If you're going to ask a Christian what Islam is really like, ask one who has actually endured life as a religious minority in a Muslim country.
it would certainly seem a mistake to be supporting the fundy versions of islam such as the wassabi Saudi Arabians. In the end there is no peaceful coexistence between us and them. supporting secularists, scientists, and the like is a better long term policy.
YALE MISSIONS SCHOLAR SAYS RELIGION IS BASIS FOR ISLAMIC ATTACKS ON WEST
"The foundation of Islam is not the word became flesh but the word became book."
By David W. Virtue
CHARLESTON, SC--A Yale Divinity School Missions and Islamic scholar says there has been a resounding silence from the left and the right about the religious basis of the attacks on America by Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda.
Dr. Lamin Sanneh told more than 200 Anglican theologians, priests and concerned laity at a conference here, that the response to the terrorist attacks is a religious hostility towards the West and that snapping their networks and driving them into the blade of military action and closing financial accounts is a "sadly mistaken" view of how the West is dealing with these fundamentalists.
"We must get into the mind of the terrorists. The fundamentalists are making a religious case for their hostility towards the West. Blaming the attacks on the US because of objectionable foreign policy or belated moral decline in the US, domestic moral promiscuity, or the failure to address poverty and giving attention to gay and feminist agendas, is to miss the point."
Blaming American support on corrupt Muslim regimes, is not the whole truth, said Sanneh. "All sides agree America is long overdue for judgment because of its sins and shortcomings, something the terrorists have stated. Defending the sexual status quo and taking refuge in the Enlightenment in the hope that a similar fate will overtake Islam and throw out the Mullahs is another form of dodging the issue."
"Islam has a particular religious creed. We must ask what are the fundamental questions. Perhaps we should not be surprised that secular culture lost. The religious habit of dancing around the religious issue is costly, and avoiding the religious issues is too great."
"It's not that the West has not got a religious heritage anymore but that this religious heritage such as it is has been privatized and marginalized and comodified, rendering the West tone deaf. Islam has not suffered the same fate.
"Christianity's private subjective faith commands no respect. Islam is out front in public life. The problem of Islam in the West is not Christian hostility but Muslim overconfidence. Islam has the ability to overcome obstacles, to overcome defenses. It is only a thin secular wall that prevents the Islamic tide from sweeping over the west, it is the only the thing that prevents a pan Islamic global triumph.
"The religious West has suppressed its own religious heritage. Christianity has been modernized and subject to personal opinion. The challenge of Islam is that they see Christianity being trivialized and taken advantage of and moved to fill the vacuum."
Sanneh, an historian by training is the author of several books on Islam. He said the two fundamental questions Americans asked themselves following the attacks are why America and why do they hate us so much. Who are they, and where are they?
"I am not sure we have gotten any closer to answering these fundamental questions. We are scrambling to understand competing ideologies and adjacent cultures. Europeans have a hard time understanding Islam. Islam is a modified reflex of Judaism and Christianity. Islam might be called a religion that has almost no questions and no answers. Islam is a religion of absolute surrender to God almighty. It is a religion of revelation of scripture in the Koran. That revelation is externalized and fossilized. Islam is set of immutable divine laws and immutable acts"
"The foundation of Islam is not the word became flesh but word became book. Islam feeds on a mechanical idea of revelation. There is superficial treatment of sin and salvation. It is an eventless relation between God and man. Nothing happens in that relationship."
Sanneh said the treatment of faith and words is not very profound in Islam. "Islam encourages an intellectual conception of God and faith is a mental assent to tenets rather than inner conviction. There is no relationship between the inward and outward. In this sense it is a religious, social and political community but not in a deeply profound personal sense. Islam does not examine the motives and heart."
Citing the missionary scholar Kramer, Sanneh said that even in moderate Islamic states like Indonesia, Islam maintains a grip on its adherents.
"A Muslim is never an agnostic. Even disillusioned Muslims will kill someone who is a defiler. It maintains absolute religious superiority. Islam has a deep theocentric emphasis. God is white-hot majesty, omnipotent and unique. God personally evaporates in the burning heat of his aspects. Islam is an intense devotion to a god you cannot know because he is unknowable and because god is transcendent majesty."
"You please this god by your devotions, but you can never know if you truly please this god. It is not like Christian devotions. It is a routine cycle, the more you do the more you have to do. There is no fellowship between god and human beings in Islam. God is a theocracy, thoroughly secularized. There is no vision of god, but only a desire to achieve fuller community. Islam is a religious imperialism."
Sanneh said it was political controversy that split Islam not theological. "Islam is a religion of the natural man. Pascal said in a statement that Mohamed shows the way of human success, while Jesus Christ shows the way of human defeat. Mohammed was driven by the need for religious certitude. Revelation is fixed. God came down in the Koran. Law is mutable. The Koran is untranslatable. It is the word of god. It was created in heaven. If eternal how could it be created? It is a medieval religion. Only the pages are created. According to Islam God demands our obedience and worship but we cannot have fellowship with him. It leaves man in a desolate position. Faith is submission to its creeds and tenets. Muslim authorities create a social community and thereby minimize religious truth claims. Its fierce monotheism and uncompromising conviction that god is great invokes immunity. Muslim worship is not an enactment of divine human encounter but submission. In observance it is not a sacramental enactment of salvation. Its austere ascetic view of God inspires intense devotion and loyalty. God worked on the outside and the devil worked on the inside, therefore subjective feelings are the work of the devil."
Sanneh likened it to the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill where the Athenians poured out their hearts to the unknown god, gods they could never name. Their gods were unknown. "Islamic modernists have responded to the West by personal involvement of religion. Their structures are not divinized. It is a defensive attitude."
Sanneh said we must respond to the terrorist attacks with goodness not with evil. "The modern West has to come to terms with its Christian heritage. We are for good or ill formed in the western Christian tradition. The time to speak a religious voice now is the language of the church. We need to assess the Anglican experience. The Anglican experience helps us to tease out the issues."
"The problems we face with Muslim and the Muslim world are the issues of pluralism. Islam flourishes in the modern world of difference and diversity. Islam cannot separate religion and politics. Madison put it right: Christianity was a divine religion but the proof of the religion was that Christianity came into existence not by virtue of the state, but in spite of every attempt by the state to oppress it."
"The issue is not oil but the moral nature of the enterprise itself. God delights in our freedom and not in our enslavement. Freedom is at the heart of the matter."
"The basis of dialogue with Islam are the two global forces of Islamicization and Americanization. The shrinking ground because of the spread of these two forces is cornering fundamentalists."
Questioned about the Middle East situation, Sanneh said that that the failure of peace in the Middle East had to do with the extremist policies of Ariel Sharon. "He is not helpful and under his leadership the Middle East has been prone to more and more violence. The Palestinians need a state not a guerrilla war."
"The American support for Israel is not the reason for Islam attacks, Most Arab governments don't want a radical Arab state on the back door. Most Arab governments are nervous about the establishment of an Arab state. In East Timor and Kashmir, Israel is not an issue."
"Unrest in Algeria and the Sudan and for two million Christians and non-Muslim animists Israel is not an issue. For Americans it looms large, but in a global framework it is very marginal. Nor is it a question of poverty or wealth but a moral crisis that targets women and children. America is not the enemy of Islam but Americans have trivialized their Christian Faith, that is the issue. Islam is not containable. The Declaration of Independence talked about "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It should have been the pursuit of justice. Secular America thinks religion is the enemy and they are wrong."
Dr. Sanneh spoke to more than 200 Anglican scholars, clergy and concerned laity at SEAD, the Scholarly Engagement for Christian Doctrine conference in Charleston, SC this past week.
Yes, that's the real question.
Several people qualify for the job, but every time a reformer comes along, he gets murdered.
He's correct. Of course, we underestimate the zeal of the globalists as well. It may be a race to see who conquers first - and who outlasts the other.
In Britain, phenomenal numbers are moving towards Islam. It seems strange that a religion whose followers could propound such a heinous crime has actually come out on top.I'll say.
The very First Paragraph of the article says...IT ALL!
This "Anglican Priest" and all who are like him will...
usher in the Anti-christ.
NOT at all Surprising...Stay Tuned as we will be seeing more and more of these Horrible Excuses of human beings Prancing and Parading All Around The World Pushing their Evil Agendas.
Get Ready:
All True Believers in Yeshua/Jesus The Risen Messiah will be persecuted because they Live for GOD - The Holy ONE Of Israel.
READ: Matthew 5:10-12.
Filthy, disgusting lies from morons like Phillips have created a society of historical mental cases. The fact that the first Crusade only occurred over 400 years after Islam had Jihaded and dhimmiized whole Christian populations in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Asia Minor, Spain, North Africa, the ME, and was threatened by the marauding Seljuk Islamic Turks with their Jihad towards Constantinople, means nothing to brainless twits like this Phillips propagandist and like ilk. We're in trouble because most of the sheep are more interested in the latest video then they are in any historical consciousness. So they are content to be spoon-fed by propagandists.
Victims of Wahabism
By Shia News
The list of the victims has been compiled with the cooperation of Sipah e Sahaba - The Terrorist OrganisationPlease visit the site for more information
More than 70 doctors and 34 lawyers, various Ulema, scholars, teachers and students of seminaries, religious figures, politico-religious parties leaders and activists, officials of various government and private institutions have so far been assassinated during the last two years in Pakistan. Their only fault, they were Shias.
Sipah e Sahaba (Army of the Companions), best described as Sipah e Yazid (Laeen ibn e Laeen) is a Wahabi/Deobandi terrorist organisation which is being funded by Saudi Arabia and supported by the Wahabi ranks in Pakistan Army’s ISI. Lashkar e Jhangavi is the death squad of Sipah e Sahaba. Riaz Basra, chief of the Lashkar, is being sheltered by the Wahabi Taliban in Afghanistan.
With the financial backing from Saudi Arabia and ammunition, protection and training from the Pakistan government, Sipah e Sahaba and Lashkar e Jhangavi have been openly killing Shias in Pakistan for many years now. Hiding behind the name of Sahaba Ikram (RA), these Wahabi terrorists tried to portray themselves as Sunni Muslims. But alhamdolillah the Sunni Muslims of Pakistan openly denounced these Wahabis and their terrorist activities. When they were rejected by the Sunni Muslims, the Sipah e Sahaba started killing the Sunni Ulema and leaders as well. This clearly showed that the Sipah e Sahaba was purely a Wahabi/Deobandi militant organisation which only wants to eliminate anyone who hates Yazeed (Laeen ibn e Laeen). Their prime goal, like the Saudis is to kill, torture and oppress the followers of Ahlul Bayt (AS), whether Shias or Sunnis. Using the name of Sunni Muslims, these Wahabi butchers have killed scores of innocent Shia Muslims and have tried to create hatred among Sunni and Shia brethren.
Islam was preached by Awleya e Ikram (Sufi Saints) in the Indian sub-continent. The Awleya filled the hearts of the masses with love for Ahlul Bayt (AS). The Wahabis/Deobandis/Kharjiites who for centuries have openly been an enemy of the Ahlul Bayt (AS) and their followers, now decided to disguise themselves as Sunnis.
In Pakistan, the preachers in almost all mosques are appointed and paid by the government, which has very carefully placed Wahabi mullahs in Sunni mosques. Majority of the Sunni Muslims have, unknowingly, become a victim of this anti-Ahlul Bayt conspiracy by the Wahabis. Spreading false rumors against the Shia community is one of the most important weapon of the Wahabis. As these Wahabis portray themselves as Sunni scholars, the innocent Sunni masses have been believing every thing they tell them.
The Pakistani media has also played its role in creating hatred between Shias and Sunnis by using the word "Sunni" for the Wahabi Sipah e Sahab and Lashkar e Jhangavi and blaming the massacres of Shias on their Sunni brothers.
All praise for Allah, the Sunni brothers have now started to realise the situation and they have started confronting the Wahabis on every front. The Sunnis, as a punishment, have also become a target for these Wahabis. Maulana Saleem Ullah Qadri, head of the Sunni Tehrik in Pakistan was brutally murdered by the Sipah e Sahab in Karachi. The Maulana had become the flag bearer in recent years for the religious organisation representing the majority Barelvi Sunnis in Pakistan.
We hope that the Pakistan government now, as it has joined the internatinal community in the "War Against Terrorism", would also pay attention to the innocent victims of Wahabism in Pakistan. We also request the international community to pressurise the government of Pakistan to rid the law abiding and peaceful Shia and Sunni Muslims from the menace of Wahabism.
We pray that Allah swt blesses Sunni and Shia brothers with strong unity and may He protect everyone from the evils of Wahabis and their terrorism. Ameen.
Below is a list of some of the innocent victims of Sipah e Sahaba and Lashkar e Jhangavi: ....
http://www.shianews.com/hi/articles/politics/0000149.php