That this is being hosted at Dhimmi Yale is enough to expose its true nature. "Yale to host high-level Christian-Muslim dialogue," from the Daily Times, July 28:
NEW HAVEN: Senior Christian and Muslim scholars and leaders are meeting in the United States this week to seek common ground in their different faiths and foster better understanding between Islam and the West.Ain't gonna happen -- not until they first openly and honestly discuss the uncommon ground they do not share -- you know, those pesky "peripheral" issues like jihad, dhimmitude, and jizya, denial of Christ's divinity (or that he was even crucified), the fact that the Koran and Bible disagree about so many things (was it the son of the slave or the wife who was to be sacrificed -- and where?). Until Muslims and Christians can first openly (and maturely) discuss these issues, the rest is meaningless fluff.
Hosted by the Yale University Divinity School, the conference is the first public dialogue launched by Muslim intellectuals in the Common Word group that had appealed to Christian leaders last year for discussions among theologians to promote peace.As "intolerant" as these evangelicals appear, it must be admitted that their position is the most logical: if you believe in Religion 1, which preaches tenets x, y, and z, and Religion 2 denies them, insisting instead on a, b, c, the only logical thing is to conclude that Religion 2 is "false." (As for "violent," watching the evening news is enough to reach that conviction.)Most of the US participants are Protestant theologians and church leaders, including some prominent evangelicals, but some Catholics and Jews are also taking part. The Muslims, both Sunnis and Shia, hail from all across the world.
The Yale conference began on Friday with closed-door talks among 60 theologians about how the two faiths understand the concept of loving God and loving one's fellow man. It will expand to include 150 people in public sessions from Tuesday to Thursday.
Evangelicals: An important aspect of the meeting is that evangelical Christians are among the participants. While some US evangelical preachers denounce Islam as a false and violent religion, several evangelical leaders support this dialogue.
[...]Yes, and to further demonstrate their "sincerity," the Saudi government continues indoctrinating its youth with hate-filled teachings directed against none other than "Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists."The conference comes just more than a week after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hosted an unprecedented meeting of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists in Madrid and pledged to pursue interfaith dialogue.
[...]The Common Word project, started by Muslim clerics, says Christianity and Islam share two common core values – love of God and love of neighbour.
That's right. And this "love of neighbour" has prompted Muslims, in a display of selflessness, to invade, plunder, and subjugate their neighbors' lands, all in the name of Islam -- and "love," of course.
The Common Word project, started by Muslim clerics, says Christianity and Islam share two common core values – love of God and love of neighbour.
In Egypt, the muslims have been putting this one into practice -- they "love" their Coptic neighbor so much that they steal their teenage daughter and marry her! What a love story!
Islam is the brain-chiild of that sociopathic desert warrior, Muhammad. It is a false ideology through and through, tailored to suit Muhammad's needs and more importantly, desires historically.
The name itself, meaning submission to Allah, is most curious because it seems that everyone except Muhammad did the submitting.
No, as Aisha astutely noted, "It seems to me that your Lord hastens to satisfy your desire.", with Muhammad conveniently being the only spokesman for Allah. Where were the sacrifices of Muhammad to justify his prophetic title?
There is no common ground with other faiths, nor was one intended, as is evident by the main context of the Qur'an.
A false and downright evil ideology, it is, with over a billion slave-like "submitters" worldwide.
The true nature of Islam would be to take this opportunity to exercise the practice of taquiya,and kitman, behind closed doors of course. This is an exercise right out of Islamists playbook in an effort to draw the dhimmi in, and over the years that same meeting would eventually demand that those dhimmis convert or die, and they will be asking for the jizya at the door. Will they invite Islamic scholars like Robert Spencer behind those close doors? of course not. The expression "Love of God and love of neighbour"already defies what Islam is all about--dominance of all that are not Muslim. Come into my parlor said the Muslim to the dhimmi!
Was Pat Robertson invited?
I wonder how many Copts are attending this conference. Or how many Christians from Sudan, Nigeria, Iraq, Algeria, or Turkey are attending? They could all give first-hand testimony about the Moslems' "love" for their neighbors.
Part of the problem is the large number of "compassionate" Christians who are confused enough to believe that the proper response to jihad is to turn the other cheek to an enemy who will cut their throats, given the chance.
Not another high level Dialogue conference. With all the blood murdering spree that has occurred just recently I would hope there was some intelligent and logical conclusion to the fact that Islam is a religion of Murder, violence, hatred and pedophilia. Not to forget Misogyny. The killing for blood thirsty allah continues world wide. Allah survives on the blood of infidels, especially the weak and helpless like children and women bombed and murdered by his cowardly minions and thugs.
Dialogue?
One wonders if Prince Alaweed and company are preparing additional multi-million dollar gifts for university MESA.
Yale was a bit miffed when Prince Alaweed overlooked Yale's proposals for the multi million dollar grants ultimately won by Georgetown and Harvard.
Such donations yield rapid results as revealed in the headline:
******
What is lacking is a leadership at the university and national level that can and WILL speak as plainly, [sans false dialogue/taqyyia] as clearly documented in the not so distant past:
video link
transcript of entire speech
Robert, with respect to the juan cole affair (referenced in the Dhimmi Yale link), you recall that Yale acted responsibily. It rejected the dispicable cole, not for his vile blog and hatred of Jews and Israel, but for the inferior quality of his scholarship.
Would Maria Rosa Menocal, who is the author of a book on the splendors (but no miseries) of Islamic Cordoba, and the "convivencia" that she - who does not list in her bibliography the most important sources on Islamic Spain, including the works of Evariste Levi-Provencal -- and who until recently (ca en dit long) was the head of the Whitney Center for the Humanities at Yale, have anything to do with this treacly, misleading, and ultimately, because misleading, false "search for common ground" that ignores the essence of what Islam teaches, which is the sheer rightness and necessity for Islam to dominate in all lands, and Muslims ultimately to rule, everywhere, and that furthermore mandates for Believers the duty, to be fulfilled as one can, to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the domnance, of Islam.
Do any of those participating in this farce know this? Have a glimmer of understanding of it? Care to read more, study more, and find out what Snouck Hurgronje, Joseph Schacht, Henri Lammens, Samuel Zwemer, St. Clair Tisdall, and hundreds of other great Orientalists, students of Islam, knew because of their their linguistic proficiency, their encounter with Islam in books and in life, and their being able to study and study, and do research, and then to publish, in the days or years or century before the Great Inhibition set in?
And do any of those participating in this farce, or perhaps those merely looking on, from other fields (say, a physicist, or a professor of literature or of law, who might actually have begun to make his own inquiry into the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, of Islam,and discovered that something quite other than what the handful of MESA-Nostrans who hire and promote each other, at Yale as elsewhere, would have you understand), think that the university administration might begin to look into things a bit more closely, and not to ignore their respoonsibilities for fear of violating the principle of faculty "autonomy" that, for example, can allow someone who has clearly gone off the deep end, such as John Mack at Harvard, who continued to teach though he deeply believed, apparently, in those stories about people being kidnapped by aliens (some may think his appalling prize-winning book on T. E. Lawrence an early sign of his later, more obvious mental bizarreries). For more on the scandalous state of academic teaching around and about Islam -- not everywhere, but in too many places --google "MESA Nostra" and "Jihad Watch." While you are at it, if you haven't entered before, do enter the "MESA Nostra Contest." It's permanently open, until I declare it -- and I never will -- closed.
An article from three years ago:
Fitzgerald: The persistent myth of Andalusia
"The myths about Islamic Spain (known collectively as the "myth of Andalusia") have their origins in the romantic writers of the early 19th century. Just as Sir Walter Scott, venturing beyond Scotland, painted a completely fictional portrait of the "noble Saracens" tutoring the Christians in chivalrous behavior, so the myths of wonderful tolerant Andalusia owe their existence to two highly imaginative works by convincing writers: "Tales of the Alhambra" by Washington Irving and "Le Dernier des Abencerages" by Chateaubriand. The latter, of course, thought nothing of making things up even about his own life -- some of his entirely fictional trips are set down as fact in "Memoires d'Outre-Tombe."
The apotheosis of this is the dreamy effort of Maria Rosa Menocal, entitled "Ornament of the World," which purports to be about Cordoba, where "three faiths" worked harmoniously blah-blah-blah a lesson and hope for our age blah-blah-blah Maimonides blah-blah-blah. Now the first thing to know about this impressionistic fantasy is that it completely ignores, does not even mention in its bibliography, any of the major scholarly works on Muslim Spain -- including those of Evariste Levi-Provencal, of Dufourcq, of Bousquet, of many others. It ignores a good deal else as well, including Maimonides' own words: "...the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us...Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they..."
This is particularly disturbing because this book received all sorts of praise, including some uncharacteristic guff from Fouad Ajami. The author is a "professor at Yale" and the "Director of the Whitney Humanities Center." Well, no one takes academic standards very seriously anymore, what with Cornel West being snapped up at Princeton, and Rashid Khalidi offering his PLO propaganda at Columbia, and the "post-colonial hegemonic discourse" still apparently in full swing. And one cannot here resist the temptation to notice that more than one teacher of literature has publicly expressed his long-past-receiving-of-tenure version of a deathbed conversion, and publicly admits that all that theory, that post-hegemonic discourse, whether of the Derrida-delirium, or Saidian swamp variety, was a monstrous error, and that one would do better to teach students in this audiovisual age to read books with attention, affection, and a well-stocked mind. (See Frank Lenticchia, et al, who have attempted to express more or less the same thing).
Oh, al-Andaluz, al-Andaluz. Cordoba, and the red gitanillas flowing over the balconies above the whitewashed walls flanking the narrow alleys, and from outside one can hear the pleasing plash of fountains in the inside hidden courtyards, and one can see, in one's imaginative mind's eye, venerable old scholars, one Muslim, one Jew, one Christian (in a kind of backdated Benetton ad), walking together, talking animatedly of philosophy and spiritual manners, in an atmosphere of the highest mutual regard and understanding -- for that was Al-Andaluz, wasn't it? -- and the smell of the orange blossoms, and in the distance a glimpse of the Guadalquivir, and....fill in the rest yourself, courtesy of the Tourist Board of Spain or your own imagination.
Islamic Spain was far from being a paradise. Cordoba was no "ornament of the world." Maimonides had to flee the city because of the persecution of the Almohads, but as Andrew Bostom points out in his "The Corrosive Hagiography of Muslim Spain," even before the Alhomads the treatment of non-Muslims was dismal. When the Jewish viziers Samuel ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph were both murdered, and then the entire Jewish community of Grenada was massacred as well – yes, in Grenada, home of the "Alhambra" of which Washington Irving sung -- it was not something without deep Islamic roots.
Richard Fletcher's "Moorish Spain" and the scholarship of Levi-Provencal and others all show that this "tolerance" was born from the Romantic poets-in-prose mentioned above and is directly contradicted by the historical evidence. The records of the Muslim jurists, such as Ibn Abdun, confirm that the tolerance of Muslim Spain is a myth. In his opinion on the treatment of the Christians and Jews of Seville, Ibn Abdun insisted that "No...Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to accost them with the greeting, 'Peace be upon you'…In effect, 'Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God's warning. They are the confederates of Satan's path; Satan's confederates will surely be the losers! (Quran 58:19). A distinct sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace."
A well-known jurist and poet of Muslim Spain may have helped to promote the Grenada massacres in his famous anti-Jewish poem:
"Bring them [the Jews] down to their place and Return them to the most abject station. They used to roam around us in tatters Covered with contempt, humiliation, and scorn. They used to rummage amongst the dungheaps for a bit of a filthy rag To serve as a shroud for a man to be buried in...Do not consider that killing them is treachery. Nay, it would be treachery to leave them scoffing."
This has not prevented such Muslim apologists as Abdul Rauf from starting their own little "Cordoba Dialogues" and suchlike; it will not prevent Zapotero and other Spaniards from wanting so desperately to believe that once upon a time, in an ancient land called Andalusia, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived happily together. Nor does it prevent the sentimental and sloppy, such as Menocal, from adding their embarrassing mites. If I were she, I would try to recall all copies of the book, or at least publicly announce that she will never, ever, publish a book without doing her homework again -- and write that on the blackboard at the Whitney Humanities Center 100 times, to be followed by a lesser mea culpa from Fouad Ajami for the blurb he gave her. If he does not know the truth about Andalusian Spain, he is certainly capable of learning it.
The Myth of Andalusia originates in the Western Romantic movement. And it is also linked with the human need to believe in a Golden Age. In the Western world, this myth has been summed up by Harry Levin in his essay on "The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance." (The same "myth of the Golden Age" has a Muslim version -- the Sunna or behavior of Muhammad, and the kind of life the Prophet and the Companions led, which was perfect in all respects).
And nowadays, in an age which we think of as tough-minded, realistic, skeptical, and so on, the dreamily romantic mythmaking about Islam lives on for geopolitical reasons. It is difficult to face reality and a threat that will not disappear -- not through word-conjuring, nor logic-chopping, nor further protesting-too-much that Islam is a "religion of peace and tolerance." Too much evidence, and more of it every day, suggests the opposite.
When the new mosque in Grenada was opened with on July 10, 2003, marking "a return of Islam to Spain," a conference was held in Granada at the same time. Bostom notes in one of his several articles on the myth of Andalusia that "the keynote speaker at this conference, Umar Ibrhaim Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim leader, implored Muslims to cause an economic collapse of Western economies (by switching to gold dinars, and ceasing to use Western currencies), while the German Muslim leader Abu Bakr Rieger told attendees not to adapt their Islamic religious practices to accommodate European (i.e., Western Enlightenment) values."
So we are left with a myth of Al-Andaluz that requires ignorance of the facts to survive, and many -- Menocal is hardly alone, and hardly the worst offender -- are happy to oblige. Yet even these romanticizers who write of Al-Andaluz as the great exemplar of tolerance also consider it to be, at best, a unique example in the long 1400-year history of Islam -- which already is a way of admitting that the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam in general was not a paradise of "tolerance" and fruitful mutual accommodation. In all of the history of Islam, the story of Muslim Spain is that only one where there is even a colorable claim for "tolerance."
How pleasant it would be to make of history what it was not. How wonderful to think that at least once, just once, in the whole long history of Muslim conquest, there really was one spot where there was real tolerance -- not the tolerance that is purchased by the Christians and Jews through payment of the jizya and submission in a hundred ways to a crushing regime of permanent degradation, humiliation, and physical insecurity. No wonder it is not only non-Muslims who like to imagine such a world, but also those Muslims who feel they must stick with Islam, they cannot jettison that belief-system with which their entire civilization, their ancestors, and they themselves are so identified. These believers must create, or must believe in, a mythical world of past tolerance that is now being "ruined" by these Bin Ladens and the others who have "hijacked a great religion."
Oh, the Will to Believe is strong. One wants to believe in Eden, and Santa Claus, and Endless Peace (das ewige Frieden), and once upon a time living happily ever after, in the thrice-nine kingdom, over hill and down dale, and the princesse lointaine awakened by her prince, and in the "buzzin' of the bees/In the cigarette trees/Near the soda water fountain/At the lemonade springs/Where the bluebird sings/On the big rock candy mountain."
Dream-worlds do no harm -- except in cases of civilizational peril. If dreams about the past or the present prevent sensible measures from being taken to prevent mass war, and to prevent the disappearance of one's own imperfect, silly, but still-worth-defending Infidel civilization, then the hollowness of those dream-worlds, whether the creation of Romantic writers or of slapdash historians, aided by a publishing industry without standards, must be exposed.
The reality of Muslim Spain should be based on a familiarity with Levi-Provencal and other scholars of that period. One's views should not consist of repeating phrases about "how wonderfully people of all faiths got along in Andalusia -- gosh, why can't we just do that again?" Schoolgirl gush is not permissible in current grim circumstances. Some "congress of dialogue." Some "springwell (sic) for the enlightement." Some convivencia."
[Posted by Hugh at November 6, 2005]
Yale may have 'rejected the dispicable cole' but there remains reason for continuing concern:
This should be seen by as many people as possible. I am putting it here, and elsewhere, hoping that many will see it, and many will send it on, so it may spread throughout the Internet:
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1821.htm
Thanks, Hugh.
Posted at my blog.
Who at Yale is qualified to represent the Christian religion, or to select individuals qualified to represent the Christian religion in such a dialogue?
Yale has been an anti-Christian institution for a long time.
"While some US evangelical preachers denounce Islam as a false and violent religion, several evangelical leaders support this dialogue"
As has been mentioned previously, it should be expected that a genuine adherant of one religion that has contrasting beliefs to another religion, would consider the other relition "false."
That really should not be an issue of concern to anyone. The fact that someone in another religion considers my religion "false" does not in any way prevent me from practicing my religion or from living in peace with followers of the "other" religion.
It is the second part that should be of concern, and the history of Islam, along with a continuing stream of current news reports demonstrate beyond question that Islam is indeed a "violent religion", whether or not Evangelicals recognize it.
The fact that there are some US Evangelical preachers who don't recognize this, and think there is some value in such dishonest dialogue is not really surprising to anyone who has followed the trends of Evangelicalism over the last few decades.
The loss of Biblical and Theological basis of Evangelicals has been well documented by theologians such as David F. Wells ("No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology") and others since the early 1990s.
I have no question that there are plenty of Evangelical leaders who would sell out their own religion in a heartbeat just to sing kumbaya with the self-acknowledged enemies of their religion.
Especially since they don't really believe and practice the tenets of their own religion in the first place.
Closed door talks?
"mostly protestant theologians"
Bad sign since a lot of them are willing to distort their own faith and values to sing kumbyah with the Saracens.
And some have no values or faith whatsoever - its just a way to make a living.
If Yale was honest and not hosting a propaganda event for Muslims, it would invite in Coptic, Greek Orthodox and Catholic theologians that have both the brain power and experience with Islam to discuss various topics.
Lastly Islam doesn't posit a loving God at all. To them G-d is a impersonal tyrant molded in the image of a oriental potentate.
And in Islam love of ones fellow man only extends to a devout fellow believer. If you're a heretic, apostate or disagree with the local Iman you're only worthy of a bullet in the head or knife in the back.
heroyalwhyness, (love the moniker, by the way)yeah, spelling sure ain't my forte.
Yale has made some bonehead moves, like bringing the talibani hashemi there as a nondegree student, but I wouldn't necessarily refer to the institution as "Dhimmi Yale", at least not yet. Columbia, certainly. Harvard, possibly. But both professors and students are still free to speak their minds at Yale.
I don't know what the connection between WHC and Divinity is, or whether Menocal had anything to do with this, but certainly agree with everyone that it is highly unlikely that anything informative, insightful, or in any way positive will come out of this 'dialog'.
"denial of Christ's divinity .."
Raymond, at best islam looks to be confused.
Jesus was the name, by calling him Christ they are stating his divinity, and it is right in the koran.
Surah 4, 170-171 , if read carefully states what they know about Jesus, and how the attempt to mislead about him is written in the koran.
The koran calls him The Christ.
Were the Ahmadiyas and the Nation of islam invited?
So many meetings, so few obvious results, and so few, if any, reports on progress made.
I think these meetings should be televised, for the whole world to see, as a reassurance that the money and time aren't being wasted.
Hey, I can dream...
This up coming BS Will end in the muslim cutting of the heads of the jews ( woman and children ) and christians ( old people and little kids ), but only if the cops run-away.
Talking to a muslim about freedom is like talking to a nazi about freedom for the jews and love for all people.
"Jesus was the name, by calling him Christ they are stating his divinity"
Actually, the terms Christ (Grk: Christos) and Messiah (Heb: Mashi'ah) just mean "the Anointed One", and don't in themselves imply divinity.
Traditionally, Judaism teaches that the person of Messiah does not include divinity. (although some of those arguments could be seen as polemics against Christianity)
The claim to Christ's divinity can be found throughout the Gospels and New Testament, and not directly derived from the term Christ/Messiah.
Sura 4 170-172 uses the terms Messiah and Christ, but stresses that he was "only an apostle of God" and specifically denies the Trinity and Christ's divinity.
Christians disagree with this, but there really isn't any contradiction here, since the terms Messiah/Christ don't automatically imply divinity.
What is the use of this? Yale must have received millions of petro-dollars to sell themselves to islam. Don't they know that if there was a shred of sincerity on the islamic side, they would have allowed the first Chruch to be built in Saudi Arabia? Their goal is not interfaith; rather, to sell or shuve islam into everyones ass.