Muslims

I could have chosen several news links to provide background to my comments, but the International Herald Tribune's Frida Ghitis' column "Intimidated by Muslim extremists" dated June 1 2005 is the most global. That is to say that it deals with the subject on a very basis rather than responding to individual incidents.

Anyway, because Muslims trace their origins back to the Biblical patriarch Abraham, through his son Ishmael, they share many of their legends and hero with both Christians and Jews. In fact, as I recall, Muslims claim that it was Muhammad and not the Holy Spirit, who Christians claim, that Jesus told his disciples to wait for when he left them. But that is beside my point here; my point is that the God of Abraham, who Muslims claim to worship, repeatedly acted in marvelous ways to defend both himself and those who worship him but today what we call Muslim extremist seem to feel the need to act to defend themselves and the God they worship.

This behaviour, in the name of Abraham's God, does not lend credibility to their cause in my eyes. Abraham's God gave him a son when Sarah, Abraham's wife, was well into menopause; this God also, seemingly instantly, created numerous languages at Babel, sent a devastating flood upon the earth after that and caused fire a brimstone to rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham's lifetime all to defend his honour before men. But now these modern day worshiper of his behave like he is too weak to act on his own or their behalf.

On the Christian side of the fence for seventy years Christians suffered under communism then one of their persecuted brethren, Karol Woytya, became the head of the Catholic Church and quite literally shamed communism into destruction. Suddenly communism had to face the fact that a man they had tried to suppress had risen to one of the most influential offices in the world and they would have to accord him the honour he was due. An entire empire fell and unless I am mistaken not one drop of blood was shed. Contrast that with Muslims, who claim they too are worshipping the God of Abraham, and how readily they will shed both their own and the blood of others as an act of worship. Come to think of it the fact that they will shed human blood as an act of worship is a clear indication that they are not worshipping Abraham's God.

Abraham's God abhors human sacrifice. Suicide bombings are a clear violation of the tenets of worship toward Abraham's God from both the Christian and Jewish understanding of him. There is only one acceptable human sacrifice in Christianity and that was Jesus of Nazareth, who was executed as a political figure by the Romans and as a heretic by the Jewish authorities and to my knowledge there is no provision what so ever for a human sacrifice in Judaism.

I suppose my point is that as much as Muslim extremists have created a culture of fear they have done so at the expense of their credibility. They are trying to forcibly bring about something that really, should have some divine wonders attached but seemingly does not. And to both the Christian and Jewish mind they are undermining their cause further by offering human blood to the god of Abraham, who abhors human sacrifice. If their goal is to create a culture of fear I suppose they have been successful, but if it is to win disciples to Islam and create an Islamic world their actions are communicating all the wrong concepts to their intended audience.