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Subject Line:
AR 20:11 - How much of a threat is militant Islam?
Apologia Report 20:11 (1,240)
March 18, 2015
In this issue:
ISLAM - atheist's guide explains "why Islam is more violent than
Christianity"
+ how "specious moral equivalence descends into the absurd" with some attempts to correctly understand jihadi implications
SYNCRETISM - dealing with eastern mysticism, Scientology, satanism,
and animism, to name just a few
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ISLAM
"Why Islam Is More Violent Than Christianity: An Atheist's Guide" by Robert Tracinski -- begins: "The Charlie Hebdo massacre once again has politicians and the media dancing around the question of whether there might be something a little bit special about this one particular religion, Islam, that causes its adherents to go around killing people.
"It is not considered acceptable in polite company to entertain this possibility. Instead, it is necessary to insist, as a New York Times article does, that 'Islam is no more inherently violent than other religions.' ...
"[I]n today's context, it's absurd to equate Islam and Christianity. Pointing to the Spanish Inquisition tends to undermine the point rather than confirm it: if you have to look back three hundred years to find atrocities, it's because there are so few of them today. The mass crimes committed under the name of Islam, by contrast, are fresh and openly boasted about.
"As an atheist, I have no god in this fight, so to speak. I don't think the differences between religions make one more valid than another. But as the Charlie Hedbo attack reminds us, there is a big practical difference between them. In fact, the best argument against the equivalence of Christianity and Islam is that no one acts even remotely as if this were true. We feel free to criticize and offend Christians without a second thought - thanks, guys, for being so cool about that - but antagonizing Muslims takes courage. More courage than a lot of secular types in the West can usually muster."
Tracinski goes on to compare the life of Christ and the life of Mohammed as well as the early history of Christianity in contrast to that of Islam. His conclusions include: "By contrast, Muslims widely accept a particularly literal version of what the Christian would call 'salvation through works.' In its crudest version, this is the 'die in jihad and get 72 virgins in paradise' outlook. Getting into heaven is less about reordering your soul or trying to introspect some greater meaning in your life - and more about punching a checklist of external actions, of being obedient to a long list of strictly enforced requirements and taboos. ...
"The final big difference between Islam and Christianity isn't something that's wrong with Islam, but rather something that happened uniquely in the West that influenced Christianity: the history of religion in America. ...
"While Enlightenment ideas had a wide influence in America, demands for religious freedom did not come primarily from anti-clerical types who wanted to abolish religion. Instead, religious freedom was literally preached from the pulpit, which is why it so naturally made it into our founding documents." The Federalist, Jan 27 '15. <www.goo.gl/hNRC66>
"Western Sleepwalkers and the Paris Massacre" by Raymond Ibrahim (Jan 12 '15) -- a response to Bruce Thornton's piece by the same name in FrontPage Magazine <www.goo.gl/TzpK0c> and begins with a concise overview: "In the absence of clear thinking and recognition of fact, responses to this latest example of Muslim violence reflect ideological fever dreams. 'Nothing to do with the Muslim religion,' as French president François Holland said of the attacks, is a perennial favorite. Such apologists invoke shopworn Marxist bromides like colonialism, or postmodern magical thinking like 'Orientalism,' the two-bit Foucauldian invention of Egyptian-American literary critic and fabulist Edward Said. This was the tack taken by an American historian of Egypt who told a New York Times reporter that Islam was 'just a veneer' for [jihadist] anger at the dysfunctional Arab states left behind by colonial powers and the 'Orientalist' condescension many Arabs still feel from the West. ...
"For many apologists ... it's just easier to call the jihadists 'crazy.'" Ibrahim uses the example of "Vox's Ezra Klein, long-time purveyor of progressive orthodoxy, opining on the Paris murders." For Ibrahim, "This repeats Jimmy Carter's mistake about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he called a 'crazy man.' But jihadists arenot insane, and their violence cannot be dismissed so simply. ... Their faith preaches that Allah wills the whole world to be united under the rule of Islam and its illiberal, totalitarian law code. ...
"Another tack is to invoke the tu quoque fallacy, charging that Hebraism and Christianity are just as violent as Islam.
"This argument took off after 9/11 and has persisted among the jihad deniers. Historian of religion Philip Jenkins claimed, 'The Islamic scriptures [about war] in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.' Rabid anti-Zionist and apologist for terrorists Richard Falk played the moral equivalence card: 'The Great Terror War has so far been conducted as a collision of absolutes, a meeting ground of opposed fundamentalists.' Atheist gadfly Richard Dawkins complained about 'fundamentalist' Christians who 'fuel their tanks at the same holy gas station' as Muslim terrorists. Similarly, a few years ago, Salon ran a headline asking, 'What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick.' This specious moral equivalence descended into the absurd....
"But even right-thinking people slip into this species of apologetics. A writer at Pajamas Media, in an otherwise perceptive analysis, wrote this as well: 'Unfortunately, this civilizational friction between the west and Islam has ebbed and flowed across the centuries. It is nothing new. Islam threatened the gates of Vienna and the Crusades reached the Holy Land.' This smacks of the 'cycle of violence' trope usually used against Israel. What it ignores is the fact that someone started the violence by serially invading and conquering the lands of others, and enslaving and oppressing their people. ... [T]he Crusades were an attempt to liberate from oppressive occupiers a land that had been Christian for centuries before being invaded by the armies of Islam.
"Most important ... is the simple fact that the violence in the Old Testament is, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, descriptive, not prescriptive. It reflects the brutal reality of its times, not a theology binding the faithful for all times. As for the New Testament, the only violent verses apologists can dredge up, as a New York Times article did last week, come from the apocalyptic predictions of Revelations, or these words of Christ from Matthew: 'I come not to bring peace, but a sword.' Grade-school catechumens know that this is a metaphor, not a call to jihad, like the Koranic verses instructing Muslims to 'slay the idolaters wherever you find them,' or to 'fight those who do not believe in Allah,' or to 'kill them wherever you find them.'"
The "silence of the Muslim masses about jihadist terror has been the case for over a decade.... [W]e have not seen the kind of public, unequivocal, unqualified, mass condemnations of the jihadists one would expect if the latter were a fringe whose beliefs are so alien to traditional Islam.
"What we have seen are thousands of Muslims celebrating in the streets after 9/11. We have seen riots and murders in response to Westerners exercising the right to free speech. We have seen rallies against Israel in which nakedly genocidal rhetoric is indulged....
"Our ancestors for centuries acknowledged the true nature of Islam, a simple fact proven by 1000 years of Muslim aggression. Alexis de Tocqueville, one of our most brilliant political philosophers, wrote in 1838, 'Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. ... The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels ... [T]hese doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran ... The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.'
"Meanwhile, the bodies of jihadism's victims continue to pile up, and Iran's genocidal theocracy closes in on a nuclear weapon. And
many in the West continue to sleepwalk through it all." <www.goo.gl/FGvkGn>
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SYNCRETISM
Slippery Paths in the Darkness: Papers on Syncretism: 1965-1988, by Alan R. Tippett [1] -- the publisher promo reads: "A primary concern amongst missiologists is presenting the gospel in a way that is culturally relevant without adulterating the essential truths of the message. The ability to appropriately contextualize this message is the difference between establishing an indigenous Christianity as opposed to introducing syncretism. In this compendium of presentations and papers, the issue is addressed with regard to the idea of covenant relationship with the Lord. Drawing from interdisciplinary research across continents, Tippett examines the syncretistic religious behaviors eminent at the time of his writing that threatened to fracture this covenant relationship - from eastern personality cults in India to Scientology in Australia, from satanism in the United States to animism in Mexico. While his research only spans a set number of years, Tippett provides timeless insights for a global church burdened with the Great Commission call in an increasingly pluralistic world." <www.goo.gl/hYF3UV>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Slippery Paths in the Darkness: Papers on Syncretism: 1965-1988, by Alan R. Tippett (Wm Carey, 2014, paperback, 234 pages) <www.goo.gl/G7LKTe>
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