From
Pastor Paul T. McCain (Another Kung Fu Master) OR Cyberbrethren...
September 10, 2004
Greetings Cyberbrethren:
I believe that Islam represents a very real and present danger to our nation, and any other, in which it gains a majority. With the *possible* exception of the Moors in Spain, the history of Islam demonstrates that, generally, in whatever nation it acquires the majority of the population and political control ,the result is the imposition of Islam across the culture. Perhaps we need to return some of the original wording of Luther's hymn, where he originally wrote, "curb Turk and Papists' sword" to "Lord Keep Us Steadfast Us in Thy Word . . .curb Islam's sword."
It is difficult for secularized cultures to grapple with the reality that there are those in the world who believe, as a matter of religious principles, that killing another person for his or her faith is proper and even necessary. Attempts to sugar-coat the inherently violent nature of Islam, not merely as a cultural phenomenon, but as part of the religious teachings of Muhammad are failing in light of the increasingly horrendous demonstration of this reality around the world. It is fanciful nonsense to try to claim that Islam is a "religion of peace" when nothing could be further from the truth. Islam was founded on the basis of brutal murder and mass killings of those who opposed Mohammed and his followers.
It is also difficult for generally peace-loving democratic cultures to understand that at times the only response to such behaviors is an unrelenting and untiring effort to kill and destroy those who are trying to kill and destroy us. It is a hash reality of life in a fallen world, but precisely one of the highest duties God gives to those who govern, to wield the sword powerfully and decisively.
Here is an interesting article by Dr.Uwe Siemon-Netto
Analysis: Transatlantic variation on Islam
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religious Affairs Editor
PARIS, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- The accelerating number of ever-bloodier outrages committed in the name of Islam has produced a curious transatlantic split over how this religion is to be seen.
A plurality of Americans (46 percent) believes that Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence among its believers, according to a new survey released by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Pubic Life.
Yet more Americans take a positive than a negative view of Islam (39 vs. 37 percent). Meanwhile, European scholars interpret this result as a sign of "American naivité" when it comes to judging the radical Muslim threat.
"This is in line with the tenor of 90 percent of the books on Islam currently oozing out of the United States," said Christine Schirrmacher, president of the Islamic Studies institute in Bonn, Germany.
"Every theologian over there seems to feel compelled these days to pen an apologetic tome on this religion, and almost all of these books are of questionably scholarship, except for those written by bona fide experts, who are often remarkably profound."
These sharp words are part of an astonishing phenomenon: In formerly "liberal" Europe, a radical turnaround in the public, scholarly and theological perception of Islam is underway, according to Schirrmacher and other specialists.
"People over here have come to believe that Islam is not comparable with Christianity," said the Rev. Hans Voecking, key Islamic affairs adviser to the Brussels-based Commission of European Catholic Bishops' Conferences.
Schirrmacher -- who is frequently traveling around the continent addressing a vast array of civic, military, police, foreign service and religious organizations -- observed amazing changes in her audiences' responses.
"It used to be that at every one of these events, some people would get up claiming that Muslims are much nicer and much more faithful than Christians with their history of crusades and inquisition.
"This is over," Schirrmacher went on. "Now I keep hearing: 'We must return to our Christian heritage.' You no longer hear the phrase, 'After all, aren't we all alike? Don't we all want the same?"
Perhaps the most telling shift has occurred in the relationship between the state-related "Evangelical (Protestant) Church in Germany," known as EKD, and the leadership of the country's 3.5 million Muslims.
The EKD's past chairman, the Rev. Manfred Kock, used to maintain a very harmonious relationship with his Muslim counterparts - often criticized as "too cozy" by conservative Christians.
His successor, the Rev. Wolfgang Huber, bishop of Berlin, is taking an increasingly tougher stand. After Islamist terrorists had kidnapped 1,200 school children, teachers and parents in Russia and killed 335 of them, Huber demanded that Muslim organizations in Germany disassociate more clearly from such atrocities committed "in the name of God," causing strong protests from Muslim leaders.
Meanwhile in France, home to nearly 6 million Muslims, their officials have taken "a very smart approach," according to Voecking. They expressed unqualified solidarity with Christians and others in condemning the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq.
But on a key issue European Muslims remain intransigent, and that issue are suicide-murders in Israel and elsewhere, Schirrmacher and Voecking stressed.
In 1998, Shaikh Mohammed Tantawi of Cairo, the most respected Sunni Muslim theologian, decreed that every Palestinian had the right to blow himself up in Israel. He described suicide operations as acts of self-defense.
This attitude is strong among Muslims in Europe, Schirrmacher and Voecking said, which is one reason for Berlin Bishop Huber's tough stand, said Wolfgang Polzer, managing editor of idea, a Protestant wire service in Germany.
Interestingly, Huber used to be considered a left-winger within the EKD leadership, but the terms left and right have long lost much of their significance when it comes to assess the Islamists' strengths and weaknesses in Europe.
The Netherlands, for example, was once considered the most liberal country on the continent, unabashedly selling disused Protestant churches to Islamic congregations. "Now the Dutch and the Scandinavians, who were equally liberal, are among the most hard-nosed participants in European conferences on Islam," Schirrmacher related.
Discussing attitudes on this subject in the United States -- where college graduates (49 percent) and liberal Democrats (56 percent) take the most positive view of Islam, while white evangelicals attending church weekly were most negative (54 percent) -- Schirrmacher wondered: "Have Americans not seen the horrible reports from North Ossetia? Are they so badly informed on what is happening away from their shores?"
Of course, the Pew poll was taken before the Beslan massacre. "I wonder how Americans felt after watching this bloodbath on television," Schirrmacher concluded.
