Islam vs. Christianity: The Age-Old Conflict Continues

CNSNews.com ^ | August 22, 2003 | Paul M. Weyrich

[Gritty]

It's not just because Prem Awaes has come to this country as a legal immigrant that Americans should welcome him. No. He has a message that does not make for easy listening, but it is one that Americans, particularly those who are anxious to cast Islam as a peaceful and tolerant religion, need to hear.

Awaes has come to America thanks to the sponsorship of the Virginia Council of Churches and the Presbyterian Church of Fredericksburg. He had been trained as a missionary by the Salvation Army and had operated a Christian school for in Pakistan.

Because Pakistan is a Muslim republic, Awaes' work as a Christian missionary made him run afoul of the government's laws. Believers in the Christian religion are often persecuted; the police seldom do much to ensure the protection of religious minorities. Indeed, as Awaes pointed out in an interview with the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, they will often be the attackers.

Recalling the violence inflicted on his village in an attack six years ago, Awaes said: "They threw hand grenades at houses. Muslims robbed the houses and took everyone's things."

After living constantly on the run in Pakistan, Awaes fled to Asia, living there for awhile before being granted refugee status by the United Nations and finding sponsorship in the United States. He expects to be reunited with his family soon.

More Americans are coming to realize that while many Muslims lead peaceful and tolerant lives, those who truly believe that the Qur'an represents the divine words spoken by Allah will not be tolerant or peaceful toward the "People of the Book": the Qur'an's designation for Jews and Christians.

As Sura 9:29 of the Qur'an declares: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the people of the Book, until they pay the Jizya (a special higher tax rate) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Many contemporary theologians depict the Crusades as Christianity's war against Islam, but they have it dead wrong. For Islam was on the march centuries before the Crusades, having conquered the Christian lands of Egypt, Syria, North Africa, and Spain by the time Pope Urban II had declared the first Crusade.

To this day, the enmity continues. Just last year, a Muslim cleric in Indonesia called upon his fellow believers to fight "belligerent infidels" who are Christians.

Christians who believe that all people are equal in dignity before God need to realize that this idea is not taught in traditional Islam. Muslims who do believe in this equality of dignity have been influenced by the West, but within the Muslim community they are typically shouted down by the more fervent and louder voices of Islamic militants.

My colleague, Robert Spencer, writes in Islam vs. Christianity: The Age-Old Conflict Continues that Americans need to wake up to the fact that not all religions or their followers share the Western values of tolerance.

Indeed, more Americans are waking up to this. A poll released last month by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed 44% of the American public now understands that Islam is more likely than other religions "to encourage violence among its believers." Only a quarter of Americans realized this in March 2002.

September 11 should have alerted every American to that fact. Unfortunately, the innate American sense of trust and decency, our best values, leave us ill-equipped to confront an enemy like Islam -- just as it was difficult in 1940 for many Americans to grasp that a civilized country like Germany could discard true Christian beliefs.

Now, as the second anniversary approaches of that terrible day, conservatives need to make sure every American realizes the true nature of the threat we face from Islam's fervent believers.

We should not have to depend on al Qaeda to provide a reminder.

[anniegetyourgun]

Paul lays it on the line - once again.

[RAY]

It seems that those of the Islamic faith, especially Arabs, never negotiate in good faith.

[rageaholic]

Indeed. There is a provision in the Koran that permits contracts with infidel to be broken.

[TomSmedley]

Unfortunately, the innate American sense of trust and decency, our best values, leave us ill-equipped to confront an enemy like Islam ...

Our desire to think the best of our neighbor is a biblical reflex rooted in the 9th 10th commandments. When we try to think the best of our neighbors gods, however, we surrender that which is not ours to discard.

[eleni121]

No Muslim can be trusted no matter how much he/she talks about "peace". Americans and indeed all free peoples of the world need to understand that just as communism is an ideology whose ultimate aim is the destruction of our way of life, so does Islam seek its destruction and has been doing so for far longer.

[Gritty]

BTTT

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[livius]

I think we have to be very careful with Islam, even when it's not openly trying to kill us. As far as I'm concerned, Islam is a Satanic death-cult.

But individual Muslims are a different matter. God gives every man a thirst for the truth, and if the truth is simply not available, that thirst will be filled with something else (in this case, Islam). We Christians have got to work harder to adhere to our truth, purify our expression of it, and offer it to Muslims.

Some of them will accept it and some of them won't. But that's been true of Christianity - which does not "convert" by the sword - since the beginning.

[Terp]

Now, as the second anniversary approaches of that terrible day, conservatives need to make sure every American realizes the true nature of the threat we face from Islam's fervent believers.

I wonder how the author thinks this can be accomplished?

We should not have to depend on al Qaeda to provide a reminder.

Well he's dreaming if he thinks this isn't the only way that the vast majority will realize what Islam's true nature is. People have short memories and 9/11 is something that's fading fast.

[Gritty]

We Christians have got to work harder to adhere to our truth, purify our expression of it, and offer it to Muslims.

Everything you say is very true.

Islam is a particularly hard nut to crack - not because of it's theology, which is bogus, but because of it's murderous mindset to both it's adherents and to any Infidel trying to spread the Gospel where it holds cultish, mindnumbing sway not only in the religious sphere but in the imbedded cultures and civic law.

That said, it is an inflexible, brittle system, a lot like Communism, which will eventually fall of it's own weight when it's adherents are confronted with Truth. They will eventually lose, but they will take millons, maybe billions, down with them.

[wizardoz]

No Muslim can be trusted no matter how much he/she talks about "peace".

Actually, the more they talk about peace, the more suspicious I become, because from what I've heard, "peace" to them means "When the whole world is Muslim, we won't have to kick their heads in anymore, so there'll be PEACE!" This mitigates any enthusiasm I might have for "peace."

[NewRomeTacitus]

What really is the president's stand on this? His team has kept him very Teflon on a lot of issues.

[txzman]

"...Americans need to wake up to the fact that not all religions or their followers share the Western values of tolerance."

Which is a *very* tough thing given the general lack of education and reading in this country.

[BenR2]

I am shocked -- SHOCKED! -- by the politically incorrect title of this article!

Islam is a "Religion of Peace!"

(Okay, so they like to blow up innocent civilians, but, hey, no one's perfect!)

[TomSmedley]

But individual Muslims are a different matter. God gives every man a thirst for the truth, and if the truth is simply not available, that thirst will be filled with something else (in this case, Islam). We Christians have got to work harder to adhere to our truth, purify our expression of it, and offer it to Muslims.

I strongly recommend the Iranian movie The Color of Paradise. It's a poignent meditation on the generational cleavage in Iranian society today: 75% of the guys are under 24 years old, and regard the mullahs as the monsters who slaughtered their fathers in pointless wars and impoverished their nation in every way -- fiscally, morally, artistically, and culturally.

The part that registered with me, however, was the frank references to allah, for the desire (eventually attained) to "see" his face.

[Gritty]

Which is a *very* tough thing given the general lack of education and reading in this country.

... our Achilles Heel!

[nravoter]

Appropriate for the times, here's a pretty cool Crusades-themed chess set available from http://thechessstore.zoovey.com/

[CGVet58]

Livius,

in the sense that each man should be treated individually (vice applying the group realities), I agree with your comments (... individual Muslims being a different matter...).

I completely disagree with your suggestion, that we Christians should purify our expression of the Truth as we know it and offer this "alternative" to the Arab Muslim. This is a passive and benign offering; and we live in a time when the scimitar is poised against us.

To this scimitar - rusty as it is from centuries of failure, yet wielded by a hands which vaingloriously yearn for a return to the status of their "conquest-enabled eminence" - there is only one response: the Sword.

A bit more on this. Your comments, coming as they do from our western mind, our appreciation and trust in American Values which are based on peace and goodwill, and very understandable. I wholly suscribe to living my life this way, as do you and millions others. We in the Christian world, despite our human imperfections, do know the value of the sword, and we know the value that comes from beating our swords into plowshares. But the realm of the scimitar is a desert wasteland... nothing grows there. The proverbial plowshare is likely as foreign to the desert as it is for us live in nomadic tents and use Camel dung for fuel.

The wielder of the scimitar knows how to destroy, how to subjugate, how to enslave. The wielder of the sword knows these things, too; but has also learned that the same metal forged for battle can be turned towards cultivation of the land; for growth and prosperity achieved through creation and not just acquired through conquest.

Offering our worldview to the Arab Muslim in an attempt to have him understand us only reinforces to him how destitute his land is, and likely reaffirms his hatred of us because we have lands of milk and honey - certainly at the least hold us in contempt for thinking that the plowshare metaphor can be applied to their barren landscape. It's not that they don't understand the metaphor, or the concept, or even the culture differences - they do, quite well and probably better than most of us.

No, Livius... we must meet them in the one way they truly understand; with the sword. The defense of our own can expect no less a response.

[tictoc]

Offering our worldview to the Arab Muslim in an attempt to have him understand us only reinforces to him how destitute his land is, and likely reaffirms his hatred of us because we have lands of milk and honey

Sir or madam, I'd like to shake your hand (in a manner of speaking) for expressing it so well.

We need to remember that the Arabian desert is the least inhabitable place on Earth outside of Antarctica. It makes a great deal of sense to me that any religion/cult born there would carry the hatred and resentment of its people for having been cast into such a place.