Posted on 05/17/2004 11:05:43 AM PDT by ambrose
Posted on Mon, May. 17, 2004
Hilaire Belloc: Islam's a heresy of Christianity Poet and historian saw continuing -- and dangerous -- vitality in the Muslim faith
TOM ASHCRAFT
Special to the Observer
Americans have had the luxury of being far removed from the centuries-old turmoil of the Islamic world. Because of the war in Iraq and other events, however, that is a luxury we no longer enjoy.
Several informative books on Islam have recently come out, including Srdja Trifkovic's "The Sword of the Prophet," Karen Armstrong's "Islam: A Short History" and Michael Sells' "Approaching the Qur'an." But perhaps the most succinct, insightful views, especially for Christians, were written about 70 years ago by Hilaire Belloc.
Belloc (1870-1953) was a French-born poet, writer and historian. Educated at Oxford and a naturalized British subject, he served from 1906 to 1910 as a member of the British House of Commons. His wife, Elodie Hogan, was an American from Napa, Calif.
In the 1930s he wrote "The Great Heresies," a history of what Belloc, a Catholic, deemed the five main heresies since the advent of Christianity. In the second slot, between Arianism (fourth century) and Albigensianism (12th-13th centuries), he put "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed."
A heresy outside the Church
Unlike other heresies, he wrote, Islam was the only one to arise outside rather than within the Church. He said Mohammed, a camel driver, sprung from pagans of the "Arabian wilderness." As is well known, Mohammed was born about 570 in Mecca and later fled to Medina, both in present-day Saudi Arabia.Belloc says that, rejecting pagan notions, Mohammed insisted upon ideas which were at the heart of Christianity: the unity and omnipotence of God; God's personal nature, all-goodness, timelessness and providence; his power as the origin of all things and his sustenance of all things by his power alone; the world of good spirits and angels and of evil spirits in rebellion against God, with a chief evil spirit; the immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life, with punishment and reward coming after death.
Mohammed, Belloc says, "gave to Our Lord [Jesus] the highest reverence. ... On the day of judgment ... it was Our Lord, according to Mohammed, who would be the judge of mankind, not he, Mohammed. The Mother of Christ, Our Lady, `the Lady Miriam,' was ever for him the first of womankind."
As described by Belloc, a heresy is the "dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein." But it has "creative power" and survives by the truths it retains. The novelty introduced by Mohammed was "a full denial of the Incarnation."
Belloc says, "He taught that Our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet: a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether." Islam was thus founded upon an alluring "simplification" of the Christian creed.
An astonishing success
After Mohammed's death in 632, Islam became an astonishing success in the Mideast, then swept west across north Africa, and overtook the Iberian peninsula and part of France, before being stopped by Charles Martel near Poitiers in 732. According to Belloc, this happened not only because Muslims won military battles in Christian lands but also because their ideas were ripe for social victory.
In the early Middle Ages, the Greek-Roman world of the eastern Mediterranean, Belloc says, had become a "tangle wherein the bulk of men were disappointed and angry and seeking for a solution to the whole group of social strains." Belloc specifically points to widespread indebtedness, usury, slavery, endless Christian theological controversy, heavy imperial taxation and control, and "the tyranny of the lawyers and their charges."
Enter Islam. In theory it promised -- for those affirming Mohammed as the prophet of God with divine authority -- freedom for the slave, an end to usury and debt, elimination of imperial taxation, justice without buying it from lawyers, the brotherhood and equality of man under Allah. In short, Islam seemed to offer "a new spirit of freedom and relaxation."
Belloc points out that unlike most heresies, Islam, whose military power has waxed and waned, never lost its internal vitality. He says, "Missionary effort has had no appreciable effect upon it. It still converts pagan savages wholesale." It retains the Quran, "its organized system of prayer, its simple doctrine."
In such continuing vitality Belloc saw recurring danger for the West. Writing in the mid-1930s, he predicted the possibility of "that terror under which we lived for centuries reappearing." He worried about a future "revival of Mohammedan political power, and the renewal of the old pressure of Islam upon Christendom." Belloc never claimed to be a prophet, but his worries have arrived in our day.
Tom
Ashcraft
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Observer columnist Tom Ashcraft is a Charlotte lawyer. Write him c/o The Observer, P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, NC 28230-0308, or at TAshcraft@compuserve.com.
Since Christianity's forerunner is Judaism, then Islam can be rightly called a bastardization of Judaism. That's why crazy islamics hate Jews and Christians because islamics are bastards.
Eek--sounds like the here and now...
Sounds alot like America today...
Belloc was very prophetic.
I recommend his 'The Servile State' to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our times.
F.Y.I.
I think of Belloc as a sort of Edwardian Orwell. ;^)
Islam is a syncretist religion that took elements of Judaism, elements of Christianity, and elements of paganism and fused them into one horrible insane egomaniacal vision.
The bastard spawn of Abraham
I suppose that after WWI and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, there was a certain period of dominance by the West, especially when they needed us to develop their oil fields for them. When Saudi nationalized the oil fields it probably marked the beginning of what seems to be the new rise of Islamic Supremacism. I prefer the term "Islamic Supremacist" (or Islamist) to the popular "Islamofacist" because I think their racism and xenophobia are more reminiscent of the KKK than anything else.
Bttt
Muslims themselves do not know the 150+ year gap between Muhammad's 'visions' influenced by his stays with Arab Jews and Coptic Christians while on the run.
There is no 'unique' religion of allah - it is an amalgamation of Judaic and Christian teaching. Muhammad could not understand why there was not a specific 'Arab' God.
Which is why for 18 months Muhammad had his follwers, while taking refuge in Medina, bowed down and prayed to Jerusalem. (Karen Armstrong's book easy, great read).
What? You do not know these things? Do not feel bad, even those who consider themselves devout Muslims do not know.
Muslims themselves do not know the 150+ year gap between Muhammad's 'visions'
Forgot to say that at the time of Muhammad, there was NO Arabic writing or written language. It was 150+ years after Muhammad before that evolved - and the Arabs had no oral history tradition like the Jews - who were fastidious in making sure each nuance was passed on from one generation to the other.
In case anyone is interested, this is public domain stuff, and is available on the Web in several places. Here is one: The Great Heresies by Hilaire Belloc
Mark for later
Belloc was not the originator of the critique of Islam as a Christian heresy. St. John of Damascus, who was intimately familiar with Islam, living as he did in the Caliphate (in one of those brief periods when Islam really was tolerant--although a Christian he was the equivalent of Lord Chamberlain or Prime Minister to the Caliph), wrote the first Christian critique of Islam, and regarded it as a heresy rather than a proper seperate (false) religion.
Belloc was a brilliant man and probably the greatest historian of the last 150 years. His concern that Islam would once again rise to power and threaten the West was born more from his knowledge of history than from any 'prophetic' ability. He understood well that Islam had temporarily been eclipsed by Western technological superiority, but that it had never been extinguished. Any firefighter knows that you must not let a single ember burn, else it will flare up again. Unfortunately, the likes of Belloc have been replaced by modern revisionist 'historians' hell bent on trashing Christianity and saddling white males with a guilt complex.
You are correct. But keep in mind that Belloc was a great historian and also a great Catholic scholar. When he wrote he wrote as such, and he quoted his sources in footnotes.
Aside from being an excellent source of emergency bathroom hygenic paper The Quran is nothing more then Satan's instruction book to his minions.
Arians struggled with the concept of the Trinity; therefore, Islam with its denial of the Godhead was easily absorbed.
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