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The Al Qaeda-Pope Show Down
By Kalavai Venkat | Published Yesterday | Hinduism , Indian Culture and Philosphy , Strategic Security |
Kalavai Venkat
View all articles by Kalavai Venkat Ratzinger Schemes To Re-Christianize Europe!
Europeans have been steadily abandoning Christianity. Church attendance has fallen dramatically. Both the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches have been worried because if Europeans desert Christianity, its Third World adherents would follow suit. How does one then revive Christianity in Europe?

Christianity, unlike Buddhism or Hinduism for example, has never been an inward-looking religion. It never encouraged the spirit of inquiry. Christianity has always required an external enemy, sometimes real but often imagined, to keep its flock together. Christianity aggrandized itself by dehumanizing the "enemy" and by inculcating a fear of the "enemy" in its flock.

The New Testament vilifies and dehumanizes the Jews. It calls them "Christ-killers", "Children of the Devil", "Brood of vipers" (Matthew 3:7, 12:34 and 23:33, Luke 3:7) etc., and pronounces all future generations of the Jews 'guilty' of 'killing' Christ (Matthew 27:25). Norman Beck, a distinguished academic and Lutheran theologian, demonstrates that approximately 450 anti-Semitic remarks are found in merely five books of The New Testament, making it the most comprehensive hate-filled "scripture" ever written. No other religion has this infamous distinction of having been founded on hatred toward an ethnic group. For two millenia, this terrible and false antisemitic libel has constituted the basis of Christianity and to unite the Christian flock.

Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, wants to convert Europe back to Christianity. Until WWII, the church dehumanized the Jews to unite its flock. But, in the post-Holocaust world this is unlikely to work. For decades, the church met its goals by positioning itself as the bulwark against Communism. But this too will not work in the post-Communist era.

Ratzinger has also attempted making Buddhism and Hinduism the imagined enemies by calling Buddhism an "auto erotic spirituality", and Hinduism "a faith that offers false hope". But since the world sees Hinduism and Buddhism as tolerant, pluralistic spiritual paths that provided yoga and meditation, it is unlikely to unite under the Christian banner against these religions.

Where then to find an "enemy" that will help rejuvenate Christianity?

Muhammad Rescues Christianity

Ironically, Christianity found its savior in Muhammad! During a recent lecture in Germany, Ratzinger said, quoting a medieval Byzantine emperor:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

All hell broke loose when Muslims responded by rioting. Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups issued a fatwa pronouncing death penalty for Ratzinger and called for a general massacre of Christians. Ratzinger abjectly whimpered that his pronouncement did not express his true opinion about Islam and its prophet. Did Ratzinger then express his false opinion about Muhammad when he made those remarks?

Since the papal speeches are meticulously planned, Ratzinger could not have made these remarks unthinkingly. Is this a calculated strategy to whip up Islamic frenzy, ensure bloodshed, and in the process position Christianity as the bulwark against Islamic terror?

Ratzinger's remarks about Muhammad are accurate. Ironically, everything he said about Muhammad and Islam applies to Christianity and its founder too. The religions and their respective founders are so similar that it is hard to tell them apart.

Birds Of The Same Feather - Fight Each Other !

Christians and Muslims, as Bush has confirmed, worship the same God. Talreja documents in Holy Vedas And Holy Bible -- A Comparative Study that their common God is jealous and vindictive, preaches intolerance, advocates torture of and death for non-believers, practices incest, orders rape and genocide, and uses obscene language. The language and original contents of The New Testament and The Quran are hateful and terrible.

What about their respective prophets, Jesus and Muhammad? The distinguished Belgian scholar, Dr. Koenraad Elst, demonstrates in his book Psychology Of Prophetism - A Secular Look At The Bible that Jesus suffered from a serious mental disorder called paraphrenia and a lack of sexual libido. Elst shows in his article Wahi - The Supernatural Basis Of Islam that Muhammad suffered from tumor-induced paranoia. In both studies, Elst bases his inferences on the scientific researches of Dr. Herman Somers.

According to Islamic sources - see The Life of Mahomet From Original Sources by Sir William Muir, pp. 299-303, Muhammad’s child bride Ayesha was involved in a post-marital sexual scandal with Safwan ibn al-Moattal, suggesting that Muhammad too might have suffered from sexual inadequacy. Both Jesus and Muhammad were intolerant of criticism and acted irrationally.

Both Christianity and Islam spread through warfare, brute force, and by oppressing other religions. They survive by whipping up frenzy against an imagined enemy. They ban the truth. A shared God, disregard for truth, and similar prophets, scriptures and history characterize the two cults.

A Clash Of The Uncivilized?
Some worry that this hostility between Christianity and Islam will culminate in a clash of civilizations. This fear is misplaced. A clash of civilizations requires two civilized parties to begin with. From what I have written in the preceding paragraphs, you can safely conclude that neither Christianity nor Islam can be considered civilized. So, no matter how horrible their fights get, it will never be a clash of civilizations!

While these two uncivilized cults call for each other's destruction, and put their respective flocks on the heaven-bound cargo postmortem, the rest of the world should learn how similar these two cults are. Hopefully, that would help preserve the civilized after the uncivilized take care of each other.

Kalavai Venkat is an India-born, Silicon Valley-based orthodox, practising, agnostic Hindu.

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