Posted on 09/17/2012 12:30:24 PM PDT by ConorMacNessa
I was raised as an evangelical Christian in America, and any discussion of Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations around the world must include the phenomenon of American Islamophobia, for which large sectors of evangelical Christianity in America serve as a greenhouse.
At a time when U.S. embassies are being attacked and when people are getting killed over an offensive, adolescent and puerile film targeting Islam - beyond pathetic in its tawdriness – we must begin to own up to the reality of evangelical Islamaphobia.
Many of my own relatives receive and forward pious-sounding and alarm-bell-ringing e-mails that trumpet (IN LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS!) the evils of Islam, that call their fellow evangelicals and charismatics to prayer and “spiritual warfare” against those alleged evils, and that often - truth be told - contain lots of downright lies.
For example, one recent e-mail claimed “Egyptian Christians in Grave Danger as Muslim Brotherhood Crucifies Opponents." Of course, that claim has been thoroughly debunked, but the sender’s website still (as of Friday) claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has “crucified those opposing" Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy "naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.”
(Excerpt) Read more at religion.blogs.cnn.com ...
In other words - Ignore the tenets of their “faith”, ignore their ancient history, ignore their recent history, and ignore their declarations of intent. OK, Got It!
The author is delusional.
Can’t they find the undoctored original and release that, or have the actors interviewed and translated into Arabic and release that the same places the doctored edit was sent?
Let's see if we were to go back to 33 A.D., which Apostle would Brian McClaren be. Would he be the caring , loving, devoted John, the thoughtful Peter, the thinking and sometimes skeptical Timothy..or would this guy be the go along to get along, servile, lying pig Judas Iscariot. He accepts daily his 40 pieces of silver. Paul warned of guys like this guy, go along to get along, lukewarm, appeasing enemies of Christ so that they may reap earthly accolades types.
Jesus constantly warned of false gospels, of accepting universalism, of being wishy washy and trying to prosper in both the world of the Romans and the world of his Word and Glory. Accepting of another man’s false religion does not earn you favors with God. We are called to resist false gospels and messages proclaiming a false God. Unlike Muslims though we are called to do this with gentleness and respect, we are never to harm or kill our critics. God needs no defense by us, he can do a great job with that himself.
Sad really a theologian can be this lost, be so off base in his Christian fundamentals
It’s time for another Crusade. Coexistence is not an option.
I nominate this guy to be the next US ambassador to Libya complete with NO security. He seems to know Muslims well, and he clearly fears the evangelicals of his childhood. Libya might be too moderate for the guy. Maybe he could be the new ambassador to Iran.
Where to start?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ and evangelism are BANNED in almost every MUSLIM country. Missionaries would almost certainly be risking their lives to try and preach it.
Christians aren’t being crucified in Egypt. They ARE persecuted and under siege. Same thing in Iraq.
MUSLIMS around the world CELEBRATED the attack on 9/11 and cheered the death of thousands of Americans.
Mark me down as Islamaphobic.
Notice how this puke Brian says he was “raised” in an evangelical family and has evangelical friends. Does he once describe himself as an evangelical? You have to be tripping on mushrooms to be prompted to write this article based on the savage attacks against our nation in Libya and Egypt.
Judas Iscariot had “evangelical” friends too.
drivel emerging from the left.... useless dreck
***I do not fear islam, I despise it.***
It is not Islamophobia. It is Islamomisa, a revulsion of islam.
This guy has chosen.
He has been winnowed. He is chaff, the tares.
Islam has a purpose in God’s plan, and it is to force people to make a choice between the world and God’s kingdom.
That was....an amazing display of self-hatred and Stockholm Syndrome. Lib stupidity displayed.
Yup! if someone insults me, and I torture them to death its their own fault, right? And abused wives probably caused their husband to beat them. Poland caused Germany to attack them in WWII as well.
The beautiful thing about his logic is that I can justify any act of aggression merely by citing a perceived slight. Tawdry, pathetic, even pornographic.
The history of Islam's practitioners speaks for itself. Islam, by the very nature of its own doctrine, history and by the actions of its followers has shown itself to be the existential enemy of Western civilization. Dr. Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims provides insight into the Islamic mindset and what its ascendancy might mean for the rest of us:
Lee Harris' outstanding work, The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West explains why and how the West's days may be numbered. We are our own worst enemy unless we face up to the hard choices necessary to remain a free and prosperous people.
If anyone is still having trouble wrapping their minds around the fact that Western civilization does in fact have mortal and existential enemies, take a quick turn through Lee Harris' Civilization and Its Enemies
Let us also dispense with the idea that Islam is a religion. Islam is not so much a religion as it is a supremacist, totalitarian political ideology, a destructive and murderous meme impervious to moderation or change, and with a narrowly circumscribed set of rituals that define every aspect of its followers’ lives. As for 'tolerance', here's a quote from the Muslim Brotherhood and their mission in the U.S, calling for...
"...a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions."
Speaking to the “Islam is a religion of peace," assertion that we hear from Muslims and ignorant (yes, ignorant) Westerners, when Muslims assert that Islam is a “religion of peace” they are not engaging in al taqqiya, they are actually making an assertion in good faith.
The problem lies in the fact that Islam has, from the Western point of view, a defective concept of peace. In semitic languages like Arabic, the consonants are the “root” of the word: islam = submission, and salam = peace have the same root, slm.
The only concept of peace in Islamic jurisprudence is the peace between the conqueror and the conquered, between master and slave. There is no concept of a negotiated peace between nations in Islamic law (note that law is the defining property of Islam—their clerics are jurists, schools of Qu’ranic interpretation are called fiqh, a legalistic term)—Muslims may negotiate a “hudna” or armistice of limited duration with non-Muslim, but not a definitive enduring peace.
In that regard, Islam was, is and will continue to be a serial murderer of entire cultures and peoples. This is precisely what Islam has done throughout its entire 1400 year history. This is what it has done whenever it has finally gotten the upper hand in whatever culture it has infiltrated. This is what has been inextricably interwoven into the DNA of its operating system. Those whom Islam does not destroy, it enslaves, diminishes and impoverishes. Islam strives for the conversion, enslavement or death of all who do not conform to its cruel and sadistic vision of Mankind. Advocates of Islamic ‘reform’ are sadly mistaken and deluded. Islam cannot be ‘reformed’ in the light of our Western values of humanity and freedom. Were that so, it would no longer be Islam. For its psychopathic and brutal misogyny alone, Islam is an abomination and worthy only of extinction. The best and most concise description of the Islamic mindset was laid out almost as an aside by noted Historian and philosopher, Carroll Quigley in his landmark Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. Here, he describes what he characterized as The Pakistani-Peruvian axis. An excerpt from that work is shown below:
Another aspect of Arabic society is the scorn of honest, steady manual work, especially agricultural work. This is a consequence of the fusion of at least three ancient influences. First, the archaic bureaucratic structure of Asiatic despotism, in which the peasants supported the warriors and scribes, regarded manual workers, especially tillers of the soil, as the lowest layer of society, and regarded the acquisition of literacy and military prowess as the chief roads to escape from physical drudgery. Second, the fact that Classical Antiquity, whose influence on the subsequent Islamic civilization was very great, was based on slavery, and came to regard agricultural (or other manual) work as fit for slaves, also contributed to this idea. Third, the Bedouin tradition of pastoral, warlike nomads scorned tillers of the soil as weak and routine persons of no real spirit or character, fit to be conquered or walked on but not to be respected. The combination of these three formed the lack of respect of manual work that is so characteristic of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis.Somewhat similar to this lack of respect for manual work are a number of other aspects of traditional Arab life that have spread the length of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. The chief source of many of these is the Bedouin outlook, which originally reflected the attitudes of relatively small group of the Islamic culture but which, because they were a superior, conquering group, came to be copied by others in the society, even by the despised agricultural workers. These attitudes include lack of respect for the soil, for vegetation, for most animals, and for outsiders. These attitudes, which are singularly ill-fitted for the geographic and climatic conditions of the whole Pakistani-Peruvian area, are to be seen constantly in the everyday life of that area as erosion, destruction of vegetation and wild life, personal cruelty and callousness to most living things, including one’s fellow men, and a general harshness and indifference to God’s creation. This final attitude, which well reflects the geographic conditions of the area, which seem as harsh and indifferent as man himself, is met by those men who must face it in their daily life as a resigned submission to fate and to the inhumanity of man to man.
Interestingly enough, these attitudes have successfully survived the efforts of the three great religions of ethical monotheism, native to the area, to change these attitudes. The ethical sides of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam sought to counteract harshness, egocentricity, tribalism, cruelty, scorn of work and of one’s fellow creatures, but these efforts, on the whole, have met with little success throughout the length of the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. Of the three, Christianity, possibly because it set the highest standards of the three, has fallen furthest from achieving its aims. Love, humility, brotherhood, cooperation, the sanctity of work, the fellowship of community, the image of man as a fellow creature made in the image of God, respect for women as personalities and partners of men, mutual helpmates on the road to spiritual salvation, and the vision of our universe, with all of its diversity, complexity, and multitude of creatures, as a reflection of the power and goodness of God – these basic aspects of Christ’s teachings are almost totally lacking throughout the Pakistani-Peruvian axis and most notably absent on the “Christian” portion of that axis from Sicily, or even the Aegean Sea, westward to Baja California and Tierra del Fuego.
Throughout the whole axis, human actions are not motivated by these “Christian virtues,” but by the more ancient Arabic personality traits, which become vices and sins in the Christian outlook: harshness, envy, lust, greed, selfishness, cruelty, and hatred.
Quigley believed that Islam possessed an “ethical” aspect. However that may be, it is overshadowed and essentially silenced by the actions of its adherents. As I have previously stated, Islam is an abomination and worthy only of extinction.
Gee, look at me. I was raised as an evangelical Christian in America so that makes me an expert on Islamaphobia. I will tell everybody what to think because I was “raised” as an evangelical.
He’s quite obviously mentally deranged.
I do not fear islam, I loathe it as I loathe communism, fascism, and socialism or a fly larvae that feeds on a rotting corpse.
Hey Brian!
Are you even capable of independent, objective, assessment?
What single factor can be associated with 90% of the terrorism in the WORLD, over that last 20 years?
Are you aware that by definition, a “phobia” is an irrational fear”?
Let me help:
Recognizing and addressing Radical, Islamic Terrorism is NOT a “fear”.
Recent history also informs us that such a recognition is NOT “irrational”!!
Would it be unreasonable to expect more than a half-dozen Muslims to have condemned Islamic Terrorist actions over these last 20 years?
Brian McLaren must be CNN’s “house boy evangelist.”
If he’s really an evangelical Christian, I challenge him to go evangelize and start up a church in Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Pakiston or Iran. Maybe then he might see how “peaceful” islam is.
Are you sure you were wrong the first time?
Time for you to open up a Koran and read. Time for the stupidity to end.
What a load of crap. So the crucifixions were debunked, but I can assure you many Coptics are being tortured and murdered by muslims in Egypt. And did you know 30 years ago “Palestine” was 50% Christian and now it’s 20%?
In fact, one of my regrets about being Catholic is that the Vatican doesn’t do more to help our brothers in the Middle East.
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