"Vatican Is Rethinking Relations With Islam," from the Washington Post, with thanks to JJP Mackie:
ROME -- After two decades of contact and dialogue with the Islamic world under Pope John Paul II, the Vatican is rethinking an outreach program that critics say is diluting Catholicism and has brought almost no benefits to beleaguered Catholic minorities in Muslim countries.The late pontiff undertook the drive as part of a broad effort to open channels to other religions. He applied a personal stamp by stepping into a mosque in Damascus and meeting with Muslim groups more than 60 times. He also visited a synagogue in Rome and Jerusalem's Western Wall.
Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, said the next pope might more emphatically demand rights for Christian minorities in Islamic countries and the freedom of all people to choose their faith.
Well, here's hoping.
"There may be a greater insistence on religious liberty," said Fitzgerald, the church's point man on Islamic relations. "But I don't think we're going to go to war. The times of the Crusades are over. . . . I don't see any fundamental change in the way the church has been dealing with these questions."Justo Lacunza Balda, who heads the Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, a Vatican research group, said criticism was focused on the lack of reciprocal goodwill gestures in many Muslim countries. "Humanly speaking, it is of course important to see some payback," he said.
Certainly many Muslims publicly mourned John Paul. Rwanda's mufti, Saleh Habimana, declared that "the death of the pope is the disappearance of a hero of recent times." President Mohammad Khatami of Iran, a Muslim cleric, flew to Rome for the funeral in an unprecedented sign of respect.
But elsewhere, feelings toward the pope were less warm and, at times, openly hostile. One Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, said the pope had not apologized for the Crusades and that Muslims were waiting.
Let's hope they keep waiting until hell freezes over. Why? Read about it in my forthcoming book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades (Regnery).
Radical Islamic Web sites sometimes predict that Muslims will conquer Europe and set up headquarters in the Vatican.
Not just "radical Islamic web sites," either. Here is one of the most prominent Muslim teachers in the world, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, doing the same thing. Others, too.
Before they stopped speaking to the press on Saturday, several of the 115 cardinals who are in Rome to elect John Paul's successor cited the spread of Islam as one of the major issues facing the church. Hanging over the church's deliberations, Vatican officials said, was whether to view Islam as a collaborator in combating secularism or a religious rival.It has been a rival historically. Muslim invaders established their faith on European soil in Spain and the Balkans in the 8th century; European Crusaders seized control of the Holy Land from Muslims between the 11th and 14th centuries. Now, the large Muslim minorities that have emerged in historically Christian European cities have engendered suspicion from the majority populations.
No mention here of the fact that Muslim invaders overwhelmed the Christian lands of the Middle East and North Africa around the same time they were threatening Europe (and they continued to threaten Europe for quite some time thereafter). The Crusaders tried to win back just a small part of these vast expanses of land. Now the large Muslim minorities in Europe have "engendered suspicion" because they threaten to accomplish what the jihadists of bygone ages couldn't: the Muslim conquest of Europe.
Many people in the Vatican view Christianity as under siege in parts of the world. They say that Christian populations are shrinking in countries in the Middle East in part because of long-term discrimination and repression by Muslim majorities. Catholic churches in Baghdad have been the targets of terrorist attacks; Christian communities are under physical attack by Muslims in Nigeria and the Philippines. Sub-Saharan Africa, the fastest-growing area for Catholicism, is also the fastest-growing for Islam.In the Muslim world, many people view the situation in reverse, believing that the Christian West, through movies and television, is reshaping the values of Islam and, through the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, taking over historically Muslim lands.
Here at Jihad Watch we really don't think that having to choose between Al Jazeera and HBO is as big a hardship for Muslims as, say, jihad genocide in Sudan is for Christians. This kind of moral equivalence is disgusting.
"The relationship among religions is probably the most ignificant" issue facing the next pope, said Rev. Augustine DiNoia, the second-ranking official in the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is in charge of safeguarding orthodoxy. "The fundamental problem is how to value another religion without devaluing your own."
That's a fundamental problem? Ridiculous. The Rev. Augustine DiNoia should know from his Christian faith that he should value all human beings as fundamentally equal as children of God -- but that doesn't mean he must also equally value a belief-system that teaches the inequality of peoples and all sorts of other injustices.
None of the frequently mentioned papal candidates has called for ending dialogue, but they have taken different approaches to sustaining it. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was John Paul's chief guardian of Catholic doctrine, has placed a priority on shoring up faith among Catholics as a prerequisite for successful interfaith dialogue. In 2000, he wrote a declaration called Dominus Iesus, or Lord Jesus, stressing the superiority of Catholicism.Nigeria's Cardinal Francis Arinze, the most-mentioned African candidate, doesn't dispute Ratzinger's Catholic-centric approach but sees contact with other religions as a vehicle for strengthening Catholicism. In his 1997 book, "Meeting Other Believers," Arinze wrote: "Through contact with other believers, the Church also learns much. Christians learn what great gifts, for example, of wisdom, holiness of life, love of others, self-gift to others and asceticism God has given to some people who are outside the visible boundaries of the Church."
Cardinal Ivan Dias, the archbishop of Bombay, has split the difference. He strongly supported Ratzinger's expression of Catholic superiority but also told a group of bishops recently that the Catholic Church "must make every effort to relate to every human being without any superiority complex."...
Of course, but the emphasis here is on human beings, not belief systems. To make every effort to relate to every human being without a superiority complex doesn't mean that we treat every belief-system as if it were equal in its capacity to inspire either violence or benevolence.
Vatican unease over outreach surfaced in 2003 when La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit magazine whose articles have to be approved by the Vatican secretary of state, published a downbeat assessment of Christian-Muslim relations. It said the Vatican's professions of tolerance for Muslims had not been displayed equally by Muslims for Christians.
What's that? I'm shocked, shocked! Muslims have not respected or tolerated Christians?
La Civilta Cattolica noted that Saudi Arabia refused to permit churches to be built on its territory but financed construction of mosques and schools in Europe, including Rome, "the very heart of Christianity."Early this year, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, head of the Jesuit order, warned against building up illusions in inter-religious talks, particularly with Muslims. "There is an unbridgeable gap between the religions," he wrote. "I repeat that this does not exclude meetings for the purpose of understanding each other better. But an awareness of the impediment makes these meetings become more honest. Otherwise there is a risk of treating the Muslim, theologically, as if he were a Christian of another confession."...
Hear, hear, Kolvenbach. I'm all for not building up illusions. We have labored under too many for too long.
Good news, there is hope. Catholic church finally realizing that dhimmitude doesn't pay, and that turning the other cheek and groveling in the dirt before Muslims doesn't help Catholics oppressed in Islamic countries.
A very encouraging sign from Father Kolvenbach. For context on the top Jesuit's view on general policies of the order, here is an excerpt from a July 1997 address:
http://www.jesuitalumni.org/congr/dir7.htm
"In practical terms, the Jesuit vision calls for a commitment to work for peace where vested interests are fomenting unrest in order to sell armaments. The Jesuit vision calls for a commitment to honesty in situations where corruption flourishes, to preservation of the environment where opposing forces stand for ever greater consumerism, to respect for peoples of different beliefs where radical forces are for suppressing minority opinions and rights. The Jesuit vision calls for a commitment to the preservation of indigenous peoples against cultural forces that consider themselves superior, to equal treatment for both sexes in a world where women are often given second-class treatment and are even destroyed before birth. The Jesuit vision calls for a commitment to an equal standard of education for all in situations where the majority are given poor education or no education at all, to the family in an atmosphere where more and more families are breaking up, to a just economic policy that benefits all sections of society and not only certain better off sectors, to mass media that portray values of honesty, compassion, and understanding rather than values of consumerism. hedonism, and prejudice."
I post this paragraph, because these general ideas are consistent with many ideas with folks with left-leaning political views. But, it seems, the Jesuits will not be fooled when it comes to Islam.
Quite a combination of views and principles, isn't it? Catholic, socially progressive, and keenly aware (one hopes) of the oppression and threat that Islam represents. Europe generally would do well to take the lead from this Jesuit, and others, like Father Schall at Georgetown.
Jihad Watchers aren't going to like this, but secularism is not the enemy, in fact it is the only cure for this Battle for God.
You aren't going to solve the Islamist problem, by
conversion to Christianity, nor by appeal to reason and humanity, but only by debunking the very basis for their beliefs, the Abrahamic myth, and that means that Judaism and Christianity are also debunked (as they have been and successfully).
In short form Abraham is really aBrahma (son of Braham) and his wife Sarati was the moon goddess, which in itself indicates the origin of the people who now call themselves Jews, or as they were known in the Indus Valley (and they are related to the Pashtuns and Gypsies by the way) as Juth or Jats, a name that means Camel Driver and connotates a man driving camels down the silk road in search of commerce and profit, and of course they settled in commercial centers like Babylon, Damascus, Tyre and Memphis, adopting and adapting as their own the various myths, heros, legends, kings and rituals they encountered.
There was no Abraham, hence no Isaac and Isma'il, hence no Jews or Muslims, hence no Christians or Jesus. It's all a house of cards, and the only result is perpetual religious war until either no one is left standing or all the world is Muslim.
Sheer numbers, fecundity, the virtual impossibility of a Muslim to defect, and the willingness to die in the way of "allah" is sufficient to ensure an eventual muslim victory.
In reference secularism or lack of belief.
Secularists are more hated by Muslims than Jews or Christians, like mushrik (Hindu's) they are given but two choices either submit to Islam or die.
Not even the status of dhimmi is an option.
Secularism is the enemy of all religions, not because secularists have declared war on religion (secularists don't care what people believe, so long as their beliefs are not politicized or used as the rationale for political action).
But secularism is enlightment, reason not blind belief based on "faith" or a upbringing, it is linear, fact based, and historical (not hysterical like religion).
And the reason religons hate secularism is because it is contagious, and that means it diminishes the
numbers of faithful, and thus diminishes the political power, and financial resources of those men (and few women) who hold forth (like Imam's, Rabbi's, priests and preachers do) that they somehow have the ability or a "divine commission" to speak for and interpret the words and desires of a god. A god by the way which is created in the image of man, not vice versa.
Just a Allah was created to suit the needs of Muhammad, so are the Judeo Christian gods created to suit the needs of those brought them into creation, and who maintain to this day the belief.
If there is anything to be said about gods and men, is that man creates his god(s) in his own image and then uses it as a ventriloquist dummy.
And the use of scriptures as a basis for belief is circular reasoning.
Q. Why do you believe in the scriptures?
A. They are the word of god (allah).
Q. How do you know that?
A. It says so in the scriptures.
The scriptures are the word of god (allah) because it says so in the scriputes are the word of god (allah) because it says so in the scriptures are the word of god (allah) because it says so in the scriptures are....
If one needs to believe in a power greater than themselves for whatever reason, then do so but don't thus claim any scriptures (hence a god, prophets, peoples) as a basis or source of authority, nor quote from said "scriptures" to justify policies and actions.
When you do that, a Jew, Christian, Muslim are indistinghishable from one another, peas in a pod, from a secularist point of view.
giaour~ we will happily let the religion of secularism takes its place on the list- which should be somewhere near the bottom, just above Marxism.
The rest of us shall live and worship as we see fit, be it Christian, Hindu, Bhuddist, Native American, etc.
We'd rather not be second class citizens to your elite, worshipping in secrect, just as we would be under islam (if we were lucky).
Upon Pope John Paul II's passing I pulled out a copy of his book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope". In it he does a comparative analysis of Catholicism to Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. In light of his initiatives towards interfaith reconciliation, I found his comments in the chapter "Muhammed?" quite unexpected.
From pages 92-93:
"Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself, First in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam, all the richness of God's self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside.
Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God of outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus is mentioned, but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammed. There is also mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent. For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity."
Consider those words at the next "Interfaith" Taqiyya Fest.
He goes on to add on page 94:
"In countries where fundamentalist movements come to power, human rights and the principle of religious freedom are unfortunately interpreted in a one-sided way - religious freedom comes to mean the freedom to impose on all citizens the "true religion". In these countries, the situation of Christians is sometimes terribly disturbing."
Yes, Dhimmitude is terribly disturbing. I hope the next Pope will indeed recognize that the fight against Dhimmitude should be led by the Vatican along with the leadership of all the other religions (Judaism, Hinduism, etc.) whose faithful have suffered under the Islamic system of religious apartheid.
As far as Secularism goes, let's not confuse that with Atheism, Marxism, and the like. I can advocate a secular form of government without rejecting God, faith and religion, just as I can recognize an authority higher than the secular state without feeling compelled to impose it upon the Secular rule of law. It is patently false to simplisticly claim that Secularism is an enemy of religion, when it has served as a legal system that has ensured religious freedom in nations such as the United States for centuries. Secularism can, and has been, a friend of Religion - when we frame Secularism within an Atheistic or Marxist, or even Nihilistic, frame of context, it is easy to lose sight of this fact.
Mike-
Thanks for the quote. Although I adhere to no organized faith, I've made the point on JW/DW several times to Muslim apologists that Islam is a retrograde creed, taking the worst of the Old Testament, distilling [sic] and amplifying it, and ignoring the humanizing and "taming" nature of Jesus's transformation of the vengeful Old Yaweh into a more conscious, more loving deity.
The Old Testament God, and Allah, share many traits: violence, compulsion to submit, raging warnings of hellfire and a cruel joy in the misery of their own creatures -who just happen to find the arguments of the prophets (or Mohammad) unconvincing.
Christ was the NEEDED 'civilizing' of God.
When Islam demotes him beneath yet another Old Testament-ish warlord like Mohammad, it becomes a swerving off the path toward love and humility that Jesus embodied, and back to the dark, ancient, vicious, dead-end dogmatic doomsaying of the time when God was a bullying despot, and not a sharing, caring creator.
And even I can see this, without being a christian/churchly follower.
What is endearing about Christ is his 'devilish' humor. (Outwitting the religious teachers with parables, analogies, wordplay, and startlingly original insights that stick in the mind to this very day.)
A quality UTTERLY lacking in Mohammad/Allah, both being megalomaniacal, grim and unaware of the ineffable levity which upholds all mere gravity.
Mike~ it ain't the secularism per se.
It is the people in Charge of it.
Giaour likes to think people of faith are suffering a neurological disorder.
Remember the last group of people who made such claims about people? We trashed them and their leader committed the ultimate act of humanity by killing himself.
When someone looks down at you, laughs at your beliefs and calls it a mental problem, you are in trouble.
To me, secularism simply means neutrality between faiths, rather than Godlessness. In a sense secularism as applied to politics is enshrined in Christian doctrine, in the words 'Render unto Caesar...'.
Secularism is alien and offensive to Islam, where politics and religion are one. In fact, even to speak of 'politics' and 'religion' as if they were separate, is a kind of blasphemy.
There has been a lot of science done that seems to indicate (at least so far) that the religious impulse comes from a very primal and ancient part of the human brain. In other words most people need some kind of spiritual belief system to satisfy there psychological needs.
I think Giaur forgets that if you do away with Christianity that most people will no longer have that spiritual need met and so will look for it somewhere else.
In other words people will set up all sorts of cults and convert to other religions. That is not so bad if the other religions on offer are tolerant humanist religions. However if the religions on offer are anti-humanistic then we will have a lot of trouble. Essentially, getting rid of Christianity could transform our very already very tolerant civilisation into an intolerant inhumane theocratic Orwellian nightmare.
P.S. if we freely decide in the future to alter or get rid of that part of our brains that results in us being dependent on religion then maybe we could have a godless society without creating a potential disaster. Until then however the risk of getting rid of the western relgions is just too great.
P.S. I think it is time for the first Jesuit Pope.
I'm forced to agree with the terminally humorless Giaour on this one:
Christianity, as a philosophy, can survive (and has survived) centuries of controversy and demystification. The Sermon on the Mount is compelling literature, whatever the nature of Jesus. Recent controversies like the Da Vinci Code and the Dead Sea Scrolls have religious books flying off the shelves at record rates.
Faith means different things to different people. Not everyone needs magical healing or dead people flying out of the grave to have faith in God.
But the Earth is a physically-limited sphere (really, check with Galileo on that one). If the Vatican caves in and allows Europe to become "Muslim land" (Earth to them) there will be no Christianity, secular or otherwise.
The theory of the Big Bang was propounded by a Catholic priest. This dovetails nicely with Thomas Aquinas and his arguments for first causation. Secular science and religion come at the same questions different ways, neither destroying the other. Knowing HOW creation happened does not mean creation didn't happen.
Don't worry about those who have faith only for God in the gaps. Science is always finding more gaps.
I dsiagree with Holvenbach. Honor to the names of certain historical figures is certainly a "bridge" between the various Abrahamic religions. Belief in immutable moral standards is a "bridge" between eastern religions and Abrahamic onces. The idea of an underlying rationality of all existence is a bridge between Daoism, Platonism, and Christianity. May many, many, many pass over such bridges to Jesus Christ.
After all, the unescapable fact is that we live in God's universe.
Hence, Beagle, I suspect that if we get rid of the "God-conscious" part of the human brain (if that's what it truly is--why doesn't it also explain the fanaticisms some people invest in ideology, including ones purporting to be "scientific", and hero worship?), we'll find out too late that we've effectively lobotomized the species.
And, Giaour, I humbly and gratefully fall on my knees before your astounding Sanskrit and antiquarian scholarship. All my ignorant years I thought that Abraham was just Hebrew for "Father of a Multitude" and Sarah the same tongue for "Princess". Now, I, like Jesus in the hidden books you probably know so well, will get me to Tibet to seek esoteric Buddhist knowledge (never mind that the Tibetans weren't even Buddhists until about 600-700 A.D.), which is the true source of "Abrahamic" religion. And, how dumb of me never to realize that Hebrew, despite having only two tenses and forming participles with an "m" in front rather than suffixes, is really only a trivial dialect of Sanscrit (or is it Pali?)! Your, sir, are my enlightener! The new Buddha! O-mi-tuo-fo qing-cai luo-bo!(阿彌陀佛青菜蘿蔔!--I've just honored your wisdom).
Kepha the Jat-Scandinavian-Asian mix.
Socialists often sound like fundamentalists of many religions by ignoring real-world examples and quoting books by Karl Marx. Lenin's body on display has all the hallmarks of saint's relics. The list goes on.
I think the Catholic Church should embrace controversy by debating rather than circling the wagons and thinking about siding with a religion like Islam which would love to set up shop in the vacated Vatican. Threat assessment is critical to survival. The Da Vinci Code or newly-discovered scrolls in the desert won't destroy the Catholic Church, but Muslim clerics have sworn to do just that. Which really should come as no surprise after the last 1400 years.
And did you know that the name "Plato" actually derives from the English "Play-do", which is a little known term coined by Shakespeare to refer to the bad, very bad, performance of a play. As Shakespeare almost said once,
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, a play-do of fools you play. Yea, you do. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious peritwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to play-do, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbs-shows of noise. Such profane play-dos o'erstep the modesty of nature. Pray avoid it."
Plato assumed his name to project the idea that his dialogues should be construed as bad dramas rather than philosophical prose; and this little known fact escapes ancient scholars to this very day, who foolishly do not understand that Plato, like Jesus, could see into the future, and had a bad sense of humor besides.
We think that Plato is a philosopher, but he is really just trying to be a bad poet. Instead of analysis, he deserves a round of 'boos'.
I note as well that the Vatican is still making moral equivalence noises about "fundamentalists" among the "separated brethren". Perhaps it's because in a system where the divine call to ministry is evidenced in the show of hands (or closed ballots) by a Scripturally-educated laity rather than mere acceptance of someone imposed from a distant human authority, the pedophile clergymen's actions would've gotten them defrocked and reported to secular authority but fast--and Cardinal Law would've taken his hits rather than getting kicked upstairs.
Beagle, I don't believe atheism exists. If I listen to you long enough, I'll know which deity or deities you worship. Nietzsche deified the Will-to-Power and the blond beast; Marx deified historical necessity. Rousseau posited something called a general will that permitted compelling people to be happy.
Hey, Giaour, since you say we Christians and the Muslim radicals are alike as peas in a pod, despite having recognized that we believe that God Incarnate died on a cross and they call it blasphemy (ever wonder why we have that peculiar belief?), have you ever sputtered and gotten mad when someone lumped a Goldwater conservative like you with Stalin, Mao, and Saloth Sar (whose boys I even had the dubious pleasure of meeting, once upon a time)?
Then again, Giaour, your religion tells you that commands like "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" or "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" or leaving vengeance to God are just swindles taking advantage of stupid and credulous primitives like me.
Sometimes I think the non-Qaeda and non-Taliban sorts of Muslims might be more trustworthy against the Islamofascists. I've seen Uighur Muslim exiles stand up for persecuted Lama Buddhists, Falun Gong people, secular dissidents, and Christians; I've seen an Iraqi Shi'ah scream louder than the Pope himself against the Baghdad church bombings; many Muslims are fully capable of recognizing and actually do recognize that outsiders may also have a claim on justice; and some such Muslims may even be pissed off about friends and relatives killed by the Islamofascists.
BTW, JTF: Aristotle was actually a woman, for the name's a corruption of "Ari's Daughter."
'Aris Totle is cockney rhyming slang for bottle.
This continues with bottle and glass as a rhyme for arse. US would say ass, and yes I know it is not polite but there is worse in the world.
Then you turn it back, to further confuse outsiders and the agencies of law enforcement.
And 'arris, short for Aristotle, out of bottle and glass, becomes a slang word in it's own right for posterior.
Which probably inspired the Monty Python Philosophers Song but lets not go there.
We are waiting for a new Pope that change his politics about islam, we need a John Paul II respect islamism, we needs critics so hard like the communism made JPII. It´s necessary, I am optimistic, because the things have changed a lot. Be faithful and pray.
People should just become Jedi and trust in the Force. That hokey religion hasn't hit one bum note, yet.
But logic precludes me from believing in a supreme being which continually tweaks and changes the oil in a creation which should have been complete in the first place. As George Burns said in the movie Oh God, "Some of my best ideas are right here on Earth." (paraphrasing)
If lighting strikes someone, it's because that person's streamer connected with the stored static electricity in the clouds.
Basically, I'm a Theist.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005764.php
Robert and all
Difficult to track posts on this site I have a long dialogue with respect to Cardinal Ratzinger Dominus Iesus based upon my own religious experiences.
These are 3 in which I have the gift of memory of a past life, and 2 theophanies one is known as the Judgement of the living this event happened to me over 20 years ago and is responsible for complete altering of my understanding about Judgement this experience is Catholic forming part of the credo "He shall judge the living and the dead".
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p1s2c2a7.htm#II
As a mature catholic I know that these revelations are valid for public scrutiny and are not under the Catholic reservation of "PRIVATE" Revelations
67 Throughout the ages, there have been so-called "private" revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.
The best place for me to begin is with Jesus telling his friends that Matthew 10:34
34“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to turn “ ‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother, a daughterinlaw against her motherinlaw–
The "Sword" Jesus speaks of is the "WORD" of God that came to the prophets and it is worth noting that this "Sword" could not come whilst Jesus was living in the flesh, this from the annunciation was the case and why Gabriel came to give the Annunciation, and why Mohammed is a liar, because this same "Sword " is quite able and zealous to "speak" for himself, I too have recieved this gift (John 16:5-15) although it took me years to come to terms with it.