The Mosques of War

American Thinker ^ | July 13, 2010 | Victor Sharpe

[neverdem]

Of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism is considered the mother faith and the other two, Christianity and Islam, her daughters.

The first daughter, Christianity, under the influence of the early church fathers, rejected the mother and distanced herself from Judaism , even to the extent of changing the Sabbath from the seventh day, Saturday, to Sunday and renaming it the Lord's Day. Seventh-Day Adventists retain Saturday as their Sabbath.

The younger daughter, Islam, under Muhammad, turned on both the Jewish and Christian tribes of Arabia, who declined to accept that Muhammad was the Messenger of God and the "Seal of all the Prophets." Both Jews and Christians rejected the claim of the new faith that it alone ushered in "God's final revelation."

After Rome embraced Christianity under Constantine, the Church fathers increasingly used temporal powers to discriminate against the Jews and proscribe and mock the practice of their faith. In time, this led to the horrors of the Crusades, the Catholic inquisition, forced conversions, pogroms, and ultimately, to the Holocaust.

Islam's followers tolerated those they called the "people of the Book," the Jews and Christians, whose faith was based upon the Bible. But Islam, too, practiced forced conversions, pogroms, massacres, and the discrimination of Jews and Christians through the practice of dhimmitude, whereby the "infidels" were forced into second-class status and forced to pay a tax, the jizzya, as a penalty for remaining outside the Islamic faith while under Muslim control.

Like Christendom, Islam often forced the Jews to live in ghettos, called mellahs. Islamic authorities were the first to coerce Jews into wearing distinctive and often humiliating clothing, preceding the German Nazis by centuries. The Nazis and their European allies forced the Jews into wearing a yellow Star of David, thus marking them for death.

But history is replete with accounts of both daughter religions fighting each other for centuries over territory. When not slaughtering each other, they both often turned upon the hapless and stateless Jews, who, for the most part, had no allies and were unable to defend themselves.

The mother has ample reason to weep at the ferocious degradation and scorn her daughters have heaped upon her with such violence and ingratitude. But many Christians -- not all -- have come to the realization that biblical Jewish roots are inextricable from their own and that their faith is fatefully incomplete without an acknowledgment of those roots.

Islam, too, is immensely indebted to Judaism. According to Abraham I. Katsh, author of  Judaism and the Koran,

... like the Jew, the Moslem affirms the unity of God, that He is one, eternal, merciful, compassionate, beneficent, almighty, all-knowing, just, loving and forgiving.

Like Judaism, Islam does not recognize saints serving as mediators between the individual and his Creator and both faiths believe that each individual is to follow a righteous path and secure atonement by improving his or her conduct and by practicing sincere repentance. But there is another essential and integral part of Islam not shared with Judaism: Jihad.

As Katsh points out in his book, originally written as far back as 1954,

the duty of Jihad, the waging of Holy War, has been raised to the dignity of a sixth canonical obligation, especially by the descendants of the Kharijites. [...]

To the Moslem, the world is divided into regions under Islamic control, the dar al-Islam, and regions not subjected as yet, the dar al-harb.

Between this 'area of warfare' and the Muslim dominated part of the world there can be no peace. Practical considerations may induce the Muslim leaders to conclude an armistice, but the obligation to conquer and, if possible, convert never lapses. Nor can territory once under Muslim rule be lawfully yielded to the unbeliever. Legal theory has gone so far as to define as dar al-Islam any area where at least one Muslim custom is still observed.

Thanks to this concept, the Moslem is required to subdue the infidel, and he who dies in the path of Allah is considered a martyr and assured of Paradise and of unique privileges there.

Here one can understand clearly that peace -- true and lasting peace -- between Islam and nations that adhere still to Judeo-Christian civilization, or to Hinduism, Buddhism, or all other faiths, is a forlorn and baseless hope.

The "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, for example, is thus a grand illusion, endlessly fostered by Western politicians and diplomats, along with self-deluded Israeli leaders, who all refuse to see a reality that has existed since Islam's creation in the 7^th century.

And it is in one abiding respect that this endless spiritual and temporal conflict is seen in its most practical and historical context -- the conversion of places of worship into mosques.

The result has been that since the time of Muhammad, synagogues, churches, Hindu temples, Zoroastrian temples, and pagan shrines have been all too often violently converted into mosques.

After the conquest of Mecca in the year 630, Muhammad transformed the Black Stone in the Ka'aba, which ancient pagan Arabs had worshiped, into the paramount Islamic holy place. It became known as the Masjid al-Haram, or Sacred Mosque.

During the Arab invasions of neighboring lands in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond, under the new banner of Islam, numerous synagogues and churches were converted into mosques. In Damascus, Syria, the church of St. John is now known as the Umayyad Mosque. Also in Syria, the mosque of Job was originally a church.

The Islamic tide swept into Egypt, and many Christian Coptic churches were converted into mosques. From North Africa, the conquests continued into Spain and Portugal, where again churches were converted into mosques. Interestingly, many churches had been built upon the sites of earlier Roman temples. But during the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Christian armies -- the Reconquista -- these same mosques were reconverted into churches.

In Gaza, the Great Mosque of Gaza was originally a Christian church. In Turkey, the Hagia Sophia Church was converted in1453 into a mosque and remained so until 1935, when it became a museum. Indeed, the Ottoman Turks converted into mosques practically all churches and monasteries in the territories they conquered.

The most well-known mosques, built upon previous non-Muslim holy sites, are the Al-Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, also built upon the site of the two biblical Jewish Temples.

There are four holy cities of Judaism: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. Hebron is the second-holiest city, and in it is the burial place of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs, known as the Cave of Machpela, where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah are buried.

Herod the Great constructed an enclosure for the burial site. During the later Christian Byzantine period, a church was built upon the site, but this was destroyed in 614 by the Persians. Later, the Arab-Muslim invaders built a mosque in its place.

Jews were not permitted to worship at their nearly-four-thousand-year-old holy place by the Muslim Arabs. They could only ascend to the seventh step leading to the tombs. Indeed, they were refused this right as a place of worship from the 7^th century until 1967, when Israel liberated the territory from the Jordanian occupiers. Even before the Israeli liberation, a horrifying massacre of Jewish residents in Hebron by their Arab Moslem neighbors took place in 1929 while under the British Mandate of the geographical territory known as Palestine.      

Prior to the present-day Palestinian Authority assuming control of the city of Nablus, which was the ancient biblical Jewish city of Shechem, the Tomb of Joseph, the biblical figure, was a place of Jewish pilgrimage. When it was handed over to the PA, as one of seemingly endless Israeli concessions, the tomb was desecrated by a Moslem mob, which proceeded to convert it into a mosque.

On the Indian subcontinent, Hindu temples were similarly converted into mosques. Lately, Hindu nationalists have reconverted some mosques into temples, and, as in so many other parts of the world, considerable bitterness exists between Moslems and members of other faiths or those of no faith.

Mosques now occupy vast numbers of places of worship for other faiths. In Algeria, the Great Synagogue of Oran is now a mosque after the Jewish population was driven from Algeria. Many other synagogues throughout the Arab world are now mosques from after the Jewish inhabitants were expelled.

In the 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, many Greek Orthodox churches in northern Cyprus were converted into mosques. And the process continues.

Saudi Arabia invests endless billions of dollars to build mosques throughout the world. The international blanketing of cities with mosques is just another expression of jihad. In western Europe, most famously renamed Eurabia by the writer, Bat Yeor, there may soon come a time when there will be more minarets than steeples.

Perhaps the most egregious and blatant example of Islamic triumphalism is the planned construction of a giant mosque in New York, almost upon the site of the horrific destruction of the Twin Towers by Moslem terrorists acting in the name of Allah.

The proposed mosque is to be opened in 2011 on the very anniversary of the September 11, 2001 atrocity -- a flagrant insult to the memory of the thousands of innocents who died at the hands of Moslem fanatics and believers, most of them Saudis.

But this, after all, is what jihad is all about. Subdue the "infidel" at all costs. The Islamic obligation to conquer and convert the unbeliever must never lapse. Its tangible manifestation can also be characterized as the mosques of war.

Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Volumes One and Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state. 

[Persevero]

The Jew has no greater true friend than an evangelical Christians.

We vote for an support Israel more than Jews do it seems!

So I find this article rather puzzling.

[Judges Gone Wild]

Perhaps the most egregious and blatant example of Islamic triumphalism is the planned construction of a giant mosque in New York, almost upon the site of the horrific destruction of the Twin Towers by Moslem terrorists acting in the name of Allah.

The proposed mosque is to be opened in 2011 on the very anniversary of the September 11, 2001 atrocity — a flagrant insult to the memory of the thousands of innocents who died at the hands of Moslem fanatics and believers, most of them Saudis.

A MOSQUE MUST NOT BE PERMITTED TO BE BUILT ON THE SITE OF THE TWIN TOWERS. VOTE OUT BLOOMBERG AND EVERY IDIOT WHO IS ALLOWING THIS TO HAPPEN. CALL AND WRITE THE MAYOR’S OFFICE RELENTLESSLY.

[HiTech RedNeck]

No distinction is made between biblical Christianity and popish Christianity. The latter purports to have the power to come up with ever new revelation, opening the door for abuses that are not countenanced in the New Testament text itself. (To be fair to the Roman church, the precipitating factor for the Inquisition and Crusades was not Jews but Muslims, although Jews got caught in the midst of the battle and were not always treated with the scriptural deference they deserved.)

A notable New Testament fact is that the Lord’s Day (commemorating the resurrection of Jesus) and the Jewish Sabbath were contemporaneously observed by Christians. The Jewish Sabbath fell into disuse in the Church as Jews pretty much abandoned the Christian church in the centuries after the Temple fell, and it became by default a gentile following. (Seventh-Day Adventists of today are well meaning but do not account correctly for the accommodation to the gentiles in Acts 15, believing that to be only a temporary accommodation.)

[Judges Gone Wild]

The Christians did not leave Judaism. The Christians in Jerusalem were driven out of The Temple by the Jews. The Apostle Paul was driven out of synagogues by the Pharisees. The final break was when Simon bar Kochba massacred Christian Jews who would not accept him as their messiah in A.D. 135.

[tsomer]

So I find this article rather puzzling.

Likewise.

I'd like the author to name one passage of scripture that incites murder of Jews. Before anyone convinces me that Christianity is to blame, I need this proof.

The Nazis hung a kind of cross over their door too. That didn't make them Christians. There are instances of this in the Koran; I've read them.

[HiTech RedNeck]

You know the Moose are giggling themselves silly over the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero. Mosques, with minarets, are typically placed at sites of Moose victories.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Jews typically don’t make distinctions between the behavior of pope-led churches vs. the behavior of scripture-led churches, especially as they’ve had a lot more experience (and bitter experience) with the former. On the Jewish eschatological time scale, the Protestants and evangelicals are but a blip.

[Just mythoughts]

The author apparently only uses manufactured cliff notes. Because it was brothers that sold a brother Joseph because of jealously, that was indeed allowed by the Heavenly Father that caused or brought forth the Egyptian captivity.... And even through the miracle of their freedom the children itched whined and murmured once they were guided by divine intervention with safety of an overhead light by night and a cloud of covering during the day, and even provided angels food to sustain them, still could not be satisfied. There was NO other religious/political interference described as cause for them to complain... but they did non-stop. Things deteriorated to the point the children demanded to return to Egypt. So instead of letting that happen they got to wander in the wilderness until the ones of 20 years and older died off .... they would NOT be allowed into the promise land.

And it was by Heavenly direction and even being foretold what was going to happen that sent the House of Judah into the Babylonian captivity. And it was by divine direction that a certain person would send forth out of Babylon with the funds to rebuild the previously sacked temple.

And we in this nation freely elected a modern day Pharaoh that is daily placing all of US unto his bondage. Moses penned in Deuteronomy what would happen IF the children turned their collective backs upon the Heavenly Father.... Moses laid out what would bring the blessings and what would bring curses... and so it is.

Oh as far as the other two religions one need only look around this globe to see their success rate. This author does not demonstrate that he knows who is in control and things have occurred exactly as they were foretold they would.

[bperiwinkle7]

This article is loaded with BS at the beginning. Christianity is NOT responsible for the Holocaust, Hitler and the German people are. Many Christians died under the 3rd Reich, defending Jewish people.

[bperiwinkle7]

I don’t feel like taking the time to point out all the other errors, some of which are already indicated by others, above.

Usually, American Thinker has a better quality of writer.....

[pnh102]

At best, islam is literally the bastard child of Judaism. Giving it any sort of legitimate link to Judaism is an insult to the Jewish people. There's simply no way the God of the Jewish people is the same god as the god of islam.

And comparing the Crusades to the Holocaust? What kind of flawed thinking is this? The Crusades were a defensive response to the invasion of Europe by the muslims. Sadly, they were only partly successful in repelling the invasion, as the muslims were able to set up shop in southeastern Europe for 500 years.

[pnh102]

VOTE OUT BLOOMBERG AND EVERY IDIOT WHO IS ALLOWING THIS TO HAPPEN. CALL AND WRITE THE MAYOR’S OFFICE RELENTLESSLY.

Sadly it seems most of the opposition to this monument of islamic victory is coming from outside of New York City. The voting majority of people in the city seem to be perfectly accepting of this atrocity. It really is too bad that most of these people couldn't recognize islamic extremism even if it crashed a plane into a building, twice.

[highlander_UW]

I thought the word “mosque” was just arabic for holy ammunition dump...at least that's what they were being used as in Iraq, and almost certainly elsewhere.

[sayuncledave]

Please don’t take offense neverdem, but the author’s piece is rather inaccurate and poorly written.

[SkyPilot]

After Rome embraced Christianity under Constantine, the Church fathers increasingly used temporal powers to discriminate against the Jews and proscribe and mock the practice of their faith. In time, this led to the horrors of the Crusades, the Catholic inquisition, forced conversions, pogroms, and ultimately, to the Holocaust.

I stopped reading right there.

This author has not one whit of a clue about evil, Satan, eternal destiny, the Jewish people, Israel, or God's word.

[snowsislander]

Perhaps the most egregious and blatant example of Islamic triumphalism is the planned construction of a giant mosque in New York, almost upon the site of the horrific destruction of the Twin Towers by Moslem terrorists acting in the name of Allah.

The proposed mosque is to be opened in 2011 on the very anniversary of the September 11, 2001 atrocity -- a flagrant insult to the memory of the thousands of innocents who died at the hands of Moslem fanatics and believers, most of them Saudis.

[BipolarBob]

A notable New Testament fact is that the Lord’s Day (commemorating the resurrection of Jesus) and the Jewish Sabbath were contemporaneously observed by Christians.

It is a sad fact that corruption began in the early church as it lost its roots. As pagans, that worshipped the sun, were incorporated into the church, their day of worship was contemporaneously observe (Sun Day). The truth is Jesus kept the Sabbath as prescribed in the Fourth Commandment. He proclaimed the Sabbath as the Lords Day (Mark 2:28). There is no Biblical commandment to observe Sunday as there is for the sabbath. If we love Jesus He reminds us to keep His Commandments.

[Broker]

Agreed and Islam is no daughter to Isreal.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The Lord’s Day merited mention in the Bible as a day of observation. It takes some twisting to attempt to reason from that to the purported conclusion that observing it is wrong. In parallel to the Old Testament it would be quite fair to call it “a” sabbath, in the sense that various Old Testament observations that fall on weekdays are called sabbaths. This one is different, however, in that it’s voluntary. Legalism about it is just plain wrong.