Posted on 05/10/2003 6:06:50 AM PDT by Seti 1
EVANGELICALS' ANTI-ISLAM REMARKS ARE TESTAMENT TO IGNORANCE
WASHINGTON -- Evangelical Christianity's leaders, meeting here this week, performed a great service for the geopolitical health of the world. They denounced as "unhelpful" and even "dangerous" the outrageous anti-Islam remarks made by some of the movement's star preachers over recent months. The Rev. Franklin Graham was not there. He was in San Diego at a "mission." But his words of the last year and a half -- that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion" -- clearly hung over the landscape.
Nor was the Rev. Jerry Falwell at the conference, sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Institute on Religion and Democracy. His words last year on "60 Minutes," that the prophet Mohammed was himself a "terrorist," had an equally cloying effect on the meeting, along with those of the Rev. Pat Robertson, who recently said that Islam only wants to "co-exist until it can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy."
It seems that many in the organized evangelical community, with its extraordinary 45 million Christian members in America, are finally getting sick of such prejudiced outbursts -- and about time, too! Don't we have enough problems in the world without these otherwise respected and even sagacious "men of the cloth" and "men of God" carrying on in such a manner in the name of their faith and their country?
First of all, one has to wish they had ever bothered to read a history book on Islam.
For nearly 800 years from 711 A.D. onward, the Islamic Moorish state in Spain ruled over one of the most brilliant, cultured and tolerant states in world history. "Al Andalus, the ornament of the world," historians called it. In the capital city of Cordoba, the city's library housed some 400,000 volumes, compared to hundreds in the largest libraries in Latin Christian countries.
Historian Maria Rose Menocal wondered over the magnificent "culture of tolerance" in this Moorish Spain. "Their illumination of the rest of the universe transcended differences of religion," she wrote. "It was in Al Andalus that the profoundly Arabized Jews rediscovered and reinvented Hebrew poetry ... Christian palaces and churches, like Jewish synagogues, were often built in the style of the Muslims," and one synagogue in Toledo even "includes inscriptions from the Koran ..."
Today in many parts of the Muslim world, one finds impressive learning and tolerance. Turkey's secular state directly controls Islamic education and even the training of the Muslim preachers; Tunisia began reforming Islam in the 1830s, and that country's Islam today is advanced and highly tolerant; in the Sultanate of Oman, where the distinct Ibadi Islam is the way of life, tolerance is built into every level of life.
In some of the less lucky Muslim countries -- Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, Egypt to a certain degree -- after the colonial powers left the Arab world in the 1950s, and after the Koran became available to interpretation not only by clerical authorities but every preacher, a kind of Arab "Protestant Revolution" came into being. But this was a violent one, and one far removed from the old authorities.
In this untethered Islam, the apocalyptic mystique and message of an Osama bin Laden could grow because the Muslim world had become a society under stress and duress. Strangely enough, this same apocalyptic message -- always ending in terrible destruction and the conversion of "the other" -- is strikingly similar to the Armageddonite message of many evangelical Christians. Both ideas are in part responses to the alienating modern world.
Islam in history was sometimes brilliant, tolerant and just; sometimes debauched, intolerant and unjust -- almost exactly like the history of all great religions.
Second, one has to say that these gratuitous and unbalanced insults to the Muslim faith, which have been broadcast through globalization across the entire world, have played a major role in further radicalizing Muslim society.
Pakistan's religious parties are taking over more and more of the crucially important border areas with Afghanistan, the moderate Islamic authorities are lying low as the radicals crow about American prejudice against Islam, and classic Muslim groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are strongly on the rise again. Is this really what these men of the cloth want to see happen?
Third, it is becoming clear, in part through conferences such as the one here, that these spokesmen are becoming somewhat of an embarrassment to their flocks. Do evangelicals really want to appear to the world to be unschooled in the complicated histories of the great religions; to be seen as politically throwing their support to Ariel Sharon's expansionist policies on the West Bank? Do the masses of good, smart, cultured evangelical people really believe that Armageddon will be more moral than a Palestinian state?
I was raised as a Baptist in Chicago, and I have great respect for evangelical religions, so, please, no attacks on that basis! But I also know from years of working overseas, not to speak of simple observation of humanity, that the way you contain radicalism -- any radicalism -- is to gradually, persistently and justly drain out the poisons from the swamps, thus drying up the wellsprings for terrorism and diverting the rivers of hatred.
The words of the Grahams, the Falwells and the Robertsons have exactly the opposite effect. It is infinitely good that serious evangelicals are speaking out in other tongues.
I actually HATE that woman!!
Really, the anti-intellectualism of her arguments is appalling. Let's crack open a history book about the brutal conquest of Syria, or the siege at Vienna. I defy Geyer to find anything "Protestant" about their "revolution" except the protestations of murdered Jews and Christians. Wahabism came about in the 1800's I believe, yet Geyer "missed it on purpose" now didn't she, so she could blame "colonialism", completely absolving the House of Saud. Oh, Geyer is a foul apostate; I challenge her to name ONE thing "holy" about islam.
Ahhhhh.... no.
More like a testament of the triumph of reality over BS.
The sandmaggot behavior currently and historically speaks for itself.
No amount to propaganda can change that.
Easy, the space between the ears of someone who would give themselves over to this over-rated death cult.
completely absolving the House of Saud
Amazon.com: Books: Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports ...
In the global search for culprits and causes in the rise of terrorism, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold shines a spotlight on a nation many think of as a close ally of the United States: Saudi Arabia. As he explains in Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, Gold believes that the Saudi government is greatly influenced by the Islamist sect known as Wahhabism and, he explains, that influence has lead to Saudi support of terrorism in the Middle East, Europe, the United States and around the world. The historical portion of Gold’s argument, where he traces the emergence of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the changing face of Saudi leadership, is admirably extensive and detailed. His modern research is a little more uneven, relying on statements by various Muslim clergy members, letters to the editors of newspapers, opinion pieces, and other evidence that is rarely damnable. Curiously, mentions of Israel and the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict are much more infrequent than one would expect from an Israeli diplomat and scholar. But regardless of one’s opinion of Gold’s research or his alarming conclusions, the book offers something not often found in modern political nonfiction: a coherent structure, exhaustive research, and a clear and consistent perspective on the ongoing threat of terrorism. --John Moe
a similar propaganda piece
Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias - article by Daniel Pipes The recent PBS documentary Islam: Empire of Faith is a case in point, offering, as the Wall Street Journal sharply put it, an "uncritical adoration of Islam, more appropriate to a tract for true believers than a documentary purporting to give the American public a balanced account." Islamists in New York City celebrated the destruction on September 11 at their mosques, but journalists refused to report the story for fear of offending Muslims, effectively concealing this important information from the U.S. public.
Of course Pat Robertson didn't say this - he sent his [Arab-looking] reporter to a mosque in London and that is what the Muslims told him. I saw the interviews.
Is it 'radical Christians' that are sending their children out to die with bombs? that are raping, murdering and pillaging all over the world - and in the name of 'God'? ...like they have a divine right?
Islam is indeed a dangerous doctrine. The fact that not every Muslim is doing these things is of little consequence... they aren't doing anything to stop it either.
ptoooooey!
This first sentence is the real purpose of the article. It's all about the Jews.
As someone who claims to have been raised Baptist, it's interesting that she questions the morality of Armageddon. If she's speaking about the last days prophesy as found in the Bible, anyone who payed attention while being raised Baptist would know that indeed all that God does is moral. By definition.
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