Posted on 09/21/2007 1:49:02 PM PDT by Caleb1411
A global Islamic revival is creating conflicts that go beyond the War on Terrorism. Much of the civil unrest around the world—in Indonesia, East Timor, the Philippines, Sudan, among others—has to do with Muslims attacking Christians. Meanwhile, in tribal villages from Asia through Africa, Islam and Christianity are competing for the souls of the people. Even the jihadist assaults against America and Europe may be seen as a Muslim war on the civilization that Christianity produced.
Though the secularists cannot imagine such a thing, the world is convulsed in a religious war.
The Washington Post's Phillip H. Gordon recognizes that the conflict with radical Islam is an ideological war, like the struggle of the free, capitalist West against communism. He points out, however, that victory in the Cold War came not from armed warfare but from winning the ideological argument. He says that instead of using military might against Islamists, we should be demonstrating to the Muslim world the superiority of Western ideas.
The problem, though—besides the need to take military action against those who attack us—is that the West has become so self-loathing and religiously clueless that it seems unable to stand up against Islam ideologically. Relativists are not very well-suited to making an ideological argument.
Though radical Islam is arrayed against Christianity, Western thinkers are claiming that Christianity and Islam are essentially the same.
Some say the two religions are equally good. We are told that Islam is a tolerant religion hijacked by radicals. Others say the two religions are equally bad. Christianity is just as violent as Islam, according to a number of recent books, and conservative Christians are as big a threat to freedom as Muslim terrorists. The enemy, then, is religion in general, with secularists claiming to be the true representatives of Western civilization.
But the secularists are having trouble standing up against Islam. If you go to gatherings of the hard-left—a Green Party convention, a radical bookstore, a demonstration against the Iraq war—you will find tracts, pamphleteers, and activists who are actively taking the jihadist side. These leftist circles often include homosexuals and feminists who would be among the first killed if the jihadists had their way.
In reality, Islam and Christianity are opposites. One posits a deity far above the fray; the other embraces a God who became flesh and dwelt among us. One bases salvation on works, and not necessarily even good works; the other bases salvation on God's grace expressed in His own sacrifice to sinners. One is worldly, with the goal of imposing Islamic law on earth; the other is supernatural, bringing converts into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Not to recognize these differences—and the cultural and political implications that grow out of them—is like trying to wage the Cold War with the assumption that capitalism and communism are essentially the same.
To sum degree, I’m in agreement with the secularists. I can’t believe a religion such as Islam exists in the 21st century. It’s in desperate need of a reformation.
And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
As long as they HATE BUSH GET BUSH STOP BUSH IMPEACH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH
Can I choose who I have to defend?
You need to get ahold of some good pre 1960 history books, FRiend.
98% of what a secular humanist points out as being "good" in Western Civilization has its roots in the love of/for Christ. If you plumb deep enough, you can even see that many of the main sources of attack on religion and Christianity had their roots in the same soil; perhaps like I, you will be able to simultaneously appreciate and be outraged by the irony.
It’s in desperate need of a reformation.
It cant change
The vision is frozen
In the’re view
there will be no other prophets after Mohammad
And the Koran is without error
I believe it was Wittaker Chambers who described liberalism as “Christianity without the Cross”.
Modern secular humanism is cribbed from Christianity. The ancient pagan ‘Man is the measure of all things’ was not sufficient for the modern notion of human rights. Only the lofty anthropology of ‘ . . .come let Us make Man in Our image and likeness. . .’ and ‘. . .and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. . .’ is ground enough for that.
Some secularists, despite rejecting the source, manage to still get the conception of Man right (Nat Hentoff comes to mind), but most manage to start tinkering (the rationalist always thinks he knows best) around the edges: oh, embryos and foetuses aren’t human, oh, the aged are expendable, . . .
I just don't see this. In Madrid, UK, Bali, Pakistan: it's the Christians or Americans they go after first. You see occasional sharia enforcement stuff, but the big stuff is against globalists, Americans or Christians. If they would go after homosexuals and liberals first, why don't you see this happening anywhere now?
“Though radical Islam is arrayed against Christianity, Western thinkers are claiming that Christianity and Islam are essentially the same.”
Huh....What on earth are these thinkers thinking about? To claim that Islam and Christianity are essentially the same is simple ignornance. Or at least relatively speaking:
“The problem, though—besides the need to take military action against those who attack us—is that the West has become so self-loathing and religiously clueless that it seems unable to stand up against Islam ideologically. Relativists are not very well-suited to making an ideological argument.”
For a relativist Islam and Christianity may appear to be the same, but then again so does everything else. Our failure against Islam will be primarily moral in nature. Unable to make a distinction between right and wrong we have tolerated that which is evil and called it good, or at least relatively good. We no longer have a basis to make moral distinctions so Islam simply becomes another expression of the same truth. To say otherwise is to be labeled intolerant which is the worst thing one can be called in a culture robbed of it’s ideals.
I would love of some freeper would actually define a “secularist.” It means ten different things to ten different people and yet this article and many like it treat the term we’re all on agreement of what it means. Although secular humanist is more exact, even then you can’t know a persons beliefs from that term.
I’m an atheist, what do you think my political beliefs are? Other then the fact that I’m posting here you have no idea. Now let me narrow that down and tell you I’m an objectivist. So now if you know that that is you have a very good idea of what my beliefs are.
I just wish people were much more exact in their language. Simply saying secularist or atheist gives even less indication of ones political beliefs then saying christian or muslim.
bookmark
Ironic considering that the Koran is FULLY LOAD with contradictions and errors.
This article cannot be more wrong about East Timor. The conflict in East Timor is by no means drawn along religious lines. In fact, it’s between two ethnic groupings whom we generally perceive to be pro-integration and pro-independence. To say that it’s a religious war is shallow, erroneous, misleading, and deceptive.
To author of the article: Get your facts right before writing.
Secularist is very precise—it means someone who believes that what religion has considered the ultimate things are irrelevant to how one should live one’s life.
Modern secularists (whether atheists, agnostics, deists, or even adherents of some liberal religion which is ‘true for them’) typically try to recover something like traditional morality from the inherent properties of the human person—objectivists are in some ways the most outstanding example of this phenomenon.
The problem is, without some transcendant source of worth for the human person, all such constructed secular moral codes are actually baseless. As Dostoyevsky put is “If there is no God, then anything is permitted.” The symmetry between human beings that objectivism, or the ‘right for me/right for you/just don’t hurt anyone’ relativism often found on the left, takes as axiomatic is readily overthown by an appeal to a Darwinian imperative: The strong *ought* to use the weak for their own advantage. The survivors are right merely because they survive. There is no this-worldly counterargument to the proposition that might makes right.
Actually, Islam’s not a religion. Anything that has as its objective the overthrow of a government and replacement of that government with its own system is a political movement, not a religion.
Christianity has never advocated the overthrow of a government; Church and State may have been at each other’s throats, but they were always separate, and Christianity can exist with just about any form of government (although it does better with some than others, obviously).
In fact, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism don’t advocate overthrow of the government, either.
The only thing that does that is Islam, which is why it is a militant political movement, just like Nazism, rather than a religion.
Ray, you caught me on a Saturday morning, I’m in a good mood and I will try to be nice, which I rarely am to Randians. I am going to try to nicely define for you what a secularist is.
I’m sure you can posit a quite consistent and coherent moral code. I am also sure you cannot tell me the ultimate WHY of your moral code other than “Ayn Rand said it and it makes sense to me”.
I will go you one better — I am certain that you share a common trait with everyone that has ever existed — you have not been 100% perfect in practicing the moral code you pretend to embrace. (Please note that I personally succumb to this axiom with disturbing frequency.)
Here is my quick and dirty definition. If you answer the question of “Where did your moral code come from”? — and your bottom line response is “_______, said so and it sounded good to me.” — you are a secularist. Secularist is proper to describe the Randian just as much as the Marxist, even if they are worlds apart in what their man made moral code actually requires.
To describe the global conflict as a war of religions is only half right. It is true that one side is motivated primarily by Islam, but the enemy is not Christianity in itself (in fact the Christian churches are very reluctant to take part). The enemy is Civilization (as Mr. Bush has repeatedly pointed out), and those who must be destroyed or forced to submit are all who believe in and support Civilization - Christian, Jewish, “secularist”, or, yes, Muslim.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.