What I Did Not Say And The Missionary Myopia 1

What I Did Not Say And The Mis­sion­ary Myopia

Intro­duc­tion

There are those who say that lying and deceiv­ing is at the soul of all crime and that Chris­tian­i­ty epit­o­mizes these traits more than any oth­er faith.See e.g., http://​www​.bare​-jesus​.net for a detailed analy­sis, which are unflat­ter­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty. As proof of their asser­tion they often quote Paul of Tar­sus, arguably the true founder of Chris­tian­i­ty, who is record­ed to have said, But if through my false­hood God’s truth­ful­ness abounds to his glo­ry, why am I still being con­demned as a sin­ner ? Any why not do evil that good may come ? – as some peo­ple slan­der­ous­ly charge us with say­ing. Their con­dem­na­tion is just.” (Romans 3:7 – 8)

While I want to exclude myself as one who would con­demn an entire reli­gious tra­di­tion based on such state­ments, I must admit that the temp­ta­tion is too great when I see how the fanat­ics of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty, the big­ots with their high­ly bloat­ed holi­er than thou’ notion of moral supe­ri­or­i­ty, often try to set hall­marks of lying and decep­tions. To these xeno­pho­bic big­ots, there is noth­ing good in Islam, Qur’an and Muham­mad (S) – the reli­gion, the Scrip­ture and the Prophet of Mus­lims ; dia­logue with Islam is out of ques­tion. The mere accep­tance of Islam as a go-between” Judaism and Chris­tian­i­ty would be dis­as­trous”, espe­cial­ly now that rela­tions between Jews and Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca are flow­ing smooth­ly.” To them, if Mus­lims were to join the dia­logue, then they must leave their holy book far behind them in pub­lic, espe­cial­ly in areas of leg­is­la­tion. Islam­ic law must nev­er be con­sid­ered in delib­er­a­tions, for it is too harsh and barbaric.”

By the way, none of the above quot­ed state­ments are mine, but comes from a die-hard Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary. Soon after my speech at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty on the sub­ject of Islam and Coex­is­tence” got post­ed in the Inter­net, this activist react­ed vehe­ment­ly with his 13-page polem­i­cal writ­ing and sil­ly pro­pa­gan­da object­ing to what he calls my errors and omis­sions’ — what I should have said at Van­der­bilt” -– obvi­ous­ly assert­ing my speech as a non-speech”. I must admit that I was unaware of the exis­tence of this pro­pa­gan­dist before some of my read­ers plead­ed that I should respond. I told them that I try to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in debates on com­par­a­tive reli­gion for the mere fact that they often burn more bridges than I can ever afford to build. After real­iz­ing that the Chris­t­ian polemist’s writ­ing dis­play a pen­chant for anti-Mus­lim big­otry, I relented.

Some back­ground infor­ma­tion on my speech. A few weeks before the event, when the orga­niz­ers of the Inter­faith Coali­tion of Nashville con­tact­ed me to rep­re­sent Islam, I polite­ly sug­gest­ed that they should instead con­tact Dr. Robert D. Crane.For a short biog­ra­phy see here. Appar­ent­ly, he turned them down, and I end­ed up speak­ing on the sub­ject of Islam and Co-existence”.

Like oth­er speak­ers, I was allot­ted only 15 min­utes to cov­er such an impor­tant and vast sub­ject, espe­cial­ly in the after­math of 911 when inter­ests are high to learn about Islam. Odd­ly, none of the oth­er speak­ers said any­thing from their own scrip­tures, talk­ing only on generalities.

Dur­ing the ques­tion and answer ses­sion, when I tried to respond to a ques­tion from the audi­ence, some big­ots from the rabid­ly anti-Mus­lim Jihad Watch group tried to dis­turb me. They were arro­gant and rude. They won’t allow me to respond to the ques­tion and instead insist­ed that I answered their ques­tion first. When I pro­vid­ed the answer from the Qur’an, they won’t yield because it did not agree with their poi­so­nous and con­fused learn­ing” about Islam, thanks to Spencer and his ilk. When I chal­lenged them to prove me wrong from the Qur’an, they didn’t have any­thing to say oth­er than ram­bling that they did not believe” me. I told them that they were enti­tled to their erro­neous opin­ion and that I must answer the ques­tion posed to me first. They stared angri­ly at me before leav­ing the con­fer­ence room.

This inci­dent once again demon­strates what kind of mali­cious and big­ot­ed ser­mons and hate lit­er­a­ture many Chris­tians are now fed about Islam. Nat­u­ral­ly, the mer­chants of Chris­t­ian reli­gion have found that sell­ing the poi­so­nous pills of big­otry and Armaged­don is much more lucra­tive to their cof­fers than com­mu­nion breads !

In what fol­lows, I shall dis­cuss some major themes raised by the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary. Oth­er issues have long been answered by me and others.

A. Vio­lence :

The evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary was not gay about the selec­tion of vers­es from the Qur’an that exem­pli­fied coex­is­tence with peo­ple of oth­er faiths.See this author’s arti­cle, Islam and Co-exis­tence. He would rather have me quote the vers­es from the Surah at-Taw­bah, which were revealed about the anti-Mus­lim mushriqs of Ara­bia so as to prove how intol­er­ant Islam is or its prophet Muham­mad (S) was. As I have explained many times, all the scrip­tures have their share of vio­lent pas­sages. The Qur’an does not have a monop­oly there. As a mat­ter of fact its share of vio­lent pas­sages is insignif­i­cant com­pared to those in the Bible.See this author’s arti­cle, Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi : Why a dif­fer­ent yard­stick for Mus­lims ? for a sam­ple of vio­lent and demean­ing vers­es in Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish reli­gious books. If such pas­sages in the Qur’an make the Prophet of Islam a vio­lent man, then most of the great per­son­al­i­ties in the Bible, from Jacob to Moses to David to Jesus were no less vio­lent individuals.

When Chris­t­ian zealots shield those Bib­li­cal vio­lent vers­es from a com­pa­ra­ble cri­tique, and yet demand a dif­fer­ent set of rules for Mus­lims, it is intel­lec­tu­al dis­hon­esty. Such a norm is exem­plary of the ancient Latin phrase : Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi –- which means what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the cat­tle”. There­fore, I am not too sur­prised to see how these Judeo-Chris­t­ian fanat­ics always rel­e­gate the role of cat­tle to oth­ers. It is in this pompous vein that the pro­pa­gan­dist complains :

    But Sid­diqui makes some errors and omis­sions. He assumes, for exam­ple, that Jim Jones of the Guyana mass sui­cide and David Kore­sh of the Waco incin­er­a­tion were Chris­tians, but they were not. They devi­at­ed far from the New Tes­ta­ment and its teach­ing of love demon­strat­ed by Jesus Christ.

How won­der­ful ! Zar­qawi and OBL are Mus­lims, but Jim Jones and David Kore­sh are not Chris­tians ! They might as well be Mus­lims (for the sake of deceiv­ing mis­sion­ar­ies)! So must be Hitler !

How about King Richard, the so-called Lion-Heart”? Wasn’t he a Chris­t­ian when he killed 3000 Mus­lim pris­on­ers of war in Accre ?We should not, there­fore, be sur­prised with the killings of POWs in Iraq and Afghanistan by Jesus-lov­ing, faith­ful Chris­t­ian war­lords. How about all those mass-mur­der­ers in his­to­ry who pro­fessed Chris­tian­i­ty ? To those fanat­ics : geno­cide, mur­der, may­hem, rape and plun­der were no predica­ment but God’s vengeance brought about by faith­ful uphold­ers of Chris­tian­i­ty who were inspired and guid­ed by the Holy Spirit !

I shall have no prob­lem dis­cussing the Qur’an­ic vers­es that are vio­lent in nature when my coun­ter­parts are will­ing to wash their dirty laun­dry in the open. In the mean­time, let them reflect on the instruc­tion enun­ci­at­ed in the gospel accord­ing to Matthew (7:1): Judge not that ye not be judged.

The Jesuit asks : when did Jesus and his first gen­er­a­tion of Chris­tians take up arms to kill peo­ple or to impose a dhim­mi tax on those who refused to sub­mit ? My ques­tion is : did Jesus run the affairs of his peo­ple ? If not, how can he be com­pared with some­one who did ? The actions of Muham­mad (S) should, in all fair­ness, be com­pared with prophets of the Bible who held sim­i­lar respon­si­bil­i­ties –- the likes of Moses.Deut. 18:18 offers a close resem­blance. When we do that we’ll find Muhammad’s (S) and his ashabs (Com­pan­ions) treat­ment of the con­quered peo­ple was far supe­ri­or. In con­trast to the Bib­li­cal prophets who killed all peo­ple, includ­ing infant males and unarmed women who had known (sex with) men (see, e.g., Num­bers 31:17 – 18), except vir­gins, Muham­mad (S) instruct­ed his army not to kill any old man, unarmed civil­ian, child and woman.In a cel­e­brat­ed hadith Muham­mad (S) instruct­ed his army : Depart in the name of Allah, and be His helper. And kill not any old man, nor young boy, nor child, nor woman. But be good-doers, for Allah loves those who do good.” They were also instruct­ed not to demol­ish homes, nor to destroy cat­tle and trees. So, if death is bet­ter than life, then the so-called dhim­mi tax would be con­strued as being worse than mur­der.It is worth men­tion­ing here that this tax was col­lect­ed to guar­an­tee pro­tec­tion of lives and prop­er­ties of the pro­tect­ed’ peo­ple, who need­ed not to par­tic­i­pate in Jihad. The dhim­mis were also exempt from pay­ment of oth­er forms of tax­es that were manda­to­ry on Mus­lims.See the arti­cle : Non- Mus­lims and the Law of Social Secu­ri­ty in Islam By Shaykh Shawkat Husayn – for an excel­lent analy­sis. See also : Anec­dotes from the life of the Prophet Muham­mad by Mum­taz Ahmed Faruqui ; A True Word – Here’s to You, Dr. Robert­son” by Amir But­ler.See also this author’s arti­cle Real Islam and Jihad – a rejoin­der” for an under­stand­ing on the sub­ject of Jihad.

The Bib­li­cal prophets also burned down the cities of the con­quered peo­ple (see, e.g., Num­bers 31:10).

In spite of many lead­er­ship short­com­ings (e.g., being reject­ed by his own peo­ple), the por­tray­al of Jesus in the so-called New Tes­ta­ment is not the love-all” and for­give-all” kind of per­son­al­i­ty that the Church would have us believe. He appears rude (John 2:4, Matt. 12:48, Mark 3:33 – 4), mean-spir­it­ed (Matt. 15:26, 17:17, 23:33 – 5), offen­sive (John 8:44, Matt. 23:13 – 29), abu­sive (Matt. 12:39, 23:23 – 9, Luke 11:44), dis­re­spect­ful (Matt. 11:21 – 3, 16:4, 23:13 – 9), divi­sive (Matt. 10:35, Luke 14:26), racist (Matt. 15:26) and prone to vio­lence (Matt. 10:34 ; Mark 11:15 ; Luke 12:49 – 53, 19:27, 22:36). He is even tempt­ed by the dev­il (Mark 1:13, Luke 4:2). He com­mands steal­ing (Matt. 21:1 – 3, Luke 19:29 – 34), and may even be a homo­sex­u­al (Mark 14:49 – 52, John 13:23). [Na oozu bil­lah !]

The apoc­ryphal Gospel of Thomas puts the fol­low­ing words in Jesus’s mouth : I shall destroy this house and no one will be able to (re)build it.” The depic­tion of Jesus dur­ing his sec­ond com­ing is any­thing but flat­ter­ing or peace­ful.See the Book of Revelations

The ear­ly his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty in the pre-Con­stan­tine era (324337 CE) is not immune from vio­lence either. It is a his­to­ry of heresy, riots, tor­ture, tor­ment, extor­tion, competition/​rivalry, excom­mu­ni­ca­tions, ban­ish­ments and assas­si­na­tion.The Out­line of His­to­ry by H.G. Wells ; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gib­bon. It is there­fore not dif­fi­cult to under­stand the state­ment of James in the NT : From whence come wars and fight­ings among you ? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your mem­bers ? Ye lust, and have not ; ye kill, and desire to have, and can­not obtain : ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. … Ye adul­ter­ers and adul­ter­ess­es, know ye know that the friend­ship of the world is enmi­ty with God ? .., Cleanse your hands, ye sin­ners ; and puri­fy your hearts, ye dou­ble mind­ed.” (James 4:1 – 8)See also Acts 5:1 – 11.

The sit­u­a­tion did not improve much even after Chris­tian­i­ty was adopt­ed as the state reli­gion. The Roman emper­or Jus­tin­ian (33263 CE) described the love” of Chris­tians for each oth­er in this way : I expe­ri­enced that even beasts of prey are not that hos­tile mind­ed to human beings than Chris­t­ian sin­ners to each oth­er.“Quot­ed from Kurt Eggers With state back­ing, Chris­tian­i­ty soon revealed its my way or high­way” type men­tal­i­ty anni­hi­lat­ing all com­pet­ing faiths from vast ter­ri­to­ries it came to con­trol. There was to be no rival­ry, no qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the rigid uni­ty of the Church.

Dur­ing his reign Catholic emper­or Flav­ius Theo­do­sius (346395 CE) took severe mea­sures against Ari­an­ism and the sur­viv­ing rem­nants of pagan­ism. In 388 a pre­fect was sent around Egypt, Syr­ia, and Asia Minor for the pur­pose of destroy­ing tem­ples and break­ing up pagan asso­ci­a­tions ; it was then that the Ser­apeum at Alexan­dria was destroyed. He pro­hib­it­ed pagan reli­gion and intro­duced heavy finan­cial penal­ties.http://​www​.newad​vent​.org/​c​a​t​h​e​n​/​14577​d​.​htm The impe­r­i­al decree stat­ed : We com­mand that those per­sons who fol­low this rule shall embrace the name of Catholic Chris­tians. The rest, how­ev­er, whom We adjudge dement­ed and insane, shall sus­tain the infamy of hereti­cal dog­mas, their meet­ing places shall not receive the name of church­es, and they shall be smit­ten first by divine vengeance and sec­ond­ly by the ret­ri­bu­tions of Our own ini­tia­tive, which We shall assume in accor­dance with the divine judg­ment.” And lat­er, with regards to pagan hous­es of wor­ships, he decreed : We com­mand that all their fanes, tem­ples, and shrines, if even now any remain entire, shall be destroyed by the com­mand of the mag­is­trates, and shall be puri­fied by the erec­tion of the sign of the ven­er­a­ble Chris­t­ian religion.”

These codes result­ed in fur­ther leg­is­la­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the death penal­ty for non-Chris­tians in 435 CE. All cit­i­zens had to belong to the autho­rized Catholic” Chris­tian­i­ty, except Jews who were per­mit­ted to prac­tice in places iso­lat­ed from the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. Between 429 and 439 CE some 150 dif­fer­ent laws were enact­ed defin­ing and defend­ing the Catholic faith.” Church lands were made exempt from tax­a­tion and bish­ops immune to chastisement.

The­o­log­i­cal sup­port for repres­sion of reli­gious plu­ral­i­ty was for­mal­ly indoc­tri­nat­ed by St. Augus­tine (354430 CE), Bish­op of Hip­po.http://​www​.newad​vent​.org/​c​a​t​h​e​n​/​02084​a​.​htm As part of his hos­til­i­ty to the Donatist here­sies, he for­mu­lat­ed his doc­trine of Cog­nite intrare (Ital­ian : costringali ad entrare, mean­ing : com­pel them to enter”), which was used through­out the Mid­dle Ages to jus­ti­fy the sup­pres­sion of dif­fer­ences and tyran­ny against the dis­senters. Augus­tine stat­ed : The wounds of a friend are bet­ter than the kiss­es of an ene­my. To love with stern­ness is bet­ter than to deceive with gen­tle­ness… In Luke 14:23 it is writ­ten : Com­pel peo­ple to come in!’ By threats of the wrath of God, the Father draws souls to the Son.”Edward Peters, Heresy and Author­i­ty in Medieval Europe ; R. Dean Peter­son, A Con­cise His­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty ; James A. Haught, Holy Hor­rors ; J.N. Hill­gar­th, Chris­tian­i­ty and Pagan­ism ; Mal­colm Lam­bert, Medieval Heresy.

The inter­est­ed read­er may like to read the book : The Dark Side of Chris­t­ian His­to­ry by Helen Ellerbe for an account. Excerpt from chap­ter 8 reads : The Ref­or­ma­tion did not con­vert the peo­ple of Europe to ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty through preach­ing and cat­e­chisms alone. It was the 300 year peri­od of witch-hunt­ing from the fif­teenth to the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, what R.H. Rob­bins called the shock­ing night­mare, the foulest crime and deep­est shame of west­ern civilization,”…that ensured the Euro­pean aban­don­ment of the belief in mag­ic. The Church cre­at­ed the elab­o­rate con­cept of dev­il wor­ship and then, used the per­se­cu­tion of it to wipe out dis­sent, sub­or­di­nate the indi­vid­ual to author­i­tar­i­an con­trol, and open­ly den­i­grate women.”

So my sug­ges­tion to these myopic mis­sion­ar­ies who seem to suf­fer from chron­ic men­tal ail­ment of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance” is : before you nit­pick the Qur’an by cher­ry-pick­ing vio­lent pas­sages you ought to study your own scrip­ture first and make an objec­tive eval­u­a­tion. Tru­ly, if you are look­ing for vio­lence, you don’t have to go beyond your own Bible. It is arguably the most vio­lent book in the annals of human history.

B. Slav­ery :

Writ­ing on slav­ery, the Jesuit alleges, More­over, the Quran endors­es slav­ery — not mere­ly per­mits it because it was too deeply entrenched in soci­ety. Muham­mad him­self trad­ed in slaves.” He con­tin­ues, The slave trade was lucra­tive for Muham­mad and his orig­i­nal Islam. It trad­ed in slaves through­out its history…”

There is not an iota of truth in his asser­tions. Instead if the Jesuit had stud­ied his own Bible well, he should have seen how it endorsed and encour­aged slav­ery : You may pos­sess slaves, but make sure they are for­eign­ers. You may also make slaves of the natives who dwell among you and from their chil­dren who are born and reared in your land. You may own them as chat­tels and leave them to your sons as their hered­i­tary prop­er­ty, mak­ing them slaves for­ev­er. But you should not lord it over your own coun­try­man, your own kins­men.” [Lev. 25:44 – 46] (See also : Deut. 21:10) Even in the NT, not a sin­gle state­ment can be found in Jesus’s mouth that comes close to uproot­ing slav­ery. (See also : 1 Tim­o­thy 6:1, 1 Peter 2:18, Col. 3:22 for endorse­ment of slavery.)

The ancient world was deeply entrenched into slav­ery, and the Arab soci­ety in Muham­mad’s (S) time was no excep­tion. The pagan aris­toc­ra­cy in Makkah, Jew­ish landown­ers and mer­chants in Mad­i­nah and many wealthy Chris­t­ian Arabs were slave own­ers.A study of the lives of many for­mer slaves who became the Com­pan­ions of the Prophet (S) is suf­fi­cient to prove this. For instance, Salman al-Farisi’s (RA) slave mas­ter was a wealthy Jew from Banu Qurayza. (See also Maulana Rumi’s mas­ter­piece — Math­n­abi.) Most of the ear­ly believ­ers in Muhammad’s (S) mes­sage of pure monothe­ism, on the oth­er hand, were slaves, who were bru­tal­ly tor­tured for their faith by their non-Mus­lim slavers. It became, thus, incum­bent upon the Prophet (S) and his Com­pan­ions (notably Abu Bakr and Uth­man – may Allah be pleased with them) to free those slaves. Muham­mad (S) bought free­dom of 63 for­mer slaves, A’isha (RA) 67, Abbas (RA) 70, Abdul­lah ibn Umar (RA) 1000 and Abdur Rah­man ibn Awf 30,000.Human Rights in Islam by Abul Ala Maw­du­di. It was no won­der that some of the best-known Mus­lims and sol­diers in the defense of Islam were these for­mer slaves and their chil­dren.Read this author’s The Book of Devo­tion­al Sto­ries (in print) for sto­ries of some of these ear­ly Muslims.

The Qur’an unequiv­o­cal­ly makes it clear that no man, irre­spec­tive of his sta­tus (includ­ing a prophet), can enslave any oth­er human being : It is not (pos­si­ble) for any human being unto whom Allah had giv­en him the Scrip­ture and wis­dom and Nabuwah’ (Prophet­hood) that he should after­wards have said unto mankind : Be slaves of me instead of Allah …” [3:79]

Thus, Islam’s cred­it lies in being the only major reli­gion to cur­tail­ing slav­ery and encour­ag­ing eman­ci­pa­tion of slaves.See the Qur’an for many such ref­er­ences, e.g., 4:92, 5:89, 58:3, 90:13, 24:33, 9:60, 2:177, 2:221, 4:25, 4:36. Fol­low­ing the dic­tates of the Qur’an, per­son­al and pub­lic wealth from zakat fund and the Bait­ul-Mal was used for man­u­mit­ting slaves.See Fethul­lah Gulen’s arti­cle : How is it that Islam, a reli­gion inspired by God for the good of human­i­ty, allows slav­ery ? Here are some rel­e­vant Tra­di­tions (aha­dith) encour­ag­ing eman­ci­pa­tion of slaves, Mus­lims and non-Mus­lims alike :

  • A per­son who frees a Mus­lim slave, Allah will deliv­er every one of his limbs from the fire of Hell in return for each of the limbs of the slave, even his pri­vate organs for the sake of the freed slave’s organs.” — Muham­mad (S) [Bukhari and Mus­lim : Abu Hurayrah (RA)]
  • The atone­ment for beat­ing or slap­ping a slave (Mus­lim or non-Mus­lim) on the face, for no fault of his, is that he should be set free.” — Muham­mad (S) [Mus­lim : Ibn Umar (RA)]
  • Give food to the hun­gry, pay a vis­it to the sick and release (set free) the one in cap­tiv­i­ty (by pay­ing his ran­som).” — Muham­mad (S) [Bukhari : Abu Musa Al-Ash’ari (RA)]
  • Allah the Most High said, I will be the oppo­nent of three per­sons on the Day of Res­ur­rec­tion. They are the one who makes a covenant in My name and then prove treach­er­ous. Or the one who sells a free per­son (Mus­lim or non-Mus­lim) as a slave and appro­pri­ates his price for him­self. And the one who hires a labor­er and hav­ing tak­en full work from him, fails to pay him his wages.” — Muham­mad (S) [Hadith Qudsi, Bukhari : Abu Hurayrah (RA)]
  • There are three peo­ple whose prayers are not accept­ed. And one of these three is a man who enslaves a free per­son (Raju­lun iitaba­da muhar­raran).” – Muham­mad (S) [Abu Dawud]
  • No son can repay his father unless he finds him as a slave and pur­chas­es him and sets him free.” – Muham­mad (S) [Mus­lim : Abu Hurayrah (RA)]

As hint­ed ear­li­er, many of the Com­pan­ions of the Prophet Muham­mad (S) were freed slaves who went on to become great lead­ers of the Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty. Bilal the Abyssin­ian became the first caller to Islam [note : the posi­tion of mu’addhin is next to the imam]. Ammar ibn Yathir was from Yemen, Salman al-Far­si was from Per­sia, Suhayb al-Rumi was from Byzan­tium. Many of the rulers in Mus­lim ter­ri­to­ries were freed slaves and their descendants.

On the oth­er hand, through­out our known his­to­ry, many of the noto­ri­ous slave traders (includ­ing those involved in the Atlantic slave trade) were Chris­tians and Jews.Accord­ing to some his­to­ri­ans, eigh­teen mil­lion Africans are esti­mat­ed to have died dur­ing the Atlantic slave trade. In Amer­i­can Holo­caust (1992), David Stan­nard esti­mates that some 30 to 60 mil­lion Africans died being enslaved. Howard Zinn puts the num­ber at 40 mil­lion. To them, the fate of dark-skinned (African) race was sealed with Gen­e­sis 9:25 : And he [Noah] said, Cursed be Canaan ; a ser­vant of ser­vants shall he be unto his brethren.” (See also Joshua 16:10.) The Church did not believe that Africans pos­sessed human souls.See, this author’s An anato­my of racism” and White Man’s Bur­den : the nev­er-end­ing saga.” Not sur­pris­ing­ly, when the British Crown asked the Chris­t­ian cler­gy for sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to jus­ti­fy the slave trade, they read­i­ly found them with­in the Bible.

Dr. George Best, a non-Mus­lim his­to­ri­an, says, Chris­tian­i­ty did not object to slav­ery. Polit­i­cal­ly or eco­nom­i­cal­ly, it did not encour­age the believ­ers to oppose the tra­di­tions of their gen­er­a­tions as regards slav­ery. Chris­tian­i­ty did not even dis­cuss the prob­lem and said noth­ing against the rights of slave own­ers. It did not urge slaves to demand their free­dom and did not basi­cal­ly ask to free the slaves.”

Nor should we for­get that the move­ment to abol­ish slav­ery in Europe and Amer­i­ca is rather a new phe­nom­e­non and dates back only to the 19th cen­tu­ry,The only real excep­tion is Por­tu­gal (1761), how­ev­er, the prac­tice con­tin­ued for decades in its colonies. near­ly 1200 years after Islam for­bade tak­ing any free man as a slave (see Imam Bukhari’s chap­ter : Baab Ithm man ba’a hurr wa akala thamanahu). Even with the pas­sage of the Slav­ery Abo­li­tion Act of 1833 in the British Par­lia­ment, the prac­tice of own­ing slaves con­tin­ued for anoth­er cen­tu­ry in the West. The Grand Larousse of the 19th cen­tu­ry reads : Man does not won­der at the pres­ence of slav­ery and its being com­mon among the Chris­tians till now. The reli­gious rep­re­sen­ta­tives approve it and believe that it is legal. In brief Chris­tian­i­ty approves it com­plete­ly till our time and it is very hard to prove that Chris­tian­i­ty tried to abol­ish slavery.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, mod­ern-day slav­ery still exists today in one form or anoth­er, e.g., sex labors in many parts of the world, cap­tives or pris­on­ers of war held in many parts of the world, forced labor in Bur­ma and Chi­na, and slave camps run by the SPLA and Lord’s Army.

Diver­sion has always been a favorite ploy uti­lized by shrewd strate­gists to divert atten­tion. Impe­ri­al­ists and their agents have suc­cess­ful­ly used it to col­o­nize and mis­lead oth­ers.For a full treat­ment, inter­est­ed read­ers may con­sult Prof. Ali Mazrui’s books, includ­ing The Africans, a PBS Doc­u­men­tary, USA. This tac­tic still has tremen­dous appeal among the mod­ern-day empire dream­ers. So, as it was dur­ing the pre-colo­nial days of Africa, we were bom­bard­ed not too long ago with alle­ga­tions that the north­ern Sudanese were enslav­ing the south­ern ani­mists and Chris­tians. Thanks to the CBS pro­gram which unearthed the hoax of slave eman­ci­pa­tion by the Chris­t­ian Sol­i­dar­i­ty, now we know that there is no truth to these alle­ga­tions. The pro­gram estab­lished that the Chris­t­ian SPLA and Lord’s Army rou­tine­ly prac­tice this crime by enslav­ing free peo­ple (against their own kind in Sudan and Ugan­da) and trad­ing there­after for mon­ey and arms. It is a lucra­tive busi­ness for these sav­ages and their western/​Christian patrons to slic­ing Sudan and estab­lish­ing their zone of influ­ence. For years, these crim­i­nals used every means at their dis­pos­al, includ­ing heinous pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns and arms ship­ment, to encour­age seces­sion move­ment in the south­ern Sudan. [See the link in http://​www​.sudanem​bassy​.org/ for a CBS inter­view with Dan Rather on the hoax of The Sudan Slave Trade.http://​www​.sudanem​bassy​.org/ (and click the link to The Sudan Slave Trade).

C. Treat­ment of Jews :

To prove Islam’s alleged mis­treat­ment of Jews, the Jesuit pro­vides a link to Spencer’s hate lit­er­a­ture. As have been repeat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed by many schol­ars he sim­ply can­not be relied upon to pro­vide the truth on any­thing per­tain­ing to Islam and Mus­lims.See, e.g., Choose : Islam Scary, Lite or Dry ?by David Need for a review on Spencer’s book. He is a mer­chant of hatred – an Islam­o­pho­bic mani­ac. Peri­od ! Scores of Jew­ish schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans can be cit­ed, includ­ing Ben-Sas­sonA His­to­ry of the Jew­ish Peo­ple, edit­ed by Haim Hil­lel Ben-Sas­son. and Abba EbanHer­itage : Civ­i­liza­tion and the Jews by Abba Eban. to prove him unre­li­able, hos­tile and lying.

Let me quote from the schol­ar­ly work, A His­to­ry of the Jew­ish Peo­ple, edit­ed by Haim Hil­lel Ben-Sas­son (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1976), an Israeli historian :

The height of mag­nif­i­cence and lux­u­ry was reached by the wealthy Jews in the lands of Islam, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Moslem Spain. We know that the court bankers of Bagh­dad in the tenth cen­tu­ry kept open house for numer­ous guests and for the poor. Sim­i­lar­ly, the cer­e­monies of the Jew­ish lead­ers in Baby­lo­nia [Iraq] and the patron­age of the lead­ing Jews in Moslem Spain, indi­cate con­di­tions of ease and plenty.

The atti­tude toward these non-Moslems in the Islam­ic ter­ri­to­ries was shaped in prin­ci­ple in accor­dance with the con­cept of dhim­ma, mean­ing pro­tec­tion grant­ed to them by agree­ment or treaty… In return, their lives and prop­er­ty were pro­tect­ed and, in accor­dance with the gen­er­al atti­tude of Islam to infi­dels, they were assured lib­er­ty of faith and wor­ship. They were also per­mit­ted to orga­nize them­selves as they wished, and the Jews ful­ly availed them­selves of that permission.

From the Jew­ish view­point, this con­glom­er­ate of Moslem atti­tudes to infi­dels was eas­i­er to live with than the one that had been estab­lished by Chris­tian­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Byzan­tine Empire. As we have not­ed above, for hun­dreds of years the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Jews lived in the Islam­ic ter­ri­to­ries. Although it is pos­si­ble to per­ceive some Chris­t­ian impact on the Moslem atti­tude towards non-believ­ers and even towards the Chris­tians them­selves, the mod­er­a­tion with which the Moslems applied this influ­ence proved to be of great impor­tance to the major­i­ty of Jew­ry over a long peri­od. Unlike the mass­es of Chris­tians and pagans who joined the Moslems over the first half cen­tu­ry or so, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the Jews under Moslem rule held firm­ly to their own faith.“For a brief review of the book, see : http://​www​.muha​jabah​.com/​j​e​w​s​o​f​i​s​l​a​m​.​htm

As to the set­tle­ment and eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty in the 16th and 17th cen­turies and the estab­lish­ment of the Sephardic Dias­po­ra in the Ottoman Empire, the above book states :

A con­sid­er­able stream of exiles from Spain over­flowed into the Ottoman Empire. Once the lat­ter had annexed Erez Yis­rael, it became a lode­stone for Mar­ra­nos who wished to repent and return to their for­mer faith…. The sul­tan at the time of the expul­sion, Bayezid, wel­comed the refugees flee­ing from the fanat­i­cal Chris­tians. As record­ed by a Jew­ish con­tem­po­rary the Sul­tan sent men ahead, and spread the word through his king­dom in writ­ing as well, declar­ing that none of his offi­cers in any of his cities dare to dri­ve the Jews out or expel them, but all of them were to wel­come the Jews cor­dial­ly.’ It can be assumed that this impe­r­i­al pro­tec­tion and the order grant­i­ng right of domi­cile were issued through the influ­ence of the lead­ers of the long-estab­lished Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in the Ottoman Empire… Suc­cess was not restrict­ed exclu­sive­ly to med­ical and court cir­cles. It seems that in the Ottoman Empire it was felt that the absorp­tion of the exiles from the West pro­vid­ed social, cul­tur­al and even mil­i­tary advan­tages… The exiles grad­u­al­ly dis­persed through­out the main cities of the Empire. Many syn­a­gogues were to be found in Con­stan­tino­ple dur­ing the six­teenth cen­tu­ry. In this city they set­tled in quar­ters where Jews had not for­mer­ly resided. Saloni­ka also became one of their main cen­tres, and sim­i­lar­ly Adri­anople and Smyr­na (Izmir). The exiles also estab­lished them­selves in small­er cities. Expul­sions from south­ern Italy helped to diver­si­fy the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and increase the var­i­ous con­gre­ga­tions in the Empire.“op. cit., pp. 631 – 3

What is clear is that his­tor­i­cal­ly the rela­tion­ship between Jews and Mus­lims liv­ing under Mus­lim Sul­tans was rather ami­ca­ble and, that even in places like Pales­tine, Mus­lim peo­ple did not have any prob­lem with Jews liv­ing there. The rela­tion­ship soured only after the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion (1917) when the British allowed Euro­pean Jews to col­o­nize Pales­tine.See this author’s arti­cle : The Case of Jerusalem — for a detailed treat­ment of the holy city.

As to the mat­ter of jizya imposed on Jews, one sim­ply has to read Euro­pean his­to­ry about what had hap­pened to the Euro­pean Jew­ry who sought pro­tec­tion from the Chris­t­ian roy­al­ty in the medieval times. In return for roy­al pro­tec­tion dur­ing the first two Cru­sades, Ger­man Jews were made serfs of the Impe­r­i­al Cham­ber’ and were required to pay vast sums of pro­tec­tion mon­ey’ for this priv­i­lege. Those Jews even­tu­al­ly became a very real source of roy­al rev­enue. As the king’s prop­er­ty, they could be – and were – bought, loaned and sold, to pay off cred­i­tors. The cus­tom spread to oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries. Church lead­ers jus­ti­fied this sta­tus the­o­log­i­cal­ly on the basis of ear­li­er Church teach­ing that the Jews were doomed to eter­nal servi­tude for hav­ing cru­ci­fied their lord – Jesus Christ.Edward H. Flan­nery, The Anguish of the Jews : Twen­ty-Three Cen­turies of Anti­semitism, Paulist Press, New York/​Mahwah, 1985 ; Michael L. Brown, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood : The Trag­ic Sto­ry of the Church” and the Jew­ish Peo­ple, Des­tiny Image Pub­lish­ers, Ship­pens­burg, 1992.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pro­tec­tion for which the Jews paid such a hefty price in Europe did not always mate­ri­al­ize. For instance, before set­ting out for the 3rd Cru­sade the Cru­saders plun­dered the pos­ses­sions of the Jews, who had fled into the roy­al cas­tle where they were besieged by the war­riors – many of whom were deeply in debt to their quar­ry. In York, Eng­land, the cli­max was reached when a stone, thrown from the cas­tle, killed a Chris­t­ian monk. A bat­tle cry was raised urg­ing the peo­ple to destroy the ene­mies of Christ.” When the Jews saw the fury of the besiegers and felt their fate to be sealed, they took their own lives, cut­ting one another’s throats. When the mobs gained access to the tow­er, the few Jews left, who begged for bap­tism and deliv­er­ance, were slaugh­tered. The total casu­al­ties have been esti­mat­ed var­i­ous­ly from 500 to 1500. From this scene of car­nage, the attack­ers con­verged on the cathe­dral and burned all the records of finan­cial oblig­a­tions to the Jews kept in its archives.Flan­nery, op. cit.

Writ­ing in 1135, the French schol­ar Pierre Abelard has a Euro­pean Jew in Dia­logue between a Philoso­pher, a Jew, and a Chris­t­ian” spoke these words :

No nation has ever suf­fered so much for God. Dis­persed among all nations, with­out king or sec­u­lar ruler, the Jews are oppressed with heavy tax­es as if they had to repur­chase their very lives every day. To mis­treat the Jews is con­sid­ered a deed pleas­ing to God. Such impris­on­ment as is endured by the Jews can be con­ceived by the Chris­tians only as a sign of God’s utter wrath. The life of the Jews is in the hands of their worst ene­mies. Even in their sleep they are plagued by night­mares. Heav­en is their only place of refuge. If they want to trav­el to the near­est town, they have to buy pro­tec­tion with the high sums of mon­ey from the Chris­t­ian rulers who actu­al­ly wish for their death so that they can con­fis­cate their pos­ses­sions. The Jews can­not own land or vine­yards because there is nobody to vouch for their safe­keep­ing. Thus, all that is left them as a means of liveli­hood is the busi­ness of mon­ey-lend­ing, and this in turn brings the hatred of Chris­tians upon them“ibid.

Bot­tom line : the sta­tus of a dhim­mi in a Mus­lim-run state was much bet­ter com­pared to that of a Jew liv­ing in Chris­t­ian-run Europe.

There is no deny­ing that the Jew­ish tribe of Bani Quraiza was pun­ished by the Prophet of Islam. But can Muham­mad (S) be blamed for their trea­son ? They were pun­ished not for reject­ing Muham­mad (S) as the last Prophet (nabi) of Allah, but for their con­fessed crime against the nascent Islam­ic state, and judged by their own laws, by their appoint­ed judge. My ques­tion is : was Musa [Moses] (AS) more mer­ci­ful to the Jews when he and his faith­ful dis­ci­ples killed 3000 mis­guid­ed Chil­dren of Israel (Exo­dus 32:28)? [See Md. Saidul Islam’s Were the Jews mal­treat­ed by Prophet Muham­mad, or vice-ver­sa?” for a good analysis.]

A clos­er scruti­ny will show that the vers­es in the Qur’an that cas­ti­gat­ed Jews of Mad­i­nah for their nefar­i­ous activ­i­ties were com­par­a­tive­ly milder than those found in the Bible (see, e.g., the Books of Isa­iah, Mic­ah, Hosea and Ezekiel, and espe­cial­ly those of Jesus in the so-called NT).See this author’s arti­cle, Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi : Why a dif­fer­ent yard­stick for Mus­lims ? for detailed analysis.

D. Israel and cost of progress :

As any evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian-Zion­ist would be expect­ed these days, the Jesuit mis­sion­ary is very gay to report about the progress” of the col­o­niz­ing enter­prise – Israel. He does not tell us that the land was stolen in a land­mark Chris­t­ian-Zion­ist con­spir­a­cy from its native peo­ple and giv­en to out­siders from Europe (most­ly Kharazites) who had no claim. He also does not tell us that the so-called progress of Israel has been cost­ing Amer­i­ca bil­lions of dol­lars. The latter’s naked sup­port of the rogue state has giv­en us the cliché : the tail that wags the dog ! [Inter­est­ed read­ers may like to read John Mearsheimer and Stephan Walt’s recent­ly pub­lished work The Israel Lob­by and US For­eign Pol­i­cy,” Lon­don Review of Books, March 2006, to under­stand Israel’s harm­ful effect.]

E. Sta­tus and Worship :

Com­ment­ing on the Qur’anic verse 98:4 – 6, the Jesuit says, This implies that the Bible is infe­ri­or. Verse five says that Jews and Chris­tians must do salat (prayer five times a day) and give zakat (required char­i­ty).” Such com­ments once again show that he needs to study the Bible before get­ting jumpy with the Qur’an. Don’t Jews and Chris­tians pray and pay alms ?See the book : To pray as a Jew : a guide to the prayer book and the syn­a­gogue ser­vice” by Hay­im Halevy Donin, New York : Basic Books, c1980. Didn’t Jesus pray also (Mark 1:35, 14:35 – 39 ; Matt. 26:39 – 44)? So why com­plain ? Inter­est­ing­ly, he is very upset about the Qur’an hav­ing put the idol­aters in the same sen­tence as the peo­ple of the Book, as can be seen in the last phrase of the next state­ment where he says, Verse six cat­e­go­rizes unbe­liev­ers among the Peo­ple of the Scrip­ture (= the Bible) with idol­aters, the most impure of all humans.” It is no coin­ci­dence that the Bib­li­cal prophets killed the idol­aters en masse where­as, after the con­quest of Makkah, the Prophet of Islam announced a gen­er­al amnesty against the idol­aters. (See, e.g., Exo­dus 22:20Any­one who sac­ri­ficed to any god oth­er than the Lord must be destroyed.”)

F. Law of Retaliation :

The Jesuit makes a fool of him­self when he alleges, Sid­diqui omits Sura 5:45, which impos­es retal­i­a­tion, lit­er­al eye for an eye. Would rad­i­cal Mus­lims want to impose this around the world?” The Qur’anic verse in ques­tion talks about the retal­ia­to­ry laws of the Books of the Chil­dren of Israel, e.g., Exo­dus (21:23 – 5), Leviti­cus (24:20) and Deut. 19:21. If the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary had an open mind, and not the kind of obsessed mind he had demon­strat­ed, he could have noticed the clear pref­er­ence enun­ci­at­ed in the Qur’an in the very next sen­tence with­in the same verse 5:45, which states, But if any one remits the retal­i­a­tion by way of char­i­ty, it is an act of atone­ment for him­self.” As has been not­ed by Karen Arm­strong every harsh verse in the Qur’an is fol­lowed by those that seek com­pas­sion and not retal­i­a­tion. The Qur’anic mes­sage is of mod­er­a­tion, and not extremes. Mus­lims are, thus, called upon to be a mid­dle” nation (ummatan wasa­tan).

G. Moral­i­ty :

Let me now touch upon the mat­ter of the Judeo-Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty in the Bible of which the Jesuit is con­vinced that Islam can­not con­tribute any­thing. Let us look at this haughty asser­tion from the Bible itself.

  • A prophet is report­ed to have com­mit­ted sex with his own daughters.
  • A prophet is reck­oned to have com­mit­ted adul­tery with anoth­er man’s wife.
  • A prophet indulges in calf-worship.
  • A prophet’s son impreg­nates his own son’s wife and becomes the father of twin sons who are to become father of great prophets to come lat­er (e.g., David, Solomon and Jesus). Yet this son is blessed by the prophet. Anoth­er son com­mits for­ni­ca­tions with the prophet’s consort. 
  • A prophet aban­dons his faith in one True God and take to idol­a­try and builds idol temples.
  • One of the prophets wrong­ly attrib­ut­es his own false state­ments to God.

Need I con­tin­ue any fur­ther to show how hol­low such asser­tions about supe­ri­or­i­ty of Judeo-Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty sound ?The inter­est­ed read­er may like the read Mowlana Rah­mat­ul­lah Kairanvi’s Izhar-ul-Haq” for a detailed analy­sis of the Bible.

Jesuit Chris­tians give the impres­sion that celiba­cy is pre­ferred over mar­riage for the cler­gy. Yet a read­ing of the so-called New Tes­ta­ment gives the impres­sion that the dis­ci­ples of Jesus may not have abstained from sex (1 Tim­o­thy 3:2, Titus 1:6, 1 Cor. 9:5). There are now claims that Jesus him­self may not have been celi­bate either.

As hint­ed ear­li­er, accord­ing to ear­ly Chris­t­ian fathers, truth is called fal­si­fi­ca­tion and vice-ver­sa. In a Gnos­tic Gospel, an ear­ly Chris­t­ian Theodore asks Clement of Alexan­dria (150215 CE) — an ear­ly Church father – the verac­i­ty of the record­ed mes­sage that Jesus was a homo­sex­u­al (na oozu bil­lah). In reply, Clements writes, To them, there­fore, as I said above, one must nev­er give way ; nor, when they put for­ward their fal­si­fi­ca­tions, should one con­cede that the secret Gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath.“For details, see : The Gnos­tic Soci­ety Library, Gnos­tic Scrip­tures and Frag­ments, The Secret Gospel of Mark ; see also Acts of John, from The Apoc­ryphal New Tes­ta­ment,” M.R. James — trans­la­tion and notes, Oxford : Claren­don Press, 1924

There are Chris­t­ian church­es in the USA that ordain gay and les­bian priests and draw their legit­i­ma­cy from such claims. One sim­ply won­ders if sodomy and oth­er forms of sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren by Chris­t­ian priests draw their moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion from such records of Jesus’s life (na oozu bil­lah)! Evi­dence sug­gests that many instances of child abuse by cler­gy were not one-time, iso­lat­ed inci­dents. Shield­ed by a church cul­ture of secre­cy, some priests preyed upon numer­ous vic­tims dur­ing mul­ti­ple parish assign­ments. Church records have revealed sto­ries of many oth­er repeat abusers, includ­ing priests who trad­ed drugs for sex with minors, fathered chil­dren, and phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed their vic­tims. In the case of almost every preda­tor priest, church offi­cials had reports of abu­sive behav­ior, but allowed the priests to remain in min­istry. In many cas­es, accused priests were sent for brief peri­ods of psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and then returned to parish­es — where they abused again.http://​www​.philly​.com/​m​l​d​/​i​n​q​u​i​r​e​r​/​n​e​w​s​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​/​12707654​.​htm ; http://​www​.bish​op​-account​abil​i​ty​.org/; http://​www​.telegram​.com/​s​t​a​t​i​c​/​c​r​i​s​i​s​i​n​t​h​e​c​h​u​r​c​h​/​092205​.​h​tml ; http://​www​.ffrf​.org/​t​i​m​e​l​y​/​p​e​d​o​1992​.​php ; http://​www​.boston​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​/​s​p​o​t​l​i​g​h​t​/​a​b​u​s​e​/​e​x​t​r​a​s​/​c​o​v​e​r​u​p​s​_​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​.​htm ; http://​www​.boston​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​/​s​p​o​t​l​i​g​h​t​/​a​b​u​s​e​/​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​5​/​040704​_​v​e​r​m​o​n​t​.​htm ; http://​www​.boston​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​/​s​p​o​t​l​i​g​h​t​/​a​b​u​s​e​/​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​5​/​022804​_​v​i​c​t​i​m​s​.​htm ; http://​www​.boston​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​/​s​p​o​t​l​i​g​h​t​/​a​b​u​s​e​/​s​c​a​n​d​al/; http://​www​.ffrf​.org/​t​i​m​e​l​y​/​1990​s​t​u​d​y​.​php ; http://​www​.find​ar​ti​cles​.com/​p​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​m​i​_​m​0​M​K​Y​/​i​s​_​16​_​29​/​a​i​_​n​15779345 ; http://​tran​scripts​.cnn​.com/​T​R​A​N​S​C​R​I​P​T​S​/​0412​/​09​/​a​s​b​.​01​.​h​tml.

Accord­ing to Catholic moral the­ol­o­gyhttp://​www​.newad​vent​.org/​c​a​t​h​e​n​/​14611​a​.​htm (for ordained priests), priests can have sex three times a year (for details con­sult : St. Alphon­sus Liguori’s work.http://​www​.cross​road​sini​tia​tive​.com/​l​i​b​r​a​r​y​_​a​u​t​h​o​r​/​129​/​S​t​.​_​A​l​p​h​o​n​s​u​s​_​L​i​g​u​o​r​i​.​h​tml). In a 1983 doc­tor­al the­sis by Richard Black­mon, 12% of the 300 Protes­tant cler­gy sur­veyed admit­ted to sex­u­al inter­course with a parish­ioner and 38% admit­ted to oth­er sex­u­al­ized con­tact with a parish­ioner.Richard A. Black­mon, unpub­lished Ph. D. dis­ser­ta­tion (1984). The Haz­ards of Min­istry. Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary : Pasade­na, CA. Note : The author not­ed that 16 min­is­ters did not answer the ques­tion con­cern­ing sex­u­al inter­course with parish­ioners, indi­cat­ing that the per­cent­age is prob­a­bly high­er. In sep­a­rate denom­i­na­tion­al sur­veys, 48% of Unit­ed Church of Christ female min­is­ters and 77% of Unit­ed Methodist female min­is­ters report­ed hav­ing been sex­u­al­ly harassed in church.Cen­ter for the Pre­ven­tion of Sex­u­al and Domes­tic Vio­lence (1992). Cler­gy Sex­u­al Mis­con­duct : Sex­u­al Abuse in the Min­is­te­r­i­al Rela­tion­ship. Seat­tle, WA 17 per­cent of lay­women said that their own pas­tor had sex­u­al­ly harassed them. Ten per­cent of Protes­tant pas­tors had been sex­u­al­ly active with an adult parishioner.

Accord­ing to the dic­tates of the NT, the Church does not allow divorce (Matt. 5:32). This rul­ing has con­tributed to illic­it sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. Sur­veys by Bal­ti­more psy­chol­o­gist and mar­i­tal researcher Shirley Glass showed that 25% of wives and 44% of hus­bands in the USA at one time or anoth­er have had sex­u­al rela­tion­ship out­side of mar­riage (USA Today, Jan. 9, 2003).http://​www​.dearpeg​gy​.com/​a​n​n​o​u​n​c​e​20​.​h​tml ; Con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates in the West sug­gest that 60 per­cent of men and 40 per­cent of women will have an extra­mar­i­tal affair (http://​www​.dearpeg​gy​.com/​a​f​f​a​i​r​s​.​h​t​m​l#3). It does not take a psy­chol­o­gist to under­stand the effect of unhap­py mar­riage on crimes that is glued by Church edicts ! [The lead­ing cause of death of preg­nant women in the USA is mur­der (CNN, Dec. 142004).]

One-third of all U.S. chil­dren are born out of wed­lock. One-half of all U.S. chil­dren will live in a one-par­ent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004). A recent sur­vey in UK showed that the pro­por­tion of chil­dren born out­side mar­riage has leapt from 12% in 1980 to 42% in 2004, accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics. In con­trast, 15 oth­er EU coun­tries had an esti­mat­ed aver­age of 33%, the annu­al ONS’ Social Trends report said. http://​news​.bbc​.co​.uk/​2​/​h​i​/​u​k​_​n​e​w​s​/​4733330​.​stm In the USA, 70% of all black chil­dren are born out of wed­lock. Six­ty-five per­cent of nev­er-mar­ried black women have chil­dren, dou­ble that for white women.http://​www​.saveus​.org/​d​o​c​s​/​f​a​c​t​s​h​e​e​t​s​/​p​o​r​t​r​a​i​t​_​b​l​a​c​k​_​f​a​m​i​l​y​7​-12 – 05.pdf ; http://​www​.city​pages​.com/​d​a​t​a​b​a​n​k​/​26​/​1264​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​12985​.​asp.

As to vio­lence, rape, mur­der, the less said the bet­ter. The crime sta­tis­tics in any major city in the USA is sure to dwarf crime rates in many east­ern coun­tries.http://​www​.dis​as​ter​center​.com/​c​r​i​me/; http://​www​.sing​stat​.gov​.sg/​s​s​n​/​f​e​a​t​/​4​Q​94​/​f​e​a​t​.​h​tml ; http://​www​.crimes​ta​tis​tics​.org​.uk/​t​o​ol/; http://​www​.police999​.com/​s​t​a​t​s​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​tml

One sim­ply won­ders how much of all these immoral and crim­i­nal activ­i­ties in the Chris­t­ian soci­ety draw their inspi­ra­tion from the Chris­t­ian teach­ing of vic­ar­i­ous atone­ment, so terse­ly artic­u­lat­ed by our Jesuit pro­pa­gan­dist : I do not believe that my good works get me into heav­en. Only Christ’s good work on the cross does this – a bod­i­ly and lit­er­al cru­ci­fix­ion that the Qur’an denies in Sura 4:157!”

Suc­cinct­ly speak­ing, Chris­tian­i­ty has no moral high ground and has failed abysmal­ly.See, e.g., the book : Eunuchs for the King­dom of Heav­en : Women, Sex­u­al­i­ty and the Catholic Church by Uta Ranke-Heine­mann, Pen­guin, 1990

Con­clu­sions

In clos­ing, let me say that unlike Chris­tian­i­ty, which is respon­si­ble for breed­ing a soci­ety devoid of any moral oblig­a­tion through its notion of orig­i­nal sin and the accom­pa­ny­ing the­ol­o­gy of vic­ar­i­ous atone­ment, Islam preach­es indi­vid­ual account­abil­i­ty for one­self. Its prac­ti­cal­i­ty, notions of peace, jus­tice and plu­ral­ism put it on a seri­ous lev­el to have a gen­uine dia­logue of civ­i­liza­tions.See this author’s 1994 arti­cle : Islam and the West : The Need For a Bilat­er­al Talk Big­otry and racism should not stand in the way of the West to open that dia­logue. They need it more than they are will­ing to admit it.

Islam, more than any oth­er reli­gion, embod­ies the con­cept of coex­is­tence.See this author’s Islam and Coex­is­tence” for sup­port­ing evi­dences. Deny­ing it will only reflect on one’s inher­ent xeno­pho­bia and big­otry. Let the Chris­t­ian xeno­phobe reflect on Muhammad’s (S) statement :

This is a mes­sage from Muham­mad ibn Abdul­lah, as a covenant to those who adopt Chris­tian­i­ty, near and far, we are with them. Ver­i­ly I, the ser­vants, the helpers, and my fol­low­ers defend them, because Chris­tians are my cit­i­zens ; and by Allah ! I hold out against any­thing that dis­pleas­es them.

No com­pul­sion is to be on them. Nei­ther are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.

No one is to destroy a house of their reli­gion, to dam­age it, or to car­ry any­thing from it to the Mus­lims’ hous­es. Should any­one take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and dis­obey His Prophet. Ver­i­ly, they are my allies and have my secure char­ter against all that they hate.

No one is to force them to trav­el or to oblige them to fight. The Mus­lims are to fight for them. If a female Chris­t­ian is mar­ried to a Mus­lim, it is not to take place with­out her approval. She is not to be pre­vent­ed from vis­it­ing her church to pray.

Their church­es are to be respect­ed. They are nei­ther to be pre­vent­ed from repair­ing them nor the sacred­ness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Mus­lims) is to dis­obey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”

Such were the mem­o­rable words of Muham­mad (S), the Prophet of Islam, in the year 628 CE, when he grant­ed this his­toric doc­u­ment, also known as the Char­ter of Priv­i­leges, to the monks of St. Cather­ine Monastery in Mt. Sinai.Mus­lim His­to­ry : 570 — 1950 C.E.’ by Dr. A. Zahoor and Dr. Z. Haq, ZMD Cor­po­ra­tion. P.O. Box 8231 — Gaithers­burg, MD 20898 – 8231.

Is there any­thing remote­ly sim­i­lar to this doc­u­ment that an Islam­o­phobe can pro­duce from his/​her founder(s) of the faith ? Not a chance !

Peace, Salam, Shalom, Shanti.Endmark

The author, Dr. Habib Sid­diqui may be con­tact­ed direct­ly at saeva@​aol.​com
Cite this arti­cle as : Habib Sid­diqui, What I Did Not Say And The Mis­sion­ary Myopia,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, May 22, 2006, last accessed March 28, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​o​p​-​e​d​/​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​a​r​y​-​m​y​o​p​ia/

Comments

3 responses to “What I Did Not Say And The Mis­sion­ary Myopia”

  1. Ashley Avatar
    Ashley

    I think we are just world’s apart … as I browsed through this arti­cle, this line caught my eye — Accord­ing to Catholic moral theology39 (for ordained priests), priests can have sex three times a year (for details con­sult : St. Alphon­sus Liguori’s work”

    Priests aren’t allowed to have sex … they’re not allowed to mar­ry. Those who do, com­mit a sin. it cer­tain­ly isn’t a prac­tice for them to have sex three times a year ! The best part is he attach­es a link … and the link does­n’t sup­port his con­tention at all … in fact, there’s no men­tion of this prac­tice at all. How do I take any of what this writer has said seri­ous­ly if he makes such a claim and then sup­ports’ it with such a link (did he not think that peo­ple would check?)

  2. shery Avatar
    shery

    Well, I typed in Chris­t­ian Vio­lence” and got var­i­ous sto­ries, including :

    Reports of the trou­bles” in North­ern Ire­land, where Protes­tants and Catholics repeat­ed­ly kill each oth­er, and the IRA have caused death and destruc­tion through­out the UK. If you go back a few more years, you’ll find count­less mar­tyrs in both faiths because of vio­lence per­pe­trat­ed by both sides.

    Var­i­ous reports of Chris­tians bomb­ing abor­tion cen­tres, caus­ing death and destruction.

    The mur­der of Matthew Shep­pard, fuelled by Chris­t­ian hatred for gays.

    The shoot­ings in the very Chris­t­ian” town of Jonesboro.

    The suicide/​death of more than 900 mem­bers of the Chris­t­ian sect Peo­ple’s Tem­ple” in Jon­estown, Guyana in 1978 (after sign­ing over all their assets to the church). Includ­ed in that num­ber are 300 infants who were poisoned.

    Anoth­er church in Flori­da was respon­si­ble for the deaths of 14 peo­ple who had dared to leave the creepy sect.

    The leader of the Chris­t­ian coali­tion molest­ed his three daugh­ters last year.

    In 1974, Chris­t­ian protests over cer­tain books on the school syl­labus led to Molo­tov cock­tails and dyna­mite being used against school bus­es, amongst oth­er things.

    And I haven’t includ­ed the need­less deaths caused by the Amer­i­can army across the world — it depends if you call them Chris­t­ian. The bomb­ing of a parac­eta­mol fac­to­ry in Iraq ? The destruc­tion of roads and hos­pi­tals in Bosnia ? The shoot­ing of inno­cent civil­ians in Baghdad ?

    I could go on for hours — this took me a few minutes.

    I’m sure you could argue that all my exam­ples are not valid for some rea­son or oth­er, but of course, then you must realise that Mus­lims can do the same for your examples.

    Chris­tian­i­ty does not have a his­to­ry of peace and love — from the Cru­sades onwards, Chris­tian­i­ty has a bloody, vio­lent tra­di­tion that it can­not be proud of.

    There’s a bible verse about planks and splin­ters that I’m think­ing of right now. Go look it up.

  3. richcy Avatar
    richcy

    dis­cus­sion on a dis­cus­sion board about the verse in the bible that says jesus did not come to bring peace but division.

    Quite sim­ply, if we are allowed to inter­pret the bible as say­ing some­thing exact­ly the oppo­site of what it plain­ly says, then we can pre­tend the bible says any­thing and every­thing, what­ev­er we want. Using the same method I can say, with equal mer­it, that the Bible pre­dicts Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, advo­cates pedophil­ia, demands the reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of Orange Crush, com­mands that lit­tle girls be crushed to death who play with dolls, and pro­vides the world’s great­est recipe for pep­per­oni pizza.

    But all the while, I would be com­pelled to heed my own words, in the very essay to which you respond :

    It does no good to try in des­per­a­tion to make excus­es for it. A good and wise man’s mes­sage would not need excuses.”

    Or, as I also say there, It is plagued with a gen­er­al obscu­ri­ty and ambi­gu­i­ty” that con­demns it as infe­ri­or, even dan­ger­ous – pre­cise­ly because it can be inter­pret­ed to mean any­thing. The Nazis found in the Bible sup­port for the exter­mi­na­tion of the Jews. South­ern slave own­ers found sup­port for the bru­tal­iz­ing enslave­ment of blacks. The Inqui­si­tion found sup­port for the burn­ing of witch­es. And god-fear­ing Chris­tians even today find in it sup­port for the assas­si­na­tion of doc­tors, and state-spon­sored reli­gious coercion.

    That’s the gen­er­al point. Now the spe­cif­ic point. What I mean by quot­ing the sword verse is not some­thing you need guess at – the very next words in my essay make clear what I meant : the prin­ci­ple of set­ting even fam­i­lies against each oth­er.” And that is, after all, explic­it­ly in the Bible. Accord­ing­ly, I took sword” as a metaphor for strife and divi­sion, not nec­es­sar­i­ly march­ing orders for war. I will quote the pas­sage at length, the very words of Jesus himself :

    Who­ev­er acknowl­edges me before men, I will also acknowl­edge him before my Father in heav­en. But who­ev­er dis­owns me before men, I will dis­own him before my Father in heav­en. Do not sup­pose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daugh­ter against her moth­er, a daugh­ter-in-law against her moth­er-in-law – a man’s ene­mies will be the mem­bers of his own house­hold. Any­one who loves his father or moth­er more than me is not wor­thy of me ; any­one who loves his son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me”

    The con­text is unmis­tak­able : Jesus (or, rather, the fic­tion­al char­ac­ter the author wants us to believe is Jesus) intends his teach­ings to cre­ate strife and divi­sion, to tear up fam­i­lies, and destroy the foun­da­tion of love upon which soci­ety sus­tains itself, and in its place secure the uni­ver­sal rejec­tion of human soci­ety in favor of sin­gle-mind­ed pledge of love and alle­giance to jeZ­sus khrist (which trans­lates in prac­ti­cal terms to love and alle­giance for the church whose pro­pa­gan­da this Gospel rep­re­sents). All for the sin­gle pur­pose of self­ish­ly secur­ing sal­va­tion for the indi­vid­ual after death.

    The words are plain : I did not come to bring peace.” That means what it says : he is not preach­ing peace. That does not mean he is call­ing for war in a mil­i­tary sense, so much as cul­tur­al and social war, which can be just as vio­lent, but even when eschew­ing vio­lence can be just as destruc­tive. Hence in the par­al­lel pas­sage in Luke (12:49 – 53) he says : I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kin­dled ! …” Thus, the pas­sage per­tains to some­thing he wish­es to hap­pen, not any­thing that sad­dens him or that he wants to stop. So he continues,

    Do you think I came to bring peace on earth ? No, I tell you, but divi­sion. From now on there will be five in one fam­i­ly divid­ed against each oth­er, three against two and two against three. They will be divid­ed, father against son and son against father, moth­er against daugh­ter and daugh­ter against moth­er, moth­er-in-law against daugh­ter-in-law and daugh­ter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

    What­ev­er you want this to mean is irrel­e­vant : what the text plain­ly says is immoral and rep­re­hen­si­ble, and cer­tain­ly not admirable. If that is not what God meant, then he should have said what he meant and not some­thing exact­ly the oppo­site. Any half-wise human would, so God can have no excuse. The Jesus char­ac­ter por­trayed here is demand­ing that we place him above all oth­er humans, and engage in destruc­tive com­bat­ive­ness with every­one, even our own kin, over ques­tions of reli­gious alle​giance​.It does not mat­ter if this has been spu­ri­ous­ly inter­po­lat­ed amidst some sup­pos­ed­ly gen­uine col­lec­tion of say­ings. It is impos­si­ble now to dis­tin­guish inter­po­la­tions from gen­uine say­ings. If there was a true Jesus, we can­not real­ly know what he said about any­thing. Even what the Gospel authors por­tray him as say­ing is full of con­tra­dic­tions, as it rep­re­sents many lay­ers of redac­tion and tra­di­tion cob­bled togeth­er over time, or appro­pri­at­ed and toyed with by this or that author.

    And it does not mat­ter if it meant some­thing else, because any text worth our admi­ra­tion would say what it meant, not some­thing else instead.

    Basi­cal­ly, the more Chris­tians try to make excus­es for their book, the more they claim it must mean the exact oppo­site of what it says, the more they con­demn it as unwor­thy of our attention.

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