This Week’s Newsletter

Posted by The Treasurer, on December 6th, 2015

Here is this week’s Newsletter: St Stephens News XXVI No 48

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• The Reverend Peter M. Hawkins.

  December 6, 2015 at 12:01 PM

  Our government, for instance, still maintains that Islam is a religion of peace (1), and Islamic resentment against the West is largely fuelled by the devastation inflicted on the Moslem world by the Crusades. What government What government does not tell us, however, is that the Crusades were the West’s much belated response to more than 400 years of Islamic savagery.(2).
  That First That First Jihad had destroyed countless thriving Christian communities in North Africa and the Middle East (3). In the process, it also subjugated all Portugal, Spain and Sicily, as well as much of France and Italy, to brutal Moslem rule (4).
  Nor do our political masters explain that terrorism, kidnapping and enslavement have been tools of Islam from its very inception, and that the United States has been a victim of jihadist aggression from the very moment of its independence (5).
  In 1793, for instance, 11 American ships were seized by Barbary pirates – Moslem terrorists operating out of Algiers and Tripoli who kidnapped, enslaved or held to ransom innocent Christian men, women and children.
  Unable to raise funds to pay the ransom for the crews, the U.S. representative was compelled to borrow from a friendly Jewish moneylender living in Algiers to pay the nearly $1 million ransom. But this only served to encourage terrorism. Well into the first half of
  the 19th Century, two thirds – repeat two thirds – of the U.S. federal budget went to paying off the maritime terrorists whose direct descendants today hijack aircraft, bomb and kidnap on a world-wide scale.
  Such knowledge might not encourage people to support current policies that seem largely aimed at placating the Islamic world – rather the contrary, in fact (6). But absent such an historical perspective, how can they form objective opinions one way or the other? GPHX.

  This is somewhat better than usual but the vision is again limited and tendentious. So let us deal with the points in sequence.
  (1) Islam means the area of Peace in Arabic, BUT as in the Hebrew Tradition (Shalom), to which it and we are related, that means the peace that comes after a battle, after a striving. The reason that World Governments, Muslim Scholars and Muslims generally interpret this to mean that the striving and war is over and the relative peace across the world is the peace to which Muslims have always striven. Professor Tariq Ramadhan makes the point well, when he asserts that Muslims have more religious freedom in the world at large than they do in Muslim Lands. Further this political stance is one that most Muslims can accept and support.
  (2) Yes the Crusades were the Western Christian Response to Muslim aggression using the Furor Normanorum and Muslim methods. Hindus did the same to Muslims in their development of the Sikhs. The Eastern Christians response was peaceable and worked, they tended to buy the Muslims off, but were under no illusions. Manuel II Palaiologos (27 June 1350 – 21 July 1425) was Byzantine Emperor from 1391 to 1425 had been educated by the Muslims. He had a dialogue believed to have occurred in 1391 between him and a Persian scholar and recorded in a book by Manuel II (Dialogue 7 of Twenty-six Dialogues with a Persian) in which the Emperor stated: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” “God is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…” Wikipedia. Manuel was very effective and travelled West to seek support but to no avail, there was a civil war against the Hussites, and the others felt far away.
  (3) There is evidence that some Christian groups assisted Muslims in their conquests, because they were angry with the “Christian” Government, and they thought rightly that Arabs would be cheaper. The “Christian” Government since Constantine had used the Church to impose harmony and obediance, as the Government, of England, Andorra, Monaco, Vatican, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland, do to this day. “Non Conformists” objected but had no America to flee to, and so joined the Arabs.
  (4) Rule of any kind at the time was brutal.
  (5) Muslims do enslave, and always have done. Christians had doubts about it from an early time, and many slaves were freed. The United States of America used Slavery down to Modern Times, and the descendents of those slaves still suffer discrimination, violence and death.
  (6) As I have explained, the only way forward is to encourage Muslims of good will, and there are many, to believe that they share our peace and that there is no need for public jihad.