CWIA Annual Charismatic Conference, Alexandria, VA, Aug 12-14, 703-971-3633
Is there currently a war of religions?
The short answer: yes. It is also the long answer.
Whether one parses terms like “religious war,” it can be said with great confidence that there’s an ongoing global conflict — more acute by the month (and sometimes the week) — between those who believe in one True God and those who believe in false gods, or no God at all.
The latter are the secularists who in the West are beginning to actively persecute Christians. They have man-made gods. They want no Creator. (The same for materialists, a category that overlaps others.)
In between are the false gods of the New Age; of Eastern religions; and — if you are with those who believe that Allah is different than the Christian God — of Islam.
Are Muslims — like the humanists, like the secularists, like the occultists (include here the sudden rise of Satanism) — at war with Christianity?
Whether or not Allah equates to Christianity’s “God the Father” (we want that to be the case, though we are not sure) — and though we are without question called by the Church, as well as Our Blessed Mother, to find common ground with other religions, including Islam — it is also good to have balance and to cite the truth where one sees the truth (which sets one free) and the facts line up to tell us that something in the fabric of Islam — in its foundation — seeks to erase Christianity and that too many within its ranks are set on just that, with quiet support from others.
Simple facts.
Simple truths.
It is not a time to candy-varnish things.
For we approach an emergency.
Let us find common ground with Muslims in the service of love (they are children of God, often devout ones), but it is also high time to tell Muslims and their “Sharia law” to back off.
Those who belong to their religion have killed thousands of Christians in the last several years and are wreaking terror from France to Nigeria to the Philippines to Orlando to London.
To ignore this is to enable it.
It is also to ignore history.
For centuries, starting in the seventh century — 1,400 years ago — Islamic forces have fought on European soil and at one point conquered all of Spain and much of France, fighting on the outskirts of Rome itself.
There are numerous apparitions of Mary that occurred during or after such persecution, in consolation to persecuted Catholics, in coming to their aid. In fact, Muslims historically have reached as far north as Grenoble in France (near the apparition site of LaSalette, meaning both that place as well as Lourdes were under duress) and have threatened Christian territories in Czechoslovakia and Poland (leading many Christians to convert to Judaism, which Muslims at that point were not at war with). For centuries, Christians had to bury or otherwise hide Crucifixes and statues of Mary across large swaths of southern Europe.
So is there and has there been a religious war?
There has been a religious war, sometimes quiet, sometimes simmering, sometimes frothing over, for fourteen centuries. Steam comes out of the kettle once more.
Simple truth.
Speaking aboard Shepherd One on his way to Rome earlier this week, after a five-day trip to Poland, Pope Francis said: “I think it is not right to identify Islam with violence. It is not right and it is not true. I believe that in every religion there is always a little fundamentalist group.”
And there is truth to that (we will not quibble with the Supreme Pontiff).
But we are concerned that it is more than a “little fundamentalist group.”
Palestinian terrorists have terrorized Israel for decades, and there have been leaders in the Middle East like Gaddafi and Arafat and Ayatollah Khomeini (and Saddam Hussein); there have been Hezbollah and Hamas; there is Al Qaeda and now ISIS and Boko Haram. Surveys show, disconcertingly, that many mainstream Muslims favor not just Sharia law but tacitly support conquest of those who are not Muslim.
Christians have not responded in kind. There are no Christian or Jewish terrorists car-bombing Muslim communities, nor slashing the throats of imams; there have been no Christian hijackings, or kidnappings; Christians have not beheaded those who read the Koran. Thus, the problem is not with Christianity.
It never was.
“The Holy Father acknowledged that there are violent Catholics, too,” trumpets the media. “‘I don’t like to talk about Islamic violence because every day, when I look at the papers I see violence here in Italy—someone killing his girlfriend, someone killing his mother-in-law. These are baptized Catholics.’”
But with all due respect: one must differentiate between criminals and terrorists. We know what the Pope is getting at, and it’s a good point, perhaps hastily said.
For Christians have never attempted to take over the entirety of Islamic territories in an effort to eradicate a religion. The Crusades were to rescue Christianity. Someone killing a mother-in-law is not a religious terrorist.
Thus, the need currently is not to lecture Christians on peace and conciliation — since Christians are not the aggressors but the victims; the ones being killed; savaged — but to lecture Muslims. They need the discourse — and very stern rebuke.
Otherwise, we are enablers, we simply embolden their radicals. And enabling radical Muslims — of which there are many — will cost yet more Christians lives like that of the 85-year-old priest in France who last week was all but beheaded.
Sometimes, it seems they are using immigration as a modern form of invasion.
Just this week, we received a call from a viewer in the Midwest who was distraught and desperate for help because hostile Muslim neighbors are stockpiling crates in their backyard, with who knows what in them. Elsewhere — for example, in Greece, this week (hearkening back to the Middle Ages, when Muslims fought in Crete) — crates hoarded by Islamic “immigrants” were confiscated by police who found them filled with arms.
Are Muslims setting the stage here in the U.S. for “jihad”?
Astonishingly, there are news accounts like this: “A mob of up to 30 young Somali men paraded through one of Minneapolis’ more upscale neighborhoods last week, yelling disparaging comments and threats against homeowners. A female resident of the neighborhood, obviously shaken in a TV interview, related how she was screamed at by a Somali man who threatened to kidnap and rape her. ‘They were screaming at the house that they were going to kidnap you and they were going to rape you,” one Minneapolis resident told KSTP TV. ‘It was a very traumatizing experience.'”
In another case a Christian woman (in the U.S.) was not served by a Muslim store clerk because of the Cross around her neck!
This is America?
This is just today: “LONDON (AP) — A Norwegian teenager of Somali origin is suspected of going on a knife rampage through London’s tourist hub of Russell Square, killing an American woman and injuring five other people, police said Thursday.”
And this: “Police are hunting for a Moroccan terrorist who attacked a Catholic priest at a cafe in Spain after warning him ‘You should be afraid of me, I’m an Arab.’ The terrorist, thought be aged around 35, tried to grab his victim’s Crucifix around his neck before threatening to kill him after insulting him.” Sockdolager after sockdolager of terror.
We are called to love — no question — but we are not required by Christ to wear a target on our backs.
Good people? There are saintly Muslims. Many have a religious discipline, a dedication, that Christians could emulate.
Those who seek to simply come to the U.S. and live peaceably within the framework of their own religion without forcing it on others: no problem. There never was.
But an unpleasant fact: in polling, too many Muslims support Sharia law and tacitly endorse the conquest of Christianity. Simple truth.
Thousands of Christians have died at the hands of radical Muslims and Hindus in the past ten years. Thousands. To repeat. [At left, where ISIS is now]
Show us the Catholic terrorist.
Show us the doctrinaire Christians who, as in Mosul, Iraq, have detonated a hundred churches, even a 1,400-year-old monastery (Mosul is the site of ancient Nineveh). Show us where Christians have ever done what has been done in Syria.
How much of the above can we attribute to hereditary abnormalities? Generational “curse”? How much to simple human (or inhuman) misguidance and evil?
Honesty in such matters is a critical start to alleviating intractable issues, for the truth sets us free, although the truth is also not always (these days, not usually) politically correct.
Love, always — but do not enable evil.
[An abbreviated timeline of just the low Middle Ages:
627: Meccan leader Abu Sufyan (c. 567 – c. 655) laid siege to Muhammad’s forces in Medina during the battle of the Trench. Even with 10,000 men he was unsuccessful for the 15 days he was there. Muhammad suspected the Banu Quraiza Jews of helping the Meccans and had all the men killed.
715: By this year just about all of Spain is in Muslim hands.
725: Muslim forces occupied Nimes, France.
730: Muslim forces occupy the French cities of Narbonne and Avignon.
813: Muslims attack the Civi Vecchia near Rome.
846: Muslim raiders sail a fleet of ships from Africa up the Tiber river and attack outlying areas around Ostia and Rome. Some manage to enter Rome and damage the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. Not until Pope Leo IV promises a yearly tribute of 25,000 silver coins do the raiders leave. The Leonine Wall is built in order to fend off further attacks such as this.
870: After a month-long siege, the Sicilian city of Syracuse is captured by Muslim invaders.
939: Madrid is recaptured from Muslim forces.
965: Grenoble is recaptured from the Muslims.
994: The monastery of Monte Cassino is destroyed a second time by Arabs.
July 03, 997: Under the leadership of Almanzor, Muslim forces march out of the city of Cordova and head north to capture Christian lands.
August 11, 997: Muslim forces under Almanzor arrive at the city of Compostela. The city had been evacuated and Almanzor burns it to the ground.
998: Venice conquers the Adriatic port of Zara.
c. 1000: Chinese perfect the production and use of gunpowder.
1000: The Seljuk Turkish Empire is founded by an Oghuz Turkish bey (chieftain) named Seljuk. Originally from the steppe country around the Caspian Sea, the Seljuks are the ancestors of the Western Turks, present-day inhabitants of Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan.
August 08, 1002: Death of Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir, ruler of Al-Andalus, on the way back from raiding the Rioja region.
1004: Arab raiders sack the Italian city of Pisa.
1007: Birth of Isaac I Comnenus, Byzantine emperor. Founder of the dynasty of the Comneni, Isaac’s government reforms may have helped the Byzantine Empire last longer.
1009: Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, founder of the Druze sect and sixth Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, orders the Holy Sepulcher and all Christian buildings in Jerusalem be destroyed. In Europe a rumor develops that a “Prince of Babylon” had ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher at the instigation of the Jews. Attacks on Jewish communities in cities like Rouen, Orelans, and Mainz ensue and this rumor helps lay the basis for massacres of Jewish communities by Crusaders marching to the Holy Land.
1009: Sulaimann, grandson of Abd al-Rahman III, returns over 200 captured fortresses to the Castilians in return for massive shipments of food for his army.
1012: Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, founder of the Druze sect and sixth Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, orders the destruction of all Christian and Jewish houses of worship in his lands.
1012: Berber forces capture Cordova and order that half the population be executed.
1013: Jews are expelled from the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordova, then ruled by Sulaimann.
1015: Arab Muslim forces conquer Sardinia.
[Noted one critic of Islam, to give us this view: “Religion is behind the violence and jihad we’re seeing in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and here in this country. It’s a religion that calls for the extermination of ‘infidels’ outside their faith, specifically Jews and Christians. It’s a religion that calls on its soldiers to shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is Great’ in Arabic) as they behead, rape, and murder in the name of Islam. Radical Islamists are following the teachings of the Quran. We should call it what it is.”]
[Christian children reveal horror of radical Muslims]
[From: Islamic terror on American soil:
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