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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Hugh Fitzgerald: People Are The Same The Whole World Over

Dec 22, 2015 11:13 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

people are the same

Nine years ago I wrote about President Bush’s dreams of creating a Light Unto the Muslim Nations in Iraq (you may remember that $2 trillion dollar, decade-long campaign in Iraq, and how wonderfully it all turned out):

“The sentimentalist in the White House contents himself with bromides about how people everywhere ‘love freedom’ and that all we have to do is bring ‘freedom’ to Iraq. And with that ‘freedom’ (demonstrated by those purple-thumbed elections that drew tears from sentimentalists everywhere) all manner of things will be well. Islam’s resurgence — not return, because it never left — in Iraq is nothing to worry about, because Islam is not the problem, only those ‘extremists’ who ‘pervert’ a ‘noble religion’ are the problem. Nonsense on stilts.”

After the Iraq adventure, the next incarnation of that curious and entirely fantastic notion that “people everywhere love freedom” turned out to be the celebrated “Arab Spring.” Now the freedom-loving impulse extended far beyond Iraq. Freedom would naturally flower, so it was believed, in any Muslim land where despots could be deposed — just get rid of a Mubarak in Egypt, a Ben Ali in Tunisia, a Qaddafi in Libya and, if we just hold on, an Assad in Syria, and freedom, democracy, the whole works, would forever flourish.

Behind this deep belief that “all people love freedom” is the equally baseless proposition that “all people are the same the whole world over.” And if “people are the same the whole world over,” then surely the God they worship must be the very same God. And that statement is usually put in a narrower form, allowing the dismissal of Buddhists and atheists and at least a billion Hindus, to wit: “Muslims and Christians worship the same God.”

Those who utter this phrase never bother to adduce any evidence for this extraordinary remark. They do not tell us about the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, and thus spare themselves the effort of explaining how that conception of a triune God is like tauhid, the anti-trinitarian monotheism of Islam. They try to overlook the fact that in Christianity, God has a Son, while in Islam Allah it is an insult to Allah’s transcendent majesty to say he has a son. They do not discuss the Muslim Allah who rants and raves about Christians and Jews, and calls them all sorts of names (apparently the Muslim Allah does not himself believe either that “people are the same the whole world over” or that “we all worship the same God,” for if we did, what need for him to denounce Christians and Jews?), and compare him with the Goodness-and-Mercy Brotherhood-of-Man-Fatherhood-of-God — all that Bomfoggery — of Christianity.

And still another way in which the Muslim God can be distinguished from the Christian God is in the way Allah can do anything He wants — see Robert Spencer or Stanley Jaki. He can govern the universe as He pleases, is not bound by natural laws. The Christian God — see Robert Spencer or Stanley Jaki — operates according to natural laws. But, as Spencer has noted, Allah’s “hand is unfettered — he can do anything. The Qur’an explicitly refutes the Judeo-Christian view of God as a God of reason when it says: ‘The Jews say: Allah’s hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so’ (5:64). In other words, it is heresy to say that God operates by certain natural laws that we can understand through reason….Allah was not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. ‘He cannot be questioned concerning what He does’ (Qur’an 21:23). Accordingly, observations of the physical world had no value; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would be consistent, or even discernible. If Allah could not be counted on to be consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change tomorrow.”

We could dilate upon all the differences between the Muslim God and the Christian God. But what good would adducing the evidence from the Qur’an, or Al-Ghazali, or the Hadith, do in convincing the kind of people who like to say, because they want so desperately to believe, that “Muslims and Christians worship the same God”? Just keep saying that. Just the way you kept saying that the Arab Spring would work miracles, and that Iraq would prove to be a Light Unto the Muslim Nations. Go ahead, believe two or three or four impossible things about Muslims and Islams before breakfast. And now would be an especially good time to do it, as I’ve just heard, on NPR, that a million Muslims have entered Europe as “refugees” this past year. What does it matter, if our God is the same, if we all want the same thing, if People Are The Same The Whole World Over? Why even bother, if we are all so very similar and worship and want the same things, to have such silly impediments as passports, and national boundaries? One World, for One People. What could be better?

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Filed Under: Eurabia, Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, immigration Tagged With: Allah


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Comments

  1. Vinton says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 11:26 am

    From ardent supporter – some important advice: You are driving people away with very unpleasant adverts feed – lots of horrible images of Obesity and bad cosmetic surgery etc…. please investigate and change. ( I am afraid to open your pages in case I am sickened by the ads! – sorry)

    • Robert Spencer says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 11:36 am

      If you have an alternate way of paying the bills, please let me know. Thanks.

      • Susan B says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 12:28 pm

        No worries Robert, keep up the good work. I just zoom past them, doesn’t really bother me. What I do find funny is that these advertisers think this is the kind of crowd that falls for or is interested in that crap.

      • Edwin1683 says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 5:59 pm

        I agree with Susan. I just buzz past them, always considered them just a necessary evil.

        One of them, however, is apropos to the subject matter of this website. It’s the one with the photo of what I assume is a tapeworm. It is a very fitting metaphor for Islam.

        Whatever potion they are advertising has obviously been successful in removing the tapeworm from its host. May Robert’s website have the same success!

        • Shmooviyet says

          Dec 22, 2015 at 6:48 pm

          Your comment caused a needed belly LOL. Dealing with a tapewormy pet has been a challenge.
          Thank you for the terrific article, Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Spencer.

      • eduardo odraude says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 9:56 pm

        No problem with the ads here. Do we really want someone who gets death threats on a daily basis to have to worry about having the resources necessary for security? If one considers the huge amounts that the Dutch government spends on security for Geert Wilders, one will understand the kind of costs that Spencer may be facing, since he is as well known as Wilders.

      • Gamaliel says

        Dec 23, 2015 at 12:01 pm

        What’s really funny is a year or two ago frontpage magazine was advertising a Muslim dating site and an ad that promoted Islam. Gotta pay those bills!

    • Westman says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 12:37 pm

      Vinton, I understand the antipathy that you might have with some of the advertising.

      I would like to refer this site to family and friends but the advertising, “is like a box of chocolates. You never know you’re going to get.” It often falls below their standards and distracts from the legitimacy of the website. Even, worse, CAIR and other critics of this site will point to the advertising, with its caricature images, and say, “see, it’s just more decadence of the West. We don’t have that on our website!”

      It may very well be reducing the overall donations to the cause.

      Here is a possible solution: Break the donations into two maps on the page, the main donation and a WebPage support donation that has a bar indicator of the donation portion fullfilled for the month. People are more inclined to donate when, they know what it is for, and, that it makes a difference.

      When we read that Pamela Geller claimed a personal income of $200,000 – which may simply be a fabrication so like the media – there could easily be a question in an observers mind of why the site needs advertising at all.

      Anyway, the type of advertising is definitely counter-productive to the message. With today’s cookie-reading, ad selection, and insertion capabilities the type of advertising can be controlled; unless, advertisers of a higher caliber won’t advertise on social-oriented sites.

      • KnowThyEnemy says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 3:20 pm

        I second your suggestion to break the donations into two maps. Also, all of us need to do more to donate on a regular basis. After all, who is more worthy of donations and just compensation than the people who are working hard to protect everyone’s freedoms!

        We also need to change the way we do things to get more bang for… our efforts. People sometimes post very educative comments here, and many contributors are quite gifted when it comes to making a point or to get their point across. However, those great comments quickly get buried in the multiple pages and comments that are posted every single day. So if I am looking for a particular comment, it is difficult as impossible to find it.

        The solution to this is for regular posters to create their own anti-jihad themed webpage and post a link in the website box when posting a comment here. Post a copy of the comment on your webpage (preferably, post the same info as a topic by itself). IMO Google Plus pages is better than Facebook. Google is much less likely to remove your page.

        I want to give an example of how advantageous it would be to make your own pages-
        Let’s say I am debating some newbie in youtube comments who is aware of something called taqiyya but is unaware that it is a fully developed Islamic doctrine. Now let’s say I recall that the poster mortimer had explained in detail the various types of taqiyyas. If mortimer has a page, all I have to do is go to his page, find the topic where he explains taqiyya, and post a link in youtube comments for the newbie to read.

        Not only this would save a lot of effort both on the part of writers and readers (of comments), but it will make it much easier to disseminate quality information far and wide. In addition, on our page we can edit the topics for clarity, post sources, and post links to related news and incidents. (For example, if you have a post on your page with the topic “Sharia prohibits celebrating non-Muslim festivals”, you can edit your post and attach a link to the latest news from Brunei.)

        We need to do a lot more to defeat the traitorous and subversive propaganda churned out by the Islamists and the regressive left. I am confident that the above mentioned suggestions (donating on regular basis, and creating your own webpage) will make our anti-jihad, anti-sharia work much more effective.

      • Edwin1683 says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 5:22 pm

        I wouldn’t mind if Pamela Geller did claim a personal income of $200,000. For what she goes through and what she does for all of us in standing out there under fire 24/7 in the cause of freedom, she would richly deserve it.

      • eduardo odraude says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 9:59 pm

        Why does Geller need $200K? Suppose she needs 24/7 security. Do you know how much that costs?

        • Westman says

          Dec 23, 2015 at 12:38 am

          That should be covered under expenses of the AFDI. US citizens are taxed on personal and business net income, after expenses.

          I don’t have any problem with Pam’s net income, considering she’s very busy preventing another Holocaust and that her life is always in danger. I’m certain that it will lead to CAIR comparing it to the budget of Ghandi while refusing to reveal their own.

        • Gamaliel says

          Dec 23, 2015 at 12:03 pm

          That costs over $300,000 a year.

    • dsinc says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 3:04 pm

      Vinton,download and install an ad blocker.

    • Arthur says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 9:24 pm

      Vinton,

      The advertisers probably pay based on the number of times their ads are downloaded. You can install an ad blocker (I trust adblockplus.org) to remove them, but it may have the effect of reducing JW’s income. Of course, those of us using it can give $$$ to the cause to make up for it.

      I keep buying powerball and megamillion tickets hoping for some divine intervention…

      • Arthur says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 9:32 pm

        …you might want to keep the ads just in case they come up with
        “One Weird Trick to Eliminate Islam from Civilized Society”
        though I have not seen that advertised yet…

        • eduardo odraude says

          Dec 22, 2015 at 10:02 pm

          Ha! A good chuckle out of that one.

        • Westman says

          Dec 23, 2015 at 12:53 am

          LOL!

    • Champ says

      Dec 23, 2015 at 4:10 am

      Vinton wrote:

      From ardent supporter – some important advice: You are driving people away with very unpleasant adverts feed – lots of horrible images of Obesity and bad cosmetic surgery etc…. please investigate and change. ( I am afraid to open your pages in case I am sickened by the ads! – sorry)

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      The ads that Vinton objects to are nothing when compared to the daily horrors committed courtesy islam and company. Wow how does Vinton stomach the stories of murder & mayhem at the hands of muslims, then. A few “obesity” and “bad cosmetic surgery” ads pale in comparison. I’m just sayin’ …

    • TH says

      Dec 23, 2015 at 9:12 am

      Nobody obliiges you to pay attention to the ads. I read Jihadwatch everyday and I have no idea of what the ads are about, because I pay no attention to them and am aware that they are paying the bills. Jihad is such a serious matter, that the solid information provided by the site is woth a lot more than a few silly ads.

  2. mortimer says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 11:26 am

    Radical Universalist Fallacy (A Circular Argument that Refutes Itself)
    1. Radical Universalism states that “All religions are the same.”
    2. No other religion (except for RU) knows or states that “All religions are the same.”
    3. Since a) no other religion knows the truth that “All religions are the same”, and since b) Radical Universalism alone knows the truth that “All religions are the same”, only Radical Universalism knows the truth about all religions.
    4. Only Radical Universalism knows the truth about all religions.
    5. Because only RU knows the truth about all religions, Radical Universalism is thereby both distinct and superior to all religions.
    6. Therefore, because Radical Universalism is distinct from and superior to all religions: all religions are thus not the same, since Radical Universal is different from and superior to all of them.
    7. Since RU is different from and superior to all other religions, one religion is not the same as all others. Radical Universalism’s argument thereby refutes itself and is untrue.

    • dfd says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 6:36 pm

      mortimer says … Radical Universalist Fallacy (A Circular Argument that Refutes Itself)
      1. Radical etc….

      Hi mortimer,

      I like a lot of your posts, but what on earth have you been smoking?

      Salute, DFD

    • eduardo odraude says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 10:20 pm

      Mortimer,
      That reminds me of those who say nothing should ever be seen in black and white moral terms, and that everything is only shades of gray. Then the same people who insist on universal gray refute themselves by more or less demonizing those who see things black and white. The moral grey proponents don’t notice the irony when they act righteous, like seeing things grey-on-grey means being the good guys in the white hats but seeing things black and white means being the bad guys in the black hats. Absolute relativism thus refutes itself.

      But the relativist and the absolutist both have their place. A million shades of gray are out there but sometimes approximate very closely to pure black or pure white.

      • mortimer says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 11:21 pm

        Most Radical Universalists are closed-minded about their theory. Most of our Western politicians and journalists tend unconsciously to be Radical Universalists.

        The unexamined life is a subhuman life.

  3. jihad3tracker says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 11:26 am

    President Woodrow Wilson’s “nation building” dream + a refusal to read about Islam’s actual intent = American Middle-East military policy + waste of life + squandering of $$$

    • mortimer says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 11:29 am

      Western elites refuse to learn (or even hear) about 1) the jihad doctrine 2) the kafir doctrine 3) the taqiyya doctrine, making it IMPOSSIBLE for them to understand POLITICAL ISLAM.

  4. mortimer says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 11:31 am

    Kafir Doctrine expressed by a Muslim Cleric

    “If a kafir person (disbeliever) goes in a Muslim country, he is a cow. Anybody can take him. That is the Islamic law…If a kafir is walking by and you catch him, he’s booty. You can sell him in the market. Most of them are spies. And even if they don’t do anything, if Muslims cannot take them and sell them in the market, you just kill them. It’s OK…I say the reality that’s in the Muslim books anyway. Whether I say it or not, it’s in the books.”
    – Abu Hamza al-Masri of Egypt, detained cleric, ‘Captain Hook’, 58 year sentence

    • jura says

      Dec 23, 2015 at 2:20 am

      no, kaffir on a visit is so called mustamin. He is of similar status as “inostranec” (foreigner) in russian society.

      • Jack Diamond says

        Dec 23, 2015 at 3:27 am

        Mustamin is a short-term visitor to a Muslim country given “safe conduct” for certain purposes– business, study, diplomacy etc. But that status is conditional, just as is the “protection” accorded the dhimmis if something is seen as harming the interests of the Muslims. It can end and without that safe conduct a state of war exists with the harbi, as depicted by al-Mastri.

        Islam Q&A says “Allah does not forbid you to be kind, uphold ties, return favours and be fair towards the mushrikeen (polytheists),whether they are relatives and others, so long as they are not fighting you because of your religion or seeking to drive you out of your homes.”
        But what happens when Muslims consider you (collectively) to be fighting them because of their religion?

  5. Rob says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    Please don’t use the word ‘sentimentalist’ to describe the geezer currently in the WH.
    He’s a ‘fantasist’.
    A ‘sentimentalist’ cries in his own beer. A ‘fantasist’ expects to cry in everyone’s beer.

  6. Michael Copeland says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 2:19 pm

    Islamic State demolished the shrine of Saint Elian at Mar Elian Monastery.
    They said it was dedicated to a God “other than Allah”.

  7. jewdog says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 2:35 pm

    President Bush made the mistake of assuming that his own concepts of an ideal society would be shared by everyone else and could be achieved militarily. But that does not mean that his ideas were bad. Actually, I think that a sort of Western catechism as an alternative to the Islamic State vision should be formalized and used as a template by the West to advance our values. It could provide a blueprint for inspiring perplexed savages, and be used as a referrence to level constructive criticism as part of an ideological war. For example, the imposition of religious law, or Sharia, contravenes the religious freedom as a Western ideal. Western leaders can’t even get that far in their discussions, which shows that they need a basic primer, along with some testosterone injections.

  8. Jason P says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 3:31 pm

    Without examining their culture and religion, we will continue to have absurd and self-defeating policies as Hugh correctly noted (and I do remember him saying this circa 2004). Bush tried to give them the gift of liberal democracy because “they are just like us.” Obama said you can’t do it for them but they will do it for themselves (if we remove a dictator or two) because “they are just like us.” Now we have the absurdity of our Western leaders telling us that we can’t fix it there and they can’t fix it there but its safe to bring them here “because they are just like us.” We still can’t have an open unfettered discussion about Islam in today’s America.

  9. Pong says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 5:43 pm

    Often I come across an opinion that Obama is the worst president in American history. I have to stronly disagree with that.
    Bush was much worse then Obama. My opinion is based on the facts and analysis below.
    Obama became president as a reformer. It was very clear which road he was going to take America. He didn’t hide his left wing views. He was attending a church, which preached hatred to America. Chicago style politics and moslems apologetics were well expected from him. He was representing his base and was rewarded with second term. The only drawback was that he didn’t do enough.
    He is a shakespearien villain. He understands nature of his deeds.
    Bush, on the other hand, came, masqueriding as a conservative. He betrayed his base and looked and sound exceptionally stupid.
    Many things Obama has done were to make his ideological allies feel happy. He knows he had to do it to keep their support. Bush did not have to do many things he did against wishes of his base.
    Without “Islam is a religion of peace”, “The future should not belong ect” would be either impossible or very difficult to push.
    Support for moslems looked like bi-patisan policy and people tend not to question such policies too hard. MSM often referred to Bush, when Obama was criticized for his sympathy towards Islam and it makes harder to argue against it.
    All presidents make mistakes. I understand why Obama didn’t know or ignored history. He was making his own. But why Bush didn’t pay any attention to Eisenhower, who considered taking the Arab side in 1955 conflict the biggest mistake of his presidency?

  10. Wellington says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    George Bush is a decent man, as opposed to the current occupant of the Oval Office, but decent human beings, if powerful and ignorant, can do just as much damage, sometimes even more, than those who fall below any decency standard.

    Decency should never be the ultimate measure of a person, rather wisdom in combination with the attainment of proper knowledge (and this would include proper ethical knowledge) should be. Here Bush 43, decent man though he is, falls short. America and all the West is still paying for this “shortness.” As for Obama, the toll that will have to be paid well into the future because of him is almost incalculable.

    • Avenger says

      Dec 26, 2015 at 1:42 am

      I disagree Wellington, Bush squandered the opportunity to retaliate against the sunni Arab nations after 911, wasted trillions of our national treasure to wage the most feckless wars this nation ever fought, and set the stage for the Arab Spring.
      His presidency was so horrible it made border line conservatives flock to Obama.
      Now please name one policy that Obama has put into play that the next president with the stroke of a pen cannot reverse or remove? You cannot say the same for the Bush legacy, what he did is irreparable.
      I personally would not agree that Bush was a “decent” man but more of a spoiled rich “man child” with a very low IQ and a love for Saudi money.

  11. Kepha says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 8:14 pm

    I’m glad that Hugh, who in the past introduced himself as an unbeliever, recognizes important differences in Christian and Muslim theologies.

    But I’m going to quibble with Hugh’s idea that the Christian God is somehow bound by a natural law. I suspect that Hugh is operating from the position of Hugo Grotius in _De Iure Belli ac Pacis_ that there are principles of right which “God himself cannot change”. A better position is that found in James Dalrymple, First Viscount Stair’s _Institutions of the Laws of Scotland_ (1683):

    “Even God Almighty, though he be accountable to, and controllable by none, and so hath absolute freedom of his choice, yet doth he unchangeably determine himself by his goodness, righteousness, and truth…God cannot deny himself, or act unsuitably to his divine perfections.”

    Thus, to Stair (a good Calvinist Christian), the communicable attributes of God (attributes which can be shared with man) are the basis of a natural law; not that the natural law is somehow above God. Indeed, I suspect that Stair was critiquing the Grotian view.

    I suspect that where Islam’s capricious God gains some credibility is that there is a sense in which God is outside the moral law. For example, is it logically possible for the maker, ruler and hence owner of all things to steal (i.e., take something that is not lawfully his)? Yet God has imprinted his own moral character in man in such a way that it is legitimate for Abraham to plead with God for Sodom and Gomorrah with the words, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Gn. 18).

    The Christian warning about natural law, though, is that it is essentially as broken as the Ten Commandments due to our innate sinfulness (at least since Adam won for himself and all his progeny by ordinary generation the troubles of this life, death itself, and the pains of Hell forever). According to Paul, “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thought the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.” (Rom. 2:14-15).–the operative issue being accusing and excusing.

    I suppose that one of the things that the 9/11 world is revealing is how theologies are indeed different–and, again, I am glad that Hugh is putting his talents to use pushing that point. It becomes clearer that the Moralistic American Deism in which a lot of us were raised (and which some of us abandoned for other faiths) can maintain “all people are everywhere the same” (in that they are all basically good; rather than all fallen and sinful) only through a stupendous act of willful ignorance.

    Under my real name, I shared on facebook an article by a Christian theologian arguing that Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God on completely theological grounds (it’s from a blog entitled “Heidelblog”–punning on the Heidelberg Catechism). Immediately, a good friend (who is against ALL organized religion) accused me of accessing a “fear and hatred site”. But I think a very key difference is that in Christianity, God does not remain remote and eternally “wholly other” (in Karl Barth’s phrase): he takes to himself our nature (flesh and blood, reasonable soul, etc.) in Christ, hence the Second Person of the Trinity became man and remains fully God and fully man in one person forever. In this, the Christian God identifies with us in all our fallenness, misery, and frailty, and has even tasted death itself for us (see. Hebrews ). I hope that all Christian readers here will consider this during the Christmas season.

    While we’re at it, I can’t help but notice that God so loved and identified with us sinners that he chose to be born into a highly dysfunctional family (see Matthew 1)–quite a contrast to Islam’s whittling away all matters of morality and then claiming “perfection” for the plainly fallible Muhammad ibn Abdallan ibn Abu-Mutalib.

    • Jason P says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 10:52 pm

      I took Hugh to put for the view that Allah, according to Islam, is not bound by physical natural law. I’ve read elsewhere that all physical actions don’t follow law but are by Allah’s will according to Islam. I remember reading a translation of a chemistry book (perhaps on MEMRI) that said that 2H + O -> H2O isn’t an inextricable law but happens only because Allah has willed it once again. Sorry I don’t have the references. I believe this goes back to al-Ghazali (who, by the way, influenced David Hume via several other philosophers.)

    • TH says

      Dec 23, 2015 at 9:16 am

      I suggest that you study St. Thomas Aquinas and you will get out of your Calvanist ideas which are in some ways a little similar to Islamic ones. The Summa Theologíae and others of his major works are available in translation in Internet.

  12. Kepha says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 8:23 pm

    What good will it do for us to dwell on how Muslim and Christian theologies differ, especially with those who are determined to see “all religions the same?” Maybe our educational task is just beginning. For so long, we have has first a kind of Moralistic American Deism (MAD) masquerading as Christianity while claiming that “all religions are essentially the same–hence cut the missions budget”; then we have an evolutionary materialism which took up the MAD meme, but held all religions are equally bad and destructive. But, sooner or later, people are going to ask why Muslims bomb people while Christian fundamentalists merely picket and hold pray-ins at abortion clinics.

    Well, g’nght. I have to go in and have back surgery tomorrow.

    • Arthur says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 9:28 pm

      Good luck on the surgery. I hope it goes perfectly.

    • eduardo odraude says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 10:45 pm

      Robert K. Reilly points out a key difference between Islamic and Judeo-Christian theology.

      “The Islamic doctrine of tanzih teaches that God is so infinitely transcendent that absolutely no comparison can be made between Him and anything else. There is nothing “like” Him, certainly not man. The Judeo-Christian notion from Genesis of man possessing the imago Dei is a scandalous blasphemy in Islam. There is nothing God-like in man’s reason, which is unable to apprehend morality and has no integrity of its own. This is why there is no freedom of conscience acknowledged in Islamic jurisprudence.”

      “…This helps us understand the huge support – some 84 percent, according to Pew Research – for the death penalty for apostasy from Islam in Egypt today. Freedom of conscience remains an alien notion. Therefore, one must ask whether the desired freedom of the Arab Spring is truly based upon the proposition that all people are created equal. How many Egyptians actually believe that Copts and Muslims, men and women, believers and nonbelievers are equal – to say nothing of Jews and Muslims? Where is the underlying support in their culture for the truth of this proposition? If it is not there, it will be freedom for some and oppression for others. ”

      • eduardo odraude says

        Dec 22, 2015 at 10:46 pm

        The Robert Reilly quote comes from
        http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/will_the_arab_spring_turn_into_winter

      • TH says

        Dec 23, 2015 at 9:25 am

        For similar reasons it doesn’t seem possible to really enter into a loving relationship with Allah, as he is so way out transcendent that he is inaccessible as well as totally arbitrary. He even hats the unbeliever, somthing totally opposed to the Biblical notion of God clearly pesent in the Book of Deuteronomy, and al the prophets, not to mention Jesus himself. How many times does the Bible repeata that God is” merciful and and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in compassion”. Compassion is about “suffering with”. A god who hates a great percentage of his creatures is totally foreign to the Bible, both Testaments. The fact that the Biblical notion of God is pefectly reasonable is the reason why we have the whole field of science, as Stanley Yaki, referred to to in the article, so clearly explains and argues why science never got off the ground in any other cultural milieu except the Christian West. How could we have science is the universe is not ordered by reasonable and understandable laws?

    • Angemon says

      Dec 23, 2015 at 5:01 pm

      Kepha posted:

      “I’m glad that Hugh, who in the past introduced himself as an unbeliever, recognizes important differences in Christian and Muslim theologies. ”

      Same here. Most non-religious people I know operate under the fallacious “there’s no God, all religions teach that (at least one) God exists, meaning that all religions teach the same thing and therefore are the same” logic. Since they believe that all religions are the same, and they have better things to do with their time than actually looking into scriptures of an ideology they don’t believe to begin with, they tend to operate under the “square peg, round hole, hammer away” methodology: a) all religions teach the same, so if there are muslims killing people in the name of their religion today, Christians must have done the same thing sometime in recorded history, b) point to the Crusades and the Inquisition, c) arrive at the satisfactory conclusion that since all religions teach the same and Christians eventually stopped killing people in the name of their religion, there’s nothing to worry about regarding islam and muslims killing people in its name – they’ll grow out of it eventually.

  13. Victoria says

    Dec 22, 2015 at 10:43 pm

    Thanks for a worthwhile essay. It is important for thinking Christians to ponder the differences between Allah and God which cut much deeper than mere nomenclature. The concept of the “unfettered hand” of Allah dovetails with the idea that not even morality or ethics in Islam are set in stone or even rational. Allah can, and does, change what is halal at will, and it has nothing at all to do with natural law and everything to do with Allah’s whims. Just because a Muslim feels like one of Allah’s commands SHOULD be wrong (such as jihad), he must overcome the feelings of his heart. Allah knows best. Likewise God is “fettered” by his very essence. E.g., he is Truth. Therefore, he cannot lie. Allah can and does lie; Muslims consider this a testament to his greatness, whereas the great I AM has the rockbed of constancy to attest to his eternality.

    • eduardo odraude says

      Dec 22, 2015 at 10:56 pm

      Victoria,
      Yes, Islamic theology conceives Allah in the image of a despot so absolute that he need obey no “law,” but only himself. To say of Allah, as you Victoria said of God, that he is fettered by his essence as truth so that he cannot lie, would be blasphemy in Islamic theology, since it limits Allah. The theological conception of Allah has been warped by the immoral human obsequiousness demanded by earthly despots.

      See my quote of Robert K. Reilly above to understand more about this.

  14. JSobieski says

    Dec 23, 2015 at 12:42 am

    At best, Allah is the “same God” as the Judeo-Christian God in a superficial and shallow way that would convince a six-year old, but it shouldn’t fool an adult. No beatitudes. No suffering and dying for our sins. No distinction between Kingdom of Man and the Kingdom of God. No render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s and onto God what is God’s. No love your neighbor as yourself. No “and the greatest of these is love”. No turning the other cheek.

    Islam is what happened when a punk kid tries to make their own version of a complex and deep theology. Some superficial similarities, while all the deeper insights are 180 degrees opposite.

  15. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Dec 23, 2015 at 7:06 am

    From purple thumbs to the communist reset button to the Arab Spring, here we are with Moslem republics springing up all around. I have to admit that the purple thumb thing would have the benefit of telling us once and for all the potential of Moslems, we’d know, and could proceed accordingly. But no, instead we now go along as if that proof isn’t there because we made the mistake of putting a Shia in charge, which led to internecine tension, which left Iraq the hellhole it was to begin with. Well, OK, then let’s look at what was wrought on the Shia and Sunni side of the outcome. The Persians have yet to break off their half of the national corpse, but we all know that it’ll be the same as the Islamic Republic of Iran, an ugly thing holding grave threat to us. And Iran may annex the place. On the Sunni side, we have the New Caliphate, and we don’t need to go into examples of how that place operates. Throwing homosexuals from the roofs of building comes to mind, so does dipping cages filled with Christians into the sea to drown them. And, more recently, Paris and San Bernadino.

    So what is the prescription for Iraq, to have a half-breed Sunni/Shia man take over? And what difference could that possibly make?

    But what good would adducing the evidence from the Qur’an, or Al-Ghazali, or the Hadith, do in convincing the kind of people who like to say, because they want so desperately to believe, that “Muslims and Christians worship the same God”?

    Meanwhile, here we are at home watching our news entertainers blab on constantly about Moslems, always mistakenly. Sean Hannity can’t say radical Islamist enough times, but he’s not alone. That goes for all of them, plus the politicians and academics and everybody else. But there is never mention of the facts pointed out by Fitzgerald here, or Spencer there, or several others elsewhere. The scriptures of this belief system are never allowed to speak for themselves, nobody in America or Europe or Down Under know of the Holy Prophet and what he did, which is openly acknowledged by all Moslems, behind closed doors at least. The facts of the matter are unmentionable, and for good reason. Nobody wants to be stabbed to death in a parking lot, no CEO or editor wants to see a bomb blast in the office.

    For the population to be shown the facts of what we’re dealing with will have to take the next 9/11, which will likely be much more deadly. Then maybe the doctrine of equivalency will be challenged. Probably not but maybe. Even after that the politician or editor must consider the near inevitability of personal violence as retribution by Moslems for telling the truth about them. It’s a harsh proposition made all the more difficult by the fact that our nation has become more corrupt, a dictatorship not only by the Oval Office and SCOTUS, but also by the news entertainment industry, buttressed by the equally corrupt academe.

  16. dlbrand says

    Dec 24, 2015 at 1:57 am

    “Nine years ago I wrote about President Bush’s dreams of creating a Light Unto the Muslim Nations in Iraq (you may remember that $2 trillion dollar, decade-long campaign in Iraq, and how wonderfully it all turned out):”

    Indeed, indeed, lest we forget. In brief.

    • dajjal says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 6:54 am

      Genuine victory, turning Afghanistan & Iraq into exemplars of good governance, required overwhelming force, which was not employued. As the AssWhole said: “You break it, you bought it.” Victorty would mean sealing of borders to supply and infiltrators. It would mean securing all military assets. It would mean securing banks and institutions.

      But most of all, it would require the extirpation of Islam. Generals Allan & Schwartzkopf should have called loya jirgas in every town. Should have told the sheiks: Allah promised you victory, you got conquered. Allah promised permanent conquest, Andalusia, Israel, Greece and Romania are liberated. Allahu skatta!!! Who wants to meet Allah? Take one step forward. There should have been a treanch waiting for them. While one of them is Muslim, every dollar and drop of blood was wasted in a fool’s errand.

  17. dlbrand says

    Dec 24, 2015 at 2:42 am

    “The ‘wise men’ from Zoan are … fools, and those from Memphis are utterly deluded. They are the best you can find, but they have ruined Egypt with their foolish counsel.”

    (Isaiah 19:13, Living Bible, Paraphrased.)

    Throughout this conflict, the counsel of our “wise men” have cost us bitterly, for zero gain. Good men, good women, good limbs, all down the tube for diddly.

    All the while, here at home and abroad, we continue to propagate the lie of a Moderate Muslim, a “Holy Qur’an” filled with tenets worthy of being followed in our homeland and elsewhere.

    In so doing, we are doing our damn level best to form “Sunnah-America”–and we are certain to have it.

    “We” thus devote ourselves to “empowering the “Moderate” Muslim, when there is no Moderate. There is only true Believers of or apostates to the Islamic faith; what’s more, “we” throw our efforts, funds, fight, hearts and souls in to empower the former, hang the latter out to dry.

    The latter–the apostates to Islam–they are the ones deserving of our guns, reason our “best”; because the apostates are among the crowd of the “Islamaphobies,” they are among those stating the facts of Islam and the adherents to it.

    Therefore, reason and counsel our “wise men,” they (the apostates) and others like them that “bash-Islam,” (aka, state facts with respect to it) they are making us less safe, they, not the Believers, are central to our present Islam-based problem.

    Nonetheless, notwithstanding the deep, deep cost to us for forging, promoting, swallowing, and defending the “truth” in the above lie our leaders propagate; those cost aside, still we embrace that lie, still we “war-plan” counting that lie as fact.

    But as Fitzgerald stated, “What does it matter?”

    Truth or lie we believe on Islam and the adherents to it, “What does it matter?”

    “Just keep saying” of Islam and the adherents to it, whatever it is you want to believe of them. Do so, disregarding the mountains of volumes that spell out, irrefutably, what Islam teaches and precisely what one who follows that faith thus believes and practices.

    Keep believing, keep swallowing the garbage dished out for you and yours daily: “we are all so very similar and worship and want the same things.”
    .

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