Chesterton on Islam

GK Chesterton was one of the most influential popular Christian authors of the 20th C. He was an Anglican-turned-Catholic and he wrote on Saint Francis, Saint Thomas Aquinas, the basics of the Christian faith, and many other topics. Here is a fascinating quote of his on Islam:

Unitarians (a sect never to be mentioned without a special respect for their distinguished intellectual dignity and high intellectual honour) are often reformers by the accident that throws so many small sects into such an attitude. But there is nothing in the least liberal or akin to reform in the substitution of pure monotheism for the Trinity. The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. The heart of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea “it is not well for man to be alone.” The social instinct asserted itself everywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled by the Western idea of monks. So even asceticism became brotherly; and the Trappists were sociable even when they were silent. If this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)–to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places and, the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.

(Quote is taken from the article Allah and the Trinity)

Islam and the Letter 'X'

Well, the letter 'x' is the same as the Saint Andrew's cross, but the Latin letter predated Christianity by quite a while I think. But that cannot stop the government of KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) from being annoying to the world and paranoid about everything:

"The letter "X" soon may be banned in Saudi Arabia because it resembles the mother of all banned religious symbols in the oil kingdom: the cross.

"The new development came with the issuing of another mind-bending fatwa, or religious edict, by the infamous Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the group of senior Islamic clergy that reigns supreme on all legal, civil, and governance matters in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

"The commission's damning of the letter "X" came in response to a Ministry of Trade query about whether it should grant trademark protection to a Saudi businessman for a new service carrying the English name "Explorer."

"'No! Nein! Nyet!' was the commission's categorical answer."

This, I think, supports my argument that Islam is, today at least, very worrried about itself. Very insecure. Very nervous. When you have to edit the world's dominant alphabet it shows that you lack self-confidence and vigor.

Here is the link:
NYSun

American Muslim Women

Muslims do best in societies where they are the minority. Why? Becuase they enjoy the benefit from the rights accorded to citizens which are genrous and liberal. But once Muslimss become the majority and Shari9 comes in, then the decline starts.

Here is a (positive) review of a book about Muslim women in America. All I can say is that they are not real Muslim women at all, because they do not live in an Islamic society. If they were in an Islamic society, they would do what Muslim women are supposed to do: be quiet.

But they are in America, so they have the freedom to write and publish--for now.

Excerpt:

"If there's anyone I was more sick and tired of than Muslims, it's Muslim–bashers. No one is allowed to criticize Islam and Muslims but those who do it from love. Those who do it from hate, step aside. And step aside, those who do it as a way to fame and fortune funded by neo–conservatives who think they can kaCHING up genuine "reform" in Islam and manufacture docile little McMuslims for the maintenance of U.S. McHegemony in the world. Neocons can kiss my Islamic ass."

Now tell me how that is different from the standard BBC line. The link is here

Lies and more Lies, courtesy of the German press

Here is a link to an article from the noted periodical Der Spiegel. It is sad to see things like this. Here is the particular section that is absolutely and historically incorrect. It is theoretically true, but in historical fact has never been practiced:

"Jews and Christians enjoyed the protection of the Muslim authorities. They were, after all, recipients of a scripture of revelation, who, like Muslims, believed in the one and only God - albeit, from an Islamic point of view, in a diluted form. Hence the designation dhimmi ("protected person") applied to both Jews and Christians living under Islamic rule. This exemptive status explicitly distinguished them from the non-believers who were the Muslims' predefined enemy."

Protection? This is totally false. The dhimmi contract was revocable unilaterally and without notice from the Muslim ruler. What kind of security does that actually afford? You pay your jizya for ten years and then, without notice, raiders descend on your town, burning buildings, taking women and children to be sold as slaves, and executing men who might be able to fight--without your notice that your great treaty of protection has been revoked.

Please.

Here is the link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,460559,00.html (copy and paste)

Surge in Muslim Converts?

From Sleepy Old Bear:

Link

He goes country by country talking about the converts being made there. I think it is over-optimistic, but even if only half of what he says is true it is still a big deal. This information is generally very hard to get because both the Muslim converts and the Christianss working with them have to keep it that way for safety purposes.

Example:

Iraq: more than 5,000 new Muslim converts to Christianity have been identified since the end of major combat operations, with 14 new churches opened in Baghdad, and dozens of new churches opened in Kurdistan, some of which have 500 to 800 members. Also, more than 1 million Bibles shipped into the country since 2003, and pastors report Iraqis are snatching them up so fast they constantly need more Bibles.

Egypt: some reports say 1 million Egyptians have trusted Christ over the past decade or so. The Egyptian Bible Society told me they used to sell about 3,000 copies of the JESUS film a year in the early 1990s. But last year they sold 600,000 copies, plus 750,000 copies of the Bible on tape (in Arabic) and about a half million copies of the Arabic New Testament. “Egyptians are increasingly hungry for God’s Word,” an Egyptian Christian leader told me. Last Christmas, I had the privilege of visiting the largest Christian congregation in the Middle East, which meets in an enormous cave on the outskirts of Cairo. Some 10,000 believers worship there every weekend. A prayer conference the church held in May 2005 drew some 20,000 believers.

Afghanistan: only 17 Muslim converts to Christianity before 9/11/01, but now more than 10,000. Dozens of baptisms every week.

Muhammad died a political leader, and Jesus died on a cross

Here are some interesting comments from the Rt. Rev. George Carey. He is the former Archbishop of Canterbury. That means he was the head of the Anglican Communion, which numbers about 70 million around the world.

In general I agree with him, but I would clarify that my sense is that "moderate Islam" is largely a myth. That is, it is a fabrication, perhaps not malicious, but it does not exist on the scale that the Western press hopes for. True Islam is and must be profoundly conservative. It must be profoundly Arabic in a 7th Century sort of way because Muhammad is seen as the ideal man. Thus his way of living, eating, speaking, holding a water glass, trimming his beard, and so on, must be emulated. This is actually what the word "sunni" means: the way or manner of life of Muhammad.

Thus moderate Islam actually must support many of the people that are called terrorists in the West. I do think, however, that there is room within "moderate Islam" to condemn the 9/11 mujahidiin. That, however, would be a minority position within moderate Islam--condemning the 9/11 mujahidiin, that is. Sad to see how so many people misunderstand Islam. Claiming that there is a large "moderate" group that simply does not exist is not helpful to anyone at all.

Until the West begins to understand this there is no possibility for fruitful conversation.

Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for space and clarity.

Q. I can't help but ask your thoughts about Pope Benedict and his comments last fall about Islam. What do you make of all that?

A. It didn't seem to relate to the message at all until one starts to look at the theme and what he was talking about. The secular mind can understand a God that's loving but cannot understand a God that's brutal and murders. So I think that in the pope's mind there was a link there: What kind of God do we believe in?

Now, I said that if people had looked at it carefully - it's a brilliant, brilliant essay on faith and secularism today - and the kind of thing he was saying indirectly about Islam, the Muslims need to face up to. The key question is why is Islam associated with terrorism? And it's no good saying that the terrorists are extremists.

There's something about the Islamic scriptures (that gives) justification for violence. There can be no denial about that actually. So there needs to be a really frank discussion.

Q. A lot of people who would call themselves Christians have committed acts of violence and used Scripture to justify (them). Do you see a difference?

A. I see a profound difference really. Because Islam - Muhammad - conquered by the sword. He died a political leader, and Jesus died on a cross. So there are two different concepts.

But you're absolutely right. There's been a lot of terrorism and violence done in the name of Christianity, which goes against the faith itself. I don't want to argue that Christians take the high moral ground on this. We can't. But what we have to say is we mustn't allow the terrorists to take Scripture over and bend it.... If Islam is a peaceful religion, then the moderates must deny the martyrs in terrorism and say that no terrorist actually is a martyr.

Here is the complete text: http://tinyurl.com/ye9ssk

Islam and Victimhood

Part IX: Victimhood and Muslim Identity (December 2006)

“No one admits that his own yoghurt is sour.” --Syrian proverb

I want to suggest in this post that victimhood has become an integral and essential element in Muslim identity today. There are a number of reasons for this, some of them are valid, but many of them are not. I want to explain why and how this has come to be the case today.

If I may quote Sam Huntington, “The problem is not Islamists, it is Islam: a civilization convinced of its superiority and obsessed with its inferiority.” Islam is unlike Christianity in that it makes certain guarantees, namely that if a society is faithful in following Islam (and the sharia’) then certain consequences must follow: material wealth, political power, an ever-widening scope of authority over non-Muslims, scientific and economic advancement, justice and good governance, and so forth. It is very clear though to people throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that other than sub-Saharan Africa their region is near the bottom of the list in all these areas. With globalization, migration, increasing ease of travel, and of course the internet, it has become clear to Muslims everywhere that this is not at all the case today.

(It must be stressed that Christianity does not make any such promises. While there are verses from the proverbs that speak of God rewarding hard, honest work, and many of us have seen this in our lives, even stronger is Jesus’ insistence that the Kingdom of God is characterized by opposition which may well be violent, and indeed resulting in martyrdom.)

And the tension is not just between MENA and the West. Rapid development and the growth of a middle class have moved forward in nations like India and China, not to mention the astounding development of places like South Korea and Japan in the 20th Century.

So there is a very tense situation because the empirical evidence and experience of the people run directly against the claims of Islam. There are two common ways of trying to reconcile the evidence and the religious doctrine. The first is simply to say that none of the Muslim countries are actually practicing Islam correctly. I hear this a lot: this country is too strict, that country is too liberal; this country is not democratic enough; that country has a corrupt monarchy; and so on. My answer: There are more than 20 Arab Muslim countries, and you mean to tell me that not one of them can get Islam right? If that is the case then Islam is more of a dream than a realistic system that can actually work. It’s like someone telling you that you can get a million bucks for walking from the ME to North America. You can easily spend all your life trying to do it, but ultimately it is simply impossible, no matter how wonderful the promised reward is.

The second response though is my primary concern here: victimhood. The reason that Muslims nations are not the prominent world powers, that their governments are extremely corrupt, that nepotism and tribalism and rampant, that five million Israelis publish more scientific papers in a year than 400 million Arabs, that no Muslim nation in MENA actually has freedom of the press, assembly, or speech, and that the governments are not accountable to the people—the reason is simple: we are being oppressed.

The culprit changes from place to place and time to time: the French, the British, the Israelis, the Americans, but tomorrow it will be someone else. Sometimes the culprit is other Muslims, but even then (as is the case of fighting between Shiia’ and Sunni in Iraq) the real culprit is outside of Islam.

The rise of the sense of victimhood is integral to the recovery of jihad which we have witnessed in these last years. Historically Jihad need not be related to self-defense at all, but the appeal to self-defense strengthens those who advocate it. And here is the critical tie: If all Muslims are victims of Western anti-Islamism then any act of Jihad against the West becomes an act of self-defense. This was OBL’s explicit rational for the 9-11 attacks: they were a defensive measure. And since all Americans contribute to the American oppression of Islam by virtue of paying taxes, all Americans (children and women included) are in fact military targets and their execution is an act of worship to God. Such is his logic, which, while novel, has great appeal throughout Dar al Islam.

Victimhood is a central element of contemporary Islamic identity. When the West does not help Muslims it is oppressing them. When the West intervenes in the region it is imperialism and occupation. When the west opts for the long, messy, and sometimes ineffective path of diplomacy, they are indecisive. When the West makes dramatic moves they are brash and militant. Victimhood confers on one’s self the ability to abuse power in the name of protection and self-preservation.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy because, as I outlined above, political and social efforts to help will always be interpreted by some as further persecution. Moreover, they lack the ability to bring about the profound moral and spiritual conversion that we call being born again. Only within the Gospel do we find a point of reference for victimhood and power because we understand that in the ultimate sense of the word no one is a victim because no one is absolutely innocent except for Jesus Christ. As the Gospel transforms our minds and our communities, the imperative is to be generous and forgiving rather than to assert the rightness of one’s cause. This is the transformation we should hope for in MENA.

Films from KSA?!

Interesting article here on some recent films from KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). While this is not about religion explicitly, I think it offers some good insights into the tension we see throughout Dar al Islam regarding change. In KSA many households have sat TV and can watch most anything they like, but actual movie theatres which are much easier to monitor are completely forbidden. Amazing.

I like Izidore's attitude about her work. I also appreciate her family's artistic qualities. Very few people here in the ME are interested in art unfortunately.

Saudi Filmmakers

Jesus was a good Muslim, and stuff on being a dhimmi

Here is a review by Bat Ye'or of a recent book.

Bat Ye'or is one of my great historians. Her name means Daughter of the Nile, and she was born in Egypt to Jewish parents. She is not a citizen of France where she does most of her writing.

She is the world's foremost scholar on dhimmitude, that is, the continued existence of Christian and Jewish communities in the Muslims world. Unfortunately the Western press has often mutilated the term and spoken of rights of "religious minorities". This is utterly absurd and shows their absolute ignorance regarding Islam. Dhimmitude only requires a Muslim ruler. Indeed, if a European country were taken over by a Muslim government then all the non-Muslims would be dhimmis--even if that is 80 or 90% or the population. This was in fact the case in much of Turkey, at times there were entire regions that were over 80% Christian, yet they were still under the dhimmi.

In any case, a fine review from a brilliant scholar:

Do we Worship the Same God?

An excerpt:

"In the first section, the author provides information about and reflections upon the Muslim Jesus (Isa). He stresses as fundamental the Koran’s teaching that Islam is the first, primordial religion, preceding Judaism and Christianity, which are dismissed as invalid traditions, being falsified versions of Islam. Because Christianity and Judaism are thought to be a corruption of the pure message of Islam, anything true in these religions comes from their Islamic roots. Consequently, to obey their true religion, Jews and Christians should “revert” to Islam and accept the prophethood of Muhammad."

Liturgy? Hmm....

Liturgy, translated from the Greek word (which occurs a few times in the NT, see my post below for more on that) means 'work of the people'. Recently, my friend Erik, who is studying theology at Oxford, preached the sermon below. Please check it out, it is very insightful from a Western point of view.

Liturgy refers to, in modern terms, the flow of the worship service. Don't get me wrong: every church has a liturgy. Sometimes it is written down, like in most Lutheran or Episcopal churches, sometimes it is simply memorized by the congregation, like in most Baptist or non-denom churches. There is music, then a prayer for this, then a prayer for that, then a sermon, then a prayer for X, then there is Y, and finally there is Z. That is liturgy, to put it in rather vulgar terms.

This is what he is talking about. Please read his homily carefully and post your comments on his blog at Priests and Paramedics

In terms of our work here, the question for us is: what kind of liturgy works well for Christians who comes from a Muslims background? That is a complicated and--really--a very difficult question. Should they separate men and women? Should they baptize children or not? Should they read from the Qu'ran and the Bible, or only the Bible? Should they kneel facing Mecca? Jerusalem? The rising sun in the East? (Most Christian churches face east, because Jesus is the Sun of Righteousness and the Light of the Word.)

"The Gospel does not destroy cultures, it fulfills them," said Pope Paul VI in his letter to the church called, "The Gospel is Preached." A great insight. Our task here is to figure out what exactly that looks like. Erik is trying to do that in post-modern Europe and post-Christian USA, we are doing that here in our home country in Dar al Islam.

Harsh Sentiments

It has been tough these last few weeks to talk with Christians here in the ME. Many people have a very bitter attitude towards Islam.

One pastor I spoke with told me point blank that Muslimss are evil, and they may act like they know God but it is all false.

Another brother complained about the election of a Muslim to the USA House of Representatives. "Islam is like a cancer, once it enters in it destroys everything. You will see."

God have mercy on us.

This Morning's Church Visit

I visited a Sriac Orthodox Church this morning here in our city. What's that? Glad you asked.

It is part of a family of what are called here Oriental Orthodox Churches. Not to be confused with Eastern Orthodox, these churches did not accept the definition of Chalcedon, which you can check out at New Advent if you like. Other churches in this famiyl are th Ethiopian Orthodox, Coptic, and Armenian Apostolic.

The language there is Syriac. That is, you should not think this is a "syrian" church, in term of the actual nation of Syria. It is named after it's liturgical language. The book of liturgy, which was kindly gifted to me, has three columns: Syriac (with the Syriac alphabet), Syriac (with the Arabic alphabet), and Arabic. Quite fascinating.

Am working on figuring out the contours of the Lord's Prayer in Syriac right now. Then will move on to the Creeds, and then possibly (if I get that far) to the Great Thanksgiving.

People were friendly, and I got to meet the priest and bishop who was visiting. Quite a young man!

Blessings be upon them. It sounded like their community was growing, which is not normal here in the Middle East for Christian communities.

Matt, Gina, & Matthew

The Pope on Islam and Evangelism

Pope urges 'firm, humble' dialogue with Muslims
Nov 10 2:16 PM US/Eastern

Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholics to engage in "firm and humble" dialogue with Muslims, in an address to bishops from Germany, which has a sizable Muslim minority.

Pope Benedict said Catholics should manifest their beliefs with the same conviction as Muslims, who "are attached with great seriousness to their convictions and their religious rites."

The pope, who will travel to mainly Muslim Turkey at the end of the month, said Muslims "have the right to our firm and humble witness for Jesus Christ."

Such dialogue "obviously presupposes a solid knowledge of one's own faith," he added.

Pope Benedict is to pay a four-day visit to Turkey, his first official trip to a Muslim country, starting on November 28.

The planned trip follows uproar across the Muslim world over remarks by the pope in September seen as linking Islam and violence.

From Breit Bart