There Must Be No Competitors
"The Prophet (peace be upon him) commanded us, 'Two religions shall not coexist in the Arabian Peninsula', so building [churches] in the first place is not valid because this Peninsula must be free from [any other religion]."This is the interpretation from the Koranic principles given to a Kuwaiti delegation that had approached Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, Grand Mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Who insisted additionally that this being so, it is "necessary to destroy all the churches in the Arabian Peninsula", to satisfy the edict. Which edict makes it abundantly clear that land sacred to Islam cannot and may not host the defiling influences of another religion's false symbols and institutions.
It should be borne in mind that a supremely influential cleric to whose wisdom the faithful flock, and whose words must be taken as the authority for whatever those faithful then proceed to engage in, for they have been given both permission and instruction from the highest authority, has spoken. When, as a result, Christian churches are razed to the ground, and their parishioners harmed in the process, it is merely a reflection of religious justice.
Churches representing a divine belief in an ancient religion that much pre-dated Islam itself, and was, along with an even earlier original monotheistic religion, the inspiration for Islam, are to be destroyed. A religion whose practitioners are of more ancient vintage, with heritage scriptures that guide the principles and lives of its devout is held by Islamists to be an insult to Islam, and its presence intolerable, as a result.
This prevailing institutionalized attitude is reflected not only in Saudi Arabia, a country which does not in any event recognize the right of other religious views to be present on its soil, much less their institutions or symbols, and whose laws mandate death to any non-Muslims who would enter Mecca and Medina, but countries like Egypt and Iran as well, whose leading clerics echo the edict of the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia.
Churches have been burned and their members killed in majority-Muslim countries like Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines. In Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, Christians have had to acknowledge that their days of living in peace with their religion are numbered. Yet Muslims live in peace, with freedom to worship as they wish in Christian-dominated countries of the world.
And when Muslims perceive or believe that symbols of Islam have been desecrated they rampage.
The Christian communities in majority-Muslim countries are fearful for their tentative futures, and shrinking. And even in non-Muslim-majority countries where a mix of religious communities exist, the growing militancy and violence of the Muslim communities constitute a threat to the longevity of the Christian communities.
Muslims and Christians and Jews have been able for thousands of years to live together, each more or less respecting the other; certainly not constituting a direct and dire threat to each other's presence, aside from occasional outbreaks of dissatisfaction. The new level of violence and disruption owes to the growing militarization of political, jihadist-driven Islam.
As it presented itself in its first millennia of existence, a powerful juggernaut of religious awakening, violently determined to overturn the presence of earlier religions, to conquer new recruits and new lands, Islam is once again on the march.
Nor does this march bode well for the offshoots of Islam, the Ahmadiyya and the Ismailis, happy to live in peace with others.
Labels: Christianity, Conflict, Islamism
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 24, 2012
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