Thursday, July 14, 2005

The spirtual problem of radical Islam

Radical Islam is a short-term political/military issue, but a long-term spiritual one. It has dogged the world, particularly the Christian world, since the seventh century. Even if all of our military and political strategems works as planned, radical Islam is likely only to disappear underground for a period of years before emerging again in a new form. In college I had the opportunity to study Islamic history and law under scholars from the Hoover Institution at Stanford. One thing that struck me was how Islam, far more than any other faith, is built on military conquest. Today that military impulse takes the form of guerilla warfare. But the objectives remain the same: conquer the infidels; re-establish the caliphates.

You may think this is amusingly absurd. So did the Byzantine Empire before it fell to the Muslims. Yes, it took about eight hundred years, but fanatics who are suicidal are hardly deterred by the mere need for time to pass. Remember, in the seventh century, Islam was truly nothing more than a rag-tag group of bedouins, attacking the errant caravan in the Arabian desert. You think the Byzantine empire, the heir to mighty Rome, gave much thought to this? Hardly. But today New Rome, the glory of the East, Constantinople, is known as--Istanbul. The greatest cathedral of the early middle ages, Hagia Sophia, was disfigured into a mosque.

Islam is built on a base of resentment of the Western world. It roots, I believe, pre-date Muhammed in a sense. Muhammed grew up on the fringes of the Christian/Byzantine world; Christianity competed with paganism for the souls of a wild, nomadic people. Several hundred years before Muhammed, the rural peoples of North Africa formed the core of the Donatist movement, which plagued the Christian Church of North Africa, and specifically St. Augustine. They were the unforgiving moral purists in the aftermath of the persecutions undertaken in the early fourth century. The Roman emperors crushed the Donatists as a movement, although Donatism didn't finally disappear for two centuries after the death of Augustine--that is, the early seventh century, around the time of Muhammed's appearance. Coincidence? Perhaps not. Muslims swept across northern Africa and western Asia, utterly wiping out the Christian civilizations of north Africa and western Asia. Except for a brief period around the time of the Crusades, Muslims have held on to their gains.

So the next time you're inclined to disparage those who would take the Muslim challenge seriously, I have only two words to say to you--remember Constantinople!

7 Comments:

At 2:52 AM, Blogger Saur♥Kraut said...

Yes. If we do not know history, we are doomed to repeat it. Underground Logician has some excellent posts in his blog about this topic that you might be interested in reading.

 
At 5:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like your blog. Glad you posted to Saur's.

I wish that American citizens were more educated about the religion of Islam. This radical behavior and thought is foreign to us and difficult to comprehend. I think educating Americans about the enemy can only help to put the real issues in perspective and improve our decision-making process regarding our security.

 
At 1:12 PM, Blogger Underground Logician said...

Bill:

Excellent post and very articulate! I am also struck with the similarities between radical Islam and Fascism socio-politically. This poses a huge challenge to how we combat it as Christians, eh?

 
At 3:17 PM, Blogger Saur♥Kraut said...

Underground, excellent point. But it amazes me how a religion that was thought just plain insane at one time is now being tiptoed around for fear of discriminating against those who will willingly take advantage of our fears.

Someone once posted about this that the only thing we really need to fear is fear itself. In this sense, it's true.

 
At 3:36 PM, Blogger Underground Logician said...

Yes, I think it's the tendency of our culture to take on an appeasement of envy approach. Very cowardly, and very deadly for us. For more info. on this, go to Jack Wheeler's article, Aeschylus and America. Copy/paste this in your URL: http://www.tothepointnews.com/article.php?id=422&i=

 
At 9:06 PM, Blogger Bill R said...

Saur, Kathleen, and Underground,
Good comments, all. I've been reading Underground's comments on his blog, which helped inspire mine. Education about Islam is crucial, as long as it doesn't turn into propaganda. Too many postmoderns think all education must be a type of propaganda. That's very dangerous.

If I had carried my post on a bit longer, I would have mentioned the fascist parallels. It does pose a great challenge, but probably less than that faced by my father's generation (aka "The Greatest Generation"). If we had half their will, we could have twice their results!

 
At 9:58 AM, Blogger Saur♥Kraut said...

my father's generation (aka "The Greatest Generation"). If we had half their will, we could have twice their results!

Something which I have always said, too.

 

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