CHRISTIANITY VERSUS
ISLAM
By
Samuel L. Blumenfeld
NewsWithViews.com
Because we live in such a highly
secularized society we cannot believe that America could ever become
involved in a religious war in this day and age.
Yet ferocious religious wars have been going on all over the place:
in Northern Ireland, in Israel, in the Balkans, in the Sudan, and in
Russia. But history is a very harsh taskmaster and refuses to let us
Americans escape into our secular fantasies and hot houses for long.
Thus, it is vitally important for us to reconnect with the human
race’s never ending history of religious struggle.
That a group of Islamic terrorists, living in a remote war-torn,
famine ridden, hell-hole in Asia could organize the kind of mind-boggling
attack against America that took place on September 11th, means
that America is not only not exempt from history, but has been dragged
kicking and screaming back into the middle of it.
Back
in 1588, Christopher Marlowe, master of historical drama, wrote his famous
Tamburlaine 2. In it there is
a fascinating scene in which the Christian King Sigismund of Hungary and
Orcanes, the Muslim King of Natolia, both former enemies, decide to
establish peace between them in order to join forces to defeat Tamberlaine
the Great, the cruel, pagan conqueror of Asia.
Both
men confirm their commitment with an oath.
King Sigismund vows:
By Him that made the world and
sav’d my soul,
The Son of God and issue of a
maid,
Sweet Jesus Christ, I solemnly
protest
And vow to keep this peace
inviolable!
King
Orcanes vows:
By sacred Mohamed, the friend of
God,
Whose holy Alcoran remains with
us,
Whose Glorious body, when he
left the world,
Clos’d in a coffin mounted up
the air,
And hung on stately Mecca’s
temple-roof,
I swear to keep this truce
inviolable!
But as the story goes, it was King Sigismund who later broke the truce and
was defeated and killed by the
Muslims.
While the history of the struggle between Christians and Muslims for
control of Europe was for a time settled after the Muslims were expelled
from Spain in 1492, and driven back from the gates of Vienna to Asia and
Africa, the Islamic enclaves that remained in the Balkans led to the
recent wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. The
Serbs had considered themselves as the Christian bulwark against further
Islamic incursions in Europe, and therefore could not understand why they
were being bombed by fellow Europeans and Americans.
You had to know history to understand what Bosnia and Kosovo were all
about. That conflict proved
that the war between Christianity and Islam has never ended.
Over the ages, it simply took on different forms.
The rise of European power put a lid on Islamic ambitions and the
Muslim world became the backwater of history until the discovery of oil in
the 20th century. But in the 19th century, the Islamic Barbary
states of North Africa could still make trouble for the Infidel.
They took possession of American and European commercial vessels,
held their crews for ransom, and enslaved other Christians.
Our first war after independence was fought during the Jefferson
administration against the Muslim pirates and kidnappers of Tripolitania,
the Barbary War, in which U.S. Marines staged their first invasion of
foreign soil. Hence, the Marine anthem: “From the halls of Montezuma to
the shores of Tripoli.”
In order to finally put a stop to the piracy and barbarism coming out of
North Africa, France decided
to take over Algeria. During
the 1830s and 1840s, the French imposed their rule over the territory,
encouraging Europeans to settle there.
The result was a flourishing French colony and an end to Barbary
piracy. France maintained
order in North Africa until the end of World War II, when the
anti-colonialist movement got underway. Both liberals and communists joined in forcing the European
powers to give up their colonies.
In Algeria, however, over a million Europeans had settled in the territory
and the coastal departments were considered an integral part of France.
However, when Charles de Gaulle gained power at the height of the
Algerian uprising, he decided that France should quit Algeria because the
Moslems could never become true Frenchmen.
And so France abandoned Algeria, and a million Europeans took to
the boats. Today, the
invasion has been reversed. Five
million Muslims, mostly Algerians, live in France.
They comprise ten percent of the population and are part of the
resurgent Islamic power in Europe. Christianity
is now so weak in France that one wonders if it is capable of resisting
the assumption of Islamic power.
We have been told by our leaders and the media that we are not at war
against the Islamic religion. We
are at war against terrorism. But
what they all prefer not to recognize is that the spiritual power behind
that terrorism, the power that drives otherwise intelligent human beings
to undertake suicidal missions against the infidel is the religion of
Islam. Of course, there are
millions of Muslims who just want to lead normal lives.
Unfortunately, after September 11th, nothing is
“normal” anymore.
Samuel
L. Blumenfeld is an
lecturer, educator and the author of eight books on education, many of which are
available through Amazon.com
