Islam and the West
A lecture by Abdal Hakim Murad (Tim Winter) which should have some relevance to recent comments on this blog. The points he raises in this video should cause all of us (particularly the critics of Islam) to reflect.
(My thanks are due to zaytoon88 who brought this video to my attention)
Enjoy:
English Defence League discusses ‘The Case for Nuking of Mecca’
This demonic avatar belongs to an Israeli man who goes under the name of ‘King Kalydosos’. In an article on the pro EDL 4 Freedoms Worldwide website he discusses ‘The Case for Nuking Mecca’. This “member of the English Defence League” (who lives in Israel!) thinks it is a rather good idea.
He concludes his article:
‘Today we are told by Muslims that the true meaning of jihad is internal struggle. Unfortunately, the actions of too many Muslims shows that they believe jihad means armed struggle against the infidels. Destroying Mecca may have the long-term affect of convincing radical Muslims that Allah really doesn’t want sharia law around the world. That all that stuff about killing the infidels in the Quran–that’s all metaphor.’
‘After all, if Muslims can be convinced that the whole hajj thing is just metaphor, then what else might they consider as metaphorical? Perhaps jihad. Perhaps sharia. Perhaps the global Caliphate.’
‘These are just some thoughts. I don’t actually think we should ‘nuke’ Mecca. An atom bomb would do the job.‘
‘In an age like this, total war and the bombing of Mecca would only make sense if done on a massive (nuclear) scale during the hadj (sic) when one could expect a big body count. Get the most bang for the buck.’
The city of Mecca has a population of 1.7 million men, women and children, plus an additional 4 million people who visit during Hajj. So with the occasional population of nearly 6 million the Jewish ‘King Kalydosos’ would happily murder the same number of people that Hitler killed during the Holocaust!
Five other EDL supporters commented on his post, but not one condemned it. One of them (our old friend OldWarDog who wrote in an email to me yesterday “I’m a peaceful guy believe it or not”) wrote ‘I wouldn’t like to nuke Mecca but I’d certainly love to watch it burn’.
You can read in full the disgusting and evil article here:
EDL Supporter Says of Muslims: “kill-em-all”
On the EDL supporters 4 Freedoms Worldwide website ‘Old War Dog‘ has a series of anti-Islamic photos.
One of them is entitled: kill-em-all
‘Old War Dog’ states,
‘I see the EDL as a small part of the overall counter-jihad movement… That’s why I support EDL.’
From Wikipedia,
‘The English Defence League (EDL) is an English far-right single-issue organisation formed in 2009. Its stated aim is to oppose the spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic extremism in England, although the EDL’s political direction is being debated within the group.’
‘It presents itself as being multi-ethnic and multi-faith, and states that it opposes only “jihadists”, not all Muslims. Nevertheless, EDL members were reported to have chanted “We hate Muslims” at pro-Palestinian demonstrators in London on 13 September 2009.’
Clearly some of EDL’s supporters are violent extremists who wish to kill Muslims.
UPDATE:
Old War Dog just sent me an email, he says
‘I never thought of it like that. I’ve deleted that picture since you point it out though. I seen the heads of the radicals and terrorists which were spiked as a cry for justice, not as an incitement to violence? Don’t know if you’d noticed the heads on the spikes were all known terrorists and extremeists.’
I’ve checked the website and the offending photo has gone. Good. But the picture is clearly an incitement to kill Muslims. Also, the central figure in white is shown from the back and is unidentifiable, so even accepting his logic, the central Muslim figure is not a ‘known terrorist and extremist’. I note also the Christian cross in the sky at the top of the pic, which infers the killing is a form of Christian jihad.
BUT!
Here are some more photos from Old War Dog, a man who claims to reject terrorism and extremism (!). I let you, the reader, decide if he is a complete hypocrite or not:
This photo is entitled Humpty Dumpty:
Advanced guide to understanding Christianity
COMING SOON:
An Advanced guide to understanding Christianity
MDI have announced a new course for Muslims wishing to undertake a scholarly and rigorously academic approach to understanding Christianity, for dialogue, debate and discourse.
It is intended to be a 6 week course. Each class lasts for 1 hour 30 minutes at a central London venue. Starting at GCSE level and rising to A level in the last 2 weeks.
Subjects covered include:
a general introduction to the Bible, the biblical canon, textual history, why there are different Bibles
the historical Jesus, who he was, and what his first followers believed about him
James, Peter and John and the Jerusalem Church
the theology of Paul
can we trust the New Testament?
historical theology (Christology, creeds and councils)
how can biblical scholarship help Muslim Dawah today?
I will be teaching this class on behalf of MDI. The programme will begin in the new year. Venue, dates and further information to follow…
MDI Event 10th December 2009
I will be chairing and moderating this event, inshallah.
Contentions by Abdal-Hakim Murad
All Islam offers is God.
We need an Erasmus, not a Luther.
Atheism: the belief that water originates in the well.
Laziness is its own chastisement.
A god is any site of independent volition.
America is Rome. Europe is Athens. Islam is Jerusalem.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is not to be changed by it.
To switch on a television is to acknowledge one’s own lack of refinement.
You are your intentions.
The Crucifixion and the Conquest of Mecca: which is higher: to forgive from a position of powerlessness, or of power?
The Vicarious Atonement proves that torture can be a good thing.
Islamic democracy: sovereignty belongs to God.
He is dead who does not feel the Qur’an move in his hands.
Rumi
Wisdom from Rumi (Selected by Kabir Helminski)
Let’s ask God to help us to self-control:
for one who lacks it, lacks His Grace.
The undisciplined person doesn’t wrong himself alone—
but sets fire to the whole world.
Discipline enabled Heaven to be filled with light;
discipline enabled the angels to be immaculate and holy.
The peacock’s plumage is his enemy.
The world is the mountain,
and each action, the shout that echoes back.
This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace
to extract the silver from the dross
Anger and lust make a man squint;
When self-interest appears, virtue hides:
Fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.
If ten lamps are present in one place,
each differs in form from another;
yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose
when you focus on the light.
The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.
To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.
If you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.
The stoppered jar, though in rough water,
floated because of its empty heart.
When the wind of poverty is in anyone,
she floats in peace on the waters of this world.
As long as desires are fresh, faith is not;
for it is these desires that lock that gate.
The tongue of mutual understanding is quite special:
to be one of heart is better than to have a common tongue.
If you dig a pit for others to fall into,
you will fall into it yourself.
Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader,
are your own nature reflected in them.
With will, fire becomes sweet water.
The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks
is a minor hero
compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
O son, only those whose spiritual eye has been opened
know how compulsive we are.
Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.
The intellectual quest,
though fine as pearl or coral,
is not the spiritual search.
The intelligent desire self-control;
children want candy.
Since in order to speak, one must first listen,
learn to speak by listening.
When, with just a taste, envy and deceit arise,
and ignorance and forgetfulness are born,
know you have tasted the unlawful.
Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue
is like an arrow shot from the bow.
O tongue, you are an endless treasure.
O tongue, you are also an endless disease.
I am burning.
If any one lacks tinder,
let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.
Although your desire tastes sweet,
doesn’t the Beloved desire you
to be desireless?
The world’s flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel:
eat less of it, for it is full of fire.
Forgetfulness of God, beloved,
is the support of this world;
spiritual intelligence its ruin.
For Intelligence belongs to that other world,
and when it prevails, this material world is overthrown.
Were there no men of vision,
all who are blind would be dead.
All these griefs within our hearts
arise from the smoke and dust
of our existence and vain desires.
Whoever lives sweetly dies painfully:
whoever serves his body doesn’t nourish his soul.
Your thinking is like a camel driver,
and you are the camel:
it drives you in every direction under its bitter control.
If you are wholly perplexed and in straits,
have patience, for patience is the key to joy.
Fast from thoughts, fast:
thoughts are like the lion and the wild ass;
men’s hearts are the thickets they haunt.
If you are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?
Anyone in whom the troublemaking self has died,
sun and cloud obey.
If you wish to shine like day,
burn up the night of self-existence.
Dissolve in the Being who is everything.
There is no worse sickness for the soul,
O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.
The heart and eyes must bleed a lot
before self-complacency falls away.
Can the water of a polluted stream
clear out the dung?
Can human knowledge sweep away
the ignorance of the sensual self?
How does a sword fashion its own hilt?
Go, entrust the cure of this wound to a surgeon,
Many are the unbelievers who long for submission,
but their stumbling block
is reputation and pride and continual desires.
I’m the devoted slave
of anyone who doesn’t claim
to have attained dining with God
at every way station.
Everyone is a child
except the one who’s intoxicated with God.
God has said, Knowledge that isn’t from Him is a burden.
like a woman’s makeup, it doesn’t last.
Be cleansed of the (false) self’s features, and see your pure Self:
Know the mirror of the heart is infinite.
Either the understanding falls silent, or it leads you astray,
because the heart is God,
or indeed the heart is He.
Everything, except love of the Most Beautiful,
is really agony. It’s agony
to move towards death and not drink the water of life.
Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it,
but inevitably by leaving it ungratified.
Anger is a king over kings,
but anger once bridled may serve.
Servetus to Take off the Veil
19th November, UPDATE:
Servetus the evangelical is none other than:
‘Kermit Millard Zarley, Jr. (born September 29, 1941) an American professional golfer who played on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour. He is also an author of several books.’
So says Wikepedia about him. What a joke.
A while ago I did a post about an anonymous evangelical Christian author who went by the pseudonym “Servetus the Evangelist” who had published a new biblical study on the Trinity entitled: The Restitution of Jesus Christ. The original plan was that the author, a well known evangelical, would reveal his identity on the 500th anniversary of Michael Servetus’s birth, but in the meantime, as a kind of playful contest, would release weekly clues as to his identity and invite readers to make guesses.
However recently “Servetus” has announced a change of mind. He promises to reveal his identity this Thursday November 19th. The following announcement has appeared on his Website:
ANNOUNCEMENT!!! October 18, 2009
I have decided to end this contest and reveal my identity as the author of The Restitution of Jesus Christ on November 19, 2009, almost two years earlier than planned. I will tell on this webpage who I am. And I will tell about the interesting development that has caused me to change these plans. It is something totally unexpected and that I could not have foreseen. Yet I am very excited about it.
I hope all the fuss about his identity proves to be worth it!
Apostates and Islam
Recently, a certain Christian politician launched a discreditable attack on my previous post on apostasy. I have sought authoritative guidance on this matter from scholars in the Islamic world whose work is available in English. I reproduce below an excerpt from a work entitled The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi who is the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), and the president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS).
His authoritative judgement needs no endorsement from me, but I am happy to acknowledge it as the teaching of Islam.
Capital Punishment
Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala says, “…Do not take the life which Allah has made sacred except in (the course of) justice….”(6:151)
Allah has mentioned three crimes for which the death penalty is justified:
1) Unjust murder. Murder which has been proved demands retaliation by taking the life of the murderer—a life for a life, a like return for an evil committed, as the initiator of the killing is the initiator of the wrongdoing. As the Qur’an states, “In the law of qisas (retaliation) there is life for you, O people of understanding….”(2:179)
2) Publicly committing zina with a person who is not one’s spouse if at least four upright people have actually witnessed intercourse taking place and testified before the court that they saw it. The death penalty applies to either of the two who is married. Confession, repeated four times before the court by the adulterer or adulteress, is equivalent to the testimony of four witnesses.
3) Apostasy from Islam after willingly accepting it and subsequently declaring an open revolt against it in such a manner which threatens the solidarity of the Muslim community is a crime punishable by death. No one is compelled to accept Islam, but at the same time no one is permitted to play tricks with it, as some Jews did during the Prophet’s time:
A party of the People of the Book say, ‘Believe in what has been revealed to the Believers’ at the beginning of the day and reject it at the end of it, in order that they may turn back (from Islam). (3:72)
The Prophet (peace be on him) limited capital punishment to these three crimes only, saying,
The shedding of the blood of a Muslim is not lawful except for one of three reasons: a life for a life, a married person who commits zina, and one who turns aside from his religion and abandons the community. (Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim)
In any of these instances, the death penalty can be implemented only by the proper authority after due process of law prescribed by the Shari’ah; individuals cannot take the law into their own hands, becoming judges and executioners, since this would result in absolute chaos and disorder. However, the judge may turn the murderer over to the victim’s next-of-kin to be executed in his presence so that their hearts may be eased and the desire for revenge extinguished. This is in obedience to the saying of Allah Ta’ala, “…And whoever is killed wrongfully, We have given authority to the heir; but let him not go to excess in killing (by way of retaliation), for indeed he will be helped” (17:33).
© Paul Williams 2009
Examining C.S. Lewis’ Trilemma
Here’s a new article by Muslim writer Bassam Zawadi who created the excellent Call to Monotheism website.
It presents a refutation of CS Lewis’ often quoted argument that Jesus claimed to be God.
Enjoy!
C.S. Lewis is a man who needs no introduction. He was indeed one of the most influential Christian figures of the 20th century. His works fascinatingly appeal to a wide audience of readers who come from different religious backgrounds (including myself). However, despite enjoying reading his works one cannot resist but to strongly disagree with some of its content. I am speaking specifically about C.S. Lewis’s famous “Jesus was either a lunatic, liar or Lord” argument.
This popular argument is heavily cited by Christian laity today against people of other faiths – particularly Muslims who hold Jesus to be so dear to them – mainly due to its revival by popular Christian apologists like Josh McDowell (see Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), page 157).
It’s disappointing to see that Christians do not offer other alternatives besides the above three. This could simply be due to 1) their inability to think and comprehend or 2) stubbornness that they are right and close mindedness to entertain other views or 3) just sheer ignorance of the reality of scholarship out there.
However, it is refreshing to see that respected Christian scholars – including the conservative ones – could see the fallaciousness of this supposed trilemma as I will show below.
Lewis’s famous argument is stated as follows:
I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse.. I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: MacMillan, 1943), pages 55-56)
Conservative New Testament scholar Craig L. Blomberg takes issue with this view and states in the introduction of his famous book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels:
The problem with this argument is that it assumes what is regularly denied, namely, that the gospels give entirely accurate accounts of the actions and claims of Jesus … This option represents the most common current explanation of the more spectacular deeds and extravagant claims of Jesus in the gospels. (Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, (Intervarsity Press, 1987), page xx)
Liberal New Testament scholar and former Bishop J.A.T. Robinson protests against Lewis’ argument:
We are often asked to accept Christ as divine because he claimed to be so–and the familiar argument is pressed: ‘A man who goes around claiming to be God must either be God–or else he is a madman or a charlatan’ … And, of course, it is not easy to read the Gospel story and to dismiss Jesus as either mad or bad. Therefore, the conclusion runs, he must be God. I am not happy about this argument. None of the disciples in the Gospels acknowledged Jesus because he claimed to be God, and the Apostles never went out saying, “This man claimed to be God, therefore you must believe in him.” (John A.T. Robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), pages 71-72)
Liberal theologian, Professor John Hick states:
In this, one of the earliest christologies, the human Jesus was raised to a unique and highly exalted role (though not to deity) shortly after his death.
All this rules out the once popular form of apologetic which argues that someone claiming to be God must be either mad, or bad, or God (e.g. Lewis 1955, 51-2). With the recognition that Jesus did not think of himself in this way christological discussion has moved from the once supposedly firm rock of Jesus’ own claim to the much less certain ground of the church’s subsequent attempts to formulate the meaning of his life. (John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age, 2nd ed. (Louisville: WJK, 2005), pages 28-29)
Conservative New Testament scholar Craig Evans said:
When it comes to evaluating Jesus, popular Christian apologists often appeal to the triad of options proposed by C.S. Lewis half a century ago: Jesus was either a liar, lunatic or Lord. The appeal makes for good alliteration, maybe even good rhetoric, but it is faulty logic. Without further qualification, those who adhere to this line of argument commit the fallacy of excluded middle. That is, they overlook other viable alternatives. At least two other alternatives are possible; both relate to how Scripture is understood and both come into play in the books that Fabricating Jesus criticizes.
A fourth alternative is that Jesus is neither liar, lunatic nor Lord (in the traditional, orthodox sense); he is something else. He may be Israel’s messiah, the Lord’s servant and perhaps the greatest prophet who ever lived. He could even be called God’s son, but not in the trinitarian sense, in which Jesus is seen as fully God and fully human. As far as we know, this more or less agrees with Ebionite Christianity, a form of Jewish Christianity that emerged in the second century and eventually disappeared sometime in the fifth century. The Ebionites possessed one or more edited versions of the Gospel of Mathew, which tended to enhance the status of the law and minimize the divine nature of Jesus. They believe that in the sense King David could be called God’s son (as in Ps 2:7) Jesus also could be called son of God. But Ebionites did not hold to what theologians call “high Christology” – that is, the view that Jesus is divine. The Ebionite understanding of Jesus is pretty close to the view of two of the scholars considered later in this chapter.
A fifth alternative is that we really don’t know who Jesus was, what he really said and did, what he thought of himself, or what his companions thought of him, because the New Testament Gospels and other sources we have are not reliable. The New Testament Gospels may well present Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and as God’s Son, but for all we know, that is nothing more than the theology of Christians who lived in the second half of the first century, Christians who had never met Jesus and had never heard him teach. (Craig Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2006), pages 20-21)
So as we could see, there are at least two other possible alternatives: 1) Jesus’ words are not to be understood as him claiming to be God, therefore making the position of Muslim apologists and Unitarian Christians who argue that Jesus did not claim to be divine to be a possibility and 2) Even if the New Testament does clearly show that Jesus claimed to be God, it’s possible that these words are falsely attributed to Jesus.
In conclusion, Christians who keep posing this argument need to start being a little bit more open minded and realize that there are other alternatives that they must engage with. To keep shoving this logically fallacious trilemma down the throats of people will do nothing but push them further away from them and create barriers to having a serious intellectual dialogue surrounding the topic of the historical Jesus.
Feel free to contact me at b_zawadi@hotmail.com
In Praise of Christian Honesty
It’s a fact that not all Christians are right-wing fundamentalists (yes really!). The excellent Christian Forum ‘The Ship of Fools’ has a new feature called ‘The ten worst verses of the Bible’. Actually there are many other horrible and vile verses which for some reason don’t get a mention, but I’ll add my favourite nasty verse at the end. Just remember folks: this is God’s Word you’re reading!
The ten worst verses of the Bible
Lord, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Ship of Fools can finally and authoritatively reveal the worst verse in the Bible, according to our readers.
The verse is ascribed to – who’d have thought it – St Paul, and if you’ll turn with me in your Bibles you’ll find it in 1 Timothy:
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
It’s a verse that’s particularly difficult to discuss. When we revealed the results of the Chapter and Worse poll at the recent Greenbelt festival, Hannah Kowszun, the only woman in our panel of three had, of course, to contribute in sign language.
St Paul did well to make the top place with his rules for church life in first-century Ephesus, beating genocide, infanticide, executions, dismemberment, human sacrifice (and donkeys) to get there. All the verses that placed from fifth to second place resorted to violence to do so.
In second place, the Lord via the prophet Samuel instructs King Saul in ethnic cleansing:
“This is what the Lord Almighty says… ‘Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Samuel 15:3)
It seems like a rather disappointing elucidation of what the Lord did and didn’t mean by, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
At number 3 is the only entry from the Hebrew Torah:
“Do not allow a sorceress to live.” (Exodus 22:18)
This is not the only biblical death penalty, but it appears sorceresses elicit greater sympathy than blasphemers, rebellious sons, unfaithful fiancées and brides who fail to prove their virginity.
Number 4 is particularly jarring because it comes at the end of a favourite psalm, which moves from pining for home to anger against the Babylonians who have taken them into exile. It’s the line that Boney M didn’t quite manage to fit in to their disco calypso hit, Rivers of Babylon:
“Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:9)
Hebrew hymnwriters were rather franker about their feelings than their modern counterparts, weren’t they?
Number 5 brings us to the most unpopular book in the Top Ten, Judges, a history of Israel before its first king:
“So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.” (Judges 19:25)
The man in question is so outraged by the treatment of his woman, he cuts her into 12 pieces and sends them around the 12 tribes of Israel in protest. The biblical writer makes no comment.
From all that violence, we return to Paul for some homophobia. The 6th worse verse in the Bible is:
“In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:27)
It’s the one you could imagine Rowan Williams trying to sneak out of the Bible when no one’s looking.
Then at 7 it’s back to Judges for a bit of human sacrifice:
“And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, ‘If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt-offering.’” (Judges 11:30-1)
As Hannah Kowszun said at Greenbelt, perhaps he was hoping it would be the missus. But it was his daughter, so he was morally obliged to burn her for God.
In at number 8, a golden oldie, for prog rock fans, it’s Genesis. God is speaking to Abraham:
“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” (Genesis 22:2)
More human sacrifice. Admittedly, this time it turns out that God doesn’t actually mean it, but does that really let him off the hook?
We’re back to St Paul for a third time with number 9:
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)
And scraping in at the last moment to the number 10 slot, it’s the man who gets a much better press for saying most of the same things, St Peter:
“Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)
All in all, the results are a mixture of the historically horrific and milder restrictions that are still being applied in our own times. It may be a surprise that biblical sexism caps biblical genocide, but maybe it’s because it’s more of a live issue. No one is using the Book of Samuel to justify genocide today, but the words of Paul are still used to silence women.
It’s an unedifying list, but we think the Bible can survive bringing these shadowy verses into the spotlight. It’s not the all-or-nothing book that fundamentalists (atheist and Christian) say that we must either accept wholesale or burn. We need a view of the Bible that is nuanced enough to treasure its comforts and challenges, its classic stories and groundbreaking ethical wisdom, while facing the plain fact that some of it is unacceptable.
Here’s my nomination for number 11:
Hosea 13:16
The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,
because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open.”
Christian Terrorism
The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605
As I write these words multiple explosions are occurring in London. But don’t be alarmed. The English people are celebrating, with fireworks, their deliverance from one of the most memorable events in English history: the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Commons and the King in 1605.
Christian terrorism did not begin in 1605 of course. Acts of terror had been perpetuated by the Christians against other Christians since the days of the early Fathers (not to mention terrorism against Jews and Muslims). But the English have celebrated their deliverance from this particular act of Christian terror annually for the past 400 years to the chant of ‘Remember, remember the Fifth of November’.
The conspirators were all devout Catholics, determined to overthrow King James I of England and VI of Scotland
I have read, and recommend, Antonia Fraser’s fascinating book The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, (published by Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 2002). She is a Roman Catholic herself, and it is instructive to read the dedicatory page:
FOR
Edward who would have defended them
Lucy who would have hidden them
Paloma who would have succoured them in exile
So Christian terrorism still has its defenders today, though no one seems to bat an eyelid from the safe distance of 400 years.
For an excellent discussion of what constitutes terrorism and how to define the term see Definition of terrorism
© Paul Williams 2009
The headquarters of Christianity may well have been Baghdad not Rome…
‘The First Christianity’
This Thursday, 21:00 on BBC Four
BBC Synopsis:
‘When he was a small boy, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life’s work.’
‘In the first of a six-part series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity’s forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.’
‘The headquarters of Christianity may well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then western Christianity would have been very different.’
more info here: BBC
and here: BBC Press Office
2 comments