…

Thank You

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives;
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.

There is no difference between the Johnnies
and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side
here in this country of ours.

You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.

After having lost their lives on this land they have
become our sons as well.”

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 1934

these words by Ataturk opened a WW1/Gallipoli campaign memorial. I think they are the kindest words, and I am pretty sure the only kind words ever spoken by a conquering Islamic to or about Christians.

HeIsSailing:

But Islam does not seem to have an evangelistic, or missionary presence. If asked, will they proselytize? Do they have ‘reasons to believe’? Or do they not evangelize, because like early Calvinists, this is exclusively up to the will of Allah?

Oh yes, they proselytize energetically in some places.

Robert Spencer on January 27, 2008 at 2:36 PM

Sorry, this is just a tiny bit snarky. But REALLY? They proselytize??? Do they have swords in their hands when they do it?!

Robert, Is there evidence that Allah was worshipped, prior to Muhammad’s arrival on the scene, by the quraysh as a moon god?

Allah is a generic term for “god” in Arabic, but so is Allat, who was apparently worshipped as a singular goddess by the quraysh – one of 3 daughters of Allah.

Did Mohammad, in essence, elevate the already existing pagan deity of “Allah” to the supreme, trancendent being worshipped by Christians and Jews?

Chesterton thought that, and I suppose there is some evidence, that all ‘pantheons’ were assembled out of each distinct groups ‘one god’. So we have many words that come from simply a word used for the one God. So in this sense evidence can be thrown back and forth on the subject. The problem that Christians and others have is not the idea that we kind of preknow God before anything (i.e. before the fall) but the character and notion of the God being described. The polytheistic system got around this by pluralistically including everyone’s gods – the trouble with that is that it makes God many (when he is one.) Islam’s approach is mostly to militaristically declare their conception correct and weed out all of those who disagree.

The approach of Christianity is and has always been not to narrowly define God (Historic deviations from this point nonwithstanding) but to say that you can not be talking about God if you deny certain things about him: The trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection, the existence of his Life, and so forth. It is common to misinterpret the creed to be defining God rather than pointing out what he isn’t. (The original creed included an anathema, which said, “And those who say that he is not God, or that there was a time that he was not, let them be Anathema…” Had such heresies not arisen no creed would have emerged.)

Islam is strictly cataphatic; leaving no room (unless you’re a Sufi) to experience the mystery of God.

It also seems to me that Islam exists within the historical framework of Christendom. No matter what it does it is caught in that framework; for instance ‘Shirk’, which is the cardinal sin, is a rebuttal to the Trinity. It would seem that instead really saying anything, it is mostly trying to ‘unsay’ a lot of what has been said.

Some argue that even though Allah is nearer than the jugular vein, he is not everywhere. Some modern Muslims argue that to affirm otherwise would be to fall into pantheism and shirk: the association of partners with Allah, the cardinal sin in Islam.

It really amazes me how often this comes up and how fundemental a tennant Mohammed’s basic mis-interpretation of Christianity is to Islam. If they took the time to actually read a Gospel or two they’d see. Or they’d probably just call it another “corruption.”

Hm, descriptions of distance in units of time. Mohammed must have spent some years in Los Angeles traffic or something. We use time to describe distance, too.

Yes, and it takes about five hundred years to get across town here, too.

I say to the Western scholars: Do not interpret the Quran for Muslims. We Muslims are capable of interpreting the Quran for ourselves.

I’m not trying to interpret the Quran “for Muslims”, I’m trying to interpret it “for non-Muslims”, and see how the Quran mandates I be treated by Muslims. So far, it’s nothing but hatred toward me, regardless of how it outlines Muslim-Muslim relations.

To paraphrase the old saying “your right to freedom ends at the tip of my nose”, Muslims right to “be Muslim” ends at the edge of my skyscraper. Stick that in your hookah and smoke it, Tahir A. Qureshi.

Article on Obama and Islam

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={C8772E0E-73B9-4DDE-BEF1-DE6A1CB4C273}

Verses 2-4 almost sound like a type of creation story (or at least a reference to Job 26:7), but Ibn Kathir’s explanation in this matter, using years to describe distance, dimension & direction, is puzzling. Can you clarify why he would use that terminology and how that disproves allah’s physicality?

I don’t think Ibn Kathir is trying to disprove Allah’s physicality. He seems to be taking that physicality for granted. As for using years to measure distance, he is talking about how long it would take to travel from one to the other.

A question for you, RS:
Verses 2-4 almost sound like a type of creation story (or at least a reference to Job 26:7), but Ibn Kathir’s explanation in this matter, using years to describe distance, dimension & direction, is puzzling. Can you clarify why he would use that terminology and how that disproves allah’s physicality?

Thanks again for taking the time to present a great study.

Barry Obama is the biological son of a Muslim father. His choice to be muslim was made before he was born. There is no going back. It’s not common knowledge yet, but he has to be marked an apostate by the Islamic preacher sect or they aren’t doing their jobs.

pc on January 27, 2008 at 11:20 AM

You raise an interesting question. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, Obama wins. How will Muslim countries and leaders deal with him since now they aren’t just dealing with non-believers, they are dealing with an apostate. What happens then? Some enterprising reporter should start asking…

Islam expert Robert Spencer has a weekly series at Hot Air called Blogging the Qur’an. I highly recommend it. The Qur’an can be a difficult read, with its stilted language and incomplete references to people, places, and events that assume…

Recently I received emails or links to the problem in a muslim country that by law does not allow Christians to use the name Allah for God in their translation of the Bible on the principle that the Christian or Jewish God was falsely described and not the same as the true God, Allah, who owns that name exclusively.

This is going on in Malaysia:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/019558.php

Robert, Is there evidence that Allah was worshipped, prior to Muhammad’s arrival on the scene, by the quraysh as a moon god?

I believe there is, but can’t put hand to evidence for it at the moment.

Did Mohammad, in essence, elevate the already existing pagan deity of “Allah” to the supreme, trancendent being worshipped by Christians and Jews?

Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians used the word “Allah” for the supreme God before the advent of Islam.

But Islam does not seem to have an evangelistic, or missionary presence. If asked, will they proselytize? Do they have ‘reasons to believe’? Or do they not evangelize, because like early Calvinists, this is exclusively up to the will of Allah?

Oh yes, they proselytize energetically in some places.

This remains the orthodox view of the Qur’an: that it is a perfect, unchanging copy of the Mother of the Book that has existed forever with Allah.

How do Islamic scholars square this with passages in the Quran that refer to contemporary events?

Allah foresees all!

Mr Spencer, is there such a thing as a ‘mystical’ sect of Islam that practices a form of numerology for hidden meaning in the Quranic text, much like the Bible had with the likes of Ivan Panin, or his modern disciple Chuck Missler?

I never heard of Panin or Missler, but there certainly a lively “a form of numerology” that searches for “hidden meaning in the Quranic text” among Muslims.

There is a huge amount of speculative numerology centered on “Above it are nineteen,” (Qur’an 74:30).

No, I hadn’t seen it before, and yes, it does sound ominous.

saint kansas on January 27, 2008 at 9:40 AM

Debate explores Muslim, Christian relationships