Posted on 09/13/2014 6:02:06 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Appearing on Charlie Rose's PBS show this week, HBO's "Real Time" host Bull Maher rebuked him for linking Islam to Christianity, defending Christians by saying a vast numbers of them do not believe in violence or treat women as second class citizens.
Maher, a self-proclaimed atheist, began by refuting former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's recent statement that vast numbers of Muslims are not like ISIS in Iraq and Syria, an al-Qaeda offshoot that seeks to form an Islamic emirate in the Levant region through "jihad."
Interrupting Maher, Rose asked, "Behind every Muslim is a future member of some radical?"
"Vast numbers of Christians do not believe that if you leave the Christian religion you should be killed for it," Maher responded. "Vast numbers of Christians do not treat women as second class citizens … Vast numbers of Christians do not believe if you draw a picture of Jesus Christ you should get killed for it. So yes, does ISIS do Khmer Rouge-like activities where they just kill people indiscriminately who aren't just like them? Yes. And would most Muslim people in the world do that or condone that? No."
Maher then quoted a Pew poll held in Egypt a few years ago, noting that 82 percent of respondents said stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultery, and over 80 percent thought death was the appropriate punishment for leaving the Muslim religion.
The comedian then added that to claim that Islam is like other religions is "just naive and plain wrong."
Maher also remarked that "we're upset that ISIS is beheading people which we should be upset about but Saudi Arabia does it and they're our good friends because they have oil."
Rose pointed out that Arab League nations are now also fighting ISIS. "They're joining us in the fight. As is the Emirates. As is Jordan. They are all Muslim countries."
Maher responded by saying, "Well, they are both fighting ISIS and they are for ISIS."
"If they were beheading people in Vatican City, which is the equivalent of Mecca, don't you think there would be a bigger outcry about it? So this is the soft bigotry of low expectations with Muslim people. When they do crazy things and believe crazy things, somehow it's not talked about nearly as much," Maher added.
"The Koran absolutely has on every page stuff that's horrible about how the infidels should be treated," Maher went on to say.
President Obama said Wednesday that ISIS "is not Islamic."
ISIS men have killed hundreds of people in Iraq as well as beheaded two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Numerous members of the Christian and Yazidi minorities have also been killed, and tens of thousands of them have fled their homes.
"No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim," Obama said. "ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way."
ISIS, or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is also known as the Islamic State and ISIL.
Earlier this year, Maher invited Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed to his show and asked why Jesus needed to come and make some corrections to the Old Testament about laws such as stoning of adulterous women to death.
I must have woke up in the wrong universe this morning. I thought only Christians clung to guns and religion with antipathy for others.
Pat Condell says the same exact things.
Seems a better universe than the one to which we are accustomed.
I suppose one can put a gloss on Obama’s assertion, “No religion condones the killing of innocents,” in such a way that it is true. The problem with Islam is that its notion of “innocent” excludes all non-Muslims.
Well...let him fly to Syria and have an interview. Not a follower of the Pope...but last time I checked....he wasn’t beheading anyone in the name of Christ. Most atheists won’t touch Islam.
Christianity and Islam in History
MSGR. WALTER BRANDMULLER
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0110.html
On the same day when the Vatican made public Benedict XVI’s message for the World Day of Peace next January 1, cardinal secretary of state Angelo Sodano sponsored a meeting at the Pontifical Lateran University the grand chancellor of which is the pope’s vicar, cardinal Camillo Ruini. The meeting focused on a topic crucial for the Church’s geopolitics: “Christianity and Islam, Yesterday and Today.”
In his message, Benedict XVI pointed to “nihilism” and “religious fanaticism” as the two deep sources of Islamist terrorism.
But the analysis at the December 13 meeting at the Lateran concentrated above all on the history of the relationship between Christianity and Islam. The occasion for the meeting was the fifth centenary of the birth of saint Pius V, the pope of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, at which a league of Europe’s Christian states inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Turkish fleet.
The topic was explored by an authoritative specialist in Church history, monsignor Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
The biggest difference between Christianity and Islam concerns the crucial issue of understanding the human person. This is shown by the fact that many Islamic countries have not accepted the declaration of human rights promulgated by the United Nations in 1948, or have done so with the reservation of excluding the norms that conflict with Qur’anic law which means practically all of them.
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM IN HISTORY
by Walter Brandmüller
I will address the topic of Christianity and Islam by limiting myself to a brief presentation of historical facts, without entering into the specifics of religious and theological dialogue. This seems useful to me, because the celebration of the fifth centenary of the birth of Pius V was a bit muted, especially in academic circles. The victor at Lepanto in 1571, this pope who had the courage and the energy to construct an alliance of almost all the Christian kingdoms against the Ottoman empire which was advancing to threaten Europe and had already established dominion over the Balkans today, precisely on account of the unhappy restoration of hostility between the two worlds one formerly Christian, and to a certain extent still Christian, and the Muslim world seems to many to be an obstructing presence best left in the shadows.
Those who maintain that understanding jihad as a holy war constitutes a sort of deviation from the true Islamic tradition are therefore not telling the truth, and history sadly demonstrates that violence has characterized Islam since its origin, and that Mohammed himself systematically organized and led the raids against the tribes that did not want to convert and accept his dominion, thus subjecting the Arab tribes one by one.
Since their very beginnings, there have been differences in how Christians and Muslims think of conversion and the use of violence.
For the Christians, conversion was something that must be voluntary and individual, obtained primarily through preaching and example, and this is how Christianity did in fact spread during its first centuries. Obviously, we must immediately note that this conception of early Christianity underwent changes in later eras, connected with the diffusion of a spirit of religious intolerance in Western culture. John Paul II himself acknowledged that in this regard the Church’s children “must return with a spirit of repentance [for] the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth.” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 35).
But on the part of the Muslims, from the earliest times, even while Mohammed was still alive, conversion was imposed through the use of force. The expansion and extension of Islam’s sphere of influence came through war with the tribes that did not accept conversion peacefully, and this went hand in hand with submission to Islamic political authority. Islamism, unlike Christianity, expressed a comprehensive religious, cultural, social, and political strategy. While Christianity spread during its first three centuries in spite of persecution and martyrdom, and in many ways in opposition to Roman domination, introducing a clear separation between the spiritual and political spheres, Islam was imposed through the power of political domination.
It therefore comes as no surprise that the use of force occupies a central place in Islamic tradition, as witnessed by the frequent use of the word “jihad” in many texts. Although some scholars, especially Western ones, maintain that jihad does not necessarily mean war, but instead a spiritual struggle and interior effort, Samir Khalil Samir again clarifies that the use of this term in Islamic tradition including its usage today is essentially uniform, indicating warfare in the name of God to defend Islam, which is an obligation for all adult Muslim males.
Those who maintain that understanding jihad as a holy war constitutes a sort of deviation from the true Islamic tradition are therefore not telling the truth, and history sadly demonstrates that violence has characterized Islam since its origin, and that Mohammed himself systematically organized and led the raids against the tribes that did not want to convert and accept his dominion, thus subjecting the Arab tribes one by one. Naturally, it must also be said that at the time of Mohammed warfare was part of the Bedouin culture, and no one saw anything objectionable about it.
But the biggest difference between Christianity and Islam concerns the crucial issue of understanding the human person. This is shown by the fact that many Islamic countries have not accepted the declaration of human rights promulgated by the United Nations in 1948, or have done so with the reservation of excluding the norms that conflict with Qur’anic law which means practically all of them.
The interpretation that Muslims today try to make of the crusades an interpretation that finds many followers among Western historians also fails to correspond to historical reality.
According to this representation, Western Christians were invaders in a peaceful region that was respectful of the different religions the Holy Land, which back then was part of Syria using religious motives to disguise imperialist ambitions and economic interests.
But the idea of the crusades emerged, above all, as a reaction to the measures that the Fatimid caliph Hakim bi-Amr Allah took against the Christians of Egypt and Syria. In 1008, al-Hakim outlawed the celebrations of Palm Sunday, and the following year he ordered that Christians be punished and all their property confiscated. In that same year of 1009, he sacked and demolished the church dedicated to Mary in Cairo, and did not prevent the desecration of the Christian sepulchers surrounding it, or the sacking of the city’s other churches.
That same year saw what was certainly the most severe episode: the destruction of the Constantinian basilica of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, known as the Holy Sepulcher.
The historical records of the time say that he had ordered “to obliterate any symbol of Christian faith, and provide for the removal of every reliquary and object of veneration.” The basilica was then razed, and Ibn Abi Zahir did all he could to demolish the sepulcher of Christ and any trace of it.
Today in many intellectual circles there is a lot of talk about the religious tolerance shown over many centuries by the Islamic authorities, because while in terms of the pagan populations the saying “embrace Islam and your life will be spared” held true, and the pagans who did not convert were killed the “people of the book,” the Jews and Christians, were able to continue practicing their religion.
In reality, the situation was much less idyllic: the Christians and Jews could survive only if they accepted Muslim political dominion and a situation of humiliation, which was aggravated by the obligation to pay increasingly burdensome taxes. So it’s no wonder that most of the Christians, even though they were not constrained by force, converted to Islam on account of the constant economic and social pressure. This led to the total disappearance of a form of Christianity that had flourished for more than half a millennium, as in the part of Africa ruled by the Roman empire, the land of Tertullian, saint Cyprian, Tyconius, and above all saint Augustine.
This is shown by the fact that many Islamic countries have not accepted the declaration of human rights promulgated by the United Nations in 1948, or have done so with the reservation of excluding the norms that conflict with Qur’anic law which means practically all of them. From an historical point of view, therefore, it must be recognized that the declaration of the rights of man is a cultural fruit of the Christian world, even though these are “universal” norms, in that they are valid for all.
In Islamic tradition, in fact, the concept of the equality of all human beings does not exist, nor does, in consequence, the concept of the dignity of every human life. Sharia is founded upon a threefold inequality: between man and woman, between Muslim and non-Muslim, and between freeman and slave. In essence, the male human being is considered a full titleholder of rights and duties only through his belonging to the Islamic community: those who convert to another religion or become atheists are considered traitors, subject to the death penalty, or at least to the loss of all their rights.
The most irrevocable of these inequalities is that between man and woman, because the others can be overcome the slave can be freed, the non-Muslim can convert to Islam while woman’s inferiority is irremediable, in that it was established by God himself. In Islamic tradition, the husband enjoys an almost absolute authority over his wife: while polygamy is permitted for men, a woman may not have more than one husband, may not marry a man of another faith, can be repudiated by her husband, has no rights to the children in case of divorce, is penalized in the division of the inheritance, and from a legal standpoint her testimony is worth half as much as a man’s.
In Islamic tradition, in fact, the concept of the equality of all human beings does not exist, nor does, in consequence, the concept of the dignity of every human life. Sharia is founded upon a threefold inequality: between man and woman, between Muslim and non-Muslim, and between freeman and slave.
So if Islam implied, and still implies, not merely religious membership, but an entire way of life, sanctioned even at the political level a way of life that naturally involves and prescribes how to act with other peoples, how to behave in questions of war and peace, how to conduct relations with foreigners it is very easy to understand how the victory of Lepanto guaranteed for the West the possibility of developing its culture of respect for the human person, for whom equal dignity regardless of his condition came to be guaranteed.
If this characterization of Islam is destined to remain unchanged in the future, as it has been until now, the only possible outcome is a difficult coexistence with those who do not belong to the Muslim community: in an Islamic country, in fact, the non-Muslim must submit to the Islamic system, if he does not wish to live in a situation of substantial intolerance.
Likewise, on account of this all-embracing conception of religion and political authority, the Muslim will have great difficulty in adapting to the civil laws in non-Islamic countries, seeing them as something foreign to his upbringing and to the dictates of his religion. Perhaps one should ask oneself if the well-attested difficulties persons coming from the Islamic world have with integrating into the social and cultural life of the West are not explained in part by this problematic situation.
We must also recognize the natural right of every society to defend its own cultural, religious, and political identity. It seems to me that this is precisely what Pius
Atheists are against religions. It so happens that the dominant religion in the US is Christianity, so they seem to be against it more so than Islam. When push comes to shove, Atheists have far more fear and hatred of martial religions such as Islam than urbane ones such as Christianity, which as been de-fanged over the centuries. Atheists loathe Christianity, but they fear Islam.
I hear ya. Maher has these rare outbreaks of sanity where he is lucid and comprehensible. But don’t blink or you’ll miss ‘em!
CC
"COEXIST" is atheist-speak for "Please kill me last."
I know this because my husband and I lived in the KSA when he (and I) worked for the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO--not U.S. government, 3 private U.S. oil companies and [Dutch] Shell) and lived in Ras Tanura for FIVE (count'em) LONG years. No, not five weeks or months, but YEARS.
FIVE YEARS: You get to know the country, its people, its way of life and its religion. My husband called it the "adventure of a lifetime" for us. Boy was he right.
While we were there we went to Egypt twice (they like Americans and are happy with their life, country and culture), Syria, Turkey, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain (several times)
I really learned a LOT about myself, what was important to me and HOW lucky I was to be an American. When we finally landed at LAX I KISSED the ground!! I got down on the shiny linoleum floor and KISSED the ground.
I was...home.
i checked the by-line to see if this was John Semmens Semi-News...
and we were allowed to use our own resources, this would not be an issue...
Bizarro World ping...
Charlie Rose is almost as stupid as John Kerry.
I have to give Bill Maher credit where it’s due. He was magnificent in puncturing holes in each of Charlie Rose’s flimsy old, pipe dream talking points. Charlie looks cadaverous, may want to stay on late, late night TV or maybe radio. Most guests would hold back, too polite to repeatedly make the host look like an idiot in self-denial, not Bill. People change throughout their lives about many issues. It’s not too late for Bill to be Saved. Conservatives like Ms.C.Cupp or Rand Paul will be the bridge between the left world ready to consider entering the right world.
Indeed; this and Sotomayor's apprehension/warning about drone [over-]use…
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