[browardchad]

“The Church looks upon Muslims with respect. They worship the one God living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to humanity and to whose decrees, even the hidden ones, they seek to submit themselves whole-heartedly, just as Abraham, to whom the Islamic faith readily relates itself, submitted to God . . . Although considerable dissensions and enmities between Christians and Muslims may have arisen in the course of the centuries, the Council urges all parties that, forgetting past things, they train themselves towards sincere mutual understanding and together maintain and promote social justice and moral values as well as peace and freedom for all people” (Declaration Nostra Aetate, No. 3).

I prefer John Quincy Adam's analysis:

 “In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of  Hagar [i.e., Muhammad],  the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth.  Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle.  Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion.  He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind.  THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST:  TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE (Adam's capital letters)….Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged.  The war is yet flagrant…While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”

-- “Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece, written while JQA was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830” [Chapters X-XIV (pp. 267-402) in The American Annual Register for 1827-28-29. New York, 1830.]

[livius]

John Quincy Adams was right on the mark! A better analysis cannot be provided.

One thing many people forget is exactly how long this war has been going on: since the very moment of Mohammed's "visions."

Prodigal Son made some interesting points on another thread. He said that the secret of its longevity is that it does not have one particular leader - its clergy are its leaders, especially those descended from Mohammed, and they are dispersed, as he put it, like "nodes." Taking one or more of them out won't bring down the whole "network." However, the biggest vulnerability of Islam is that it is a geographical religion. That is, if Mecca and Medina were suddenly removed from the face of the earth, Islam would immediately cease to exist. Interesting points.