Posted on 04/04/2002 3:53:09 AM PST by fporretto
I was perusing another thread, a survey of Hamas's leadership and how its members live, and noticed several posts to the effect that Islam itself is the greatest recognizable threat to world peace. Needless to say, this is a flat contradiction to the image Islamic loyalists are trying to purvey.
Though I tend to agree with the assessment, I find myself wondering how a religion -- a system of belief pertaining to Man's relations with the Divine -- could possibly have produced so perverse and secular a thing as a supranational military movement that targets peaceable civilians of other faiths.
The one idea that occurs to me about it is that Islam, unlike other major religions, defined itself in opposition to another religion, specifically Christianity. Mohammed's schism from Christianity stemmed from his unwillingness to allow the divinity of Christ. His first followers were almost all Monophysite Christians (their closest doctrinal descendants are the Coptics), for whom Trinitarian doctrine presented a huge obstacle to belief.
When Mohammed added the doctrine of conversion by the sword to Islam, he created a combination that was pregnant with the monsters that roam the world today.
I have no interest in "saving" Islam, especially from itself. But I'd like to get some discussion going about this matter of religions, or other systems of belief, that define themselves in opposition to others, about their tendencies toward violence, and other important historical examples, if anyone knows of any.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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