Posted on 08/07/2006 2:15:39 AM PDT by generalhammond
September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally. I recognised that I had to know more about Islam.
In the aftermath of the attack one thing was perplexing. Many commentators and apparently the governments of the "Coalition of the Willing" were claiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and that the terrorist attacks were an aberration. On the other hand one or two people I met, who had lived in Pakistan and suffered there, claimed to me that the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.
Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully? What of Islamic minorities in Western countries? It is important to know accurately where we are, to dialogue together to strengthen the moderates on all sides and to avoid a clash of civilisations.
The current situation is very different from what the West confronted in the twentieth century Cold War, when secularists, especially those who were repentant communists, were well equipped to generate and sustain resistance to an anti-religious and totalitarian enemy. In the present challenge it is religious people who are better equipped, at least initially, to understand the situation with Islam. Radicalism, whether of religious or non-religious inspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness. But if we are going to help the moderate forces within Islam defeat the extreme variants it has thrown up, we need to take seriously the personal consequences of religious faith.
We also need to understand the secular sources of emptiness and despair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death. This is another place where religious people have an edge. Western secularists regularly have trouble understanding religious faith in their own societies, and are often at sea when it comes to addressing the meaninglessness that secularism spawns. An anorexic vision of democracy and the human person is no match for Islam.
It is easy for us to tell Muslims that they must look to themselves and find ways of reinterpreting their beliefs and remaking their societies. Exactly the same thing can and needs to be said to us. If democracy is a belief in procedures alone then the West is in deep trouble. The most telling sign that Western democracy suffers a crisis of confidence lies in the disastrous fall in fertility rates, especially in Europe.
Faith ensures a future. In 1950 Russia, which suffered one of the most extreme forms of forced secularisation under the Communists, had about 103 million people. Yemen, a Muslim country, had only 4.3 million people. By 2000 fertility was in radical decline in Russia, but because of past momentum the population stood at 145 million. Yemen had maintained a fertility rate of 7.6 over the previous 50 years and now had 18.3 million people. United Nations forecasts suggest that even with fertility rates increasing by 50 per cent in Russia over the next fifty years, its population will be about 104 million in 2050-a loss of 40 million people. It will also be an elderly population. But even if Yemen's fertility rate falls 50 per cent to 3.35, by 2050 it will be about the same size as Russia - 102 million - and overwhelmingly young. The war against terrorism is only one aspect of the challenge. Perhaps more important is the struggle in the Islamic world between moderate forces and extremists, especially when we set this against the enormous demographic shifts likely to occur across the world, the relative changes in population-size of the West, the Islamic and Asian worlds and the growth of Islam in a childless Europe.
Every great nation and religion has shadows and indeed crimes in their histories. This is certainly true of Catholicism and all Christian denominations. We should not airbrush these out of history, but confront them and then explain our present attitude to them.
These are also legitimate requests for our Islamic partners in dialogue. Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? Is the programme of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad's death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible?
Useful dialogue means that participants grapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam and the West the stakes are too high for fundamental misunderstandings.
Both Muslims and Christians are helped by accurately identifying what are core and enduring doctrines, by identifying what issues can be discussed together usefully, by identifying those who are genuine friends, seekers after truth and cooperation and separating them from those who only appear to be friends.
This statement should stand out like a sore thumb to anyone!!
Herein lies the biggest weapon that Islam has today and slowly (perhaps not slowly) but surely these people are making their way over to Europe, USA and Canada and mass producing in these countries as well.
I say we make a new type of bomb that contains anti-fertility air borne particles that when breathed in renders a guy useless.
There is a deeper point here.
Younger countries mean countries with less mature leaders, a less mature base, and in many of these countries, you are also adding a high degree of academic ignorance, coupled with economic weakness.
All of this combines to very bad ju-ju.
George Pell for Pope! He's a truly inspirational leader who knows whose who in the zoo.
Does anyone care to speculate as to what America will be like when whites are in the minority in the U.S., which will be much sooner than 2050. Will it be like South Africa?
Between ZPG and PC, we(?) have created a fine mess and a quite uncertain future.
If Christians were burning people alive at the stake today, the world would be just as outraged with them as they are with Muslims. But Christians aren't burning people at the stake. They're not the issue. Right now, in this day and age, it's the Muslims who are doing evil. Muslim issues that must be addressed.
Unfortunately there are no "Islamic partners in dialogue" worth talking to. The ones we need to reach aren't interested in the kind of dialogue that Pell is talking about, and the ones that are - well, they're serious apostates in the minds of the ones with guns, RPGs, and worse.
Do they believe that the "peaceful suras" are abrogated by the "verses of the sword"? This is a question that no serious minded person can pose, even rhetorically.
The "peaceful suras" Pell refers to are often called the "Medina verses", and the "verses of the sword", the "Meccan verses". The Meccan verses are later in time, and by Mohammad's own words, he states that GOD HIMSELF insists that the later verses take precedence over the earlier verses. This is a settled question in the mind of virtually every Islamic authority.
Finally, Pell asks if the Muslim program of military conquest is to be "resumed".
Well, hasn't it, Mr. Pell?
What, if wonder, does he think this is that has been roaring around our heads like a whirlwind of death for the past three decades?
We already have a stockpile of them... nuetron-bombs.
Hey, I'd forgotten, guess they get saved for a rainy day!!
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