Tags

, , , ,

Scary Pic

This is the continuation of the piece on Islam and ISIS by a Christian with knowledge of the region who needs to remain anonymous. The final part will be published tomorrow. C451.

Collect from the 2nd Sunday in Lent:

O God, who seest that we have no power whatever from ourselves; keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts which may hurt the soul. Through our Lord.

So what are we going to do about the Muslims generally?

The first question I have to ask is what do we mean by “we”? Who are “we”? When we say “we” do we mean Catholics? Christians? English? The West? I would hope we mean Christendom…but does Christendom still exist in any real form?

Please take a look at the image above. It is a tongue in cheek find the odd one out game.

  1. is some Muslim girls. (by the way, those scarves are called mandeel in Arabic. Sounds familiar, no?). 2 shows some Iraqi Christians at prayer and outside. 3. is a Western girl wearing a traditional Mantilla. 4. is what we in the West regularly feed our teenage daughters as role-models.

And we say we want to evangelize the Muslims? I think we have a slight problem.

The biggest indictment of Western culture I think I have come across is knowing Palestinian Christians, already refugees from the State of Israel, living elsewhere in the Middle East, who had the opportunity to go to the West but preferred to take their chances living under Muslim rule because they were afraid of their children being corrupted by Western culture. That gives a painful shock, especially when you consider the way our films and media often portray young women.

So we have separation of Church and State?

Let’s take a look at our Western States. I will use UK as an example and although things may vary slightly from one country to another, the general picture is very similar.

Our Western countries are largely secular. Atheism, agnosticism, new age paganism, alternative religion and plain can’t be bothered/haven’t got a clue materialism are on the rise (actually have pretty much risen already). Church attendance is abysmally low. In the UK approximately 10% of the population are Catholic (according to baptismal registers; the numbers of practising Catholics are considerably lower).The picture in other denominations is even more dire. We have phenomenal numbers of abortion, “gay marriage” and adoption, genetically engineered babies (UK is the first country to legalise 3-parent babies), euthanasia is not yet legal in the UK but it is in some other European countries, aggressive feminism, the breakdown of traditional family life with easy divorce (and remarriage), co-habitation, a high level of drink/drugs abuse and promiscuity by the younger generations, ever more immodest fashions, TV, music; pornography has gone mainstream. We have a youth with an entitlement mentality and no respect. And in the middle of all this we have political correctness, equality and diversity, and the Trojan horse of massive Muslim immigration into our countries. It seems that Muslims are our enemies….except when they are our friends. What was the first Iraq war about? Defending Saudi Arabia? Oh? And what nationality was Osama bin Laden? And those Arab Christians? Did anyone stop to consider that such a military intervention would worsen their plight by association? I get the impression our governments don’t really care too much about Christians, neither at home nor abroad. We are the post-Christian West. Look at the unbridled support for Charlie Hebdo’s right to free speech….because Muslims attacked him…but we forgot that he was also in the habit of making disgusting blasphemies against Our Lord and Our Lady. This well illustrates where we are. As Catholics we are stuck between a rise in secular/atheistic, un-Christian – even anti-Christian views in our own culture and the rise of Islam on the other.

Why are Muslim immigrants to the west, now in their third and fourth generations, still not flocking to convert to Christianity and then, like the 3 wise men, telling their people back home? Maybe because they don’t like what they see because largely it isn’t Christianity? Maybe we are offering them stones, not bread? And what about that certain percentage of our own youth who convert to Islam? We stare in amazement, why would they do that? Maybe because people want/need something higher than themselves, something more meaningful than consumerism, something worth living for and dying for, a purpose, and maybe because our Catholic Faith is so diluted and barely visible that it is easy for the uncatechised to pass it by and find Islam instead.

We, the West, are right Charlies. We are Sodom. We are Babel.

We, Catholics/Christians, want a Crusade against ISIS? (Which I would support, by the way, a real crusade for the right reasons, done in love for Christ, to protect our Christian brethren and where possible to work for the conversion of the locals). Us and what army? In whose name? Strange bedfellows! We, the West, have gone so far down the slippery slope that we hardly even notice any more that it is not normal. We want to evangelize the Muslims? With the Spice Girls? I don’t really think that is going to work very well. Even Arab Christians don’t like it.

We, the West, want to do it our way, without reference to God. It seems to have become about us versus them. I am reminded of the Pocahontas song: ‘Savages, savages, barely even human’. Look on Twitter for example. Hatred spews everywhere. It is tribalism. I don’t remember Jesus saying “hate your enemy”. And I don’t think it was Jesus who said “the best thing about principles is that they can be sacrificed to expediency”. And while we are pointing the finger at the “evil” Muslims, shouting “savages, savages” they are pointing one back and shouting the same thing. Average Joe Muslim isn’t evil. He’s just a human being who has been fed the lie of a false religion. What are we doing to convince him that Christianity is better, that Christianity is the True Faith? Not much! Just as we don’t understand the Middle East well, they don’t understand us well either. They see our Western Culture and link it with Christianity. Christian, for the most part, it isn’t!

If you have a cat and keep smacking it down, eventually it will turn and scratch your eyes. It is a law of nature. If we, the West, keep smacking down the Arabs, they will unite against us. Average Joe Muslim probably doesn’t like ISIS much, but he likes being smacked down by the West even less. We have a very delicate balance here as to whose side average Joe Muslim could be on. Did Jesus take a big stick and smack Zaccheus out of his tree?