I would imagine that most readers here are also regular readers of CANN. If not, they should be. The following is CANN's latest "editorial" on the scandalous Muslim reaction to the Pope's address last week in Germany. I strongly urge you to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest what is said here.
Sober second thought, reasonable caution, and prudence are all good things. Perhaps if some media-sharks hadn’t dumped chum-bait all over the Pope, we’d not have to restate the obvious right now. If not this, it would be something else.
The fact is (pace, Mark Shea, et al.) we are already in a religious and civilizational war that will not go away by our being more reasonable, self-effacing, or scruplulously even-handed in our analysis. The current Pope is pretty much the most reasonable and educated religious leader on the planet.
The Pope quoted somebody. Get over it. He’s allowed: we don’t have to abide by your Islamist rules. THAT’S THE POINT. This is yet another attempt to make us construct our own inner borders and fences on their behalf.. forbidden thoughts & words.. fear.. self-destruction. It’s the habit inculcated by any tyranny: Communism, Nazism, Islamism, and by the various flavours of secularist Westernism. The bully wants the victim to worry and act always in terms of the will of the bully.
Islamist ideology is an opportunistic infection; unholy ebola. Disproportionate drama-queen controversy, deliberate outrage, sympathetic media attention, staged protests are all good for the cause. Any excuse in a storm, for the bullying scumbags, soundrels and rabble-rousers– however sincere– who want Western Civilization on the eternal defensive, then enslaved.
Militant Islamists want to finish the Big Jihad, paused in the 1600s at the gates of Vienna. It will involve erasing and defacing everything in accord with their views. All shall submit: history, nations, churches, secularity, literature, art, philosophy, archaeology, music. Yes, it’s even worse than an infestation of liberal Christian liturgists and clergy. Europe stand on the verge of implosion, having lost the native population and the civilizational nerve to know what to do, in the face of massive internal Islamist threats.
Oh, and the nuclear sword may already be at our necks. Got Caliphate?
That Emperor-guy had more than enough reason, and 700 years of Byzantine bumbling and Islamic predation (and the destruction of Christian North Africa, much of what is now Israel, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and chunks of modern-day Turkey) over which to make his comment to the muslim Persian professor with whom he was talking– and that final collapse was aided and abetted by the Catholic West, over and over again. The ruins of cities and blood of Christians and the loss of most of the Eastern Roman Empire were testament enough to his view. History may repeat itself in the next century.
The Pope (a witness and survivor of Hitlerism) does not need to be reminded that the world is a dangerous place. Despite the idea that John Paul II was more of a “Peace, peace! Where there is no peace” kind of soul, one need only remember that he lit the spark that imploded the satanic secularity of the USSR. Assassin’s bullets showed that the Kremlin recognized the dangerous power of Christianity, and of JP2’s papacy.
Benedict laid down a gauntlet before both the irrationalism of modern secularity, and a resurgent pre-modern heresy with Jewish and Christian roots, and a violent past and present. Political correctness and jihad are twins, of a sort. Both refuse rationality and religion, and insist on their own absolute autonomy, and the submission of all else to their particular claim. Western cultural skirmishes over Islam, and many social-cultural issues like abortion or homosexuality are all signs of the bigger battle– not to mention that in the end, it’s not flesh and blood we’re fighting, but powers & principalities and spiritual darkness that seeks to eat up everything: Christian, secularist, and Islam alike, and make Hell on earth in whatever form. Our enemy Satan is not picky.
And once again.. our eyes are off very nearly nuclear Iran. Anybody notice that?
Nobody likes such a time as this. Hearts quake, knees shake, all are tested beyond their skill, wit, or desire. We want to turn our eyes away, we long for comfort and peace. But this is our time, and like it or not, this burden is ours. As Christians, we need to step up. If we are secularists (as B-16 recently said to someone), the we ought to live and act as if God existed. If moderate muslims, as if the best of our religion and heritage is not going to be stolen and defaced, and our own names and faces dishonoured by the radicals– even if they are, worldwide, a majority.
And even if the battle is a long retreat– well, there are far worse things than dying well, into the arms of God. As for the rest? God rules.
CaNN News Editor
Thank you, Albion, for posting that. I've liked this pope from the start, and my respect for him has increased.
ReplyDeleteSomeone has to say it, even if only by quoting a Byzantine emperor. Though there are many fine people among the Moslems, Islam in itself, even in a 'moderate' form is intrinsically evil. It is a postchristian attempt to discredit Christianity and to keep mankind from salvation. I said some of this responding to the "Here we Go Again" post. It has been very successful in its campaign thus far, having wiped out the historic Church in North Africa and Nubia, and having hamstrung its operations throughout the Middle East. A 'holy book' containing deliberate distortion of Sacred history, an imitation Jesus and a false prophet superseding him, and an Allah whose characteristics are more like those of Isaiah 14:12-23 (long thought to refer to Satan) than like the God revealed in both Old and New Testaments -- this is what constitutes Islam, and its scriptures make it perfectly clear that force is justified to convert those who have not submitted. And such force is a way of life to this day in certain Muslim countries.
This may not be 'politically correct', but it needs to be said by those who believe the message of Christ to be the divinely appointed way of salvation.
ed
I had begun playing with the idea that the real villain in all of this was the liberal media, beating up the riots of a few ignorant Muslims to make Muslims as a whole look bad. But I was shocked out of this when my eyes fell again on an article reporting that President Musharraf was seeking to have the UN outlaw vilification of Islam, or some such, as a result of the Pope's lecture. Unfortunately, it's not just the ignorant rabble. It's leaders of nations--and ex-leaders (praise be to God for the 'ex') like Dr Mahathir. Rest assured, God (and I don't mean the Babylonian Moon God Allah) will win the war--that is his promise. But if this is just a battle, we'll have to be prepared to die and appear to lose it. I remember that somewhere C S Lewis wrote that the reason for being on God's side was not that it was the winning side but that it was on the right side. 'Fight with Odin and die' was the old Norseman's equivalent. May God give us all the courage and fortitude.
ReplyDelete"Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son, that he may die: because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because he hath cut down the grove that was by it. And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save him? he that will plead for him, let him be put to death whilst it is yet morning: if he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar. Therefore on that day he called him Jerubbaal, saying, Let Baal plead against him, because he hath thrown down his altar."
ReplyDelete-Judges 6:30-32
Baal and Allah are both of them very weak gods who need people to kill in their defense.