take top ‘extremist’ honors?

    It is crazy, so contrary to what anyone would expect, yet it is the way things are. So crazy is it, yet so exactly fulfilling Bible expectations, that it all but screams: Here they are! Here are the people hated for doing good—exactly as the Bible said would be the case! The top dishonor of ‘most persecuted’ becomes the top honor of ‘identifying the people taken from the nations for God’s name.’ (Acts 15:14) It is why I ended a chapter in I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why with: “When searching the field of religion, look for the group that is individually praised but collectively maligned.”

    As for suffering under persecution, Jehovah’s Witnesses will be fortified with: “What merit is there in it if, when you are sinning and being slapped, you endure it? But if, when you are doing good and you suffer, you endure it, this is a thing agreeable with God.” (1 Peter 2:20-21) “Look! We pronounce happy those who have endured”—the James 5:11 verse is woven into the current circuit assembly program. As is Proverbs 27:11: “Be wise, my son, and make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me.” It is the Devil taunting God, as he did with Job, that a person will serve God only when the going is easy.

    If you peer into the pants of this or that king to tell of his soiled underwear, you can expect him to get mad. But what if you treat him with respect while you simply go about your innocuous business? Won’t he leave you alone? You would certainly think so, is the gist of Introvigne’s parting remark, but—alas—it is not so:

    “What the Jehovah’s Witnesses defend is the right to live differently, in this world, yet part of a kingdom ‘not of this world,’ as Jesus says in John 18:36. Are our societies prepared to tolerate those who live in a way different from the majority’s, as long as they are peaceful, honest, and law-abiding citizens? That the answer is ‘no’ in an increasing number of countries proves that our world is becoming a dangerous environment for religious liberty.”

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  • Death of NPOV (Neutral Point of View) at Wikipedia

    Mostly I use Wikipedia for details on out-of-the-way topics that you wouldn’t think would be subject to bias—lately it has been to corroborate some background on Voltaire, for instance.

    But not always—sometimes I use it as though a base stock, like you would in cooking, to develop a post on some contemporary issue. Others do this, too—pretty routinely—to provide backdrop for arguments they are making. People will develop points on some Internet forum or other, and validate them by appealing to Wikipedia.

    It’s an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is—that’s how everyone thinks of it. As such, it is unbiased—that supposedly is its mission statement. Anyone can edit it (I’ve never quite understood how that works—well, I guess I do, but I’ve never been interested enough to attempt it, and the premise is that when anyone can do so the result will be complete and unbiased.) Not so, says co-founder Larry Sanger. Its unbiased ideal went out the window long ago. NPOV (neutral point of view) is a thing of the past. He says it here, on this post from his own blog. Wikipedia is badly biased. 

    He doesn’t say his co-creation is not factual. Nor does he say it is not objective. But it is not complete. It clearly sides with particular points-of-view. Larry offers about a dozen examples of clear bias, from politics, to science, to health, to religion in which the minority view is run off the road. They are “embarrassingly easy to find,” he says.

    Sigh…this seriously compromises Wikipedia as a base. It is a leftist choir that is preaching there these days, and if you quote the source, which I do all the time, you will be getting a leftist point of view, with other viewpoints either overwhelmed or declared wrong. Disputes among experts such as doctors and scientists are papered over to give the impression that the “victorious” opinion is monolithic. It is not for an encyclopedia to do this, Sanger says. It is supposed to reflect all points of view. It is not to declare a winner. Is “the science settled” on some point or other? Understand that it may have been settled by decree.

    One might suppose, given Sanger’s creation, that technology is his chief interest. It is not. (per Wikipedia!) It is philosophy, epistomology, and ethics. He is clearly disappointed in the path his innovation has taken. He didn’t mean it to be that way. In a world supposedly driven by knowledge, what could be better than to have all the details of anything at your fingertips for instant application to anything? He never anticipated that it would be hijacked by any one faction.

    Maybe I should have picked up on this before—Wiki’s bias. I did, after all, quote Anton Chivchalov complaining* of how the Russian experts relied upon by courts of that land have been known to copy “various public sources about Jehovah’s Witnesses from the Internet, which naturally have an anti-cult bias.” Could Wikipedia have been the prime “public source?” There are a dizzying array of anti-cult Witness pages on that source—every petty little episode or imagined brouhaha is explored in minute detail, with “pro” views drowned out by the “cons.”

    Recently, a few dozen scholars released a statement to Russian authorities in support of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Stop the police action against them, they said. They are obviously peaceful, so let them worship in peace. Putin said a year and a half after the ban that “Jehovah’s Witnesses are also Christians, and I don’t really understand why they’re persecuted.” Just a few months after the ban, he publicly praised a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Noviks from Petrozavodsk, calling them a “model family”—apparently without knowing what page he was supposed to be on. Leave the Witnesses be. “We are left with the impression that Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia are being punished for their success in gaining new adherents,” the statement from the scholars said.

    This is a bit much for the anti-cultists. Is it possible to assassinate the characters of these “scholars”—all associated with prestigious universities from around the world—so as to present them as crackpots? Some of them have been interviewed by jw.org—Christine King, George Chryssides, and Massimo Introvigne, for example.

    Enter Wikipedia with its “anti-cult bias.” It tackles Massimo Introvigne.

    There  (born June 14, 1955, in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religion[1] and intellectual property attorney.[2][3] He is a founder and the managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), a Turin-based organization which has been described as "the highest profile lobbying and information group for controversial religions".[4] ……………..In 1972, he joined conservative Catholic group Alleanza Cattolica.[8][better source needed] From 2008 to 2016 he has served as vice-president of the group…………….. he advocates doctrinaire positions that favour groups like Scientology."[4]  In the mid-1990s, Introvigne testified on behalf of Scientologists in a criminal trial in Lyon.[4]…………….journalists described Introvigne as a "cult apologist", saying he was tied to the Catholic Alliance and Silvio Berlusconi's then ruling party.[22] Introvigne responded that his scholarly and political activities were not connected…………….He was the Italian director of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula,…………In 1997, J. Gordon Melton and Introvigne organized an event at the Westin Hotel in Los Angeles where 1,500 attendees came dressed as vampires…

    Note the guilt by association. This is never okay with the anti-cultists until they do it themselves. He “advocates doctrinaire positions that favour groups like Scientology.” He has even testified on behalf of them. He is a “cult apologist.” (the less incendiary term, rejected by anti-cultists for just that reason, is “new religion.”) He hung out with Silvia Berlusconi, the businessman who committed the unforgivable sin of getting elected though not a politician and showing up that lot. And didn’t he draw a four year sentence for tax fraud? Introvigne responds by saying his scholarly and political activities are not connected, and—wink, wink—we know what that means. He threw a gathering in which guests came dressed as vampires! [a Halloween party, probably]

    To be sure, the Introvigne entry (accessed 10/11/20) comes with a couple of “hatchet job” warnings, though not called that. “A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject,” therefore the article “may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.” Also, it “may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral.” Seeming a note of caution. But if co-founder Sanger’s observation is anything to go by, it is only in need a few like-minded hacks to jump into the fray and repeat the bad opinion.

    Certain hot topics continually go back and forth on Wiki. One fellow commented on my blog to the effect that he regularly updated Wiki posts about JWs to keep them “honest”, and he had to do it constantly because opposers would change them right back to their hostile takes on matters. I got the impression that that was his assignment, but I could be wrong—he may just have been an independent defender of the faith. At any rate, he was worried lest I immerse myself into these things too much and that it wear me out, because among these critics are so many slimeballs. But as it turns out, I don’t immerse myself.

    “Go to the Reddit site and read up on” whatever volatile accusation had caught Vic Vomodog’s fancy at the moment, he told me, adding “make sure to read all the comments.” But I truthfully replied that I had visited there from time to time—I even have a presence there (that I have tired of)—r/truetomharley, and I tell them to make sure to read all of my comments, and they tell me to…well…they decline my invitation.

    But that’s reading. I have read some of their comments—I read a lot, to be sure. But to this day, I don’t think I have ever seen a complete video production, mostly because they are so self-important or tedious or hostile that the first minute is a turnoff—rarely do I get beyond a minute. It is my own bias—one can read in a minute what some smug and insufferable pedant will take 20 to develop via video. 

    Wikipedia has its place, but it has long fallen from its unbiased perch. Maybe the best way to appreciate its silly underbelly, which threatens to become the main event, is to look up some historical figure and discover a handful of paragraphs. And then look up a television series and see every single episode written up in endless detail, sometimes each meriting it’s own page. Just how much of Mr. Ed does one need to know?

    …

    *See update from one year later: January 2022