Few non-Muslims in America seem to recognize the realities of the institutionalized oppression that non-Muslims must endure under Islamic law. But the Vatican seems to be becoming quite aware of these realities: "Too many Islamic countries treat their Christian minorities as second-class citizens and bar them from building churches while Western states let their Muslims build mosques freely, according to a senior Vatican official." This from Reuters, with thanks to Nancy Block.
"Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who recently retired as the Vatican's foreign minister, told the French Catholic daily La Croix Wednesday that Christianity and Islam faced 'an enormous task' of learning to live together in mutual tolerance. Tauran was the latest and highest-ranking Catholic official to voice concern about Vatican relations with Muslims, an issue seen as central for whoever succeeds the ailing Pope John Paul.
"'There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens,' said Tauran, the church's top diplomat for 13 years before he had to step aside on being made a cardinal by Pope John Paul in October. Stressing the need for respect for minorities, he singled out 'the extreme case of Saudi Arabia, where freedom of religion is violated absolutely -- no Christian churches and a ban on celebrating Mass, even in a private home. Just like Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well,' the French-born cardinal said.
"Leading church figures have increasingly expressed concern about Islam in view of friction between Muslims and Christians in Africa and the Middle East and the difficult integration of Muslim minorities in traditionally Christian Europe.
La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal published with Vatican approval, said last October Islam had a 'warlike face' throughout history and charged Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Pakistan discriminated against Christians.
"This was seen as a departure from the more balanced approach the Vatican has taken toward the Muslim world, where it usually stressed both positive and negative aspects of its relations. In Rome that same month to celebrate Pope John Paul's 25th anniversary as pontiff, several cardinals cited relations with Islam as a key issue for the next papacy, akin to the Communist challenge at the beginning of the Polish pope's reign.
"The head of the United States bishops' conference, Bishop Wilton Gregory, spoke of potential religious violence. Referring to Islam in the West and in Africa, he said: 'It's growing in places it didn't exist before and it is growing in places where Christianity is growing. The world cannot afford a violence that is born of religious intolerance.'
"Saudi Arabia has rejected criticism of its ban on churches, arguing the Vatican would not let mosques be built on its land. Abid Ullah Jan, a Pakistani writer based in Canada, wrote that the Civilta Cattolica article signaled the Vatican had 'joined the ranks of intellectual warriors who are battling Islam with renewed zeal since the fall of the Soviet Union.'
"Since becoming cardinal, Tauran has taken a lower-profile post as Vatican librarian but has also been appointed to several important Church commissions for foreign affairs, Catholic doctrine, Eastern churches and bishops' appointments."
Seeing as Islamists don't want churches on their soil, then maybe Christian countries should return the favour... and remove all moques from the lands of Christian countries.
This action will then have a twofold effect! The radicals will of course run to Islamic countries where they can pray in any mosques already there - and the moderates would be as non-religious as many other religions...
At least this would cause the fanatics to be rooted out and returned back to where they're from.
I can imagine the kind of agony this subject has caused the Holy See. Say too little, and the Vatican will be dismissed as irrelevant to the most important religious conflict of all time. Say too much, and it could incite literal pogroms against Christians in Muslim-dominated lands. No matter what is said, or how gently or when, the loudest voices will be those who condemn the sentiment, the delivery, and the timing. And of course, any criticism of Islam risks a violent reaction from the fringes of the creed.
I wouldn't want to have that responsibility. I marvel that anyone would accept it.
Israel was created and Palestinians have essentially been removed from their land and homes with a loss of rights. 'Americans' removed the natives of the new world, denying them their rights and their land. The Spanish went to the southern Americas and massacred the natives into either certain extinction or certainly a loss of rights and their land. The French, as with the British 'settlers', example of acquiring canadian lands, denying natives. The British went to Australia and today we have an abused native population denied their land and rights.
European (the americas) Judeo-Christian history is littered with the abuse of power, the elimination of native populations and the illegal confiscation of lands . . . We have bathed in the blood of our victims and have denied basic human rights across the globe. Today we have extended our bloodlust to Afghanistan and Iraq and are endeavouring to go further still.
What is it about Judeo-Christian values that encourages the lack of morals, humanity on fellow members of the human race? What is it about our beliefs that we must create death and destruction whereever we go? It surely is time we stepped out of denial and began to realise that we are the 'devils own', it is up to us to recognise and stop our evil-doing.
I think we do have to recognise that our judeo-christian values have been abused so that they are now essentially 'demonic' in nature, we have to recognise that we are enjoying all the fruits of our sinister interventions across the planet. Nowhere do we bring peace, treat our fellow humans as equals. Nowhere do we want to share our good fortune with the hungry, homeless non europeans.
We don't go to help people because they are being terrorised, but instead we help those that do the terrorising on our behalf.
We will fight wars for resources, for geopolitical advantage - not for peace and safeguarding humanity. And we have no boundaries, we will commit atrocities and call them acts of 'liberation'.
We Europeans are innately evil it would appear, since we (humans) are all of one race and there is no real distinction to be made between peoples around the world. We need to understand the reason why we, in Europe, are like this.
A commonality amongst us is our religious roots, a shared history. These have defined our communities and societies, we have endorsed crusades and missionaries. We have wiped out tribal communities in Africa because they were deemed to be 'savages', in fact we went as far as to think in terms of a new science 'eugenics'. 'Race' politics: that non-Europeans are somehow related to monkeys and gorillas whereas we are the sons and daughters of a supreme being. Our saviour is no ordinary prophet but the son of god, even god. We are the chosen people.
We are taught these values, we have them reinforced and we are fed lies to increase our ignorance.
In truth, we are the problem.
Interestingly, Islam is being made to fit a criteria that we claim teaches its adherents to hate us, to hate the USA - that is, obviously, not true. It certainly isn't within Islam to be anti-American and Muslims - as do the Catholics of Latin America, the atheists of the ex-Soviet states or Buddhists of the South East Asia - generally separate their hatred for American foreign policy and their religions.
But it is correct to say that Europeans (West) are trying to reshape Islam into something that can be recognised by us. We need it to be an image of our belief system and it is this reshaping that involves us to feel that it is Islam is our enemy and not an oppressed people that have been abused by us.
The Islam issue is a carefully constructed distraction from our evil-doing. Islam is the label, just as is al-qaeda.
What of democracy? We are not interested in democracy,to even think we do is crass naivity. The democracy debate is just mood ,usic to the ears of the pro zionist, neo cons that justify our interventions without any accountability or responsibility to those we want to eradicate.
Bush said it more succintly: you're either with us or against us.
The debate doesn't exist.
Wendy, you should read some history if you are going to pronounce the inherent evil of any particular race or culture. I happen to be an Australian and was interested in your statement regarding the Australian aborigines "an abused native population denied their land and rights".
I give you 24 hours to apologise for that lie. Not only do Australian aborigines have "land rights" (or what is called native title) and access to the same public goods as anyone else in the country (there is no discrimination against them), they also have government departments dedictated specifically to them.
I also challenge you to tell me which settler culture could have done a better job in coexisting with the Australian aborigines in the 19th century. It was inevitable that Australia would be settled by someone due to the lack of unity and low population of the indigenes. But who? The Muslim Javanese? The Japanese? Do you seriously believe that the condition of indigenous Australians would be anything approaching what it is had the alternatives settled Australia at a crucial time?
Let us now observe some of the alternatives to the "evil West". There are the Mongols, for example, who razed the Eurasian continent and nearly destroyed your beloved Islam. Nor have you mentioned the Soviet Union, Red China, and those of their ilk who starved, murdered, tortured, impoverished and brutalised as many as 100 million people in the 20th century. Nor have you mentioned the Turkish genocide of Armenians, nor the "invasion, suppression, and dispossession" of Christians in Asia Minor at the hands of Sel-Juq Turks in the 10th-11th centuries. Nor have you mentioned the centuries long invasions of Europe by first the Arabs (who came through Spain to France), who nearly destroyed Europe, and then the Ottomans. This was over a period of many centuries - encompassing the sort of behaviour (and often worse) you only seem to condemn in the West. I am yet to hear you condemn the Islamic world's appalling treatment of Christians and Animists in Africa (racking up millions of hits in Sudan). Nor have you mentioned the various atrocities of imperial Japan. Nor is there any understanding of the massive violence that has characterised sub-continental history - constant war between Moghul and Hindu empires, the occasional destruction and cleansing of same, not to mention the genocide that came with the independence of South Asia. All you see is "Western evil" as if somehow everyone else is not. A ridiculous, pathological, and ahistorical position to take.
I will now turn to a couple of interesting statements:
"Nowhere do we bring peace, treat our fellow humans as equals. Nowhere do we want to share our good fortune with the hungry, homeless non europeans."
Can you explain which Muslim countries seek to bring "peace, treat fellow humans as equals, or share their good fortune with the hungry, homeless, non europeans"? Is it really true that every single culture other than Western culture is just bursting with good-will and a desire to help everyone else in the world? Nonsense. Humans are inherently self-interested and will structure their lives around their own utility. They find it in their own self-interest to bond together and form societies in the interest of self-preservation (ie security). If humans believe it is in their interest to kill or harm other humans, then they will do so - this is a fact that is common to every single culture around the world. Where progressives go wrong is that they aren't actually interested in understanding other cultures - only denouncing their own.
People will also do good where it is in their interest to do so. Take the US security hegemon. It was responsible for the liberty of Japanese, South Koreans, Singaporeans, Taiwanese, Thais (indeed all of the non-communist Asian econonomic tigers who grew massively in affluence behind an American security pact, including Muslim Malaysia), all of Western Europe, the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet Tyranny, the liberation of Iraq from fascist Saddamism amongst other fantastic achievements. Why? Because it was in America's self interest to do so. Hundreds of millions of people have been saved from servitude by Americans, and hundreds of millions more liberated from same.
This did not happen because Americans are inherently good or generous, it was because their security interests coincided with the liberty of millions of people. It was a matter of enlightened self-interest. Many of these people, surprise surprise, were not European.
Can you come up with an example where a Muslim security alliance created such overwhelming conditions of prosperity and freedom for non-Muslims? What the Western world has demonstrated is an ability to reform and change with the times. To modernize. Indeed (as Samuel Huntington has showed) every culture will modernize, and that very rarely means they will Westernize. But the West certainly was the first into the modern era - the inventions and innovations that have sprung from this modernization (mass transport, mass production, technological progress) have generated a prosperity on a scale not previously thought attainable - and indeed available on a massive scale. To simply assume away this as unimportant is a classic example of the characteristic Judean complaint "What have the Romans ever really done for us, I mean apart from bringing the aquaduct, the roads, sanitation, law and order..."
In conclusion - humans are inherently self-serving and sinful. This is a condition that is not unique to any particular culture. Equally, it is clear that the Western world has been most successful in maximising the utility of its citizens and minimising harm between them. Western culture has evolved from a point of clear inferiority to many (most?) other cultures at the beginning of the 2nd millenium, to a position of clear superiority at the beginning of the 3rd millenium, through the successful adaption to the times. This will surely change as birth rates decline, savings rates decline, and morality slips.
What won't change is the gaggle of knockers, cringers and lunatics, fuelled by a pathological hatred of their own culture, secure in their taxpayer funded employment in academia, determined to destroy Rome to satisfy some vague and unattainable ideology of social justice - the sociopathical faction of Leftism. There are always barbarians at the gates - after all history is nothing more than the rise and fall of peoples and the wiping out of the weak by the strong - what is truly bizarre is that there are ideologues who want to pretend away the external threats to their existence.
To Wendy!
you might want to read the current book written the sociologist Rodney Stark "one true God: consequences of Monotheism".....the Judeo-Christian view of God allowed for advancements made in science in the West, the abolition of slavery....while the Islamic view of God allowed for the Islamic world to remain behind in the scientific fields and stills allows slavery TODAY! an Egyptian muslim cleric recently came out stating quite plainly that slavery is islamic and those who disagree do not understand islamic history....so true! here is the documentation: http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_1190.shtml
check out what is going on in Somalia and the Sudan.
Why is the West so ready to white wash Islam into a religion of tolerance and peace when its history clearly states the opposite!
jihan