Archive for March, 2006

Culture Contrast

Friday, March 31st, 2006
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I have a friend, a retired college professor, who lamented when the US invaded iraq that the White House advisors do not understand Islam.  They don’t understand the attitude of Islam toward the Christian west.  He wasn’t sure what the US was trying to achieve in Iraq, but he predicted failure.  He said that our very presence in their Islamic land would create chaos, just as it did by the presence of every previous western power that intervened in their land.  The number one problem is religion.  Successful religions have built into them provisions for their self-preservation.  The Christian religion has the carrot and the stick.  The carrot: If you are a good Christian you are rewarded in heaven.  The stick: If you are a bad Christian, or not a Christian, you are punished in hell.  And, you are admonished to convert others to Christianity.  The Christians don’t punish before death.  Islam doesn’t wait until death.  It kills its members that denunciate the faith.  The crime is called apostasy.  It tends to hold membership.

The recent arrest in Afghanistan of Abdul Rahman for apostasy, converting from Islam to Christianity, is a clarifying example.  In Afghanistan, a democracy, the constitution provides that there can be no law that conflicts with Islamic law, hence Islamic law is the law of the land.  I quote Khoja Ahmad Sediqi, an Islamic Cleric who is also a member of the Afghan Supreme Court, on the penalty for apostacy.  “The Quran is very clear and the words of our prophet are very clear.  There can only be one outcome: death.” 

Death for converting to Christianity?  I suggest that most Americans did not think such a law could be possible, let alone actually exist and be applied in a democracy.  This is a glaring example of the attitude of Islam toward Christianity.  The presence of a Christian force in an Islamic nation is a threat to their religion, the base of their culture.  Plug in that Christians are pushed by their faith to convert others to Christianity.  Is it any wonder that Iraqis resent our very presence in their country?  Did our leaders fully understand this attitude when we imposed ourselves on them?  Maybe, but obviously underestimated its importance, to our peril.

Luckily for Abdul there was enough international pressure in his case that the prosecutor “found,” without expert advice, that Abdul was a mental case so he was released to journey to Italy where he received asylum.  How many Christians have not had such a happy ending to their story?  We’ll never know.   –TEB

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