But politicians have been criticised for underplaying the role of Islam as a religion in terrorist events. The gist of what many have said is terrorists are not driven by their religion but by their ideological convictions. The form is Islam, the latter is Islamism and the relationship between the two is tenuous at best.
The truth we need to face, however, is that Islamism that drives Manchester-type terrorism (technically most accurately described as Salafism) is deeply Islamic. Here is the chilling, terrifying ISIS media release re Manchester:
Here the West is "the Crusaders" or militant Christians, down to every last teenage fan of Ariana Grande. All soldiers in this centuries old religious war. The bombing is "revenge for Allah's religion." The concert arena is "shameless" meaning it transgresses Islamic values of purity and holiness. The next event will be worse, "more severe on the worshipers of the Cross and their allies." Everything happens within an Islamic religious worldview, "by Allah's permission."
The Islamism of terrorism is not an ideology it is a religion. A terrifying, rogue strand of Islam. And, seemingly, ultimately well funded by Saudi Arabian money (to which you and I have contributed with "donations" at petrol pumps). Saudi Arabia, not to forget, being the country in which Mecca is found.
This religion has one particular religious enemy: Christians. So, in the past couple of days, we learn again of another atrocity against Coptic Christians in Egypt.
Let's be clear about two matters these events highlight.
(1) We cannot in the West feign innocence about our contributions to Islamic terrorism. Both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are correct to identify that Western actions have exacerbated the threat to Western countries from Islamic terrorism. However well intentioned we have been about military actions in places such as Libya and Iraq, the resulting chaos has been fertile for terrorist recruitment. Not one Western country (and certainly not NZ) has ever taken a decisive stand against Saudi Arabia and its shadowy role in these matters. Trump's fawning visit to Saudi Arabia recently underlines the importance we Westerners place on this country. The West is not responsible for Islamic terrorism but it has contributed to the conditions in which it has been conceived, birthed and nurtured.
(2) Even if we overcome our feigned innocence, put matters to right in Libya and Iraq and deal to Saudi Arabia, Islamism will still be at war with Christians. Coptic Christians have no foreign policy to fault. They were not European Crusaders sweeping down on the Middle East. They are a minority people in a majority Muslim nation. But they worship the Cross. That is enough to warrant death. For Islamism there is only one way. Until we submit to that way, or are killed, Islamism will never give up. Allah requires the submission of every last person on the planet.
Islam, dear politicians, is surprisingly religious in its convictions.
28 comments:
Dear Peter
You are almost there.
“Islamism” is a western construct unknown in the Middle East and the Islamic world. It is a fabrication developed by western politicians to separate the violence of Islam from the religion of Islam. An attempt to separate the practice of Jihad from the religion of Islam which is both its source and its validation.
It is therefore a dishonest word and one that we as Christians of all people ought to remove from our lexicon.
There is only Islam, there is only jihad, there is only death to the infidel.
These are not bigoted statements, these are theological statements supported by Islam’s holy texts, the example of their prophet Mohamad and the historical record of Islam in the world.
Eventually there will be internments and deportations of Muslims from the West, or we will submit and Islam will dominate. These are presently unpalatable truths.
There are reportedly 27,000 Muslim jihadists in Britain, 3000 of whom are on their terrorist watch list. Both the Manchester bomber and the recent Westminster jihadist were known to the British authorities, yet they were not considered a priority.
Jihadists are being allowed to return to Britain from Iraq and Syria to live as ‘citizens’ in that nation – this is both irrational and incomprehensible. Ultimately it will prove to be unsustainable.
The truth is that Europe and the west cannot rely upon surveillance and policing to defend its citizens from Islamic jihad. We are living in days where our politicians in the west are becoming part of the problem. In their attempt to protect their Muslim populations (and constituents), they are prepared to sacrifice their nations children.
If I may end with a quote from the PM of Poland following the Manchester atrocity:
“Where are you headed, Europe? Rise from your knees and from your lethargy, or you will be crying over your children every day.”
You seem to be very up to date with your information about Muslims in Britain, Brendan,
Can you reveal your sources? Or are they buried deep within the Islamist society you are trying to dispose of? I doubt whether there is one terrorist in Britain who knows as much as you seem to know about their Islamic intentions towards our British friends. It seems to me that semantics may be your strongest contribution to this debate.
Hi Ron
Thanks for the sanity check on the numbers. I had overstated the number of jihadists living in Britain, it was not 27000 but actually 23,000.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/terror/britain-home-to-23000-jihadists/news-story/f9184e17a424e2ee2162e07b40b01671
That still represents a small army.
I live in Britain and Brendan's figure of 'up to 3000' on terror-watch lists is correct. It's from Home Office counter-terrorist agencies. You can easily google them for yourself. The figure of 27,000 looks like a ninefold extrapolation. What is clear is that there are many more potential jihsdis in the UK than there ever were 'active service' members of the IRA. About 850 UK residents went off to Syria to fight against Assad or for Islamic State.
I doubt whether Ron has ever met an Islamist in England. But they are not hard to find at all.
Brendan, welcome back. And welcome to Peter's occasional Muslim readers. This is important.
The matter is complicated by nationality and sect, but the Muslim/Islamist distinction has two basic uses.
As early as my first sojourn in Istanbul in 1987 there were bearded men with tables on sidewalks by the Blue Mosque who politely called themselves "Islamists," and sold cassette tapes that reiterated in Turkish the views of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. They believed that the practise of authentic Islam had been corrupted by Western-style secularisation during the C19-20, and so viewed most ordinary Muslims in all countries as caught in *jahiliyyah*, the spiritual darkness of Arabia under pre-Islamic polytheism. In their view, reached after considerable soul searching, Islam itself is afflicted with a disease that can only be cured with militant action that was their personal duty and could cost them their lives. Their point in calling themselves Islamists was that, unlike the great mass of their co-religionists, they had awakened to the need for change to a form of state and society that conforms to Islam. Critics of the decadent sultans after Suleiman and opponents of the Kemalism of the Turkish Republic, they were selling tapes and organising "free" mosques in the neighbourhood to reach the Turkish population. They took it for granted that they were under hostile state surveillance and would be taken to the police station and roughed up in interrogations from time to time-- along with activists for Maoism, feminism, gay rights, etc-- but they saw this as minor compared to the sacrifices that they might someday be required to make. (So did the other activists.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahiliyyah
Cont'd below
Westerners professionally interested in national security, including politicians, have adopted a cognate distinction between revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries. They distinguish between *Islamists*, who are revolutionaries by definition, and (quite conservative) *moderate Muslims*, who have somehow stopped short of believing in a personal duty to cure Islam with militant action. If you draw the line at revolutionary zeal for the use of force, then you will indeed find anti-Western xenophobia and anti-modern reaction on both sides of it, just as you have often said.
But whoever draws it, the distinction is real insofar as the line between a traditional duty of submission to Allah's providence and a late modern duty to change the course of history is not easily crossed. (It was likewise hard to remain an observant Jew or Christian after becoming a Bolshevik who wanted to kill the Czar.) Not all Muslims are worried about Islam. Not all blame their weak or failing states for Islam's ills. Not all blame monarchy for the states they have. Not all believe that a dose of republican democracy is either un-Islamic or bad for Islam. Not many equate their observant families with ancient Arabian polytheists. Few easily navigate both the peace of submission and the restlessness of an ideologue. For that matter, there is no consensus among the ideologues on what the Islamist replacement for the present order should be. The Islamic State and Qaeda do not get along.
When there is jahiliyyah wherever you look, but there is no strong agreement on the cause or solution, restoring a past age is the most straightforward thing to do, both cognitively and organisationally. Restorationism is appealing to late modern Islamists just as it has long been to most evangelical or pentecostal Christians. This is why something like the Islamic State was inevitable, as is the occasional Muslim convert in the West who talks himself into an Islamist. And that, perhaps, is also why Western conservatives with a bit of restorationism in their own DNA are the most confident that a thousand more Muslims in Bradford or Detroit will necessarily yield at least five more militants who want to restore the C8 in their neighbourhoods with some random act of cruelty. Given the premise of jahiliyyah, that is an easy reaction for an alienated young immigrant man.
The counterintuitive truth is that we may in fact be depending on opponents who do not want to kill us to protect us from other opponents who might. That is, spiritually respected Muslim leaders who find much of our culture disgusting, but who also see through the allure of restorationist terror may be the only ones with the credibility and knowledge to offer a traditional path to higher ground to those who need it.
Bowman Walton
Hi Bowman
Thank you for the clarification on the origins of the word ‘Islamism’. My thesis was based on the words of the now President (for life) of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who when confronted with the term ‘moderate Islam’ said:
“These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdoğan
So, while I accept the distinction you have made there are serious Muslims who do not.
Furthermore, I have reluctantly concluded that such distinctions are now purely academic and from a practical and civilizational perspective, irrelevant. How important do you think such distinctions are to the parents who lost their little girls to the Manchester jihadist? Or to the parents who have yet to lose their children to the next jihadist, or the next?
As for your counter intuitive suggestion that we may be dependent upon “opponents who do not want to kill us to protect us from other opponents who might.” I would ask, how well has that strategy worked out for Jews, Christians heretics and infidels over the last 14 centuries?
There is a very short window of opportunity remaining for western Europe and for Britain to reverse the Islamization of their countries. If this same trend continues for another thirty years, our politicians will have succeeded where Suleiman and Kara Mustafa failed.
Bowman: a pious and unlikely wish is not a "truth", not even a "counterintuitive one". The idea that old-line imams can restrain the violent jihadis is one that the Britsh govt has been pouring vast amounts of public money into - and it shows no signs of working. The problem has only got worse and shows no signs of going away.
Here are a few facts, expressed as simply as I can.
1. Turkey is much further down the road to being a conservative Islamic society than you first saw in 1987. Erdogan has tightened his grip. Kemalism is dying.
2. It is no accident that where you find Islam in large numbers, there you find autocracy. Islam is inherently anti-democratic and anti-liberal and fosters autocracy, militarism, tribalism and the apparatus of secret and religious police. It is an ideology of social control.
3. Islam in the west is almost an entirely the creation of immigration, i.e. globalist economic policies with the collusion of leftist political parties who saw third world immigrants as their natural political clients. Mexican immigration in the US is broadly parallel. The official propaganda was that this 'diversity' was to 'enrich' western societies and this nonsense is still trotted out in RE lessons in England on 'community cohesion' by governments alarmed by the ghettoes they have created in British cities.
4. By almost every index you care to mention, most Muslims occupy the lower rungs of western society: whether it's education, income, employment, health, or prison population, you will find a disproportionate number of Muslims there. Hindus and Sikhs are not like this at all, while Jews are the polar opposite.
5. A crisis lies at the heart of Islam and modernity only twists the knife. According to their religions and cultural chauvinism, Muslims have the best religion and the best social organisation (sharia) - but the West is evidently richer, freer and more given to pleasure than immigrant taxi driver or kebab stallholder. Cognitive dissonance dictates that this can only be because of the thieving ways of the kufarin.
6. Islam is most unlikely to become a majority even in the faithless west; but its base in inner cities means it will become an ever more divisive force in western politics and culture. Because their birth rate is so much higher than the indigenous population, Muslims will carry a lot more clout in education - and in 5 to 7 years' time you will see a great influx of young Muslims into higher education (indeed this has happened already in East London). This has the UK government terrified.
7. Islam and violence ( = coercion) are more closely linked than many want to admit. Even when it is not jihadist, Islam depends on autocracy, extreme punitivism in its legal codes and cultural violence (honour killings) to enforce conformity. This is because it is at heart an anti-gospel: a system of law (not grace) to compel submission to its god.
Brendan, arre yuou advocating a 21st century 'Crusade' against all Muslims? That idea was pretty poor when it was first tried in Europe. How does it square with the will of Christ as quoted in the Christian Gospels?
Ron, your comment suggests you do not understand what 'the Crusades' were or are using the word as a rhetorical shamer or virtue-signal.
There were many 'Crusades' over several centuries of many different kinds.
There was never a 'crusade' against Muslims - in Europe or anywhere else. (In Europe the 'crusades' were against Albigensians - St Dominic - or against the Baltic pagans - the Teutonic Knights.)
The Crusades in the Middle East were not 'against Muslims' but to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land who came under attack by the Turks, then later, attempts to regain Jerusalem.
I wish people would learn some basic history - let alone something about Arab or Turkish aggression in Tours, Constantinople, Lepanto, Vienna or even 19th century Bulgaria - but ignorance about the past runs deep in the distracted modern mind.
Hi Ron
The sound of armour you hear clanking in the background is not me preparing for the next crusade. My preference is for another 9/11.
9/11/1683 that is, back in the days when Europe was unashamedly Christian.
Osama Ben Laden was acutely aware of that date when he launched his attack on the twin towers in New York City. Ever since then when it comes to all things Islam, to our great cost Western leaders have been lions abroad and lambs at home. You can ponder the wisdom of that approach.
Mark Steyn has an excellent article on the Manchester jihad and the state of our political leadership today – prescient as always.
https://www.steynonline.com/7858/the-ruin-of-england
Hi Brian at 11.26 pm
Isn't the question about the Crusades what Muslims think about them?
If the Crusades are invoked by terrorists as reason for their jihad against Westerners (non-innocent in their world view, because of the Crusades) doesn't it behold us to think less about whether the Crusades were historically, accurately this rather than that, and to ask ourselves how we might seek reconciliation with the Islamic world on this matter? (Not that I naively think that is any kind of easy matter!)
Hi Bowman, Brian and Brendan
We certainly need the assistance of moderate Muslims to stem the tide of immoderate Muslims crusading against the West (or, e.g. Mindaneo, simply against Christians from anywhere).
But is there something going on which is getting beyond the control of moderate Muslims? A force moving vast majorities of Muslims towards immoderation? Evidence for raising this question, and close to NZ evidence at that: the recent "lynch mob" approach to the Christian governor in (constitutionally pluralist) Indonesia who made the mildest of indirect criticisms of the Qu'ran and now finds himself in jail for two years.
Peter
First up, Christians need to be at the forefront of speaking the truth about the Crusades, otherwise the Muslim narrative becomes dejure. If Muslims don’t hear the truth from us, where will they hear it?
Second, Western political leadership (and much of the established Church) is in denial about Islam. The kindest thing I can think about our political elite is that they are historically and theologically illiterate. If they were not so, their guilt would be unimaginable.
Moderate Muslims certainly exist, I have employed them, helped to resettle them in Christchurch, but they are not players in the game. We should not expect ‘help’ from them. At best they are silent observers content to stay on the sidelines. We can neither hope for nor expect a reformation of Islam initiated by this demographic. It has been tried in the past with predictable results.
Brian Kelly has an excellent grasp of the overall situation, and expressed Islam’s DNA very well in an earlier post on this thread. I know you like to be upbeat and ‘hopeful’ but there is precious little to be encouraged about when considering Islam in all its forms anywhere on the planet today.
Peter
I just came across this article in Stuff today where the Philippines Government is having to deal with ISIS inspired Muslim ‘rebels’ who have reportedly captured Priests and other Christians. There have already been several deaths in the fighting.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/92948205/duterte-declares-martial-law-in-southern-philippines-after-islamic-state-overruns-city
If it can happen in the Philippines it can happen here. We are simply playing a numbers game. As we have seen in Europe, the greater your Muslim population, the greater the risk of jihadist slaughter. I wish it were otherwise.
The difference between the Philippines and New Zealand, is that they are led by an alpha male who is not about to make concessions to jihadists. I’m not defending his arbitrary killing of drug dealers, but responding with military force to acts of violent aggression by Islamic jihadists is a fair and reasonable approach.
One of our problems in the west is that we treat domestic jihad as if were a simply a matter of criminal violence when more realistically it is an act of war justifying a military response.
Yes, I get that we are not ‘there yet’. Everyone is still hoping that importing more Muslims, displaying our tolerance, and increasing our diversity will solve the problem.
Here, on the important question of Christian theology and praxis, is a very good object lesson in attitudes towards ALL people, as bearers of the Divine Image and Likeness and followers of Christ - from a Coptic Leader in the U.K:
https://goo.gl/X6mtF8
Peter: "But is there something going on which is getting beyond the control of moderate Muslims? A force moving vast majorities of Muslims towards immoderation? Evidence for raising this question, and close to NZ evidence at that: the recent "lynch mob" approach to the Christian governor in (constitutionally pluralist) Indonesia who made the mildest of indirect criticisms of the Qu'ran and now finds himself in jail for two years."
Yes - that's exactly what I've been saying for some years now. The despicable violence afflicting country after country in Europe from 'Islamism' (and only 'Islamism' - there is no aggression from Hindus or Sikhs in Britain) is really an over-spill of a great cultural upheaval running through Dar ul-Islam - an appallingly violent upheaval which has three major manifestations: reactionary religious conservatism toward women (the return of the hijab after it had been largely abandoned by Egyptian and Turkish women); the bloodthirsty war between Sunni and Shia; and the adoption of mystical 'suicide-martyrdom' (something which actually began with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka). The terrorism that appals - and frightens us in Europe is an everyday matter across the Muslim world, where violence is treated as 'holy' and 'redemptive'. The West's problems are entirely self-inflicted by its immigration problems. Poland and the Czech Republic don't have this problem because their governments have refused to take in Syrian and other Arab immigrants - and are now being threatened by Merkel for their 'unfraternal' attitude. Yes, the old German habit of bullying Poles and Czechs dies hard ....
The answer to Syria's problems is NOT to move half its population into slums and onto welfare benefits in the West - a witless idea that will store up more trouble for the future (ISIS fighters are almost all the children of immigrants) and will finish off entirely the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East.
If a Muslim angry at the West is likely to consider a violent act, the most effective dissuasive will come from someone who shares his principled Islamic view of the situation, but who also has a principled Islamic objection to the prospective violence. In contrast, a Muslim who just loves the West and all its works will not in that situation be very convincing, and if not convincing, not effective in stopping the violence. Some of us fear or loathe the former sort of Muslim, but it is just because he holds an unflattering mirror up to our society that he probably saves lives.
Brendan-- The convergence of descriptions from Langley and Arlington, Sultanahmet and Cemberlitas is striking enough to suggest that security professionals and actual Islamists understand the latter in the same way. So when considering Muslims with a religious anger at the Western alliance, I find the professionals and Islamists to be the most credible guides to the distinction between those who commit revolutionary terror and those who do not. To the public posturing of a Turkish politician, especially Erdogan, it does not seem reasonable to give the same weight.
Parents care about the distinction between the violent and the non-violent. They are afraid of anyone who could persuade a lone wolf to hurt their children, but also grateful to anyone, however strange, who could dissuade him from such acts.
Peter and Brendan-- Muslim opinion in the streets does not fall on a tidy spectrum, so I am wary of the label "moderate." Where on the scale does one put, say, a former Iraqi soldier now in Detroit who has a very conservative personal practise of Islam, but also a firmly republican politics equally influenced by the constitutions of Iran and the United States? In the US he is in the *dar al gharb* which is merely as he expected it to be; in the *dar as salaam* conquered by Mohammed, he feels more religious commitment to act.
Brian-- Sadly, no, we are not living in paradise. There may not be enough conservative Muslims to dissuade all lone wolfs from all violence. We cannot count on them-- who does?-- but neither it is reasonable to discount them.
This much is probably beyond reasonable dispute. I have other things to think about.
Bowman Walton
Hi Bowman
Thank you for your insightful comments, as usual. Where we are missing each other (a little) is that you appear hopeful of a ‘solution’ to the problem of Islam being found within its adherents, while I’m less so.
We in the west have had a hundred year respite from Islam’s depredations since the last caliphate was destroyed post WW1. Consequently, its 1,400 year angst against the infidel is a novelty to us, and difficult for the liberal mind to grasp. It was much easier for the thousands of young female sex slaves captured from Christian Spain and shipped back to the Caliph to understand these things.
We cannot grasp how people could think this way in the 21st century especially given the technological benefits the west now offers to the Islamic world. Surely once we explain the opportunities our way of life offers the Muslim world will grasp it with both hands and lay aside their suicide vests and assault rifles?
I’m not suggesting you believe this, but it seems most of our political elite do. The secular mind is blind to the pull of religion on the hearts and minds of adherents.
I hold the view that the primary problem is ‘us’ not ‘them’. I probably have not been clear enough in stating this in the past. We in the west have largely apostatised, and Islam is simply filling the hollowed out core of our culture from which Christianity has been purged. My solutions are simply a rear guard action to defer the inevitable Islamisation of Britain and Europe for as long as possible in the hope we will return to our first love, and to our senses.
I’d like to suggest a book by Douglas Murray for all those who are interested in the subject of Islam in the west:
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-strange-death-of-europe-9781472942241/
I have just finished reading the Kindle version, the hardcopy can be pre-ordered I believe, and is about to be released worldwide. I’d say it is the preeminent work on what has happened to us and why, and the options that are before is. Murray is exceptionally insightful.
I’m in Northern Italy at present. While there have been migrants from Nigeria in Florence and Rome for years, selling various ‘wares’ on the streets, the immigrants are now much more noticeable everywhere. One that I spoke to was from Bangladesh. Many appeared to be from Somalia. It seems the Swiss have closed their borders, and the migrants are now piling up in the northern Italian cities. Even some of the smaller places we stopped along the way were the same.
Just how long these young men will be satisfied living in poverty selling trinkets to tourists while there are obvious displays of wealth all around them remains to be seen.
I have to agree with you, Brendan. Exactly what I've seen in my visits to Italy in the past 3-5 years - lots of young African men selling trinkets in Naples etc - and the situation has got much worse since those idiot-criminals Cameron and Sarkozy overthrew Gadaffi, creating chaos in Libya and filling the Med with hundreds of thousands of migrants clambering for the Italian, and the idiot-criminal Merkel decided to fill Germany (with its antipathy toward having babies) with Syrians and Afghans.
And now we have Britain's third terrorist attack in three months, in an area I love to visit in trips to London.
Godzone may be pretty godless now but it should learn one lesson at least: do not import this problem upon yourself.
As for Britain, its only hope is a return to Jesus Christ.
But do not expect the archbishops of the C of E even to mention His name. As Gavin Ashenden said on 'Anglican Unscripted' this week (you can find it on youtube), you even get the impression that Anglican bishops are so intimidated b Islam that they are ashamed to mention the name of Jesus is Britain today and the call to turn and trust in Him. So what's the point of them?
I suggest, Bowman, that "moderate" in the present context is not difficult to define. It is not about a scale between conservative and liberal. It is about whether a Muslim teaches or does not teach violent jihad (and responds to or does not respond to such teaching).
There are plenty of conservative Muslims who do not teach justification of violence in support of fostering Islam. They are moderate, and thanks be to God for that.
Yes, Peter, among ourselves here we do seem to understand *moderate* more or less as you define it. But the adjective leads many others to imagine that opinion in the Arab street follows a statistician's normal distribution. It does not, of course.
Bowman Walton
Hi Glen
Countless conservative Muslims through many centuries have distinguished some sura in the Qu'ran and some aspects of the life of Mohammed from others, and as a result have found a pathway to the non-violent propagation of their faith.
We should not mistake the extremism of the few for the views of the many.
"We should not mistake the extremism of the few for the views of the many."
Unfortunately, 'the few' (ah, how Churchillian that sounds!) are not that few (23,000 'persons of interest' in the UK alone) and they are supported by a penumbra of thousands of sympathisers and relatives who wouldn't actually stab or bomb themselves but support them or keep stumm. East Ham - where I once worked many years ago - and Tower Hamlets are rife with such people.
What people need to grasp is that Islam itself is a system of institutionalised psychic violence based on the male domination of women; an extreme Arab-culture concept of honour and shame; a holy reverence and sanctification of violence as the expression of masculine power and courage; an antagonistic attitude to 'the Other'; self-deception and pride; unquestioning loyalty to your kinship group and tribe and, quite simply, the will to power.
Each of these points would take an essay to explain properly, but suffice it to say that this is the 'cultural stream' that has been poured into the west by modern immigration.
The violence has *always been there in Muslim societies: if not in jihad against the kufar tribe next door that could be killed, enslaved or despoiled, then in the social structure of Muslim societies where violence against women in endemic (see Theo van Gogh's film 'Submission' which got him killed and drove out Ayaan Hirsi Ali) and in sharia laws that prescribe amputations for thieves and death for adulterers, apostates and sexual deviants.
Because Islam is primarily a social order and *not a religious system, its collision with modernity was always going to be violent. What is happening in Europe is principally the overflow of these pathologies into the west as a result of very foolish policies by leaders - and Europeans' own refusal to have children. Demography is destine - and the future belongs ot those who show up for it.
Peter,
Are you saying then,that there is parallel between the Christian modernist who
reads the Scriptures and proclaims "Cheap Grace"; and the moderate Muslim????
Both the Progressive Christian and the moderate Muslim worship a Jesus that is not the JESUS of the CREEDS,the 39 Articles of Faith or the Doctrine of the ACANZP.
Both the Scriptures and Church Practice leads us to stand fast and state that they are in error.
Hi Glen
Try a different analogy.
Are the views which govern the Gloriavale community the views of the many Christians? Should we Christians who do not subscribe to their radicalism be judged to be the same as them? Yet who might break through to them eventually and turn them from those ways that are ill-judged (including giving a convicted criminal for sexual offences a continuing leadership and authority role)? It might just be those who share with them their love for Jesus Christ, moderate though we must seem to them.
"Yet who might break through to them eventually and turn them from those ways that are ill-judged (including giving a convicted criminal for sexual offences a continuing leadership and authority role)?"
Well, when you point your finger at Gloriavale (who have yet to produce any suicide bombers or knifers, AFAIK), you do realise you have just described the conduct of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland - and that Anglican diocese in Australia that cost Herft his job because of the massive sexual abuse of boys there? Sometimes the Establishment doesn't recognise its own behaviour.
Peter,
I stand by my analogy. The leaders of the Gloriavale community obviously worship a different Jesus than that found in the Scriptures,the Creeds,The 39 Articles and the legitimate Doctrine of the ACANZP.Matt. 18/6.
The god of the Koran is not the Father,Son and Holy Spirit.The God of the Holy Scriptures completed their Prophecy to all mankind in the revelation to St.John.Rev 22/18>.Were the Arabs not included in the Gentile nations??
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