Posted on 04/15/2013 7:19:13 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
New York Times best-selling author Robert Spencer investigates areas where Christians and Muslims fundamentally disagree.
Do Christians and Muslims agree on the issue of abortion?
Many Christians know they have some theological differences with Muslims, but still look at Islam as a valuable ally in a world increasingly threatened by secularism and immorality. Sure, we may not agree on every detail, they think, but isn’t it better to focus on what we have in common, so that we can fight moral and cultural battles together?
This idea may be more popular than ever, but it is a “dangerous illusion,” says author Robert Spencer in his latest book, Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam. We may live in an age of dialogue and “bridge-building,” but the differences between Christianity and Islam are so profound—not just in religious doctrine but in moral precepts—that the chances for any meaningful cooperation are slim at best. And the false hope for such cooperation, moreover, puts Christians at a perilous disadvantage in their dealings with followers of “the Prophet.”
Take, for example, the fight against abortion. At recent United Nations conferences, where the forces of the Culture of Death were pushing their global abortion agenda, attempts by the Vatican and Christian groups to forge a pro-life, pro-family coalition with Muslim nations failed. Why? Because Islam does not view the unborn’s right to life as absolute and inviolate. As Spencer explains, many of its schools of jurisprudence permit abortion up to various stages of fetal development (based on crude ensoulment theories found in the Qu’ran). And even after those stages, Islam generally does not view abortion as a grave evil tantamount to murder. Accordingly, Muslim scholars discourage cultural or political pro-life activism.
“In light of all this,” Spencer adds, “it is hard to understand why the idea is so widespread among conservative Catholics that Muslims would make good partners for action on life issues. In reality, the Islamic moral schema differs so sharply from the Catholic one that they have hardly any common ground at all.”
As this unique and important book explains in detail, abortion isn’t the only area where a “great chasm” divides Christianity and Islam. Similar gulfs exist between their teachings on sexual morality, marriage and divorce, women’s rights, and of course (as the plight of oppressed Middle Eastern Christians attests) religious freedom. Our theological differences are likewise not mere quibbles about small details, but fundamental divisions over the nature of God, divine revelation, salvation—divisions that some Christians want to wish away but Muslims never forget, as they proselytize under the guise of “interreligious dialogue.”
I personally think Islam is a demonic system; successfully splitting off members -- and if possible, members of the elite --- is a powerful way to defeat their system.
Who's more likely to contribute to this divinely satisfactory, Christ-pleasing result? You? Me? Or Austin Ruse?
Un-be-liev-able.
“I can't personally vouch for the number, but here's more than a million results from Google that repeat the claim that 6,000,000 Muslims a year are converting to Christianity (LINK) -— most, apparently, from sub-Saharan Africa.”
Not sure how that's relevant to the conversation. I don't see the folks with whom Austin Ruse is allying in that line of folks. In any case, 6 million folks per year represents about 0.5% of muslims. I'm sure they add more baby muslims than 6 million each year.
“I personally think Islam is a demonic system; successfully splitting off members — and if possible, members of the elite -— is a powerful way to defeat their system.”
You're relating two unrelated things - that a small number of muslims convert each year, and that Austin Ruse thinks he's making “friends” with his muslim buddies in high places. Please show evidence of a relationship between the two. Even more narrowly, please show the muslims with whom Austin Ruse is speaking who have converted.
“Who's more likely to contribute to this divinely satisfactory, Christ-pleasing result? You? Me? Or Austin Ruse?”
In that I haven't said what my own actions might be, it would be difficult to make the comparison.
Frankly, from what history shows me, Islam is best dealt with by the sword. The most Christ-pleasing result, in my mind, would be the elimination of Islam. It's not going to happen because Austin Ruse plays footsies with savages.
sitetest
What would you tell him to do? Make Planned Parenthood happy and just give up? Or maybe use that "sword" you alluded to, to cut down his most valuable anti-abortion allies?
We've read one of Austin Ruse's success stories. Now I'd love to hear one of yours.
I don't discourage him from working professionally with the muslim barbarians. It's great if he can temporarily get the moral degenerates to work with us on one or two issues (even as they go back to their tribes and rape the women of their enemies, and the men, too, and mutilate their own daughters).
I DO discourage him from playing footsies - i.e., thinking he's making friends and actually persuading the savages to abandon Islam.
“We've read one of Austin Ruse's success stories.”
It is not completely worthless to act at the level where Mr. Ruse is working. Keeping the UN from being more of an atrocity than it is is a marginally-worthwhile activity.
As for my own success, I couldn't tell you. I don't keep score. Don't even try. I just plant seeds.
Remember, there are roughly a billion or so muslims in the world. Very, very few of that number (maybe a few million) live in the United States. The muslim population one finds in the US is likely demographically different than that found in Egypt, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Iraq, or Indonesia, or Yemen, or Somalia, or Afghanistan, or Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria...
Some of those who come here are rabid dogs, much of the same mind as their masters back in the old country. Others have come here to escape. Even though they may not fully realize that it is Islam from which they were looking to escape, that is, indeed, what they were doing.
These are the few who might become ex-muslims, and might become civilized human beings.
But nearly all the rest back in Pakistan, Algeria, Libya, and the rest are savages, always have been, always will be; 99.5% of them will die in their satanism. The best we can do is to beat them back with the sword when they venture forth from their hell-holes to make the rest of humanity share their misery.
sitetest
Thank you, then, for recognizing the value of Austin Ruse’s efforts as well as his successes. We both pray. Let’s pray for more.
Just because someone accidentally does a marginally good thing (hampering the growing evil of the UN) while engaging in a greater evil (deluding himself and others that muslims are anything but moral degenerates and barbarian savages) doesn't quite equal “success.”
But I'll give him credit for trying.
Nonetheless, most of the criticism of Mr. Ruse seems valid to me.
You say in part: “... and he has found some of the Islamic countries to be effective, even essential allies.”
No muslim is an ally of a free person, or of decency. They are, at best, temporary fellow-travelers. They remind me of the “temporary marriages” that they conduct to excuse prostitution and rape, especially of young girls. Their assistance vis-a-vis Mr. Ruse's efforts are little more than tactical actions to allow them to achieve their own purposes, none of which are congruent with our own interests, or anything approaching morality, decency, or true worship of God. Failing to recognize that can be fatal.
sitetest
I think the part that truly bothers me is that the diplomats from the nations that historically used to be called “Christendom” are -— as public policy and backed by the coercive power of the State -— pro-sodomy and pro-baby-killing to a man. Or to a woman. Or whatever.
It is a difficult adjustment to make, but Pope Benedict XVI was telling us this right through his pontificate - we live in a pagan society run by pagans where Christian belief and practice will no longer occupy a privileged place.
We must think about what it was like to live in the Roman Empire before Catholicism became the preferred religion of the empire. It wasn't all persecution (although at times, the persecutions were fierce). The Church was able to grow and even prosper. The Church became increasingly influential in the empire long before the Edict of Milan. But the Church did not enjoy the privileged place it occupied after it was adopted as the state religion, and especially after Rome began to fall apart, and it was often the Church that caught the falling pieces and maintained any semblance of order.
Yet, during that period, in spite of the great evils of Rome, it was still the best thing going.
So, too, the West, today. It's decadent. It's a shadow of its former self. It is no longer Christendom. It is becoming intolerant of Christianity.
But it is less decadent, less immoral, less evil and less intolerant of Christianity than the great sewage reservoir that is Islam.
The lesson here for the Church is that she, too, must come to grips what it means to have lost her privileged place in western society. It means that she must trust less in "multi-lateral" solutions and "international" diplomacy and law, as these are no longer based in, or even friendly to Catholic moral theology or even natural law.
Calling for global solutions is all well and good when the enforcers of those solutions were an explicitly-Christianized United States, a United Kingdom with a vibrant Christian state religion, and a France that could still be called the Eldest Daughter of the Church without either tears or guffaws for the irony inherent in the statement.
As for Mr. Ruse, one of his fatal flaws is that he thinks because many Islamic countries have laws that look superficially like those previously enjoyed in the West upholding traditional Christian morality that they flow from the same, or similar source. He seems to think that in Islam, he's getting a bargain-shelf version of Christianity and Christian morality. They do not flow from the same source, and he is not getting anything remotely similar to Christianity or Christian morality. They flow strictly from the will to power of the religious elites to control and oppress their satanically-oppressed subjects.
Remember, it was a revered ayatollah of Islam that literally wrote the book on how one might licitly have sex with a chicken, and then licitly cook, butcher, and eat it later.
Their “morality” has nothing to do with Christian morality. To think otherwise is syncretism with a fatal twist.
sitetest
He just has a tactical opening to try to stop the killing of a couple million babies. And to use a certain Middle Eastern vernacular, that ain't chopped liver.
“I can't speak for Austin Ruse, of course, but I don't think there's a word in this last post of yours that Mr. Ruse would disagree with.”
Sorry, but I strongly, strongly disagree. He gives the game away here:
“In working with Muslim diplomats, in becoming friends with them, even by loving them, we believe we are changing hearts and minds.”
I have no problem with loving muslim barbarians. Jesus told us to love our enemies. And the muslims are definitely our enemies. I even love the Kenyan anti-Christ. I pray, in the likely event that God damns him, that perhaps God could not damn him to the lowest levels of Hell. I hold out very, very little hope that the Kenyan anti-Christ will not wind up in Hell.
But one cannot be friends with a muslim degenerate, just as one cannot be friends with demons from Hell. Too dangerous. They will suck you in to become apologists for their demonic Islam. They invented an entire class for non-muslims to occupy as apologists for their cult: dhimmitude. Worse yet, they may convert you to their cult.
And the likelihood that Mr. Ruse is changing minds and hearts would need to be measured with the statistical equivalent of an electron microscope. Very, very tiny. Not visible to the naked eye. Mr. Ruse is self-deceived. Even self-deluded. Use the scummy barbarians, but don't try to befriend them, and don't ever think you're converting them.
sitetest
He has the opportunity to test this as a kind of "experiment with truth." It has ample warrant from the Gospels and Epistles, which I won't quote here because you know it as well as I do.
The Lord Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that He commanded us, and baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You cannot make disciples, teach, or baptize people you are not on speaking terms with.
And Muslims are not, to be accurate, demons from Hell. They are, in fact, chained captives of those demons. We're in for the rescue, in it with Christ, and in it to win.
Next to the Gospels, I value the experience of people who speak up clearly and pay up personally. Mr. Ruse has both on his side: more day-to-day experience in this matter of dealing with Muslims, and a wider array of international Christian contacts --- people who have paid for the Faith with their blood --- than any of us keyboard commandos at Free Republic. Naive he is not. He has my prayers and my respect.
So does Robert Spencer, for that matter. I would love to hear Spencer and Ruse share their notes as two courageous and highly principled Catholic men, with both the word "Catholic" and the word "man" used in the maximal sense.
In the case of the muslims, to convert them in any significant numbers, it would first be necessary to defeat them militarily, via the sword, killing large numbers of their men. Muslims are trained by Satan to only appreciate and admire the strong man, and to hate, despise, condescend to, and vilify those who appear weak. They are inoculated against the great attraction of the Gospel - a God Who makes Himself vulnerable to us, Who allows us to kill Him. In fact, they despise us for this concept and consider it among the worst of our “blasphemies.”
If you want to convert nine muslims, you must first kill the tenth and remind the other nine that such a fate can befall them if they do not cooperate.
This is how we retook Spain and drove out the muslim hordes.
“...people you are not on speaking terms with.”
I never suggested not talking to the barbarians. To the degree that they have human speech, talk to them, by all means! But don't be fooled into thinking one might befriend them or convert any more than a very small number.
Christians have been trying for centuries to convert the muslim hordes, and without any success. Satan set up their religion to make them immune to any ordinary, natural human contact, even human contact infused with supernatural grace.
For a muslim convert, it takes the sovereign, unassisted action of God, completely unmixed with human action or use of natural human gifts. In fact, when you speak about millions of muslim converts, this is what is happening. God is visiting many of them in their dreams, often through Mary. It isn't the words of ordinary humans through which God is working. The evil is so great, He must do the job directly.
I didn't say muslims are demons from Hell. I said that like demons from Hell, it is dangerous to try to befriend them.
“We're in for the rescue, in it with Christ, and in it to win.”
We can win, if we want to. We won in Spain. We won at Lepanto. We should pray daily for leaders to lead Christian and non-muslim armies against the muslim hordes to bloody and break them, so that then they will acknowledge that they are intellectually, culturally, socially, and morally inferior to any human culture to ever exist before, and to acknowledge their unmeasurable guilt in destroying what is good about the world.
Then they will be ready for mass conversion.
“Naive he is not.”
He sure looks it to me.
“Next to the Gospels, I value the experience of people who speak up clearly and pay up personally. Mr. Ruse has both on his side: more day-to-day experience in this matter of dealing with Muslims,...”
Like I said, show me the long line of barbarian diplomats he has rescued from Satan's religion and helped become Catholics. I don't think that long line exists. This is my point. Mr. Ruse is a sweetheart! What ordinary human being could resist him? But all these diplomats listen to him all day long, and they go along with his agenda for their own purposes, mostly nefarious. But they don't convert.
Otherwise, it looks to me like he's getting co-opted. It's all just more muslim barbarian PR to convince otherwise-faithful Catholics that the muslims are our friends.
They're not.
They're immoral savages who need a good beating to make them wake up to the reality that they are evil savages.
sitetest
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