Here is a fine review of my latest book, Not Peace But A Sword, coming as priests and bishops are being murdered in Muslim countries and many of their counterparts in the U.S. are remaining silent and moving to silence those who would speak out on the victims’ behalf.
Get Not Peace But A Sword here.
“The Christian-Muslim Gulf: According to author Robert Spencer, pretending that the differences between the religions don’t exist won’t make them go away,” by Fr. C. J. McCloskey for the National Catholic Register, July 6 (thanks to Fr. Andre):
Robert Spencer, perhaps the foremost Catholic expert on Islam in our country, has written a new book entitled Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (Catholic Answers, 2013). Spencer has advised the highest levels of the military on the Islamic threat to the United States, and has authored several books for the general public on the topic of Islam, including Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith.
This book is his most interesting yet, as it makes the case for the fundamental disagreement between Christianity and Islam. Spencer writes: “One of the oddities of contemporary “˜interfaith dialogue” is that all too often, out of overzealous irenicism, it glosses over, or ignores altogether, the disagreements between religious traditions, as if pretending that they didn’t exist would make them go away.” He expands on the vast differences between Christianity and Islam on the character of God, Jesus and Divine Revelation; the nature of truth and the moral law; religious freedom and other basic rights; life issues, marriage and sexual morality, including the rights and dignity of women.
An example of this great divide: Converts from Islam to Christianity are often hunted in the Muslim world, where virtually all Islamic authorities agree that such individuals deserve death. In fact, Muhammad himself commanded this: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 84:57). In Egypt, at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious and influential educational institution in the Islamic world, an Islamic manual states that a person who has reached puberty is sane, and if he voluntarily apostatizes from Islam deserves to be killed.
The great Catholic author of the early 20th century Hilaire Belloc was prophetic in predicting: “We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future. Perhaps if we lose our faith it will rise.”
Well, we all know that in this country and many others, jihad Islam has risen with a bloody vengeance, and with no signs of receding. Meanwhile, we are kidding ourselves if we believe that the United States is still a Christian country, given the plummeting participation in religious worship of Catholics and Protestants alike….
A highlight in this fine book is an epilogue of a debate between Peter Kreeft of Boston College and Robert Spencer that has as its topic: Is the only Good Muslim a Bad Muslim?