Father Khalil Samir is right, but the head-in-the-sand unreality that prevails among analysts of Islam in the West will prevent any kind of effort like this from being mounted. From Catholic News Agency, with thanks to Paolo:
Madrid, Apr. 07, 2006 (CNA) - Father Khalil Samir, a professor at the Oriental Pontifical Institute of Rome and St. Joseph’s University of Beirut, said this week that in order to change the Islamic mentality, “which is fearful of reality,” an “enormous educational effort” is needed at schools and universities, while paying special attention to textbooks and teacher formation.In statements made to the Italian daily “Avvenire,” Father Samir, an expert in Islamic issues, said, “The enlightened West should help the most liberal Muslims to be heard in their countries and contribute to the spread of their ideas by fostering the circulation and translation of their works, inviting them to speak in Europe.”
“Above all,” he stressed, “an enormous educational effort needs to be initiated at schools and universities,” with special attention to textbooks and teacher formation.
“This is a task that would require generations to slowly change a mentality that is fearful of reality. As Christianity teaches us, reason is not an enemy, but rather an ally of faith,” he added.
Father Samir explained that in Islamic schools, “the teaching methods are based on repetition and memorization more than on logical reasoning. In the family, parents do not give their children motives for obedience; rather, it is imposed, sometimes through violence.”
The Koran, he continued, “is learned by heart and applied in a mechanical and literal way since, according to Islam, the text has been revealed directly by God to Mohammed and contains all that is necessary for life, and no interpretation is allowed.”
“If somebody says an effort is needed to find a better application of it to today’s world, he is accused of being a traitor of the most authentic spirit of Islam and even deserves death for apostasy.” The result, he said, is world that is “fearful of modernity.”
We need members of the community such as these, to speak out about Islam. We already have many evangelistic Christian leaders speaking out against the practices in Islam, and they undoubtedly have a large sway. But if it comes from the Catholics – as a single Christian group have as many people as all of Islam [billion for billion] – then just one portion of Christianity has a sway over as many people as there are in Islam.
It is also very important in emboldening leaders who might be fearful of speaking out against Islam - if members of the Catholic Church are openly criticizing Islam – this will lend support to the leaders in Western nations and in the way they deal with the problem of Islam.
The only kind of education these people need is the same kind that the United States Marine Corps has been dishing out to them for more than 200 years.
the left has monopoly over university and school. Surely in western countries but I suppose even in islamic countries.
Therefore, since leftism and islamism go hand in hand and pursue the same goal, no chance of changing the situation now or never.
Pass It On: that would be the case if the Church were one immense battleship moving under the orders of its admiral, the Pope. In point of fact it is not. Many Catholics regard it not as a faith but as a kind of nationality, something that belongs to you and with which you can do what you like. This kind of mentality is particularly widespread in the Anglo-Saxon countries, and it means that "Catholics" such as the Kennedys and J.F.Kerry have about as much faith or as much interest in the teachings of the Church as, say, Michael Moore. It goes right up to the top: several cardinals are compromised with liberal nonsense, and people like Mahoney of Los Angeles and O'Flynn of St.Paul & Minneapolis are for all practical purposes in rebellion against the universal Church.
In fact, even this interview is part of the internal struggle in the Church. The daily of the Italian episcopate, AVVENIRE, is very much on the side of the Pope and orthodoxy, and this interview is part of the drumbeat of alarm that the Italian Episcopate - which is mostly but not wholly loyal - has been beating about Islam for a few years now. But it is also to do with breaking down the left-wing consensus across the West, which has crept into the Church through prelates such as I mentioned.
This is an interesting topic. Education is a powerful weapon to be used against Islam.
I am convinced that if more people learn about many of the hate filled passages that are found in the Koran and other Hadiths, then there will be a larger movement around the world to challenge Islam. Most people don't know that Muhammad was a violent warrior who enslaved other tribes, raided their communities, and led a rather immoral life with his many wives (one of his wives -Aeisha- was only 9 years old).
The life of Muhammad was not a virtuous one that inspires others to true spiritual greatness. Muhammad was not a prohet who revealed the truth of Allah to humankind. This message needs to be made very clear to our world by pointing out Muhammad's glaring character flaws and immoral practices. People who know and understand the true contents of the Koaran and the hadiths are needed to emphasize the great contradictions in Islam. Muslims call Muhammad the final prophet but fail to acknowledge the immmorality of his life.
Muhammad= immoral person= no prophet status= no divine nature to the book he created, the Koran= Islam = false religion
Educating people about the real nature of Islam is a much better way of confronting Islam than just using violence.
But for education to be succussful as way of challenging Islam, then much more courage is needed in academic circles. Sadly, I have to say that there are a lot of dhimmis out there in academia who mislead their pupils about Islam.
As a Catholic, I know that the church has a rich intellectual tradition that is worthy of respect. But I am amazed by some Catholic leaders- including many high ranking clergy- who continue to beat the drum about 1) Islam is a religion of peace and kinship and 2) only more dialogue is needed to achieve true spiritual understanding.
I don't believe this nonsense. The logic of this statement makes some absurd claims that are rather disingenuous.
It goes like this: "if only Christians would listen to Muslims.....then they would understand that Islam presents no real danger because Muslims also worship one God. Muslims are spiritual brothers.
How sweeeet.
Can we hold hands now and just loudly sing " We are the World" by World Aid?
How naive.
Do they know about these passages???:
The Victory
[48.28] He it is Who sent His Apostle with the guidance and the true religion that He may make it prevail over all the religions; and Allah is enough for a witness.
The Victory
[48.13] And whoever does not believe in Allah and His Apostle, then surely We have prepared burning fire for the unbelievers.
The point of convergence in "the great dialogue" occurs somewhere in the middle ground. But what exactly occurs in the middle ground? Giving up supremacy truth claims? Is Islam to be accepted the way that the Muslim presents it to the dialoguing Christian?
True dialogue must allow for some confrontation and rejection. Examining religious history together in a dialogue does not mean that the Christian has to view history from the Muslim historical point of view.
Apologizing for the crusades and asking for forgiveness from the Muslim world is not the kind of message that the world needs to hear. This a a misguided approach that is based on false premise that the crusades were inherently wrong.
Sadly, this is the action that the late Pope John Paul II took in his role as bishop of Rome in 2000.
Read here:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/14/story_1458_1.html
Confronting and challenging Islam is sorely needed in today's world. Christians more than ever need to be educated in their own faith as well as in Islam.
Fortunately, Pope Benedict XVI is taking a more educated position.
Read:
http://www.catholic-pages.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7343
Websites such as jihadwatch and dhimmiwatch play an important role in educating the general public about the real nature of jihad and Islam.
But much more effort is needed before the tide turns and the lies of Islam are fully exposed to the light.
Education is a wonderful thing.
Explaining to 1.3 Billion blood crazed Muslims all across the globe that they believe in a false god for the last 1400 years? Good luck with that.
The west, except a very few, (like this board) are unwilling to be educated about Islam. The governments are just buying time. The media and the academia have sided with the enemy.
The Church cannot stand up and be counted against Islam, because religions prop up each other. Like a house of cards, remove one and the whole will collapse. They know that. The church is losing already in Europe to secularism. America still has better marketing on religion.
Educated people reject religion. so education is a wonderful thing.
Religions are the main cause of wars, bloodshed, division, secterianism.
I am not optimistic. The future is looking grimm.
The Church cannot stand up and be counted against Islam, because religions prop up each other. Like a house of cards, remove one and the whole will collapse. They know that. The church is losing already in Europe to secularism. America still has better marketing on religion. - pr126
What you're describing is the economic model known as "perfect competition": Large numbers of producers, all selling the exact same thing. For example, soybean farmers: They can't compete against each other in a "Ford vs. Chevy" sense, because they're all just selling soybeans. In other words, they advertise as an industry, rather than against one another, because they're all selling the same darn thing.
This model does not apply to organized religion. The notion that it does is part of our problem, as it points to a fundamental misunderstanding of the all-encompassing nature of Islam as a totalitarian political movement as well as religious one.
Contrast this with Christianity, where one is directed to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's." There is room for the secular, minding-ones-own-business sphere in Christianity, but not in Islam.
Two different products. Extremely different: not perfect competition, as in soybeans; not oligopolistic competition, like Ford vs. Chevy, Coke vs. Pepsi. More like Coke vs. Drano, where it doesn't make sense to stock the two on the same shelf.
Equally untenable then, is the notion that the two are engaged in a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" kind of collusion.
Educated people reject religion. so education is a wonderful thing. - pr126
Everyone loves a sweeping generalization.
I'm working on a second master's degree (neither degree, nor the dual bachelor's degrees that precede them, have anything to do with religion), and I've only become more firmly convinced in my Catholic faith as I go along.
My point is that if sheer volume of education has anything to do with it, I should be such a skeptic at this point as not to believe that I exist.
Yes, education is a wonderful thing, but for very different reasons.
It will take many generations. This is the first mistake of the Bush Administration -- ignoring the nature of Islam, and thinking it can simply palnt democracy in the stony soil of Islam, and the mental desert will bloom. We don't have the time, the money, or the ability to spend the next fifty years seizing control of the entire Middle East, and revamping its schools, its media, its everything. Instead, we are in danger, for complicated reasons, of losing our own societies to this admittedly primitive belief-system that encourages a habit of mental submission and is the declared enemy of all Infidels, of their art, their science, their free and skeptical inquiry, their laws, their customs, their manners, their understandings.
Were there all the time in the world, were the Muslim states without the vast resources that the OPEC revenues bring them, were Muslims themselves not already by the tens of millions deep within the Lands of the Infidels, and behaving with such hostility, with such inability to inegrate, incapable of offering heartfelt loyalty (with a handful of exceptions) to the Infidel nation-state or even to offer heartfelt friendship to the Infidels among whom they live ("Take not the Christians and Jews as friends, for they are friends only with each other"), practicing every sort of deception and self-deception (save for those who have courageously looked right through Islam, and decided to jettison it, it and all its works and days), then perhaps we could assume the Infidel Man's Burden.
But we can't. We don't have the time, we don't have the money, we need to save ourselves from the Islamic assault. Where we can help those within Dar al-Islam, it will not be by giving them money or invading countries -- no Muslim country needs to be invaded, though they may have to be repeatedly attacked to make sure they are deprived of all major weaponry,and where necessary, to smash this or that terrorist training camp. Otherwise, leave them alone. Let them fend for themselves. Let the poor Muslims use up some of the discretionary income of the rich Muslims, and not receive the Jizyah of foreign aid from Infidels. No more diplomatic support for Arabs and Muslims, no more pretense that they are our "allies" or our "friends" or our "staunch allies." As long as their populations receive their world-view, their attitudes, their everything from Islam, from what is in the Qur'an and the Hadith and the model of the Perfect Man, Muhammad, so long will they work against us, against what we stand for and have inherited as a civilizational legacy and wish to preserve.
Let them suffer division and demoralization. Work to deprive them of the instruments of Jihad. Try to find ways to diminish their revenues, or to force them to use them up more rapidly. Do not hesiate to nationalize the assets of enemy aliens at the next attack. Do not hesitate to plan to seize, if necessary, the oilfields of Al-Hasa. Do nothing to discourage Sunni and Shi'a hostilities, and everything to encourage non-Arab Muslims to obtain linguistic and cultural and political independence from the Arabs, by at every turn noting the Arab supremacist ideology for which Islam has been the vehicle. Support the Kurds, the Berbers, the black Africans in Darfur. Make it clear to black Africans elsewhere the record of the Arab slave trade -- and the permanent legitimacy of slavery within Islam. In Europe, stop teaching falsehoods, including the exaggerated praise of the first few hundred years of Islamic civilization, and do not fail to point out how much of the credit goes to those Christian and Jewish translators, those Hindu and Chinese sources for many of the so-called achievements of Islam, and point out that the handful of supposed examples of "convivencia" under Muslim rule were, when examined more closely, not at all as wonderful as depicted by the likes of Maria Rosa Menocal.
"The people of the Book", according to the teaching of the Koran, have every right to teach the enquiring Muslim.
It is about time that the Christians and the Jews begin to enlighten the Muslims about what their book teaches. "If you doubt what We have revealed to you, ask those who have read the Scriptures before you." Surah 10:94. "Ask the People of the Book if you know not. Surah 16:44. 21:7
All true Muslims must believe ALL the Scriptures that God has revealed. Surah 42:15. If they suppress ANY part of the Scripture they face the fire. Surah 2:174.
Repeatedly the Koran affirms it was given to confirm the Law and the Gospels. Repeatedly the Koran confirms that none can change His words.
Although the Koran says that Jews twisted their tongues while quoting the Scriptures it never claims that the actual Scriptures themselves, the Law and the Gospel, were ever corrupted.
It is time Muslims themselves came face to face with the words of their prophet and turn to the Scriptures that came down before them, the Scriptures that are between their hands, and begin to accept the confirmations of the Law and the Gospels.
The continued rejection by Muslims of the previously revealed Scriptures, according to the Koran, can only lead all of them to the flames of Hell Fire and a terrible doom.
To wipe out terrorism we need to get the Law and the Gospel into the hands and hearts of every Muslims. Let's do it before it is too late!