Reading, Thinking, & Domesticity #5

Sometimes it's helpful having your birthday at the end of the year. It acts like a 'pause and reflect' moment before heading into a new year. On my birthday in December, my husband gave me a card with a list of things that happened in 2018:

*  Our third child got married
*  Our second grandchild (a boy this time) was born
*  Our first grandchild turned 1 & we started looking after her one day a week
*  One of our sons completed his plumbing apprenticeship
*  Another son had a major job change
*  Moozle, our youngest, became a teenager & had her Grade 7 Cello exam which she passed with honours
*  We did some home renovations and slept on camp mattresses on a tiled floor for 10 weeks. I ended up with a compressed nerve in my neck and had to have a few weeks of physio.
*  Moozle and I did a 1,600 km (1000 mile) round road trip together

He didn't write it on the card but this happened just before Christmas:

*  After having worked as a contractor for over two years with a company they decided to put my husband 'officially in the system.' This required a police check.
Said police check came back and he was called into the HR office and told to leave immediately as the police check showed a list of serious criminal offences dating back about 7 years, including time spent in prison.
My husband asked for details, said he'd never been to court (except to serve on a jury!) let alone prison, but they refused to give him any information.
He was told he could only appeal via the third party company who conducted the police check. This company sent him emails, which he didn't get because the company he works for locked him out of their system.
Eventually he received a copy of the report and it showed he was working at his present employment while supposedly serving a prison term! Mmmm. Knee jerk reaction from HR who didn't bother reading the report properly.
Ten days later, with no pay during that time, after much to-ing and fro-ing with his employer and the third party who had conducted the police check, he received word that he didn't have a criminal  record after all. No apology or acknowledgement from the third party that he had been falsely accused.

And, yes, he was compensated - well, his company paid him for the time he had off, humbly apologised etc. Most of his fellow workers were appalled and angry and a couple of them knew of others in similar circumstances & they weren't surprised.

This was a very interesting experience in light of our current climate here with the Government's latest Encryption Laws and privacy. We were privy to the details of another man's criminal record, and my husband was automatically deemed to be guilty and had no right to offer a defence to his employer.
It also made us realise how difficult it must be for anyone trying to find work after serving time in gaol.
Francis Schaeffer wrote these words in 1976 and I think they are relevant even more today:

'I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened. And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things. Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals - increasingly men and women are not stirred by the values of liberty and truth - but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence. They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them.' 

World Watch List - a list of the 50 most dangerous countries for Christians. India has recently made it into the top ten on this list.

Children & dumbed down reading:

'50 years ago, parents read things to children that children could not read themselves, that were not directed primarily at the senses, and that contained deep formal and material lessons for the children...But it has never been a good thing to indulge the senses as an end in themselves. The senses have always tried to dominate the intellect and to distract us from what matters more.'

A Culture of Reading has some excellent reading suggestions.

An newspaper article I read last month:

Listening

Nicholas Clifford, Professor Emeritus at Middlebury Liberal Arts College in Vermont, USA, is a Librivox narrator I've listened to and I've enjoyed everything he's done. Fortunately, he has 79 solo recordings, many of them classics.  

The Vanishing Man by R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943) is an interesting mystery/crime novel with a focus on Ancient Egyptian artifacts and practices.

Many of Freeman's books feature the medical/legal forensic investigator, Dr John Thorndyke.  The Vanishing Man was published in 1911 and was also published as The Eye of Osiris.

My ongoing Hexie Quilt project that's taking me forever. Making progress, though.

Sisters

Christian Classics: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (1942)

The Screwtape Letters is a satirical work of fiction that gives the reader a window into the spiritual world using the vantage point of a demon named Screwtape. In a series of letters to his young nephew, Wormwood, Screwtape instructs him in how to bring about the downfall of the young man he has been assigned to plague.
There are so many memorable passages and wise insights in this book. Often when we look at something from an opposing stance we are forced to see things we would not have seen from a position of agreement. This is the device C. S. Lewis uses in The Screwtape Letters and he does it exceptionally well.
He warns us that there are two equal and opposite errors we believe about devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence and the other is to believe and have an unhealthy and excessive interest in them. He reminds us that the devil is a liar and that Screwtape is not always seeing things truly, himself.
Lewis said of this book that he’d never written anything more easily or with less enjoyment; that it was easy to twist his mind into a diabolical attitude but it was spiritually stifling. The world he had to enter ‘was all dust, grit, thirst and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness and geniality had to be excluded.’

Some highlights of this book:

Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy’s party, prepared. How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and, even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition!

Wormwood's 'patient' is a young unmarried man and the setting is at the start of WW2. Screwtape encourages him to turn the man's gaze on himself. He also advises him on ways to inculcate pride, selfishness, lust and fear in his patient and to exploit him during his dry spells:

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His effort to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else...
He cannot ravish. He can only woo...
He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than through the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best...He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Whatever their bodies do affect their souls. Whenever there is prayer, there is the danger of His own immediate action.

In the last generation we promoted the construction of...'a historical Jesus' on liberal and humanitarian lines; now we are putting forward a new 'historical Jesus' on Marxian, catastrophic, and revolutionary lines.

Martin Luther said that 'the best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.' Lewis uses his sharp wit and inspired imagination to open our eyes to the true nature of the spiritual world & to help us understand that there are spiritual beings whose purpose is to undermine our faith and prevent the formation of virtues.

I've used this book with students around the age of about 14 or 15 years and up.




Linking this to the Official 2018 TBR Challenge

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung (2000)

Loung Ung was five years old when the Khmer Rouge army took over the city of Phnom Penh in April 1975. Her father had been a high ranking official in the previous government so when the Marxist regime came to power he had to flee from the city to the countryside with his wife and seven children in order to hide his identity. His former position as a government official rendered him ‘morally corrupt,’ while his Chinese born wife was considered ‘racially corrupt.’

First They Killed My Father is an eloquent and harrowing story of survival seen through the eyes of a young child.
For the first couple of chapters Loung’s narrative is mostly concerned with her upbringing, family background, and their life as a middle class family living in the city. Loung is a spunky, precocious child and she sees her world through the eyes of such a child. The innocence and naïveté of her perspective is at first disarming, but as her story progresses and she becomes a witness and a victim of unthinkable atrocities, it is almost surreal. How could a child possibly go through such trauma and survive?
Yet she did, as did other children, but at what a cost!
Loung writes as a ‘daughter of Cambodia’ and records details of her life under the Khmer Rouge that includes the loss of half of her immediate family, her time as a child soldier and a graphic account of an attempted rape upon her when she was about 8 or 9 years old.

Loung’s older brothers were taken to labour camps and later her sister, Keav, was sent to a teen work camp. Six months later after contracting dysentery, Keav died before her parents could get to see her. When they asked if they could take her body home they were told that her body had been thrown out because they needed the bed for the next patient.
One day two soldiers came for her father and he was taken away under the pretext that his help was needed to move a wagon stuck in the mud. He never returned.

...we all know that what we feared most has happened. Keav, and now Pa, one by one, the Khmer Rouge is killing my family. My stomach hurts so much I want to cut it open and take the poison out...
“Chou,” I whisper to my sister, “I’m going to kill Pol Pot. I hate him and I want to make sure he dies a slow and painful death.”
I do not know what he looks like, but if Pol Pot is the leader of the Angkar then he is the one responsible for all the miseries in our lives...I am a kid, not even seven years old, but somehow I will kill Pol Pot...
I despise Pol Pot for making me hate so deeply. My hate overpowers and scares me, for with hate in my heart I have no room for sadness. Sadness makes me want to die inside...Rage makes me want to survive and live so that I may kill. 

There were some striking similarities between this book and Life and Death in Shanghai which I read last year, although Cambodia’s situation was unique in that the regime swept in almost overnight and squeezed their atrocities into such a short window of time. An estimated two million Cambodians were systematically killed between 1975 and 1979. I remember reading that the odds of an average Cambodian surviving Pol Pot's rule was slightly over 2 to 1. Considering how young Loung Ung was it’s incredible that she survived at all.
Some of the similarities I found were:

•    the Utopian dream of a classless society, which of course never eventuates because power goes hand in hand with corruption, and envy is never satisfied

When I ask Kim (Loung’s 10 year old brother) what a capitalist is, he tells me it is someone who is from the city. He says the Khmer Rouge government views science, technology, and anything mechanical as evil and therefore must be destroyed. The Angkor says the ownership of cars and electronics such as watches, clocks, and televisions created a deep class division between the rich and the poor...These devices have been imported from foreign countries and are thus contaminated...
Imports are defined as evil because they allowed foreign countries a way to invade Cambodia, not just physically but also culturally. So now these goods are abolished..

•    the harnessing of the youth to spread intimidation along with the loss of respect for older people. Traditionally Asian societies have a reverence for the aged so this was huge shift for both societies

•    Disdain for the educated; utilitarianism; no place for the disabled - and there were plenty of disabled people in Kampuchea as a result of the extensive use of landmines by the regime

'In the new agrarian society, there is no place for disabled people.'

Without taking her pulse or touching her, the nurse asks Keav a few brief questions and hurries away, saying she will return later to check on her and bring some medicine. Keav knows this is a lie. There is no medicine. There are no real doctor sort nurses, only ordinary people ordered to pretend to be medical experts. All the real doctors and nurses were killed by the Angkar long ago.

•    Changing the meaning of common language, rewriting history & the destruction of historical markers e.g.  antiquities, historical sites, cultural expressions

•    Cult of personality - both Mao & Pol Pot were treated as gods


The Khmer Rouge government also bans the practice of religion. Kim says the Angkar do not want people worshipping any gods or goddesses that might take away devotion to the Angkar.

•    Breakdown of family structures and religion

“In Democratic Kampuchea,” the chief continues, “we are all equal and do not have to cower to anyone. When the foreigners took over Kampuchea, they brought with the bad habits and fancy titles. The Angkor has expelled all foreigners so we no longer have to refer to each other using fancy titles...the children will change what they call their parents...”


•    Propaganda, terror, forced labour, hopelessness

 In a Khmer Rouge hospital, people moaned and whimpered in pain, but did not scream. Here at the hospital in the newly liberated zone, people scream in pain because they’re fighting to live.

•    No dissent or criticism of the regime allowed

•    No appreciation for beauty, no room for diversity

I’ve read a good number of books about the Marxist regimes that held power during the 20th Century, mostly those concerning Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, & Pol Pot’s Kampuchea. You would think that the knowledge we have now of the parallel circumstances that existed between these regimes would be sufficient to help us discern the roots that give rise to the fruits of this type of movement. As a system of government, communism seems to have had its day, but as a system of ideas, it lives on. ‘Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms’:




Some interesting links to check out:

This article on Genocide compares the Nazi system of classification and symbolization, the first two operations in the genocidal process, with the Khymer Rouge exterminations of people in the Eastern Zone:

At Phnom Pehn the Khmer Rouge issued every man, woman and child from the Eastern zone a new blue and white checked scarf, a kroma. The Khmer Rouge then required them to wear the scarf at all times. 

Power Kills -  'As a  government's power is more unrestrained, as its power reaches into all the corners of culture and society, and as it is less democratic, then the more likely it is to kill its own citizens.'

Large corporations & institutions can tend toward totalitarian structures:





Linking to Carole's Books You loved: April

The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka (1915)

As Gregor Samsa awoke from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

With these words Frank Kafka begins his bizarre, dark fantasy.

Gregor is a hard-working travelling salesman, the sole provider in his family; his parents and sister dependent upon him. He loathes his work and admits that he is the 'boss's creature, mindless and spineless.'
On the morning of his transformation, his family are alarmed that he is still in his room at quarter to seven and knock on his door. He lies in bed, expecting the illusion he thinks he is under to gradually dissolve, and even as he makes a reply to his concerned family, he doesn't doubt that the change in his voice is due to a severe cold coming on.
Meanwhile, the head clerk arrives to find out why Gregor hasn't turned up for work, and is also waiting outside the bedroom door.
Gregor gets out of bed after a great exertion and manages to get to the door and eventually unlock it and so his metamorphosis is revealed to the horrified group standing there.
At first his family, especially his sister, cares for him and brings him food, but gradually he is neglected and expected to keep to his room. After a while they think of him no longer as a son or brother but as 'it.'
Gregor had decided he was going to send his sister to the Conservatory the next year, even though it involved considerable expense, and was planning to announce his intentions on Christmas Eve. A very poignant moment occurs when her parents ask her to play the violin for their three boarders. As she performs, Gregor advances into the room, mesmerised by her playing.

Her face was tilted to one side and she followed the notes with soulful and probing eyes. Gregor advanced a little, keeping his eye low so they might possibly meet hers. Was he a beast if music could move him so? He felt as though the path to his unknown hungers was being cleared.

This is definitely an unusual story, fascinating, but in the end not very satisfying. Even the author thought this and said it had an 'unreadable ending. Imperfect almost to its very marrow.'
Kafka was born in Prague and spoke both Czech and German, but he wrote in German. As with any translation, choices are made by the interpreter. The 'monstrous vermin' of the translation I read, has been rendered 'unclean animal not suited for sacrifice' and 'gigantic insect' in other translations.
Kafka was intentionally vague about the metamorphosed Gregor and when the book was going to press he told his publisher, "The insect itself cannot be depicted. It cannot even be shown from a distance." (Endnotes of the Barnes & Noble Classics edition above)
I spent the whole book wondering how large Gregor the 'insect' was. He managed to reach the lock on the door but he could hide under a sofa. He could also be pushed around the floor with a broom. If he had been the size of a regular insect, even an very large one, he wouldn't have been so obvious to everyone and no one would have equated him with once having been a man. It sounds rather illogical - but Kafka doesn't make sense! This comment from the introduction to the book above partly explains why:

Kafka's fiction examines a universe largely unexplored in the literature preceding him, one full of implications that venture into the remote regions of human psychology. It's a universe with different rules than those governing our reality. And there's no map. 
 

According to the writers of Invitation to the Classics, Kafka's worldview is Nihilism, that is, he rejects all meaning, so he is left with a great nothingness:

Human beings, once seen as a link in the Great Chain of Being connected both upward to God and downward to animals, are now connected only downward. Without the image of God, humans beings are dehumanised. With the death of God has come the death of humanity. This is Kafka's central lesson.

Frank Kafka (1883-1924) was only forty-one years of age when he died of tuberculosis. His family was Jewish and although at first he was indifferent to  his religious heritage, he later became fascinated by it.
In 1933 the Nazi's banned and publicly burned Kafka's work. In 1942 they put two of his sisters into a Polish ghetto where they died. His youngest and closest sister was married to an 'Aryan' and was not deported, but in an act of defiance, she divorced her husband and was sent to Auschwitz and died there.

Further reading:


Invitation to the Classics: A Guide to Books You've Always Wanted to Read - edited by Louise Cowan and Os Guiness. There's a chapter devoted to Kafka, mostly relted to another of his books, The Trial, but it offers some insights into his life.

How Should We Then Live: The Rise & Decline of Western Thought & Culture by Francis A. Schaeffer. I love this book and how the author weaves in history, music, art, and literature. Although first published in 1976, this book is just as pertinent for our times.

The Barnes & Noble edition I read had a short bio and some notes which enhanced my understanding of Kafka.



This book is my entry in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2106 for a Classic which has been banned or censored.

The Abolition of Man by C.S Lewis (1898-1963)

I've read quite a few books by C.S. Lewis and have always found his writing very accessible but this book, despite its brevity, was stiff going.  I struggled to understand some of what he wrote, but reading this book more seventy years after it was published, I can appreciate his brilliance and the prophetic ring to his words.
The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools, was first published in 1943 and its main focus is moral relativism. The book is divided into three sections:

1. Men Without Chests

Lewis opens with an example from an English textbook written for schools, The Green Book. The book's authors, Gaius and Titius, argue that there is no such thing as objective value and that our judgements about value are subjective. You may value a painting for its beauty, but that's just your own subjective judgement. There is no outside standard by which beauty can be judged.

Although the authors may have unintentionally bred a philosophy of value while trying to strengthen the minds of their young students against ‘sentiment,’ Lewis cuts to the heart of the issue:

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.
The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments...a hard heart us no infallible protection against a soft head.

There are universal principles, natural laws, traditional values; beliefs that certain attitudes are true and others false. They have provided a framework for objective value throughout history and have been shared by successful civilisations and religious systems throughout history. He calls these principles the Tao, and devoted an appendix at the end of the book to illustrate the extent of its influence.

Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in 'ordinate affections' or 'just sentiments' will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science.

In an educational sense, if you stand within the Tao, the task is to train the student in those responses which are intrinsically ordinate or just. If outside the Tao, education will either remove all sentiments from the student's mind or else encourage sentiments that have nothing to do with their intrinsic 'justness' or 'ordinancy.'

This moral relativism produces Men Without Chests. The chest is the seat of Magnanimity:

Of emotions organised by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest - Magnanimity - Sentiment - these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man.

Modern philosophy gives Men without Chests the appellation of Intellectuals. The following quotes were a couple of my favourites:

This gives them (the 'Intellectuals) the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so...
It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

2. The Way

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.

Lewis believes that those who want to discredit traditional values often have their own set of values which they consider to be free from inherited restrictions. By removing these restrictions or sentiments, our real, basic values are allowed to surface. He uses this chapter to trace that thinking through to its natural conclusion.

The 'Innovator,' having dismissed the Tao, looks for a basic ground of value. He decides that ethics based on Instinct will give him what he wants.
But...
Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war...Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest.

The chapter concludes with the idea that the end result of stepping outside the Tao is the rejection of the concept of value altogether.

Let us regard all ideas of what we 'ought' to do simply as an interesting psychological survival: let us step right out of all that and start doing what we like. Let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that: not on any ground if imagined value, but because we want him to be such. Having mastered our environment, let yes now master ourselves and choose our own destiny.

3) The Abolition of Man

For the powers of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we gave seen, the power of some men to make other men what 'they' please.

Chuck Colson said that ‘Naturalism (the belief that there is a naturalistic explanation for everything in the universe) undercuts any objective morality, opening the door to tyranny.’
In the final chapter of The Abolition of Man, Man’s conquest of nature turns out to be man using  Nature to exert power over other men - i.e. tyranny.

Through eugenics, pre-natal conditioning, propaganda and education based on ‘perfectly applied psychology,’ Man obtains full control over himself.

This final chapter had my mind in convolutions at times, especially when I lost the thread connecting it all to education. Re-reading some sections helped make it more cohesive. It really is a book that deserves multiple readings, and is listed as one of the National Reviews 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century. I highly recommend it, especially to parents and anyone involved in education.



The Abolition of Man is my entry in the Non-Fiction Classic category at the Back to the Classics 2015 Challenge.

How to be Your Own Selfish Pig...and Other Ways You've Been Brainwashed by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

I pre-viewed this book about two and a half years ago before giving it to my 15 and 17 year old sons to read. At the time it was one of Ambleside Online's possible suggestions for their unofficial Year 12 but it has since been scheduled for AO Year 7.

The book has 12 chapters plus a short introduction and is a very accessible introduction to Christian apologetics.

Susan Macaulay has very ably tackled some difficult concepts and made them understandable & like her other books, this one is full of common sense and uses real life examples from situations she encountered while ministering at L'Abri.

There are ample sidebar quotes from people as diverse as Woody Allan, C.S. Lewis, Bertrand Russell and G.K. Chesterton. Many 'problem topics' are covered, not in a graphic way, but in such a fashion as to make the reader think about how our basic beliefs have consequences.

One example she gives is that of the Marquis de Sade, who 200 years ago concluded that ours was a chance universe and so it was logical that there aren't any things we 'ought' to do as human beings.

She discusses aspects of the book Brave New World, the claims of other religions, the value of life, euthanasia, abortion, promiscuity and other topics, making it a good introduction for the student who needs an apologetic 'primer.'

It has the added advantage (unlike many other apologetic books) of being very practical and readable and her conversational approach with real life examples really helps students to understand how their worldview beliefs outwork in daily life.

 

Why do you think that the Bible's view is truth?

Does this key fit the keyhole of reality?

Mentally, I checked whether the Bible's key fit.

"Ah, yes, it explains the order & complexity of the universe.

It explains why persons are unique, experiencing love, choice, beauty, right and wrong........."

In my mind, I bent over the pile of keys that claimed to be possible answers to life.  

"Ah, here is the key of the Eastern philosophies and religions. Very clever, but it doesn't fit the world the way it is....."

I think it would be wise to give it a quick preview (especially Chapter 6) if you're planning to give it to your child to read on their own.

I assigned my boys a chapter a week and after each reading they came and talked with me about it. We had some great discussions but they were older than the average student in Year 7 and we'd already broached many of these issues in the past. 

Geography: Culture & Worldview

Perhaps no knowledge is more delightful than such an intimacy with the earth's surface, region by region, as should enable the map of any region to unfold a panorama of delight, disclosing not only mountains, rivers, frontiers, the great features we know as 'Geography,' but associations, occupations, some parts of the past and much of the present, of every part of this beautiful earth.

I love Charlotte Mason's view of teaching Geography and the quote above from Volume 6 of her wonderful book, A Philosophy of Education.

My memories of high school geography are very vague, probably due to the fact that I didn't turn up to the lessons most of the time. I didn't find anything about the subject remotely interesting and from what I observed my teacher seemed to feel the same way.

I couldn't wait to be old enough to leave school, travel and learn what I thought was real geography. I have travelled a fair bit overseas since then and have lived in most states in Australia but I've also learnt how to choose good books that make geography come alive. Books that have given my children and me the opportunity to travel with their minds to places they might never have the opportunity of visiting, to get a glimpse into a completely different culture through the eyes of someone who has their own unique perspective coursing through their veins; books that open up a panorama of places and cultures that are now no more. 

I love the idea of 'associations.' A couple of years ago two newly arrived Iranian sisters walked into our church's free English classes and with their faltering English we heard about their culture seen through their nominal Muslim eyes: young girls growing up under a culture that was not originally theirs, imposed from the outside.

This encounter with these two young women opened my heart to learn about their homeland.

Fast forward a year: our family had the privilege of hearing Dr. Daniel Shayesteh speak and we were so impressed and touched by his story which he wrote about in his book, The House I Left Behind.

The House I left Behind gives a unique insight into the life of a practicing Muslim through the lens of a man raised in an Iranian (Persian) culture dominated by fundamentalist Islam (historically Iran has not always been Muslim and defended its Persian heritage for many years despite Arabic invasions).

It's the story of a man who desired democracy and economic justice for his country and believed the Iranian Revolution which deposed the Shah of Iran and opened the door for the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 would be the means of accomplishing this.

Was it ever stated that the purpose of the Revolution was a religious one and one that would empower the Ayatollah Khomeini with authority to apply Shari'a law in Iran? Never. The intention was supposedly a socio-political revolution that would ensure the equal and just distribution of wealth among Iranians by the vote of the people. Why would a righteous Islamic leader change his mind and betray his nation? He did it obviously to gratify his lust for power even at the cost of his fellow Muslims and countrymen, aligning himself with the political philosophy of Islam. Khomeini's manipulations were so subtle and clever that it never occurred to the people that he was deceiving them and the enforcement of Shari'a established his absolute supremacy over every individual and power in Iran.

The book looks at Persian culture and it's origins - the reigns of the great kings of old, Cyrus and Darius, the Indo-European roots of their language, their love of music and poetry and their customs and then tells the author's story:

Daniel Shayesteh was born on the Western side of the Caspian Sea in Northern Iran, which was formerly the kingdom of Persia, in the village of Talesh, in 1954. While studying in Tehran he became involved while a student in the Iranian Revolution and later in politics and saw the ousting of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

We never knew the mullahs would start with pro-democratic attitudes but demand absolute allegiance in the name of Islam later. We just did not see it coming. We did not know that they would hate Iranian culture and would enforce ancient Saudi Arabian culture to dominate the lives of Iranians.  

Daniel's hopes for justice and social, political and economic reform in his homeland were dashed and both he and his fellow students and revolutionaries were betrayed by the false promises of Khomeini and the mullahs.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has built many doors between Iranian parents and their children. The doors get closed to all if just one member of a family opposes government. For this reason, millions of doors are closed now between the children of Iran and their parents. The Islamic government has left a lot of parents mourning for their lost and fugitive children.

Falling out of favour with Khomeini's political group, he was kidnapped and sentenced to death but after a miraculous release he went into hiding and escaped to Turkey. It was here, after being betrayed by his business partner that he went to a group of Christians for help in trying to recover his money, and came to know Jesus Christ. Eventually his wife and their three daughters were able to join him in Turkey but eventually they even had to escape from there after threats on their lives.

This is a heart felt book written by a man who loves his heritage and his homeland and who still grieves for the relationships he had to sever when he left Iran. It is the best book I've ever read on Islamic culture. My grandfather (my mother's stepfather) was a nominal Muslim originally from Pakistan. I had that association when I was a child so I thought I had some insight into the Muslim worldview but Daniel Shayesteh's book opened up a whole new dimension for me, as well as presenting a diverse panorama of Persian culture.

I read this book aloud and even my 7 year old at the time kept asking for more. I did do some minor editing for her sake as some of the incidents he documents weren't suitable for her.

It was hard to choose what to quote from his book  - there was so much that was worth sharing but also if read in isolation his words may sound harsh. I was fortunate to hear him speak before I read his book and I found him to be very gentle, forgiving and very family minded. His story made me weep when I heard it from his own lips.

Is there any democratic Islamic country in the world which has developed an egalitarian  system and tolerated human rights, freedom of speech and religion? If yes, why has every Islamic country, even the most moderate one among them, made the proselytising of Muslims illegal? Why can Muslims build their mosques and schools in Islamic countries, but non-Muslims are not allowed to have similar rights in Islamic countries?

The mosque is also vital for establishing Muslims as sovereign over non- Muslims in a non-Islamic society. Building a mosque in a non-Islamic society or country symbolises Islam's claim over that society or country, even with a non-Muslim majority.

James A. Garfield once said that the two eyes of History are Geography and Chronology. Daniel Shayesteh's book presents a story that looks with both eyes and unfolds a sweeping narrative of a little known culture and a mostly misunderstood worldview.