CharlesRabb

from Tom...posted by C.Rabb

January 27, 2014 4:49 PM
Has AmChurch Succumbed to the Charms of Islam?

New Oxford Review
January-February 2014
By William Kilpatrick

William Kilpatrick taught for many years at Boston College. He is the author of several books about cultural and religious issues, including Psychological Seduction, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong, and, most recently, Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West. Prof. Kilpatrick’s articles on cultural and educational topics have appeared in First Things, Policy Review, American Enterprise, American Educator, Los Angeles Times, and various scholarly journals. His articles on Islam have appeared in Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Aleteia, Saint Austin Review, Investor’s Business Daily, FrontPage Magazine, and other publications.

“[We are] but helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.”
–from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan paid a visit last summer to the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Tompkinsville on Staten Island, where he met with a large group of Muslim leaders. As is often the case when Catholic prelates meet with Muslims, his theme was the common ground shared by the two faiths. Cardinal Dolan told his Islamic audience, “You love God, we love God, and he is the same God,” and he thanked them “for making me feel like a friend and a member of a family.” He went on to tell them how much they share in common with Catholics: “Your love of marriage and family, your love of children and babies, your love of freedom — religious freedom particularly — your defense of life, your desire for harmony and unity and your care for others, your care for God’s creation and your care for those who are in need.”

Perhaps this is true of the Muslims of Tompkinsville, but unfortunately the cardinal’s words will be taken as an endorsement of Islam in general. I say “unfortunately” because what he says about the common values and beliefs of Muslims and Catholics is highly misleading.

Two Fundamentally Distinct Faiths
Take the assertion that Muslims and Catholics love the same God. Of course, Cardinal Dolan’s statement can be justified in the broad sense: There is, after all, only one God. Whether prayer and worship are being offered to our Father in Heaven or to Allah or to the Great Spirit, there is only one God who is paying attention. But in that sense, anyone who offers up prayers is praying to the same God to whom Catholics pray.

Once we move from the general to the particular, the “same God” thesis begins to fall apart. In the New Testament, God presents Himself as a Trinity (Mt. 28:19); in the Koran, God explicitly denies being a Trinity (5:73). In the Gospels, God refers to Jesus as “my beloved Son” (Mt. 3:17); in the Koran, God curses Christians for calling Christ the Son of God (9:30). In the Christian account, God accepts His only Son’s sacrificial death on the cross; in the Muslim account, God declares reports of Christ’s crucifixion to be “a monstrous falsehood” (4:157). In light of these significant differences, it is difficult to see how the God of the Bible and the God of the Koran could be one and the same.

There are similar problems with Cardinal Dolan’s other assertions, such as, “Your love of marriage and the family.” Yes, Muslims can generally be counted on to love their families. But in many respects, the Catholic and Muslim views of marriage and family are worlds apart. To Catholics, marriage is a sacrament; to Muslims, it is a contract. Moreover, it is primarily a contract about sex and money. In fact, the Arabic language uses the same word, nikah, for both marriage and sexual intercourse. In Islam, marriage is an institution ordained to meet the sexual needs of men. Thus, a Muslim man can have two, three, or four wives at a time and as many different families. And four is not really an absolute limit because if a Muslim man gets tired of one of his wives, he need only say “I divorce you” three times and he is free to marry another. Although many Muslim men rise above their religion and stay faithful to one wife, the knowledge that one can be easily replaced creates an undercurrent of insecurity and instability that, in turn, leads to widespread family dysfunction in the Muslim world. In fact, a number of scholars contend that Islamic violence is in large part the result of Islamic family dynamics.

“Your love of children and babies.” Under Islamic law, women and children are little more than possessions of their husbands and fathers. Still, the bonds of natural affection often trump what Egyptian-born writer Nonie Darwish calls “the corrupting temptations” of Islam. Yet those religiously sanctioned temptations are ever present in the Muslim world. Take the matter of child marriage. Muhammad signed a marriage contract with Aisha when she was six years old, and consummated the marriage when she was nine. And Muhammad is considered by Muslims to be the most perfect human being who ever lived! The Koran says ninety-one times that all Muslims are supposed to pattern their lives after Muhammad. Thus, when Islamic societies strive to return to their Muhammaden roots, there is a corresponding demand for a lowering of the legal age of marriage. For example, Iranian lawmakers are now seeking to lower the age of marriage for girls to nine. Mohammad Ali Isfenani, chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, called the current minimum age of thirteen “un-Islamic.”

Then, of course, there is the matter of honor killings. An increasing number of Muslim fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and brothers feel so strongly about family honor that they are willing to murder any female relative who calls the family honor into question. Some commentators say this practice has nothing to do with Islam but is merely an unfortunate tribal custom. But the fact is that Muslims account for the vast majority of honor killings worldwide. This is because honor killings are protected under Islamic law. Perhaps the most authoritative guide to Islamic law is Reliance of the Traveler, a nine hundred-page manual that has been certified as reliable by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Section O, which deals with “retaliations” (punishments) for killing a human being, explains that some killings are not subject to retaliation. For example, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” In other words, parents or grandparents who kill their children or grandchildren should not be punished. And so, in many places in the Muslim world, the perpetrators of honor killings are not punished or else are let off with a light or suspended sentence.

“Your love of freedom — religious freedom particularly.” Religious freedom? But what about the freedom to change one’s religion? This would seem to be one of the most basic exercises of religious freedom. Yet there is near unanimity among Islamic scholars and jurists that male apostates from Islam should be killed. And the average Muslim in the street tends to agree. A 2010 Pew Forum survey of public opinion found that eighty-four percent of Egyptians agree that apostates should be killed. A Pew survey of Pakistanis revealed that seventy-eight percent favor death for those who leave Islam.

Freedom of religion would also seem to involve the freedom to criticize one’s religion. But, as is now becoming apparent, most Muslims worldwide have little or no freedom to criticize Islam due to its blasphemy laws. Moreover, unlike some other aspects of sharia law, blasphemy laws also apply to non-Muslims. Numerous Christians in Muslim lands have been jailed or killed for making an offhand remark about Muhammad or Islam. Nor does living in the West necessarily protect one from the reach of the blasphemy enforcers. Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed in the streets of Amsterdam for making a film critical of Islam. In Denmark, writer Lars Hedegaard was nearly killed by a would-be assassin for “insulting Islam.” Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and his granddaughter were forced to take shelter in a safe room when an armed Muslim attempted to break into his house. Meanwhile, death fatwas have been issued against a Seattle cartoonist, a Los Angeles filmmaker, and a Florida pastor — all for violations of blasphemy laws.

It’s a good bet that Muslims in Tompkinsville don’t take the blasphemy laws as seriously as Muslims in Pakistan, but there are reasons to believe that not all American Muslims are as enthusiastic about religious liberty as Cardinal Dolan suggests. For example, a 2012 poll conducted by Wenzel Strategies found that fifty-eight percent of Muslim-American citizens believe that criticism of Islam or Muhammad should not be allowed under the U.S. Constitution. Forty-six percent said that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should face criminal charges, while one in eight respondents felt that such crimes merit the death penalty. Another forty-two percent said that Christians do not have the right to evangelize Muslims.

Pawns in the Great Chess Game
Cardinal Dolan realizes that the Catholic Church needs allies in the struggle to maintain religious liberty in the U.S., but it is doubtful that America’s imams will prove to be reliable allies. The “ecumenical jihad” approach — a strategy whereby Christians and Muslims are encouraged to join forces in a common struggle against secularism — might work with some issues and in some circumstances, but not with the issue of religious liberty. For a faithful Muslim, religious freedom largely means two things: freedom to practice sharia (thirty-two percent of those surveyed in the Wenzel poll believed that sharia should be the supreme law of the land in the U.S.) and freedom from criticism. Imams and Islamic activists undoubtedly realize that they are not the target of the Obama administration’s attack on religious freedom. In many different ways, the administration has shown a distinct bias against Catholics and in favor of Muslims. To the extent that Islamic leaders are interested in the issue of religious freedom, it is likely as leverage to silence the growing number of those who criticize Islam precisely for its suppression of freedom. An “alliance” with the Catholic hierarchy would, among other things, provide a degree of immunity from Catholic critics of Islam and, in fact, Muslim groups have already successfully prevailed upon members of the Catholic hierarchy to muzzle Catholics who speak out about the oppressive nature of Islam.

Islam’s representatives are willing to make alliances with Catholics, but not necessarily because they share the same values. Islamic leaders are just as likely to form alliances with secular leftists as with Catholic bishops. Again, this is not because they see eye-to-eye with the secular Left but because they see a political advantage. One of the major mistakes Christians make about Islam is to fail to understand its political nature. Unlike Christianity, subjugation of other religions and cultures is at its core. In this regard, it’s worth noting that the game of chess, which originated in India, was greatly improved upon once it reached Muslim lands. Strategy is an important concept in a warrior culture. Arguably, it is even more important to the twenty-first-century practitioners of stealth jihad — the process of spreading Islam by means of cultural rather than armed warfare. While bishops may regard their Muslim counterparts as “dialogue partners,” it is quite likely that not a few of their partners regard the bishops as pawns in the very serious game of Islamic expansion.

The most audacious recent move in this “great game” of strategy is the offer by Al-Azhar — Islam’s most important university — to renew relations with the Vatican. Relations were broken off when Pope Benedict XVI denounced the bombing of a church in Alexandria, Egypt. In an overture to Pope Francis, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar said that relations could be resumed “if in one of his addresses he were to declare that Islam is a peaceful religion.” Quite clearly, the Grand Imam’s main interest in maintaining relations with the Vatican is to see how he can manipulate the Church in order to gain a strategic advantage. And he seems to have had some success. Pope Francis, in his first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, asserted that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

“Sabotaging Its Miserable House”
We could examine more of Cardinal Dolan’s assertions about Islamic values — “your defense of life, your desire for harmony and unity,” etc. — but it’s more important to consider his appearance at the mosque in the larger context of long-term Islamist strategy. The strategy is essentially the same as the one that Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci recommended to communists in the 1930s — namely, the “long march through the institutions.” The Islamic version of the strategy was first outlined by Hasan al-Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and then developed by theorists such as Sayyid Qutb and Maulana Mawdudi. More recently, the strategy has been used to great effect by Prime Minister Recep Erdogan in gradually transforming secularist Turkey into an Islamist society. The strategy includes the West as well. A secret twenty-page document written in 1991 by a member of the Board of Directors of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America and later obtained by the FBI, sets forth the group’s mission as “a grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.”

“From within…by their hands.” The author seems to have a good grasp of the Western penchant for cooperating in its own undoing. The long march through the institutions doesn’t need to take that much time when the institutions are throwing open the doors and putting out the welcome mat. One of the institutions that the Muslim Brotherhood aims to influence and manipulate is the Catholic Church. Representatives of Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America have already managed to get themselves appointed as the bishops’ main dialogue partners in the U.S. Moreover, numerous Catholic colleges seem also to have succumbed to the charms of Islam. Some of the Islamic studies courses served up to Catholic students and seminarians might as well have “Made in Saudi Arabia” stamped on the front. In addition, Catholic high schools can generally be counted on to present a whitewashed picture of Islam.

It is difficult to see what benefits these faith alliances bring to Catholics, but they provide a number of benefits to Muslims. The benefit of having Catholic schools and colleges act as apologists for Islam is obvious and is, by the way, a favor that is not reciprocated in Islamic schools. A less obvious but equally important benefit is that the kind of endorsement provided by Cardinal Dolan and other Catholic leaders lends legitimacy to Islam. It makes Islam look like a member in good standing of the club of world religions and tends to confirm the thesis that all the butchery done in the name of Islam is the work of “fanatics.” Moreover, these alliances also serve to neutralize Islam’s Catholic critics.

A Case Study
The case of Robert Spencer, who has been described by Fr. C.J. McCloskey as “perhaps the foremost Catholic expert on Islam in our country” (National Catholic Register, July 6, 2013), is illustrative. Spencer was invited to give a talk to a Catholic men’s group in Worcester, Massachusetts, last spring; however, under pressure from Muslims, Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester rescinded the invitation on the grounds that Spencer’s talk “would impact negatively on the Church’s increasingly constructive dialogue with Muslims.”

Last summer Spencer was scheduled to speak at a Catholic homeschool conference in Sacramento, California, sponsored by Kolbe Academy. For their pains, Kolbe Academy officials received a letter from Nathan Lean, editor-in-chief of Aslan Media, whose founder, Reza Aslan, is a Muslim critic of Christianity. The letter stated that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League list Spencer as a “hate group leader” and that Spencer “regularly appears in public with members of the neo-Nazi street gang, the English Defence League….” Lean continued, “Why Kolbe Academy would knowingly host a man with these associations is unclear…. I have alerted several major civil rights organizations and watch groups about this and they have informed me that they are investigating the invitation…. Additionally, I have spoken with news media outlets both in the state of California and nationally…. They were unaware of this speaking engagement and many are interested in pursuing stories about it….”

In other words, “Nice little academy you have there. It would be a shame if something bad were to happen to it.” As Lean fully understands, it doesn’t matter that his portrayal of Spencer as a hater is false. What Catholic organization would want that kind of attention? As it turns out, Kolbe Academy stood firm. It was forced, however, to find a new location because, like the bishop of Worcester, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento denied permission for Spencer to speak on Church property. Spencer’s foes didn’t fully succeed in blocking him this time around, but the fact that they should have so much influence over diocesan matters is disturbing.

They tried again later last summer when Spencer accepted an invitation to debate Shadid Lewis of the Muslim Debate Initiative in the U.S. The event was hosted by Ave Maria Radio and held at Eastern Michigan University, so Spencer’s stalkers couldn’t very well pressure Church authorities to cancel the event. Nevertheless, they did their best to persuade Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing, who celebrated Mass after the debate symposium, to disassociate himself from the event. Victor Begg of the Michigan Muslim Community Council asked why the bishop would appear at the symposium “knowing these people have an Islamophobic, bigoted agenda.” Likewise, Dawood Zwink, the group’s executive director, questioned why the debate organizers would choose such an “incendiary” figure as Spencer.

The Michigan Muslims failed to capture their opponent’s bishop, but that is no reason to celebrate. Other bishops and Catholic groups will take note of the controversy and think twice before inviting critics of Islamic supremacism to speak. Consequently, we can expect to see a series of similar moves by Islamic activists in the future. Their goal is to marginalize their opponents by removing them from play one by one. When the Muslim Brotherhood memorandum speaks of sabotaging Western civilization “by their hands,” this is the kind of tactic to which they are referring. They want to silence Spencer and other critics of Islam, and they want Catholics to do the silencing for them.

Some Catholics seem all too happy to comply. For example, in an article for the National Catholic Reporter that appeared shortly before the debate at Eastern Michigan, Michael Sean Winters wrote that Spencer should be barred from Catholic forums because his “vile anti-Muslim pronouncements certainly approach the level of bigotry we associate with Holocaust denial” (Aug. 8, 2013). Winters neglected to quote any of these “vile” pronouncements, but apparently fairness and accuracy don’t matter when you’re dealing with someone whose views are “morally repugnant.” In the course of his diatribe, Winters cautioned Bishop Boyea that he would be “well-advised to follow the example of his brother bishops and say that the Catholic Church simply cannot be associated with this vile anti-Muslim bigotry.”

The Stratagem Unmasked
Where does Cardinal Dolan fit into this picture? He hasn’t, as far as I know, canceled any Catholic speakers or been asked to. However, silencing speakers isn’t the only game being played by Muslim activists. Cardinal Dolan didn’t just happen to stop by the mosque on Staten Island. He was invited. And it’s likely that he was invited for a purpose other than that of promoting good fellowship.

One of the main strategic goals of Muslim interfaith leaders in the New York City area is to eliminate the counter-terrorism program put into place by the New York Police Department in the wake of 9/11. Part of the program involves the monitoring of suspected mosques and Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapters. The surveillance seems justified in light of the fact that mosques and MSAs have proven themselves to be incubators of radicalism. According to four separate studies, approximately eighty percent of U.S. mosques convey a supremacist vision and provide their members with anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, pro-sharia, and pro-jihad literature. As the NYPD is acutely aware, the terrorists who perpetrated the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 were radicalized by Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheik,” an imam who preached in three New York-area mosques. Likewise, two of the 9/11 hijackers received mentoring at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in northern Virginia. So did Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood terrorist. MSA leaders also have a long history of promoting terrorism or engaging in it themselves. For example, Anwar al-Awlaki, who became a top al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, was once president of the Colorado State University chapter of the MSA. Mohamed Morsi, whose followers are responsible for the rampant persecution of Christians in Egypt, first became involved with the Muslim Brotherhood while an MSA member at the University of Southern California.

The NYPD claims to act only on the basis of solid information about specific groups and individuals. Nevertheless, as might be expected, Muslim leaders have managed to frame the intelligence-gathering program as an attack on religious freedom. And they have been successful in enlisting their interfaith Christian partners in attempts to close down the police operation. For example, the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty has taken a strong stance against what it calls the NYPD’s “profiling” and “spying” operation on “the Muslim community.”

The cultivation of Cardinal Dolan suggests he might be next on the list of interfaith partners to be enlisted in the cause of putting a stop to police investigations. He can prove that he is in earnest when he speaks about the Muslim love of religious freedom by joining in the campaign to hamstring the NYPD’s anti-terrorism efforts — a campaign that takes advantage of America’s commitment to religious liberty. Of course, if Cardinal Dolan is right about the shared values of Muslims and Christians, then the NYPD program is an extreme overreaction. But if he is wrong?

Deadly Consequences
Cardinal Dolan seems to think that Islamic beliefs can be fit into a framework of familiar and comfortable Catholic and American assumptions. He is not alone in attempting to reconcile Islamic values with those of the Western, Christian tradition. Many other Catholic leaders do the same. But it seems well past time for them to take a more realistic look at Islam. In particular, they should realize that trying to fit Islamic ideas about freedom into a Western format makes for a very awkward fit. For most Muslim leaders around the world, freedom of religion is not a wish to be treated like other religions, it is a wish — increasingly, a demand — to be placed above criticism, above examination, and above suspicion.

In 2011 Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America managed to convince a compliant administration to purge the training programs of all the national security agencies of material judged to be “biased” against Islam. The FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security — seventeen agencies altogether — were forbidden from drawing any connection between the doctrine, law, and scripture of Islam and Islamic terrorism. At the behest of Muslim leaders, our national security apparatus willingly blinded itself to the threat from Islam. As a result, on numerous occasions, federal agents have been forced to ignore intelligence that might have thwarted terror attacks. The FBI’s inability to utilize Russian intelligence reports on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, is a case in point.

Likewise, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the Muslim Brotherhood wishes to encourage the Catholic Church to purge herself of any notion that Islam is anything but a freedom-loving, peace-loving religion. Their aim is to keep Catholics docile and uninformed so that stealth jihad can proceed unchallenged. It’s a deadly serious “game” with deadly serious consequences, but so far, as exemplified by Cardinal Dolan’s ill-considered remarks and the hasty retreats by Bishops Soto and McManus, the Church’s leadership shows little sign that it understands the stakes.

Written by Tom

dukeofsc

more likely to the insufferable charms(sic) of left wing liberal cry baby, pluck my heart strings to get your way with me, bleeding heart liberal progressives, I should think, but hey, I was wrong once,ONCE)!!!!take a good long look at the news today on Foxnews, yeah I know what a rightwing nut site that is, the only problem with that statement is you cannot deny the accuracy of their news, you can only berate it , denigrate it and deny it, the truth is friend, truth hurts, that's why we do all the off hand things to get as far away as possible from it, its human nature, you cant help it, so there's your excuse, keep on keepin on, friend...cant call em fags no mo, it hurts their widdle feelings, but hey kill all the christian's you please, no one will say anything, serves em right for preaching yeah, rape all the little girls you want, pedophilia is simply a lifestyle choice now eh?? kill all the babies but "goddamn" America for having anything to do with the killing of a baby seal or whale, O.M.G. unheard of in our enightend society of today, for shame, for shame, I know your name...HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHA you deserve everything you get...

cesspool jones Loc: atlanta

i can't get over how the (needs-to-pay-hard) left sucks on muslims like the little girls that they are, while pissing all over christianity which has much more compassion towards basic life than muslims do. the only good poacher izza dead poacher. you can remove poacher and insert any word you want.

cant beleve Loc: Planet Kolob

This CAIR group started a new practice that allows Muslims to practice "Muruna" the act of deceit to further the aims of Islam. In the Bible one is not allowed to be deceitful. Let alone to pray to "God" or as Muslims view him "Allah" for the ability to be deceitful. Google it Muruna,only practiced since 9-11.The catholics and Muslims share nothing in common. Islam is the antithesis of Christianity. Plain and simple. They are Anti-christ.In fact they're hadith says that Christ will return in black to judge the "monkeys" (Jews) and "pigs" (Christians).
How can their possibly be any connection of a lasting dialogue? Taquia at its best!

dan miller Loc: U.S.A./Michigan

Though out history islam has ether conqued by sword on though intermarryin in local community unitl they in the marioty then they change the rules to make masters over the rrst.o

LAwrence

Since most of the churches threw out their base, the holy bible, They are ripe for the god of this world , Satan and will fall for any religious lie.

rumitoid

Excellent piece. Clear and informative. Thank you. I have saved this in my documents for future reference.