Islam and Religious Imperialism

“Islam in its cradle was already a specimen of religious imperialism, which is another name for secularized theocracy.”

Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a non-Christian World

A Missions-minded Orthodox Church?

You can find them every now and then: the Antiochians in the USA are one example--though mostly they are converting Christians to Christianity (something I don't find terribly impressive). But there is also the Orthodox Church in Indonesia, whose senior priest is himself a former Muslim. (Who converted to evangelical Christianity and only later became Orthodox.) Here is their website, I recommend their newsletter which has some nice pictures. It makes me glad to see that there are places where Orthodoxy is still out planting churches and catechizing and evangelizing non-Christians.

Friends of Indonesia

Douthat on Islam: a Roman leader or Cantuar the appeaser?

I told you, great article here by Ross Douthat:

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.

Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.

By contrast, the Church of England’s leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

Douthat on Anglicans, Catholics, and Ecumenism

Great stuff on Anglicanism and Catholicism and ecumenicity. This is a brilliant article. Perhaps the best I've read on the whole Anglican-Catholic ordinariate development so far:

At the same time, the more ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths — Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift into agnosticism and apathy.

Nobody is more aware of this erosion than Benedict. So the pope is going back to basics — touting the particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects, and seeking converts more than common ground.

Along the way, he’s courting both ends of the theological spectrum. In his encyclicals, Benedict has addressed a range of issues — social justice, environmental protection, even erotic love — that are close to the hearts of secular liberals and lukewarm, progressive-minded Christians. But instead of stopping at a place of broad agreement, he has pushed further, trying to persuade his more liberal readers that many of their beliefs actually depend on the West’s Catholic heritage, and make sense only when grounded in a serious religious faith.

Jerusalem, the third most holy site of Islam?

So fractured was the Muslim Ummah in the late 7th century that the
Damascus Umayyads started discouraging their subjects from going on the
hajj pilgrimage. It is said that while in Mecca, the Syrian pilgrims would be
infl uenced by the oratory of Caliph Ibn al-Zubayr and give their oath of
allegiance to the Meccan caliph. Abd al-Malik feared that returning pilgrims
would challenge his political as well as religious authority. Many historians
report that Abd al-Malik was so frustrated by his inability to capture Mecca
and to lead the hajj that he built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem as an
alternative to the Ka’aba in Mecca. Before Abd al-Malik, there is no record
of Muslims going to pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but after he built the Dome
of the Rock, this site became a venue for Syrians to visit instead of Mecca
and Medina.

Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, by Tarek Fatah (2008, Wiley, p 169)

The Huge News today

Wow. Huge. At least, for Anglicans like us.

The Pope has announced the formation of a new and rather innovative ecclesiastical structure for Anglicans/Episcopalians who are disappointed with all the wonderful developments in the West (women bishops in the UK, gay marriage in the US, church blessings of same-sex unions in Canada, you know). In a nutshell: Anglicans can become Roman Catholic AND retain their liturgy and hymnody and their married priests (to some extent, at least). That is a big deal. Hordes of evangelicals (like me) have left The Episcopal Church (USA) already. It is not unreasonable to think that a significant number of anglo-catholics (like me) will also leave now that communion with Rome AND retaining an Anglican identity is a very real option.

Anyway, the press release is HERE, as well as the best treatment of the underlying meanings of the document.

[And for those of you who are wondering if Abu Daoud & Co. are going that way, the answer is no. We don't live in the US or the UK, but in the Middle East. The Anglicans here don't do all those trendy things like gay marriage, so it's not a concern. And plus, like I have mentioned several times before, it would mean the end of our ministry here as Catholics don't support lay missioners. There are other reasons too, but that's just to start with.]

Islamdom in Sweden

From HERE:

Twenty years ago, I think that most Sweden would have found it difficult to imagine that Islam would become Sweden's second largest religion, that Swedish artists who criticize or joke about Islam would live under constant death threats, that a dozen Muslim terror organizations would establish themselves in Sweden, that leading Muslim representatives would make demands about imposing Sharia laws in Sweden, that Swedish county councils would use taxpayer's money to circumsise fully healthy little boys, that Sweden would have the most rapes in Europe and that Muslim men would be highly over-represented among the perpetrators, that Swedish pools would introduce separate swimming times for men and women, that Swedish municipalities would consider introducing sex-segregated swimming classes in the schools, that the freezer sections in our grocery stores would offer ritually slaughtered meat while Swedish preschools would stop serving pork, that Swedish schools would introduce new vacations to celebrate the end of Ramadan while Church graduations would be banned in more and more schools and so forth.

All this is today a part of Swedish reality. The question is how it would look a few more decades from now, when the Muslim population, if the current pace continues, will multiply in size and many of Europe's major cities, including Malmö, would almost certainly have a Muslim majority.

The multicultural social elites might see this future as a colorful, interesting change for a Sweden and Europe, which all too often denies ever being 'Swedish' or 'European'.

As a Swedish Democrat I see this as our greatest foreign threat since WWII, and I promise to do everything in my power to change the trend when we go to the polls next year.


HT to Islam in Europe

An Israeli arrives at Heathrow...

..and the customs officer asks, "Occupation?

The Israeli answers, "No, no! I'm just visiting."

Qutb's mythical version of the early Umma

The society was freed from all oppression, and the Islamic system was established in which justice was God’s justice and in which weighing was by God’s balance. […] Morals were elevated, hearts and souls were purified, and with the exception of a very few cases, there was no occasion even to enforce the limits and punishments which God has prescribed; for now conscience was the law-enforcer, and the pleasure of God, the hope of Divine reward, and the fear of God’s anger took the place of police and punishment.

Qutb, p 30
Milestones
Damascus

Current events and the fall of the Roman Empire

This author is talking about the gluttony of the the USA government and the corresponding decline of the country's influence in the world:

I cannot put my finger on it exactly, but there is something very "Decline and Fall of Rome"-ish about the trend of current events. In Rome, too, as things began to go downhill from its days of heroism and glory, the lawsuits multiplied (with results just as random and unpredictable as they are today), the troops were brought home to be safe as the barbarians made things rough on the frontiers, productive businesses were taxed and taxed to pay for the emperors' extravagances until people were put out of work, farms went fallow and food had to be brought in increasingly from greater and greater distances, and the citizens of Rome partied on as though there were no tomorrow.

No one at the top could bring themselves to describe the bad news as it was happening; instead, a few messengers who brought ill tidings were put to death. And so, guess what? Nobody brought any news to Rome about the barbarians advancing toward the gates, until it was too late.

From HERE.

What do you all think? Is the decline of the USA (and the West in general) like or unlike the decline of the Roman Empire? Specifically, how are the two different?

Antwerp: 40% of Elementary School students are Muslims

Yep. Islamization in action. It's all about demographics and migration:

40% of the students in the Antwerp municipal elementary schools (4,150) chose Islam as their religion class subject this year, according to data provided by the Antwerp alderman for education Robert Voorhamme (SP.A) upon request by Vlaams Belang.

According to Filip Dewinter (Vlaams Belang), by extrapolation, in 2012 a majority of the students in the Antwerp elementary schools will be Muslim. Voorhamme says this is an hypothesis. "People see a threat where there is none," says the alderman for education.

31.5% chose a non-confessional morals class (3,235 students) and 26.5% chose Catholic religion (2,751 students). Other religions (Protestants, Orthodox) were chosen by a small number of students.

In secondary schools, morals class is still more popular than Islam: 47.5% compared to 30.5%.

From HERE.

Chrislam: Syncretism, West African style

I love it!

Mazhar Mallouhi on attitudes about Muhammad

I am allowed to say good things about Oliver Cromwell without being reminded that he chopped off the king’s head. I am allowed to speak positively about Thomas Jefferson without incessant interruptions that he impregnated his slave. Do people think that we are somehow admitting defeat, or dishonoring Christ, if we focus on the positive aspects of Muhammad or the religion that he founded?

This is from the most recent issue of St Francis Magazine, p 12.

Mallouhi, Mazhar. 'Comments on the Insider Movement' in SFM Vol 5:5, Oct 2009, pp 3-14.

Mallouhi describes himself as a Muslim follower of Christ.