generalspeaking

An interesting backlash has come to public attention through a series of lectures taking place at Campbell Baptist Church in Windsor, Ontario. A man of Lebanese descent portraying himslf as a former Islamist fanatic turned Christian is on a mission to educate as many people as he can reach about the threat of Islam, a "religion of war", to non-Muslim countries. Zachariah Anani claims in his studied explanations that Islam requires the "ambushing, seizing and slaying" of infidels, particularly Jews and Christians.

This Lebanese-Canadian is intent on pursuing his dedication to informing everyone that Muslims are being taught to worship a spiritual figure who encourages his adherents to "fight and kill", to "strike with terror", one who permits of no prisoners in battles against Islam's enemies for they are enemies of Allah. Mr. Anani, who came to Canada as an immigrant in 1997, titles his talk "The Deadly Threat of Islam", and predictably enough, his passionate denunciation of Islam, his description of the manner in which the sacred texts are being interpreted by fanatics is bringing alarm to the Muslim community.

Even members of the Christian community are frightened and taken aback by his claims, arguing that he is himself inciting hatred. But Donald McKay, the church's pastor insists the lectures have merit since they reflect the "absolute truth". He claims it isn't the desire of the church to be offensive or to unnecessarily polarize the community, but to bring Mr. Anani's experience to public light, to inform and to advise. A reasonably tolerant onlooker might venture to wonder why such revelations are taking place in a place of worship to begin with, rather than on more neutral grounds, such as a public arena, but that's another story.

Muslim men who attended the lecture out of curiosity, slammed Mr. Anani's credibility, claiming that he has taken quotes from the Koran 'out of context'. Which is precisely the point. Mr. Anani is citing his own personal experience, growing up in Lebanon, being taught the tenets of the faith through interpretations of the Koran used by fanatical Islamists to gear impressionable young men into line, to adapt themselves to a lifestyle in which bloody jihad against infidels features large.

To make an invalid comparison as was done, to the violence described by warring entities in the Old Testament is to miss the point, for that can be classified as ancient historical documentation; there is no overt or covert invitation to translate the adversarial conditions which were then prevalent to our present time, and no one believing in the Old or New Testaments is making a fierce effort to breed a modern complement to the religious warriors of old.

In fact, Mr. Anani, as distasteful as his message is in conveying to a western audience his own personal oddyssey into hell and beyond, is alerting us, as though we haven't had sufficient such alerts, to the dangers inherent in moderate, peaceful Muslims among us not confronting those in their own community who choose to worship at the alter of a fascist brand of Islam. It is not Mr. Anani who is causing instability, but those Islamists who taught him and countless others to attend to their religious responsibilities by targetting and murdering those whom they consider infidels; insulting to Islam.

Mr. McKay makes an interesting point when he observes that "Islam is the most intolerant religion in the world today", for events playing out every day in every corner of the world consolidate that opinion. And if it is indeed true as Mr. Anani asserts, that he personally delivered death to "hundreds of people in the name of Allah" during the Lebanese civil war before his conversion, then he has himself much to answer for; the act of converting to another religion that does not energetically preach for murder, does nothing to exonerate his personal guilt, for we all have free will, and Mr. Anani chose to believe what he was taught, and to act on it.

The truth as Mr. Anani is delivering it to both willing and unwilling ears is out there for anyone with an interest in world events to identify. Mr. Anani is a living messenger, an example of an impressionable young man who chose to believe what imams in Lebanon took out of the Koran as history and held up as an example for the present day. During the Lebanese civil war Shia Muslims sought out and killed Lebanese Christians and Kurds and fought to the death with Sunni Muslims, exactly the scenario playing out today in places as diverse as Iraq, Sudan, the Palestinian Territories and Somalia.

Although other Arabs are not necessarily the preferred victim/infidels, Jews are not always readily available, nor are other Westerners, considered no better than offal by fanatical Muslims. That such Islamists have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of other Muslims and Arab Christians whose religious affiliations have found profound disfavour in the eyes of these rabidly disaffected clerics condemns by default the religion they seek so bloodthirstily to celebrate.

The condition of tribal and religious secular violence - Sunni upon Shia and vice versa - both turning their deadly attention on Christians and Jews is a critical world problem. Might as well meet the reality head on. Then try to figure how to contain and counteract it.