Great idea! Now if we can just convince the terrorists themselves to do this.
“No religion would do that,” the soldier said, pointing to the badly vandalised church. “They’re terrorists.”
Why virtually everyone feels the need to cover for and burnish the image of Islam remains unexplained, but superficially this soldier, and Ján Figeľ, seem to have a point: the Quran says: “If Allah had not driven some people back by means of others, monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques, where Allah’s name is mentioned much, would have been pulled down and destroyed.” (22:40)
However, Muslim clerics often interpret this as referring only to the churches and synagogues in which everyone became Muslim, and not to churches and synagogues of the “unbelievers among the People of the Book” (Qur’an 98:6) — that is, actual Jews and Christians. The destruction or conversion into mosques of the churches of those people is just fine, and there is abundant precedent for it in Islamic history, especially when lands are newly conquered by jihadists, as in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Damascus and others.
“‘We must distinguish between Islam and terrorism,’” World Watch Monitor, November 28, 2016:
Keeping the distinction between Islam and terrorism clear could prevent an ultimate ‘Clash of Civilisations’, an EU diplomat says.
“All this hatred and bloodshed is a misuse of religion,” said Ján Figeľ, the European Commission’s first Special Envoy for the promotion of Freedom of Religion or Belief outside the EU. Failure to separate fanatics from the religion they claim could even spark World War III, the Slovakian MP said on 26 Nov. in Vienna at an event organised by religious freedom organisation ADF International.
Figeľ, who has been in the role since May, highlighted the words of an Iraqi Christian soldier returning to a church in the recently liberated city of Qaraqosh.
“No religion would do that,” the soldier said, pointing to the badly vandalised church. “They’re terrorists.”
“I applaud this distinction,” Figeľ said, adding that Christianity has been misused to achieve violence aims in the past. “Don’t mix [up] criminals and the religion they misuse,” he added.
Other speakers at the event, ‘Embattled: Christians under pressure in Europe and beyond’, included Swedish MEP Lars Adaktusson and Hungarian MP Tamás Török, Under Secretary of State for Hungary’s new office focusing on the persecution of Christians.
Adaktusson said that although “there is a very clear connection” between organisations such as the Islamic State and Islam, “we need to be very careful not to blame individual Muslims for terrorist attacks”….