Posted on 05/22/2005 5:01:10 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The alleged desecration of a single copy of the Koran sends deadly Muslim mobs into the streets, creates howls from Muslim governments and gathers condemnation mixed with groveling from the U.S. Government and mainstream media. The actual Muslim destruction of Christian churches, this year, in Iraq, Kosovo, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria is met with silence. Apparently, moral equivalency for desecration isn’t moral or equivalent. The same holds true for Jihads and Crusades.
Americans are lectured endlessly that ‘Jihad’ means a personal struggle to subject oneself to godliness. Yet, 300 Muslim clerics in Tajikistan outraged with the one Koran tidy bowl issue wrote, “if an investigation does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America." Obviously, Jihad really means fighting real holy wars.
Jihad threats must worry us, because the U.S. State Department sent a cable saying the U.S. "is a tolerant society in which freedom of religion for all faiths is ardently defended.... Disrespect of the Holy Quran is not, has not been and will never be the policy of the United States." Or, maybe the U.S. just needs Muslim allies to hunt the Islamists and Muslim vendors for oil. Pandering respect about the ‘Holy’ Quran, the book that calls for Jihads against Jews and Christians which millions of Muslims interpret as ‘Death to America’, is a nice try, but never good enough.
Jihad is integral to Islam. Islam was spread by the sword, not by missionaries. Now, Islam attacks with terrorism and conquers with immigrant invasions. Mohammed started massacring Jews just five years after he kicked off his new ‘religion of peace’. Mohammed’s armies started murdering, raping and conquering Christians on a much grander scale a few years later. Today, at least 10 per cent of Islam, about 150 million Muslims, is at war with the rest of the World, but especially America and Israel. Islam hasn’t repudiated Jihad, so all 1.2 billion Muslims are potential Islamists.
Only the Muslims can decide for themselves to have a Reformation and an Enlightenment to give up Jihad and killing people who convert, killing people who criticize Mohammed, killing innocent and their own people with suicide bombers, public stonings, or beheadings. It’s up to the Muslims to catch up 800 years of civilization. Islamic civilization is as backward and barbarian to the West as the Visigoths were to the Romans. Civilizations aren’t morally equivalent. Neither are the religions the civilizations are based on.
Likewise, the Crusades aren’t the moral equivalent of Jihads. The Crusades were strategic counter-attacks from the West. Like the long liberation of Spain from the Moors ending in 1492, the Crusades returned territory and people to Christendom. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even if war is evil. ‘Crusade’ was a good word for a noble struggle until very recently.
Liberal Human Secularists and Sissy Christians, who hate Conservative Christians so much they would rather see the West go under Islam than rise with Evangelical Christianity, push a multi-cultural historical curse on Crusades. My youngest daughter spared me the PC torture of the ‘Heaven’s Kingdom’ movie by seeing it first and wretching. Liberals sputter over ancient Crusades and ignore Jihads.
I visited Haggia Sophia in Istanbul (Constantinople) when I was a rifle platoon leader in the 82 nd Airborne on an exercise in 1973. This architectural wonder was a Byzantine Christian church from 537 A.D. until Muslims conquered and made it a mosque in 1453 A.D.. The huge Muslim symbols desecrating that beautiful church made me sick at my stomach. As I stood in the corner reserved for infidels I prayed for the cleansing of this church and return to Christ. The building was Christian for 916 years. It has been Muslim, by conquest, for 552 years. So, should it stay Muslim forever or someday return to Christianity? Maybe a Billy Graham kind of Crusade can return the light to the building.
Until Evangelical Crusades truly roll back Islam, America must face Muslims’ implacable hostility and insatiable demands. The prostrate moral hysteria and hypocrisy of Liberals serves Islam. Yet, Islam deserves as much respect from Christians and Jews as Elijah showed to Baal worship (I Kings 18:19-40). Islam descends from pagan, Baal-like worship like the moon symbol and the black Kabba in Mecca.
Americans can tip toe on eggshells over Muslim sensitivities forever, but it won’t prevent Muslim outrage. There’s no need to insult on purpose. But, if the truth hurts, like ‘Islam is barbaric’, offer a healing balm, like the Holy Bible.
James Atticus Bowden has specialized in inter-disciplinary long range 'futures' studies for over a decade. He is employed by a Defense Department contractor. He is a retired United States Army Infantry Officer. He is a 1972 graduate of the United States Military Academy and earned graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. He holds two elected Republican Party offices in Virginia.
Comments: JAtticus@aol.com
Char
Thanks Char...:)
Ping!
I agree with the author completely. He stated his case well indeed!!
This Church was stolen by bloody Turks and needs to be returned BEFORE Turkey should even be considered for membership in the EU.
This guy is very good. Is harping on the same themes that we do at Free Republic and JihadWatch.com. Little Green Footballs too. It's hard for me to respect Muhammad's blood cult. It's hard for me to believe that much good can come from a cult that demands its acolytes to model their lives after a barbaric, bogus prophet
Unfortunately Wahbbism is that reformation.
I'd suggest you read "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance," edited by Robert Spencer.
Dyslexic people?....should be moving forward. Instead, they're reading the tea leaves backwards.
Char
Charlite -this is the ARCLIGHT of Truth.Just wish the Pentagon would pull all our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Carpet bomb the Muslim triangle to rubble
no higher than an American soldier could lowcrawl past without getting a million dollar embarassig wound on the sit down. But they won't until the Muslim have virtually
taken over as much of the free world as the Soviet Union
once influenced. . . T'anks anyway.
1099 Jul 15, Jerusalem fell to the crusaders following a 7 week siege. A massacre of the city's Muslim and Jewish population followed with the dead numbered at about 3,000.
1099 Jul 16, Crusaders herded the Jews of Jerusalem into a synagogue and set it afire.
1110 May 13, Crusaders marched into Beirut causing a bloodbath.
1189 Jan 21, Philip Augustus, Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa assembled the troops for the Third Crusade.
1190 Mar 16, The Crusades began the massacre of Jews in York, England. The Jewish population of York fled to Clifford’s Tower overlooking the rivers Ouse and Foss during an anti-Jewish riot.
1190 Mar 17, Crusaders completed the massacre of Jews of York, England.
1190 Mar 18, Crusaders killed 57 Jews in Bury St. Edmonds, England
1191 Jul 12, Richard Coeur de Lion and Crusaders defeated the Saracens at Acre.
1191 Aug 20, Crusader King Richard I (1157-1199), Coeur de Lion (the "Lionheart"), executed some 2,700-3,000 Muslim prisoners in Acre (Akko).
1202 Nov, The Fourth Crusade sacked Zara. The leaders of the Fourth Crusade agreed to sack Zara (present-day Zadar, Croatia)--a rival of Venice--as payment for transportation the Venetians supplied the crusaders. Zara, previously part of the Venetian republic, had rebelled against Venice in 1186 and since allied itself with Hungary, posing competition to Venice’s maritime trade. Unable to raise enough funds to pay to their Venetian contractors, the crusaders agreed to lay siege to the city despite letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding such an action and threatening excommunication. The fleet set sail in October of 1202, reaching Zara in Nov. Zara--the first Christian city to be assaulted by crusaders--surrendered after just two weeks. The army then wintered in the city and planned an attack on the Byzantine capital of Constantinople the following year.
1203 The Fourth Crusade murdered 100,000 Orthodox Christians
1204 Apr 12, The Fourth Crusade, led by Boniface of Montferrat, sacked Constantinople. Constantinople fell to a combined force of Franks and Venetians. The 4th Crusade failed to reach Palestine but sacked the Byzantine Christian capital of Constantinople.
Time to tell the barbaric and idiotic mohammedans to get their populations under control. They are becoming progressively unlikeable and intolerable. Pretty soon they will be seeming very peculiar to even the parts of the world that are not pro-American.
Valin, Most grievious was the attack on Byzantine Christians from a strategic view to weaken them to the Turks. I knew that history if not the details when I wrote "It seemed like a good idea at the time, even if war is evil." in the op-ed. Only have 750 words and so I can't include all the details. War is always evil, even glorious WW II for some. The Crusades, despite their failings of the human Crusaders, a strategic counter-stroke with some avarice as noted on side expeditions.
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