Posted on 08/21/2007 4:43:11 AM PDT by IrishMike
In case you had any doubt that Western Civilization is mired in a crisis of suicidal self-loathing and pre-emptive surrender, a Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has publicly commented that Christians should begin to refer to God as “Allah” so as to make Muslims like us better -- or at least bomb us less.
Unused to having their demands met before actually making any, a Muslim group responded that it had made no such request -- although now that it’s known to be within the realm of possibility, I’m sure it will be considered as a future point for increased “tolerance.”
The bishop in question is Tiny Muskens (“Muskens” apparently being the Dutch word for “cojones”), who professes to believe that he is fostering understanding between religions with his spiritual version of “Would you like me better if I were blonde -- or at least less obviously Christian?”
Perhaps rather than trying to increase understanding between religions, the Bishop (as a Christian priest and all) might want to focus on increasing understanding of, you know, Christianity. Oh wait, I might have just committed a hate crime with that thought. Please forgive me. The Bishop’s appeal for appeasement is said to come at a time of rising tensions between Islam and Christianity in Holland --“rising tensions” apparently being the Dutch words for “violence by Muslims.” Oops, hate crime.
One wonders where Christianity would be today had Christ had apostles of the same bent as Muskens. A concise history of the faith might read: and then, after Christ died on the cross rather than yield to demands that the message of his faith be corrupted, the apostles carried his message to Rome -- but nobody noticed since they decided to call God “Jupiter” and just tried to get along. Who needs the blood of the martyrs when compromise and groveling work so well?
Thankfully, the Bishop’s grand idea has been overwhelmingly rejected by the Dutch public, but it comes on the heels of other disturbing efforts to hide the horrible Christian nature of Christianity from Muslim sensibilities. As reported last year by the Brussels Journal, the bishops of Brussels opened up their churches as sanctuaries for Muslim Illegal aliens hiding from law enforcement in Belgium. To make them feel more at home, the altar was removed, the statue of the Virgin Mary was hidden under a cloth (burkhas -- not just for living females anymore!) and the churches were festooned inside and out with Green banners bearing the name “Allah” in Arabic script. Doubtless, this made the churches less offensive to the fugitive Muslims within. In unrelated news, church attendance by actual Christians in Europe is down for some reason.
At the risk of committing yet another hate crime by bringing up the obscene subject of proselytizing the gospel, I would remind the bishops that the Muslims in Europe represent a special opportunity for them -- unlike Muslims in Muslim countries, the bishops can try to convert these to Christianity without fear of prosecution by the government. They’ll probably get killed for trying, but then I guess that’s why bishops such as these seek to promote understanding between religions, rather than the spread of their own religion. Again, the apostles burned with the passion of the faith. Muskens and friends smolder weakly in the spirit of compromise.
Also, issues of core principle aside, does anyone really believe that Muskens’ gesture of subservient compliance would reduce tension with Islam one mite? Suppose we did call God “Allah,” there’s still the minor source of conflict that Islam is aimed in large part at co-opting Christians and that the Koran specifically denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, or that he was crucified or resurrected. And oh yeah, because the teachings of Jesus are thus considered invalid, there’s about a thousand other differences too. Lack of a shared vocabulary is not really our central problem.
And to be blunt, we could all covert to Islam tomorrow and it would not reduce Islamist violence in the slightest, since the only folks more likely to be killed by Islamists than us infidels are other Muslims. Would we become Sunni or Shia, by the way? Personally I’m shopping the Alawite sect just to maintain my reputation for being a bit different. Of course being a bit different is a capital offense to Islamists.
Conflict is always unpleasant and burdensome -- but it is not always wrong or to be avoided. If you believe in something transformative and significant, that carries consequences and can entail suffering. If your faith is deemed offensive, it is your duty to offend; and if your identity as a Christian divides you from others, this division is acceptable. If such thoughts sound too deep to have come from me, they didn’t.
“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." -Luke 12:51-53
There are worse things than conflict. Loss of one’s core identity is surely among these. More and more, Western Christianity seems embarrassed by its own existence.
I am uncomfortable talking about religion, both because I think it is a very personal thing and because I believe I make a poor choice of spokesman for anything Holy (hint: my beatification is not exactly pending). But when church leaders themselves seem embarrassed by their own faith and so eager to compromise its ancient traditions, something has gone very, very wrong.
Let us pray that, when necessary, God will save the Faith from the Church.
Perhaps the bishop can count the candles in the vatican for his new job.
as reported by Pope Benedict XVI 9-12-2006:
“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.” Byzantine Emperor -Manuel II Paleologus 1391
“More Moslems came, and soon a small mosque was built, which attracted yet others. As long as Zoroastrians remained in the majority, their lives were tolerable; but once the Moslems became the more numerous, a petty but pervasive harassment was apt to develop. This was partly verbal, with taunts about fire-worship, and comments on how few Zoroastrians there were in the world, and how many Moslems, who must therefore posses the truth; and also on how many material advantages lay with Islam. The harassment was often also physical; boys fought, and gangs of youth waylaid and bullied individual Zoroastrians. They also diverted themselves by climbing into the local tower of silence and desecrating it, and they might even break into the fire-temple and seek to pollute or extinguish the sacred flame. Those with criminal leanings found too that a religious minority provided tempting opportunities for theft, pilfering from the open fields, and sometimes rape and arson. Those Zoroastrians who resisted all these pressures often preferred therefore in the end to sell out and move to some other place where their co-religionists were still relatively numerous, and they could live at peace; and so another village was lost to the old faith.”
Boyce, A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism, pp. 7-8;
What these idiots fail to comprehend is that Islamic fascists have as their goal the end of Western Civilization itself and believe that God has commanded them to do this. You cannot appease such fanatics.
No comproomise with Islam. It is not a religion of God.
Remind you of Paris the last couple of years ?
It is not a religion of God.
.
.
.
Nor a Religion of Peace.
Nor a Religion of Tolerence.
Muslims will continue to exploit freedom of speech in the West to spread their “hate” and attack their adopted countries, until the Western mind grasps the magnitude of the Islamic threat.
In the Rhine Valley city of Mannheim, the glittering minaret of Germany’s biggest mosque overshadows what was once the region’s most vibrant church, testifying to Muslims’ new confidence as Christian churches are closing down.
Years ago, 180 sisters of the Catholic order of the Sisters of the Divine Savior were the pulse of the city. Today, eight remain. Every weekend, roughly 150 Roman Catholics attend mass at the Liebfrauen Church, while up to 3,000 Muslims throng the Yavuz-Sultan-Selim mosque. Since the mosque was opened in 1995, Muslim shops and youth centers have become a magnet for the Muslim community.
Mannheim is not unique. Across Europe, the Continent’s fastest-growing religion is establishing its public presence after decades in basements and courtyards, changing not only the architectural look of cities, but also their social fabrics.
Hailed by many as a sign of Muslim integration, the phenomenon is also feared as evidence of a parallel Islamic world threatening Europe’s Christian culture.
“Muslims have come out ... and have become visible,” says Claus Leggewie, a political scientist at Germany’s University of Giessen who wrote a study on the evolution of the mosque landscape in Germany. “By building expensive, representative mosques, they’re sending a message: we want to take part in the symbolic landscape of Germany. We are here and we’ll stay here.”
Major mosque projects from Cologne, Germany, to Amsterdam to Seville, Spain, have met with fierce opposition and fears that they will serve as breeding grounds for terrorists. Family members of two of the suspects in the Glasgow, Scotland, car bombings this month said the men had been radicalized by Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic revivalist group with plans for an 18-acre complex near London’s 2012 Olympic stadium that would house Europe’s largest mosque.
The way it’s working globally, in a nutshell.
Yep.
I can’t tell you how many Moslems have said to me “Well Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth.. so it has to be right”....
Just like in that paragraph I pasted. Which I point out to them... you been following the same Jihadist script for 1,400, you aren’t fooling me.
Of course then the Leftists attack me for being a bigot.
The best way to counter that when making a comment to predict that Leftists will respond with cries of bigot and racist.. that preempts a lot of it.
And just as stated in your OP, when push comes to shove, and the Muslims become a majority in a given area, the former residents move on and leave it to them-facilitating the growth of Islam. They count on it.
Whose REAL god is the DEVIL himself via worship of a moon-rock.
“I can’t tell you how many Moslems have said to me “Well Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth.. so it has to be right”....
One of the all time bigtime lies Moslems WILL say, thanks to the father of lies.
dhimmitude bump
WAKE UP PEOPLE! WE ARE AT WAR! Just the fact that any muslim in any country will not denounce the atrocities done by terrorsts or stepping forward and convicing all of us that the religion of Islam is peaceful and compassionate is just another sign that they cannot be trusted and do not want to assimilate in any society and want nothing wore than the death of western civilization.
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