Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

The ‘Muslim Catholic’ Who Invented the Christian-Muslim Relationship

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The origins of the dangerous myth of “Abrahamic Religions.”

When Pope Leo hails Islam and when western politicians praise Islam as an “Abrahamic religion,” they are not reaching back to an ancient Christian tradition but the relatively new twentieth century invention of a man whom Pope Pius IX had described as a “Muslim Catholic”.

Traditional Christianity saw Islam as a pun for the sins of nations and Islamic rulers like Sultan Mehmed II as a “second Mohammed,” a “son of Satan” and a harbinger of the Antichrist.

One unlikely Christian ‘Islamist’ in the twentieth century helped change all that.

Louis Massignon was a French academic, intellectual, artist, officer, priest, gay man and likely spy, whose obsessive orientalism led him to spend a good deal of his time, occasionally at risk of his life, in the Muslim world, to advocate for its causes and to find spiritual meaning in Islam.

This was the era of ‘orientalism’ when dissatisfied wealthy western young men and women set off to find meaning in other cultures while often joining cults and engaging in sexual experimentation. Following the familiar pattern, Massignon’s travels in the Muslim world allowed him to experiment with Islamic mysticism and homosexual relationships. Along the way he developed an interest in Sufism, suffered a mental breakdown and became a scholar of Islam.

Such things were not all that unusual back then and Massignon had a number of Jewish contemporaries like Hugo ‘Hamid’ Marcus, a gay Jewish man who translated the Koran into German and was released from a concentration camp after the Nazis realized he was Muslim, Jacob ‘Israel’ de Haan, a gay poet who moved to Israel while trying to undermine its rebrth, and Leopold Weiss who changed his name to Muhammad Asad and became a spy for Saudi Arabia.

But Massignon developed a syncretic melding of Christianity and Islam that still retains a potent influence on the Catholic Church, Christianity and the West until this day. While Massignon returned to his mother’s Catholic faith, he credited a Sufi mystic with his spiritual transformation, describing him as a saint, and developed joint prayers and rituals with Christians and Muslims.

Massignon convinced Pope Pius XI to approve mutual intercessory prayers, earning the nickname of the “Catholic Muslim,” and pioneered the equation of Islamic concepts such as “jihad” with Christian ones. His most enduring one though was the depiction of Christianity, Judaism and Islam as comprising a unity of “Abrahamic religions.” Rebuking Christians as colonialists, he contended that “the Muslim, who believes in the equality of origin of the three Abrahamic religions, Israel, Christ  and Islam, knows that they refer to the same god of truth.”

Like much of Massignon’s theology, the concept of “Abrahamic religions” was not a Christian concept or for that matter a Jewish one, but an Islamic construct that allowed Muslims to claim primacy because in their teachings, Ishmael was the elder son who is taken by Abraham to build the foundation of Mecca, and whom Muslims claim was nearly sacrificed.

In actuality, Islam does not date back to Abraham or Ishmael, but to Mohammed who far postdated both Judaism and Christianity. The only connection between Abraham and Islam is that some Arabs (Adnanite Arabs including Mohammed) claim to be descended from one of Ishmael’s sons. Even assuming that this is true, Islam is not an ‘Abrahamic’ religion because a distant descendant of the patriarch’s concubine’s son created it 2,500 years later. Certainly not any more so than any of the other non Judeo-Christian religions held by Arabs before that.

Louis Massignon might have set out to create mutual understanding between Catholicism and Islam, to legitimize the displays of Muslim mysticism and piety that  he encountered in his time in Cairo, oscillating between gay clubs and Al-Azhar’s Islamic scholarship, his time in Iraq and Algeria, but what he actually unknowingly accomplished was something fundamentally different.

Embracing ‘Abrahamic Religions’ licensed an Islamic theological primogeniture that made it the ‘elder brother’ to other religions. When Muslims talk about “Abrahamic religions,” what they are really doing is asserting the supremacy of Islam based on the lineage of the elder male, the same principle on which Islam’s caliphs were chosen (Mohammed had no living adults sons, so his successors were the fathers of his wives or the husbands of his daughters.)

This principle which once governed the political order of many of the kingdoms of Europe (and caused more than a few wars)  may seem peculiar to their distant descendants, but establishing theological and political supremacy is a significant element in the Islamic conquest of Europe.

Massignon’s interest in Sufi mysticism largely blinded him to the political drives of Islam. Like many orientalists who attributed the conflicts between Islam and Europe to the Ottoman Empire rather than to the innate theological imperatives of Islam, he saw Arab Muslims as oppressed rather than the original conquerors and destroyers of Christianity in the Middle East.

The initial resurgence of post-war Jihadism in the Middle East was viewed by many European leftists as part of a global liberation movement to end colonialism. Ever the orientalist, Massignon was drawn to Gandhi, and despite the Indian’s leaders forced clashes with Islamic nationalism (which Gandhi had done his best to avert) viewed him as a model when Muslim terrorist groups began murdering Christians and Jews under French rule in Algeria.

In the 1950s, Massignon welcomed Muslims to France, denounced the French for their prejudice against Muslim mass migration and insisted, as later popes like Francis and Leo would, that Europe had a sacred mission to take in Muslims and “to love fraternally beyond their milieu and their relationships in time and space  here below, within a community directed towards the universal.”

Allying with leftist intellectuals like Jean Paul Sartre and ACLU founder and Communist Roger Nash Baldwin’s International League for Human Rights, Massignon took the side of the Jihadists in Algeria over those of France, protesting and holding showy Gandhian fasts. Holding up the ‘Abrahamic’ model, Massignon argued for a resolution, but the notion of any Abrahamic unity had been a one way street and did not stop Algerian Muslims from perpetrating horrifying atrocities against Jews and Christians including the Milk Bar bombing aimed at children.

Rather than recognizing the rising Jihadism, even while Massignon admitted that there was a “religious revival of the masses” in Islam “focused on a desperate and revolutionary fanaticism” that would sweep around the world, he went on insisting that the “the Muslim state, which does not recognize any confraternity, enjoins its members not to meddle in public affairs because they have ‘renounced the  world.’” This may have been true of a handful of Sufi mystics of his acquaintance, but not of Islam which was founded on politics and which lives, kills and conquers for politics, and which sees the ultimate conquest of the world as its supreme religious mission.

Massignon complained about a Muslim leader that  The god which inspires his conduct is not the God of Abraham, of pity and  self­sacrifice, of the ‘Abdal,’ of the substitute saints, it is, he be­lieves, the god of private vengeance (which Islam has specifically abolished.)” And yet even a cursory reading of the Koran and its accompanying narratives show Allah and Mohammed engaging in private vengeance and viewing the killings of enemies as a sacred act.

The West’s foremost Islamist had fundamentally misunderstood Islam and his misunderstanding has been transmitted to popes and politicians.

After the success of the Algerian ‘revolutionary’ movement that he supported, the 1 million Catholics all but disappeared. During Pope Leo’s recent visit, an estimated 8,000 Catholics in the entire country. And France has long since been under siege by Islamic mass migration.

Saving the West will require unlearning the ahistorical follies and fallacies that a generation of orientalists like Massignon imported into its intellectual precincts. Islam is not a religion of peace, but is founded on an endless war in the name of an ultimate peace of submission. It does not recognize the equality of Christianity and Judaism, but rather curses and mocks them, oppresses them and forcibly converts their followers. It is not ‘Abrahamic’, but ‘Mohammedan’.

The name is important because Abraham was a man of peace who only fought in defense of his family when they were attacked, and after that single battle, refused to take slaves or loot. Mohammed by contrast was a warlord who built his religion on slavery and theft. If Islam were an ‘Abrahamic’ religion, the faith that Massignon and other Christian and Jewish ‘Islamists’ thought it was, peace would be easy, but it is a Mohammedan religion and so peace is impossible. The only periods of peace with Islam comes from its periods of weakness.

Massignon’s Christian Islam doesn’t exist. But Muslim Christians and Muslim Jews, men and women so devoted to a peaceful Islam that only exists in their imagination, are all too real.

And unless we unlearn the folly of an imaginary Islam, more nations will fall to the real Islam.

Comments

  1. Too much boloney to read the entire article, Mr. Greenfield. (I know it isn’t your boloney)

    There is no such thing as a Christian muzzie. If one is a Christian, he cannot be a muzzie. If one is muzzie, he is not Christian.

    There is no combining Christianity and islime. If a person is truly Christian, he will reject and oppose islam.

    Jesus said, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor throw pearls before swine.” He also warned about “rotten trees producing rotten fruit,” and “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
    Paul wrote not to ‘sit at the table of demons” and John wrote, “do not welcome those” who bring a foreign teaching. “Do not say a greeting to them or allow them into your homes.”

    and they warned of “the anti-Christ” who is anyone and all who reject Christ or lie about Him.

    Couldn’t help but notice that all of the ones I did read about above, were homosexual. And perverting the teachings and commands of Christ in order to spread the evils of a demonic entity.

  2. I get why Christians and Jews don’t like “Abrahamic religions” being used to lump islam w/ them. While I’m not unsympathetic to that view, I do get why some critics of both Christianity and islam do use “Abrahamic” to lump them together. It’s part history, and part current trends (I guess not much else is left?)

    It”s the first 2 commandments – the dogma that monotheism is sacrosanct, and that idolatry is a big no-no, that are a problem. Once one rejects Atheism and Agnosticism, then making the case that there is only one deity, as opposed to 33 or 745 or a million is just impossible, but that’s what Christians and muslims both aggressively claim (while Jews believe that as well, they are hardly the proselytizing kind, and seem to be more of a live-and-let-live type of people). We know about jihad, so looking at the Christian side of this, there was – for the Catholics – the Inquisitions, the conversion of “Latin” America and the Thirty Year war. Both the Catholics and Orthodox persecuted the Jews, and so except for the Protestants, tolerance was something almost as absent from Christianity historically as it was from islam, even if one concedes that the latter was exponentially more barbaric. Once that chapter of Christendom ended, it morphed into a “love-your-enemy” faith that embraced islam, and that partnership is there in the Catholic, Anglican and Russian Orthodox faiths. Daniel focuses on the Catholics here, but this is true of the leading Protestant and Orthodox sects as well. I’m not sure whether there are other Protestant or Orthodox sects that are explicitly anti-islam: I’m open to learning about any that are

    Only exception is the Jews, but they never lorded it over any other peoples, nor did they persecute anybody for their faith, despite the first 2 commandments. Now whether they didn’t b’cos they couldn’t or b’cos they genuinely didn’t believe in those commandments is something anyone can hypothetize on, but in today’s Israel, Gentiles pretty much have the same rights as Jews. I therefore avoid using the term “Abrahamic”, particularly since the commandments came to Moses, not Abraham, but this alliance b/w Christians & muslims is problematic

    • There was a “promise” a “covenant” between God and Abraham long before Moses was born and longer still before he was given the Commandments.

      God promised Abraham that through him, all of the nations of earth would be blessed. Not every individual because many individuals are just plain evil, but people of every nation would receive blessings because Abraham “listened to God’s voice.”

      Furthermore, as has been written here on this site many times, when muzzies rape, steal, kidnap, murder, lie….they are following their book of demon evil.
      when Christians do any of those things, they are going against the Bible and the Commands of Jesus. It isn’t Christian.
      The Ten given to Moses does not apply to Christians except in the principles involved, and in Jesus’ Words about the “two greatest Commandments”.
      If you “love your neighbor as yourself” you won’t steal from him, or cheat him or rape or murder him. But it doesn’t mean you take him in and feed him, nor allow him to rape your daughter.

      Too many people regard everything a person does while claiming to be Christian, as representing Christianity. and way too many Christians….at least claiming to be….do not understand the Commands of Jesus Christ.

      Jesus offered His Way, but He never ran after anyone to force His Way upon them. He defended His Father’s House and He condemned the evil of evil people. when He said “love your enemy,” He also said “Be like your Father in heaven.”
      Our Father in heaven doesn’t look on muzzies as ones Christians should be treating as brothers or friends. We just aren’t supposed to take Judgment into our own human hands and execute it.

    • Infidel: I have come across many times a specific contention which I think valid and supporting what you wrote above, to wit, that monotheistic religions are the most intolerant of all religions.

      One minor disagreement with you here and that is about the Protestant sects being more tolerant of Jews. No, not really. Just look at Martin Luther’s “On the Jews and Their Lies” composition by him, in which he argued for outright persecution of Jews. Many other examples could be found of Protestant prejudice against Jews from the 16th century onwards. Ironically, it was often Popes who interceded to stop this or that pogrom against the Jews by fellow Catholics, for instance Gregory I (590-604). With all three major sects of Christianity—Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox—it is a mixed record here, as Jews know only too well.

      • Wellington

        Thanks for your feedback: that’s interesting to know. I was unaware of Martin Luther’s views on the Jews, but do note that unlike in countries like Spain, which the Jews fled (just like the Moors), Jews weren’t persecuted in countries like Holland (where they fled to) or in Elizabethan England (which was undergoing a somewhat controversial transition from Catholic to Protestant, courtesy Henry VIII’s disputes w/ the Papacy), centuries after King Edward I had them expelled. Not sure what their predicament was in Prussia or other Protestant German states

        I do think that polytheistic religions are inherently more tolerant in that one could simply add Christ to their pantheon, and superficially make it “Christian-compatible”. You see that in Ohio, where when Vivek Ramaswamy says that he considers Christ a son of God, as opposed to the son of God – something that’s costing him votes of Ohioans (when they don’t think that he wants to import all of India to this country. Incidentally, I disagree w/ Mr Ramaswamy when he claims that Hinduism is a monotheistic religion believing in a “one true God”: people really have to stretch the definition of “monotheism” to justify that claim, aside from it contradicting what are in the Vedas and Puranas – the 2 sets of Hindu scriptures). But it’s the first 2 commandments that break that “compatibility” by insisting that people disown any other deities they may revere and honor, and stick to just “God” and Christ. A lot of people are just vanilla deists, who worship a deity w/o being specific about the Abrahamic God, Christ, Shiva, Ahura Mazda, Zeus or Thor, and neatly sidestep the question of whether or not they believe in a single or multiple deities

        • Re polytheistic religions and their tolerance–Pagan Nero burned Christians.
          Mahayana Buddhists in China slaughtered Christians in the Boxer Rebellion.
          Hindus and Buddhists are after each other in Sri Lanka
          Buddhist monks have supported outrages on both Muslims and Christians in Myanmar.

        • Kepha, in line with your comment, I have seen some reports on Christians in India being persecuted by Hindus….sent into the sea, kidnapped , threatened and beaten.

          And in the ancient nation of Israel, it was commanded by God that any “alien resident” was to follow the Law while “residing in the Land.” Worship of other gods by alien residents was not allowed if they wanted to stay in Israel.

          Christians are the most persecuted of any group around the world. As Jesus said it would be. A Christian who doesn’t believe that they have the Truth, does not remain Christian for long.

        • Kepha

          The reason that the Romans persecuted the Christians was the latter insisting that none of their deities were deities. Had it just been a case of adding Christ to the pantheon, it might have worked, but like I said above, it was the first 2 commandments that did them in

          Was the Boxer rebellion a religious war: while they did attack Christians, was that movement a Buddhist movement? Or Taoist? Or Confucian? Incidentally, Buddhism is not a polytheistic religion: while Buddhists believe that Buddha was the incarnation of Vishnu, they reject all other Hindu deities, so there is some argument on whether they are monotheistic or even atheistic

          As for the Sri Lankan civil war, it was never a religious war: it was a Tamil vs Sinhalese war, where the Tamil side was Marxist. Best proof of that was that in India, Hindu activists did not support the Tamil side: it was the Dravidian supremacists in Madras who did. Also, that Eelam movement also got support from Leftist regimes, like Libya’s at the time (the 80s). Calling the Eelam movement Hindu would be like describing Che Guevara as Catholic

          As for Buddhist monks cracking down on muslims & Christians in both Sri Lanka and Burma, they’re responding to conversions. In case you think those conversions are innocuous, we already know what converts to islam turn out to be: jihadists. As for converts to Christianity, 3 states in North East India – Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya have been Christianized over 7 decades, and today, they are centers of separatist campaigns – particularly Mizoram. And in Manipur, Christians have been pulling off massacres of Hindus, w/ the BJP governments just watching

          The idea that if a population becomes Christian, all becomes hunky dory is misleading. Just look at South Sudan, which was supposed to have become very peaceful once it seceded from Khartoum. Instead, they were plunged into a civil war and today, are not much better than the country they seceded from

        • Actually Infidel, it was because the Christians refused to bow down to the Roman ‘gods’ in acts of worship.

          It was not for the reason you stated. The Apostle Paul is the one who went to Rome. He was, in fact, a Roman citizen. And in his witnessing work to the people at the Areopagus, he recognized that they worshipped many gods. He noticed that they had a statue of what the Romans called “an unknown god.” They had that because they didn’t want to take a chance on not worshipping a god who was unknown to them.

          So Paul told them that he was there to tell them about the Unknown God to which they had an idol and worshipped.

          The real reason the Christians were persecuted and murdered was due to the fact that they refused to bow to the other gods. They made the right choice.

      • In the 1st Century the majority of the believers in the Churches that Paul visited were actually Jews who followed Christ. ALL the Aposals were also Jews as was the Messiah. The Roman Church was not invented till the 4th Century, when Emperor Constantine walked his population into the sea to baptise them . . .
        .
        For 1000 + years the Church of Rome persecuted the Jews and called them Christ Killers . . .
        On their way to fight the Mohamedans the Crusaders often sacked Jewish Towns them came across along the way.
        They were just as aggressive with the Christian Sects that had existed since the 1st Century . . . read “Foxes Book of Martyrs” for a little insite.
        In the 1960s the Pope did offer an apology . . .
        .
        The Roman Church invented “Replacement Theology” which many foolish believers are buying into today.
        Islam has absolutely NOTHING to do with Abraham, who lived more than 1500 years before their Invention. It is a Political, Judical System posing as a religion . . . whose goal is Conquest.

    • Yes, the religions “of the Book” are “intolerant”. Truth is by nature “intolerant”. I learned simple arithmetic, and, when my grade school self tried to count by sevens and said, “7,14, 21, 26,” I rightly got marked wrong.

      If Massignon was calling for Christians to love even the “them” neighbors as themselves, I am with him. After all, when Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?”, He answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan, a man who, in Jesus’ view, worshiped ignorantly (cf. Luke 10:25-37; John 4:22).

      As one who believes God actually spoke to all Israel from Sinai, then by the prophets, and finally became flesh in Jesus the Messiah, I will live by Jesus’ telling me, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father but by me.” (Jn. 14:6). Those are not Uncle Kepha’s words, but those of Jesus himself; and, if I confess him as Lord, I must accept them. But, believing as well that the risen and clorified Jesus knew perfectly well what he was doint when he called Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, I reocgnize as well that the weapons in Jesus’ holy war are the preaching of the Gospel, prayer, and ethical living. Go read the Corinthian Epistles to see how those weapons are spiritual rather than carnal.

      I read the Qur’an and Hadith and see how Muhammad got much wrong, despite Muhammad’s claim to continue the line of the biblical prophets. Having been taught that the Holy Trinity is Father, Word (who became flesh and dwelt among us, and is also called Son), and Holy Spirit, I cannot but see Muhammad as either mislad, lying, or both when he says my Holy Trinity is God, Jesus, and Mary. Simiarly, having lived in proximity to Jews and having discussed religion with them, when Muhammad says they see Uzair (Ezra) as Son of God the way I see Jesus, I again cannot but conclude that Muhammad either didn’t know what he was talking about or deliberately bearing false witness against a neigbor.

      As for the Jews, while I readily recognize modern Israel’s tolerance of its minorities (or, more than mere tolerance, but meaningful citizenship for them); I can’t say that Judaism per se is tolerant. I go back to intertestamental times and see how Jesus ben Sirach looks on the Samritans as wrong-headed (Just as Jesus the Messiah did–even if, as a Protestant, I do not see Sirach/Excclesiasticus as canonical, but merely ancient and edifying), and how the Hsamoneans forcefully Judaized the Idumaeans (and, becauce of it, ultimately got the Jews under the rule of Herod).

      @Wellington–Indeed, what Luther wrote about the Jews was awful. But, closer to home, in Nazi-occupied Norway, the starchy Lutheran Confessionalist Bp. Ole Hallesby (who would also see Reformed Uncle Kepha as wrongheaded over my understanding of the Lord’s Supper) said that Chritians must not cooperate with Nazi designs on the Jews. Did Bp. Hallesby, by that token, betray the Lutheran doctrines of justification by faith, sola scriptura, solo Christo, and the corporeal presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper? Ithink not. Nor did those similarly strachy confessionalist Reformed Doleantie in the Netherlands betray the meat of the Three Forms of Unity by finding themselves disproportionately represented among the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem.

      Why? Christian Scripture is loaded with admonitions to practice peace. Its “Warrant for Genocide” in the Hexateuch is clearly a one-time insturction for the conquest of Canaan at a time when the “sin of the Amorite was full”–and comes with a warning that Israel will meet a similar judgment for unfaithfulness to God’s Covenant. The modern missions-minded Evngelical Christian wants the destruction of Jews, Muslims, post-Christian Westerners, etc. no more than he wants the destruction of the Asians and Africans, but, rather, their conversion (and that is the work of God’s Word and Spirit).

      While it may be that God’s controversies with the nations today will one day lead to armed civilizational conflict, I still pray that God will so revive his Christian churches that we may present a renewed, loving, and effective witness “…That the Jews be called and the fullness of the Gentiles (including Muslims–and Jews and Gentiles as the two races of man stems from Scripture) be brought in…” (Westminster Larger Catechism, QA191).

      • Thank you for your reply, Kepha. Just two points here 1) As many historians and others have pointed out, just about the safest place for Jews to be during the Nazi era was in Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal, both exceedingly Catholic nations. There is no question that within the Christian framework, some Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox can do the right thing at times and some will not. 2) Are you familiar with Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus, first published in German in 1906, in English in 1910 and subsequently in many other languages? I find Schweitzer’s arguments quite compelling and they mirror what certain others have contended like the historian Michael Grant, to wit, Jesus thought he was ushering in the end of the world and Jesus got this wrong. Would be interested in your take on this. Best to you and yours.

        • Let’s see if this flies. Sucuri blocked my first atttempt.

          Schweitzer is right to accuse the older Questers for the Historical Jesus of looking down the well of 19 centuries only to see the reflections of their own faces in the bottom. He was right to note that Jesus is a very distrubing person, and not the nice, soothing, proto-rationalist or proto-humanitarian the 18th and 19th century critics made him out to be.

          This being said, Schweitzer misses the mark when he is content to leave Jesus as a wild-eyed apocalypticist who got his prediction of the end o the world wrong.

          Yes, Jesus is an apocalypticist. But his Olivet discourse, which says the generation hearing him will see come to pass, refers chiefly to the coming destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus. Jesus is steeped in the Prophets of Israel, and uses the sort of language they used. Also, like them, he sees portents of the final judgment in the temporal judgments such as the destructions of Samaria and Jerusalem (twice!). But, in his teaching on forgiving one who sins against you, instituting the Supper, and setting his apostles as authority figures, Jesus is also providing for a community. Hence, Schweitzer did not see far enough–and not much further than those people “vom Reimarus zu Wrede” whom he criticizes.

          I’ll lay my cards down and say that I agree with J.A.T. Robinson that the New Testament documents predate 70 A.D. For him, the clincher was that nobody in the NT sees the destruction of Jerusalem as a fait accompli. I would add that in Acts, Luke takes pains to show how the early church had its propets, esepcially one Agabus, who predicted the famine in Claudius’ time and Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem. Had Jerusalem already fallen when he wrote, it’s inconcivable that Luke would fail to make a note of “just as the Lord said….” Further, Acts does not end with any premonition of Paul’s upcoming martyrdom under Nero, but on a surprisingly upbeat note. Hence, Luke-Acts must predate 66 A.D., and thus also throws Matthew and Mark back in time.

        • Thanks for your reply, Kepha.

          Well, just for argument’s sake, what if the traditional dates for the Gospels et al. have been correct? Does this really change matters for you?

          Also, do you admit that what you believe—Jesus as divine, the Resurrection, the Trinity, etc. could be mistaken? I would reference here two people, David Hume and Miguel de Unamuno. The former asserted that the only true Christian is a skeptic and the latter stated that faith which does not doubt is dead faith. Yes, is doubt allowed and, if so, how much?

          Moreover, and assuming Christianity is the true faith, why would God do it as He did? Why come at a time when medicine and magic are so intermixed that separating the two was deuce difficult (except for the ancient Greeks)? Why emphasize faith above reason? Why threaten those who do not have faith with eternal punishment? Why the bloody sacrifice of the Cross—was there no better way? Why the abolition of physical laws by way of miracles to impress people? And so on.

          You see, even if Christianity is the true faith, I remain disappointed—and if Islam is the true faith, then it is much worse, i.e., we live in a very creepy universe and God’s a jerk. Of course, I am a skeptic to the core, rely only on my reason and have no faith whatsoever and think there is no such thing as the true faith, but assuming that I’m wrong I sometimes wonder what is in store for me though I am fairly certain Marlene Dietrich got it right when she said, “When you’re dead, you’re dead, that’s it.” I think it highly unlikely that there is any afterlife of any kind. .

          I write all this, Kepha, in a spirit of friendship and I will close here by stating what I have before here at JW and that is that I wish every Muslim would wake up tomorrow a devout Christian. I have no doubt whatsoever that the world would be far better off were this to occur and were the opposite to occur, then darkness indeed would descend upon the Earth. I am non-religious but not anti-religious and support certain religions which have a proper ethic while also realizing that for many religious belief helps sustain them in this brief, often uncertain and sometimes even terrible and frightful existence. Take care.

        • You guys don’t know. Islam has sharia. Islamist want to mix Islam in with Christianity because we are weaker and fall for it.

          Is it working? Look at the pope, the big boss of all the Christians. He says Islam is a legitimate religion and you can go to heaven if you are Muslim, go look it up.

          What about Muslim? They don’t say the same because they aren’t stupid like us. They know it’s a bullshit game, and we believe it.

          That’s why they allowed to come to our countries and plop up the rot, sharia zones. Their relative comes and then ten more kids and three more wifes.

        • MIG BOB, your claim that Anti-Jihadists here have never heard of Sharia law is just mizstaln.

          And the Catholic Pope is not the “big boss of all the Christians”. Try again.

        • Obviously you are not a student of Bible Eschatology . . . . in fact I suspect you completely ignore the OT Prophets . . . .
          .
          In the Olivet Discourse Christ was talking to the Jews . . .
          .
          Jesus warned repeatedly that in the Last Days … Matt 24:
          3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
          4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
          5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

          11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
          12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
          13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
          14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. (That could only be NOW)
          15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
          (What is the “Abomination of Desolation” and Where is the “Holy Place”)
          16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
          (Who is fleeing to the mountains from Judaea)

          Daniel 9 explaines it further.
          Zechariah 12 tells us When and Where Jesus returns …
          He then sits on the Throne of David in the Temple in Jerusalem for 1000 years …
          3rd Temple Construction could start any day now …
          .
          25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

          33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

          34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

  3. Thank you. I will no longer spread the teaching that God promised to bless the world of Islam through the blessing promised to Ishmael.

  4. You cannot be a good Christian and a good Moslem ,Islam demands you to hate unbelievers ,Islam does not believe we are all made in the image of God and equal law for all believers and unbelievers. Islam demands force conversation of unbelievers or death or enslavement of unbelievers .Christianity in the 20-21 century does not believe in forced conversation or murdering unbelievers because of their faith ,You have to chose to follow one or the other you cannot hold two contradicting belief system true .It would be like believing the earth is flat or a round globe at the same time both cannot be held as true. This French one time “priest” seems to be a rich over educated person who in his boredom wants to have his cake and eat it too. Anyone who believes everything really believes nothing and sets himself up as above god in making up his own false belief system base on nothing is true the ultima blasphemed against God. Making these people heroes for moral weak people who will not take a stand that a belief system is important and some systems are superior to others .Relativism is not law ,not a belief system ,not a faith ,to excuse your weakness for a failure to chose .Islam is the choose of violence ,sexual aggressiveness ,a belief of a whorehouse heaven for those who murder men women children who believe differently then you. It is the religion the glorifies slave holders ,child molesters ,rapist ,thieves ,murders all done in the name of allah a pagan moon god .A god created by Mohamad who used bits and pieces of Jewish ,Christianity and ancient pagan desert religions and gave birth to that abortion of a religion Islam that would have died if force conversion and fear did not keep it alive for the last 1200 .years. Jewish faith gave birth to the Christian faiths they are connected by many laws and scriptures in logical order .Islam is a Frankenstein monster of a religion stealing bits and pieces from all over the place with little or no logic beyond mindless violence to advance it and giving license to every human vice as long as the evil deeds are done to the “unbelievers” .It is no wonder Hitler admired it as a supremist war like religion to drive the masses to kill the “outsiders” in bloodlust ,blind loyalty to the tribe unquestioning any moral conscious about their actions.

  6. When people (liberal shmucks) say “well we all worship the same God!” they ignore the following – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped the God who gave hs the Ten Commandments. But so-called “Allah” orders his deluded followers to hate and fight all non-Mulims. In the name of Jihad Muslims may fight, murder, rape, plunder and oppress all non Muslims. Despite their supposed hated of homosexuality Muslims routinely sodomize non Muslim POWs as well as anti-Islam dissidents. Also lying – Muslims will lie to non-Muslims to trick them into converting. However once the duped converts learn more about the real nature of Islam they often abandon Islam in spite of the threats of Muslims to kill all apostates. So it is a religion that breaks every one of the Ten Commandment (Muhammad is really an idol) so he or it cannot be the same God that Jews and Christians worship. Yes – Muslims also worship “one god” – but Ahab and Jezebel also worshipped one “god” – Baal to whom his worshippers burned alive their first born baby boys as sacrifices.

    The current Pope is a total sucker thinking that if he rubs noses ( or more likely rubs dicks) with the Egyptian and Turkish imams that there will be peace and friendship between Christians and Jews. If Muslim armies ever captured the Vatican it’s more likely its commanders would take turns raping him probably on the high altar.

    NEVER TRUST A MUSLIM!

    Postscript: Another FRENCH Catholic philosopher, Jasques Ellule, pointed out that many of what critics considered to be the dark aspects of Christianity – the Crusades, the Reconquista, the Spanish Inquisition and the harsher aspects of Canon Lew were actually all reactions to Muslim impositions – Jihads, Muslim Shariah courts, and the oppression kf dhimmis under Islam. some Renaissance Cardinal mistook the “muhabelah” challenge in the Quran to be a respectful ecumenical dialog whereas in relation it would have been more of a foul mouthed cursing and pissing contest.

    • Jacques Ellul belonged to the Eglise Reformee, not Roman Catholic. Also, his theology was more Barthian neo-orthodox rather than truly confessional Protestant.

  7. The well-meaning Renaissance Cardinal who wanted dialog was Nicholas of Cusa.

    Apology for crude comment about Pope Leo the Last but he seems overly partial to the Father James Martin lavender mafia. Don’t be surprised if Leo elevates him to rank of Bishop or even cardinal.

    • I have been unable to drive to my Eastern Church (one hour plus away) due to gas prices, so I’ve been attending a western (Roman) church here in town. I was talking to the priest there and told him my thoughts on Pope Leo’s pandering to Muslims and lack of speaking out against the genocide of Christians in Africa. Was pleasantly surprised when he totally agreed with me. And he also said he “didn’t like the last guy’s views either” meaning Pope Francis. It’s encouraging to me that not all priests and Catholics are buying the codswallop of ecumenical outreach.

  8. I edited out objectionable comment:

    When people (liberal shmucks) say “well we all worship the same God!” they ignore the following – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped the God who gave hs the Ten Commandments. But so-called “Allah” orders his deluded followers to hate and fight all non-Mulims. In the name of Jihad Muslims may fight, murder, rape, plunder and oppress all non Muslims. Despite their supposed hated of homosexuality Muslims routinely sodomize non Muslim POWs as well as anti-Islam dissidents. Also lying – Muslims will lie to non-Muslims to trick them into converting. However once the duped converts learn more about the real nature of Islam they often abandon Islam in spite of the threats of Muslims to kill all apostates. So it is a religion that breaks every one of the Ten Commandment (Muhammad is really an idol) so he or it cannot be the same God that Jews and Christians worship. Yes – Muslims also worship “one god” – but Ahab and Jezebel also worshipped one “god” – Baal to whom his worshippers burned alive their first born baby boys as sacrifices.

    The current Pope is a total sucker thinking that if he rubs noses ) with the Egyptian and Turkish imams that there will be peace and friendship between Christians and Jews. If Muslim armies ever captured the Vatican he would learn suddenly that the rebukes of friends are better than the false kisses of your enemies.

    The Renaissance Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa misunderstood the “muhabrlah” in the Quran as a sort of respectful ecumenical debate. In reality it is more it a cursing contrast in which opponents try to trash talk each other into submission. These scandalous proceedings sometimes were broadcast on Egyptian TV much to the delight of secularist Egyptians. MEMRI would do a great service to the world if they rebroadcast these spitting contests either closed captioned translations.

    NEVER TRUST A MUSLIM!

  9. The three Abrahamic religions stuff is nonsense for one of two reasons. Reason #1: the Islamic deity, Allah, is a perversion of the Judeo-Christian deity, a rip-off of it though bearing faint resemblance to it; Reason #2: the Islamic deity is not even a rip-off of the Judeo-Christian deity, assertions to the contrary by Muslims themselves (and clueless dhimmis) notwithstanding, but based on some kind of moon deity from the polytheistic Arab society before Mohammed.

    Whichever of the two, there is no way the three Abrahamic religions contention can’t stand up to scrutiny. So, choose which poison that Islam has inflicted on the world in wanting to foist the fictional Allah on all of us.

  10. I remember being excited to read about the great sufi mystic Rumi’s love poems and thought of such unity within religions but I had read a few areas of the Qu’ran that were really defeating of any of that notion, even back in my post college days when I came across that material. Then Rumi and the sufi’s and the love poetry until I came upon something, somewhere where Rumi, the great poet and mystic had commented that he found nothing Mohammed said or wrote to contradict his love poetry- something to that effect. I was repulsed by his comment, and never had the desire to go the ‘mystic’ poetry route again.

    • Good call. It’s also worth noting that a bulk of the Turkic peoples from Turkey to India were sufis. Including mass murderers like Tamerlane and Aurangzeb. In todays Russia, the Chechens, who have practically carved out a separate state within Russia (similar to Lesotho) are Sufis, and so are the Kashmiri jihadists in India. Don’t let the crazed Dervish mujras trick you into thinking that there is anything remotely peaceful or “loving” about this movement. More importantly, ignore anything that Bollywood has to say about sufis: they are pretty much dominated by muslims

    • When visiting Turkey, our tour hit Konya, and the mausoleum of Mevlana Jalal ed-Din (Rumi). My huge clodhoppers broke three sets of plastic shoe covers, so I was allowed to carry my shoes through the shrine.

      It struck me that of the crowd there, the obvious Kufr tourists such as myself were generally more respectful of the space than most of the Muslims, save a few elderly women. The crowd milling about both the courtyards and the shrine itself was quite international. I even heard some snatches of Chinese among the visitors–including some who were obviously Muslim rather than simply tourist.

      During the same trip, we also saw the house of the Apostle John in Ephesus–a very simple affair. Since it is said he cared for Mary in her old age, it also attracted a large number of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and even Muslim pilgrims seeking healing.

  11. Yes, the religions “of the Book” are “intolerant”. Truth is by nature “intolerant”. I learned simple arithmetic, and, when my grade school self tried to count by sevens and said, “7,14, 21, 26,” I rightly got marked wrong.

    If Massignon was calling for Christians to love even the “them” neighbors as themselves, I am with him. After all, when Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?”, He answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan, a man who, in Jesus’ view, worshiped ignorantly (cf. Luke 10:25-37; John 4:22).

    As one who believes God actually spoke to all Israel from Sinai, then by the prophets, and finally became flesh in Jesus the Messiah, I will live by Jesus’ telling me, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father but by me.” (Jn. 14:6). Those are not Uncle Kepha’s words, but those of Jesus himself; and, if I confess him as Lord, I must accept them. But, believing as well that the risen and clorified Jesus knew perfectly well what he was doint when he called Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, I reocgnize as well that the weapons in Jesus’ holy war are the preaching of the Gospel, prayer, and ethical living. Go read the Corinthian Epistles to see how those weapons are spiritual rather than carnal.

    I read the Qur’an and Hadith and see how Muhammad got much wrong, despite Muhammad’s claim to continue the line of the biblical prophets. Having been taught that the Holy Trinity is Father, Word (who became flesh and dwelt among us, and is also called Son), and Holy Spirit, I cannot but see Muhammad as either mislad, lying, or both when he says my Holy Trinity is God, Jesus, and Mary. Simiarly, having lived in proximity to Jews and having discussed religion with them, when Muhammad says they see Uzair (Ezra) as Son of God the way I see Jesus, I again cannot but conclude that Muhammad either didn’t know what he was talking about or deliberately bearing false witness against a neigbor.

    As for the Jews, while I readily recognize modern Israel’s tolerance of its minorities (or, more than mere tolerance, but meaningful citizenship for them); I can’t say that Judaism per se is tolerant. I go back to intertestamental times and see how Jesus ben Sirach looks on the Samritans as wrong-headed (Just as Jesus the Messiah did–even if, as a Protestant, I do not see Sirach/Excclesiasticus as canonical, but merely ancient and edifying), and how the Hsamoneans forcefully Judaized the Idumaeans (and, becauce of it, ultimately got the Jews under the rule of Herod).

    @Wellington–Indeed, what Luther wrote about the Jews was awful. But, closer to home, in Nazi-occupied Norway, the starchy Lutheran Confessionalist Bp. Ole Hallesby (who would also see Reformed Uncle Kepha as wrongheaded over my understanding of the Lord’s Supper) said that Chritians must not cooperate with Nazi designs on the Jews. Did Bp. Hallesby, by that token, betray the Lutheran doctrines of justification by faith, sola scriptura, solo Christo, and the corporeal presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper? Ithink not. Nor did those similarly strachy confessionalist Reformed Doleantie in the Netherlands betray the meat of the Three Forms of Unity by finding themselves disproportionately represented among the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem.

    Why? Christian Scripture is loaded with admonitions to practice peace. Its “Warrant for Genocide” in the Hexateuch is clearly a one-time insturction for the conquest of Canaan at a time when the “sin of the Amorite was full”–and comes with a warning that Israel will meet a similar judgment for unfaithfulness to God’s Covenant. The modern missions-minded Evngelical Christian wants the destruction of Jews, Muslims, post-Christian Westerners, etc. no more than he wants the destruction of the Asians and Africans, but, rather, their conversion (and that is the work of God’s Word and Spirit).

    While it may be that God’s controversies with the nations today will one day lead to armed civilizational conflict, I still pray that God will so revive his Christian churches that we may present a renewed, loving, and effective witness “…That the Jews be called and the fullness of the Gentiles (including Muslims–and Jews and Gentiles as the two races of man stems from Scripture) be brought in…” (Westminster Larger Catechism, QA191).

  13. There is nothing good or worthwhile in barbaric, primitive, violent and degenerate Islam Islam is the opposite of Christianity. This massignon was an idiot if he thought that there was anything good in Islam. Lots of people saw how evil islam is. John Quincy adams, Alexis dr Tocqueville and Churchill saw how evil islam is.

  16. When. It comes to what POPES France and Leo 14th said opening the borders of countries to Muslims. I believe POPE St. John Paul 2nd the great. Wouldn’t support the Muslims. That are trying to make the world Islamic.

    • Wait wasn’t he the one that made it official, Islam goes to heaven too? It’s part of Catholic doctrine that praises Muslims as part of the heritage of biblical history.

      I don’t know. The church is cowardly, and will always back Muslims and Islam. Tha church of the crusade is long gone. Christian’s have to move on to other churches. They must protect their land , and not give it up for pillage because the pope says so.

  17. The ‘Muslim Catholic’ Who Invented the Christian-Muslim Relationship
    ………………………………………….

    Suicidal madness.

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