Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West by William Kilpatrick• Also available in Electronic Book Format
Christians in the Muslim world face daily persecution. In some places they are
threatened with extinction. Will Christians in Europe and America someday find
themselves in the same precarious position that Christians in Egypt, Pakistan,
and Iraq now occupy? That will depend on whether they wake up and defend their
freedom while they still can.
Muslim persecution of Christians has increased dramatically in recent years.
One of the main reasons for this is that, in failing to understand Islam, Western
countries have helped to unleash the antagonism toward non-Muslims that lies at
the heart of the Islamic faith. For the better part of the twentieth century,
secular, despotic governments in the Middle East and in other Muslim regions
acted as a restraining force on the more violent manifestations of Islam. Then,
starting with the ouster of the shah of Iran in 1979, the situation began to
change. Secular strongmen were pushed aside or eliminated, and traditional
Islam was able to reassert itself. Western nations played a large part in this
transformation. They encouraged, supported, and sometimes actively participated
in the overthrow of autocratic rulers with the naïve confidence that democracy
would usher in an “Arab Spring”, that is, a blossoming of human rights and
liberties. But the overthrow of the shah in Iran, of Hussein in Iraq, of
Mubarak in Egypt, and of Gadhafi in Libya didn’t have the expected
result—neither did free elections in Gaza, Lebanon, and Turkey. Many Muslims in
the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia have become more radicalized
and more dangerous, with the result that the future of the non-Muslim
population in those areas hangs by a thread. Christians in many predominately
Muslim regions now live in a nightmare world of beatings, abductions, rape,
imprisonment, torture, looting of shops, and burning of churches.
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”, said the prophet Hosea (Hos
4:6). Western lack of knowledge about Islam is not the only reason Christians
in the East are being destroyed, but it is a contributing factor. A basic
knowledge of Islam would include the fact that it requires the ultimate
subjugation of other religions. Moreover, even a cursory glance at Islam’s
founding document, the Koran, reveals a pronounced disdain for non-Muslims. One
of the main reasons for Western ignorance of these facts is that they conflict
with one of the most cherished of contemporary Western beliefs: the belief in
the benefits of cultural diversity. Paradoxically, this belief rests on a
deeper conviction that differences between peoples are in reality only surface
phenomena—that although cultures and religions appear to be diverse, they are
actually very much the same. Although Islam appears to be different, it must,
according to this view, be just like other religions. What appear to be
differences are only misunderstandings, and facts that don’t support this claim
are routinely ignored or suppressed. For this reason, most of the atrocities
committed against Christians by Muslims receive very little media attention.
When the facts can’t be ignored, they are often misrepresented. Thus, attacks
on Christians by Muslims are described by the media as “sectarian strife” or as
“clashes” between Christians and Muslims.
A carefully guarded ignorance about Islam is widespread in the Western world,
and if Western citizens choose to remain in the dark, the problems faced by
Christians in Muslim lands could soon become our problems. Europe is already
well along the road to Islamization, due in part to immigration and high Muslim
birthrates, but also due to strictly enforced speech rules. In several European
countries, telling the truth about Islam is a crime. Although further behind,
America is on the same road as Europe. The extent of Islamic penetration of our
institutions is far greater than most Americans realize, but the mainstream
media, along with courts, universities, and various politicians, have been
quite willing to obscure this reality.
Who is Rifqa Bary? That her story received only grudging coverage might serve as an illustration of how effectively negative information about Islam is controlled. Bary, a Muslim girl living with her parents in Ohio, had secretly converted to Christianity at the age of fifteen. When her parents discovered the truth two years later, Bary, fearing for her life, fled to Florida, to the home of a Christian pastor and his wife with whom she had been in communication. A court battle ensued and eventually resulted in her return to Ohio, but not to her parents. Rather, she was put under the protection of Ohio social services until she reached eighteen, the age of legal emancipation.
Much of the court battle revolved around the question of whether Bary was in any danger from her parents. Her defense argued that Islamic law requires the death penalty for apostates and that her parents would be expected to carry out the execution in order to cleanse their honor. This is what Bary tearfully told Florida reporters:
I don’t know if you know about honor killing. . . . You guys don’t understand. Islam is very different than you guys think. They have to kill me. My blood is now halal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I’m from a Muslim background, it’s an honor. If they love God more than me, they have to do this. And I’m fighting for my life, you guys don’t understand. You don’t understand.
Most of the media coverage, however, suggested that Bary was
the one who had misunderstood her religion, that what she asserted couldn’t possibly
be the case. Her claim flew in the face of the established narrative that Islam
was a religion of peace and justice. The murder of apostates simply didn’t fit
into the narrative.
If the reporters covering the case had done their homework, they would have
discovered that there is an almost universal consensus among Muslim scholars
that male apostates must be killed, although many Muslim authorities hold that
female apostates need only be imprisoned until they repent and reconvert. Bary
was aware of the lesser punishment, but she also knew that Islamic law allows
Muslim men to take matters into their own hands when it comes to their wayward
daughters. “Either they do that [kill me],” she said, “or they send me back to
Sri Lanka. There is an asylum there where they put people like me.”
Even though the killing or imprisoning of Muslim converts to Christianity has
become more and more common in Muslim communities, the plight of Rifqa Bary
didn’t fit into the prevailing consensus about Islam, so the majority of
reporters decided to frame the story in terms with which they were more
familiar. Thus, after the story was processed through the media’s mental
sorting machine, Rifqa Bary was cast as an over-excitable American teenager who
had a squabble with her parents and ran away from home. Multiply the
misreporting of Bary’s story a thousand times, and you’ll have a rough idea of
the amount of distortion and misinformation that surrounds one of the main
issues of our time.
This book is intended, in part, as a wake-up call. That in itself is revealing.
It’s amazing that eleven years after 9/11 and eighteen thousand terrorist
attacks later, wake-up calls are still needed. Yet the majority of people in
the West still do not seem to have grasped the supremacist nature of Islam, let
alone the threat it poses to them.
What is it that has served to delay that awakening? As I’ve said, part of the
responsibility lies with the Western faith in cultural equivalence. Any
evidence that Islam is markedly warlike and intolerant would undermine the
doctrine that all cultures and religions are roughly equal. Consequently,
Western societies have ignored and even suppressed the facts about Islam and
the important differences between it and Christianity.
Unfortunately, many Christians have also fallen into the habit of ignoring the
differences. The Islamic faith is founded on a blunt rejection of basic
Christian beliefs, but you would hardly know it from reading official Church
statements or from listening to leading prelates. Instead of informing their
flocks that Islam rejects Christ and requires its faithful to work toward the
eventual subjugation of Christians, many Christian leaders have been more
intent on emphasizing the common ground that Christians and Muslims share. For
example, the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate focuses almost exclusively on the similarities
between Muslims and Christians. That approach was in keeping with the spirit of
change and openness that marked the Council; moreover, it seemed to fit with
the prevailing circumstances in the Muslim world at the time. The search for
shared beliefs and values arose at a time when the militant side of Islam was
kept firmly in check by secular rulers. But it now seems that the Islamic world
the Council Fathers were familiar with was an aberration—a brief departure from
the path laid out by Muhammad when he called for Muslims to make the whole
world submit to Allah.
During the 1960s, Westernized and secularized Egyptians could laugh along with
President Nasser when, speaking before a large assembly, he related how, years
earlier, a Muslim Brotherhood leader had demanded that he enforce the wearing
of the hijab, the head scarf traditionally worn by Muslim women. Nasser
replied, “Sir . . . you cannot make one girl, your own daughter, wear it, and
yet you want me to go and make ten million women wear it?” Nasser’s remarks
brought a burst of applause and laughter from the audience; but, as is now
evident, the wearing of the hijab is no longer a laughing matter in Egypt, and
the Muslim Brotherhood, the butt of Nasser’s joke, is now the dominant
political force there.
Many Christians still hope that Muslims and Christians can unite in a common
front against atheism and aggressive secularism, but that spirit of cooperation
and mutual respect is not shared by many of Islam’s religious leaders. The
situation that prevailed in the Muslim world at the time of the Second Vatican
Council is rapidly disappearing. The face of Islam that now presents itself
very much resembles the supremacist religion that once threatened Christendom.
In light of this development, it now seems that the common-ground thesis is
overdue for a reexamination.
Tolerance needs to be balanced with justice, and justice seems to require that
Christians be provided with a fuller account of Islam—if for no other reason
than that their survival may depend on that knowledge. Although there is some
common ground between Christianity and Islam—as there is some common ground
among all religions—it might be wise to start looking at some of the profound
differences between the two faiths. For example, because jihad is not an
interior spiritual struggle as many have been led to believe, but rather a
serious obligation to subdue non-Muslims, a lot of Western Christians are going
to be woefully unprepared for the kinds of things that are already happening to
Christians in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and
Sudan.
Being prepared is contingent on being informed, and many Western Christians are
no better informed about Islamic beliefs than the pundits and politicians who,
in the early months of 2011, predicted that an Arab spring was just around the
corner. But finding a fuller account of Islam can be challenging for Christians
because many authoritative Church sources are brief and incomplete. Take the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, for example. Its
statement about Muslims (it says nothing of Islam per se) is forty-four words in length, which is about
eighty words less than the warning label on a bottle of Tylenol, and it
contains no warnings, only the comforting assurance that “together with us they
adore the one, merciful God.” Well, yes, the Koran refers to God as “merciful”,
but Islam seems to have its own unique understanding of that word. For example,
textbooks for tenth graders in Saudi Arabia instruct them on how to cut off the
hand and foot of a thief (illustrations included) as prescribed in the Koran
(5:33, 5:38). It would be nice to think that this is only for the purpose of
giving students a feel for the way things were done in Muhammad’s day; but as a
matter of fact, amputations (along with beheadings) are conducted on a weekly
basis in public squares in Saudi Arabia. When the Saudis apply a procrustean
solution to the misfits in their society, they do so in the literal sense of
the term.
Christians have a procrustean problem of their own in regard to Islam. They
have developed a habit of trying to force Islamic beliefs to fit into a bed of
familiar and comfortable Christian assumptions. Thus, on the rare occasions
when Christians hear anything about Islam, they are likely to hear that Muslims
worship one God (just like us), that they hold to an Abrahamic faith (just like
us), that they revere Jesus (just like us), honor Mary (just like us), and
value the moral life (just like us). But trying to fit Islam into a
preconceived Catholic/ Christian format makes for a very rough fit, as I hope
to make clear in the following pages.
An excessive emphasis on tolerance and sensitivity has resulted in a dangerous
knowledge gap for Christians. Moreover, when Christians put tolerance above
justice, they harm not only themselves, but Muslims as well. Christians need to
ask whether the current conciliatory approach to Islam is just toward all those
Muslims who suffer under the barbarities of sharia law. As has often been
noted, the main victims of Islam are Muslims. Should Christians be more worried
about offending the sensibilities of some Muslims, or should they be concerned
about the men, women, and children who are oppressed by Islamic laws? Tolerance
is fine up to a point, but as Thomas Mann observed, “Tolerance becomes a crime
when applied to evil.”
One thing seems clear. It is well past time for Christians to throw off their
complacency and begin instead to think more deeply about what Islam is and what
is at stake if we allow it to take root in our societies. And if Christians
need to readjust their thinking, so too do Muslims. It is ironic that our
society, which believes so strongly in change, nevertheless insists on the
unchangeability of other people’s beliefs. It is one of the legacies of
multiculturalism that we have come to believe that our own culture is
infinitely malleable, while believing that non-Western cultures are immutable.
Because we think Muslim beliefs can never be changed, we never suggest that
they ought to be changed.
It seems time to chart a different course. Any adequate response to the threat
from Islam will require us to push Muslims to rethink their faith on the most
basic level. In this regard, critics of Islam tend to avoid the main question
in favor of secondary questions. The secondary questions are: Is Islam a
religion of peace? Is Islam compatible with modern values? Are women treated
fairly under sharia law? The main question is: Did Muhammad actually receive a
revelation from God? That is really the heart of the matter. As long as Muslims
believe that Muhammad received his marching orders from God, the Islamic jihad
will continue. But take away the divine mandate to subjugate everyone, and you
take away the rationale for Islam’s war against the world.
Because the driving force behind Islamic aggression is Islamic theology, we can
no longer afford to treat Islamic theology as a protected species. Paradoxically,
the best way to secure peace and, at the same time, to show our love for
Muslims is to instill doubts about Islam in the minds of Muslims. At the same
time, of course, we must make sure that we have something better to offer in
its place.
Muhammad said that he came as a “warner”. The pages ahead are a warning about
the threat from the religion he founded. But this book is intended to serve as
more than a wake-up call. Many others have discussed the dangers posed by
Islam, but not many say what can be done about it. In addition to analyzing the
threat, this book lays out the practical steps that both Christians and
non-Christians can take to push back against the spread of Islam. At the same
time, it offers guidelines for countering the efforts of Islam’s many enablers
in the West.
Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West
by William Kilpatrick
For many Americans the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was the first time they had considered Islam. Were the terrorists motivated by the true dictates of their religion, or had they hijacked Islam as well as the planes in a political cause unrelated to the teachings of Muhammad?
Christianity, Islam, and Atheism argues that Islam is a religion of conquest and subjugation and that in spite of 9 /11 and thousands of other terrorist attacks throughout the world, many in the West still do not know or admit this because it conflicts with their multiculturalism and their belief in the equivalence of all cultures and religions.
To meet the challenge from Islam, Christians need to know more about the important differences between Islam and Christianity, yet many have been lulled into complacency by the misleading and largely unexamined assumption that the two religions are similar. The time that Christians spend in pursuing common ground is time that Islamic activists will use to press their radical agenda.
In addition to challenging both the multicultural and common-ground approaches, William Kilpatrick also exposes the role played by atheists and secularists in advancing Islam. Despite paying lip service to freedom, radical secularists serve as enablers of radical Islam. The civil liberties that the West enjoys are the fruit of Christian civilization, Kilpatrick argues, and only a reawakened Christianity can defend them against Islam's advance.
William Kilpatrick is the author of several books, including Psychological Seduction and Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong. His articles on Islam have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, FrontPage Magazine, Jihad Watch, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Register, World, and other publications. Professor Kilpatrick, who taught for many years at Boston College, lectures frequently to audiences in the US and abroad.
" Kilpatrick's insights into Western relativism, multiculturalism,
and the resultant anti-Christian attitudes form a matrix by which the
rot of a crumbling society can be better understood . . . This book
summons Christians to awaken their love for the true Jesus Christ of the
Gospel, to learn sober truth about Christianity and Islam, and live
their faith courageously in the face of Muslim aggression."
- Mitch Pacwa, SJ, Author, St. Paul and the Power of the Cross
"Most politicians, journalists, and intellectuals either fall silent
on the subject of Islamic theology or sanitize it through platitudes,
all of which revolve around religious and cultural relativism. As
William Kilpatrick convincingly shows in Christianity, Islam, and Atheism,
this fashionable complacency has compromised Western civilization. In
this indispensable book, he wakes the politically correct up from their
dogmatic slumbers, sounding a vitally important alarm about the true
aims of Islam."
-George Neumayr, contributing editor to The American Spectator and co-author of No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom
"This extraordinary book pierces through the politically correct
miasma of unreality that envelops us and explains clearly and
persuasively, with mountains of evidence, the threat that Islam poses
today to the Church and to Western civilization. William Kilpatrick is
to be commended for penning a concise and comprehensive introduction to
the reality and magnitude of the Islamic supremacist threat. This book
should be essential reading for politicians, bishops, and everyone who
is on the front lines of the culture wars."
- Robert Spencer, author of the NY Times bestseller The Truth About Muhammad
After years of Catholic/Muslim 'dialogue' in Turkey the frustrated Archbishop of Ankara, aware that the 'dialogue' was no dialogue but one way traffic by the catholics across the bridge to the non responsive Muslims, finally asked them in frustration, "What can you Muslims learn from us Catholics?" They told him bluntly: "Nothing! We can learn nothing from you because you have nothing to teach us. Furthermore, we are going to take Europe from you, Not with violence but with time. And we have all the time in the world. Because it is your liberal tolerant western laws and attitudes that will hand Europe to us on a plate."
The Archbishop of Ankara took this message back to Rome to unresponsive and catatonic fellow Bishops and liberal religious. "Please stop handing over un-used catholic churches (in Italy) to muslim communities. Of course they will accept them. They will also think - "See how superior we are to these infidels. Why they even hand over their churches to us - because they have no respet for their own religion."
I have just spent 4 years in Indonesia - the world's largest Muslim country.
I have returned a changed man. I have seen what is is like to live under a totalitarian religion. I have seen what is happening - and we should all be concerned. Our biggest fault is that we are catatonic - we underestimate what is possible around the corner.
As Fr Samir Samir SJ says correctly - "The present state of Islam is that it is an ignorant religion, taught by ignorant people for ignorant people."
Recently an Islamic scholar in Lebanon was explaining the probable development of the Koran - over a century or so - like many of the Biblical texts -a gradual development. Some of his students rushed him and literally threw him out the window. He is now in hiding in Europe.
Islam's problems are largely of it's own making - since the 12th century ban on the use of reason. hence - ask a muslim "Why does paper burn?" and you are likely to get the reply - "Because it is the will of Allah."
Islam needs to ask itself questions and we need to ask Islam questions.
At present people are too frightened to.
I asked questions when I was in Indonesia. A woman (teacher) on one occasion, looked over her shoulder and around the room to see if anyone could hear our conversation, then said quietly to me, "You do realise we are having a very dangerous conversation."
I then realised we are living in dangerous times.
Posted by: Phillip Turnbull | Monday, November 26, 2012 at 04:39 PM
I prefer the truth spoken plainly by our religious and this course seems wonderful as well as your article-For the Christian Humanist of the 20th century, there are three levels of reality: GRACE (the only true reality); NATURE (fallen, but made by God); and MODERNITY, in which men ignore Grace and either ignore or domi nate nature, God’s creation, originally intended as a gift for the man steward. In the end, because modernity forgets, ignores, or despises the true reality of Grace, it can only produce a false, substitute world. Historian Christopher Dawson noted that just “as the unity of the ancient world was finally broken in two by the sin of Islam, so the modern world is being broken by the sin of communism....so the only serious rivals to Christianity at the present day are not the old religions of the East, but the new political substitute-religions, like communism, nationalism, and so forth.” In essence, modernity is merely a shadow of a shadow. “The modern pagan, the godless child of tecnology or the “crowd man” is something more than fallen,” author and Trappist priest Thomas Merton wrote in the late 1950’s. “He lives not only below the level of grace, but below the level of nature--below his own humanity.” Man now living in “a world of falsity and illusion” loses all sense of purpose, all moorings, and the disorder of the world becomes fully manifest.
www.CatholicCourses.com
Posted by: Jude | Monday, November 26, 2012 at 04:46 PM