In the fuss over whether to build an Islamic center a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero, one of the most smug — and, so far as I can tell, as yet unchallenged — arguments is that there are no Christian churches in Muslim nations. (Skip, for now, the bizarre implication that we should give up freedom of religion because other nations don’t have freedom of religion.) The Christian superiority and persecution exaggerations can get pretty wild:
"Go to any Christian country and carry a Koran in public. Nothing will happen to you. Try carrying a Bible openly in any Islamic country – you will be arrested, and may be executed. There is no comparison."
In this blog post, I take apart the Right's great churchless lie about Islamic nations, one simple photo at a time: http://filterednews.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/the-great-churchless-lie-about-islam/
Comments
Any person who says there are not Christian churches in Muslim countries has obviously NEVER been to a Muslim country.
But then most of these people have never been outside of North America, so...
It might be a good idea to post actual photos of Christian churches in Eqypt, Lebanon etc.
Pictures are more powerful than words!
It might be a good idea to post actual photos of Christian churches in Eqypt, Lebanon etc.
Pictures are more powerful than words!
Get yourself a passport, get on a plane and go see them for yourself. I am bored with you conservatives whose world experience consists of Fox news and WWF.
It might be a good idea to post actual photos of Christian churches in Eqypt, Lebanon etc.
Pictures are more powerful than words!
There are pictures in the article posted:
http://filterednews.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/the-great-churchless-lie-ab...
Not just churches, but magnificent churches.!
It might be true that there "are churches" in some Islamic nations, but "The Church", mostly what are called Eastern Rite, many of them differing with the theology of the Western Churches. For that reason, some Western Churches tend to leave them behind since they didn't they didn't sign on to the Nicean Creed. These people took on Christianity first, and constitute some of the oldest Churches that exist.
At any rate, some of them are hassled by the Islamic authorities, for example, in Egypt since they they represent the merchant class, people who usually have more money that most Moslems. Lebanon is a special case, though most Christians are better off than most Moslems, which does lead to tensions sometimes. In Syria and Iraq, the Assyrians, the descendents of the ancient Assyrians, who still speak Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Eastern basic of the Mediteranean a few centuries ago, the very first non-Jews to accept Christianity, likely the oldest established Church, are not treated very well. They wanted Autonomy at the Versailles peace talks, but the Iraqi government balked and broke the promise
What is curious is the politics they play with Assyrian, Aramaic speaking Christians are encouraged to support the Iraqi government with their relations serving as hostages. If you ask a few more questions, they identify with Jews more than they do with Arabs on the basis of "past history".
So . . . yes there are churches, but the Christians tend to get the short end of the stick, shorter or longer, depending the country and its regime.
The Roman christians are still bitter because they got their butts kicked in all the crusades except the first one. In the first one they stormed the walls of Jerusalem and slaughtered everyone including the Muslims and Jews who had been living in harmony together. The Rock under the Dome of the Rock has great significane for both Muslims and Jews and both are of the Abrahamic belief.
The Roman Christians began the Inquisition by slaughtering and annihilating the Cathars of Southern France becasue the Cathars were actually pious and practicing Christians, a Gnositc sect that believed a person could know God by knowing nature, by gaining "knowledge" thus Gnostic means Knowledge. The Church would not tolerate anything but "right thinking" and that is the def of orthodox., Not to be confused with Eastern Orthodox, this is the sect that started out in Constantinople when the early Church was divided. One of the Crusades saw the western half attack the Orthodox Christians at Constantinople.
All of this gets lost when today's self-annointed christians try to potray their faith and history as pure and innocent. Not so.
From the perspective of an agnostic, this whole christian verses muslim argument sounds a lot like two drunks arguing over which country was the first to put a man on the sun. If any of the peoples of the Earth had a shred of intellectual integrity we would quit coddeling these morons and demand they accept reality as reality and not some manifestation of some indefinable diety's will. We simply cannot afford to continue being critical of ideas, as long as they are not religious ones. Let there be honesty, inasmuch as we can recognize it, and let's quit exagerating the credibility of people just because they have long beards and quote scripture.
In the words of Forest Gump, "stupid is as stupid does" and, where most Earthly religions are concerned, the stupid is taking up more space than the smart ever did.