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.”
Class, Compare and Contrast.
by Austin Ruse
http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/working-with-the-muslims.html
The 10 p.m. negotiating session was set to go all night long. This was the last night of a two-week process that had been in planning for years before. All the hard things would be decided in the dead of that final night, when everyone was exhausted, the cafeteria was closed, and the translators had all gone home.
I walked out onto the floor of the immense negotiating room in the basement of the United Nations. Concentric half rings of desks cascaded from the front to the back with one hundred and eighty-something national “flags” arranged alphabetically, and floor-to-ceiling windows 100 feet high overlooking the moonlit East River.
On the negotiating floor, I approached a Muslim ambassador and said, “This session is going all night long and its going to be very tough going. And when it gets really hard, I want you to know that right over there,” and I pointed to a section of raised seats off to the side, “twenty Christians will be praying for you.”
That night this man was a tiger in defense of unborn children. The gathered western governments, along with U. N. bureaucrats, hungered for a right to abortion that would require nations to allow for the unrestricted ling of their unborn babies.
He rose time and time again to stop dangerous language from entering into that document. He pounded on his desk. At one point, he even rose in defense of our Christian NGOs who had come under attack from the European Union. As the sun rose, his efforts, our efforts, paid off. An alleged right to abortion was stopped once more.
Many will applaud the result of this meeting and others like it, and those same people will cringe that we accomplish this task with governments that allow the persecution of our co-religionists. It would be good if the coalition of those who support unborn children at the U. N. were broad and vast and deep. It is not.
If only the so-called Christian nations stood with us. It is post-Christian Europe that leads the fight to make abortion the law of the world. Even such solid countries as Poland and Malta go along with Germany, France, and the United Kingdom after the EU takes a common position, which is almost always in favor of the culture of death.
What about Catholic Latin America? There are a number of reasons they are not with us. Their elites long ago sidled up to Europe on the question of abortion. They view abortion practically as a sacrament and also a badge of sophistication. Their governments also do not want to be hectored by U.N. “human rights” committees who push for a universal right to abortion.
They also tend to throw a bone to their domestic radical feminists and allow them to represent their countries at U.N. negotiations. These governments also do not want to be labeled as part of what the prestige media calls the “unholy alliance” of the Vatican and the Muslim states. So, Catholic Latin America largely takes a powder on these issues.
Africa? They are so poor they cannot give up even a single dime proffered by the U.N. and the donor nations. Is financial assistance linked to support of the pro-abortion agenda? A few years ago a new diplomat questioned her country’s sponsorship of a resolution. Immediately afterward the lobbyist from the U.N. Population Fund threatened her country with losing financial aid. That is a potent weapon.
I could go on throughout the all the regions of the world and find similar reasons why our pro-life coalition at the U.N. is so small.
Some will say it is not worth protecting the unborn child if we have to make common cause with the Muslim states. Recently, at Andrew Breitbart’s “Big Peace” website, respected columnist Diana West suggested that in working with the Muslims, pro-life Christian NGOs help spread Sharia and radical Islam. She believes that religious persecution is a more important issue than protecting unborn babies from their own holocaust.
Many individuals and groups would agree. They work on religious freedom and ignore the plight of the unborn. That is their right. Groups must choose their mission. But West and, I suspect, others go further. They actually want us to stop our work because the cost is too high if it includes Muslims.
No one knows the yearly global body count owing to abortion. Is it 50 million? The “official” data say so, but it is likely more; possibly much more. This represents the grossest human rights tragedy of all time and would get exponentially worse if U.N. radicals get their way.
If one were simply adding up columns of death, this column would dwarf all others; all wars, all persecutions, all pogroms, and all final solutions. It is all the more barbaric because these victims have no way to fight back, and nowhere to run.
And we are supposed to stand aside because the Muslims make defending the unborn possible?
We in the U.N. pro-life movement believe we are called to this fight in particular. We applaud those who work on other legitimate human rights issues like religious persecution. But we believe the right to life comes first. It is the right that makes all other rights and freedoms possible including freedom of religion.
We also believe that in our own way we do fight for religious freedom. In working with Muslim diplomats, in becoming friends with them, even by loving them, we believe we are changing hearts and minds. And in our own – perhaps mysterious – way, we do help our beleaguered brothers and sisters. This commonly misunderstood way is the way of Christ.
Austin Ruse is the President of the New York and Washington, D.C.-based Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a research institute that focuses exclusively on international social policy. The opinions expressed here are Mr. Ruse’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of C-FAM.
No matter what they believe, “taquia” will allow them to appease the infidels . . . that’s why Obambi, a devout mooslim, can endorse murdering newly born Americans and not offend the camel jockey sand-monkeys.
so freedom to choose abortion is among the many freedoms and rights to privacy enjoyed by muslim women?
who knew
Muslims honor kill their kids when they’re born. Why would they give a damn about the unborn?
Compare and Contrast
I have yet to see a burqa at a ProLife rally.
Thanks
This is different than what I assumed.
Is there a difference between Sunni and Shiite muslims on abortion?
Bump
You can not form an alliance with this group. They will lie to get you to agree. They despise you and will make a show of cooperating, but they are fundamentally liars.
Sexual Morality -- what morality? the are fine with having girls and boys as sex slaves...
marriage -- more then 1 wife?? IMMORAL to me...
Women's Rights?? When I see a Muslim women in a bikini walking in Mecca, then I'll believe they have rights!!
But they DO view that fathers and husbands have an absolute and inviolate right to control the sexuality of their wives and daughters, so it might be easy to get their support on things like minors requiring parental consent before having an abortion.
My take is that Muslims in general do not have any serious problems with non-Muslims having abortions - we only harm ourselves, we decrease our numbers, and we prove how decadent our culture is, how superior theirs is.
Robert Spence finds Islamic theological opinion inconsistent and contradictory when it comes to the right to life of the conceived child.
Of course, you'll find the same in different strands of Judaism and Christianity: some Orthodox Jews are rather downright pro-life; others (including "Conservative" and "Reform" Jews) consider abortion to be much more negotiable. And I recall that the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights was hosted for decades in the United Methodist building in Washington, DC.)
Austin Ruse, on the other hand, has spent decades with his pro-Life pro-Family NGO battling the International Planned Parenthood pro-abortion, pro-depravity, pro-LGBT crowd at the U.N.; and he has found some of the Islamic countries to be effective, even essential allies. Meanwhile the so-called Christian countries of Europe and elsewhere, including the USA, have let him down disastrously, over and over again.
And MNDude, I've seen a burqa at a prolife rally. Years ago I knew a gal-- a red-headed, blue-eyed convert to Islam --- who used to come to prolife demonstrations in Maryland. She and her Yemeni friends would yell curses (she told me they were curses) --- impressive polysyllabic screams --- at the pro-abort counter-demonstrators.
Hope you’re right. I’d love to see the wave of European Muslims go up against that part of their culture
You might take that up with Austin Ruse, who has found Muslim diplomats in the U.N. to be far more reliable opponents of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, than any of the diplomats from the historically “Christian” countries. Europe, Britain, the U.S. and the Anglosphere generally, are almost invariably pro-global-baby-killing and pro-global-sodomy.
If you think a bikini is an adequate indicator of women’s inherent rights and dignity: well, that tells me a lot, not about rights, but about you.
And when these muslims go home to their countries do they carry on their campaign to stop abortion?
My, aren’t you self-righteous.
http://worldabortionlaws.com/map/
(click on map to enlarge Middle East-Northern Africa areas) abortion is largely illegal in Islamic countries.
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