"Al-Azhar – The Vatican: Official apologies demanded," from the Morocco Times, with thanks to LGF:
Egyptian highest religious authority Al-Azhar has requested the Vatican to present official apologies on Christian crusades carried out against Muslims seven centuries ago. Sheikh Fawzi Zafzaf, President of the Interfaith Dialogue Committee of Al-Azhar, said during a press conference that his committee has sent a request to the Pope last February, demanding an official apology on Christian crusades against the Muslim world, following the example of the Jews.The principle of demanding apology from the Vatican germinated following Pope Jean Paul II's visit to Syria and Egypt a few years ago, and the apologies the Catholic Church presented to the Jewish and some other Christian doctrines, explained Sheikh Zafzaf. “Al-Azhar is only asking for a similar treatment,” he added.
The Vatican's ambassador to Egypt has abstained from commenting, saying that Al-Azhar's request is now being considered by the Holy See.
Charles at LGF notes that Al-Azhar, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, has praised suicide bombing and stated that Islamic states have a religious obligation to acquire nuclear weapons.
And yes, like TigerHawk, I want to see an apology from Al-Azhar for the 450 years of unanswered Islamic aggression and expansion that obliterated the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East and North Africa, and to which the Crusades were a late and paltry defensive reaction.
But the Crusades have grown into a myth that little resembles reality. One hostile emailer, who represented himself as a professor of divinity in Scotland (and may well be, the level of politicized ignorance in the universities being what it is these days) just today asserted to me that the "whole pretence behind [the Crusades] was to slaughter the un-Christian savages in the East." He also claimed that "2.5 million (approx) Muslim people were slaughtered during the Holy Crusades of the 11th century."
This is absurd, and not just because the Crusades had just barely begun by the end of the eleventh century (the first one was called in 1095 and didn't get going until 1099). But the Crusades were not waged to "slaughter un-Christian savages," and it would not have been possible for the Crusaders to kill 2.5 million people (all in 1099, I guess). I suppose this "professor" would have us think that the Connecticut Yankee showed up in the County of Edessa with a few state-of-the-art 20th century Nazi crematoria. (Estimates of deaths in the Crusades more realistically peg them at about 650,000 on each side -- for the entire period between 1095 and 1291).
Anyway, by bothering the Pope, Al-Azhar is just trying to perpetuate this nonsense. It is, after all, politically useful -- as my addled Scots friend indicates. As it happens, I am these days working on a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, which should be out from Regnery in a few months. In it, I'll do my best to clear away this propaganda and tell what really happened.
This is laughable, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Vatican actually capitulated.
The ecumenical council is pathetically mistaken if they think that Islam can be reconciled with Christianity.
Islam will absorb Christianity if these guilt-ridden politcally-correct Catholic clerics aren't stopped.
Islamic Clerics in Canada are spreading the "Crusades" myth as part of their "Victim envy"
mindset to force Islam and the Quran on non-Muslims through guilt.
I'm waiting for Muslims to denounce Muhammeds rape of a 9 year old child that he insisted Allah gave to him as a reward,pedophiles are sick,
decent humans knew this long before any modern day religious text declared it.
Shariah law in Canada will bring lower standards
for the value of human life,this claim by me is based on Muslim leaders in Canada that absolve Muhammed of any shame for having sex with a child. It was Muhammed's own words in the Islamic history that he fought to free the slaves from "White" rule and put them under the protection of Muslim owners that had higher morals for treating slaves.
Hey,why not just ban slavery Muhammed?
Actually most Muslims appear to promote Islam as a faith that's slaughtered less people than the other religions.
xlnt selling point.
Well, they might just get their apologies!
This pope, who courageously worked for change against the commies in Poland,- failed miserably when it came to dealing with Muslims.
By visiting a Mosque and kissing the Qu'ran Wojtila has clearly shown that he is a sucker for Islam! Whatever his intentions were, Muslims see the leader of the catholic church bowing to their god, something no Muslim would ever do.
This certainly send the wrong signal and that encourages the Muslims to make more 'demands'.
I have also noted previously that preachers of the Christian faith in Europe eagerly seek contact and hang around the Imams and the Mosques, in open admiration of the respect and the devotion that Muslims show to their 'faith' - something that the Christian churches lost long ago.
Since much of this is simple power-play, quite a few preachers have already converted, 'reverted' to Mohammed's cult.
The loss of faith in the western world has created a spiritual void that Mohammedans can easily exploit.
Al-Azhar is welcome to drop dead in a small hole with a bomb attached to it.
Is Islam apologizing for murdering half a billion human beings over 13 very horrible centuries? No way in the hell on earth it is and has created for humanity.
Is Islam apologizing for dehumanizing billions of human lives with its savage ideology? of course not.
Is Islam apologizing for torturing and persecuting untold millions of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Gypsies, animists and others? Don't make us laugh.
Is Islam apologizing for destroying the Library of Alexandria? Hell, no.
Is Islam apologizing for lying about the Crusades themselves? Whaaa? You crazy??
Is Islam apologizing for its own Crusades across the Middle East, Northern Africa, the Indian subcontinent, central Asia, and Southeast Asia?
And perpetrating the greates losses of life ever seen in the history of the world? Silence in memory of those murdered, maimed, tortured and so forth.
ANd NOW Christianity should apologize to them??!!!??? Don't these clowns even remember THEY sacked the Vatican at least once and overran southern Italy? Would it even OCCUR to any of them to apologize to the Vatican and the western world for such transgressions? That's FUNNY!
Bwa Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!
If the Vatican 'apologizes' does that mean that the Muslims will then abandon ALL of the lands that they conquered in their even earlier war across the globe (600 to 1800 A.D.)? And will happily return to the dusty precincts of Mecca and Medina, humbly herding goats, thereby freeing the blood-soaked swath of land from Morocco to Indonesia that they stole at the point of the crescent sword from those who were there first, - Berber pagans in the Rif Mountains to Buddhists in Afghanistan to tribalists and Hindus in Malaysia?
I think the world needs an apology from these dangerously delusional Muslims.
At least the Vatican and Christians in general have relinquished their theocratic domination and become a spiritual more than governmental force.
Something Islam, by its own Koran, cannot ever do.
I want them to apologize for insulting out intelligence.
(Restoring the Taliban-destroyed Buddhas of Bamayan will do for a start.)
We want the Hagia Sophia and that thing they call "The Dome of the Rock", for starters.
Interesting news site. check out this link, they are scared of Evangelical Protestants:
http://www.moroccotimes.com/paper/article.asp?idr=11&id=4609
40,000 Protestant converts? good job.
Let's see now. During the first Muslm conquest, Arab Muslims conquer the long-settled, more advanced, more numerous populations of Christians and Jews in Mesopotamia, Syria, Judea, Egypt and the rest of North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula. Everywhere they conquer, they kill, destroy, forcibly convert, or reduce those who remain to the status of deliberate degradation and humiliation, as non-Muslims – the status of the dhimmi. After the Battle of Qadissiya, they did the same to the more advanced Zoroastrians of Persia, the “gift” of Islam. Other Muslim conquerors later did the same to the Greco-Buddhist civilization of present-day Afghanistan, and then inflict permanent damage, on Hindu civilization, killing 60-70 million Hindus until they decide that the Hindus can more profitably be exploited by being left alive to be taxed with the jizya, which in conquered Hindustan as everywhere else Muslims have conquered, is used to support the Muslim state.
And Jihad-conquest continued long after the initial conquest. In 904 the Jihad-pirate Leo Africanus attacked Thessaloniki, massacring its inhabitants, and seizing and enslaving 22,000 of them. In 1009 the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim ordered the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He continued to wreak damage on non-Muslim sites in the Holy Land, and early in that century some Christians began to discuss the need for doing something. But decades passed, and Al-Hakim (deemed “mad” in any case) was replaced as threat by the Turkomans, an islamized tribe that during much of the 11th century continued to bring destruction to non-Musilms, and non-Muslim sites, in the Holy Land. They murdered Jews, who had held on in their ancient homeland. They waylaid, kidnapped, robbed, killed Christian pilgrims. They continued to destroy Christian sites. Much of the best material on this comes from the authoritative, meticulous, massive study of Moshe Gil, “A History of Palestine, 634 to 1099.”
Given all this, it was no surprise that Christians would try to counterattack. But even that counterattack had nothing in common with the Jihad. It was based simply on the need to retain access to the Holy Land, and to protect Christian sites. No canonical text in Christianity was invoked, for there was none, to prompt warfare. There was nothing in the Bible, unlike what is in the Qur’an, to demand that all Christians participate in warfare against non-Christians, as Muslims are supposed to engage in, or support, the Jihad. The Crusades – for there were several, sometimes treated separately, sometimes as part of a series – were limited in time (barely 200 years) and in space (only the Holy Land was involved, for the Crusaders had no intention of carrying their battle beyond the Holy Land to reconquer the formerly Christian lands conquered by Muslims..
The Crusades were thus nothing like the Jihad, which has been going on for 1350 years, whenever and wherever Muslims felt strong enough to conduct it, and in modern times has been conducted largely through non-military instruments, including “wealth” and “pen, speech” and now with the weapons of Da’wa and demography within the Infidel lands. Vast territories that had for 600 or 700 or a thousand or 1400 years been Christian -- think of North Africa, where Tertullian and St. Augustine came from, and its Christian civilization – became part of dar al-Islam. And that was not all. Up and down the coasts of Western Europe, for a thousand years, Muslim raiders looted, burned, killed, and kidnapped more than a million people who were kidnapped and enslaved by the Muslims (see Giles Milton, “White Gold”). From the Slavic lands, more than 3 million people were kidnapped and taken as slaves to the Muslim territories. From black Africa, of course, tens of millions were seized, mostly young boys castrated at the time of capture, with only about 10% surviving the march to the slave markets of dar al-Islam. Jihad never really let up – it was just that in the last half-century all the scholars who had written about Jihad had disappeared, either died, or retired, or deliberately overlooked, while an army of apologists for Islam carefully took control of academic centers all over the Western world.
The Copts, the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, suffered the invasion of Arab Muslims who steadily, over time, helped reduce their numbers and asphyxiate their civilization—just think of the art in St. Mercurius, and in your mind’s eye think of all the art, all the churches and frescoes and paintings destroyed, all the Hindu temples, all the statues of Buddha, everything that was destroyed during and following Muslim conquests. Muslim conquest led to the most successful imperialism in human history. It caused those who were conquered to forget who they were, their own pre-Islamic pasts, their own ancestors, their own civilization.. Over time, islamization always meant arabization, for Arabic was required for reading the Qur’an, and non-Arabs began to assume Arab names (which is why knowledgeable Maronites carefully call themselves not “Christian Arabs” but “Arabic-using Christians”), and forgot who they were, and began to think of themselves as Arabs.
If there is to be an apology for what was done during the Crusades, it should only be directed at the memory of those tens of thousands of Jews massacred along the way, in the soutnern Rhineland, for example, as well as in the Holy Land itself, for they had been entirley inoffensive, the victims not so much of Christian doctrine, as of Christian doctrine exploited by those who wanted to despoil the Jews of their property, or who needed a scapegoat for all of the ills that will always beset a society, from fear of supernatural forces, to the anxieties caused by the constant threat of plagues.,
But to Islam, to Muslims? No apology needed, not then, not before, not after, not ever. Not by the Vatican, not by the Protestant churches, not by the Buddhist monks or government in Thailand or Burma, not by the Hindu or Sikh officials, not by Confucian scholars who may have survived, just, the “new China” and all the hectic vacancy of its money-making.
Here is a link to a piece mainly about the Muslim depredations committed by Al-Hakim and then by the Turcomans, in the Holy Land in the llth century, that led to the Crusades in the first place. The information comes mainly from Moshe Gil's massive "A History of Palestine, 634-1099" though such scholars as Steven Runciman are also quoted:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16235
Trimmed of its footnotes, here is "The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine" by Andrew G. Bostom:
"During the early 11th century period of al-Hakim’s reign, religious assaults and hostility intensified. As Gil notes,
"…the destruction of the churches at the Holy Sepulchre [1009 C.E.] marked the beginning of a whole series of acts of oppression against the Christian population, which according to reliable sources, extended to coercion to convert to Islam."
Yahya b. Sa’id’s description of the events surrounding the destruction of the Churches of the Holy Sepulchre is summarized by Gil:
"They dismantled the Church of the Resurrection to its very foundations, apart from what could not be destroyed or pulled up, and they also destroyed the Golgotha and the Church of St Constantine and all that they contained, as well as the sacred grave stones. They even tried to dig up the graves and wipe out all traces of their existence. Indeed they broke and uprooted most of them. They also laid waste to a convent in the neighborhood…The authorities took all the other property belonging to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and its pious foundations and all its furnishings and treasures."
Citing both Muslim (al-Quda’i, Ibn Khallikan, and Ibn Al-Athir) and non-Muslim (Bar Hebraeus) sources, Gil also describes the edicts al-Hakim imposed upon the Christians and Jews beginning in August 1011 C.E.:
"They were ordered to wear black turbans. The Christians had to wear a cross the length of a cubit and weighing five ratls around their necks around their necks; the Jews were obliged to wear a block of wood of similar weight…they had to wear some distinguishing mark in the bath-houses, and finally al-Hakim decided that there were to be separate bath-houses for their use…Ibn Al-Athir conveys…that al-Hakim ordered (after the destruction of the Chucrh of the Resurrection in Jerusalem…) that all the churches in the realm be destroyed, and this was done, and that the Jews and Christians were then to accept Islam, or emigrate to Byzantine lands. They were also obliged to wear special distinguishing signs. Many converted…Bar Hebraeus speaks of thousands of churches which were destroyed in the Fatimid kingdom at that time; the decree regarding the wearing of the cross around the neck was also, he says, a means of pressuring the Christians to convert. The wooden block the Jews were obliged to wear, had to be in the shape of a calf, as a reminder of the golden calf"
In a separate, focused analysis of the conditions of the dhimmis of Jerusalem, Gil concludes that during the early through the mid 11th century, the Jews suffered both economically and physically:
Economic conditions in Jerusalem were rather harsh, and the yeshiva often issued urgent appeals for aid. Besides, there were frequent acts of oppression on the part of the Muslim authorities. Very often special heavy taxes were imposed, which aggravated the already precarious situation of both the yeshiva and the Jewish population of Jerusalem. It must be remembered that taxation in Jerusalem was probably different from that found in other parts of the Muslim world. It seems that Jews there had to pay a comprehensive lump sum for the whole Jewish population of the city, regardless of its numbers. When the population decreased as a result of wars and Bedouin upheavals, the burden on each individual became heavier. In such situations the yeshiva was forced to borrow money, against heavy interest, from wealthy Muslims. When the time of repayment arrived, Jewish notables were in danger of being imprisoned, as the yeshiva was not in a position to accumulate the funds it had to return. In some cases people were actually incarcerated and it took a great deal of effort to collect the funds necessary for their release. An example is the letter written by Abraham, the son and main assistant of Solomon b. Yehuda, head of the yeshiva, to the sons of Mevasser, a family of parnasim of Fustat, asking them to keep their promise to send the aid in time to pay the kharaj.
Muslim Turcoman rule of Palestine for the nearly three decades just prior to the Crusades (1071-1099 C.E.) was characterized by such unrelenting warfare and devastation, that an imminent “End of Days” atmosphere was engendered. 63 For example, Gil describes one of Atsiz b. Awaq’s jihad campaigns in Syro-Palestine at around 1077 C.E.:
"Then Atsiz advanced on Jerusalem from Damascus, placed the city under siege, and promised its inhabitants the aman; on this basis, the inhabitants opened the gates of the city to him. Atsiz prevailed over Jerusalem, completely ignoring his promise of aman, and went on a rampage. He slaughtered 3,000 people there…He also conducted campaigns of annihilation against Ramla, until all its people had fled, and against Gaza, where he murdered the entire population. He likewise massacred people in al-'Arish and elsewhere and wrought endless havoc in Damascus, where only 3,000 of the original 500,000 inhabitants had remained, due to starvation and scarcity. Jaffa, too, was attacked, and its governor…fled from the town to Tyre, together with all the city's inhabitants, while the walls of Jaffa were destroyed on Atsiz' orders."
A contemporary Russian chronicle cited by Gil indicates that the Turcomans, “…destroyed and desolated the cities and the villages from Antioch to Jerusalem. They murdered, took captive, pillaged, set on fire; they destroyed churches and monasteries."
Gil notes that these observations are confirmed by Geniza documents, describing how, “…the Turcoman occupation denoted terrible calamities, such as the taking captive of the people of Ramla, the cutting off of roads, the obduracy of the commanders, the aura of anxiety and panic, and so on.” He continues, “We do not know what Atsiz' attitude was to the Jewish population in 1078, during the cruel suppression of the uprisings and the destruction of towns, but the fact that from this date onwards, we barely find letters from Palestine (apart from Ascalon and Caesarea) in the Geniza documents, speaks for itself.”
A contemporary poem by Solomon ha-Kohen b. Joseph, believed to be a descendant of the Geonim, an illustrious family of Palestinian Jews of priestly descent, speaks of destruction and ruin, the burning of harvests, the razing of plantations, the desecration of cemeteries, and acts of violence, slaughter, and plunder:
"They were a strange and cruel people, girt with garments of many colors,/Armed and officered-chiefs among ‘the terrible ones’-/And capped with helmets, black and red,/With bow and spear and full quivers;/And they trumpet like elephants, and roar as the roaring ocean,/To terrify, to frighten those who oppose them,/
And they are wicked men and sinners, madmen, not sane,/ And they laid waste the cities, and they were made desolate/And they rejoiced in their hearts, hoping to inherit./
He [God] also remembered what they had done to the people of Jerusalem,/ That they had besieged them twice in two years,/ And burned the heaped corn and destroyed the places,/ And cut down the trees and trampled upon the vineyards,/And surrounded the city upon the high mountains,/And despoiled the graves and threw out the bones,/And built palaces, to protect themselves against the heat,/And erected an altar to slay upon it the abominations;/And the men and the women ride upon the walls, Crying unto the God of gods, to quiet the great anger,/ Standing the whole night, banishing sleep,/While the enemy destroy, evening and morning,/And break down the whole earth, and lay bare the ground,/ And stand on the highways, intending to slay like Cain,/ And cut off the ears, and also the nose,/And rob the garments, leaving them stand naked,/ And also roar like lions, and roar like young lions;/ They do not resemble men, they are like beasts,/ And also harlots and adulterers, and they inflame themselves with males,/ They are bad and wicked and spiteful as Sodomites./ And they impoverished the sons of nobles, and starved the delicately bred./ And all the people of the city went out and cried in the field,/ And covered their lips, silent in their pains,/ And they had no mercy on widows, and pitied not the orphans."
Gil concludes that as a result of the Turcoman jihad,
"Palestine was drawn into a whirlpool of anarchy and insecurity, of internal wars among the Turks themselves and between them (generally in collaboration with the Arab tribes) and the Fatimids. Here and there, in one or another area, a delicate state of balance was arrived at for a few years. By and large, however, the Turcoman period, which lasted less than thirty years, was one of slaughter and vandalism, of economic hardship and the uprooting of populations. Terrible suffering, eviction and wandering, was the particular lot of the Jewish population, and chiefly its leadership, the Palestinian yeshiva."
Gil offers this sobering overall assessment from his extensive, copiously documented analysis of the initial period of Muslim rule of Palestine, from 634 to 1099 C.E.:
"These facts do not call for much interpretation; together they simply form a picture of almost unceasing insecurity, of endless rebellions and wars, of upheavals and instability..."
The brutal nature of the Crusader’s conquest of Palestine, particularly of the major cities, beginning in 1098/99 C.E., has been copiously documented. However, the devastation wrought by both Crusader conquest and rule (through the last decades of the 13th century) cannot reasonably be claimed to have approached, let alone somehow “exceeded”, what transpired during the first four and one-half centuries of Muslim jihad conquests, endless internecine struggles for Muslim dominance, and imposition of dhimmitude. As Emmanuel Sivan has observed, regarding Crusader dominion,
"…practical considerations appear to have outweighed religious fanaticism and, when it came to the peasantry, the ‘infidel children of the devil’ in the villages were spared. It was clear to the Crusaders that they were themselves too few to dispense with the labor of local …farmers in cultivating the soil."
Moreover, we cannot ignore the testimony of Isaac b. Samuel of Acre (1270-1350 C.E.), one of the most outstanding Kabbalists of his time. Conversant with Islamic theology and often using Arabic in his exegesis, Isaac nevertheless believed that it was preferable to live under the yoke of Christendom rather than that of Islamdom. Acre was taken from the Crusaders by the Mamelukes in 1291 in a very brutal jihad conquest described by Runciman:
"Soon the Moslem soldiers penetrated right through the city, slaying everyone, old men, women and children alike. A few lucky citizens who stayed in their houses were taken alive and sold as slaves, but not many were spared. No one could tell the number of those that perished…Some prisoners were freed and returned to Europe after nine or ten years of captivity…Many women and children disappeared for ever into the harems of Mameluk emirs. Owing to the plentiful supply the price of a girl dropped to a drachma a piece in the slave market at Damascus. But the number of Christians that were slain was greater still…As soon as Acre was in his power, the Sultan (al-Ashraf Khalil) set about its systematic destruction…The houses and bazaars were pillaged, then burned; the buildings (of the Orders) and the fortified towers and castles were dismantled; the city walls were left to disintegrate. When the German pilgrim, Ludolf of Suchem passed by some forty years later, only a few peasants lived amongst the ruins of the once splendid capital…"
Accordingly, despite the precept to dwell in the Holy Land, Isaac b. Samuel fled to Italy and thence to Christian Spain, where he wrote:
"The word ziz in Arabic is derogatory, for when they wish to say in that tongue, ‘Strike him upon the head,’ ‘Give him a blow upon the neck,’ they say zazzhu (‘hit him’)…Indeed, on account of our sins they strike upon the head the children of Israel who dwell in their lands and they thus extort money from them by force. For they say in their tongue, mal al-yahudi mubah, ‘it is lawful to take money of the Jews.’ For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew. For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory have said, ‘Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael.’ They plead for mercy before the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, ‘Master of the World, either let us live beneath Thy shadow or else beneath that of the children of Edom’ (a Talmudic verse)."
All the footnotes can be found in the complete article, for which the link is given above.
The next time someone assures you that the Crusades were a blatant act of unmotivated aggression, you might ask them to read this article. And the next time you are assured how good it was for "the Jews of Palestine" under Muslim rule, and how they suffered only from the bad Crusaders, point out what the celebrated Kabblaist of Acre, Isaac b. Samuel, after fleeing Muslim oppression for first Italy and then Christian Spain was for him the Land of Israel, wrote about his own experiences.
Brilliant Hugh...as always, thank you for your insights!
Mr. Spencer's Scottish interlocutor, the Pope's recent moves, and the unwillingness of the C of E to stand up for the ex-Muslim Christians of Britain (largely ethnic South Asian working stiffs, probably, not genteel or mediogenic)underscore the brain death of liberal religion. Maybe a counter-offer would be that the Maghreb countries and Turkey commit themselves to iron-clad protections for the Christians and Jews in their midst, including ex-Muslim Evangelical newcomers.
Suzan's link to a Protestant surge in Morocco is heartening. The fears of the official journalism reported therein suggests that the Berber and Arab peoples of North Africa may have begun to get sick and tired of being lied to. By the way, on the site "Answering Islam" there are some interesting testimonies from North Africans. It seems that the Bible itself and other written materials have been major players in reviving Christianity in the lands of Cyprian and Augustine.
Suzan, as a Catholic who has been exposed to Evangelicals a great deal, I can give you a good reason why Moroccan Muslims are converting to evangelical Protestantism: Evangelicals take their faith more seriously than Catholics and are less willing to compromise for the sake of "tolerance."
The first Sunday after the 9/11 attacks, many Catholics were told to befriend Arab Muslims and reassure them that they had nothing to fear from Catholics. Granted, the idea was to discourage reprisals against innocent Muslims living in the U.S. But couldn't that point have been made in another fashion? Going to such extremes (as I view them) basically emasculated the legitimate sense of moral outrage.
Then again, there's a big backlash in Catholic circles against "revenge," as exemplified by such things as opposing capital punishment for murder (a punishment, btw, that's God-ordained). There's also been a big ecumenical movement that this pope has launched to try and build peace through mutual understanding and avoid a "clash of civilizations." Unfortuntately, such a strategy has meant nothing but appeasement in the immediate build-up to and initial aftermath of the war in Iraq.
Joseph D'Hippolito: We Evangelicals don't exactly go up to Muslims and say, "Convert to Christianity or we'll shoot you", either. However, we're more likely to affirm things like the deity of Christ, that Christ is God's appointed way of salvation, and point to differences between the Bible and Qur'an.
Also, for some Muslims, Christ offering a complete and full atonement for the sins of the world and conquering death three days later can be powerful stuff (and they're not the only ones). It also intriques them that the Christian Bible isn't just the New Testament, but that we share four fifths of the Bible with the Jews--and don't accuse the Jews of falsifying, either (differences of translation and interpretation, yes; fraud accusations, no).
Also, we're pretty accustomed to being confused with Aryan Nations types or judged by our own angries and a handful of mediagenic eccentrics, too; despite the fact that we're a pretty diverse bunch. Hence, we're able to differ respectfully and sympathetically when we deal with Muslims.
Also, we have to be people who take our faith seriously, or our churches and institutions won't stand. Despite what ther ACLU screams about, nobody taxes you to pay for our churches and schools (we have to pay for them ourselves--once I shocked a Chinese friend I invited to church by explaining that the building, property, pastor's salary, books, etc. were paid for by what the congregation donated--not penny's worth of tax oir corporate support). Even in Europe, save for a few scattered enclaves in the official churches of certain countries, we tend to be free churches rather than establishments.
Degenerated Matter and Hugh:
An interesting article was published about two years ago in the "La Civiltà Cattolica,” which I believe is edited by Jesuits in Rome. I'm presently travelling so I don't have the article with me but the attached link provides a summary. Excerpts are provided below. It appears some people in the Vatican get it with respect to Islam - where this will take us given the current pope's state of health I can't say.
The link is: http://www.islamreview.com/articles/vaticanblasts.shtml
Following are excerpts from the article:
“La Civiltà Cattolica,” edited by a group of Jesuits in Rome, is a very special magazine. Every one of its articles is reviewed by the Vatican secretary of state before publication. So the magazine reflects his thought faithfully.
In its October 18 edition, “La Civiltà Cattolica” published a strikingly severe article on the condition of Christians in Muslim countries. The central thesis of the article is that “in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike and conquering face”; that “for almost a thousand years, Europe lived under its constant threat”; and that what remains of the Christian population in Islamic countries is still subjected to “perpetual discrimination,” with episodes of bloody persecution.
What follows is an ample extract from the article printed in “La Civiltà Cattolica” no. 3680, October 18, 2003, and used here with the kind permission of the magazine:
Christians in Islamic Countries
by Giuseppe De Rosa S.I.
"How do Christians in Muslim-majority countries live? [...] We must first highlight a seemingly rather curious fact: in all the countries of North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco), before the Muslim invasion and despite incursions by vandals, there were blossoming Christian communities that contributed to the universal Church great personalities, such as Tertullian; Saint Ciprian, bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258; Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo; and Saint Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe. But after the Arab conquest, Christianity was absorbed by Islam to such an extent that today it has a significant presence only in Egypt, with the Coptic Orthodox and other tiny Christian minorities, which make up 7-10 percent of the Egyptian population."
"In conclusion, we may state in historical terms that in all the places where Islam imposed itself by military force, which has few historical parallels for its rapidity and breadth, Christianity, which had been extraordinarily vigorous and rooted for centuries, practically disappeared or was reduced to tiny islands in an endless Islamic sea. It is not easy to explain how that could have happened. [...]
In reality, the reduction of Christianity to a small minority was not due to violent religious persecution, but to the conditions in which Christians were forced to live in the organization of the Islamic state. [...]"
THE WARRIOR FACE OF ISLAM: “JIHAD”
"As for the countries belonging to the “house of war,” Islamic canon law recognizes no relations with them other than “holy war” (jihad), which signifies an “effort” in the way of Allah and has two meanings, both of which are equally essential and must not be dissociated, as if one could exist without the other. In its primary meaning, jihad indicates the “effort” that the Muslim must undertake to be faithful to the precepts of the Koran and so improve his “submission” (islam) to Allah; in the second, it indicates the “effort” that the Muslim must undertake to “fight in the way of Allah,” which means fighting against the infidels and spreading Islam throughout the world. Jihad is a precept of the highest importance, so much so that it is sometimes counted among the fundamental precepts of Islam, as its sixth “pillar.”
"Obedience to the precept of the “holy war” explains why the history of Islam is one of unending warfare for the conquest of infidel lands. [...] In particular, all of Islamic history is dominated by the idea of the conquest of the Christian lands of Western Europe and of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople."
"Thus, in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike face and a conquering spirit for the glory of Allah. [...] against the “idolaters” who must be given a choice: convert to Islam, or be killed. [...] As for the “people of the Book” (Christians, Jews, and “Sabeans”), Muslims must “fight them until their members pay tribute, one by one, humiliated” (Koran, Sura 9:29). [...]"
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF CHRISTIANS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
"Radical Islam, which proposes that shari’a law be instituted in every Islamic state, is gaining ground in many Muslim countries, in which groups of Christians are also present. It is evident that the institution of shari’a would render the lives of Christians rather difficult, and their very existence would be constantly in danger. This is the cause of the mass emigration of Christians from Islamic countries to Western countries: Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia. [...] The estimated number of Arab Christians who have emigrated from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel in the last decade hovers around three million, which is from 26.5 to 34.1 percent of the estimated number of Christians currently living in the Middle East."
I have only scratched the surface of this article - it also deals with dhimmitude and redical Islam. Read it all.
Kepha, I didn't mean my post as anti-Evangelical. For some reason, I sense that you took it that way. Please enlighten me if I'm wrong.
Well I know that many of you are anti-catholic, I prefer don´t speak but in Italy these easter we will have 100,000 converts from Islam and there are too in immigrants in Spain, but for precautions, we don´t do ads, the Catholic Church converts muslims more than the evangelicals.
For example this
http://www.pionet.org/Boletines/Boletin_10_septiembre_2003.htm#
http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=2555
Joseph D'Hippolito: I didn't take your post as anti-Evangelical. I was just pointing out a few things that helped us move into North Africa, Turkey, and the Little Teherans of America.
Apologizing for the Crusades is one more chip in the mulch pile as Muslims chip away at Western culture.
Franze, if the Catholic Church can convert 100,000 out of Islam, that's great. My suspicion, however, is that those making the converts are doing so at counterpurposes with church "leadership" that seeks to make nice with Islam at the expense of proclaiming Christ's atoning death for sin and resurrection.
Being Catholic, I can hardly be considered "anti-Catholic." Nevertheless, Franze, you and I must confront the fact that many within our own faith have no interest in such conversions because they've been bitten by the bug of "tolerance" or have their own geopolitical agendas to foster.
The question isn't whether Catholic or Evangelicals can bring more Muslims to Christ. The issue is whether Muslims come to Christ in the first place; whether they come as Catholics, Evangelicals or Orthodox is a secondary concern.
Joseph I am agree, but I listen here many times that Catholic Church is dhirmi and other things, and when Bush support Saudi Arabia or say that islam is peace, I haven´t seen that anyone say that Bush is dhirmi, I think that only with the reconversion of the western to the christianism, these muslim converts, why? because if the westerners convert situations like the refuse of the freedom religion in Saudi Arabia and the islamic countries, don´t produce because the societies asked for to the governments change, and dhirmitude dissapear, why there are dhirmitude, because there aren´t strong believes, and having fear for the future, and people prefer sell his soul for being quiet.