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| Islam versus Christianity By Antonio C. Abaya September 6, 2002 President George W. Bush seems to be in a mad rush to invade Iraq and topple the strongman Saddam Hussein, whom his father, Bush the Elder, failed to depose in what will most likely be known now as The First Persian Gulf War. As this is being written, Bush the Younger has promised to make public what he claims are incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein has accumulated weapons of mass destruction (atomic, biological and chemical), which, to Bush, are enough justification to launch The Second Persian Gulf War. He is apparently timing his promised revelation to coincide with the first anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon so as to ride on the wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments that the anniversary will surely resurrect in the American heartland. Current public opinion surveys indicate that Americans will support an invasion of Iraq only if it is backed by allies, of which, sadly for him, there is only one, the ever loyal United Kingdom of Tony Blair. Bush is undoubtedly confident that when he reveals his proof, the American public will jump onto his bandwagon even if only the British show up on D-Day. Militarily, it would not make a difference. In the First Persian Gulf War, even though more than 20 countries signed up, it was only the British who had a significant presence on the battlefield. Even the French, who contributed an armored regiment to the invasion force, were relegated to a holding position near the central city of al-Nasariya (to block any reinforcements from Baghdad; none came) as US and British tanks, APCs and self-propelled guns raced through the desert towards the southern city of Basra to engage and decimate Saddam�s elite Republican Guards and liberate Kuwait City. In the putative Second Persian Gulf War, in which the strategic goal is not just to defeat the Iraqi army but to effect a regime change as well, the main battlefield will most likely be in Baghdad itself and the Americans will try to capture, as fast as possible, key installations (such as the airport, radio and TV stations, power plants) and symbols of power (such as the presidential palace, the parliament building), so that they can install a rival government which, they hope, will lead to the speedy collapse of the present one. In the meantime, teams of special warfare technicians will be rushing to known and suspected sites of Iraq�s ABC weapons platforms to prevent their use. Their success or failure could mean the life or death of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, assuming the worst, that the Iraqis have developed and deployed mobile (and therefore hard to pinpoint) short-range ballistic missiles armed with ABC warheads and will launch them if and when the US invades. President Bush�s strategic advisers have apparently weighed the cost in US casualties and have decided that it is better to strike now, while Iraq�s ABC capability is still in its infancy, rather than wait a few more months or years, by which time Saddam Hussein may have become so strong he will control the entire Persian Gulf (and its oil and gas), command the loyalty of the whole Muslim world as its caliph, order the extinction of the state of Israel, and threaten the very existence of Western (read Christian) civilization with which Islam has had a running war since the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century. ***** A scrutiny of the many conflicts raging around the world today would show a marked preponderance of the confrontation between Islam and Christianity even if many of the actual combatants represent secular states. Thus we have the Catholic Filipinos at odds with Muslim separatists in the southern parts of Mindanao; Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia engaged in communal warfare with Christians in Maluku and actually planning a pan-Islamic state that will encompass the territories not only of Indonesia and Malaysia but also southern Philippines and southern Thailand (which has Muslim communities); Islamists targeting Christian schools and churches in Pakistan in a sideshow of the Hindu-Muslim war over Kashmir; a vicious civil war between Muslim Chechens and Orthodox Christian Russians in Chechnya; similar armed conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Sudan and Nigeria; the recent wars in the Balkans involving three-cornered struggles between Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars; recent territorial conflict between Orthodox Christian Armenians and Muslim Azeris over Nagorno-Karabakh; and the still unfinished business in Afghanistan, which Osama bin Laden saw as Islam�s struggle �against the Crusaders and the Jews.� The conflict between Christianity and Islam, which has been going on, intermittently, for 13 centuries, can best be explained by the fact that they are both missionary religions, in fact the only ones that are such among the world�s great religions. Meaning, both Christians and Muslims believe that theirs is the One True Church and both exert earnest missionary efforts to convert other peoples to their beliefs. And both have used coercive means against those who refused to convert.. That is not true of other religions. Judaism and Hinduism are ethno-centric religions that have little appeal outside the Jewish and Hindu communities. Buddhism does not even have a God or gods, only a set of instructions for attaining a state of enlightenment; its very passivity makes Buddhism attractive to many former Christians who find the missionary animus of Christianity offensive. While Christianity has survived the rise of the nation-state and the spread of secular thought, Islam has developed in the opposite direction. Victimized by western and Christian colonialism, especially after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims and Arabs have been attracted in growing numbers to an austere and ultra-conservative form of Islam that rejects the idea of separation of church from state, seeks to impose sharia law on everyone and sees in secularism the breeding ground for moral decay. Today Saudi Arabia and Iran, tomorrow the entire Muslim world, from Morocco to Mindanao. Christianity may be said to be riding the up-escalator towards a secular image of the universe in which God is an existential option of each individual; while Islam may be said to be riding the down-escalator to the basement where Allah permeates everything, including the fast-food counters and the janitors� closets. As the escalators cross each other, the two inevitably clash because each passionately believes that his escalator is going in the right direction, the one and only direction worth traveling in. ***** I was invited to guest in Randy David�s and Katrina Legarda�s TV program last August because, I think, of my column titled �Why the Americans are in Basilan and Sulu� (which can be viewed in our website www.tapatt.org). I had argued in that article that the Americans are/were there, not so muchto help wipe out the Abu Sayyaf, as to set up listening posts to monitor the activities of Islamic fundamentalists in nearby Indonesia who want to establish a pan-Islamic state that will encompass the territories of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and the southern parts of the Philippines and Thailand. There was no argument over this point as the two other guests � Defense Secretary Angie Reyes and an officer of the Akbayan party � agreed with my analysis.. Katrina did ask a question that was not answered by anyone because of time constraints: Has there been a Muslim leader in recent times who sought to lead all Muslims in a confrontation against Christians and the West? The answer is, Yes. In the 1950-60s, it was the Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser; in the 1970-80s, it was the Libyan Moammar Gaddafi; in the 1990s, it was/is the Saudi Osama bin Laden. The first two were secular leaders but their appeal transcended political boundaries and embraced all Arabs. The third, though not an imam, couched his message in largely religious terms and his appeal embraced, not only all Arabs, but also all Muslims. In the mid-1990s, a fundamentalist cult in Malaysia, al-Arqham, became widely popular with its message that a leader would soon emerge in Uzbekistan to lead all Muslims in the world in a final confrontation with the Christian infidels. (See my article �Has World War III Begun?� in the Tapatt website). In the first decade of the 21st century, if he survives US efforts to kill him and is able to respond dramatically, Saddam Hussein may yet become the caliph of the Muslim world. ***** The bulk of this article appeared in the September 23, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic. |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Islam versus Christianity� THE RELIGIOUS zealots espousing a pan-islamic nation through forceful means is not mainstream, but a rather large minority (some say 10%) in the islamic faith who adhere to wahabism. wahabism encourages the use of force and violence to propagate their faith, and has been likened to the ku klux klan of �christian� americans. the wahabists forget the quranic statement that in religion there is supposed to be no compulsion. this is not necessarily a christian vs. muslim confrontation conflict that is brewing in iraq, but rather western (global?) civilization vs. a terror-sponsoring state. it just so happens that iraq�s religion is islam. to say it is is sensationalism. additionally, bush does not represent a religion in exercising his prerogatives, but that of a beleaguered democracy. Eben Ramos. [email protected] October 2, 2002 MY REPLY. Are you referring to the pan-Islamic state being pursued by Islamic extremists in Indonesia, or to the contrived drama to overthrow Saddam Hussein from power? The two are related only in the fact that the opposing sides are Christian and Muslim, even though, as I emphasized in my column, they may represent secular states, as they do in the Iraq brouhaha. Thirteen centuries of mutual hatred, mutual suspicion and mutual massacres cannot be masked by one or two centuries of enlightened liberalism. Your estimate of 10% of Muslims as being Wahhabis (that is the accepted spelling) is overdrawn. According to the 2002 World Almanac and Book of Facts, the world�s 1.2 billion Muslims are 83% Sunni (such as Saddam Hussein), 16% Shia or Shi-ite (such as the ayatollahs of Iran), and one percent other sects, presumably including Saudi Arabia�s Wahhabis. But one should not be deceived by small numbers. Christianity was started by only one man and twelve disciples. The Protestant Revolt against Rome began with even fewer. But the ensuing religious wars in Europe killed hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of adherents on both sides. Never underestimate the power of religious intolerance. And they will kill over the most petty issues. During the schism between the Orthodox Church and Rome, people were massacred over such issues as the correct number of beads in the rosary, and whether or not priests should be required to wear beards. Their ideological descendants could conceivably kill over the compulsory use of capital letters. So you�d better watch out. ......................................................... YOU HAVE proven that the world needs to get rid of its stupid and murderous religions; there will never be peace on this planet as long as billions of people kowtow to some hypothetical creature called God, who in reality is merely a figment of man�s imagination. Christianity and Islam are the two worst religions by far and I would be happy to see them destroy each other and give the rest of us some peace and quiet. Robert Hanan, Queensland, Australia. [email protected] October 2, 2002. MY REPLY. I have proven no such thing. Human beings have been killing each other long before they invented religions. Even our simian ancestors killed each other over scraps of food, as graphically pointed out by Stanley Kubrick in his film �2001 � A Space Odyssey,� in which a flying tibia, hurled during a melee between marauding apes, is suggested as the precursor of today�s intercontinental ballistic missiles. So what else is new? ........................................................... I HAVE to take issue with your notion that Saddam might become the Calif of Islam. His path to power was through the Ba�ath Party, an explicitly Socialist, nationalist and anti-religious organization. Enough people remember that, and his systematic persecution of Muslims in his own country, to make his credibility in Islamic circles questionable. Marc de Piolenc, Iligan City. [email protected] October 2, 2002 MY REPLY. Do not forget that Osama bin Laden and his suicide bombers belonged to the Wahhabi sect of Islam which makes up only one percent, or even less, of all Muslims.(See the letter above and my reply).Yet he is revered by Sunnis, Shias and Wahhabis alike because of what he has done for his faith, whether or not we infidels approve of it. Similarly, if Saddam Hussein is able to stand up to the bullying of George W. Bush and, better yet, if he is able to dramatically give the Americans a dose of their own medicine, his standing in the Muslim world will shoot up and all Muslims (except the Uncle Toms or, rather, the Uncle Abduls who are interviewed on BBC World), will doff their turbans to him, no matter what their sectarian leanings may be. Like the Jews, the Muslims are waiting for their Messiah, who will lead them in a final battle with the Crusaders. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |