Young Muslims in Turkey Murder Three Christians
Christianity Today Barbara G. Baker April 20, 2007
Deaths mark first known martyrdom of Turkish converts since founding of republic.
In a gruesome assault against Turkey’s tiny Christian community, five young Muslim Turks entered a Christian publishing office in the southeastern province of Malatya Wednesday and slit the throats of the three Protestant Christians present.
Two of the victims, Necati Aydin, 36, and Ugur Yuksel, 32, were Turkish converts from Islam. The third man, Tilmann Geske, 46, was a German citizen.
The Turkish press reported Thursday that four of the five young men arrested for the murders, all 19 to 20 years of age, admitted during initial interrogations that they were motivated by both “nationalist and religious feelings.”
Friday 20 Apr 2007 | JBL | Islamic violence |
Why will the Turkmen not renounce their barbarism?
Dean: They won’t give up their barbarism because of it is part of their belief, belief = identity, to renounce their belief is to renounce who they are not just in the present, but throughout time and beyond. It is an understanding much of Christianity has lost and secluarism has never had.
Besides, it is not really barbarism, it is part of the sacrifice due to god, part of their covenant with god confirmed in blood.
The “Young Turks” are at it again. On a day that the Armenians, along with the Assyrians and other Christians of the Ottoman empire commemorate the Genocide of the early 20th Century we realize that not much has changed.
I find these murders very troubling because they may be a portent of increasing social and political tension and turmoil in Turkey. At least three different conflicting forces are presently at work pulling and tearing Turkey in different directions.
First, you have the more Westernized political liberals who would like to see Turkey intergrate with the European Union and advance economically, and who recognize that political liberalization is part of this process. In so much as the murders of Christians inhibit this process they are an embarrassment to the liberals.
Then there are the Turkish Nationalists who see themselves as protectors of Kemal Attaturk’s legacy and who are very powerful in the Turkishh military. While secular in outlook, they are also intensely xenophobic and nationalist, and particularly paranoid about non-Turkish minorities with competing claims on what they see as the Turkish homeland.
Lastly, there is the growing Islamic movement whose fundamentalist message is designed to exploit the fears and anxieties of the economically marginalized living in Turkey’s poorer towns and urban slums. In his novel “Snow”, Nobel prize winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, which concerned young Muslim women committing suicide in response to a ban on headscarves, explored the tension between Turkey’s Nationalist and Islamic movements.
The murders are worrisome because they suggest that Turkey may not be ready for political integration with Europe. Turkish nationalists may fear the loss of soveriegnty that would result from closer intergration with Europe, while Muslim fundmentalists may not be able to view the religious freedom that intergration with Europe would require as anything but a mortal threat to Islam.
The Turks have always been a violent and barbaric nation and this latest act only reinforces this. They have violated churches and women in Cyprus and Greece in recent years. Unfortunatley because of their strategic location as a buffer zone between first Russia and now Iraq, they are treated with kid gloves and pandered too. Remember the Crimean and Galipoli and the wholsale slaughter of the Armenian nation. Unfortunately this has all been swept under a the silk carpet of western tolerance!
Well, the West really doesn’t care about the Christians in the East. They have sold out to economic interests and convenience. If the Allies hadn’t abandoned Greece after WWI, we wouldn’t be having the problems we are having today. Cyprus is a complete mess, with the UN ‘plan’ being to give in to Turkish aggression. Tolerance of evil is a heinous crime.
Is there any nation that hasn’t behaved violently and barbarically at some point in its history? If you know of one let me know.
It should be noted that although clearly designated as second-class citizens, Christians did enjoy freedom of worship under Ottoman Turkish rule. The Orthodox Patriarch was considered a Turkish state official, and many Christians from the Pharnar region of Constantnople served as diplomatic envoys and representatives of the Sultan. As late as 1920, Christians comprised the majority of Turkey’s professional and mercantile class.
The recent murders of Christians in Turkey have to be seen in the context of the divergent forces presently pulling Turkey in different directions. The Islamic parties have steadily gained popularity by exploiting the fears and anxieties of the economically marginalized living in Turkey’s poorer towns and urban slums.
A large segment of the Turkish population however values the secular traditions set in place by Kemal Attaturk. Remember, Attaturk is the one who banned the beards and fezes and all other vestiges of what he saw as Turkey’s backward leaning Islamic past. The secularists held huge demonstrations last weekend to have the Islamic party candidate for President, Abdullah Gul, removed from the ballot. The Turkish military released a statement, seen a vieled threat, suggesting that they would intervene, in other words, hold a coup d’etat, to prevent the establishment of an Islamic regime.
Both the secular nationalists and the Islamists resent the West, but for different reasons. The secular nationalists, in particular, resent what they see the persistant and unfair anti-Turkish bias, a smug European superiority and calculated European insults to their nation and people.
This is regrettable, because at least theoretically, Turkish membership in the European Union would be the best thing that could happen for both the West and Turkey. It would liberalize and westernize Turkish laws, and finally establish that long hoped-for free, democratic state in the middle-east, sought by the Bush administration, that could transform the region.
Where have you been living? “Religious Freedom”, more like “Religious Intolerance”. You need to stop reading the Turkish propaganda, Dean. The patriarch was abused, killed, deposed, thrown into the sea. The patriarch was seen as a tool for controlling the Greek population.
As for a democratic state transforming the Middle East, what happens then? If the will of the people is unchanged, it will just be popularly elected hostile governments. Democacy doesn’t always make everything hunky-dory.
Dean - I agree with you that democracy has not resulted in the progressive, liberal and western-leaning governments in the middle-east that were hoped for. Instead, democracy has provided Islamic fundamentalists with an opportunity to hijack government and implement policies we find dangerous and unwelcome.
There are reasons to believe that it could be different in Turkey, however.
First, Turkey has this emphasis on secularism built into its consitution and this ideal is strongly protected by the miltary, who whatever their other faults may be, don’t want to see their nation taken over by radical Islamic fundmentalists. Secondly, Turkey would be tied to the European Union and would have to harmonize many of its own laws with those in Europe, which are far more liberal. Also Turkey is tied to Europe and the US through NATO, another important organization for international cooperation which the Bush administration has failed to support, but which the Turks regard seriously.
So two things can happen - Turkey can join the EU, move closer to the West, and become a stronger political and economic partner. Or through our refusal to let go of our hostile attitudes from the past, we can keep on alienating and insulting the Turks, driving them away and allowing their nation to slip into the arc of instability and violence that is gripping most of the middle-east.
Which sounds better to you?
If Turkey joines the EU, will it “move closer” to the West
Dean believes that if Turkey joines the EU, it will “move closer to the West?”
Opponents of Turkey’s admission to the EU fear that Turkey will not move closer to the West, but that Turkey’s huge Muslim population will not assimilate with Europe but will overwhelm Europe.
These theses can be factually tested. Ask yourself, where has Europe effectively prevented the creation of a parallel, unassimilated and unassimilatable Muslim communities? No where. The French managed to uphold a headscarf ban in the schools, but, little else.
Please note the follow Islamicization of Europe:
1)Britain is making welfare payments to the polygamous second and third families of Muslim immigrants.
2) Britain has also allowed the institution of a parallel sharia legal system.
3) Britain has made it government bonds “sharia” friendly.
4) There exists a “Muslim parliament of Britain” which does not have official recognition from the U.K. government but which is beginning to be recognized by groups of British Muslims.
5)The Christian religious freedom group, Barnabus House, reports that a very vigorous, parallel Islamic society is being built in the U.K. with millions of Saudi dollars. Muslims settle disputes with private sharia courts. Brides are imported from Pakistan, who in turn, are never taught English, but live in Muslim-only enclaves in Muslims neighborhoods (territories).
The British Home Minister gave a speech in a Muslim neighborhood recently. During the open question period that followed, a Muslim asked the minister “why do you dare to come into our neighborhood.” The meaning was clear, the neighborhood had been claimed for Muslims, for Islam and for sharia.
6) Saudi Arabia has been given virtually free rein to dominate most European mosques and has been pumping out anti-Western hate literature by the ton into the European Muslim community.
Channel Four in Britain did a undercover report on a mosque generally considered to be “moderate.” It produced hours and hours of videotapes of imams telling the worshippers that non-Muslims were animals. This mosque had been active in “inter-faith” seminars by the way. No action has been taken against this mosque even 4 months after the broadcast.
7)Teachers in Germany have stated that Muslim students threaten them if they attempt to teach about Voltaire, the Crusades, the Holocaust or other topics “offensive” to Muslims.
8)Muslim apostates are not safe in Europe and those who challenge Islam directly as not supported they are killed; like Pym Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh. Aayaan Hirsi Ali was virtually driven out of Europe due to her refusal to exclude Islam from debate and intellectual testing. The killer of Theo Van Gogh was a second generation Danish Muslim. He was unrepentant at his trial.
9) “Intellectuals” who mock, scorn, and denigrate the teachings of Judaism and Christianity are rewarded with tenure, titles and book deals. People who write even an essay critical of Islam have to go into hiding as happened recently to a French author.
10) French police have openly stated that there exists an “intifada” against French society in the Muslim slums. Police, fire and emergency medical personnel are attacked if they enter Muslim territory. The most recent episode was a riot in the center of Paris’ famed underground metro system. Something the governemnt could not longer hide from the public. Muslim youth rampaged against the police and against non-Muslim travelers.
11) Rape attacks against indigenous Swedish women by Muslim thugs have caused the incidence of rape in Sweden to increase fifteen fold. No one dare discuss the nature of the attacks, who the attackers are or why they attack. Swedish women victims report that they are called “Swedish whores” by their attackers. Islam teaches that women who do not “cover are not entitled to respect or legal protection against attack. This Islamic value has been transplanted to Sweden.
12) Police and fire officials in Malmo, Sweden report much the same behavior as do French police. They cannot venture into Muslim neighborhoods without fear of attack.
Sweden has the most generous welfare system in the world and Muslim immigrants have generous benefits in terms of cash stipends, medical care and housing.
13) A German judge refused to grant a Muslim woman an emergency divorce order becuase the judge considered the beatings the woman received to be normal for Muslim culture. It took a public outcry for the ruling to be reversed.
14) The Muslim Council of Britian recently published an 80 page report on British education of Muslim children. They requested a complete overhaul of the British public school system to “accomodate” Muslims. Probably most disturbing was the insistence by the Muslim Counsel of Britian that Muslim children be excluded from any class teaching about other religions BUT, that non-Muslim children should be required to attend a class on Islam approved by the Muslims Council. Adoption of all the proposals would have completely Islamicized British public schools and made them virtually indistinguishable from those in Saudi Arabia, except for the presence of non-Muslim children.
Although these incidents are scattered across Europe they demonstrate that Muslims in Europe are working for Islamicization of Europe and that that well-funded, powerful groups are leading a politically astute drive to create separate Muslim socieities. The fact that many individual Muslims may not agree with this push, is irrelevant as they are not politically organized or funded, while the Islamists are. Let us remember that to be a Muslim is to believe that the Koran is the divine word of God. Assimilation to Europe cannot occur without revising that belief and leaving Islam, at least, to some degree. You cannot square the circle.
So, just who is assimilating whom? Will the addition of millions of Turks help? I think not.
What about Turkey’s human right’s violations?
As a moral matter, make the Turks stop their brutal suppression of Christian and non-Muslims inside their own borders.
If Muslims cannot behave in a civilized manner inside their own country, why should they change in Europe?
When Europe turns a blind eye to the suffering of non-Muslims in Turkey, it emboldens the Islamists and allows them to tell their non-Muslims in Turkey “see Europe does not care about you and you have no friends anywhere.”
I do not believe that Turkey will enforce the decrees of the EU, as Turkey has learned, from the past, that it can sign whatever treaty it wants, and it will not be held accountable.
While we should not go out of our way to inflame the Turks, we should criticize them when they are incorrect. Unfortunately, the Turks will see this as an insult, anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Turkey will only be appeased when it has established a world of Turks.
Not an altogether impossible scenario when one considers their track record.
The fall of Constantinople has many parallels to modern day Europe. Infighting, lack of will to fight (only 1/7th of men of fighting age in the doomed city volunteered to defend it), and a sense of foredoom defined the setting in 1453. If I was Turkey, I would see no reason to deal with an already teetering West.
There really is nothing new under the sun.
When the city fell, thousands were killed outright. Wives and daughters were raped en masse, and taken as slaves. I’ll always remember the story of the a high-ranking official who tried to make nice with the victorious Mehmed. It didn’t work out, as Mehmed’s only demand was to force that official’s young sons to bed. The official ended killing his own kids to keep them from being defiled in that manner. Mehmed then beheaded the official. Remember, the crescent of Islam came from Constantinople, whose symbol was the crescent moon. It’s the symbol of a conqueored people.
Hijack? Islam is not broken. It’s who these people are, and these policies are often what they want. Ask Muslims if they think their faith is broken or hijacked. They’ll be insulted. Most who are forthcoming say it is the tactics they agree with, not the aim. Islam is *the* way of life, not something you check at the door when you go to work. If anything, Muslims think they are going to ‘fix us’…namely our secular, hollowed out societies.
Correction: Most who are forthcoming say it is the tactics they [disagree] with, not the aim.
Slow Learner, indeed. Your attempts to conflate Turks with Arabs and depict them both as part of some menacing, undifferentiated Islamo-fascist monolith are misinformed and based on fear, gross ignorance and bigotry. My God look at the calender - it’s 2007, bot 1453.
if you had been paying any attention to the news, at all, you would have known that a major confrontation is building between Turkey’s secular and Islamic factions. The Turkish congress chose foreign minister Abdullah Gul, from the Islamic party to be the sole candidate for president. In response there has been a huge backlash by Turkey’s secularists.
First, their were huge demonstrations by secular Turks protesting the possibility of and islamic government.
Turks protest Islamic-rooted government
Second, Turkey’s military issued a warning that it would inerven to protect the nation’s secular institutions and prevent the establishment of an islamic regime.
Harsh army warning over secularism hits Turkish presidential vote
Lastly, Turkey’s Supreme Court moved to suspend the election, to prevent the Islamic candidate from becoming president without a secular alternative candidate.
Turkish Court Blocks Islamist Candidate
Obviously, a large portion of Turkey’s population has a strong secular orientation, and clearly fears and opposes the possibility of Islamic rule and is western-oriented and progressive in outlook. The question is, how can we help them.
The answer is not with stupid, religiously bigoted, ignorant comments that only serve to weaken and alienate them and validate the paranoid popaganda of the radical islamists.
Maybe this is why the United states has suffered so many foreign policy setbacks lately - because our people are too lazy to open a newspaper, and would rather rely on stale propaganda instead.
Is opening a history book any less important, Mr. Scourtes?
Dean - I would strongly recommend The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999, by Mischa Glenny
This book really provided a lot of new, valuable information for me, on the history of relations between Turkey and Southeast Europe. Both Greeks and Turks, for example like to paint the other as villains, but the reality is a lot more ambiguous and complicated.
For example, Greeks remember that during the Greek War of Independence, the Turks massacred and enslaved most of the population of the island of Chios, an act of barbarism that shocked Europe. The Turks, on the other hand, emphasize in their history that the Greeks massacred and wiped out almost the entire Muslim population of the Peloponese, at least 20,000 people, men, women and children. “Not a Turk Will Be Left in Morea” (the Peloponese) was actually a battle cry of the Greek rebels, and they meant it.
The selective telling of history means that we have to consider the source as we read history, and make an extra effort to look for objective and balanced information.
While it is unfortunated that tragedies occur, the fact remains that, historically, Turks have been the aggressors.
As for the veracity of the statement about the 20,000 Turks, this is from the people that still deny the Armenian genocide…
Dean S. You say: “This book really provided a lot of new, valuable information for me, on the history of relations between Turkey and Southeast Europe. Both Greeks and Turks, for example like to paint the other as villains, but the reality is a lot more ambiguous and complicated.”
The aggressor normally has more of a burden to bear when evaluating what happens in war. In Greek/Turk case there is no doubt that by the time of the Greek War of Independence, the Greeks had endured almost 400 years of systematic brutality. While the killing in the Peloponese is excessive, it is understandable. The Greeks overall have shown remarkable restraint. Many Muslims, as the case under discussion illustrates, will slit throats at a mere umbrage or just because someone is Christian.
As to your earlier comment on the “freedom of religion” in the Ottoman Empire: The Ottoman response to the declaration of war by the Greeks was to drag the Patriarch of Constantinople from his Cathedral in the middle of a Pascha celebration, behead him and stick his severed head on a spike at the gates of the Phanar.
One cannot understand history through an egalitarian lens just as one cannot understand the current threat. The truth is not some entropic fantasy. Islam has historically been an aggressive and barbaric force both as it conquers and when it rules.
Greece, Cyprus,Kashmir,Chechnya, Nigeria, Morroca list goes on and on
Michael it seems that the biggest struggle is to persuade people to take the long view, both across the globe and across history.
Islam has been an aggressive and imperialistic political system since its inception. The story of jihad is the story of Byzantine Christians, Balkan Christians, North African Berbers, Christian Greeks, Christian Cypriots, Hindus, Buddhist Afghanis (Afghanistan was once Buddhist), Christian Russians, Nigerian Christians, African animists, Buddhist Thais, ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia, Roman Catholic Philipinos. Over and over again the Muslims have warred against all non-Muslims descending to the most base tactics known in human history. This includes Hitler as much of the Muslim world were Hitler’s explicit and open allies in WWII.
American authorities in Iraq have found that the fuel storage take and inner walls of a newly built girl’s school were boobytrapped with explosives, if the plan had gone through an entire building full of teachers and young students would have been blown to pieces.
Jihadis in Iraq have targeted doctors and teachers. They war relentlessly against the pillars of a peaceful civil society doing everything in their power to destroy it and replace it with their tyranny.
Islam is a totalitarian system that forbids freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. It is a false, totally false and irredeemably false teaching, that cannot countenance free thought. It exudes the fear held by all falsity that the bright light of free thought will expose its foul lies.
Mohammed was NOT a prophet of God and everything he taught is false and heretical. Lies are the seeds of evil and tragedy, the history of Islam in this world. Nothing good arises from lies, nothing.
Cultural wishful thinking will only march us to our demise all the sooner.
I’m reading a book called Real Love. The principals it advances for inter-personal communication seem to be in accord with Gospel teaching although there is nary a specific reference to Christ in the whole book. One statement the author makes is: “It is the lack of real love in our individual lives that causes all the anger, racism, and contention the world.” He also harps throught the book on the fact that anger is a self-generated emotion–no one else but you, makes you feel angry–it is always a choice.
It is clear by the public statements made by many Muslims that there is a deep fear in their hearts. IMO that fear is generated by the Muslim theology.
Barring a miracle, I do not beleive that the west will have the policital and cultural will to fight. For Christians, that leaves but one choice (which we should be doing anyway)–prepare for marytrdom. Of course, if the Jihadi’s were really smart, they would never launch another attack. “Surrender” in Iraq and let democracy take its course which would be Sharia Law. In the west our unwillingness to stand politically for anything but selfishness will eventually allow Sharia Law to me imposed here simply because the Moslems will continue to out breed the rest of us. Since the republicanism of the United States has increasingly become mob-based populism, why won’t it happen? How do we answer constitutionally the fact that, for Muslims, Sharia Law is integral to their religious freedom?
Time for a reality-check:
Thousands Protest Religion in Turkish Government , New York Times, May 6, 2007
Look at that! Thousands of people in a big Muslim country rejecting radical fundamentalism. Apparently there ARE moderate Muslims. Apparently they aren’t all brainwashed robots programed to destroy Christians after all.
Dean, real reality check: The “secular” Turkish government has been systematcially strangling the Eumneical Patriarchate for years by closing the seminaries; refusing to allow Turkish citizens to be bishops while at the same time mainting the law that the Patriarch has to be a Turkish citizen.
The “moderate” Muslims I have heard speak past and present eventually come around to admitting that they do not agree with fundamnental aspects of the Islamic faith as it is routinely practiced. They do not agree with large sections of the Koran, etc. I’ve come away with the impression that they are to Islam what Episcopelians are to Christianity.
Now, apostate Muslims in power is probably a good thing for us, but it still does not help us really deal with the core of Islam.
Note 14 Dean asks that I look at the calendar? I ask Dean to look at the world.
Dean, in Note 14 you ask me to look at the calendar, I have asked you to look at the world.
I am not aware of any post by you that contradicted the facts that I reported in my Note 10. Islam is changing Europe, Europe is not changing Islam.
You have not supplied any information which contradicts the list of the places I provided in Note 19 which TODAY, not in 1453 are torn by Muslim violence against non-Muslims. Why is it so hard for you to take a wider view of Islam? Why can’t you recognize the big picture, the globe is aflame with Muslim violence, we are all under seige. Why do you think every country in the world has to enforce elaborate security measure at is airport? Is that all delusional? I think not, Dean. I think not.
Michael and SL:
Here is what I believe. I would submit that the true threat to peace is not Islam, but religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is an intolerant, paranoid and even hateful expression of religious values. Fundamentalism thrives on fear, ignorance, insecurity and poverty, which of course are endemic in large parts of the Muslim world, but also can be found in pockets in largely Christian countries. The same forces that help create a ruthless butcher like Abu Zachari also operate to create an unrepentant mass-murderer like Timothy McVeigh.
To promote peace we must address the causes of fundamentalism. The reinforcing and inflaming religious anatagonisms are counterproductive to peace. I’m not suggesting that we let down are guard. We must always be wary and vigilant against poterntial adversaries. However, Christian ethics impel us to work for peace whenever we can, and where there are opportunities we must explore them.
Rather than engaging the facts, Dean punts the intellectual ball and blames “fundamentalism” Christianity does not command that we close our eyes to truth and fail to condemn evil acts arising from evil ideologies.
Any aspect that Islam that Dean finds objectionable Dean called “fundamentalism.” This is to preserve the fiction that there exists a bona-fide, human-rights compatible, Islamic tradition arising from the Islamic world ( as opposed to Sunday afternoon teas at your local Episcopal “church”).
However, there is no such thing as Islamic “fundamentalism,” the word itself comes from the West. There is no division between Islamic fundamentalism and orthodox Islam. There is Sunni, Shiia and Suffi Islam. There are four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. The content of orthodox Sunni Islam is very well established and defined and has been for centuries. It is this very core content that inspires Islamic violence, it is orthodox Islamic jihad.
The last sermon of Mohammed commanded his followers to conquer the world for Islam and that is what they have been busy with for centuries, with some real success. This sermon has never been delegitimized by any Muslim cleric and no previously accepted teaching of Mohammed can be refuted by any Muslim as Mohammed is the perfect man and the eternal exemplar who is beyond correction or amendment. Certainly Dean you are aware of the campaigns of conquest arising from the Arabian peninsula and extending to the Spain, India and the Balkans? What do you think inspired this effort?
The duty to conquer the material, political, social and temporal world for Islam is set out in all the teachings of Islam, it is called “jihad.” Sunni Muslims represent 90% of all Muslims in the world. The leading theological seminary for Sunni Islam is located in Cairo, it is called Al-Azhar. Al-Azhar publishes Muslim theological authorities. The leading Sunni Muslim theological authority is a book called “Reliance of the Traveler.” Translations of this book are available in English with a forward assuring readers that the scholars at Al-Azhar have reviewed the translation and found it to be accurate and not misleading.
No one in the Muslim world doesn’t know that Mohammed commanded Muslims to conquer the world. The very title of Bernard Lewis’ book “What Went Wrong” is a reflection of the confusion among the Muslim community over Islam’s stalled effort to conquer the world.
Many Muslims are not interested in conquering the world by force, however, they are enjoined to conquer the world for Islam by any and all means available including emigration to non-Muslims lands and the seizure of political power in those countries to transform them to Islam by degrees. As noted in Note 10, Muslims have gone very far down that road in Europe, with some considerable success. Sharia imposed by any means is repugnant to human rights as understood in the West.
Recent polls by many respected pollsters in the U.K. show that a very considerable portion of native born Muslims, as much as 30%, want the U.K. to be ruled by sharia. Islam is a political and legal system as well as a religion and it is expressed and given life by and through sharia. Sharia is not “fundamentalism” Sharia is Islam and Islam is Sharia.
When a Muslim Dutch politician was asked to renounce sharia as a condition of remaining in a left-liberal party, he replied that he could not renounce sharia without renouncing his identity. He was a member of a well established Dutch political party, not a fringe group.
Dean simply does not want to engage the facts on the ground. Regardless of one’s religious committment or lack of it, we in the West must take a clear eyed view of Islam’s history, Islam ideology as openly announced by Muslims.
Osama Ben Laden has told us exactly what he is doing and why he is doing it. Muslims all over the world know exactly what OBL is doing and why OBL is doing is and a very large percentage actively support it.
A small handful of Westernized academic Muslims are of no import in this struggle. Millions in Indonesia follow Abu Bakr the instigator of the Bali bombings, a few mild-mannered “Muslims” showing up an an Episcopal high tea means nothing.
Remember being White means having to apologize for buying black slaves from Muslims slave traders. Being Muslim means never having to take responsibility for imperialist wars of conquest, the enslavement of millions of Black Africans, the kidnapping and enslavement of white Europeans, the destruction of pre-Islamic culture in every country Islam has conquered, and the very real, very present and very cruel persecution of non-Muslims in every Muslim majority country on the planet.
Christ does not command us to pretend the truth away, instead, he condemnds calling evil good or excusable or acceptable by people if they happen to be misled by false prohets.
Matthew 10:34
There are a lot of passages in the Christian scripture that can be taken out of context and used to misrepresent Christianity as a religion of violent conquest as well. Also, a person with an anti-Christian bias could look at the bloody manner by which Christianity was spread in Central and South America by the Spanish Conquistadors and use that to make the argument that Christianity is a religion of violent conquest as well.
The depiction of peple of the Islamic faith as uniformly and unainimously bent on the violent conversion of non-Muslim peoples is not supported by reality, but based on selectively culled and misintepreted quotes. It took me less than a minute on Google to find the “Muslims against Extremism and Fundamentalism” web site with a number of articles promoting a more peaceful and moderate view of their faith.
If we deny that there are moderate Muslims than we make violent confrontation with the Muslim world a self-fulfilling prophesy. However, if we work with moderate Muslims to promote peace and understanding we can discredit the fundamentalists and their evil propaganda.
Quoting from Reliance of the Traveler is not “taking out of context”
Reliance of the Traveler is published by Al-Azhar, the leading, world-recognized Islamic University in Cairo. Jihad is a command that Muslims conquer the world for Islam. EVerybody but you recognizes that.
Dean, you are truly fact resistant. Islam publishes its own theology and you are the only one who refuses to read the theology Islam publishes.
This is not a theological matter, this is a factual matter. You simply refuse to face facts.
Islam is a imperialistic, totalitarian, political system whether you are willing to acknowledge it or not. However, you propose polices that you suggest that your fellow Americans adopt based on your denial of the truth and your wishful thinking.
Dean, you are truly fact resistant.
He is not even really that. He is a liberal reactionary, a troll who posts here to insight flame. Slow Learner, don’t bother attempting to engaging him - it is what he is after….
Christopher writes: “He is a liberal reactionary, a troll who posts here to insight flame.”
The word is “incite.” If you’re going to attack someone, at least get the spelling right.
If Dean is here to incite flame, it’s strange that you’re the only one who flames. Everyone else discusses.
SL - I’ve never even heard of the “Reliance of the Traveler “.
All I know is that my Savior, Jesus Christ, has directed us to work for peace and healing in the world. If there are Muslims who want peace and healing also, then it logically follows that we have a religious duty to engage them in dialogue, not deny their existence. We must not let the fear and anger dictate our thoughts and actions.
Matthew 10:16
Archbishop Pavle of Serbia writes:
http://www.stbasilchurch.org/patriarh.html
All I know is that my Savior, Jesus Christ, has directed us to work for peace
Slow Learner. Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Really, we have already had this exact conversation with Dean a dozen times here. These posts of his are flame baits. Don’t fall for it…
Dean, you need to distinguish between correctly assessing what we face AND deciding what the Christian response to that challenge is.
Take the Nazis. It is not unChristian to state that the Nazis promoted and enforced a fascistic, violent and totalitarian political movement which called for the extermination of the Jews. This is a factual statement. Period. Being a Christian does not mean failing to use the power of our minds to investigate and determine what we are dealing with. After the nature of what we are dealing with is understood, we can determine the proper Christian response is under the circumstances.
Certainly history itself affords enough evidence of violent jihad. Have you even looked at Andrew Bostom’s book, “The Legacy of Violent Jihad?”
Check it out from the library.
I have not seen any recognition from you of the comprehensive nature of today’s jihad. You have never recognized that jihad is occurring all over the world today and that virtually every non-Muslim group has suffered from it.
Dean, if peace with Islam means that we abandon Egyptian Copts to persecution would you embrace “peace?”
The West has very strong tools available to it, besides actual martial conflict. We can protest. We can boycott goods. We can refuse visas and passports to those who promote and apologize for human rights violations.
We can prevent Saudi money from corrupting our colleges and universities.
We can block Saudi money from building schools and mosques in our country.
We can stop Muslim immigration.
If peace with Islam means that we accept polygamy in America as it has been in the U.K. would you embrace “peace?”
If peace with Islam means that we accept wife beating in America as it
has been in Germany, would you embrace “peace?”
If peace with Islam means that we will look the other way when Muslims
bring female genital mutilation into America, will you embrace peace?
If peace with Islam means giving Islam privileged spaces in our airports,
schools, sports stadiums over Christians, Jews, Hindus and atheists,
will you embrace Islam?
Dean Scourtes -
In note #24 you imply that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian fundamentalist. What is the evidence for this?
In note #24 you imply that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian fundamentalist….
Of course. It’s called a flame bait - liberal hyperbole written to get you to ask the question. Resistance is NOT futile!!! You don’t have to go down this road!!!
Dean, for a more mature and thought out view of making peace you might want to read The Christian Warrior on the article side. Particularly the part about refusing to engage in conflict does not make for peace.
I do not see any thing in the Bible or Church history that remotely suggest ’safety’ for Christians when we go amongst the wolves. In fact, just the opposite. One cannot responsibly conduct U.S. foreign policy from a stance of martyrdom. That is no better than supporting Israel out of a Protestant escatological fantasy.
Dean,
If peace with Islam means that we accept honor killing in America, would you embrace “peace”?
Of course we should not abandon our Christian co-religionists anywhere to persecution or condone Muslim practices that offend our moral values. To be “wise as serpents” means to protect ourselves, always be wary and vigilant against potential enemies, and not be lulled into a false sense of security.
My argument has been that Islam is not monolithic - that it contains both moderate and progressive elements, and dangerous, radical fundamentalist elements. Some Muslims have focused on the more benevolent teachings of their faith to lead admirable lives, while others have been drawn to its more intolerant and militant themes. As you move closer to the areas with more economic prosperity and education you find the first type of Muslim, and as you move further away you find the second kind.
The moderate and progressive Muslims are the ones we can work with to promote peace and understanding. However we weaken and discredit them when we attack the entire Islamic faith, rather than those specific actions or beliefs that are morally offensive. By attacking the entire Islamic faith we validate the propaganda of the radicals and inflame an already combustible situation.
Consider that the best way to fight fire is not with gasoline, but by shutting off fire’s oxygen supply. Hateful ideologies thrive on fear, ignorance, insecurity, poverty, and oppression. Those are the root causes of our problems.
Dean, the poverty you decry is a fruit of the Islamic system. It is ironic that the latest jihad has become possible only due to the great oil wealth in Islamic countries which funds and fuels (no pun intended) the Islamic expansionism.
Your presentistic approach to history and your economic determinism do not explain in the least the jihads of the past which had the same intent and were driven by the same faith.
Michael: By the way - thanks for the link to Garrison’s article. It provides a lot of good information. I skimmed it, but am going to read it again more closely.
Dean, an exercise in Islamic reform.
“He who changes in religion, kill him.” Mohammed, Bukhari Hadith.
How do you excise this morally offensive concept from Islam?
In order to contradict the express and repeated teaching of Mohammed that apostates should be killed, you would have to “dethrone” Mohammed. You would have to reject his status as a true prophet of God. You would have to reject the premise that Mohammed was the perfect example for mankind and above criticism or reproach. You would have to reject the status of the Bukhari Hadith as a legitimate record of Mohammed’s teaching. You would have to accept the idea that Mohammed’s thought could be questioned or debated. What you would have is something new, but, you would not have Islam. Even changing this truly outrageous concept that someone should be killed for renouncing Islam would require the dismantlement of Islam.
Again, your program for “reform” of Islam is really the abandonment of what is quintesenntially Islamic. The absolute and unchanging rule of the Koran, the practical divinity of Mohammed, the rejection of free thought. Islam always has taught that all thought is subject to the constraints of Islamic thinking.
While it is true that there exist different schools of thought within Islam, there exists a core set of beliefs which, by their very nature, defy compartalization or reform. This is an aspect of Islam which you constantly refuse to acknowledge or take in to account.
Islam began and expanded as a religious and political system. You treat Islam as if it were the faith of a collection of individuals. It is not, it is a political system. Islam teaches that only Allah has the right to legislate. This point is repeated over and over and over in all Islamic teaching. The union of religion and politics is the very essence of Islam and de-coupling religion and politics destroys Islam. As a corollary, the utter subjection of intellectual activity to the constraints of Islam exists at the very essence of Islam and allowing unpenalized free thought and freedom of conscience destroys Islam. This is perhaps why Islam has risen up in response to the globalization of culture. Islamic youngsters are exposed to societies where one can question religious authorities and live.
The next most fundamental premise of Islam is that Mohammed was and remains today above criticism, above discussion. There is no school of Islamic thought that displaces Mohammed as the eternal exemplar.
There is no school of Islamic faith that rejects Mohammed’s command as expressed in the Bukhari Hadith “he who changes his religion, kill him.”
There is no school of Islamic faith that rejects polygamy and divinely permitted wife-beating. It is in the Koran and it cannot be changed.
Again, your program for “reform” of Islam is really the abandonment of what is quintesenntially Islamic. The absolute and unchanging rule of the Koran, the practical divinity of Mohammed, the rejection of free thought. Islam always has taught that all thought is subject to the constraints of Islamic thinking.
Dean, Hoping that Islam will change is not a policy
You have no policy regarding Islam as it is, you merely hope very sincerely that Islam will drop those thousands of rules that contradict the Judaeo-Christian sense of ethics and morality.
The “wishful thinking” approach is in effect in Holland. It led to the death of Pym Fortyun, Theo Van Gogh and the exile of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You have no policy to meet this challenge and you cast aspersions on those who try to alert others to the threat. You claim that telling the truth of Islam is unChristian.
While you chat with a few Westernized Muslims at the local ecumenical meeting, Abu Bakir of Indonesia is commanding millions of Muslims and forming them into an army of conquest. He is delighted that you are distracted with a few Oxford educated, Westernized Muslims who chat calmly about Islamic reform.
Islam has a policy regarding us. Its policy is to take advantage of our open society, to relentlessly advance Islam by all means possible, including terror.
Islam has an express policy of emigrating to Western countries and establishing colonies with no intent to assimilate. See a recent BBC story on Lancashire in the U.K.; how a small immigrant Islamic community has grown and how the commmunity has changed Lancashire. Lancashire has not changed the immigrant community. Muslims have created a parallel society and their percentage of the population is growing, as is their political power.
The BBC report may be found here:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25392_BBC-_A_Warning_to_Britain&only
Slow Learner,
Are you also Missourian? If so, it’s been a while!
A plan to “reform” Roman Catholicism using Dean’s Islamic reform approach
I have explained to my Roman Catholic friends that Roman Catholicism needs to be reformed. First, they need to get over the idea that the Bishop of Rome is primary over all bishops. Second, they need to treat the Magisterium as informed advice rather than a controlling and authoritative statement of the Faith as applied. Thirdly, they need to abandon confessions before the Eucharist and lastly, they need to de-emphasize the bread and wine aspects of the Eucharist.
This could be done, but, nothing recognizable as Roman Catholilcism would be left.
Islam will not be compatible with the West until it renounces Mohammed as the ultimate role model , accepts the separation of mosque and state, accepts freedom of individual conscience, and accepts the full equality of men and women. This could theoretically happen, but, nothing recognizable as Islam would be left.
I’m trying to understand your recommendations for how we act as a country towards Islam. Moderate is a political, not a theological term. If used theologically, no faith would want to have any because it denotes a willingness to compromise what the faith holds sacred, while theological liberals are, more often than not those who abandon basic tenets of the faith entirely. By the same token a theological conservative might very well be someone who, from and Orthodox perspective, is simply living by old formulas instead of in the dynamic Holy Tradition and could even be a nominalist. When applied theologically, all of these terms are pejorative not descriptive. In any case “moderate” and “liberal” Muslims have already marginalized or abandoned significant parts of their faith. So I guess, Dean what you are recommending is the dismantling of Islam altogether and that western foreign policy be directed toward that aim?
BTW, Fundamentalism is properly only applied to a specific form of Protestantism although it has become sort of a generic term for rigid judgmental legalism in matters of faith. A fanatic is a person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm with its roots in a Latin word used to describe the adherents of orgiastic pagan rites. When you say we only have to worry about the fundamentalist fanatics are you attempting to describe those Muslims who hold to the historic version of Islam that demands aggressive jihad when possible?
You also keep ignoring the fact that for Christianity to be used as an aggressive instrument of imperialism, the basic tenets of the faith have to be twisted or ignored while just the opposite is true of Islam. To make Islam a religion of peace, it has to be spiritualized and personalized in a way that has no foundation in the Koran of which I am aware. One of the great pillars of Islam is the submission of the individual will to the will of Allah. Islamic submission is not the same as Christian submission. Islamic submission is more akin to subjugation of the individual will to the teachings of Mohammed and the Koran. Thus no freedom of thought in love.
Well at least we have zeroed in on the pivotal question: Are “moderate” Muslims an apostate minority rebelling against the intinsically militant teachings of their faith, or are do they represent a more peaceful, yet legitimate, interpretation of Islam that hopefully can spread and expand within that faith.
If the former, then conflict with the Islamic world represents a permanent and inevitable global reality. If the later, than the path to peace lies in strengthening the moderate Muslims, helping them to overcome their more militant and violent co-religionists and addressing the socio-economic and poltical forces that lead people to embrace hateful fundamentalist ideologies.
My reason for believing the latter, includes the fact that many Muslims living in Turkey have been able to reconcile their faith with Attturk’s secularist doctrine, while most Muslims living in the United States and and many in Western Europe have also formulated a more peaceful understanding of the tenets of their faith.
Certainly there were large numbers of Muslims living in the United States who expressed genuine shock over the September 11th attacks and protested that their faith did not justify such violence. Likewise we hear many Muslims say that their “jihad” is a spiritual struggle of the soul and not a call to take up the sword and spill blood.
If either of them are harmed or killed then Turkey can kiss it’s EU membership hopes goodbye.
Dean I reject this as a legimate premise: The socio-economic and poltical forces that lead people to embrace hateful fundamentalist ideologies.
Dean, you sound surpised at this. Why are you surprised. Atturk’s secularists were the ones responsible for the genocide of the Armenians and the supposedly secular governement of Turkey has, since its inception, been trying to kill off the whole Patriarchate. There have been repeated bombings at the Phanar and widespread harassment of both native and visiting Orthodox Christians.
RE: Number 48. Michael: I may have overgeneralized a little, but not too much.
Fundamentalism is a reaction against the modern secular world. Sometimes that negative reaction is well justified, but on other occasions it can be driven by political or socio-economic forces. Those who feel more comfortable with secular progress (science, technology and rationalism) are less likely to be a fundamentalists, those who feel more threatened or alienated by secular progress are more likely to become fundamantalists.
Karen Armstrong (author of The Battle for God) writes:
A Conversation with Karen Armstrong, author of The Battle for God , a good interview BTW, and I would be interested in what you think about it.
Dean, I have not yet read the article but one general impression with those who use the “fundamentalist” epithet: It is frequently applied to anyone who objects in any way to the “progressive secular achievements” that apparently Karen Armstrong finds “as liberating, exciting and empowering.”
I find nothing in the modern world liberating or particularly exiting except in the most artificial of senses. Most of it is emasculating and dehumanizing. It is largely a result of a willful turning away from God which in the process truncates man to a blob of protoplasm drifting in an infinite sea of meaninglessness. All but the most hardened people sense this and attempt to fill the void with all sorts of substitutes and causes (technology, political ideology of all kinds, prusuit of pleasure, power, wealth and fame, or even as Cho at Virginia Tech and the jihadists-death and and destruction). None of them work even for those most fervent. Yes there is a particular kind of despair and fear that is articulated within a religious framework, but that is not about God either, it is simply a vain attempt to control by force of will no different in content than those who call themselves atheists and secularists. I will take a look at the Armstrong interview and I recommend to you and all Fr. Stephen Freeman’s blog Glory to God for All Things. There are a series of posts and links that delve deeply into the subject of this thread including a number of comments by thoughtful atheists. Plus a comment on many of the same situations that compares ethics with prophecy
Michael writes: “I find nothing in the modern world liberating or particularly exiting except in the most artificial of senses. Most of it is emasculating and dehumanizing. It is largely a result of a willful turning away from God which in the process truncates man to a blob of protoplasm drifting in an infinite sea of meaninglessness.”
For most of history the central feature of the pre-modern world is that virtually all important choices in life were made for you. Your religion was what everyone else’s religion was. In fact, you might never even come into contact with any other religion or with any contrary ideas. Your station in life and your employment were dictated by your family’s status and background. Your spouse was often chosen for you. If you survived childhood — many did not — you were probably illiterate, unhealty, ignorant, and living from day to day on the edge of existence. Now back in the 7th or 8th century Saint Somebody of Somewhere no doubt had profound religious experiences, but the average person was more concerned with mere survival.
The central feature of the modern world is that most all of these givens are no longer given. Your religion is whatever you want it to be; if you don’t like the Episcopalians or the Baptists, you can leave them, join the Orthodox, and talk about how terrible your former co-religionists are — or vice versa. Information on other religions is readily available. You choose your college, your career, your hobbies, your recreations, your entertainments, your spouse, where you live, and so on.
This is simply the way things are, and to a substantial extent, whether or not we want to be, we are all creatures of modernity. This means that the central problem of modernity is that of self-identity, and self-definition, since we now have to make all of these choices out of virtually limitless options.
People who “reject modernity” really haven’t rejected modernity. What they have done is to choose — in a very modern way — to reject a few aspects of modernity, while unconsciously accepting vast expanses of other parts of modernity.
Note 50. Don’t be so quick to accept Armstrong’s categories Dean. Progress (technological in particular) is far from secular, which is to say that positing fundamentalism against progress is a false dichotomy.
Armstrong’s problem is that she reduces any kind of structured religion into “fundamentalism” and elevates “choice” — that hallowed post-modern virtue — above all values, similiar to Jim’s apologetic above (post 53) while leaving unexplored (perhaps unrecognized on her part) man’s (radical) existential freedom.
The entire notion of progress presumes linear time. Time, and thus creation, and thus the material workings within creation, have a beginning and an end. This notion is a perception, a way of seeing that entered the world through the Jews. Before Genesis, time was perceived as circular, i.e., man descended from the great spirit and returned to it which is manifested in various religious forms such as Native American spirituality, reincarnation, sharing in the life of the gods such as those of the Greek or Roman pantheon, etc.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, time and God were not separated. Then came the era of Darwin (Darwin is only symbolic of the shift, not the cause of it, hence his name is used only as a descriptor here) where the notion of linear time became secularized, that is, shorn of its transcendent dimension. Out of this secularist reduction came Freud, Marx, biological determinism, etc. It’s a complex history.
So when Armstong posits fundamentalism and progress as opposite poles, she speaks from an a-historical perspective. In fact, I would argue that she is not a historian at all (despite the title of her book) but a religious/political activist, and a particularly shrewd on at that because she realizes (correctly) that religious precepts form the foundation of cultural, and thus eventual socio/politico, categories.
Armstrong advocates what Jim (post 52) cogently describes and apparently believes. It’s a reduction to radical individualism where each man becomes the touchstone of moral truth. The transcendent, to the extent that it exists, is found solely within, with no assurance that it exists outside of the person at all. In one sense this is true. Transcendence, by which I mean at bottom the awareness that some kind of overarching truth must exist, is an interior affair. It is not correct however, that truth does not exist outside of the individual.
So Armstrong’s work is, in the end, polemical. The false dichotomy is telling because if dovetails with the crass and simplistic cultural formulation that religious believers are stupid, while secularists are enlightened. It really doesn’t reach any further than this.
I would recommend instead, Robert Nisbet’s The History of the Idea of Progress, and C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man.
For a critique of Armstrong: A Liberal Definition of Fundamentalism, and The New Crusaders.
Fr. Hans writes: “Armstrong advocates what Jim (post 52) cogently describes and apparently believes.”
Well, I believe it in the sense that it describes the actual situation faced by modern people — a situation that was unknown many centuries ago. Even modern people living in modern societies who are religious are religious in a modern way — it is a conscious choice between options. That doesn’t mean it’s a wrong choice or a bad choice. The point is that the person has to decide what is true. It is not a “given.” A thousand years ago religion was a given, something that was simply part of the landscape. No decision was necessary, because there was no other option.
Fr. Hans: “It’s a reduction to radical individualism where each man becomes the touchstone of moral truth.”
Well . . . let’s put it this way: each person has to choose, since each person is presented with very many options. This is a simple fact. Thus, in an ironic sense, a personal rejection of individualism is only possible through an exercise of individual choice, that is possible only through the possibilities and options presented by modernity.
Fr. Hans: “The transcendent, to the extent that it exists, is found solely within, with no assurance that it exists outside of the person at all.”
With modernity, it’s not that the transcendent is found only within, but rather that the decision to pursue the transcendent, and in what manner, is found within the individual, and the outcome is uncertain. In that sense, modernity does not present a particular outcome, but rather presents options, among which the individual must choose.
I continue to maintain that all of us — Orthodox, Protestant, Catholics, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, whatever — are creatures of modernity, whether or not we want to be.
By the way, I tried to send you an email to the address you mentioned, but the email bounced. Any alternatives?
The myth of choice is as strong a part of modernity as is the myth of progress. Neither exist in the manner in which they are described and serve only to function to enslave us in the world. Certainly, no one can be entirely free of the mind of the world into which one is born but I refuse to accept the cold, heartless, deterministic vision of man that reduces us to binary automatons. Without God, there is no real choice only illusion.
We need to take Fr. Hans description of the change of conception of time a step further–circular to linear to liturgical, incarnational time if you will. With the Incarnation, time, life, experience, being itself was opened to whole new dimensions each inner-pentrating the other ending and beginning with the divine Logos become man; sacrificing Himself out of an incomprehensible love for His creation; dying the most ignoble of deaths. Using that death to conquer the slavey of death brought into the world by our original denial of His Love and wisdom.
Jim says, “Even modern people living in modern societies who are religious are religious in a modern way — it is a conscious choice between options.”
That is only true for rationalists who deny the very foundation of a life of faith anyway and it is expressive of the basic delusion of modernity. I do not and did not choose from a variety of competing “truths” which one is best. That is not even a real choice. I was led to it, had it thrust upon me and at times feel almost compelled by it–kicking and screaming most of the way. I still spend far too much of my time kicking against the pricks but I can never deny that my real life lies in simple obediance to the one who patiently waited until I asked and then who, true to His word, has never relinquished His grasp on me since.
I am a poor Christian and no fit example for anyone but I can say without doubt there is only one choice, life or death. We are raised by grace from glory to glory or we fall into the dark, cold, unbearable habitation of separation from the one who made us, the only lover of mankind.
From Fr. Stephen Freeman on his blog, Glory to God for All Things:
Lest you mistake this a story of choice, think, he was looking only for that to which he could be obedient.
Michael writes: “The myth of choice is as strong a part of modernity as is the myth of progress.”
Ok, let’s lay aside the issue of religion. You chose whether and where to go to college. If you have hobbies, you chose them. You chose your spouse. If you have children, you chose whether or not to have them. You chose your career. I won’t belabor the point further, but you get my meaning. These are all things that a thousand years ago would simply have been given you. There would have been no choice. For modern people, choice is not a myth, it’s a fact.
Michael: ” . . . . I refuse to accept the cold, heartless, deterministic vision of man that reduces us to binary automatons.”
Having a choice doesn’t mean that you’re an automaton. It just means that there are options. Where there is no option, there is no choice. Where there are options, choice is required. Even deciding not to choose is itself a choice.
Michael: “I do not and did not choose from a variety of competing “truths” which one is best. That is not even a real choice. I was led to it, had it thrust upon me and at times feel almost compelled by it–kicking and screaming most of the way.”
Ok, but you still chose to respond. As you say later, one option was to “kick against the pricks.” You didn’t, but you could have. That’s choice. To a significant extent all of us are “compelled.” After ten years as a Christian fundamentalist I was compelled to look for something else. I also was led kicking and screaming from fundamentalism. I describe my own experience as a kind of spiritual trench warfare — digging in, being beaten back, digging a new trench and piling up sandbags, being driven from that position, and so on. I think people who take these issues seriously have that feeling of being driven and compelled, even against our wills.
Michael: ” . . . Fr. Sophrony had explored Far Eastern religions before turning again to the Orthodox faith. . . . He must decide on a new way of living. . . . He enrolled in the then recently opened Paris Orthodox Theological Institute, in the hope of being taught how to pray . . . . He left Paris and made his way to Mount Athos where men seek union with God through prayer. . . . It was crystal-clear that if he really wanted to know God and be with Him entirely, he must dedicate himself to just that . . . ”
This really looks like a series of choices to me.
Michael: “Lest you mistake this a story of choice, think, he was looking only for that to which he could be obedient.”
Yes, he was looking. A thousand years ago VERY few people would have had that option. Look at his life: Russia. . . . Buddhism . . . Indian culture . . . Italy . . . Germany . . . art . . . . Paris . . . Greece . . . . A thousand years ago virtually no one would have had that kind of experience, those options, those choices. I think you unintentionally make my case for me.
This is why I say that modernism is the context in which we all live, even those who “reject” modernism. Someone who rejects modernism is like a man in a boat in the middle of the Pacific who “rejects” the ocean — and thinks he is successful at that because his feet aren’t wet — not realizing that the entire time he is surrounded by, and supported by, and travelling upon that very thing he denies.
Note 46, Dean Hits the Nail on the Head!!!!! Bravo!
My opinion is that the “moderate” Muslims are a tiny, minority and that which needs reform in Islam is embedded in its very core. Reform of the type that Dean and I would like would require centuriers. It would be an upheaval as deep and long as the Protestant Reformation (not endorsing any side in the Protestant Reformation, just pointing out how painful major theological changes are.)
A second, still not clearly articulated, point of disagreement with Dean is that Dean assumes that change will flow from the West to Islam. I maintain that we must be wary of and defend against change flowing from Islam to the West. Islam has made much progress in Islamicizing Europe and it has a strong foothold in America today.
I have no theological interest in Islam except to the extent that it impacts my civilization, fellow Christians, fellow non-Muslims, my country, my rights. As a general rule, I don’t care what “true” Islam is and I don’t think much is to be gained by debating what “true” Islam is.
What I am arguing for here is that we take a realistic view of what Islam actually is today. I believe the New Testament says ” be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.”
I suggest that Islam today is simply a reawakening of what Islam always was after a relatively short period of queiscence. The Islamic world was in decline from 1400 through to 1920 with the abolishment of the caliphate as a result of social/political/military loses to the West. I maintaint that what we are dealing with now is exactly what President Jefferson was dealing with when he sent the new American Navy to battle the Islamic slave marauders of the Meditarranean (spelling section of my brain appears to be malfunctioning, my apologies)
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_urbanities-thomas_jefferson.html
When I provide evidence of the maliciousness of Islam and evidence that its essence is antithetical to the West, I appear to be slammed as unChristian because I am bringing up things we would rather not acknowledge.
Here is a reference to a new law in Pakistan making the renunciation of the Islamic religion punishable by death.
http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/
Again, this means that Islam is a totalitarian system with an Islamic rule for nearly every activity and a prohibition against criticizing or leaving the religion. That is the very definition of totalitarianism.
The U.K. is importing thousands if not millions of Pakistanis. Pakistantis think this legislation is right and good. This is in direct opposition to the modern Western attitude. It is a very sharp 90 degree conflict in culture. I don’t have all the answers of how our country should respond or how Christians should respond on an individual bases. However, I do know that denial is not a Christian virtue.
Western individualism vs. Islamic Ummah; Inner vs. outer observance
A Muslim is to Islam what a bee is to the hive. An isolated honey bee doesn’t have much impact, however, when united with its hive, it gains in power and impact and the hive can be quite effective. The behavior of a few isolated, academic Muslims does not give any assurance as to the behavior of large groups of Muslims. See Dearborn and the importation of de facto polygamy, violence between Sunnis and Shiia, wife beating, and more.
Westernizers have a deeply embedded habit of seeing religion as a matter of individual conscience. Islam lives as the Ummah, the group, the vast extended family of Muslims, a self-contained and self-defining society.
Christianity requires a change of heart. The change of heart then triggers changes in attitudes and behavior and radiates outward ( apologies to Fr. Jacobse for mangling Christian theology). Islam DOES NOT require any change of heart, it requires practical, daily SUBMISSION to Islamic law.
Recite the right words, bow at the right times and you are in proper submission.
Christian prayer is an exercise is uniting with God and in adjusting our inner selves to the new person God wants us to be. Jesus taught against the mere repetition of words, it does not impress God. Islamic prayer is a ritualized, physical gesture of submission of the slave. The same prayer is repeated over and over as an act of submission.
Christians are Children of God. Muslims are Slaves of Allah. (as explained to me by a Muslim lab partner)
The Christian God descends to our level and takes on our burdens and demonstrates humility. The Muslim God never reaches down to meet humanity and does not consider himself bound by his own promises in the past.
Jim my basic contention is that the existential choice you value so highly is a reflection of the ontological choice of which I am speaking. IMO the ontological choice is the only real choice. The existential choices are fleeting at best, illusory most of the time.
Michael writes: “IMO the ontological choice is the only real choice. The existential choices are fleeting at best, illusory most of the time.”
If you have time and inclination, I would be interested in your distinction here between existential and ontological. I have a sense of what you mean, but an expanded explanation would be helpful.
Jim, in response to your question:
The ontological choice is to seek to align oneself with God or to rebel against Him. All existential choices flow from the ontological choice. They reflect both the depth of one’s commitment to be in communion with God (or one’s rebellion) and the actual state of that communion. St. John Chrysostom says in his Pascha Homily, “God honors both the intent and the act”
In Elder Sophrony’s case, it is obvious his heart was for God from the beginning. The content of his choice never changed only the expression and the depth. You argue that the existential changes in his life were matters of votive choice and, in a superficial sense, they were. However, why was he presented with those choices? What brought them into his life? Given his orientation toward God, it could well be that the breadth of his experience allowed him to communicate the mysteries of God more effectively to modern ears.
Unquestionably, there are more, many more, existential choices available to us than in the past, but the fundamental ontological choice remains the same. From an ontological point of view, existential choice can be a burden or a distraction. Many Fathers, saints and modern Orthodox writers link existential choice to the fall. We ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—now we have to discern “things” rather than simply living freely in communion with our Creator. The Orthodox writers point out that our “choices” are reflections of our passions, not really a choice. So, with many more “choices” available we simply have more opportunity to indulge our passions and experience a wider variety of sin.
We can see the wisdom in a cursory look at any time during history. We have not advance ontologically past the immature stage of our ancestors in the Garden: ‘Oh, that looks good to eat and pleasing to my eye, I want it.’ We still act the same way even if it is not good for us and leads us further from God. One of my favorite examples of the illusion of choice is OTC cold medicine. There are no more that three different formulas for the stuff, yet there are dozens of competing brands heavily advertised for there efficacy. Our “choice” actually comes down to which color of package is most pleasing to our senses or where the box is placed on the shelf. Nonetheless, some people develop a fanatic loyalty to a particular brand.
I identify four basic ways of attempting to harmonize the ontological with the existential:
1. Ignore the existential such as in Buddhism and other Eastern religions and philosophies
2. Ignore the ontological, which has distinct sub-types
a. Revel in the existential hedonistically or by holding to the myth of progress
b. Become morose and depressed by the ultimate futility of existential choice as the modern existentialists tend to do
c. Fall into an entropic atheism, which posits that nothing really matters except how I manage my own life within whatever constraints I choose
3. Suppress or control the existential choices within certain strict limits. This form has both materialistic and ostensibly spiritual varieties: Communism, Fascism, Islam, much of western Christianity.
4. Focus on the ontological union with God and the synergy between us that allows the existential reality to be properly ordered. The only place I have found this Incarnational approach, fully balanced between the ontological and the existential is in the Orthodox Christian Church.
At the core of our faith is the sanctification of the physical, the existential. We recognize the fallacy inherent is any attempt to suppress or control the existential with mere force of human will. Such methods deny the ontological nature of man as microcosm. When we are in a dynamic, willing submission to God’s love, we are then able to order His creation and our lives so that we are in harmony with His will. We are able to both overcome sin and practice virtue.
Modernity has rejected the ontological in favor of all kinds of “isms” and a vast plethora of “choices”. Depending upon one’s system of thought, if you make the “right” choice, you are rewarded with material or “spiritual” success. Make the wrong “choice” and you are branded a failure, stupid, crazy or are simply killed. While rigorously denying any ontological hierarchy of values, existential systems seek to enforce rigorously their own view of a proper existential hierarchy of values. Islam is perfect for modernity as it proclaims a false vision of transcendence for which we long while at the same time rescuing us from all the wrong choices.
Only the Incarnation solves the human dilemma and allows our ontological and existential nature to be in harmony, we have but to participate in it.
Michael - Thanks for the link to article comparing Ethics to Prophesy.
He makes a good case against the selective application of Christian moral imperatives.
Dean, I rather think you missed the point entirely. The point was that ethical moral imperatives are pointless removed from the ontological reality of union with God and the overcoming of sin. Any time such “moral imperatives” are used in an existential system, ethical or political in content, they simply become fodder for skilled manipulators to use to gain power either intellectual or political. In the pragmatic mess of government they are lost and bastardized without the constant renewal of an authentic prophetic voice. Such was also, BTW, one of the underlying themes of Garrison’s approach to warfare. It is the responsibility of both the Church and each of her members to maintain and renew our prophetic voice by entering ever more fully into the theotic mysteries of Christ. See also my answer to Jim.
Apparently, there is a massive resistance occurring in Turkey against the Islamic government.
“Some wore paper hats with the slogan: ‘No to Islamic law, no to military coups: a democratic Turkey’ demonstrating disapproval of a military threat last month to intervene in the presidential elections in order to safeguard secularism.”