Have never seen a happy Muslim boy!

Have you also ever recognized how agrresive the Muslim youth is? It is not all about religion or traditions, during my Highschool life, the 90 percent of the Muslim boys I met were pyhsically and mentally overdriven.

Forexample once, after a soccer game we were at the locker room. And one of our Muslim classmates have resisted not to take of his clothes. Than he called the Gym Teacher and said “Sorry, Mr. Heinberger, I do not want to take of my shorts next to these people” The Gym Teacher was also surprized “Why?” he asked. And the answer was “Because they are uncircumcised and stinking badly”.

To be honest, after 1 and a half hour of running, challengeing and a total bad result of 5-1 our last thing to think about was our Penises.

However, Veli was concentrated on our foreskins, and since the beginning of the match, he avoided to dress up together with our team.

This is a sample of how Muslim youth fixed on their circumcized foreskin. I mean, a healthy young man wouldn’t think about or compare penises after a hard training. The agresivity of the Muslim Youth can also be explained by this “Foreskin Hate!” (Hate or envy?)

Circumcision is a totally perverted tradition in my oppinion. Because it was clearly explained at the Bibles, the Circumcized or non Circumcized had no difference. It was only a sign of old Jews to show other people (why did they show???) that they were Jewish. And it is also funny, the Islamists who normally dislike Jews (mostly Anti Semitists) are accepting this Circumcission issue like them.

Altough “Allah” expells clearly at the Quran

“

He created everything in exact measure; He precisely designed everything

(25:2)

He designed you, and designed you well.

(40:64)

He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose, designed you and perfected your design.

(64:3)

He created man in the best design.

(95:4)

[Satan said:] ” I will mislead them, I will entice them, I will command them to mark the ears of livestock, and I will command them to distort the creation of GOD.”

(4:119)

We did not leave anything out of this book.

(6:38)

The word of your lord is complete, in truth and justice. Nothing shall abrogate His words. He is the Hearer, the Omniscient.

(6:115)

Say, “Did you note how GOD sends down to you all kinds of provisions, then you render some of them unlawful, and some lawful? Say, Did God give you permission to do this? Or, do you fabricate lies and attribute them to God?”

(10:59)”

 

It is funny that they are trying to change their forms excusing this Circumcission thing. (Ok I don’t know the Arabic name)

A nice web site called circumstitions.com is dealing with this Subject.

Ofcourse, any one is free to practise the rituals of a religion. However, it is not like “first communion” we have to accept. I mean, the little children without being asked are accepted as new born Muslims and being cut. Ofocurse, they do all kinds of things to motivate the small children. But after, as soon as the child reaches to the teenager phase, mostly fixed with foreskin and a strange belief to accept Islam as their fate!

One another article from freeminds.org

When reading God’s glorious Quran which is FULLY DETAILED as far as all RELEVANT matters to human life, law and religion…One cannot find any trace or mention of one of the most crucial items in today’s Muslim societies: CIRCUMCISION.

(The following is an excerpt from a book by Dr. Sami Abu Sahlieh on the subject)

This argument can be summed up as follows: Can we imagine a God who demands that his believers be mutilated and branded on their genitals the same as cattle? Doctor Nawal El-Saadawi, an Egyptian woman, herself excised, writes:

If religion comes from God, how can it order man to cut off an organ created by Him as long as that organ is not deceased or deformed? God does not create the organs of the body haphazardly without a plan. It is not possible that He should have created the clitoris in a woman’s body only in order that it be cut off at an early stage in life. This is a contradiction into which neither true religion nor the Creator could possibly fall. If God has created the clitoris as a sexually sensitive organ, whose sole function seems to be the procurement of sexual pleasure for women, it follows that He also considers such pleasure for women as normal and legitimate, and therefore as an integral part of mental health 48.

It has very often been proclaimed that Islam is at the root of female circumcision, and is also responsible for the under-privileged and backward situation of women in Egypt and the Arab countries. Such a contention is not true… Religion, if authentic in the principles it stands for, aims at truth, equality, justice, love and a healthy wholesome life for all people, whether men or women. There can be no true religion that aims at disease, mutilation of the bodies of female children, and amputation of an essential part of their reproductive organs.

Ren‚e Saurel goes over the argument again. She writes: The Koran, contrary to Christianism and Judaism, permits and recommends that the woman be given physical and psychological pleasure, pleasure found by both partners during the act of love. Forcibly split, torn, and severed tissues are neither conducive to sensuality nor to the blessed feeling given and shared when participating in the quest for pleasure and the escape from pain 50.

God tells us in His glorious book:

“He is the One who PERFECTED everything He created, and started the creation of the human from clay.” (32/7)

“…Our Lord, You did not create all this in vain. Be You glorified. Save us from the retribution of Hell.” (3/191)

So, if God has PERFECTED the creation of the human being, then why are there people in this world who call for the mutilation of the human body in the name of religion?

Perhaps this will answer the question:

“GOD has condemned him (the devil), and he said, “I will surely recruit a definite share of Your worshipers. I will mislead them, I will entice them, I will command them to marking the ears of livestock, and I will command them to DISTORT the creation of GOD.” Anyone who accepts the devil as a lord, instead of GOD, has incurred a profound loss.” (4/118-119)

As for the “Medical” reasons which have been sited in support of circumcision…the following is an article written by Doctors on the subject:

“Alleged medical reasons for circumcision”

Cancer of the penis

The risk of cancer of the penis is one in one hundred thousand (1/100,000). If circumcision could prevent cancer of the penis (which is not likely – Madden presented a study recently with 37 cases of cancer of the penis in circumcised men), performing 100,000 circumcisions on normal infants to possibly prevent one cancer of the penis in an elderly man is unethical. A number of infants will die in the process, and many (200) will sustain significant, serious complications. Nowhere else in medicine is this type of prevention practiced.

Urinary Tract Infection

The risk of urinary tract infection in intact boys is alleged to be 1/100. How can anyone suggest that 100 boys have their normal foreskins removed to possibly prevent one UTI, easily and correctly treated with antibiotics?

Hygiene

Most Americans imagine that the foreskin of the adult male looks like the foreskin of the infant, pulled tightly over the glans, protruding out in front. They do not know, because they seldom see a normal intact male, that the foreskin becomes very loose, and may be easily retracted so that the intact male looks as if he were circumcised. It is as easy to clean this intact penis as a circumcised one. Hygiene is an absurd and tragic reason to circumcise.

Complications

Complications of every male circumcised:

	Loss of sexual sensitivity – 15+/- cell layer increase in thickness of surface of glans penis.
	Loss of the foreskin
	Loss of the frenulum
	Progressive loss of glans sensitivity
	a scar on the penis
	changes in urethral orifice

Complications – common:

	Hemorrhage
	Infections
	Meatitis
	Meatal stenosis – constriction of the urethral opening.
	Bridging – adhering of the cut edge to the glans creates tunnels.
	tight scar on shaft.
	curving of penis, due to removal of too much skin. often not apparent until an erection.
	pubic hair on penile shaft, pulled onto shaft after removal of too much foreskin.
	bleeding during sexual intercourse
	pain with erection
	concealed, or hidden penis – cut surface of remaining skin adheres to itself, burying glans.
	removal of too much skin
	wound separation
	urinary retention

Complications – serious:

	Hemorrhage
	Infection
	Cutting off all or part of the glans
	Harming or destroying all or part of the penis
	electrocautery has destroyed entire penises, necessitating surgery to change the infants’ genitals to those of a female.
	inadvertently putting hemostat in urethra and crushing glans.
	Tetanus
	Tuberculosis – via Mezizah, the practice of sucking the blood from the circumcision wound. the mohel gives the disease to infant.
	lacerated scrotum
	severe iron deficiency anemia (following hemorrhage)
	blistering and peeling of glans with intromission (described by Masters and Johnson)
	neonatal sepsis (twice as common in males as females) ie. scalded skin syndrome,
	meningitis, necrotising entero-colitis, necrotizing fasciitis, gangrene.
	Shock
	Death

The following complications are derived from statements by circumcised men.

	low self esteem over body image
	sense of body violation
	sense of denial of human rights
	difficulties with intimate relations
	sense of betrayal by parents, especially the mother
	feelings of anger and violence toward women
	addictions and dependencies (chemical and sexual)
	extreme anger and hostility toward doctors

Broader Implications of Harm:

A recent book, Circumcision, the Hidden Trauma by Ronald Goldman PhD discusses many subjects that may be associated with circumcision. These include:

	low male self esteem
	avoidance of intimacy in male-female relationships
	attitudes toward pain and stimulation
	passivity
	reduced empathy
	antisocial behaviors – adult male violence, domestic violence, rape, child sexual abuse, suicide, and theft.

“What’s done to children, they will do to society.”

Karl Menninger MD, Menninger Clinic

The Bottom Line – Human Rights:

The following rights were enumerated at the Second International Conference on Health and Human Rights, Harvard University, October 1996. Tim Hammond declared that each one of these is violated when a circumcision is performed:

	The human right to Security of Person
	The human right to Physical Integrity
	The human right to Physical and Mental Health
	The human right to Self-Determination
	Circumcision is also a violation of:
	The Convention on the Rights of the Child
	Article 24.3 calls for abolition of “traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.”

Myths:

Please check to see how these myths have been refuted by the above information.

“Just a piece of skin.”

“It does not hurt.”

“Circumcision is not an important issue.”

“It is necessary for hygienic purposes.”

“Necessary to prevent cancer of penis.”

“Necessary to prevent urinary tract infection.”

“It’s important that he looks like his father.”

(actually, his father wants to look like him)

“He may not be comfortable looking different.”

(Half are intact today. He does need to be told that he is OK, that he is normal, and that he should treat his circumcised friends gently.

In summary, circumcision is not only a practice which is NOT FOUND in God’s complete book, but it is in essence a VIOLATION of God’s claim that He has PERFECTED the creation of the human being.

Circumcision is no more that a “ritual” which has some very alarming medical “side effects” which in no way can be part of God’s complete and perfect system.

HELP STOP THIS BARBARIC RITUAL TODAY!!!

 

 

I do not think that they are completely wrong! Ofcourse, to believe something has lesser to do with the sexuality, however, without being asked the performance and practizing of this ritual is inhuman!

 

 

 

Islam @ Human Rights

ROMA – There is a conspicuous absence among the new cardinals created on October 21 by John Paul II: Archbishop Michael Louis Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

The current explanation is that Fitzgerald was not made cardinal because of his excessively placid approach to Islam.

And it is true that, together with this exclusion, an article was printed in “La Civiltà Cattolica” that contrasts markedly with the matter of Fitzgerald’s rebuke.

“La Civiltà Cattolica,” edited by a group of Jesuits in Rome, is a very special magazine. Every one of its articles is reviewed by the Vatican secretary of state before publication. So the magazine reflects his thought faithfully.

In its October 18 edition, “La Civiltà Cattolica” published a strikingly severe article on the condition of Christians in Muslim countries. The central thesis of the article is that “in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike and conquering face”; that “for almost a thousand years, Europe lived under its constant threat”; and that what remains of the Christian population in Islamic countries is still subjected to “perpetual discrimination,” with episodes of bloody persecution.

What follows is an ample extract from the article printed in “La Civiltà Cattolica” no. 3680, October 18, 2003, and used here with the kind permission of the magazine:

Christians in Islamic Countries

by Giuseppe De Rosa S.I.

How do Christians in Muslim-majority countries live? This question is appropriate, as a lot is said about the Muslim immigrants in European countries with Christian tradition but rarely it is talked about the condition of the Christians who live in countries with Muslim majority.  

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN ISLAMIC COUNTRIES:

We must first highlight a seemingly rather curious fact: in all the countries of North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco), before the Muslim invasion and despite incursions by vandals, there were blossoming Christian communities that contributed to the universal Church great personalities, such as Tertullian; Saint Ciprian, bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258; Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo; and Saint Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe. But after the Arab conquest, Christianity was absorbed by Islam to such an extent that today it has a significant presence only in Egypt, with the Coptic Orthodox and other tiny Christian minorities, which make up 7-10 percent of the Egyptian population.

The same can be said of the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Mesopotamia), in which there were flourishing Christian areas prior to the Islamic invasion, and where today there are only small Christian communities, with the exception of Lebanon, where Christians make up a significant part of the population.

As for present-day Turkey, this was in the first Christian centuries the land in which Christianity bore its best fruits in the areas of liturgy, theology, and monastic life. The invasion of the Seljuk Turks and the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet II (1453) lead to the founding of the Ottoman empire and to the near destruction of Christianity in the Anatolian peninsula. Thus today in Turkey Christians number approximately 100,000, among whom are a small number of Orthodox, who live around Phanar, the see of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, who has the primacy of honor in the Orthodox world and who holds communion with eight patriarchs and many autocephalous Churches in both East and West, with approximately 180 million faithful.

In conclusion, we may state in historical terms that in all the places where Islam imposed itself by military force, which has few historical parallels for its rapidity and breadth, Christianity, which had been extraordinarily vigorous and rooted for centuries, practically disappeared or was reduced to tiny islands in an endless Islamic sea. It is not easy to explain how that could have happened. [...]

In reality, the reduction of Christianity to a small minority was not due to violent religious persecution, but to the conditions in which Christians were forced to live in the organization of the Islamic state. [...]

THE WARRIOR FACE OF ISLAM: “JIHAD”

According to Islamic law, the world is divided into three parts: dar al-harb (the house of war), dar al-islam (the house of Islam), and dar al-‘ahd (the house of accord); that is, the countries with which a treaty was stipulated. [...]

As for the countries belonging to the “house of war,” Islamic canon law recognizes no relations with them other than “holy war” (jihad), which signifies an “effort” in the way of Allah and has two meanings, both of which are equally essential and must not be dissociated, as if one could exist without the other. In its primary meaning, jihad indicates the “effort” that the Muslim must undertake to be faithful to the precepts of the Koran and so improve his “submission” (islam) to Allah; in the second, it indicates the “effort” that the Muslim must undertake to “fight in the way of Allah,” which means fighting against the infidels and spreading Islam throughout the world. Jihad is a precept of the highest importance, so much so that it is sometimes counted among the fundamental precepts of Islam, as its sixth “pillar.”

Obedience to the precept of the “holy war” explains why the history of Islam is one of unending warfare for the conquest of infidel lands. [...] In particular, all of Islamic history is dominated by the idea of the conquest of the Christian lands of Western Europe and of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. Thus, through many centuries, Islam and Christianity faced each other in terrible battles, which led on one side to the conquest of Constantinople (1453), Bulgaria, and Greece, and on the other, to the defeat of the Ottoman empire in the naval battle of Lepanto (1571).

But the conquering spirit of Islam did not die after Lepanto. The Islamic advance into Europe was definitively halted only in 1683, when Vienna was liberated from the Ottoman siege by the Christian armies under the command of John III Sobieski, the king of Poland. [...] In reality, for almost a thousand years Europe was under constant threat from Islam, which twice put its survival in serious danger.

Thus, in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike face and a conquering spirit for the glory of Allah. [...] against the “idolaters” who must be given a choice: convert to Islam, or be killed. [...] As for the “people of the Book” (Christians, Jews, and “Sabeans”), Muslims must “fight them until their members pay tribute, one by one, humiliated” (Koran, Sura 9:29). [...]

THE REGIME OF THE “DHIMMA”

According to Muslim law, Christians, Jews, and the followers of other religions assimilated to Christianity and Judaism (the “Sabeans”) who live in a Muslim state belong to an inferior social order, in spite of their eventually belonging to the same race, language, and descent. Islamic law does not recognize the concepts of nation and citizenship, but only the umma, the one Islamic community, for which reason a Muslim, as he is part of the umma, may live in any Islamic country as he would in his homeland: he is subject to the same laws, finds the same customs, and enjoys the same consideration.

But those belonging to the “people of the Book” are subject to the dhimma, which is a kind of bilateral treaty consisting in the fact that the Islamic state authorizes the “people of the Book” to inhabit its lands, tolerates its religion, and guarantees the “protection” of its persons and goods and its defense from external enemies. Thus the “people of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitab) becomes the “protected people” (Ahl al-dhimma). In exchange for this “protection,” the “people of the Book” must pay a tax (jizya) to the Islamic state, which is imposed only upon able-bodied free men, excluding women, children, and the old and infirm, and pay a tribute, called the haram, on the lands in its possession.

As for the freedom of worship, the dhimmi are prohibited only from external manifestations of worship, such as the ringing of bells, processions with the cross, solemn funerals, and the public sale of religious objects or other articles prohibited for Muslims. A Muslim man who marries a Christian or a Jew must leave her free to practice her religion and also to consume the foods permitted by her religion, even if they are forbidden for Muslims, such as pork or wine. The dhimmi may maintain or repair the churches or synagogues they already have, but, unless there is a treaty permitting them to own land, they may not build new places of worship, because to do this they would need to occupy Muslim land, which can never be ceded to anyone, having become, through Muslim conquest, land “sacred” to Allah.

In Sura 9:29 the Koran affirms that the “people of the Book,” apart from being constrained to pay the two taxes mentioned above, must be placed under certain restrictions, such as dressing in a special way and not being allowed to bear arms or ride on horseback. Furthermore, the dhimmi may not serve in the army, be functionaries of the state, be witnesses in trials between Muslims, take the daughters of Muslims as their wives, be the guardians of underage Muslims, or keep Muslim slaves. They may not inherit from Muslims, nor Muslims from them, but legacies are permitted.

The release of the dhimma came about above all through conversion of the “people of the Book” to islam; but Muslims, especially in the early centuries, did not look favorably upon such conversions, because they represented a grave loss to the treasury, which flourished in direct proportion to the number of the dhimmi, who paid both the personal tax and the land tax. The dissolution of dhimma status could also take place through failure to observe the “treaty”; that is, if the dhimmi took up arms against Muslims, refused to remain subject or to pay tribute, abducted a Muslim woman, blasphemed or offended the prophet Mohammed and the Islamic religion, or if they drew a Muslim away from Islam, converting him to their own religion. According to the gravity of each case, the penalty could be the confiscation of goods, reduction to slavery, or death – unless the person who had committed the crimes converted to Islam. In that case, all penalties were waived.

CONSEQUENCE: THE EROSION OF CHRISTIANITY

It is evident that the condition of the dhimmi, prolonged through centuries, has led slowly but inexorably to the near extinction of Christianity in Muslim lands: the condition of civil inferiority, which prevented Christians from attaining public offices, and the condition of religious inferiority, which closed them in an asphyxiated religious life and practice with no possibility of development, put the Christians to the necessity of emigrating, or, more frequently, to the temptation of converting to Islam. There was also the fact that a Christian could not marry a Muslim woman without converting to Islam, in part because her children had to be educated in that faith. Furthermore, a Christian who became Muslim could divorce very easily, whereas Christianity prohibited divorce. And apart from all this, the Christians in Muslim territories were seriously divided among themselves – and frequently even enemies – because they belonged to Churches that were different by confession (Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Churches) and by rite (Syro-oriental, Antiochian, Maronite, Coptic-Alexandrian, Armenian, Byzantine). Thus mutual assistance was almost impossible.

The regime of the dhimma lasted for over a millennium, even if not always and everywhere in the harsh form called “the conditions of ‘Umar,” according to which Christians not only did not have the right to construct new churches and restore existing ones, even if they fell into ruins (and, if they had the permission to construct through the good will of the Muslim governor, the churches could not be of large dimensions: the building must be more modest than all the religious buildings around it); but the largest and most beautiful churches had to be transformed into mosques. That transformation made it impossible for the church-mosques ever to be restored to the Christian community, because a place that has become a mosque cannot be put to another use.

The consequence of the dhimma regime was the “erosion” of the Christian communities and the conversion of many Christians to Islam for economic, social, and political motives: to find a better job, enjoy a better social status, participate in administrative, political, and military life, and in order not to live in a condition of perpetual discrimination.

In recent centuries, the dhimma system has undergone some modifications, in part because the ideas of citizenship and the equality of all citizens before the state have gained a foothold even in Muslim countries. Nevertheless, in practice, the traditional conception is still present. [...] The Christian, whether he wish it or not, is brought back in spite of himself to the concept of the dhimmi, even if the term no longer appears in the present-day laws of a good number of Muslim-majority countries.

To understand the present condition of these Christians, we must refer back to the history of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Ottoman empire of the 19th century, where the millet system was in force, the tanzimat, “regulations” of a liberal character, were introduced. [...] From the second half of the 19th century to the end of the first World War, there was a “Reawakening” (Nahda) movement in the Arab world, under Western influence, in the fields of literature, language, and thought. Many intellectuals were conquered by liberal ideas.

On another front, the Christians created strong ties with the Western powers – France and Great Britain in particular – which, after the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, obtained the protectorate of the countries that had belonged to the empire. This permitted the Christians both greater civil and religious liberty and cultural advancement. Moreover, during the first half of the 20th century various political parties of nationalist and socialist, and thus secularist, tendencies were born, such as the Ba’th, the Socialist Party of the Arab Renewal, founded at the end of the 1930’s in Damascus by Syrian professor Michel ‘Aflaz, a Greek Orthodox. In 1953 this party was united with the Syrian Popular Party, founded in 1932 by Antun Sa’ada, a Greek Orthodox from Lebanon. In brief, political regimes inspired by the liberal and secular principles of Western Europe rose up in various Islamic countries.

THE BIRTH OF RADICAL ISLAM

These events provoked a harsh reaction in the Islamic world, due to fears that the secularist ideas and “corrupt” customs of the Western world, identified with Christianity, would endanger the purity of Islam and constitute a deadly threat to its very existence. This reaction was fed by strong resentment against the Western powers, which had dared to impose their political rule upon Islam, “the greatest nation ever raised up by Allah among men” (Koran, s. 3:110), and against their customs “despised” by the “nation (umma) that urges to goodness, promotes justice, and restrains iniquity” (ibid, s. 3:104).

Thus was born “radical Islam,” which set itself up as the interpreter of the frustrations of the Muslim masses. Hasan al Banna, Sayyd Qutb, Abd al-Qadir ‘Uda in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood; Abu l-A‘li al-Mawdudi in Pakistan, and the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran are its most significant witnesses, and their followers have spread from Dakar to Kuala Lumpur. [...]

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF CHRISTIANS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

Radical Islam, which proposes that shari’a law be instituted in every Islamic state, is gaining ground in many Muslim countries, in which groups of Christians are also present. It is evident that the institution of shari’a would render the lives of Christians rather difficult, and their very existence would be constantly in danger. This is the cause of the mass emigration of Christians from Islamic countries to Western countries: Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia. [...] The estimated number of Arab Christians who have emigrated from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel in the last decade hovers around three million, which is from 26.5 to 34.1 percent of the estimated number of Christians currently living in the Middle East.

Furthermore, we must not underestimate grave recent actions against Christians in some Muslim-majority countries. In Algeria, the bishop of Orano, P. Claverie (1996), seven Trappist monks from Tibehirini (1999), four White Fathers (1994), and six sisters from various religious congregations have been brutally killed by Islamic fundamentalists, although the murders were condemned by numerous Muslim authorities. In Pakistan, which numbers 3,800,000 Christians among a population of 156,000,000 (96 percent Muslim), on October 28, 2001, some Muslims entered the Church of St. Dominic in Bahawalpur and gunned down 18 Christians. On May 6, 1998, Catholic bishop John Joseph killed himself for protesting against the blasphemy law, which punishes with death anyone who offends Mohammed, even only “by speaking words, or by actions and through allusions, directly or indirectly.” For example, by saying that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, one offends Mohammed, who affirmed that Jesus is not the Son of God, but his “servant.” With this kind of law, Christians are in constant danger of death.

In Nigeria – where 13 states have introduced shari’a as state law – several thousand Christians have been the victims of incidents. Serious incidents are taking place in the south of the Philippines and in Indonesia, which, with its 212 million inhabitants, is the most populous Muslim country in the world, to the harm of the Christians of Java, East Timor, and the Moluccas. But the most tragic situation – and, unfortunately, forgotten by the Western world! – is that of Sudan, where the North is Arab and Muslim, and the South black and Christian, and in part, animist. Since the time of president G.M. Nimeiry, there has been a state of civil war between the North, which has proclaimed shari’a and intends to impose it with fierce violence on the rest of the country, and the South, which aims to preserve and defend its Christian identity. The North makes use of all of its military power – financed by oil exports to the West – to destroy Christian villages; prevent the arrival of humanitarian aid; kill the cattle, which are the means of sustenance for many South Sudanese; and carry out raids, for Christian girls in particular, who are brought to the North, raped, and sold as slaves or concubines to rich, older Sudanese men. According to the 2001 report of Amnesty International, “at the end of 2000, the civil war, which started again in 1983, had cost the lives of almost two million persons and had caused the forced evacuation of 4,500,000 more. Tens of thousands of persons have been compelled by terror to leave their homes in the upper Nile region, which is rich in oil, after aerial bombardments, mass executions, and torture.”

We must, finally, recall a fact that is often forgotten because Saudi Arabia is the largest provider of oil to the Western world, and the latter therefore has an interest in not disturbing relations with that country. In reality, in Saudi Arabia, where wahhabism is in force, not only is it impossible to build a church or even a tiny place of worship, but any act of Christian worship or any sign of Christian faith is severely prohibited with the harshest penalties. Thus about a million Christians working in Saudi Arabia are deprived by violence of any Christian practice or sign. They may participate in mass or in other Christian practices – and even then with the serious danger of losing their jobs – only on the property of the foreign oil companies. And yet, Saudi Arabia spends billions of petrodollars, not for the benefit of its poor citizens or of poor Muslims in other Muslim countries, but to construct mosques and madrasas in Europe and to finance the imams of the mosques in all the Western countries. We recall that the Roman mosque of Monte Antenne, constructed on land donated by the Italian government, was principally financed by Saudi Arabia and was built to be the largest mosque in Europe, in the very heart of Christianity.

Women @ Islam

Prosecution of a Woman! For what reason? For God?

“I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-Fire were women….[because] they are ungrateful to their husbands and they are deficient in intelligence. ” (The Prophet Muhammad) Sahih Bukhari V 2, B 24, N 541 

The world just celebrated the 8^th of March 2005 as the International Women’s’ day (IWD). The print and the electronic media remembered this day by publishing a plethora of articles, essays, features, news reports…and what not. In a few newspaper reports I also noted some Muslim women demonstrating in Kuwait , Turkey and Bangladesh demanding some basic human rights that are denied to them by their male-dominated Muslim societies.  

I was wondering how come this time around the Islamists did not come up with a pure Islamic version of International Women’s day? After all, you will surely notice that whenever the civilized world invents, discovers or declares some events that benefit the humanity the Islamists must, within a short period of time, devise an Islamic edition of it. This they do to demonstrate openly the absolute superiority of Islam over anything that the corrupt infidel world had thought to be beneficial to the human race irrespective of color, creed, religion or gender. This Islamic tactic is a clever political ploy by the Islamists around the world to mark the clear division between a fanatic Islamic World and the rest of humanity (the crooked infidel World). Thus, we have Universal Declaration of Islamic Human Rights (1990) in retaliation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by UN in 1940. The other good examples are: Red Crescent Society (in Islamic Paradises) in lieu of The International Red Cross, Islamic Psychology, Islamic Chemistry, Islamic Engineering, Islamic Refrigerators, Islamic Cola, Islamic Cell Phones, Islamic Paradise, Islamic Hell, Islamic Toilet, Islamic Tank, Islamic Bomb, Islamic Jets, Islamic Common Market….and so on. You just name an item or idea and you are bound to find a clever Islamic version of it. Such is the craze and zealotry of the Islamists.  

So, what about Islamic Women’s day?  Is there going to be such a day exclusively reserved for all the Muslimahs (female Muslims) living in all the Islamic Paradises? I can bet my bottom dollar that within a few years (possibly within the next 5 years or so) the Islamists will declare another day (not the 8^th of March—it is infidel’s calendar, so haram)—possibly a date commensurate with the celebration of the killing of infidels by some woman Jihadi suicide bomber (of course, the calendar to be followed will be Arabic—the Allah’s calendar, no doubt) as the Islamic Women’s Day..  

What do you think the Muslimahs, living in Islamic Paradises, will celebrate on this day of the Islamic Women’s day?  

 Below, I have compiled some of the outstanding features of Islam which are exclusively applicable to all Muslimahs. These ‘marvelous’ features of Islam have been collected from the most authentic Islamic sources, viz. the Qur’an, the Hadis, the Sharia and Imam Ghazali, whose book, ‘Ihya Uloom Ed-Din’ is considered next to the Holy Qur’an. This list, of course, is not comprehensive. If you have time to skim through the vast ocean of Islamic of literatures you will surely discover many such incredible ‘golden ’ treatments of Muslimahs in Islamic societies. Please peruse this list and decide whether the entire feminine gender of the world should follow the Islamic world or not.  

[Note: To read the complete verses from the Qur’an and the excerpts from al-Hadis, you may click at the links provided in the reference. For those citations not available in the Internet I have quoted them in full from the book/s listed in the references.]  

Here is the compiled list of the ‘golden’ rights and provisions for all the Muslimahs in the Islamic World  

 

The right to be treated as diseased and as sex toys  

The Qur’an

Menstruation is a disease; can’t have sex during a woman’s period; after the period is over have sex in any manner, at any time and at any place; God loves those who are pure and clean…2:222  

Sahih Bukhari

Menstruation is a defect in women, for they cannot fast and pray during their periods…3.31.172

 

The right to be used as a sowing field

 

The Qur’an

Wives are tilths: sow in them in whatever manner you like…2:223  

The right to enjoy another husband after the third divorce from the previous husband (hilla marriage)

 

The Qur’anIf the divorce is pronounced three times then it becomes a final divorce and reconciliation is not possible without the former wife going through a hilla marriage; the wife must be married to another man and then he must divorce her, then only the woman is free to marry back her former husband again; these are God’s laws…2:230  

Sahih Bukhari

An irrevocably divorced woman must marry another man (hila marriage) and have sexual intercourse with him before she can re-marry her former husband…8.73.107

The second husband must have sex for the woman to get a divorce to marry her first husband (hilla marriage)…7.63.187

The right to engage in Islamic prostitution through Mut’a marriage

 

The Qur’an

Give a dowry for deriving a benefit (sexual pleasure) from a woman and you can vary it mutually (mut’a marriage)… 4:24 

Sahih Bukhari

Muhammad granted permission for contract/temporary marriage with women…8.3246, 3247, 3248  

Sahih Muslim

A cloak was sufficient for a contract temporary marriage; Muhammad later asked that the women under contract temporary marriages should be let off (similar to prostitution)…8.3252, 8.3253, 3258  

 

The right to be treated as impure as a drunkard  

The Qur’an

You can’t go to a mosque intoxicated or after having touched a woman… 4:43  

 

The right to be treated as unreliable and untrustworthy

 

The Qur’an

Do not break your pledge similar to a woman who undoes her thread after she had spun it strong (i.e., women are not reliable, they easily break their pledges)…16:92

 

 

To uphold the inalienable superiority of men over women and the right to be beaten by husbands—no questions asked

 

The Qur’an

Men are protectors and maintainers of women; women must be devoutly obedient, if not then beat them… 4:34  

God asked Job to beat his wife with a green branch; he was a true believer…38:44  

Sunaan Abu DawudA man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife…11.2142

A woman who complains about the beatings she receives from her husband is not the best woman…11.2141  

Abdur Rahman I Doi, the recognized authority on Sharia, in his book, ‘Women in Society’writes:  

A refractory wife has no legal right to object to her husband exercising his disciplinary authority. Islamic law, in common with most other systems of law, recognizes the husband’s right to discipline his wife for disobedience. (Prof. Abdur Rahman I. Doi Professor and Director, Center for Islamic Legal Studies, Ahmadu Bello University,
Zaira, Nigeria.   *  

 

To uphold the right of a husband to have four wives at any time and any number of sex-slaves for all times; in case of objection by any wife the husband can beat her

 

The Qur’an

For men four free women wives (some say nine) at a time and any number of slave girls is permitted…4:3

 

Sunaan Abu Dawud

Umar told a man to beat his wife because she suckled a slave-girl with whom he used to have sex…30.2.13  

 

To uphold the right of husband to have sex with infidel women prisoner and sex-slaves

 

The Qur’an

Sex with captive women and slave women is permitted…23:5-6

Sex with wives, captives, slaves O.K….70:29-30  

 

The right to be treated as a dog, a pig, a monkey or an ass  

Sahih Bukhari

A prayer is annulled by a passing woman, a dog and a monkey; Aisha complained that Muhammad had made women dogs…1.9.490, 493,498

Aisha complained that women are equal to dogs…1.9.498  

Sahih Muslim

Aisha complained that Muhammad’s followers made women like dogs and asses…4.1039  

Sunaan Abu Dawud

Women, slaves and camels are same; must seek Allah’s refuge from all these…11.2155

A menstruating woman and a dog cuts off a prayer…2.0703  

Mishkat-ul-Masabih

An ass, a pig, a Jew, a Magian and a woman annuls a prayer…(volume 2, p.114, Hadis number 789)  

‘Ibn ‘Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: When anyone of you prays without a sutra, an ass, a pig, or a Jew, a Magian, and a woman make the prayer void (if they pass in front of him), it is enough for him, if these pass at a distance of a stone’s throw from him.’

The right of ordinary women to be treated as crows  

Ghazali

The Prophet said : The example of a religious woman among general is that of a crow with white belly among the crows.…(volume 2, p.34)  

 

The right of a Muslimah to be stupid and to become servants  

Sahih Bukhari

Majority of women are in hell because they are deficient in intelligence…1.6.301  

Ghazali

They (women, servants) are evil and posses little intelligence…(volume 2, p.34)  

Muslim women forfeit their right to travel alone  

Sahih Bukhari

A woman should not travel alone for more than three days except without her Mahram…2.20.192, 193

A woman cannot travel without her husband or Dhi-Mahram, no man can visit her….3.29.85

A man is not permitted to be alone with a woman; a woman cannot travel alone…4.52.250  

Abdur Rahman I Doi, the recognized authority on Sharia, in his book ‘Women in Society’, writes:  

A husband has the legal right to restrict his wife’s freedom of movement. He may prevent her from leaving her home without his permission unless there is a necessity or legitimate reason for her to do otherwise. However, it is his religious obligation to be compassionate and not to unreasonably restrict her freedom of movement. If there arises a conflict between this right of the husband and the rights of the wife’s parents to visit her and be visited by her, the husband’s right prevails in the wider interest of the family. Yet the Shari’ah recommends that he be considerate enough to waive his rights to avoid shame within the family. (Prof. Abdur Rahman I. Doi Professor and Director, Center for Islamic Legal Studies, Ahmadu Bello University,  Zaira, Nigeria.   *  

Women must keep their sexual organs ready at all times for the husband to enjoy them unhindered at any time—night or day  

Sahih Bukhari

The angels curse a woman for refusing to have sex with her husband…4.54.460

Marriage gives a man the right to enjoy a woman’s private parts…7.62.81  

Sahih Muslim

Allah gets displeased with the woman who does not immediately respond when her husband demands sex from her…8.3367, 3368           

Ghazali

A wife should not refuse her husband if he wants to enjoy her body. If the wife of a man dies while he is pleased with her she will enter paradise. If a man wants sex his wife must comply with him even she is on the back of a camel. A woman cannot keep optional fast without her husband’s permission. If she does God will not accept her fast…(volume 2, p.43)  

Women have the right to breast-feed an unrelated bearded man to make him haram

 

Sahih Muslim

A woman can suckle a grown up bearded man so that she becomes haram for him (i.e. she cannot get married to him)…8.3424, 3425, 3426, 3427, 3428

 

Women are slaves (prisoners) and men are their masters (owners)  

Ghazali

Women are prisoners in a man’s hand. Men have taken them as trusts from God and God has made their sexual parts lawful for men…(volume 2, p.33)  

Hedaya

A woman is a servant and the husband is the person served—(p.47)  

“Case of marriage on a condition of service from the husband.—IF ……………it is not lawful that a woman should be in a situation to exact the service of her husband who is a freeman, as this would amount to a reversal of their appointed stations, for one of the requisites of marriage is, that the woman be as a servant, and the man as the person served; but if the service of the husband to the wife were to constitute her dower, it would follow that the husband is the servant and the wife as the served: and this being a violation of the requisites of marriage, is therefore illegal; but it is otherwise with the service stipulated to be performed by another free person, with that person’s consent, as this offers no violence to the requisites of the contract; and so also in the case of service of a slave, because the service performed by a slave to his wife is, in fact, performed to his master, by whose consent it is that he undertakes it; and the same with the case of tending flocks, because this is a service of a permanent nature, and admitted to be performed for wives, and therefore, does not violate the requisites of marriage; for the service of the husband to his wife, as a dower, is prohibited only as it may be degrading to the former; but the tending of flocks is not a degrading office.”

Islamic marriage is about sex for money (prostitution)

 

Sunaan Abu Dawud

A woman becomes lawful if you give her a dower of two handfuls of flour or dates; a contract or temporary marriage can be done for a handful of grains…11.2105  

Teaching twenty verses of the Qur’an is enough as a dower to marry a woman…2.11.2106  

“Sahl b. Sa’d al-Sa’idi said: A woman came to the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) and said: Apostle of Allah, I have offered myself to you. When she stood for a long time, a man got up and said: Apostle of Allah, marry her to me if you have no need of her. The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) asked: Have you anything to give her as dower? He replied: I have nothing but this lower garment of mine. The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: if you give your lower garment, you will sit while you have no lower garment. So look for something else. He said: I do not find anything. He said: Look something even though it should be an iron ring. The man sought it but found nothing. The apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Do you know anything from the Qur’an? He said: Yes, I know surah so and so and surah so and so, which he named. The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: I have given you her in marriage for the part of the Qur’an which you know.”  

Malik’s Muwatta

The bride–price is the money that you pay to have sex with your woman; the bride-price is obligatory…28.4.12  

Sunaan Abu Dawud

If you marry a pregnant woman then her vagina is lawful if you pay the dowry, after she gives birth, flog her; the child becomes your slave…11.2126  

Hedaya

Full dower is the payment for the delivery of woman’s person. Booza meaning Genitalia arvum Mulieris— (p.44)  

“The wife entitled to her whole dower upon the consummation of the marriage or the death of the husband.—IF a person specify a dower of ten or more Dirms, and should afterwards consummate his marriage, or be removed by death, his wife, in either case, has a claim to the whole of the dower specified, because, by consummation, the delivery of the return for the dower, namely the Booza, or woman’s person,^* is established, and therein is confirmed the right to the consideration, namely, the dower; and, on the other hand, by the decease of the husband the marriage is rendered complete by its completion, and consequently is so with respect to all its effects. (^* Literally, Genitale arvum Mulieris)”  

Maintenance of a wife is the custody for the purpose of enjoyment—(p.141)  

 

A wife has the right to decorate her husband when he goes out to have sex with his other wives  

Sahih Bukhari

Aisha used to scent Muhammad to have sexual intercourse with his other wives…1.5.270  

 

A woman should never be selected or elected as a ruler  

Sahih Bukhari

People ruled by a woman will never be successful…5.59.709  

Ghazali

Muhammad said, “No nation prospers over which a woman rules.”…(volume 2, p.34)  

 

Muslim women uphold the right of Islamic Jihadists to rape infidel captive women right in front of their vanquished husbands  

The Qur’an

You can have sex with captive (wives of enemy) women even when their husbands are alive (i.e., sexual intercourse with married captive women is allowed)… 4:24  

Sahih Muslim

Muhammad allowed the horny Jihadists to rape the women captives–coitus interruption or not, what Allah has decreed will happen…8.3371, 3373, 3374, 3377  

Sunaan Abu Dawud

In the battle of Hunayn the Muslim Jihadists wanted to have sex with the captive women in front of their husbands; so Allah sent down 4:24 that allowed them to have sex with captives of war…2.11.2150  

‘Abu Sa’id al-Khudri said: The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) sent a military expedition to awtas on the occasion of the battle of Hunain. They met their enemy and fought with them. They defeated them and took them captives. Some of the Companions of the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) were reluctant to have intercourse with the female captives in the presence of their husbands who were unbelievers. So Allah, the Exalted, sent down the Qur’anic verse “And married women (are forbidden) unto you save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.” That is to say, they are lawful for them when they complete their waiting period.’  

If a woman wishes to get rid of her tyrannical husband she must refund the ’sex money’ (Mahr) she received from him during marriage

 

Sahih Muslim

A woman must return the Mahr if she wants a divorce from her husband…7.63.197, 198, 199  

Sunaan Abu Dawud

A man can take back dower if the woman divorces him…12.2220  

Malik’s Muwatta

If a woman separates from her husband then she must return all that she got from him…29.10.32  

 

Women have the right to undergo cliterodectomy (female circumcision or FGM)  

Sunaan Abu Dawud

Female circumcision—do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband…41.5251

 

Women are slaves and infidels—they are not fit to join the moral police force

 

Ghazali

A woman, a slave and an unbeliever is not fit to be a moral police...(volume 2, p.186)  

 

A husband has the right to have sex with his wife by force (the right to rape)

 

Hedaya

You can enjoy a wife by force—(p.141)  

“But not if she be refractory.—IF a wife be disobedient or refractory and go abroad without her husband’s consent, she is not entitled to any support from him, until she return and make submission, because the rejection of the matrimonial restraint in this instance originates with her; but when she returns home, she is then subject to it, for which reason she again becomes entitled to her support as before. It is otherwise where a woman, residing in the house of her husband, refuses to admit him to the conjugal embrace, as she is entitled to maintenance, notwithstanding her opposition, because being then in his power, he may, if he please, enjoy her by force.(^*Dirms have varied in their value at different times, from twenty to twenty-five passing current for a Deenar. The sum here mentioned is from about eighteen to twenty-two pounds sterling)”  

 

Women are cheap—you can have sex with a woman by simply teaching her how to recite a few verses from the Qur’an

 

Sahih Bukhari

You can marry a woman by teaching her to recite the Quran…6.61.547, 548

 

Ghazali

The best woman is she who is beautiful and whose dower is little…(volume 2, p.31)  

Barren women should be confined at homes—they are fit only to be in the house-prison

 

Ghazali

Muhammad said: A prison in the corner of a house is better than a childless woman…(volume 2, p.24)  

Sunaan Abu Dawud

A house, a horse and a woman is an evil omen; a mat in a house is better than a barren woman…3.29.3911  

“Sa’d b. Malik reported the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) as saying: There no hamah, no infection and no evil omens; if there is anything an evil omen, it is a house, a horse and a woman.”  

Quoting ‘Awn al-Ma’bud, IV, 28, Professor Ahmad Hasan, the translator of Sunaan Abu Dawud writes, “….the evil omen of a woman is her barrenness and the evil omen of a horse is its not going for fighting in the path of Allah.” (foot note 3333, p.1099)  

A woman has no say when her husband decides to add more wives in his harem; she can’t even ask her husband to divorce her

 

Sahih Bukhari

A woman should not ask a man to divorce his current wife to marry her, instead she should happily accept to be his another wife…8.77.598  

Women are devils; they are as dirty and filthy as private parts are

 

Sahih Muslim

A woman advances and retires in the shape of a devil; so when one of you sees a woman, he should come to his wife and have intercourse with her…8.3240, 3242

 

Ghazali

If you see a woman in front she is a devil. After seeing such a woman hurry to your wife because your wife also becomes a devil; have sex with your wife…(volume 2, p.26)  

“Hazrat Jaber reported that once the Prophet looked to a certain woman. He soon went to his wife Zainab and performed his necessity. After that he came out and said: If a woman comes in front, she comes as a devil. If one of you sees a woman who please him, let him come to his wife as what is near that woman is also near his wife.”  

Muhammad said, “A woman is like a private part. When she comes out the devil holds her high. A woman has ten private parts. When she gets married her husband covers one private part; when she dies the grave covers other nine private parts”…(volume 2, p.43)

 

Fear the company of women—they bring bad luck

 

Sahih Bukhari

Women, house and horses are evil omens…7.62.30, 31, 32

The evil omens are: the horse, the women and the house…4.52.110, 111  

Malik’s Muwatta

A woman, a horse and a house bring bad luck…54.8.21, 22  

Sahih Muslim

Women are more harmful to men than anything else…36.6603, 6604  

Ghazali

Muhammad said, “There will remain no greater danger for the people after my death than women. Fear the world of women.”…(volume 3, p.86)  

Muhammad said,” A woman is the string of the devil.”…(volume 3, p.87)  

 

Women have very little intelligence—their own testimony is inadmissible in rape cases; in other matters their testimony is half to that of a man

 

Qur’an

Confinement till death for lewdness by women four believing male witnesses are required to prove a woman’s innocence… 4:15

Write the contract; women witness is half of men…2:282  

Sunaan Abu Dawud

Defect of reason in women are: testimony of two women for one man; defect of faith in women, no fasting during Ramadan…3.40.4662

“‘Abd Allah b. Umar reported the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) as saying: I did not see more defective in respect of reason and religion than the wise of you (women). A woman asked: What is the defect of reason and religion? He replied: The defect of reason is the testimony of two women for one man, and the defect of faith is that one of you does not fast during Ramadan (when one is menstruating), and keep away from prayer for some days.”

 

Women are less human—they get one-third of blood money, no booty (for Jihad) for them

 

Malik’s Muwatta

The blood money for a woman is one-third of the blood money for a man; she can be given up to half of the blood money of a man…43.6.4b  

Sahih Muslim

Women Jihadiststs do not get booties except that they get a prize for participating in a jihad. …19.4458  

 

Women are worse than dead persons—they cannot follow a bier

 

Sahih Muslim

Women cannot follow the bier…4.2039  

 

Men should always oppose women

Ghazali

Hazrat Umar said, “Act opposite to women as there is reward in opposing them.”…(volume 2, p.34)  

 

Women are easily expendable—a divorced woman gets no maintenance or alimony from her ex-husband

 

Sahih Muslim

No lodging and maintenance for an irrevocably divorced woman; Muhammad asked one such woman to be lodged with a blind man, Ibn Umm Maktum…9.3519, 3522, 3530  

 

A woman has the right to stay at home solely to provide sex to her husband  

Hedaya

The woman’s stay at home is solely for sex—(p.54)  

“On the other hand the husband has no power to restrain his wife from going on a journey, or from going abroad, or visiting her friends, until such time as shall have discharged the whole of the Mihr Moajil, or prompt dower, because a husband’s right to confine his wife at home is solely for the sake of securing to himself the enjoyment of her person, and his right to such enjoyment does not exist until after the payment of the return for it.”    

A woman becomes a harlot when she wears perfume  

Mishkat al-Masabih

If a woman uses perfume she is an adulteress…(volume 2, p.255)  

Abu Musa reported Allah’s messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) as saying: Every eye is lustful and when a woman applies perfume and then goes about in an assembly she is like such and such i.e., adulteress. (Hadis number 1065).    

Conclusion:  If you are appalled by patiently reading what I diligently cited from the most authentic Islamic sources please bear in mind that those uncivilised Islamic provisions are not mere rhetoric or dead passages buried in the incredibly unfathomed depth of Islamic epics. Those Islamic requirements are living laws enacted in many Islamic Paradises, such as Saudi Arabia , Sudan , Afghanistan , Pakistan , Iran , certain parts of Nigeria and Malaysia . They are compulsory for all the Muslim women as well as for the infidel women living (in some Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia ) there. It is also feared that those barbaric Islamic customs may soon be imposed upon the Iraqi women. Isn’t March 8^th the most appropriate time for all women in the world to raise their call to free their Muslim sisters from such unimaginable, barbaric, medieval-age tyranny? There is no dignity, no respect and no basic human rights for women in the Muslim world. They are living in a world completely devoid of reason, justice, equality of gender and human dignity. Shall we not do something for these wretched, hapless women? Are we not living in a civilised society?

 

References  

1. “The Holy Qur’an,” the internet version of three English translations can be read at: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/reference.html

2.      Abu Dawud, Sulayman b. al-Ash’ath, “Al-Sunaan,” a collection of Hadith, translated in English by Prof. Ahmad Hasan: [http://www.luc.edu/orgs/msa/abudawud/index.htm

3.      Abu Dawud, Sulayman b. al-Ash’ath, “Al-Sunaan,” a collection of Hadith, (in 3 volumes) translated in English by Prof. Ahmad Hasan, Kitab Bhavan, 1784 Kalan Mahal, Daraya Ganj, New Delhi-110002 (India), 2001

4.      al-Bukhari, Muhammad b. Ismail, “Sahi Bukhari,” translated in English by Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khan: *

5.      Muslim, Abu al-Hussain b. al-Hajjaj al-Qushairi, “Sahi Muslim,” translated in English by Abdul Hamid Siddiqui:  *

6.      Ibn Abdullah Tabrizi, Sheikh Wali-ud-Din Muahmmad, “Mishkat-ul-Masabih,” (in 3 volumes) translated and annotated by Abdul Hameed Siddiqui, Kitab Bhavan, 1784 Kalan Mahal, Daraya Ganj, New Delhi-110002, India,1990

7.      Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid, ‘Ihya Ulum-Ed-Din’ (in 4 volumes), translated into English by Fazl-Ul-Karim, Darul Ishaat, Urdu Bazar, Karachi, Pakistan, First ed., 1993

8.      Hamilton, Charles, “Hedaya,” translated in English in 1870 from the Persian version; reprinted by Kitab Bhavan, 1784 Kalam Mahal, Daraya Ganj, New Delhi

 

 

What they plan?

 

Face the truth of Islamic terrorism

Jim Berry’s excellent letter Sept. 11 correctly points out how the leftist press soft-pedals Muslim terrorism. A recent CNN report on the slaughter of 12 Nepalese workers referred only to “Iraqi militants” and never mentioned Islam or even Arab. But quoting American ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish on the Beslan child slaughter: “the world media and the U.N. (must) take a serious stand against Islamic, yes, Islamic, terror condemning terrorism with serious consequences to oil rich Arab countries that finance terrorism  and no diluted language by the international media  I cannot defend the cruel teachings and hate speech in my culture of origin  there is no cause in the world that should justify this insanity. I lived it and know what will end it  a united world stand against the Arab’s stagnant and barbaric view of the world  the world cannot stand by, confused and equivocal about 9/11 and Islamic terrorism any more.  ”

Yet President Bush panders to Saudi Arabia and ignores its sponsorship of Wahhabi terrorism including 9-11. Bush can’t even say the word “Islam” or “Arab” while Kerry wants to be more sensitive to their feelings.

Mr. Berry also points out the Nazi connection. The Arabs, Chechens and Bosnian Muslims were all Nazi collaborators. The spiritual founder of the PLO and Arafat’s “uncle” (Mufti of Jerusalem) is a convicted Nazi war criminal that headed the Bosnian Muslim SS in Yugoslavia. Bush must stop putting Saudi oil and corporate profits ahead of the lives of our troops. The leftist media must tell the truth and stop playing political correctness.

This Islamic Nazism must be defeated. It’s a war of survival, and I vote America.

Lewis Loflin
Bristol, Va.

Taking Away Their Greatest Weapon

by Beth Goodtree

The civilized world has defined religion as something untouchable and sacrosanct. For civilized peoples, this is all well and good. But there are demons that move among us who have perverted the intent of religion as well as the laws protecting it. By doing this, they have waged war, encouraged slavery, and committed and incited murder and genocide with near impunity. It is time for a legal defining of ‘religion.’

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines religion as:

1. The service and worship of God or the observance.
2. A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
3. A cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.

These definitions are not qualified or modified in any way. Why? Because civilized people would find it inconceivable to include murder and genocide, as well as global conquest, slavery and subjugation as part of something Godly.

And yet this is what we are now facing. All in the name of ‘religion.’

But then, the civilized world views the whole concept of God as a supernatural force devoted to ‘good.’ And here we must also define what we think of as ‘good.’

To us, ‘good’ represents anything that encourages freedom, justice, morality, expansion of the mind, and creativity. ‘Good’ mean life encouraging. ‘Good’ means the opposite of chaos and restriction. ‘Good’ means the opposite of despotism and tyranny. ‘Good’ means acceptance of differing thoughts and opinions so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others.

Under these definitions, a blanket protection of religion is right and just.

Unfortunately, these definitions of ‘goodness’ as being necessary to a religion have never been set down or codified — they have been merely understood. And we are now paying for that.

The non-Islamist (non-radical Islam) world is being forced, by our own laws, to revere and respect all versions of Islam as being equal. They are not. Several forms of Islam (Sufi and Ismaili are two), who believe in our definition of ‘good,’ are rapidly disappearing through murder and conquest.

But many other forms of Islam actually believe that murder, genocide, war for the sake of religious conquest and expansion, as well as slavery or indenture (they call it debt-servitude to get around the rightfully inflammatory word ’slavery’), sexual mutilations and enforced ignorance are all ‘good.’ And they have forced us to accept their definitions of ‘good’ under the legal protections afforded to all religions.

Essentially, Islamism has taken that which we would consider the work of the ultimate evil and wrapped ‘religion’ around it to circumvent the very laws we have in place to protect us from such demonic and monstrous aspirations.

When you have American mosques, American Islamist publications, and Imams and groups in America calling for ‘death to the Zionists, Jews and Crusaders,’ this should not be protected under freedom of religion. It is unholy and ungodly by civilized definitions and actually is in conflict with the ‘Hate Speech as War Crimes section of the Genocide Laws. Yet it is still, unfortunately, considered ‘protected speech,’ and thus manages to supercede our other laws banning and punishing such behaviors.

This must change.

When you have constant genocidal speeches urging the murder of Jews and Christians issuing from mosques and on television, as in Israel or in Great Britain, this should not be tolerated. This is not religion. This is conquest politics at it most fiendish.

And yet Israel continues to ignore this and make concessions to a people bent upon their destruction for ‘holy’ reasons.

Great Britain, meanwhile, seems to blithely allow such hatred and lies which are aimed at instilling genocidal intent. It has reached the shameful point where even their own prince apparently thought that wearing the symbol of a former regime who accomplished just what radical Islam preaches is acceptable.

This must change.

If we are to survive as free, safe, and happy people, the civilized world as a whole must alter their laws to exclude such practices from the protection of being considered legitimate religions.

And the first step to freeing ourselves from the unholy pseudo-religion of Islamism (radical Islam) is to immediately incorporate into our laws what is acceptable as a true religion and what is not. This will liberate us from the losing proposition of tolerating and/or negotiating with murderers, inciters, enslavers and tyrannical regimes, who cowardly hide behind the shield WE provided them with: ‘Anything done in the name of religion is untouchable.’

When you have countries such as Saudi Arabia funding terrorism in Israel in the name of Islam and continuing the enslavement of entire peoples as being part of their Islamist version of conversion through conquest as well as ‘the Islamic Law of debt servitude,” this must not be tolerated. And yet we do. And not merely for the sake of oil.

We must further define our laws to specify that hatred, incitement, tyranny and the goal of conquest and conversion (as opposed to mild verbal and/or intellectual persuasion), as well as slavery and the lack of freedom of choice and thought, should be mandatory in the definition of what is not a religion.

We, the civilized world, must immediately take measures to modify our laws and thus prevent those who yearn for our destruction to use our own freedoms against us.

Beth Goodtree is a writer specializing in political commentary, Islamism and the Middle East and the occasional science and humor article. She has a background in advertising and works as a consultant on Islamism and terrorism to a security firm. Contact her at her website: http://hometown.aol.com/bgoodtree/

Another day at Mohammad’s Islam of Tolerance :P

Did you read the Qu’ran???

Surely you have seen these following

Quran Surah 2: The Cow

Don’t bother to warn the disbelievers. Allah has blinded them. Theirs will be an awful doom. 6
Allah has sickened their hearts. A painful doom is theirs because they lie. 10
A fire has been prepared for the disbelievers, whose fuel is men and stones. 24
Disbelievers will be burned with fire. 39, 90
For disbelievers is a painful doom. 104
For unbelievers: ignominy in this world, an awful doom in the next. 114
Allah will leave the disbelievers alone for a while, but then he will compel them to the doom of Fire. 126
The doom of the disbelievers will not be lightened. 162
They will not emerge from the Fire. 167
Those who hide the Scripture will have their bellies eaten with fire. Theirs will be a painful doom. 174
How constant are they in their strife to reach the Fire! 175
Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kil them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. 191
War is ordained by Allah. 216
Those who die in their disbelief will burn forever in the Fire. 217
Disbelievers worship false gods. They will burn forever in the Fire. 257
Allah does not guide disbelievers. 264
“Give us victory over the disbelieving folk.” 286

Quran Surah 3: The Family Of ‘Imran

Those who disbelieve the revelations of Allah, theirs will be a heavy doom. 4
Those who disbelieve will be fuel for the Fire. 10
Those who disbelieve shall be overcome and gathered unto Hell. 12
Those who disbelieve, promise them a painful doom. 21
Theirs will be a painful doom. 77
All non-Muslims will be rejected by Allah after they die. 85
Disbelievers will have a painful doom. And they will have no helpers. 91
Disbelievers will have their faces blackened on the last day. They will face an awful doom. 105-6
Those who disbelieve will be burnt in the Fire. 116
The Fire is prepared for disbelievers. 131
We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Their habitation is the Fire 151
Theirs will be an awful doom. 176
Disbelievers do not harm Allah, but will have a painful doom. 177
Disbelievers will have a shamful doom. 178
Disbelievers will go to Hell. 196

Quran Surah 4: Women

Those who disobey Allah and his messenger will be burnt with fire and suffer a painful doom. 14
For the disbelievers, We have prepared a painful doom. 18
For disbelievers, We prepare a shameful doom. 37
Hell is sufficient for their burning. 55
Unbelievers will be tormented forever with fire. When their skin is burned off, a fresh skin will be provided. 56
Allah will bestow a vast reward on those who fight in religious wars. 74
Believers fight for Allah; disbelievers fight for the devil. So fight the minions of the devil. 76
Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them. 89
If the unbelievers do not offer you peace, kill them wherever you find them. Against such you are given clear warrant. 91 ( Offering peace in Islam means surrendering. All 67 out of 68 wars of Muhammad were offensive. They are called qazwah (raid, ambush, sudden attack). That is how Muhammad waged his wars. He raided, massacred and looted civilians with no warning. The one defensive war, ‘ditch’ was not fought. That is why the Islamic terrorism ‘jihad’ will continue until the West “offers peace”. This was made clear by Bin Laden.)
Those who oppose the messenger and become unbelievers will go to hell. 115
Those who believe, then disbelieve, then believe and disbelieve again will never be forgiven by Allah. 137
For the hypocrites there will be a painful doom. 138
Allah will gather hypocrites and disbelievers into hell. 140
The hypocrites will be in the lowest part of hell and no one will help them there. 145
You must believe everything Allah and his messengers tell you. Those who don’t are disbelievers and will face a painful doom. 150-151
For the disbelievers, Allah has prepared a painful doom. 161
God will guide disbelievers down a road that leads to everlasting hell. 168-169

Quran Surah 5: The Table Spread

Those who deny Islam will be losers in the Hereafter. 5
Disbelievers are the rightful owners of Hell. 10
Those who make war with Allah and his messenger will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. That is how they will be treated in this world, and in the next they will have an awful doom. 33 (Anyone who resist Islam is deemed to be making war with Allah)
Disbelievers will have a painful doom. 36
Disbelievers will want to come out of the Fire, but will not. Their will be a lasting doom. 37
Life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, and tooth for tooth. Non-muslims are wrong doers. 45
Christians will be burned in the Fire. 72
Christians are wrong about the Trinity. For that they will have a painful doom. 73
Disbelievers will be owners of hell-fire. 86

Quran Surah 6: The Cattle

Many generations have been destroyed by Allah. 6
Allah will torment those who deny his revelations. 49
Those who disbelieve will be forced to drink boiling water, and will face a painful doom. 70
When nonbelievers die, the angels will deliver to them doom and degradation. 93
Allah chooses to lead some astray, and he lays ignominy on those who disbelieve. 125
Allah will send everyone the Fire, except those he chooses to deliver. 128

Quran Surah 7: The Heights

How many a township have We destroyed! As a raid by night, or while they slept at noon, Our terror came unto them. 4-5
Allah has made devils the protecting friends of disbeliveers. 27
Disbelievers choose devils as protecting friends and believe they are rightly guided. 30
Only believers go to heaven. 32
Disbelievers are the rightful owners of the Fire. 36
Entire nations have entered the Fire. Some get a double torment. 38
Disbelievers will be excluded from heaven. Theirs will be a bed of hell. 40-41
Those in the Fire will cry out to those in heaven, saying: “Pour water on us.” But Allah has forbidden that to disbelievers. 50
Those who deny Muhammad’s revelation are evil. 177

Quran Surah 8: The Spoils of War

Allah will throw fear into the hearts of the disbelievers, and smite their necks and fingers. 12
Disbelievers will be tormented in the Fire. 14
When you fight with disbelievers, do not retreat. Those who do will go to hell. 15-16
Taste of the doom because ye disbelieve. 35
Those who disbelieve will be gathered into hell. 36
The angels smite the face and backs of disbelievers, saying: “Taste the punishment of burning!” 50
The worst beasts in Allah’s sight are the disbelievers. 55
Exhort the believers to fight. They will win easily, because disbelievers are without intelligence. 65
A prophet may not take captives until he has made a slaughter in the land. 67

Surah 9: Repentance

Give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom to those who disbelieve. 3
Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. 5
Don’t let idolaters tend the sanctuaries. Their works are in vain and they will be burned in the Fire. 17
Give tiding of a painful doom to Christians and Jews. 34
If you refuse to fight, Allah will afflict you with a painful doom. 39
Disbelievers go to hell. 49
Those who vex the Prophet, for them there is a painful doom. 60
Those who oppose Allah and His messenger will burn in the fire of hell. 63
Allah promises hypocrites and disbelievers the fire of hell. Allah curses them. They will have a lasting torment. 68
Fight the disbelievers and hypocrites. Be harsh with them. They are all going to hell anyway. 73
Allah will afflict disbelievers with a painful doom in this world and the Hereafter. 74
For disbelievers there will be a painful doom. 90
Don’t pray for idolaters (not even for your family) after it is clear they are people of hell-fire. 113
Fight disbelievers who are near you, and let them see the harshness in you. 123

Quran Surah 10: Jonah

Disbelievers will have a boiling drink and a painful doom. 4
Those who neglect Allah’s revelations will make their home in the Fire. 7-8
Allah has destoyed entire generations. 13
Those who disbelieved will face a dreadful doom. 70
Allah drowned those who disbelieved his revelations. 73
Moses asked Allah to harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they would not believe until they saw the painful doom. 88

Quran Surah 11: Hud

Disbelievers wil1 end up in the Fire. 17
Those who oppose Islam and disbelieve in the Hereafter are guilty of the greatest wrong. 18-19
Those in the Fire will suffer as long as the heavens and earth endure. 106-7
Allah will fill hell with humans and jinn. 119

Quran Surah 13: The Thunder

Disbelievers are the rightful owners of the Fire 5
Allah does not hear the prayer of disbelievers. 14
Those who do not answer Allah’s call will go to hell. 18
Disbelievers will be tormented in this life, and suffer even more pain in the Hereafter. 33-34
The reward for disbelievers is the Fire. 35

Quran Surah 14: Abraham

Woe unto the disbelievers. Theirs will be an awful doom. 2
Allah sends some people astray. 4
Those who are in hell will be forced to drink festering water which they can hardly swallow. They will want to die, but they will not be able to. Theirs is a harsh doom. 16-17
Allah sends wrong-doers astray. He does whatever he likes. 27
Those in hell will be chained together. Their clothing will be made of pitch and fire will cover their faces. 49-50

Quran Surah 15: The Rock

Let the disbelievers enjoy life and let false hope beguile them. They will come to know! 2-3
Iblis will lead humans astray. Only perfect Muslims will be safe from him. The rest will go to hell. 39-43
Allah’s doom is a dolorous doom. 50

Quran Surah 16: The Bee

Allah could have led everyone to the truth, but he chose not to. 9
Those who don’t believe in the Hearafter are proud. 22
Disbelievers are evil and will dwell in hell forever. 27-29
Disbelievers are liars. 39
Allah will add doom to doom for those who disbelieve. 88
Those who oppose Islam will face an awful doom. 94

Quran Surah 17: The Children of Israel

Allah made hell to be a dungeon for disbelievers. 8
Allah has prepared a painful doom for those who disbelieve in the Hereafter. 10
Allah destroyed entire towns. 16
How many generations Allah has destroyed since Noah! 17
Allah intends to burn people in hell. 18
Allah makes it so that unbelievers cannot understand. 45-46
Allah will destroy every town before the Day of Resurrection. 58
Allah will send disbelievers astray. Then he’ll burn them in hell, increasing the flames from time to time. 97-98

Quran Surah 18: The Cave

Allah has prepared a Fire for the disbelievers. When they want a shower, Allah will give them a shower of molten lead to burn their faces. 29
Those who are condemned to the Fire know they will have no way to escape. 53
The worst wrong is to forget Allah’s revelations. Allah covers their hearts and makes them deaf so that they will never believe the truth. 57
There is an appointed time in which the doomed will find no escape. 58
Allah has destroyed many towns. 59
On a certain day, Allah will present hell, in plain view, to the disbelievers. 100
Allah will welcome the disbelievers into hell. 102
Hell is the reward for disbelievers because they made a jest of Allah’s revelations and messengers. 106

Quran Surah 19: Mary

Allah will pluck out from every sect those who should burn in hell. 69-70
Allah will record what disbelievers say and then prolong their torment. 77-79
Allah has sent the devils on the disbelievers to confuse them. 83
Allah has destroyed many generations. 98

Quran Surah 20: Ta Ha

Those who do not believe Allah’s revelations will face doom in the Hereafter. 127
Allah has destroyed many generations. 128

Quran Surah 21: The Prophets

Allah destroyed entire towns, yet the people still disbelieved. 6
The people cried out for mercy, but Allah killed them anyway. 15
Disbelievers will not be able to put out the fire on their faces and backs. They will be stupefied and no one will help them. 39-40
Allah gave judgment and knowledge to Lot . He was a righteous man. (Genesis 19:7-38) 75
Every person alive at the time of the flood was evil. So Allah drowned them all. 77
The disbelievers will stare in terror at what Allah has in store for them. 97-99

Surah 22: The Pilgrimage

The devil will guide some to the punishment of the Flame. 3-4
Those who turn from the way of Allah will face ignominy in this world and burning in the next. 9
Whoever thinks that Allah will not give Muhammad victory should go hang himself. 15
Disbelievers will wear garments of fire, boiling fluid will be poured on their heads, their bellies and skin will be melted, they will be tormented with iron hooks, and when they try to escape they will be driven back with the taunt: Taste the doom of burning. 19-22
Allah will provide the disbelievers with a painful doom. 25
How many towns Allah has destroyed! 45
Those who disregard Allah’s revelations are the owners of the Fire. 51
Those who disbelieve Allah’s revelations will have a shameful doom. 57
Those who disbelieve Allah’s revelations will burn in the Fire. 72

Quran Surah 23: The Believers

Allah told Noah not to bother pleading for the people he was about to drown. 27
Those who don’t believe in the Hereafter will receive extreme punishment from Allah. 74-77
When fire burns their faces, they will be glum. 104
Disbelievers will not be successful. 117

Surah 24: The Light

Scourge adulterers and adulteresses with 100 stripes. Do not show them any pity. Have a party of believers watch the punishment. 2
Only adulterers can marry adulteresses. Believers are not to marry them. 3
Vile women are for vile men, and vile men for vile women. 26
Believing women must lower their gaze and be modest, cover themselves with veils, and not reveal themselves except to their husbands, relatives, children, and slaves. 31
Disbelievers are miscreants. 55
Disbelievers will never escape the Fire that will be their home. 57
It’s okay for believers to own slaves. 58
The only true believers are those who believe in Allah and his messenger. 62

Quran Surah 25: The Criterion

Those who deny the coming of the Hour will be chained together and burned with fire. They will pray for their own destruction. 11-13
Allah will force the evil-doers to taste great torment. 19
It will be a hard day for disbelievers and wrong-doers. They will gnaw on their hands and wish they had chosen Islam. 26-27
Those who deny Muhammad’s revelations will be destroyed. 36
Allah drowned everyone in the flood of Noah, and has prepared a painful doom for evil-doers. 37

Quran Surah 26: The Poets

Allah destroyed the people in Lot ’s town with a dreadful rain. 172-3
Many will not believe until they see the painful doom. 201
Those who believe in another god are doomed. 213

Quran Surah 27: The Ant

Allah leads those who do not believe in the Hereafter astray by making things work out OK in this life, so that he can torment them forever in the next. They will get the worst punishment and will be the greatest losers. 4-5
“Allah destroyed them and their people, every one.” 51
But he “saved those who believed.” 53
Allah sent a dreadful rain on “those who stayed behind.” 58
Whoever does something wrong will be thrown into the Fire. 90

Quran Surah 28: The Narrative

Allah has completely destroyed many communities. 58
Allah will taunt Christians on the day of their doom, saying: Where are My partners whom ye imagined? 62-64
Allah caused the earth to swallow Korah. 79-81
Never help disbelievers. 86 (Can Muslims in countries ruled in by non-Muslims be loyal to their country?)

Quran Surah 29: The Spider

Those who disbelieve in the revelations of Allah have no hope of mercy. For such there is a painful doom. 23
Only wrong-doers deny the revelations of Allah. 49
Those who disbelieve in the revelations of Allah are the losers. 52
The doom of hell will come upon disbelievers suddenly, when they least expect it. 53-55

Quran Surah 30: The Romans

Allah will tear Christians apart for ascribing partners to him. 13-14
Disbelievers will be brought to doom. 16
It’s OK to own slaves. 28
Allah does not love disbelievers. 45
Allah seals the heart of disbelievers. (And then he burns them in the Fire.) 59

Quran Surah 31: Luqman

Those who mislead others from Allah’s way and mock Islam will have a painful doom. 6-7
Allah will give disbelievers a little comfort for a little while, and then he’ll torment them forever with a heavy doom. 23-24

Quran Surah 32: The Prostration

Allah will fill hell with the jinn and mankind together. 13
Allah: Taste the doom of immortality because of what ye used to do. 14
Those who used to deny the Fire will be tormented in it forever. 20
The worst thing you can do is to deny the revelations of Allah. 22

Quran Surah 33: The Clans

Don’t obey disbelievers. 1 (Can Muslims in countries ruled in by non-Muslims be loyal to their country?)
Allah makes the deeds of unbelievers fruitless. 19
Allah cast panic into the hearts of the disbelievers. He killed some, and enslaved others. 25-26
Allah gave Zeyd’s wife, his own daughter in law to Muhammad in marriage. This was so that all Muslims would know that it’s OK to marry your adopted son’s ex-wife. 37
Ignore disbelievers and their poisonous talk. 48
It’s OK to own slaves. 50
Allah says it is lawful for Muhammad to marry any women he wants. 50-51
It’s OK to own slaves. 55
Those who malign Allah, Muhammad, and Muslims will be cursed by Allah in this life and with doom in the Hereafter. 57
Those who oppose Islam will be slain with a fierce slaughter. 60-61
Allah has cursed the disbelievers, and has prepared for them a flaming fire, wherein they will abide forever. 64-65
The disbelievers will be burned in the Fire with a double torment. 66-68

Quran Surah 34: Saba

Those who challenge the revelations of Muhammad will have a painful doom. 5
Those who disbelieve in the Hereafter will be tormented. 8
But some of the jinn Allah burned with flaming Fire. 12
Those who strive against Allah’s revelations will be brought to the doom. 38
Those who worshipped the jinn will taste the doom of the Fire. 41
Allah hates those who ignore his messengers. 45
Those who are cast into hell be terrified when they see that they have no escape. Then they will believe. But it will be too late. 51-52

Quran Surah 35: The Angels

Those who disbelieve will have an awful doom. 7
Allah sends whoever he wants astray. 8
Allah hates disbelievers. 26
Disbelievers will burn forever in the fire of hell. Allah will keep them alive so that he can torture them forever. When they repent and ask for mercy, he will ignore them. 36-7
He who disbelieves, his disbelief will be on his own head. 39
Allah has blinded the disbelievers so that they cannot see the truth. So it don’t bother warning them.

Quran Surah 36: Ya Sin

They will go to hell anyway. 8-10
Allah has destroyed many entire generations. 31
If Allah feels like it, he will drown everyone. 43
Allah will burn the disbelievers in hell. 63-4

Quran Surah 37: Those Who Set The Ranks

Those who refuse to believe in Muhammad’s revelations will face a painful doom. 31-38
Those in hell must eat from a tree with the heads of devils, and then drink boiling water. After that they return to hell. 62-68
Allah drowned everyone except Noah and his family in the flood. 82
Allah tells Abraham in a dream to sacrifice his son. (But is the son Ishmael or Isaac?) 102
Allah killed everyone in Sodom except for Lot and his family. 136
No one is against Allah, except those who burn in hell. 162-3
Quran Surah 38: Sad

Allah has destroyed many generations. 3
Those who doubt will soon taste Allah’s doom. 8
Those who deny the messengers deserve doom. 14
Those who wander from the way of Allah will have an awful doom. 26
Those who disbelieve will burn in the Fire. 27
The transgressors will roast in the Fire and be forced to drink boiling liquids followed by ice cold drinks. 55-9
Iblis asks Allah to let him hang around and mislead humans. Allah allows him to do so, and Iblis leads all humans to hell except for the single-minded slaves. Allah agrees, and plans to fill hell with Iblis and his followers. 79-85

Quran Surah 39: The Troops

Tell the disbelievers to enjoy themselves now, because later they will be owners of the Fire. 8
The losers will be those who lose themselves and their families on the Day of Resurrection. They will be surrounded by fire. 15-16
No one will be able to help those that Allah torments in the Fire. 19
Woe unto those who forget Allah. They are in plain error. 22
Allah sends some people astray. For them there is no guide. 23
The worst thing you can do is tell a lie against Allah. The home of disbelievers is hell. 32
Allah sends some people astray. For them there is no guide. 36
Surrender to Allah before he sends the doom upon you suddenly. 54-55
Those who lie about Allah will be sent to hell and will have their faces blackened. 60
Losers are those who disbelieve the revelations of Allah. 63
Those ascribe a partner to Allah (like the Christians) will be among the losers. 65
Those who disbelieve will be driven into hell. 71-72

Quran Surah 40: The Believer

Allah sent an awful punishment at the time of Noah. 5
Those who disbelieve are the owners of the Fire. 6
Allah greatly abhors those who disbelieve. 10
When the doom comes, the hearts of the doomed will choke in their throats, and no one will help them. 18
Those who ignore Allah’s “clear proofs” will be seized and punished severely. 22
Those that Allah sends astray will have no helper or guide. 33
Allah deceives those who doubt. 34
The prodigals will be owners of the Fire. 43
The doomed will be exposed to the Fire morning and evening. 46
Those in hell will beg to be relieved from the Fire’s torment for just a day. But the prayer of a disbeliever is in vain. 49-50
Those who bicker about Allah’s revelations are filled with pride. 56
Those who scorn Allah will go to hell. 60
Those who deny the revelations of Allah are perverted. 63
Those who deny the Scripture and Allah’s messengers will be dragged through boiling water and thrust into the Fire. 70-72
Allah will taunt the Christians in hell, saying: Where are all my partners that you used to believe in? 73
Thus does Allah send astray the disbelievers (in his guidance). 74
Those who scorn will go to hell. 76
When they see Allah’s doom they will believe in Allah. But their faith will not save them. The disbelievers will be ruined. 84-85

Quran Surah 41: Fusilat

Woe unto the idolaters who disbelieve in the Hereafter. 6
Allah will make life miserable for those who deny his revelations and then he will torment them forever in the Hereafter. And they will not be helped. 15-16
The enemies of Allah will be gathered into the Fire where their skin, ears, and eyes will testify against them. 19-20
Allah will make those who disbelieve taste an awful doom. Their immortal home will be the Fire, since they denied Allah’s revelations. 27-28
Those who disbelieve will taste hard punishment. 50

Quran Surah 42: The Counsel

While some lounge in the Garden, others will roast in the Flame. 7
Those who argue about Allah will have his wrath upon them. Theirs will be an awful doom. 16
Allah sometimes kills people for misbehaving. 34
Allah sends some people astray and then punishes them for it by burning them in the Fire. 44-46
Allah makes some people barren. (Whenever he feels like it.) 50

Quran Surah 43: Ornaments of God

When the Egyptians angered Allah, he drowned them all. 55
Those who argue and do wrong will have a painful doom that will come upon them suddenly. 65-66
The guilty are tormented forever in hell. Allah will not relax their punishment. 74-75

Quran Surah 44: Smoke

Those in torment will claim to believe and ask Allah for relief. But he will refuse since they will return to their disbelief. 11-16
Those in hell must eat from a tree like molten brass that burns their bellies. Then boiling water will be poured on their heads. 43-48

Quran Surah 45: Crouching

Those who hear and reject Allah’s revelations are sinful liars. Give them tidings of a painful doom. 7-8
Those who joke about Allah’s revelations will go to hell. Theirs will be an awful doom. 9-10
Those who disbelieve in Allah’s revelations will have a painful doom of wrath. 11
Allah sends some people astray, making it impossible for them to hear or see. 23
Those who disbelieve are guilty folk. 31

Quran Surah 46: The Wind-Curved Sandals

Disbelievers will be rewarded with the ignominious doom of the Fire. 20
The guilty will face a wind with a painful torment. 25
Allah has destroyed entire towns. 27
Allah will taunt the disbelievers that he torments in the fire, saying: “Taste the doom for that ye disbelieved.” 34

Quran Surah 47: Muhammad

Allah makes the works of disbelievers vain. 1
Those who disbelieve follow falsehood. 3
Smite the necks of the disbelievers whenever you fight against them. Those who die fighting for Allah will be rewarded. 4
Allah will damn the disbelievers and make all their actions fruitless. 8-9
Disbelievers may eat and be happy now, but the Fire will be their final home. 12
Those in the Garden will drink delicious wine, while those in the Fire will drink boiling water that will tear apart their intestines. 15
Allah curses people by making them deaf and blind. 23
Angels will gather them together and smite their faces and backs. 27
Allah will make the actions those who disbelieve fruitless. 32
Those who disbelieve will never be pardoned by Allah. 34-35

Quran Surah 48: Victory

Those who think an evil thought concerning Allah will be cursed and sent to hell by him. 6
Allah has prepared a flame for the disbelievers. 13
If you refuse to fight for Allah, he will punish you with a painful doom. 16-17
But if you’re willing to fight for Allah, he will provide you with lots of booty. 19-20
Allah punished those who disbelieved with a painful punishment. 25
Those with Muhammad are ruthless toward disbelievers and merciful toward themselves. 29

Quran Surah 49: The Private Apartments

Do not lift your voice when in Muhammad’s presence. Those who subdue their voices are righteous and will receive an immense reward from Allah. 1-3

Quran Surah 50: Oaf

Allah has destroyed many entire generations. 36

Quran Surah 51: The Winnowing Winds

Accursed are the conjecturers who ask: When is the Day of Judgment? It is the day they will be tormented by the Fire. 10-14
Woe to the disbelievers. 60

Quran Surah 52: The Mount

Those who deny the existence of hell will be thrust into its Fire. 11-16
Those who disbelieve are trapped. 42

Quran Surah 54: The Moon

Allah sent a storm of stones on Lot’s folk, killing all but Lot ’s family. 34
The suffering in hell will be more wretched and bitter than anything experienced on earth. 46-48
Allah destroyed many people, but does anyone remember anymore? 51

Quran Surah 55: The Beneficent

The guilty deny hell. But after they die they go circling between it and fierce, boiling water. 43-44

Quran Surah 56: The Event

But those on his left hand will face scorching wind, scalding water, and black smoke. 42-43
Those who deny Allah and the Hereafter will eat from the Zaqqum tree and drink boiling water. 51-54
Allah will welcome the rejecters and erring with boiling water and a roasting in the hell fire. 92-94

Quran Surah 57: Iron

The home of disbelievers is the Fire, a hapless journey’s end. 15
Those who disbelieve and deny Allah’s revelations are the owners of the fire. 19

Quran Surah 58: She That Disputeth

For disbelievers is a painful doom. 4
For disbelievers is a shameful doom. 5
Don’t make friends with Allah’s enemies. For those who do so, Allah has prepared a dreadful doom. 14-15
Those who turn others away from the way of Allah will have a shameful doom. They are rightful owners of the Fire. 16-17
Those who oppose Allah and His Messenger will be among the lowest. 20
On the Last Day good Muslims will not love their non-Muslim friends and family members, not even their fathers, sons, or brothers (or their mothers, daughters, or sisters). 22

Quran Surah 59: Exile

Allah cast fear into the hearts of the disbelieving People of the Scripture. Their home in the Hereafter will be the Fire. 2-3
The disbelieving people of the Scripture are liars. 11
The devil and disbelievers will be in the Fire. 16-17
The owners of the Garden and the owners of the Fire are not equal. 20

Quran Surah 60: She That is to be Examined

Don’t be friends with disbelievers. They are your (and Allah’s) enemy. 1
Don’t be friends with those who have warred against you because of religion. Whoever makes friends with them is a wrong-doer. 9
Don’t be friends with those who disbelieve in the Hereafter. They are Allah’s enemies. 13

Quran Surah 61: The Ranks

Allah loves those who fight for him. 4
Allah leads some people astray. 5
The worst thing you can do is tell a lie about Allah. 7

Quran Surah 62: The Congregation

A hypocritical Jew looks like an ass carrying books. Those who deny the revelations of Allah are ugly. 5

Quran Surah 63: The Hypocrites

Allah seals the hearts of those who believe and then disbelieve so that they can understand nothing. 3
Disbelievers are perverted. They are the enemy, confounded by Allah. 4
Don’t bother to ask Allah to forgive the disbelievers. He will never forgive them. 6

Quran Surah 64: Mutual Disillusion

Those who disbelieve will have a painful doom. 5
Those who disbelieve are the owners of the Fire. 10

Quran Surah 66: Banning

Muhammad’s wives need to be careful. If they criticize their husband, Allah will replace them with better ones. 5
The fuel of the Fire is men and stones. 6
Be stern with disbelievers. They are going to Hell anyway. 9
The wives of Noah and Lot (who were both righteous) betrayed their husbands and are now in the Fire. 10
Quran Surah67: The Sovereignty

Disbelievers will go to hell where they will hear its roaring and boiling. 6-7
Who will protect the disbelievers from a painful doom? (Nobody) 28

Quran Surah 69: The Reality

Those who do not believe in Allah will be chained up and cast into hell-fire where they will eat filth. 30-35

Quran Surah 71: Noah

Those that Allah drowned in Noah’s flood were then tortured forever in the Fire. 25
Noah asked Allah to drown all the disbelievers. 26

Quran Surah 72: The Jinn

The fires of hell will be fueled with the bodies of idolators and unbelievers. They will experience an ever-greater torment. 15-17
Those who disobey Allah and his messenger will dwell forever in the fire of hell. 23

Quran Surah 73: The Enshrouded One

Allah will take care of the deniers. He will tie them up, burn them in a raging fire, and feed them food that chokes them. 11-13

Quran Surah 74: The Cloaked One

The last day will be a day of anguish for disbelievers. 9-10
Those who are stubborn to Allah’s revelations will face a fearful doom. 16-17
The fire of hell shrivels humans and spares nothing. 27-29
Allah has appointed angels to tend the Fire and has prepared stumbling blocks for those who disbelieve. He sends some people (whoever he wants) astray. 31
Allah is the font of fear. 56

Quran Surah 76: “Time” or “Man”

Allah has prepared chains, manacles, and a raging fire for the disbelievers. 4
Don’t obey disbelievers. 24

Quran Surah 77: The Emissaries

Allah destroyed “the former folk.” 16
Woe unto the repudiators on that day! 19, 24, 28, 34, 40, 45, 49

Quran Surah 79: “Those Who Drag Forth”

Those who rebel will go to hell. 37-39

Quran Surah 80: “He Frowned”

Disbelievers are wicked people. On the last day they will be in darkness and have dust on their faces. 40-42

Quran Surah 82: The Cleaving

The wicked will burn in hell forever. 82

Quran Surah 84: The Sundering

Some folks will be thrown into a scorching fire. 11-12
Disbelievers will be given a painful doom. 22-24

Quran Surah 87: The Most High

Those who are flung into the great Fire will neither live nor die. 12-13

Quran Surah 88: The Overwhelming

On that day many will be sad and weary. Scorched by the fire, drinking boiling water, with only bitter thorn-fruit to eat. 2-7

Allah will punish disbelievers with the direst punishment. 23-24

Quran Surah 89: The Dawn

Allah poured on them the disaster of His punishment. 13

Quran Surah 90: The City

Those who disbelieve Allah’s revelations will have the Fire placed over them like an awning. 19-20

Quran Surah92: The Night

Those who deny Allah’s revelations must endure the flaming fire. 14-16 

A story of Childhood

 

Whether you Muslims like it or not, he is always right and will be!!!

Since, I was a child I had to answer to the silly questions of Muslim friends at the school and my friendship circle. I have nothing against races and I do not ignore a Turkish guy because of his race or nation. (This summer I have been to Turkey, and there I met also with Converted Christian Turkish Brothers)

B ut what I am terribly fed up with, is the Questions that Muslims continously ask to ignore our Lord and our believes.

The silence of Christian world up to this day was because of our respect to Islamic Believes. But as we kept our silence, our Muslim friends have tought we couldn’t answer them.

No! We can answer, hereby you will be able to find some common answers to Islamic Kitsch Questions, asked for years.

The Idea came to me when my 14 years old brother, one day came home totally excited. And he said that he wanted to be converted into Muslim. Instead of shouting and yelling, I tried to explain our Christianity and our believes. He is now 16 years old and a good Christian, loving all the people, his neigbours and school.

If I have had mistaken or showed no interest to his decision, he could be a Muslim today. I know it is silly to hold somebody back from changing his religion but it is also stupid for someone to change his believes without knowing the reality about other Religions and Beliefs.

We as Christian Youth, have great duties upon ourselves. Especially these days! Because, under religious tolerance and “dialog” aims, the Christian world have always been more careful than the Muslims. Instead of Insulting them for what they believe, we tried to explain our beliefs with patience and tolerance.

But as we tried hard, they made the same mistake over and over again. They tought that our tranquility and our patience was a trick to not to face with the stupid questions they have asked.

No! Christianity has all the answers. And we as Christians, we also have many questions to ask to Muslims. And not only regarding their religion but also

their paradoxal way of behaviors, what it writes on their books and how do they live…

Pope’s speech was the boiling point of this Drama!

Can you imagine, how we Christian people, from youngest to oldest have felt ourselves like, when an ordinary (not even a theologist) fully bearded Immam, have criticized our Lord and our believes, declaring our belief to Virgin Mary as perverse? But we kept our silence. Because we have respected them.

No one has bombed a Mosque or a Islamic Foundation.

And, an oppinion of Pope, against Islam… They have reacted… They have over-reacted again.

It is a simple and a very ordinary strategy of Muslims, to ignore and disrespect Christian beliefs as much and as often as they can. And whenever, they receive a simple critic from us, they start to yell and shout with furiosity, killing people, burning Churches and so on.

Someone should stop it! Unless they learn to respect us, they have to be Stopped! But not for being Muslim, being irresponding, untolerate and wild. And if a religion is supporting these kind of behaviors (surely it does!) it has no right to criticize my Lord and his love to the Humanbeing!

Questions and Answers

Question 1: “How can one connect the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity and the belief in the unity of God, which is so clearly witnessed in the Old Testament, without getting tied up in contradictions?” (TR)

Answer: Please read Chap. 5, III, in the book carefully once more 1. Jesus himself grew up in his people’s belief in God. This belief was characterised by monotheism, the belief in the one God, which characterises the entire Old Testament. Jesus’s disciples, of whom 12 were made apostles, were naturally also monotheists. Christians know from the writings of the New Testament that Jesus did not announce himself only as a prophet. He claimed to act in the name of God and claimed that his actions (e.g. healing, waking the dead, forgiveness of sins) made God present. Moreover, he said that in himself God and his kingdom had come. The disciples, that is the first Christians, recognised in the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus’s claims were not blasphemy, did not blaspheme the one God and did not attack the true teachings of God, but were the opposite: that God himself spoke in Jesus of Nazareth, God himself was present, in other words that Jesus was the Son of God. (See: Mt  16:13-20)
Step by step the disciples, that is the first Christians, realised that the unity of God was to be understood in a new and deeper way. This is what we have tried to present in Chap 5 of the book.

So, to give a brief answer: Yes. The belief in the Holy Trinity does not negate the belief in the one God but deepens and differentiates it.  The teachings of the Christian church present an interpretation and a further development of the teachings of the Old Testament in the light of the events of Jesus’s life (his deeds and words, his suffering, death and resurrection) as well as in the light of Jesus’s teachings, as understood by the apostles and the early Christian community by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Question 2: “The Son of God was not created but born and nevertheless the Son is not after the Father? Is there significance and an explanation for this belief?” (TR)

Answer: Please read Chap.5, III, 2 Father-Son. Also: Read Thomas the Apostle’s profession: “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28)

The offence of the crucifixion was not easy to cope with. The Gospel according to John tells of how the Apostle Thomas, pulled in two directions over doubts on the news of Jesus’s resurrection, fought with himself: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (Jn 20:25). The shock of Good Friday was simply too deep-rooted for Thomas to be able to unquestioningly find his way to believe in Jesus’s resurrection. We have seen the Lord, his fellow Apostles had already told him days earlier. Thomas remained cool and reserved. We have met the Lord, he is alive, they told him. However, he did not trust them. Only the encounter with the resurrected Jesus himself opened the way to belief for the sceptical Apostle: “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came and stood among them and said. ‘Peace be with you’. Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’” (Jn 20:26-27). Overwhelmed by this encounter, overwhelmed by Jesus Christ, who lives, Thomas manages to say: “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). That is some profession! And this profession to Jesus as Lord and as God is at the end of a long road paved with doubts and uncertainties, with misunderstandings and scepticism that Thomas had to journey. And not only him but also all who are followers of Jesus have to take this road to a full understanding of the Lord. After Easter, that is, after Jesus’s resurrection, they recognised him again in the encounter, only then were their eyes opened (see. Lk 24:31). Only then did they have that “knowledge” of Jesus that then condensed into profession of Him.

In his Letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul quotes a hymn that was composed shortly after Jesus’s death and resurrection, and which summarises the belief in Jesus Christ in this way: “He was ….(Phil 2:6-11). This is the fundamental creed of Christianity.

Question 3: How can the formulation of Christian teaching “one nature in three person and three persons in one nature’’ be reasonable?” (TR)

Question 4: “What are the specific tasks of each of the elements (that is, each of the three “persons”) of the Holy Trinity, according to the Christian faith?”  (TR)

Answer: Refer carefully once again to Chap. 5, particularly 5, IV.

When the one God is love (mutual “self-giving”, see 1 Jn 4:7-21), then the three “persons” in one are simultaneously the “intersections” between which the rhythm of love is consummated: Giving – Receiving – Returning (Please note that “Person” in this context has a different significance to that of a person with a human personality as an “independent” in itself-centred reality). With that, all three “Persons” are one and the same love in three beings that are indispensable so that God can even be love at all, and – moreover… the highest selfless love. The one God is community, which means, he is the one loving game that takes place between the three “Persons”: Love, to be loved, to love with others.
In 1 Jn 1:3 it says: “We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have the fellowship with us; and truly your fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.“

Everything points to unity. And here, also, it is not about a “commonplace unity”, but a unity that receives its model from the three-in-one God. It is a unity that is realised in its variety and a variety that is moving towards unity. It is communio (communion, community).

The unity that the whole world strives for, the desire for unanimity, harmony and peace that is in every one of us, yes, the “globalisation”, interconnection and universal communication, which all technology, media and culture aim for, have something in common with the Holy Trinity, with Christian belief in the one God in three “Persons.” More precisely: There should be equivalence, a similarity between the two. This confirms this thesis once more: What God is, communio, is what we can and must become. He is the beginning of all and the target of all reality. In him, we are, we live and we move in him.
When God works on us, he always work as the one, three-in-one, God.

Question 5: “According to your belief, Satan brought chaos to God’s plan for humanity. God forbid! Does that mean that the will of Satan has overcome the will of God? Would not such a view contradict the dignity and magnitude of God?” (TR)

Question 6: “Even if God created Satan and made him superior to humanity (and allowed him to lead people into temptation), God still gave human beings some powers to resist Satan. Did God really find no other way to save humanity except to become a human being himself?” (TR)

Answer: The power and powerlessness of evil spirits are made distinct in the Bible, particularly in connection with Jesus’s appearance. Particularly the Gospel according to Mark describes Jesus’s working as the battle with Satan (Mk 1:23-28, 32-34, 39; 3:22-30). However, with Jesus, the stronger one appears who conquers evil. With Him the kingdom of God dawns because He drives out the demons with God’s power (see Mt 12:28, Lk 11:18; 10:189). Because Jesus Christ conquers evil powers and tyrannies once and for all, fear of demons is unchristian. Rather: “Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith!” (1 Pet 5: 8-9).

Church teaching is fully in line with this witness to the writings of the New Testament. For if the evil that keeps humanity in captivity does not originate from an evil principle, separated from God (as dualism teaches), then it must come only from creatures that God made good but who have become evil through their own will. Thus, according to Church teaching, there is not only evil but evil people too. Thus, firstly, Catholic teaching on human experience of the darkest depths of the world, as it is given in the Bible, is upheld. Secondly, this limits the significance and influence of evil spirits: despite everything, they are only finite manifestations, created by God and thus remain dependent on Him. Their unholy reign is broken by Jesus Christ and is ever more defeated by the working of the Holy Spirit. Hope has the last word.

Who wanted to instruct God on how He was to save sinful humanity from sin. There are no limits and no rules on God’s love. We can only wonder in grateful faith at the fact that God has chosen the path that He himself proclaimed in the word of the Bible. Read once more 1 Jn 4:7 onwards and Jn 3: 16-21.
Of course, we recognise with the benefit of hindsight that God loves in such a godly way as we love, we who were created in God’s image: whoever truly loves wants to be in solidarity with the loved one. Out of love, God wanted to be fully in solidarity with the humanity that He Himself had created. In all except sin.

Question 7: “How can a sensible person understand that, in order to forgive sin, God leads humanity ever deeper into sin finally even to the point of becoming God’s killer, Do Abraham’s children receive forgiveness by killing their God? Why then does God demand prayer and obedience? Why then does God set up commandments for humanity?”. (TR)

Answer: God gave humanity commandments. As humanity, in freedom of will, increasingly defied these commandments, God decided to show His love not only through teaching but also by sacrificing His only son (read Jn 3,16 onwards).

Question 8: “Would it not be more appropriate if, instead of God himself (in the form of Jesus Christ) fighting Satan, he would leave this to humanity?” (TR)

Answer: Every Christian is called to fight against the power of Satan. However, every Christian knows that he can win this battle, at the end of the day, only with God’s strength. This strength from God is given to each Christian, through Jesus Christ, who acknowledges the “true God from true God” and who also believes that “For us and for our salvation, He came down from Heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit He was born of the Virgin Mary and became man (the Nicene Creed). A Christian receives the strength to fight Satan’s power through the devout listening to the Word of God and by receiving the sacraments. In this way, the resurrected Lord is effective and powerful in the faithful by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Question 9: “Life’s order in this world is based on humanity taking responsibility for its deeds. Is it not strange that salvation for all people should be accomplished by one person’s suffering for all?” (TR)

Answer: God offers all people salvation in and through Jesus Christ. I deliberately write: offers. Man is free to reject the offer. If he accepts, he will need to gather all his strength so that the gift of salvation will be realised in him. He will bid Jesus Christ to take his whole person, to transform his contrariness into obedience so that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, he will come to resemble Christ more and more and will please God. In other words, he will be completely „saved.“

Question 10: “Let us assume that every person carries sin within himself since birth. Will not God, the merciful Lord, not simply forgive him of this sin? ” (TR)

Answer: See the second half of the answer to question 5 and 6. Once again: It was God’s decision not to acquit humanity simply by simply exercising His authority. Rather, He wanted to save humanity by becoming man Himself and becoming like us in all except sin. At the same time, He wanted to enable us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to become His sons and daughters for all eternity, the brothers and sisters of His son, Jesus Christ.

Question 11: “What is there to say about the belief of the early Christians, who were not familiar with the formulation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Was their belief recognised as legitimate?” (TR)

Answer: One has to differentiate between the theological formulations, which have given rise to the expression of Christian faith over the course of time, and the content of the Christian faith.

At the beginning of the Christian faith is the fact that people had discovered, in a very „revolutionary“, way for them that in Jesus of Nazareth and in the power of his spirit, God Himself had come down to His people. Through them God had not shared something of Himself with them but literally Himself. In Jesus Christ, God comes into the world personally. Our world is now also His world; He assumes our destiny and in doing so creates the most intimate cohabitation between Himself and humanity. That means, however: In Jesus Christ and – in other ways – in the Holy Spirit sent by him we meet emissaries that only point to God (just as prophets or holy people also refer to God) behind whom, however, the deity remains elusive from humanity in hidden, unending transcendence for ever. No, in the Christ event God brings Himself into the game. Whoever has dealings with Jesus, His word, His bearing, His suffering, whoever experiences the spirit in themselves and working around them is dealing with God personally. If it were not so, Jesus, who comes as God’s final valid word and as the unsurpassable embodiment of divine love, would stand in contradiction to Himself. He would then not be the final intervention between God and humanity which, however, He claims for Himself: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (Jn 14:9). And also the Holy Spirit, which fills Jesus, led us to the reality of Christ after His homecoming to the Father and opened up the direct access to the Father. He would leave us in the realm of the creatural, if He were not God Himself. See also Book 5, III, 7

Question 12: “Let us assume that Christians do not believe in three Gods? But where does the divinity of the Messiah come from? Can a man – developed in the womb of a woman, breast fed like every child, raised like every child – become or be God? Is this compatible with God’s greatness and transcendence?” (TR)

Answer: Can we humans dictate to God where His actions are fitting for His magnificence and transcendence? When we say: Allāhu Akbar, does that not then mean that God is greater than all our perceptions. If God is all His infinite mercy decided to become man so that we humans can partake of His divine life of love, can we forbid Him to do this? Please read Chap. 2, IV of the book.

Question 13: “Two thousand years ago, Hz. Isa (Jesus)did not exist. Can one add something to God later? Is God also so weak and helpless that He can be crucified by humans? Also, there are verses in the Gospels that show that Jesus was not willing to be crucified. (see Mt 27:46)” (TR)

Question 14: “The term ‘Holy Trinity’ causes also the following problem: How would it have been possible for one of the three divine persons to leave [the Holy Trinity], to enter Maria’s womb, to mix with this mortal world and to assume the human form? For, if God were a trinity then it would not be possible for only one of the three of the trinity to come down to earth separately.” (TR)

Answer: Chapter 2 (Incarnation) and Chap. 5 (God, the three-in-one) have shown that in Jesus, the Messiah, the uncreated son of God became man a long time ago. Read: Heb 1; Eph 1; Col 1:12-20; Phil 2:5-11.
Read also Chap. 3, III, 2 and 2.1

Question 15: “If the crucifixion was the will of your God, should He then not thank the Jews and Pontius Pilate? What do the terms, such as ‘peuple déicide’ (people that killed God), ‘peuple maudit’ (cursed race), ‘peuple reprouvé’ (thrown out of grace) that fill the entire Christian history show? What is the main reason why the term ‘déicide’ has found a place in Western language?” (TR)

Answer: First of all, read the following passages in Chapter 3 once more carefully: Cross, Sin, Redemption. III, 2.1; 2.2; 2.3 and the section in IV, that begins with The Crucifixion of Jesus.

There we say amongst other things: Jesus was condemned to death by the people — and crucifixion happened to be the punishment under Roman law envisaged for the action of which He was accused. Ultimately, He was given over to death on the cross because of His attitude during His life towards God and the Jewish law, the Torah. The world, such as it is, could not tolerate Jesus’s fundamental criticism of its sinful structures. Jesus was the victim of the power of evil: Hatred, injustice, envy, self-interest, separation from God’s true demand on us – all those powers that still shape the world today.

Therefore, it is also a wicked misunderstanding to blame the Jewish people as such and alone for the death of Jesus. Ultimately, the sin of each and every one of us is responsible for the rejection of Jesus and for His condemnation and execution. The Second Vatican Council says in this regard in the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.“ (Nostra Aetate), Nr. 4:

“True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
“Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.
Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.”

Thus it is clear that the slogans and expressions given in the question do not correspond to Christian Catholic teaching. On the contrary, they are to be condemned outright.

Question 16: “In the book it says, ‘Believers of different religions should try to identify those issues on which a shared, believing witness is possible, together with a genuine search for unity, in humble submission to God’s will.(Chapter: Religious pluralism, Christian responses, at the end of the first paragraph)
I would like to ask the author: How can people who have entirely differently or even CONTRARY teachings regarding God or Gods, as the case may be, form one unity? And ignoring that for a moment: How can they obey a teaching that lacks unity, that is, that is contradictory within itself. Where does true UNITY exist?” (TR)

Question 17: “In the book it says, For believers, Christian or Muslim, human beings are the creation of ‘God’s hand’, formed after his likeness and destined to return to him.’ (Chapter: The Heart of Christianity, Christian Perspectives 2. Christianity as the Way to Human Fulfilment).
According to this sentence, all people will return to God. That undermines the clarity, for where does this return lead to: heaven or hell? The next sentence then says:’ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom 8:19–25; Sure 81; 82; 99; 101). This common vocation establishes also the fundamental equality of all people across all differences in race, social position and religion’.
Now I would ask the author, why Jesus described himself in the following verses as THE ONLY WAY. Does Jesus mean in Jn 14,6: all paths lead to God?” (TR)

Answer: According to Catholic teaching: “One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God, His providence, His manifestations of goodness, His saving design extend to all men (read Wis 8:1; Acts 14:7; Rom 2:6-7; 1 Tim 2:4), until that time when the elect will be united in the Holy City, the city ablaze with the glory of God, where the nations will walk in His light.” (read: Acts 21:23f.)” (Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions: Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council, nr. 1).

Regarding belief in God, the same Council says in the same Declaration, Nr. 3: “The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men.“
However, by no means does this mean that there are not substantial differences between Islam and Christianity teaching about God. The God of Christian belief is the God of the Bible and the God that revealed Jesus. It is the triune God of Church teaching.
Nevertheless, Christians and Muslims are united regarding the one God and the will to fulfil God’s will. We Christians have not been given the competence nor the task to say with certainty if and when a person has consciously really encountered the God of Christian revelation and has nevertheless freely and thus culpably rejected him. God alone knows each human heart.

The Catholic Church teaches that God wants everyone to receive salvation, and that a person only then loses this offer of salvation when he freely and consciously rejects the offer of God’s love in Christ. Jesus Christ is in fact the only way to salvation. However, this salvation is also realised outside the institution of the Church and baptism.  Those who are just and seek God will attain eternal salvation, even if they do not know it themselves, through Christ’s act of salvation (meditate Mt 25:31 onwards: The Last Judgement. The just are in the poor, the imprisoned etc who encounter Christ without recognising him. See also the text of the Council’s constitution regarding the Church (Lumen Gentium) nr. 16.
“Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.”
Read once more in the book, Chapter 11, III, 4-6.

Question 18: “Is divorce forbidden for you Christians? If the love between two people is already over would it then not be an ordeal to let them carry on living together? If your religion forbids divorce, then why are the divorce rates in America and Europe so high? We read in the newspapers that every second marriage there breaks down”(TR)

Answer: According to Christian teaching marital love is fulfilled in lifelong fidelity. In this takes place an unconditional devotion of one partner to the other and a commitment to one another that does not depend on changing circumstances. The one holds fast to the other no matter what. Such behaviour signifies a high level of mutual responsibility and is a great sign of the mutual solidarity that people are capable of when, and to what degree, they really let God sustain them. Particularly in the life that comes from this fidelity, marriage becomes transparent to the love of God, who said an unconditional yes to the people and the world through Jesus Christ.

According to the Catholic faith, sacramental marriage is a bond which represents in its own way Jesus Christ’s love for his Church (read Eph 5:21-33). Christ gave himself and sacrificed himself to his Church by becoming human, by dying and by rising again. Only in this mystery can marriage be understood and lived as a sacrament . Marriage is a way of imitating Christ.
Christian marriage partners know that they are bound with Christ’s Church in their bond of love and fidelity, and receive in sacramental marriage the strength to sustain their bond of fidelity. This bond is a bond of mutual trust, a process which can also involve failure, guilt and the cooling of love. However, for Christians, this is no reason to revoke fidelity. Even when one partner has left the marriage, the other is still bound in fidelity to his or her spouse. They can consciously and devotedly carry their aloneness as their part of the cross in the succession of Jesus.

Regarding Christian life in marriage and family the Joint Synod of the Dioceses of the German republic states:

“In the bond until death the spouse brings Christ’s love, from which he cannot be separated (Rom 8:35) to the other spouse in daily intimacy. Such fidelity that spans an entire life shows the fullness of Christian existence: the belief in the resurrection, which encompasses the resurrection of the marriage partner; the hope that one partner has for the other in that he trusts in God; the love that holds one to the other, because he has said yes to the other in Christ’s love.”

During crises and failures one needs the brotherly help of a spiritual director.

Question 19: “You also explain that God is unreachable for people, or transcendent. If Jesus is God, then how would God remain unreachable for people, or remain transcendent? But how, in your opinion, can Jesus as well as the Holy Spirit be God since you speak of one God and not three? Had God cloned himself?” (TR)

Answer: God’s transcendence, his superior and transcending greatness does not exclude, according to Christian belief, that God himself freely and sovereignly decided not only to be the creator and sustainer of the world as well as the God that sends commandments, prophets and holy scripts but, furthermore, in freedom and in love to make himself present with us humans in the person of Jesus Christ, to be our brother and to give us the power by the Holy Spirit to live as his cherished children. We Christians have recognised through Jesus’s message, as it is preserved in the New Testament, that God has acted in this way in his immeasurable generosity. We gratefully accept the actions of a sovereign God and respond in faith and in a life according to the faith.

Read also the answers to the Questions 1, 2 and 3+4, and Chap. 2, III; Chap. 5, III, 7 and IV in the book.

In our answer to question 1, we have shown how Christian belief understands the unity of God. The unity of the three-in-one God is the unity of God who has revealed himself to us as love. Put another way: he has revealed to us, especially in Jesus Christ, what supreme love means. However, love also means precisely relationship and community. Please read once more our answer to Question 1.

Question 20: “How can the Eucharist be God? Jesus says in the Gospels that everything that passes through the mouth (in humans) reaches the stomach and is then expelled again. How can you call something that you eat and drink as God? And do only 2 Gods from 3 remain after you have eaten the Eucharist?” (TR)

Answer: Catholic teaching does not say “God is the Eucharist.” The reader should read once more openly and critically sections III and IV in the book.

The Eucharist is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic faith.

1. What are the sacraments and what does it mean to receive them?

Sacraments are signs in which we Christians experience in a special way God’s devotion to us through Jesus Christ. In them finds expression what we really receive: we encounter Christ. The Catholic Church knows seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance and Reconciliation, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. They accompany humans throughout their entire lives, from birth to death: in Baptism we receive new life through Jesus Christ; it integrates us into the community of the Church. In Confirmation Christ strengthens us with the Holy Spirit so that we can live, no longer as children, but as responsible Christians in the world and can witness our faith. In the Eucharist we become one with Christ and with one another. In Penance and Reconciliation, Christ grants us anew, and again and again, forgiveness for our sins and our guilt. In the Anointing of the Sick, Christ stands by us in serious illness and mortal danger. In the Sacrament of Holy Orders, he confers to the beneficiary the full power to proclaim his word and to dispense the sacraments. In Matrimony, when two people say yes to each other Christ binds them to an indissoluble bond until they are parted in death.

Baptism and the Eucharist are the fundamental sacraments. Their practice is frequently testified in the NT. With the seven number of sacraments, the Catholic Church is supporting itself on a long development whose origins date back already to the life of the early Church but which was roughly finalised only in the 12th C. During the 16th C, the sacraments became a point of argument between the religious denominations. Since then, the Reformation Churches usually maintain only the two sacraments of Baptism and the Last Supper (Eucharist). However, a certain convergence over the past few years can be noted.

Receiving the sacraments belongs to those conditions that one must fulfil in order to be a Christian: Baptism first enables entry into the community of the Church, it is the basic requirement. Later in life, the Eucharist ensures the bond to Christ promised by him. Only by receiving these sacraments is Christian life really possible. Only someone who is in relationship with Christ can honour his or her vocation as a Christian.

2. The Eucharist is the breaking of bread with, in other words, being at table with, Jesus Christ and is thus an expression of unity with him and with God.

The Eucharist makes visible unity with Christ because all participants in the holy supper take part in the “body of Christ”. The bread that we break, is it not sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body for we all partake in the one bread.” (1 Cor 10:16b-17).
The Last Supper that Jesus shares with his disciples, which is handed down many times in the New Testament (1 Cor 11:23-25; Mk 14:22-25; Mt 26:26-29; Lk 22:15-20), is the last supper in what may have been a long series of daily meals with his disciples. The breaking of bread has always been the identifying mark of kinship and living together which found expression in sharing a meal.

Jesus presumably resorted to this religiously significant form of the ritually determined Jewish meal: At the beginning of a meal, the head of the household gave praise to God, the giver of the bread, over the flatbread, broke off a piece for everyone (“breaking bread”) and portioned it out. Following the shared meal, the ritual was repeated over the cup of wine.
Given this background, what Jesus did and said at the Last Supper was unmistakeably clear to his disciples. With his words, “Take; this is my body, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mk 14:22b-23), he went beyond the usual meal ceremony, gave it a new significance, a new meaning in that he referred to himself, to his person in the bread and wine. In the light of the impending fate of death, which he accepted, he was speaking of himself as the sacrifice: Like the flatbread, so my body will be broken; like the wine that is poured out, so will my blood be poured out. Accordingly, Jesus’s suffering and dying is then signified as sacrifice and expiation for sins.

In remembrance of this Last Supper Christians celebrated and celebrate again and again this meal with one another: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor 11:26), writes Paul. However, this meal of remembrance is no funeral meal, but always a meal of joy due to Jesus’s resurrection (1 Cor 15), to give thanks (compare particularly Acts 2:46) for:- 1. Jesus’s sacrifice, his life and death “for us”; 2. His solidarity with us, after all “the bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:16b) and 3. The hope given for his coming in glory (compare: Mk 14:25; 26:29; 22:18).

To give thanks is called eucharistia in Greek. This is why this meal of thanksgiving is called the “Eucharist”. It is the centre of each Christian community, the heart of the Church, the “bread” which nourishes the Christian believer.

In this way, the Church is the “new people of God”, an egalitarian community from the body of Christ, bound together by the bond of love: “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another is showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, but be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers” (Rom 12:10-13).

The Christian bond of unity and the basis of mutual Christian brotherliness and solidarity are no longer blood relations and membership of the same tribe, but the common faith, ultimately the risen Christ, who unites Christians to and with one another through the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the Holy Spirit.

Question 21: “You claim that every person is born afflicted with original sin. Let us assume for now that that this is correct. In Jesus, reparation came about for the sins of all or Jesus paid the ransom fee for the sins of all people. By the way: What happens here to the responsibility of the individual? Be that as it may: if Jesus, by his death and resurrection, has paid for all sins, will all children who are born now still be born with original sin? If yes, then what use is Jesus [as redeemer] actually?” (TR)

Answer: The reader should first read once more Chapter 3, III and IV in the book carefully.

The question contains three main points, which I want to address here in three stages.

a. Regarding reality and the term original sin

The Bible’s fundamental position in interpreting history in the light of faith in God is: God did not want the world to be, and did not create it, in the way that we encounter it in tangible form. He wanted and wants life and not death; he detests injustice, violence and lies. He does not want people to suffer; he wants peoples’ happiness in companionship with him. To emphasise God’s original will and original plan, the Bible tells the Story of Paradise (Gen 2:8.15-17).
The core of the paradise story, just as the teaching on the origins of humanity, is not a palaeontological but a statement made from the point of view of fiath and therefore a theological statement: God created humanity not only good but very good; moreover, he allowed humanity to share in his life.

The testimony regarding paradise and the origins of man are not important in themselves. They merely present the background so that we can now properly understand the current state of humanity: as a condition of estrangement which God did not want and did not create. Therefore, where does evil come from?
“Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin” (Rom 5:12). That is the succinct conclusion of the apostle Paul. It summarises what is graphically reported in the story of the fall of man in the first pages of the Bible (see Gen 3:1-24).

The Bible does not tell just this one story of the fall from grace. This one story starts an avalanche of further stories of sin, in which the social dimension of sin is made apparent. (Read, for example, the story of Cain’s murder of Abel and the resulting vicious circle of guilt and revenge between people (Gen 4). Likewise the story of chaos erupting in the Flood (Gen 6) and the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11).
In the New Testament Paul takes up the stories of sin in the Book of Genesis. Here he puts the first Adam in relation to the second, new Adam, Jesus Christ (see: Rom 5:12,14,15,17).

These texts go beyond the testimony in the Old Testament. Only through Jesus Christ is the universality and radicalness of sin opened up to us; it reveals our true situation in salvation as well as in calamity. Only now is the universality of the power of sin established that rules over humanity as the power of death. However, the perception of the universality of sin is only the negative side of the coin of the universality of salvation in Jesus Christ. Since we know that salvation is given to all in Jesus Christ, we can recognise that there is calamity outside of Jesus Christ. Thus, the testimony of sin has no independent significance. It exemplifies the universality and the ebullience of salvation that Jesus Christ has brought. The bedevilled and hopeless situation of humanity is encompassed by the greater hope and the certainty that we are granted salvation in Jesus Christ.

An initial problem for today’s generation to correctly understand this lesson is that many scientists today teach that, at the beginning of history, there was not only one couple (monogenism), but that human life formed in several places simultaneously in the process of evolution (polygenism or even polyphyletism). The meaning of Church teaching is preserved, however, when it is maintained that humanity, which forms one entity, rejected God’s offer of salvation already at its beginning and that the resulting calamity is a universal reality from which no one can free themselves by their own efforts. If this belief is maintained, then the question of monogenism or polygenism is a purely scientific one, which is to be resolved by scholars based on current scientific methods. It is not a question of faith, however.

A second problem concerns the approach towards understanding the teaching on original sin. For many, the term original sin is a contradiction since original sin is defined as the state of sin that characterises all human beings as a result of Adam’s fall. In other words, we inherit sin. Yet the word inheritance means to take over something that we have not earned for ourselves but gain from our ancestry. Sin, however, is a personal deed for which we are responsible. This seems to lead to a dilemma: either we have taken over sin as an inheritance, in which case it is not a sin; or it is sin in which case the word “original” has no place here.

The problems are solved when we relinquish this individualistic view of humanity that is behind this objection and focus on the solidarity of humanity: No one begins at the beginning, no one starts at point zero. Everyone, in their deepest self, is formed by his or her own life story, family history, and people, culture, yes, even the whole of humanity. In this way, everyone finds themselves in a situation that is defined by sin. We are born into a society that is dominated by egotism, prejudice, injustice and untruth. That influences us not only by external bad example, but determines our reality. For no one lives only for himself; everything that we are, we are together with others. Thus, universal sinfulness is in us all, we each have it. There is, therefore, a web of mutual entanglement and a universal solidarity in sin from which no individual can free himself. This is also true particularly for young children. They are personally blameless; however, their lives exist only in the form of sharing in the lives of adults, especially their parents. Therefore, they are even more interwoven into adult history than adults.

According to Catholic teaching, original sin thus exists in the universal calamity of people and of humanity (read: Rom 7:15, 17-19, 22-24).

The teaching concerning the universality of sin has a multiple practical significance. It says: everyone is a sinner. “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 Jn 1:10). This teaching destroys the illusion that we create for ourselves and leads us to no longer evade our sin, to trivialise it and to always look for a scapegoat in others, in the environment, our common inheritance, our disposition. However, the teaching on original sin also tells us that we must be careful about whom we make directly responsible for personal sin and must not hastily determine sin and judge others. Ultimately, only God sees into the heart of each person. However, he does not want to judge but only to forgive. Only in the knowledge of forgiveness is it possible to confess sins. For this reason, we point out once more that reality out trumps the universality of sin, which is cast into the shadows through the light of faith, the universality of salvation, which was proclaimed through the entire long history of the Old Testament and was finally realised in Jesus Christ. The most important function of the teaching on original sin is to point to God’s forgiving and healing love, which is offered to us in Jesus Christ.

b. God’s will for salvation and Jesus’s death for sin on our behalf

Jesus’s scandalous death on the cross was, to the Jews, God’s judgement, yes, a curse (see: Gal 3:13). The Romans regarded it as dishonour and, as not a few witnesses state, grounds for contempt and ridicule. Paul writes in 1 Cor 1:22-23: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks demand wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles”.

It was therefore a difficult task for the early Christians to properly understand this scandal of the cross. However, in remembering Jesus’s own words at the Last Supper and in the light of Jesus’s resurrection through God they came to fully realise that this so shocking death of Jesus was brought about, on the first historical level by peoples’ lack of faith and their enmity, but behind that stood God’s will, God’s plan for salvation, yes, God’s love. The early Christians recognised a divine “must” (see Mk 8:31; Lk 24:7, 26, 44) in Jesus’s suffering and death that is already prefigured in the Old Testament. Thus, it was already stated in the earliest traditions of the Old Testament that already existed in Paul’s community, when he converted, that Jesus Christ had died for us as Scripture said (see 1 Cor 15:3). In the light of the Suffering Servant’s fourth song in the Book of Isaiah (see Isa 52:13-53:12), Paul can recognise in Jesus ’s death God’s unfathomable love that does not spare even his own son but instead offered him for us (see Rom 8:32, 39; Jn 3:16), in order to reconcile the world with himself in Jesus Christ (see 2 Cor 5:18 -19): The cross is the ultimate expression of the self-emptying love of God. Thus it reveals to us the nature of God and the meaning of true love.

“Behold, My servant will prosper,
He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted.
Just as many were astonished at you, My people,
So His appearance was marred more than any man
And His form more than the sons of men.
Thus He will sprinkle many nations,
Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;
For what had not been told them they will see,
And what they had not heard they will understand.

Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely our grief He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off out of the land of the living
For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
But the LORD was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.
As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.
Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
And He will divide the booty with the strong;
Because He poured out Himself to death,
And was numbered with the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the transgressors.“
(Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

Jesus’s devotion through God is Jesus’s answer as his own obedient devotion (that is the original meaning of the word islām as a verbal noun) to the will of the father “for us”. This interpretation of Jesus’s death as devoting his life on behalf leads us into the innermost core of the witness of the New Testament.

The notion of representation seizes on a basic human reality, namely, the solidarity of all people. The Bible takes up this theme and in a new way makes it a fundamental law of the entire history of salvation. Adam acts as a representative of all humanity and establishes the solidarity of all humanity in sinfulness, Abraham is called as the blessing for all generations (see Gen 12:3), Israel as the light of all people (see Isaiah 42:6). Holy Scripture concretises this idea through the idea of vicarious suffering, which is already found in the fourth Song of the Suffering Servant (see Isaiah 53:4-5,12).

The notion of representation, which is so central to the Bible, is particularly suitable to make clear in our faith how Jesus’s death could signify salvation for us. The consequence of human solidarity in sinfulness was the solidarity of all in the fate of death. This demonstrates above all humanity’s lack of salvation and its hopeless situation. Now that Jesus Christ, the fullness of life, expresses solidarity with us in death, he makes his death as the foundation of the new solidarity. His death now becomes the source of new life for all those who were under the fate of death.

The interpretation of Jesus’s death as suffering and death on our behalf is the quintessence of Jesus himself. This is also shown in the very old word (I don’t understand what you mean by “old word”): Mk 10:45.

Another very difficult concept for many to understand today is the Biblical notion of Jesus’s death as sacrifice. If we want to understand the deeper meaning of the notion of sacrifice, then we must be clear that sacrifice does not primarily depend on external sacrifices. The sacrificial offerings brought are meaningful only as a sign of personal sacrifice; this inner bearing must express itself freely and in physical form. With Jesus the personal sacrifice of self is fully united with the sacrificial offering; he is the sacrificial offering and the sacrificial priest in one. Thus, his sacrifice was the perfect sacrifice, the fulfilment of all other sacrifices that were merely a shadow of this one sacrifice made for once and for all (Heb 9:11-28). For this reason the Letter to the Hebrews can state that this sacrifice does not concern external objects but the self-sacrifice of Jesus in obedience to the Father (see Heb 10:5-10). Through this complete sacrifice on our behalf, humanity that is alienated from God is now fully reconciled with God once more. Thus, through his unique sacrifice, Jesus is the mediator between God and humanity (see 1 Tim 2:5).
The imagery of “redemption”, “exoneration” and “deliverance” are tied to this idea.

All these manifold images and statements are, in principle, about one and the same theme. They want to proclaim, in ever new ways, God’s obliging and saving love, which Jesus gained for us, once and for all, through his obedience and through his sacrifice, in order to bring peace between God and humanity, as well as between all people. Thus, the Letter to the Ephesians can say, “For he is our peace” (Eph 2:14). In him all alienation, which the sins between God and all humanity, between all people and in people themselves, have caused are once again healed and reconciled. Thus, the cross of the non-violent Prophet and Messiah Jesus of Nazareth ultimately is a sign of the triumph of God over all powers and forces hostile to humanity. It is the sign of hope.

c. Personal responsibility for salvation

No one is redeemed against their will. The salvation that God ’s infinite love offers through his son in the Holy Spirit wants to be accepted in free will. The freely accepted gift of God’s healing and redeeming love, ultimately of God, the Holy Spirit himself, sets in motion a lifelong healing process. By the power of the Holy Spirit, that is, by God’s mercy, by performing good works, a person can achieve inner spiritual growth. However, grace can also be lost through sin and is always granted anew through true conversion. Thus, a Christian’s entire life is a battle with the temptation to forget God again, to disobey his will. In this sense, a Christian’s life is a constant turning towards and returning to God. This always requires renewal and deepening. However, even when we have done everything, we still remain “worthless slaves” (see. Lk 17:10).

d. The good news of salvation applies fundamentally to all people

God wants all people to be saved and to attain knowledge of truth (1 Tim 2:4). He does not want the sinner to die but for the sinner to convert and remain alive (see Ez 33:11; 2 Pet 3:9). This universality of God’s will for salvation was emphasised once again at the Second Vatican Council:

“Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the help necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium = The Light of Nations, 16).

The choosing of, and granting vocation to, each and every person also confirms naturally that God accepts and takes seriously each person as a person. That is why he wants each person’s freely given response and acceptance. Yes, in his love, God makes the realisation of his will for salvation dependant on our freedom. That means that we can also fall short of salvation through our sin.

Question 22: “If Trinity is God’s nature, then the characteristics (or distinguishing features) of humanity, created in God’s likeness, must also resemble the Trinity of God. What are these characteristics (or distinguishing features)? In other words: What is it that makes humanity resemble God” (TR)

Answer: It is apparent that the Christian idea of man, particularly the understanding of the individual, is very much influenced by God’s triune revelation. It is an ancient insight that a person’s understanding of him or herself is intimately linked to religious faith and the resulting vision of God. A person discovers him or herself, effectively, “on a detour” via his or her own experience and knowledge of the divine. The theologian Emil Brunner writes: “For every culture, for every period in history the [following] words apply: ‘Tell me your God and I will tell you the state of your humanity’“

The image of God and the image of man are mutual reflections. Christian thinking thus soon discovered that also being a person in the image of the divine Trinity is not only and not primarily determined by a substantive I am or I am-within-myself, but rather is determined by relationship, as it is with God i.e. from others and to others. One becomes a person in the full meaning of the word through mutual recognition, in being with others and for others. The other is thus an important part of being one’s own person. In others and through others, I gain myself, my life then becomes rich, fulfilled and complete. The other person is thus an important part of being one’s own person. Yes, it can be seen from the triune God that being within oneself and for oneself are not contradictions and that these thoughts do not stand in inverse relationship to one another. One might say: The more I am me, the less dependent I am on others and the less I have to take account of others; and the more I am dependent on others the less I am me! No, looking at the triune God both are directly proportional: those who are in God are themselves because they are fully one with and through one another and thus form the inseparability of a divinity. From this one can “read” that relation, the being-in-relationship-with-others, is the highest form of unity. And we all yearn for this form of unity, not “being one with the entire world”, but a unity that is completed in a network of relationships and in connectedness through mutual relationships and in differences.

Question 23: “Throughout the Old Testament it is said that God was one, not a person, absolutely no one was at his side. The term Trinity is used for the first time by Tertullian [African Church Father (ca. 160 – ca. 225)] in the year 200 after Christ. Can you show any point in the Old Testament that contains, or even makes only a reference to, the term Trinity.” (TR)

Answer: How is the revelation of God as a triune reality, as a community of love, given in the faith of the Old Testament? The reader should read once more Chap.5 III of our book.

The Jew, the believer of the Old Testament, who awaited God, already knew God. Jesus also grew up in the faith of the Jewish people. In choosing him, God brought the Jewish people – and thus every devout Jew – to an awareness of this vocation: God had assumed responsibility for their existence through the covenant. Long ago God spoke to their ancestors in many and various ways through the prophets (Heb 1:1). God stood before the people as a living being, who challenged them (the people) to dialogue. However, how far this dialogue was to go, what effort God was prepared to make, what answer the people were to give, the Old Testament was not yet prepared to give an answer here. A distance remained between God and his most faithful servants. God is a “God merciful and gracious” (Ex 34:6), he has the passion of a bridegroom and the tenderness of a father (refer here to Hos 11 and Jer 2:1-9). However, what secrets did God hold back behind these images, which answered the deepest desire of the faithful and which was their sustenance, but still veiled reality itself?

This secret was revealed in Jesus Christ. As a result of his appearance in history, judgement takes place, a division of hearts. Those who refused to believe in Jesus may well say about his Father: “He is our God”; but they hardly know him and are saying, so to speak, only a lie (Jn 8:54 onwards; see 8:19). Those who believe in Jesus, however, are no longer withheld from the secret or, to put it better, they have been invited into the secret itself, into God’s impenetrable secret, they are at home in this secret, they are led into it by the Son: “I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15:15). There are no more images, no more secrets. Jesus speaks openly of his father (Jn 16:25). There are no more questions that one could have asked him (Jn 16:23), no more uncertainty (Jn 14:1), the disciples “have seen the Father” (Jn 14:7).

”God is love”: that is the secret (1 Jn 4:8, 16) that we gain only through Jesus Christ, and we gain this in that we „acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God” and that we thus “recognise for ourselves, and put our faith in, the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16).

From the meditative readings on the New Testament it arises that the God of Jesus Christ, that is, the God that Jesus encounters in the writings of the Old Testament, is his Father. When Jesus turns to him, then he does so with the familiarity and immediacy of the Son, “Abba”. But he is also his God because the Father, who possesses divinity without receiving this from anyone else, grants this in all its fullness to the Son, whom he begot before eternity, like the Holy Spirit with whom both are united. In this way, Jesus reveals the identity of the father and God, the divine secret and the triune secret. Saint Paul repeats three times the set phase that expresses this revelation: “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 15:6; 2 Cor 11:31; Eph 1:3). Christ reveals to us the divine Trinity by means of the only way that we – if one may say so – are able to perceive; that is, the way that God predetermined for us by creating us in his likeness, namely, by means of a relationship as to a child.

However, because the Son is the ideal image, in his Father’s eyes, of the creature before God, Jesus reveals in God the ideal image of a God, who recognises true wisdom and who has revealed himself to Israel. The God of Jesus Christ has those traits which God revealed of himself in the Old Testament in an abundance and a nativeness which humanity could never have dared to imagine. God is for Jesus in a way that he is not for any of us “the first and the last“, the one from whom Christ emanates and to whom he returns. He is the one who explains all, and from whom everything originates, the one whose will must be fulfilled under all circumstances and who is always enough. He is the holy one, the only one that is good. The one Lord. He is the only one against whom nothing counts. However, Jesus sacrifices himself to show how majestic and how sublime the father is, in other words “so that the world may know that I love the Father” (Jn 14:31). Every radiance of creation counters Satan’s power and takes away the horror of suffering, of death, yes, the death of one unjustly condemned to die by crucifixion. The father is the living God, constantly watching out for his creation, full of love towards his children. It is his fervour that consumes Jesus until he hands over the kingdom to his father (Lk 12:50).

The encounter between the Father and the Son is consummated in the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit Jesus hears the father say to him, “You are my son” and receives his father’s pleasure (Mk 1:10). In the Holy Spirit, he lets his joy at being the Son rise to the father (Lk 10:21 onwards). Just as Jesus Christ can only be united with the father in the Holy Spirit, so he cannot reveal the father without also simultaneously revealing the Holy Spirit. When the father and the son are one in spirit, then they are so in giving, in the gift. However, this means that their oneness is a gift and brings forth a gift. However, if the spirit, which is a gift, thus sets the seal on the unity between the father and the son, then this means that they are a gift in their very being, that their common essence exists in order that they may give to one another, to exist in the other and to love the other. This power of life, communication and freedom is the Holy Spirit.

Question 24: “Can you point out a baptism in the Gospel that was made in the name of the Trinity? All baptisms were made in the name of Jesus the Messiah (Christ).” (TR)

Answer: Baptism cleanses, makes sacred and makes right before God. It makes the one who receives God through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit pleasing to God and right before God, so to say (in theological terminology, “justified” before God). The one baptised has thereby become “a member of Christ” and “temple of the Holy Spirit” (see 1 Cor 6:12-20, particularly verses 15 and 19). The one baptised has become an adopted child of the father (Gal 4:5-7), a brother and co-heir with Christ in inner unity with him (Rom 8:2, 9, 17; Gal 3:28). Baptism in the “name of Jesus“ (Acts 10:48: 19:5) signifies baptism insofar as it means to “be a member of”, or better still “belong to” Christ, and also to differentiate from the baptism of John (the Baptiser). To speak of this method of baptism does not mean that the precise wording of an earlier baptism would be repeated here in which solely Christ would be named. On the contrary, the apostolic tradition believed that the triune words (that is, the words, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”), used in the baptism liturgy from the beginning correspond exactly to Jesus Christ’s ceremonial commandment, as given in Mt 28:19.

Question 25: “Can someone who has come to believe in Jesus Christ lose their salvation again?” (TR)

Answer: Faith in Jesus Christ as the son of God, the saviour and the healer of mankind, is at the same time both a gift of God’s generosity and, on the part of a person, the outcome of the freely accepted gift bound with conversion from sin and turning to God. God respects freedom of will. He expects full personal responsibility in giving. Thus he neither forces us to accept faith nor does he automatically grant it to us. It is the nature of true faith that it is freely given and freely accepted.

This is already really the answer to the question. A person can neglect or even reject faith, even after it has been freely accepted. Whoever, of their own free will, neglects or even consciously gives up faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, in doing so rejects also the gift of salvation that was offered to them and which was at first freely accepted. Such a person chooses distance from God or even consciously defies God. Hell means to close oneself off from God’s love for ever and thus to have put oneself in the absolute calamity of distance from God, yes, even enmity towards God, which is hell.

Neither in Holy Scripture nor in the Church’s teaching tradition is it categorically said of any particular person that they were truly in hell. Rather, hell is always kept in the forefront as a real possibility combined with the offer of conversion and life.

Question 26: “I have a question regarding the interpretation of the Holy Spirit. This was apparently understood differently by the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church: The Roman Catholic Church apparently says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son. The Orthodox Church apparently says that the Holy Spirit comes only from the father. This belief apparently played a major role in the conflicts regarding the true doctrine in AD 1054. The Orthodox Church said that the Gospel supported its point of view: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from Father, he will testify on my behalf.” (John 15:26). How do you explain this statement from the Gospel?” (TR)

Answer: Originally, spirit in the biblical tradition meant wind, air, storm, and then breath as a sign of life. Thus, God’s spirit is the storm and the breath of life, it is that which creates, supports and sustains everything. It is above all that which intervenes in history and creates anew. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit worked above all through the prophets. In the Creed, we acknowledge: “He has spoken through the prophets”. The Old Testament hopes from the Holy Spirit at the end of time that it will bring forth the big renewal through the general outpouring of the spirit (see Joel 3:1-2).

The New Testament prophesies this renewal at the end of time in the coming of Jesus Christ. His appearance and his impact were accompanied from the beginning by the power of the Holy Spirit: in his baptism by John (see Mark 1:10), in his annunciation (see Luke 4:18), in his battle against the demons (see Matthew 4:1; 12:28), in his sacrifice on the cross (see Hebrews 9:14) and in his resurrection (see Romans 1:4; 8:11). The name “Christ” (which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah) was originally a title. Jesus is the Messiah that is to say: the one anointed by the Spirit. Jesus Christ is not, however, a carrier of the Spirit like the prophets. He possesses the Spirit of God in immeasurable abundance. As the resurrected one, he is therefore the source of the divine Spirit, he bestows the Spirit as God’s gift to the apostles, he sends it to his Church at Pentecost (see Acts of the Apostles 2:32-33).

It is the mission of the Holy Spirit to be a reminder of all that Jesus Christ said and did. In this way, we can be led into the full truth (see John 14:26; 16:13-14). In it, Jesus Christ remains present in the Church and in the world (see 2 Corinthians 3:17). This is why the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Jesus Christ (see Romans 8, 9; Philippians 1:19), and as the Spirit of the Son (see Galatians 4:6). It is also called the Spirit of faith (see 2 Corinthians 4:13). Through the Spirit we can acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Lord (see 1 Corinthians 12:3) and can pray, “Abba, Father” (see Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). The Holy Spirit is the gift of new life. Father and Son send it to us. In giving us his Spirit, God gives Himself. Through the gift of the Spirit, we receive companionship with God, we are part of his life, we become children of God (see Romans 8:14; Galatians 4:6). That is only possible because the Spirit is not a created gift but a divine gift, in which God shares Himself with us.

“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5).

# However, the Spirit of God is not only a gift but is also a giver. It is not only a power with which one can be an instrument of change but is an instrument of change itself. It is not something but someone: It is a person. He dispenses his gifts how he pleases (see 1 Corinthians 12:11); he teaches and reminds (see John 14:26); he speaks and “prays” (see Romans 8:26-27); one can cause him grief (see Ephesians 4:30).

Also this question led to conflicts, especially in the 4th century. Some believed the Holy Spirit was only a servant subordinate to the son, a kind of angel. Others supported the three great Church Fathers: Basil ‘the Great’ (c. AD 330-79), Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 329-89), Gregory of Nyssa (c. AD 330-c. 395). Their argument: if the Holy Spirit is not a divine being like the Father and the Son, then he cannot give us companionship with God and participation in God’s life. Prepared in this way, the Church was able to acknowledge at the Second General Council, the Council of Constantinople (381), that the Holy Spirit is Lord, that is, of divine nature, that he is not only the gift but the giver of life and that together with the father and son he is owed worship and glorification. This belief is expressed in the “Nicene Creed”:

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.”

The wording “and the Son”, the famous filioque (Latin for “and the Son”), was not yet included in the original Creed from Constantinople. It appeared as doctrine wording in Spain in the 5th – 7th century, but was included in the Roman Catholic profession of faith only in the 11th century. This additional wording represents a difference to the Orthodox Church to this day. The Orthodox use the phrase “from the Father through the Son”. They want to emphasise more clearly in this way that all has its origin and source only in God the father. The Roman Catholic Church and the other Western Churches want to emphasise more strongly that the son is the same being as the father and is equal to him. East and West are united in this fundamental concern. However, they use different theological terms and models of thought. Thus, according to the Roman Catholic faith, there is a conviction regarding a legitimate unity in diversity, but no disagreement to split the Churches.

This connecting profession between East and West wants to state that the Holy Spirit is not just any gift of God but is God’s gift in person since life and its mystery find their fulfilment firstly in the participation of God’s life and mystery. However, the Holy Spirit is not only gift of God but is also the divine Giver of this gift, the Giver of life. Just as the father is the origin and source of the Son, and everything that he is he gives to the Son, so in this way Father and Son, that is, the Father through the Son, passes on his own fullness of divine life and being, and together they bring forth the Holy Spirit. Just as the Spirit is pure receiving from the Father and Son, so the Spirit is to us the effervescent source, the Giver of life. It is the evocative and creative energy of new life and the metamorphosis of humanity and the world at the end of time.

The well-known Latin hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” from the 9th century expresses in a beautiful way what this life given by the Holy Spirit means

CREATOR SPIRIT, by whose aid
The world’s foundations first were laid,
Come, visit every pious mind;
Come, pour thy joys on human kind;
From sin and sorrow set us free,
And make thy temples worthy thee.

O source of uncreated light,
The Father’s promised Paraclete,
Thrice holy fount, thrice holy fire,
Our hearts with heavenly love inspire;
Come, and thy sacred unction bring
To sanctify us while we sing.

Plenteous of grace, descend from high,
Rich in thy sevenfold energy;
Thou strength of his almighty hand,
Whose power does heaven and earth command,
Proceeding Spirit, our defence,
Who dost the gift of tongues dispense,
And crown’st thy gift with eloquence.

Refine and purge our earthy parts,
But O, inflame and fire our hearts,
Our frailties help, our vice control;
Submit the senses to the soul,
And, when rebellious they are grown,
Then lay thy hand, and hold them down.

Chase from our minds the infernal foe,
And peace, the fruit of love, bestow;
And, lest our feet should step astray,
Protect and guide us in the way;

Make us eternal truths receive
And practise all that we believe
Give us thyself, that we may see
The Father and the Son by thee.

Immortal honour, endless fame,
Attend the Almighty Father’s name:
The Saviour Son be glorified,
Who for lost man’s redemption died;
And equal adoration be,
Eternal Paraclete, to thee.

No council, no catechism and no theology can express more beautifully than in these lines what we mean when we say, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life”.

Question 27: “Since I have started reading the Bible, one question preoccupies me: How can it be possible what the Old Testament itself says, namely, that Lot’s daughters made their father drunk and slept with him and conceived children? Or is there another explanation for this event?
In explaining why the daughters had to take this step, it is pointed out that were no more potent men to be found in the city. However, it is also reported that, following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham saw the smoke rising from the burned-out cities. Why then did Lot’s daughters commit this so clearly hideous sin? And how can a prophet be involved in such a hideous sin?” (TR)

Answer: The Biblical text that the reader is referring to is Genesis 19:30-38 (In the Jerusalem Bible it is titled: The Shameful Origin of Moab and Ammon).

a. From a literary-historical point of view, this relates to an appendix to the Book of Genesis, which was perhaps handed down by the Moabites and the Ammonites (see Numeri 20:23 onwards), who would consider such a parentage to their honour, see Genesis 38. Like Tamar (see Genesis 38, 1 Chronicles 2:4 and Matthew 1:3), Lot’s daughters are not presented as bawdy. Above all, they want to secure their descendents, that is, the continued existence of their race. In the eyes of the text, this seems legitimate. Verse 31 presupposes that Lot and his daughters are the only survivors of the catastrophe. The story of Sodom, which is destroyed because of the sinfulness of its inhabitants, could originally have been an east Jordanian parallel story to that of the Flood.

b. In complete contrast to the Qur’an, the Bible records the experiences of people in word and deed in their long history with God and his revelation. Furthermore, the Bible is a witness to the learning process of the Israelites regarding the truth about God, people and the relationships between God and humankind. Thus, it is clear that the Bible presents the great personalities of Biblical history, including the patriarchs and the prophets, also as people with weaknesses and sins. Behind that is the faith that God’s benevolence and mercy are stronger than humankind’s weaknesses and sins. God brings his plans to fruition in spite of and through the weakness and sinfulness of humankind. As a result, in Christian theology, there is also no teaching about the prophets being without sin. Just to give one example: The Bible gives a detailed account of David’s great sin in connection with Uriah and Bathsheba (2 Samuel: 11). However, it also then reports David’s personal and public repentance and redress. Psalm 51, the best known of the Psalms of repentance, is attributed to David.

Only Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the son of God, was without sin, according to the testimony of the New Testament. (The tradition of Sahïh Muslim is significant (Fadā’il, 146: “When any human being is born, Satan touches him ….except Jesus, the son of Mary, whom Satan tried to touch but failed”. In addition, Mary was the mother of Jesus, “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), because she found favour with God in his unfathomable choosing and because, full of faith, she was fully obedient to God’s call, fully encompassed by the love and grace of God, which was revealed to us in and through Jesus Christ. According to the teaching of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church, Maria remained without personal sin also for the rest of her life. She is, as the Eastern Church says “fully holy”. That means full from the beginning and in all dimensions.

Question 28: “If Allah loves humanity, then why does he send so many prophets? Why has he allowed people from all religions to kill each other for thousands of years? And on top of that, in the Torah (OT) Allah even gives such commands as ‘Kill all the people in this city!’   How can one then say that God loves humanity?” (TR)

Answer: (This answer is largely based on an essay on the question of violence in the Old Testament by Prof. Dr. Norbert Lohfink from the Philosophical-Theological University Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt.)
1. The sending of prophets is viewed by both the Koran as well as the New Testament as an expression of God’s mercy. Even though the people keep forgetting God and repeatedly transgress or even distort God’s commandment, in his goodness God keeps sending them prophets. They have the mission to remind the people of God and his laws, and to remind the people that, as God’s creation, they owe their complete existence to God and are therefore obligated to obey God’s instructions and to answer to him at the Last Judgement. Above all, the prophets remind the people of the commandment that human life is sacrosanct, that they are duty bound to exercise justice and to particularly respect the rights of the poor and the defenceless.

The Bible too devotes a lot of space to the sending of the prophets. The New Testament presents Jesus’s mission as the conclusion and the absolute pinnacle of the series of prophets. See Hebrews 1:1-4: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has obtained is more excellent than theirs” (See Hebrews 1:1-2). In this way God reveals in Jesus Christ his love of humanity in a way that surpasses all purely human understanding. Read in the Book, Chap. 12, III, 2.

2. The second part of the question concerns what role violence takes in the Bible and how the Biblical message of non-violence is to be correctly interpreted. Firstly, a fundamental principle needs to be stated, namely, that the Bible supports a world of peace and not violence. This needs to be explicitly stated since there are always voices that accuse the monotheistical religions, especially Christianity, of intolerance, yes, even of introducing war into our world. It is important to make a distinction here. There is a responsibility that we humans pursue peace. But there is also a complementary divine covenant: God promises there will be peace in the story of humanity. However, something is immediately added. God does not promise this to all people at the same time. This covenant applies above all to a particular people. It is a messianic people. Only through these people can peace reach all humanity. In this way already a decisive motive for the entire Biblical theology of peace and violence is already given: The role of God’s people for solving a problem of violence. This is stated right at the beginning here.

The exposure of violence in Biblical prehistory, Genesis 1-11.

Biblical “prehistory” does not consist of hypotheses on Big Bang or on the evolution of humanity out of the animal kingdom or the discovery of fire, but consists of stories told in images. These images, put at the beginning of history, do not actually tell what happened only once at the beginning, but such initial stories present “What is always the case everywhere.” Thus, fundamental statements are made here. They apply to all people in all times.

Prehistorical stories in this form existed and exist everywhere. If you compare prehistorical stories of different peoples, then you discover substantial differences, however. Thus, for example, in the prehistorical stories of Mesopotamia there are two main themes, namely, that man is damned to toil and to work, and the question of overpopulation. However, in the Bible the main theme is humanity’s propensity for violence. That may come as a surprise to us. We do not appreciate enough that the story of paradise and the fall from grace by no means end with the banishment from paradise, but only with the story of Cain. And, furthermore, that the story of Cain does not end when Cain murders his brother Abel but only ends with the song by Lamech at the end of Genesis chapter 4. Human original sin is no “initial sin” but is a prototypic sin. And as such it has a double aspect: the “God to Man” aspect illustrates the sin in paradise, the detachable aspect from this, namely, “Man to Man” is illustrated in Chapter 4 in the story of Cain and Abel. Of course, a murder can only be presented in the second generation of humankind. Disobedience against God and fratricide are the two sides of the same coin. As soon as trust in God no longer has the upper hand, then trust as the basis of human relationships also disappears. Then rivalry is created and this tends to end in the destruction of rivals through violence.

Or course what is most important about the story of Cain is not the presentation of facts, but what happens next: For God protects Cain from the consequences of the first act of violence. In the long term the consequences would result in an ever-increasing circle of violence. God introduces the first restraint on violence: the vendetta. It is above all a preventative institution. The threat of revenge is the means to control violence. From this first human institution, within a few short sentences, the story of Cain creates the entire history of human culture and civilisation. We cannot illustrate here how the story of the Flood (Genesis 6:11-13), with its main character Noah, develops this topic in a second telling.

In any case, we can summarise that from Biblical prehistory the tendency to resolve problems through the use of force is one of the basic constant factors in the fate of humankind and that the control of violence through the threat of counter-violence, which is recognised also in today’s world as the only effective solution, is indispensable to achieving peace between people, yes, this is God’s will. In this Biblical prehistory the foundations are laid for how leaders, and the ethicists that advise them, think about how the ever recurring tendency to violence can be limited by the ever maintained threat of counter violence, and at the end of the day that they recognise that there is no other solution beyond the penalty of force. That is, if you like, the solution of the problem of violence shown in the story of Cain and story of Noah in the Book of Genesis.

Are we thus at the end of the Biblical statement on violence? On the contrary: the Bible is now only just beginning to give its real testimony. Does God really want to leave it at this second-best world which ultimately is unable to cope with violence and frequently becomes a hell of violence? In the story of the Flood a new divine principle of action already becomes clear: When creation has got out of hand, then God does not try to change everything. Rather, he grasps at a single point and starts something new from here. The entire earth was destroyed but there was Noah. Thus God pulled him out, saved him from the destruction and started again with him. He dealt with Abraham in the same way. Within the midst of entire humanity God sets a group in motion, starting with Abraham, that is to bring about peace on a higher level, no longer through the penalty of force. Their peace is actually the only peace that can be named as such in the full sense of the word. God creates a chosen people as a place of true peace.

The first problem that arises here is that of the unique way. Is not God concerned for all his people? Particularly in a world dominated by global thinking and acting, should we not always be thinking in terms of all humanity? Why does God choose a single family, then a single race and has a unique story with them? It is significant in this connection that the building of the Tower of Babel is told directly before the calling of Abraham. Building the tower was an attempt from below to act at once on behalf of all humanity. That became an action against heaven, against God and it ended in the confusion of the languages, that is, in unrest. Although the new beginning with Abraham is with an individual, his aim is for all of humanity, however. The texts in Isaiah 2 and Micah 2 that speak of the swords that will be beaten into ploughshares or the spears into pruning forks show the final hope of the journey that was initiated with Abraham’s calling. Both prophets see a vision of the Jerusalem won for God in the distant future. Then Mount Zion will tower over all the mountains of the world. In plain language: then the people of Abraham will have become a society that all other peoples will be able to look up to in fascination. They set out towards Jerusalem in order to learn there what a just society looks like. The instruction that they receive there is this, to relinquish force of arms to enforce justice. This renunciation is not achievable unless through the fascination with a people already transformed by God, who demonstrate in their radiant existence that such a thing is at all possible.

However, the bringing together of these two texts that are far apart in the Bible also shows that it concerns a long and perhaps often injured story. In principle, this people that God wants to transform into his inner historical model society, must endure an almost interminable and painful conversion process that leads it to a new relationship with violence. For a start, it must learn to see to what degree the human world is shaped by violence. The Bible rips away the veil spanned by violence. In the Bible one does not look away from violence, one looks at it. And all that is not uncovered only in other races but in Israel itself. After all, Israel comes from a world of violence, it separated itself from violence only slowly, and it lapsed into it time and again. Now this is not glossed over in the Bible but is called by name. And thus it can seem to us that especially the Old Testament is a book seeped in violence and bloodshed. The reader who does not understand what is happening here can be downright shocked and can be tempted to turn to other religious books that sound milder. But that is precisely the point: that one lets oneself be led by the Bible and with its help be able to understand our own attachment to violence. What makes it more difficult is that in the books of the Old Testament we are not looking back from a summit that we have reached, but are walking together with Israel to some extent. And it is a fact that our own understanding of the world is linked to our picture of God. Whoever worships violence from the depths of his heart also projects a picture of God with violent characteristics. We experience that through Israel in the Old Testament and it is important that we go through this stage for we are not so very different.

In order for the existing human societies, that are held together by violence, to function it is necessary to draw a veil over violence as far as possible. Thus, the first step of the Old Testament towards a world free from violence was to expose the fact that excising violence determines our reality, and also the reality in Israel. For this reason, the Old Testament says more about violence than other national or religious literature. The violence towards, inside and by Israel is told without restraint in the Old Testament writings. That should be valued positively. Whoever sees this differently needs to ask themselves whether they want to contribute to stabilising certain violent structures by drawing a veil over violence. A further step towards exposing society’s propensity to violence occurs when violence is seen as the central human sin.

Whereas the first step towards teaching Israel to become a peaceful society was to make violence, as a reality in our lives, apparent in the first place, the second step was to denounce violence. Violence is denounced, it is condemned, and there are calls for us to relinquish violence. This takes place particularly in the books of the major prophets. These especially point out the inner relationship between violence, on the one hand, and injustice and a lack of solidarity, on the other. The disadvantaged and the defenceless are in every society. One way or another, it will always lead to unequal opportunities and prospects in life. According to Biblical perception, justice and therefore peace are only possible in a society when the strong help the defenceless. Only then does a society become a “just society”. The will for reconciliation must accompany justice and solidarity. We are often responsible for the tensions and mutual harsh treatment that arise, but this can also come about without any culpability on our part. The question is, how one deals with that and whether society is ruled by the will to always renew its commitment to meet halfway and to forgive.

The people of Israel had to learn these links slowly and painfully. It was Israel’s learning process towards achieving peace. It concerned experiences that came about only in the catastrophe of the Babylonian exile when all of Israel’s own power and national glory had collapsed. It is the realisation that it is better to be a victim than to be a violent conqueror. It grows in the further realisation that such peace that surpasses the peace in our world, that is ever threatened with the fall into violence, can only come from the victims and not the conquerors. This peace cannot be expected from us humans. It is only possible as God’s miracle.

All this becomes a collective experience in exile. Israel has fallen into this national decline through its own fault. Somewhere along the line all is overturned and the victorious people have become perpetrators of violence. The whole of Israel is now a victim and awaits rescue from its God. At that time the insight developed that in just such a situation God wanted to intervene in history through Israel in the peoples of the world once more. And it is precisely there that one of the most remarkable texts of the Old Testament, the so-called 4th Suffering Servant song, is found (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). It is the highpoint of the Old Testament’s theology of peace, but at the same time it has somehow remained an erratic block. Its full profundity was first understood at the time of the New Testament in terms of Jesus’s fate. The “servant of God”, that always resurfaces as an image in the second half of the Book of Isaiah, is described as an individual person, but in connection with the Book is just as clearly a symbolic figure for the people of Israel as Zion’s wife, who is always mentioned. The statements made regarding the figure of God’s servant and the role of the people of Israel amongst all peoples are then messianic in the sense that the people of Israel will find their highest embodiment in the future Messiah.

Thus, according to the Suffering Servant song, the peoples of the world have conspired against this servant of God. They beat him and tortured him, and finally they killed him. But, just as the lamenter in the song of lament, he finds refuge in his God. He does not hit back, he accepts the escalating violence against himself and does not avoid it. And God accepts him. Suddenly we hear in the 4th Suffering Servant song the avowal by other peoples and by the kings of the world. They acknowledge their own complicity in what happened. The one who was killed bore the sins of the world. But God saved him and let true peace come into the world through him and his fate. Through him God’s plan for history will succeed. From this servant of God who is from the people of Israel, it is now also possible for the other peoples of the world to pursue a new path of justice, free from violence, towards true peace.

The highpoint of this story is reached in the death and resurrection of the true servant of God, the son of man: Jesus, the Messiah. In him is fulfilled what was initiated in Israel’s history. Now, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s will for peace in the world is accomplished, and what is more, through the one that did not conquer violence with violence but instead, through a lack of violence, makes possible a new society of true peace, even though it cost him his life.

In brief: With regard to freedom of will, God made it possible for the world, just as it is, to conquer violence with violence. However, he also offered the world a greater peace through his chosen people, his Messiah and his Church. It is a peace that the world cannot give. It comes about through the free believing-hoping-loving participation in the non-violent suffering and death and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. One can grasp this and live it in the freedom of belief and mutual trust. The more people who do this, the better for the peace in the world in general.

Question 29: “When was the ban on meat lifted?” (TR)

Answer: Relinquishing the pleasure of meat on certain days belongs to the Catholic practice of abstinence. In fundamental terms, abstinence, in Catholic terminology, means the temporary relinquishing or permanent relinquishing, given a certain life choice, of fulfilling vital needs that are experienced and lived through the senses. The motive for this lies in a subjective values system where gratifying these needs takes second place to other values that are otherwise cast into the shadows. Humanity’s experience speaks in favour of abstinence: No one, man or woman, is how they ought to be so that life will be good. One cannot experience all the possibilities open to us. Choosing abstinence in its practical forms calls for intelligence and difference of opinion.

Church law calls for abstinence from eating meat. According to the current instruction, abstinence is to be practised on all Fridays of the year, unless they fall on a feast day. Abstaining from meat together with the commandment to fast applies to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. All Catholics from the age of 14 are required to follow this. Children also should be led into a sensible understanding of penance. Previous other commandments for the entire Church were repealed by the Paenitemini of 12.2.1966. The bishops’ conferences are empowered to instruct other forms of penance or to modify the general rule regarding the abstinence commandment in view of different local customs. In 1986/87 the German, Berlin and Austrian bishops’ conferences described the fulfilment of the abstinence commandment in the following terms: abstaining from eating meat (meaningful as a symbol put into practise particularly in families and communities), cutting back on consumption in general, abstaining from luxury foodstuffs, and engaging in works of charity and piety (for example, weekday Mass, reading the Bible).

Question 30: “Are we allowed to change our religion?” (TR)

Answer: We have to distinguish between two aspects here.

1) Religious-political: Full religious freedom applies in free democratic states. Every citizen is allowed to freely choose their religion, to leave any religion as well as to change from one religious community to another. In many states with an Islamic majority freedom of religion, in this form, is not yet recognised or protected.

Art. 18 of the ”Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (from 1948) states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.

2) From the perspective of Catholic faith: See our comments in Chapter 11, IV, and 4 Religious freedoms.

Question 31: “In response to Question 4 you write: ‘It is a unity that is realised in its variety and a variety that is moving towards unity’. There is variety and still there is also unity, diversity and also equality. How can that b possible?” (TR)

Answer: The main points of my comments regarding the Trinity of God were, in this context, that we must not and cannot imagine a God, the unity of God, according to a quantitative definition of oneness. God is spirit and love. His unity is in the form of community. In the three-in-one God the relation, the being-in-relationship-to-others, is proved as the highest form of unity. Or to put it another way: the highest form of unity is fulfilled in the communication of many that are in mutual relationship to one another, and in the oneness of a network of relationships. This brings the key sentence of the New Testament to its full splendour: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). When the one God is love, that is, mutual self-giving, then the three persons are the “intersections” between whom the rhythm of love is consummated – giving, receiving, returning. With that, all three persons are one and the same love in three beings that are indispensable so that God can be love at all, and, moreover, “can be the highest selfless love”. The one God is community, which means he is the one loving game that takes place between the three persons: to love, to be loved, to love with others.

Of course, all this is not at all the result of our natural thinking, but is revealed to us by God himself in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Question 32: “Until 1960 all Catholics had to pray in Latin, just as all Muslims pray in Arabic. The Protestants abandoned this language as early as in the 16th century. If it was wrong, why did the Catholic church wait so long, if it was right, why was the Latin language, which promoted unity, given up?” (TR)

Answer: Jesus and his disciples, as well as the early Christian communities in Palestine prayed in Aramaic. The texts in the Bible were written in Hebrew and Greek. The authenticity and unity of the Christian faith does not depend on the use of a certain language. The Holy Spirit, who, according to the faith of the church is always active in the church, enables and facilitates the unity of the church, and that through the multitude of languages and cultures in which the Christian faith exists in a multitude of regions and times. In personal prayer, each Christian shall pray in that language which is closest to his heart. The language of the joint  liturgical celebrations of the Christian community and the churches has changed and adapted time and time again, as Christian life extended into different cultures and in different times. In the East, for example, the following church languages existed and still exist: Aramaic, Syrian, Coptic, Ge`ez (=Ethiopian); Armenian, Church Slavonic, Romanian, etc.

For sociological reasons, because Christians were largely outsiders, “the encumbered and burdened ones“, the predominant language, which was also the official language of prayer for the early Christian communities in the Eastern and Western centers of the Roman Empire in the first two centuries, was not Latin, but Koiné Greek. From the end of the 2nd century, this was slowly superseded by Latin. From the middle of the 3rd century, for example, all tombstone engravings for Christians in Rome were written in Latin. In the 4th century, the liturgy for the Mass in the church of the West Roman empire became Latin. At the end of the same century, Hieronymus created a standard translation of the bible (versio vulgata). Already since the apologetics of Tertullianus (died around 230), there has been a Christian literature Latin, which was used increasingly by the Latin church fathers following the political victory of Christianity. The Latin language survived the collapse of the Roman empire:  Although no-one called it a “mother tongue“ after the beginning of the reign of the Carolingians, it remained a kind of adaptable and therefore lively international “father tongue“ for culture and administration, for science and educated literature. On a European level, the language is limited to a very small group of those educated in Latin, also called the clerici. However, it can be credited with being the reason for the relative unity and the sense of belonging to an occidental culture.

There are German translations of basic texts and prayers stemming from medieval times (e.g. the Lord’s Prayer, the Credo [creed], marriage declarations, etc). Through its use of the vernacular, the Reformation questions the Catholic practice of using Latin, although in some protestant regions, Latin remains as the liturgical language.  At the same time, Lutheran German and Th. Cranmer’s English undergo sacralization. The Roman Catholic church responds to the reformers with the insistence that Latin remains the language used for Holy Mass. In the 18th century, Latin is prescribed as the language to be used by those who preside at liturgy. For other texts, and especially for hymns, the respective vernacular was chosen. In the 20th century, the use of the vernacular becomes more and more important. Since the second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the resulting reforms of liturgy, liturgy at Holy Mass, too, becomes the vernacular. The liturgical texts were translated from the Latin templates and the translations were officially certified by the church council in Rome.

Question 33: “What do the 12 stars on the European flag symbolize?” (TR)

Answer: Although the European Union increased by 10 new member states on May 1st 2004, the European flag remained the same. In future, too, there will only be 12 golden stars on the dark-blue sky of the Western world. Contrary to the US flag the stars do not merely symbolize the member states. The mythical number 12 also stands for perfection, completion and unity. The European flag, which is mentioned in Chapter IV – 1 of the “Constitution for Europe“ Treaty, thereby links up with the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 Disciples, the 12 months and the 12 hours on a clock.  The vision that the Europeans are an exceptional, even chosen group, thus finds subtle, but powerful confirmation in the European flag.  The wreath of twelve gold stars, which symbolize the peoples of Europe, allude to the tradition of selected groups in Jewish-Christian history. Israel had twelve tribes, Jesus had 12 disciples, the heavenly Jerusalem has 12 gates. The twelve stars positioned in the shape of a wreath furthermore form the shape of the crown of the apocalyptic woman. In the Book of Revelation 12:1-2 it says: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.” Depending on your interpretation, this verse uses the wreath with twelve stars to tell about either the birth of the Messiah, the people of God, or the comprehensive new beginning of history. The flag includes the promise of salvation and of being chosen.

The flag was introduced by the European Council in 1955, adopted by the European Parliament in 1983, and has been used by all European institutions since 1986. The EU would not be the EU if it had not clearly regulated the flag’s design. According to an EU “illustration manual”:  “Each star has five points whose tips form an invisible surrounding circle with a radius of about 1/18th that touch the height of the rectangle“. The European emblem has long since gained general acceptance. It not only flies in front of many government buildings, it also decorates Italian pasta packs and German license plates. The European flag thus contributes to a sense of a European identity.

Question 34: “Where and what is Christendom and why was the concept needed?” (TR)

Answer: The English language has two related words, Christianity and Christendom. In English, both terms are either used in the sense of Christianity, or Christendom refers specifically to those parts of the world in which Christianity dominates. The German language knows the two terms Christentum and Christenheit. Christentum corresponds more or less with the English Christianity, i.e. the religion which is derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible and which is split into the three large branches of the Orthodox, the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Christians. The term Christenheit is not an exact synonym of the English term Christendom, but it is very similar. It refers to the totality of groups of people and institutions which are dedicated to the Christian faith, or which have been largely defined by it. In the narrower sense, the term Christendom refers to the reality of the Christian dominated world of the medieval period, i.e. the period in European history starting with King Constantine.  The Christian medieval period, i.e. the epoch of Christendom, was marked by a close relationship between secular government (lat. imperium) and the hierarchically structured church (lat. sacerdotium). However, even in the periods in which the two “powers” were most closely linked, they were still clearly seen as different from each other.

Question 35: “What is the Rosicrucian Brotherhood?” (TR)

Answer: According to the teachings of the Rosicrucians, the linking of the rose with the cross  is the symbol for the resurrection and salvation. The adepts of the Order of the Golden Dawn wore a rose-cross on their chest which consisted of 22 differently colored petals. It symbolized the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 paths in the tree of life, which linked the ten sephirots with one another. These petals could be used to create a geometrical shape which could represent every mental and psychological force. The name was first transcribed into Hebrew letters, then a shape was drawn which could be used to link all the letters of the name if they were written onto the rose.

According to legend, Christian Rosenkreuz (1378-1484) was the founder of the secret brotherhood that bears his name. Today, it is thought to be certain that this person was the invention of J.V. Andreae (1586-1654).  The idea that there might be an invisible brotherhood, which can be traced back to the rose and cross, remains alive even in the current century (the Order of the Golden Dawn). In the 18th century, the Rosicrucians based their name on this legend. However, it can now be safely said that prior to the 17th century, the Rosicrucians did not exist.

The idea of the Rosicrucian originated from the yearning of committed Protestants for a second comprehensive reformation.
In his later years Andreae distanced himself from his early writings, which he merely interpreted as a satire on the alchemistic-theosophical sentimental enthusiasm for magi, astrologers and sectarians of his times.
But since the idea of a secret brotherhood had entered the world, reputable scholars of his time began their search for this brotherhood, which remained elusive.

Some scholars have interpreted these efforts as having been the driving force behind the scientific revolution of the 17th century. It was possible for alternative ways of thinking to develop in such secret brotherhoods, which would bring an end to the medieval way of looking at the world, and search for new ways of explaining the world.
The members were “free spirits”, who wanted to discover the secrets of nature. In the course of this they discovered new characteristics and forces in nature, which could not be fitted into the dominant world view and were therefore labeled with the term “occult”. The mystical and magical elements of this alternative way of thinking were slowly lost when more and more experiments were used to study the secrets of nature and to understand them better.

Question 36: “Why does so much Christian thinking have to do with the Kabala and Gnosticism?” (TR)

Answer: The term Kabala derives from the Hebrew word for “historical tradition“. It describes a system of Jewish theosophy which, through the application of an esoteric method of interpreting the Old Testament, was believed to enable secret teachings to be conveyed to those who were initiated into the movement, for example, the creation of the world through the emanation of the divine being.  These are developments of tendencies related to Gnosticism. They reached the zenith of their influence in the medieval period and during the Renaissance. During the 15th and 16th centuries, a Christian form of these teachings was comparatively popular and Reuchlin and Paracelsus are considered to be their most important representatives. It claims to be able to apply its specific methods and insights to explain the mysteries of the trinity, of redemption (salvation) and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

The teachings of the Catholic church have always kept a firm distance from these views and tendencies.

Question 37: “Who is the “Black Mary“? (TR)

Answer: The question refers to the “black Madonna“ of Czestochowa, i.e. the virgin Mary painted on lime-wood which is located at the famous place of pilgrimage north of Krakow in Poland. It is likely that the smoke of candles burning in the  sanctuary around the miraculous image caused it to become even darker over time.

In 1382, Prince Ladislaus von Oppeln founded a monastery on the bank of Jasna Góra. In 1384, he gave the monastery a picture of Mary with child painted in the shape of a Byzantine icon in tempera on lime-wood, the “black Madonna”. From the 15th century onward, Jasna Góra developed to become Poland’s most popular place of pilgrimage. Since the 17th century Mary has been revered there as the “Queen of Poland”.

From the Catholic point of view, the reverence of the mother of Jesus finds a strong basis in the New Testament itself. For Orthodox and Catholic Christians, the figure of Mary is the symbol of faith itself. It is in her that the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is renewed and God-pleasing mankind becomes visible. The hymn in Luke 1:42-45 & 46 ff praises Mary who has uniquely been chosen and because of her faithful and obedient response (Luke 1:38), i.e. her virginal willingness to receive God’s word not only “in her womb“, but before that “in her heart“. In this double motherhood she becomes for the church (John 19:27, Acts 1:14) the archetype and vigilant advocate and guide (John 2:3-5) for all those who, hearing God’s word, receive it thus, ponder it in their hearts (Luke 2:19.51) and obey, so that Christ and with Him the becoming God’s children takes shape (Galatians 4:19).

The 2nd Council of Nice (787) permits the use of the image of Christ, as well as the image of Mary and her veneration (Greek. timè), but distinguishes this sharply from the worship (Greek. latreia.) that is due only to God.

Question 38: “Who is the king in the Bible who saw a statute in his dreams: ‘The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron, its feept partly iron and partly tile.’ (Daniel 2:32-33), and how do you interpret the four kingdoms in Daniel? Will it come to pass as predicted in Daniel?” (TR)

Answer: The Old Testament book of Daniel consists of two main parts.

(I.) The narrative part, which describes the what happens to Daniel and his companions under the Babylonian kings, Nebuchadnezzar (1-4) and Belteshazzar, (5) as well as under Darius (6), the King of Medes. It includes their refusal to eat unclean meat (1), Daniels successful interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (2), the miraculous liberation from the furnaces (3), Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity (4), the supernatural writing on the wall (Mene, Tekel, and Peres) at the Belteshazzar’s feast (5) and Daniel’s survival in the lion’s den (6).

(II) A series of visions granted Daniel during the reigns of Belteshazzar  (7, 8), Darius King of the Medes (9) and Cyrus (10-12), visions which prophesy the future fate of the Jewish people. Several parts of these later chapters display all the characteristics of apocalyptic literature.

The traditional view, according to which the book of Daniel was written in the sixth century BC by Daniel, a Jewish exile in Babylon, is today largely discredited as untenable. A number of historic errors in the text renders it impossible to believe that the book could have originated in the period of exile.  The doctrinal position of the text and its language (it even includes some Greek words), as well as its position in the overall canon of the Old Testament also points to a much later date. Modern critical exegetes agree that the book was written between 168 and 165 BC.  Following this hypotheses, the purpose of the book was to encourage and strengthen the reader during the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes (King of Syria, 175-163 BC).  Section 2:4-7:28 is written in Aramaic, not in Hebrew.

In the New Testament, there is only one text in which Daniel is quoted directly, i.e. the reference to “horrible abomination” (Daniel 9:27) in Mark 13:14 par. But the teachings from the book of Daniel have been taken up and developed in many other parts of the New Testament, e.g. the repeated use of the expression “Son of Man“ (Daniel 7:13), the belief in angels who mediate between mankind and the transcendent God, and most of all the doctrine of “the resurrection of the dead“ (Daniel 12:2).

Regarding Daniel 2:29-45, the following can be said briefly: This section contains the first of the allegories of the book of Daniel, the mysterious succession of the large historic kingdoms (New Babylonians, Medes and Persians, and the Greeks as the heirs of the Asian kingdom of Alexander the Great). In accordance with ancient speculations about the eras of the world, these allegories are depicted here through metals of decreasing value, concluding finally in the advent of the messianic age. All earthly kingdoms collapse to give way to a new kingdom, the eternal Kingdom of God (see Matthew 4:17). Jesus who calls himself the Son of Man (see also Daniel 7:13 and Matthew 8:20), also applies to himself the image of the cornerstone that was first rejected from Psalm 118:22 (see also Matthew 21:42-44; Luke 20:17-18), and furthermore, the image of the cornerstone from Isaiah 28:16 with its clear allusion to the stone which comes loose from the mountain and destroys all upon whom it falls. See also verses 34:44-45 in the second chapter of Daniel.

Question 39: “Why do large part of the Gospels (I assume that “of the Bible“ is meant here) read like a history book?” (TR)

Answer: Firstly (based on the Catholic Cathechism Katholischen Erwachsenen Katechismus, p. 38f.), a few words about the Christian understanding of the revelation: Ever since the beginning of the world, God has revealed Himself through creation, in particular through the conscious of man and his leadership in history. There is, therefore, a general story of the revelation of God. The Second Vatican Council teaches: “From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father…“ (Nostra Aetate 2).

But God not only wants to reveal Himself to the individual person, but also with regard to their social and historic being. He wants to gather mankind up into one people and to make this into a light for all peoples (see also Isaiah 42:6).  Thus, because of the general story of God and man, there is a specific story of the revelation of God. In this story, God makes Himself known at certain times and in certain places to certain people in a certain way. This specific revelation begins with the calling of Abraham and the patriarchs. With the gathering of Israel and its liberation from Egypt, the story enters into a new phase. Through the prophets, Israel learns more and more about God and is being prepared for the final revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

“In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe…” (Hebrews 1:1-2)

The Bible (the word is derived from the Greek bíblos = book) is the Holy Scripture for Christians. It records the experiences mankind has made in the course of its long history with God in His revelation through word and deed.

The Bible, consisting of the Old and the New Testament, is therefore akin to the charter of the covenant that God made with mankind. Because the Hebrew word berít (covenant) was translated into Latin as testamentum, the Holy Scriptures of the Jews (Qur’an: at-taurát) were called the Old Testament, and the letters of the apostles and the Gospels (Qur’an: indschíl) were named the New Testament.

The Old Testament contains the story of the people of Israel with God (we generally use the abbreviated version “Israel“, but stress that this does NOT refer to the modern day state of Israel); in its diverse writings and types of literature, including the “historic literature”, it reflects the faithful existence of a people who are certain of God’s covenant with them and who, throughout the centuries, again and again experienced God’s saving grace.

The New Testament gives witness of the experience the disciples and the early church made with Jesus Christ. The writings of the New Testament are testimonies of the belief in Jesus Christ. They are testaments of Him as the Messiah, as prophesied in the Old Testament.

The authors of the New Testament writings understand the Old Testament as a witnessing to the actions of the same God whom Jesus proclaims. They are right to do this: Jesus was a Jew. His faith was the ancient Judaism, “the faith of the fathers”. The OT is seen as a collection of literature which reflects God’s special relationship with His chosen people, and therefore also as the Book of Promises which have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This is the Christian faith, and because of it, Christians believe that both Testaments are linked.

The Bible is a comprehensive collection of writings, which reflect the religious life and the faith of God’s chosen people, and to which many people and communities have therefore contributed. The genesis of the biblical writings spans a total of 1000 years. The OT came into being in the course of the 1st millennium before Christ, the NT in the 1st century after Christ. It is precisely this long period of genesis which provides such remarkable witness of the power of God’s word: Having encountered Him, people of the most diverse origin and education have again and again tried to proclaim to their fellow humans the Word of God as the lasting and strength giving force of life, each in their own time, with their different life styles and the respective new social and political circumstances.

Question 40: “Why have Christian and Jewish clerics developed encrypted script?” (TR)

Answer: I have never heard of such encrypted scripts.

Question 41: Why did the crusaders slaughter thousands of innocent people? What kind of God’s love and tolerance is that? (TR)

Answer: I would like to start with a brief description of the crusades in the narrow sense, i.e. the crusades to the Holy Land, penned by Ludwig Hagemann (Was glauben Christen? Die Grundaussagen einer Weltreligion. Herder-Taschenbuch nr. 1729, Freiburg, 1991, 126f.): When the Turks conquered Jerusalem in 1071 A.D, the returning pilgrims reported harassment and obstructions from the new rulers. This news was not to remain without effect. When Caesar Alexius I. (1081-1118) then called on Pope Urban II (1088-1099) for help because of the threat to Constantinople, the pope’s call for assistance for Christians in the orient and for the liberation of the Holy Land from Muslim occupation, at the Synod of Clermont on 27 November 1095, ignited a mass movement which united the peoples of the occident for two centuries across all national borders.

“Deus lo volt“, God wills it, was the all conquering slogan. The pope himself led the crusade movement.

The original goal was never achieved. On the contrary, all attempts to re-establish Christian dominance in the Holy Land were only successful for a limited period of time; in the final analysis, they all failed. The motivation behind the movement, which had originally been purely religious, became to be obscured behind a passion for war and adventure, a thirst for blood and the clamor for loot and power. The relationship between Christians and Muslims was put under the most severe pressure with the consequence of a new Islamic solidarity against Christians. The Eastern Church was more embittered than before. Efforts to establish a union remained without success, and the gap between the Western and the Eastern Church was deepened by the, albeit short-term, establishment of the Latin Empire in Constantinople (1204-61).

In 2004, an impressive, well-researched exhibition in the Bischöfliches Dom- und Diozesanmuseum in Mainz with the title “No war is holy. The crusades” has generated much interest. The prologue to this exhibition states:

“The history of the crusades has often been described in a very idealistic light, and has been exploited by the State and the Church for political and religious reasons.
The 19th century with its romantic admiration of knights and chivalry saw the deeds of the crusaders as expressing bravery, gallantry and nobleness, and the fear of God.
This way of thinking is represented by the fresco in the Cathedral of Speyer showing the great crusade preacher Bernhard of Clairvaux, which clearly illustrates the uncritical, romanticized depiction of an important historic event. Such depictions of history have little in common with reality.

The crusades were bloody, cruel wars of conquest that caused wretchedness and suffering.

But those who from the year 1095 took up the cross acted according to the values of their time, which we today still find very hard to understand. The crusaders considered the “liberation of the Holy Land from the hands of the unbelievers“ “a just war“ which God himself had authorized through the Pope.
The consequences of this pious belief were immense. In any case, the idea of the crusades, the mixed motives of many who took part in them and the ways in which they actually took shape in history is tainted by error and sin. The crusades not only led to hundreds of thousands of dead, but also and importantly to the deep separation of the oriental Muslim and the occidental Christian world, the traces of which can still be seen today.

The Roman church played a major part in this development, and for this reason, Pope John Paul II spoke clearly on this issue: In Athens on May, 5th 2001, he made an appeal for pardon of the sins, which “the sons and daughters of the Catholic Church“committed against orthodox Christians. He specifically named the conquest of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204. It was the first visit of a Roman pontiff in Greece for more than 1000 years.

On May 6th 2001, the Holy Father visited the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus. He expressed his hope that “Muslim and Christian religious leaders and teachers will represent our two great religious communities as communities in respectful dialogue, never more as communities in conflict.” For the first time in history a Roman pontiff had set foot inside a mosque.

This public admission and the appeal for pardon for the injustices of the crusades, which were partly the fault of the church, should give the necessary encouragement to improve the relationship between the three monotheistic faith communities of Christians, Jews and Muslims“ (quoted from the prologue of the exhibition mentioned above. No war is holy. The crusades. Signage accompanying the exhibition Mainz: Bischöfliches Dom- und Diözesanmuseum, 2004)

Pope John Paul II declared the first Sunday of Lent of the Jubilee year 2000 (12th March) to be the “Day of Pardon”. 2000 was the year in which Christians celebrated the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth and the beginning of the third millennium. In his homily that Sunday, the Pope said: (the following to the end of this question is copied from the official website http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20000312_pardon_en.html)

“Before Christ, who, out of love, took our guilt upon himself, we are all invited to make a profound examination of conscience. One of the characteristic elements of the Great Jubilee is what I described as the “purification of memory” (Bull Incarnationis mysterium, n. 11). As the Successor of Peter, I asked that “in this year of mercy the Church, strong in the holiness which she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters” (ibid.). Today, the First Sunday of Lent, seemed to me the right occasion for the Church, gathered spiritually round the Successor of Peter, to implore divine forgiveness for the sins of all believers. Let us forgive and ask forgiveness!

Let us forgive and ask forgiveness! While we praise God who, in his merciful love, has produced in the Church a wonderful harvest of holiness, missionary zeal, total dedication to Christ and neighbor, we cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions.

Let us confess, even more, our responsibilities as Christians for the evils of today. We must ask ourselves what our responsibilities are regarding atheism, religious indifference, secularism, ethical relativism, the violations of the right to life, disregard for the poor in many countries.
We humbly ask forgiveness for the part which each of us has had in these evils by our own actions, thus helping to disfigure the face of the Church.

At the same time, as we confess our sins, let us forgive the sins committed by others against us. Countless times in the course of history Christians have suffered hardship, oppression and persecution because of their faith. Just as the victims of such abuses forgave them, so let us forgive as well. The Church today feels and has always felt obliged to purify her memory of those sad events from every feeling of rancour or revenge. In this way the Jubilee becomes for everyone a favorable opportunity for a profound conversion to the Gospel. The acceptance of God’s forgiveness leads to the commitment to forgive our brothers and sisters and to be reconciled with them.

Question 42: ”What kind of religion is Christianity, in view to the fact that Protestants don’t recognize Catholics as Christians and claim, Catholics will go to hell. And this, although Protestants and Catholics believe in the same prophet and the same gospels! Does your scripture not teach you about tolerance? Are views like the ones mentioned not cruel and without compassion? Will only Protestants go to Heaven? Can those teachings be found in your Holy Scriptures?” (TR)

Question 43: ”Could you please briefly summarize your view of Protestant Christians? According to Catholic teaching, are they condemned to go to hell?” (TR)

Answer (to questions 42 & 43): These two questions appear to be largely concerned with the following issues:

a. What, from the Catholic point of view, constitutes the unity of the Church?
b. In what respect has this unity been violated in the course of history?
c. How does the Church try to restore this unity?
d. How does the Church see its relationship with non-Catholic Christians?

I will answer these questions based on the pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and especially the dogmatic constitution on the church Lumen Gentium (LG) and the decree on ecumenism “Unitatis Reintegratio“ (=UR), as well as the subsequently published official Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Katechismus der Katholischen Kirche (=KK) (Munich u. a.: 1993) ISBN 3 486-56005 or 3 486 55999 0.

It should be clarified that in our day May most protestants would not at all subscribe to the claim attributed in Questions 42 to the Protestants, that “Catholics will go to hell” just because of being Catholics.

Ad a) What, from the Catholic point of view, constitutes the unity of the church?

The Church is one, because of its  origin, the unity of the one God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity. It is one, because of its founder, Jesus Christ, and it is one because of its soul, the Holy Spirit who dwells in the believer and who fulfills and guides the whole Church.

From its beginning there has been much diversity within the Church. This originates from the diversity of God’s gifts, but also from the diversity of the people who receive those gifts. This diversity among its members arises either by reason of their duties, as is the case with those who exercise the sacred ministry for the good of their brethren, or by reason of their condition and state of life, as is the case with those many who enter the religious state and, tending toward holiness by a narrower path, stimulate their brethren by their example. Moreover, within the Church particular Churches hold a rightful place; these Churches retain their own traditions, without in any way opposing the primacy of the Chair of Peter, which presides over the whole assembly of charity (cf. LG: http://www.ewtn.com/library/councils/v2church.htm, German: http://www.stjosef.at/konzil/LG.htm)

This rich diversity does not oppose the unity of the Church, but sin and its consequences constantly burden and threaten this gift of unity ” (KK 814).

What are the ties of unity of the Church? First of all, it is love, “the bond of perfection“ (Colossians 3:14).  The unity of the church is also ensured with the following visible ties:

- the commitment to one and the same apostolic faith ;
- celebrating worship together, especially the sacraments
- apostolic succession, i.e. the continuous succession of Bishops and Priests going back to the Apostles, which through the sacrament of consecration sustains brotherly harmony in the family of God.

“This is the one Church of Christ … which our Savior, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority…. This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in [Lat: subsistit in] the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him” (LG 8).

Ad b) In which way has this unity been violated in the course of history?

“Very early on there were already splits in this one and only church of God, which the Apostle (St. Paul) criticizes severely; in later centuries, more dramatic differences developed and not unimportant sections of the community separated from the full community of the Catholic Church, occasionally not without guilt of people on both sides“ (UR 3).
Among the communities which developed after the separation from the Catholic Church are the “Protestants”.

”But those who have now been born into such communities and who are filled with faith in Christ, cannot be blamed for the separation, and the Catholic Church meets them with brotherly respect and love. …they are justified through their belief in Baptism and are part of the body of Christ, and therefore they deserve the honorable name of Christians, and the Catholic Church rightly recognizes them as brothers in Christ.” (UR 3).

Furthermore, beyond the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church, “many elements of sanctification and of truth are found “(LG 8): “the written word of God, the life of grace, faith, hope and love, and other internal gifts of the Holy Spirit and visible elements” (UR 3). The Spirit of Christ uses these churches and the church communities as a means towards salvation. Their strength results from the fulfillment of the grace and truth, which Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these goods come from Christ, lead to Him and on their own accord, strive towards Catholic unity (cf. LG 2-3).

Ad c) With which means does the Church strive to re-establish unity?

Christ always gives His Church the gift of unity, but the Church must pray and work constantly to retain, strengthen and perfect this unity Christ wishes for it. The following is necessary to fulfill the promise of this:

- the constant renewal of the Church towards a greater faithfulness in its calling. This renewal is the power of the movement towards unity.
- the conversion of the heart to strive towards a pure life in accordance with the Gospels, because the unfaithfulness of the members of the Catholic Church to the gift of Christ is a cause of the separation this Church.
-  joint prayer, because “the conversion of the heart and the holiness of life, together with private and public prayer for Christian unity, are to be considered the soul of the whole ecumenical movement; it can rightly be called spiritual ecumenism.“ (UR
- Brotherly knowledge of each other
- ecumenical education of believers and especially of the priests
- conversations amongst  theologians and the meeting of Christians in the various Churches and communities
- cooperation between Christians in the various kinds of service to mankind.

Ad d)  How does the Church view the relationship of non-Catholic Christians with itself?

”All men are called to be part of this Catholic unity of the people of God….And to this belongs or are in various ways related to it, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.“ (LG 13).

”They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The ties which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion. He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a “bodily” manner and not “in his heart.” (LG 14).

”The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the appellation of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter. (LG 15).  “He who believes in Christ and has received Baptism in the correct manner, is in a certain, albeit incomplete communion with the Catholic Church“ (UR 3). Communion with the orthodox churches is so deep that only very little is missing to achieve the fullness required to permit the joint celebration of the Eucharist.“ (Pope Paul VI, Sermon of December 14th, 1975) (see also KK 836-838).

Question 44: “If I understand correctly, the protestants claim that Jesus has forgiven you all your sins and that he has promised you the Kingdom of Heaven. This would mean that you could now commit as many sins as you like, be as evil as you wish, because you have already been saved. How can it be possible to believe in this teaching in the Gospels? Could you not be wrong here? Do the Gospels really teach a faith which encourages people to commit sins? What is your view about this?  (For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it inot from works, so n one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).“ (TR)

Answer: The New Testament itself recognizes the danger of such a complete misunderstanding of its teachings. I recommend the careful reading of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans 5:12-6:23, and his letter to the Galatians 6:1-10. The Epistle of James, which the Catholic Church regards as highly as all the other letters from the Apostles, firmly rejects this misunderstanding. See especially James 1:14-26.

It is the task of the Church Councils to clarify teachings which have led or which can lead to misunderstandings, using not only scripture, but also availing themselves of theology. The following dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council on the church, Lumen Gentium (40), comments the question of grace, good works and sanctification:

40. The Lord Jesus, the divine Teacher and Model of all perfection, preached holiness of life to each and every one of His disciples of every condition. He Himself stands as the author and consummator of this holiness of life: “Be you therefore perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48)… The followers of Christ are called by God, not because of their works, but according to His own purpose and grace. They are justified in the Lord Jesus, because in the baptism of faith they truly become sons of God and sharers in the divine nature. In this way they are really made holy. Then too, by God’s gift, they must hold on to and complete in their lives this holiness they have received. They are warned by the Apostle to live “as becomes saints”(Eph 5:3), and to put on “as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience”(Col. 3:12) and to possess the fruit of the Spirit in holiness (Gal. 5:22; Rom 6,22). Since truly we all offend in many things (James 3:2) we all need God’s mercies continually and we all must daily pray: “Forgive us our debts” (Matthew 6:12).

Question 45: “What did your Messiah whom you call God, say? How many Gods do you have? Who is it, this Messiah is God next to? The way you describe it, it is not clear whether he (the Messiah) is a lawyer or God. “Who will condem? It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us (Romans 8:34; see also Hebrews 7:25). “My children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one” (1John 2:1). (TR)

Answer: In this slightly confusingly phrased question and the list of biblical quotations, I detect the following core questions: (a) “How many Gods do you have (in view to your belief in the Jesus Christ as the Son of God)? (b) and further: In which sense do you understand  Jesus to be your “advocate“ before God at the same time as being one of the three godly “persons“ in the mystery of the triune God?

Ad a)

Firstly, I would like to refer to the above text of chapters 2 and 5 of the book, as well as to the relevant Questions and Answers.

In the following I shall merely cite sections 232-234 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“232 Christians are baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:29). Before receiving the sacrament, they respond to a three-part question when asked to confess the Father, the Son and the Spirit: “I do.” “The faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity.” (Caesarius of Arles, symb.)

233 Christians are baptized in the name (singular) of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their names (plural), for there is only one God, the almighty Father, his only Son and the Holy Spirit: the Most Holy Trinity.

234 The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of the truths of faith”. The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men “and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin”.

Ad b)

The word paraclete (gr. paraklêtos) is an expression of Johannine literature in the New Testament. It designs the function of something rather than its nature: one who is “called to the side of”, who plays the active role of assistant, advocate, supporter. This function is held also by Jesus Christ, who in heaven is “our advocate with the Father,” interceding on behalf of sinners (1 John 2:1); and here below on earth by the Holy Spirit, who actualizes the presence of Jesus, since He is, the revealer and the defender of Jesus (John 14,16f.26f; 15:26f; 16:7-11.13ff). “The Advocate (=the Paraclete), the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name – he will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you” (John 14:26). That is to say that after Jesus’ departure the Holy Spirit will take His place as Paraclete among the believers, John 14:16-17; 16:7, see also 1:33.It is the Paraclete, the advocate, the helper, who intercedes with the Father or who acts as an advocate in worldly courts, 15:26, see also Luke 12:11-12; Matthew 10:19-20; Acts 5:32.  It is the Spirit of Truth (8:32), who leads into the whole Truth because He leads the believers to understanding the mysterious person of Christ: how Christ fulfills the scriptures (5:39), what is the meaning of His words (2:19), His deeds, His “signs“(14:16; 16:13; 1 John 2:20 f; 27). The Disciples had previously not understood any of this (2:22; 12:16; 13:7; 20:9). Thus the Spirit testifies to Jesus (5:26, 1 John 5:6-7) and “he will convict the world to sin and righteousness and condemnation”, 16:8-11.

It is a grave misunderstanding to relate the quoted verses from St. John’s Gospel and the term paráklètos not to the Holy Spirit, but to Muhammad, the Son of Abdullah and Prophet of Islam, as seen, for example, in the commentary by Maulana Muhammad Ali, The Holy Qur’an, Lahore, 1951, n. 2496 to explain Sura 61:6. See also Adel Theodore Khoury, Der Koran. Arabisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und wissenschaftlicher Kommentar, Band 12 (Gütersloh, 2001), P. 97. Anm. 3 zu Sure 61,6.

In the letter to the Hebrews, Jesus Christ is called “the mediator of a new covenant “(Hebrews 9:15; 12:24), the new covenant which supersedes the old one (Hebrews: 8:6).  The people who come before God through Jesus are saved forever (Hebrews 7:25). Jesus is “the mediator”, “the high priest”. However, it was “not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high priest, but rather the one who said to him: ‘you are my son; this day I have begotten you’” (Hebrews 5:5) and he has come to do this will (Hebrews 10:7 ff). In 1 Timothy 2:5, Jesus is again called the mediator, who being fully human has been able to be the “savior“ of all mankind (verse 4), through His death as a “ransom“ for them (verse 6). Thus Jesus Christ in his very person “reconciles“ God and mankind.

Question 46: Do you recognize Islam and Muhammad? If the answer is yes, which is the final religion, Christianity or Islam? If your answer is “Islam”, do you then declare Christianity as over, i.e. should not all Christians convert to Islam? (TR)

Answer: Please start by reading earlier in this webpage in our book chapter 4, Muhammad and the Christian Faith and especially part IV, 3-5 and the excursus at the end of the same chapter. Furthermore, chapter 12 of the same book: The Heart of Christianity shows what constitutes for Christian believers the core of their faith. It is the direct, self-emptying love of God, which lights the path of the believer in the teachings, the life, suffering and death of the resurrected Jesus, the Messiah.  Christians meet Jesus and the power of His love in prayer, faith, acting in the community of all Christians, in the Church. He or she is called to witness to this love through a life of service and dedication to other people. Wherever Christians discover these traces of the love of God in Christ Jesus, also in the life of Muslims, who are fully devoted to God and to the service of mankind, they will thank God who offers His gifts to all people. Christians will connect as much as possible with such people and their works. In this sense, the Catholic Church, therefore, “exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men“ (Paragraph 2). And it calls on Christians and Muslims in particular: “to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom”.“ (Paragraph 3) (2. Vatican Council: Nostra Aetate). [Web reference: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html]

Question 47: The Gospels are distinguished through their beautiful language and content. But how are we to understand and interpret the many verses in the Old Testament which contain violence (e.g. Deuteronomy 13:15; Exodus 32:27)? (TR)

Answer: Please read the second part of the answer to the above question number 28.

I would also like to add (from the book: Glaubensverkündigung für Erwachsene. Deutsche Ausgabe des Holländischen Katechismus, Nijmwegen-Utrecht, 1966): He who opens the Old Testament himself happens upon pages of compelling magnificence and others, which appear stony and sparse like rough mountain terrain.
“Much of the confusion we feel reading [the Old Testament] stems from the fact that we really expect a nice and edifying book, a book which shows us many good things. However, already in the stories of the patriarchs in the book of Genesis, raw, cruel and, to our mind, immoral deeds are being told with great calm. We who read it should know that the Bible is not an edifying book, but that it reflects reality. God is accompanying a yet primitive mankind. Only in the due course of time morals, or at least views on ideal morals, become more refined.  In the story of Abraham, we are not invited to do everything just as he does, but to concentrate on the overall moral of the story: how he has remained faithful to Yahweh throughout. To read the Old Testament well, a long, overarching view is required. You have to be able to imagine that other people do things differently.

Reading will not be so difficult in cases, where the misdeeds are clearly highlighted as evil, for example concerning the sin of Sodom, or where the sins are specifically mentioned, for example the deception of Lot’s daughters (Genesis 19). Sometimes, however, it appears as though God stood behind it, as for example in the case of the deception of Jacob (Genesis 27) and even more strongly, in the case of the extermination of the Canaanites (Joshua 8). It says there that Yahweh himself gave the order for this. (See above, answer to question 27.)

However, we also have to consider these cases as a kind of primitive imperfectness. People didn’t know any better in those times, or, in order to keep the Service of Yahweh clean, they had to use the methods of their time and their level of cultural development. The ways of God had not yet been understood deeply enough. Remaining faithful to Yahweh alone was already very much.
How incomplete and prone to human error matters in the Old Testament are can be deducted from Jesus’ words about the fact that a man could simply send his wife away. This occurred, as Jesus said, “because of the hardness of their hearts” (see also Matthew 19:8). It was by no means God’s true intention. The same can be said for the murders mentioned in the book of Joshua. These, by the way, were much less numerous than the quoted figures suggest; much smaller than the exterminated Native Americans in the USA, or the Jews under Hitler.

Question 48: Prophets are sent by God and shall also be examples. But if one reads the stories of David and Solomon, it becomes clear that both have committed grave sins. How can these persons be prophets? (TR)

Answer: Please start by reading the first section to the answer to question 27. The patriarchs, the prophets and other major characters in the Old Testament, among them holy women like Sarah, Rebecca, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith and Esther, were and still are revered by the church as saints. According to Catholic teaching, saints are people who have lived their faith in a convincing, even heroic manner. Such holiness does not mean that one or the other of them cannot have committed sins.  Neither is it primarily based on extraordinary or highly visible good deeds, rather it is visible in extraordinary faithfulness, love and patience in the ordinary and daily life, in the glorification of God and in the service to mankind, especially in the bearing of suffering, persecution and tribulations of all kind. All of this is in them as the fruit of their openness towards God’s presence in them. The Islamic doctrine of the sinlessness  (‘isma) of the prophets, does not exist in the Bible or in Christian teachings. According to this Islamic teaching “the prophets of God cannot commit any sins. With respect to their belief and their religious faithfulness, they can neither err nor betray.  The sunna has turned every prophet into a ma‘sûm, i.e. a person who has been equipped with the privilege of being protected from evil and error. God has forgiven all the sins they may have committed before they were chosen by Him because of their human“ (Cheikh Si Hamza Boubakeur, Traité Moderne de Théologie Islamique. Paris, 1985, p. 127).

Question 49: Are Muslims who wish to become Christians given any kind of preferment? (TR)

Answer: Christian communities all over the world have the duty to take seriously the wish of adult Muslims to become Christians. At the same time, the Church calls on them to take care to ensure that the decision to become a Christian is wholly free from any external or internal force, and that the motive for this step is solely the wish to follow the teachings of Christ and to become one of his followers.  This also implies that Christian communities may not show any kind of preferment, material or otherwise, to people who ask to be initiated into Christian teaching and to be baptized, as this might contaminate the freedom and purity of their motivation.

Baptism comes at the end of a process of initiation that has several stages. This process of initiation into the faith and the preparation for Baptism is called the Catechumenate.

The time of preparation [i.e. the Catechumenate] shall enable the catechumen to respond to God’s offer of salvation and to mature their conversion and their faith in unity with the Christian community. It is an introduction and practicing of the whole of a Christian life, through which the disciples are being joined with Christ, their Lord. The catechumens thus have to be introduced to the mystery of salvation; through practicing a lifestyle in accordance with the Gospels and through a succession of holy rites they are to be introduced step by step into the life of faith, the liturgy and the loving community of God’s people“ (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church nr. 1247-1248).

“The catechumens are already joined with the Church, they already belong to the House of Christ, and very often they already lead a life of faith, hope and love“(Ad Gentes 14). “With love and solicitude, Mother Church already embraces them as her own. (Lumen Gentium 14)“ (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1249).

The Heart of Christianity

I. Muslim Questions

In some cases a Muslim who does not have defined, specific questions about this or that Christian doctrine may nevertheless ask – out of curiosity or personal interest – ‘What is the essence of Christianity? What is its chief characteristic? What is at its heart?’ This chapter therefore sets out to demonstrate how first Muslims and then also Christians understand what is at the heart of Christianity.

II. Muslim Perspectives

General

1. Generally speaking, Muslims are deeply convinced that Islam is the last, most perfect and most comprehensive of all revealed religions. Other religions, Judaism and Christianity above all, were valid before Islam but have now been superseded. The true religion is Islam, and only Muslims can be saved.

At the same time, Muslims can be quite open towards certain religious values which they meet in the lives of Christians. This, however, only increases their astonishment that people who have encountered Islam, and have even studied it, remain Christians rather than gratefully taking the opportunity to find the fulfilment of all their expectations in Islam, the true and final religion. Muslims might think that it is perhaps an emotional, irrational attachment to ‘Western’ religion and culture that prevents Christians from being open to Islam. Or are there other motives?

2. Other Muslims offer more detailed arguments. The religion of Jesus, it is argued, is Islam, i.e. the message of the one God and the call to serve him alone. However, Christians distorted this message very early on, and Paul, in particular, is denounced for this distortion. For others, the principal fault lies with the union of the Church with the power of the state since the days of Constantine the Great. Whatever is the case, the original Gospel of Jesus has been ‘corrupted’.73

3. Other Muslims again take the view that the perspective on the historical Jesus derived from the work of some biblical scholars is also significant for Muslims, as this perspective calls into question the historical basis of some of the Christian beliefs about Jesus which Muslims do not share. Muslims therefore reject the central doctrines of the Christian faith as misinterpretations of the true message of Jesus. The result of this misinterpretation or ‘corruption’ (tahrīf), Muslims argue, is the existence of four Gospels (rather than the original one Gospel) in the New Testament available today.

4. An interesting, if also thoroughly subjective, perspective was offered by Kamil Hussein, an Egyptian medical doctor, man of letters and religious thinker.74 In his view, the essence of the message of Moses was the fear of God; of Jesus, love; and of Muhammad, the hope of Paradise. He accordingly explains the meaning of Christianity as follows: ‘To believe, deep in one’s soul, that what calls us to do good is the love of God, which also calls us to love everyone whom God loves; and also to avoid everything that harms other people, because God loves all people without distinction; and, finally, to know that we cannot love God if we harm his friends, that is, other people.’75

5. One can therefore encounter today among Muslims two contrasting assessments of Christianity:

(i) Positive. Christianity is a ‘religion of the book’, originating from Abraham along with Judaism and Islam. It is a revealed (‘heavenly’) religion. Christians are thus close to Muslims; they are not hostile to them (Qur’an 5:82). They are believers, and all believers are brothers (49:10). They are monotheists. They pray. They feel responsible for the general welfare of humanity; Christianity demands of its adherents that they show love for the poor.

(ii) Negative. Christians are unbelievers (kuffār) and polytheists (mushrikūn). They worship a human being, Jesus, and make him into a god. They believe in three gods (Mary and Jesus alongside Allah). Their faith is very complicated, while Islam is straightforward. Their Scripture, the Gospel, has been ‘altered’ and ‘corrupted’ and no longer exists in its original form. Their religion has been superseded by Islam. The Church and its teaching office have suppressed freedom of thought and condemned science (e.g. the case of Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642). Christians reject Islam and its belief in the radical oneness of God and Muhammad as the last of the prophets. When they pray they do not follow rules; they do not fast. Their religion is onesidedly spiritual and makes unnatural demands such as celibacy; it despises the body and is obsessed with the idea and the omnipresence of sin.

Detail

1. The Qur’an presents two positions which diverge from each other: one praises Christianity while the other is hostile to it. Both tendencies are to be found in Islam, taken as a whole, both in the past and also today.

(i) The positive tendency. We encounter this above all in the unreserved admiration shown for the religious figures who are particularly dear to Christians: Jesus, his mother Mary, the apostles, John the Baptist, Zechariah and so on. This admiration also extends to the Gospel as a book, which was sent down upon Jesus and is acknowledged by the Qur’an, although of course only in its original text and its authentic, ‘uncorrupted’ meaning. According to the witness of the Qur’an there were also, at the time of the Prophet, Christians close to Islam, described as ‘the nearest in love’ (5:82) and ‘bowing in humility to Allah’ (3:199; cf. 3:110,113,115; 4:55; 5:66). The Qur’anic perspective on monks and priests, however, appears to be thoroughly ambivalent (5:82; 24:36-37; 57:27, on the one hand; 9:31,34, on the other).

(ii) The negative tendency. This is chiefly concerned with Christian doctrine about God and Jesus. Christians have made Jesus into a God and they call him the Son of God (4:71; 5:17,72; 43:59; 9:30-31); they worship three gods and allege that Jesus was crucified (4:156; cf. 3:55). Furthermore, they take ‘their monks to be their lords in derogation of Allah’ (9:31). They commit excesses in their religion (4:171) and have separated into sects on the basis of their different views on the person of Jesus (5:14; 19:37; cf. 2:133,145; 3:61). They claim that only Christians can enter Paradise (2:111). They call themselves God’s children and his beloved friends, but God will punish them for their transgressions. The Jews and Christians (‘the People of the Book’) ‘wish they could turn you back to infidelity after you have believed, from selfish envy, after the truth has become manifest to them’ (2:109; cf. 3:110); and the monks (as well as the Jewish rabbis) ‘devour men’s wealth’ (9:34).

This contradictory perspective doubtless reflects the conflicting attitudes of Christians to Muhammad and the Qur’an: some accepted them while others opposed them. This conflict is reflected in the Qur’an, so that Christians are at one point reckoned as a privileged group, ‘the People of the Book’, and at another point as an accursed group of unbelievers (kuffār) and of polytheistic idolaters (mushrikūn). It is precisely this ambivalence that has determined the character of Muslim attitudes to Christianity right up to the present. The ways in which Christianity and Christians are judged – whether as unbelievers or as ‘People of the Book’ and monotheists – thus depend to a considerable extent on the peaceful or tense co-existence of Christians and Muslims, exactly as in the time of the Prophet.

2. The same two-sided perspective is present in Islamic tradition and theology, although they tend to emphasize the negative statements in the Qur’an. We must keep in mind this twofold inheritance: on the one hand the traditional condemnation of Christian doctrines and moral teachings, often in association with Western neo-colonialism and an allegedly corrupt Western civilization; on the other hand the quite different perspective, also rooted in the Qur’an, which regards Christianity as one of the three monotheistic (or ‘heavenly’) religions, and Christians as brothers and sisters in genuine faith in God (Qur’an 49:10, as long as Christians are included among the ‘believers’ mentioned here).

Within the negative perspective, three aspects are particularly to be noted:

(i) Christianity overstates the nature of the relationship between the Creator and the creation by speaking of a mutual love between God the ‘Father’ and human beings as ‘his children’;

(ii) its emphasis on the spiritual dimension is also overstated, so that its exclusive interest in the life to come and in the soul are at the expense of this life and the body, just as also the individual is emphasized while the significance of the social dimension of life is neglected – all this in contrast to Islam, the religion that addresses human beings in their entirety;

(iii) finally, Christianity does not sufficiently respect the transcendence of God, because it considers Jesus to be both human and God at the same time and so also speaks of ‘the participation of human beings in the divine life’.

III. Christian Perspectives

Among many other dimensions of Christianity which might have been chosen, two are emphasized in what follows.

1. Christianity as the Way of Love

(i) The term ‘Christian’ was first applied to followers of Jesus by Gentiles in Antioch (present-day Antakya in South-eastern Turkey) around 43 AD (cf. Acts 11:26). To be a Christian means to believe that Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, who ‘went about doing good’ (Acts 10:38) and who died on the cross and rose from the dead, is the Christ (the Messiah), the one who came forth from God as God’s final and definitive self-revelation to human beings. Following the example of Jesus, and in his power, Christians try to live out their relationship to God and other people in harmony with God’s will and in the service of others. The will of God is that we should love all people – who are all called to become God’s children – with the same love; we are called to love both God and our brothers and sisters.

Christians believe that Jesus, who died on the cross, was raised from the dead and now shares in the glory of God the Father, is living and present always and everywhere.

(ii) During his life on earth, Jesus revealed that God is Father: his own Father, the Father of Christians and the Father of all people (cf. John 5:18; 20:17; Matthew 6:9 and parallels). It is the will of this Father-God that all people should understand themselves as his children. By expressing the relationship between God and the human race in terms of ‘father’ and ‘son’, Jesus chooses a powerful image to express God’s love: the love of a father for his children.76 For the Christian, however, this does not imply fatherhood in a physical sense on the part of God towards his creation.77

Jesus brings alive in his own distinctive way an essential feature of the understanding of God in the Old Testament (the Torah): God loves his people with a passionate love, as a mother loves her children (Isaiah 49:14-15; cf. Hosea 11:1-4); as a husband loves his wife, even when she is unfaithful (Hosea 1-3; Ezekiel 16); as a man loves his fiancée (Song of Songs). Jesus reveals the fullness of God’s unconditional love for the human race. This went much further than was imaginable in the time of Jesus, when God’s love was thought to extend only to the Jews and indeed only to the righteous among the Jewish people. This understanding excluded from the ‘kingdom of God’ not only non-Jews, but also Jews who were considered to be open sinners (such as tax officials), and also those who suffered from contagious illnesses such as leprosy.

Jesus turned this understanding of the relationship between God and human beings totally on its head. He proclaimed that God turns to all people with the same love. God, the Father of all people, loves them all without distinction. If it is at all possible to speak of God having a ‘special’ love for anyone, it would be for those whom society condemns and excludes: open sinners (who repent) and Gentiles: ‘The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you’ (Matthew 21:31; cf. 8:10; Luke 7:36-50).

This explains why Jesus, acting in accordance with the revelation of God as the universal and merciful Father, was always ready to welcome those, such as the poor and notorious sinners, who turned to him to find a way out of their material or spiritual need. Jesus never rejected anyone, accepting invitations equally from people of high standing and Pharisees as well as from tax collectors and sinners. Was he not criticized for sharing meals with sinners (Matthew 8:10; 11:19; 21:31; 9:10-13; Luke 7:36-50; 15:1-2,7,10; 19:7)? Precisely in this sense, he said that he had ‘come to call not the righteous but sinners’ (Matthew 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32). He was severe with those who were proud of their ‘righteousness’ and at the same time condemned ‘sinners’, the poor and Gentiles (Matthew 23:3,13-36; Luke 11:42-52; 18:9-14), for, he taught, ‘there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance’ (Luke 15:7,10). This divine attitude to sinners is presented wonderfully in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) and in other parables with God’s compassion as their main theme (Luke 13-15). Jesus struggled against everything that divided human beings into the two camps of the virtuous and the sinners. He himself relativized some of the most sacrosanct regulations in the Jewish Law, for example concerning the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8; Mark 2:27; John 5:6) or the restriction of worship to the temple in Jerusalem (John 2:13-17; 4:20-21). For ‘the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27). If the leaders of the Jewish people condemned Jesus to death and pressed for him to be executed by the Romans, this was because he had proclaimed God’s unconditional readiness to forgive and be reconciled. This message raises questions about the very basis of the authority of the leaders of the people. God the Father appeared to be of one mind with these leaders, since he gave a free hand to those who took Jesus to the cross. However, God did not abandon him to the power of death (cf. Acts 2:27), but raised him from the dead, ‘the firstborn of the dead’ (Colossians 1:18; Acts 26:23; Revelation 1:5) and seated him at his right hand. ‘And of that all of us are witnesses’, said Peter (Acts 2:32). So Jesus is truly Lord, endowed with the very authority of God, the God who solemnly confirmed the message of Jesus, the truth of all that he had said about God and about humanity.

(iii) This message is the message of boundless love, the love of God who loves all people and invites them all to become his children; the God who ‘makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous’ (Matthew 5:45).

(iv) It is thus natural that Jesus declares the commandment to love to be the most important commandment in the Law. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. . . . You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:37,39). Love for God and love for other people were already linked in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18) and Jesus takes this up. He makes it into the ‘new law’ (John 13:34), not only because for him it serves as the summary of ‘all the Law and the prophets’ (Matthew 22:40; 7:12; Luke 6:31), but also because through Jesus a new significance will be given to this love for God and neighbour.

The love of God, the Father of all people, demands love for all people, all of whom God truly loves as his own children. For Jews in the time of Jesus, the fellow Jew was the neighbour who was to be loved. For Jesus, however, every person is to be loved, including sinners and even one’s enemies; indeed it gradually became clear to him and to the early Christians that even the Gentiles and the adherents of other religions (such as Samaritans, Syro-Phoenicians and Romans) were included in this commandment. The disciples of Jesus were challenged so to love one another that, in Jesus’ words, ‘everyone will know that you are my disciples’ (John 13:35; 15:12-17). Love extends to enemies and persecutors:

‘You have heard that it was said: “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ (Matthew 5:43-48)

Instead of returning evil for evil, they should return good for evil (Matthew 5:38-42); they should forgive without measure or limit (Matthew 18:21-22), exactly as God forgives (Matthew 6:12, in the ‘Our Father’), and as Jesus forgave those who nailed him to the cross (Luke 23:34). This does not imply being indifferent to what is evil and unjust or even applauding it, but rather forgiving wicked and unjust people, because only forgiveness can liberate people from evil and bring about their reconciliation with God and with each other.

This love knows no boundaries, because it is indeed an image of the love of God, who forgives, reconciles and creates peace, and because it consists in the gift of itself to others, to God as well as to neighbours. Love does not seek its own advantage. It consists in the giving away of itself and so also in for-giving: ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13). Finally, Jesus was not content simply to preach about such love; he lived it, and he sacrificed his own life for all people, even for his enemies, whom he forgave on the cross.

Only after the death and Resurrection of Jesus did the apostles and the early Christians fully understand that the core of the life and the teaching of Jesus consisted in love, in God’s love for us and our love for God and unlimited love for all people. They went so far as to say that the real test of love for God is love for one’s neighbour (1 John 4:20-21, and the whole letter), love that consists ‘not in word or speech, but in truth and action’ (1 John 3:18). ‘We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another’ (1 John 3:16). And in fact the early Christians did live out this close community of brotherly love (Acts 2:42-46; 20:7-11). Reflecting on the life and message of Jesus in the light which they received from the Holy Spirit, the apostles finally began to understand: if it was possible for Jesus, in the way that has been described, to reveal so clearly the essence of God’s love and also to live out the perfect response to this love, then this was ultimately possible only because he was ‘God’s Son’ in a very particular and unique way, sent by the Father to communicate this quality of love. For God is love (1 John 4:8-16) and his love ‘was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him’ (1 John 4:9). This loving God ‘became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory’ (John 1:14). Jesus, the Word of God, is the revelation of God’s love because he is his Son. Of course, this revelation of love in and through Jesus must be received by the whole human race and furthermore translated into action, till the end of time, through the power of God, the Holy Spirit, working both in the Church and beyond it.

Paul’s emphasis is that only the Spirit of God, sent by Jesus after his Resurrection (John 7:37-38; 16:7-15), can make it possible for us to call God our Father (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6) and to love him and other people with the same love which we have received from God (1 Thessalonians 4:9; Romans 5:5; 15:30; cf. 1 John 4:7). In his ‘hymn to love’ Paul holds that every one of our actions receives its value from love, and that without love even the most precious charisms are worthless.

(v) The official Christian doctrines, or dogmas, that emerged in the early Christian centuries reflected the significance of Jesus Christ as this was elaborated in arguments with the chief religious and philosophical currents of that time. They sought to defend the faith of the New Testament in a changed context.

(vi) Christianity therefore means following the way of love, whose source is God himself (1 John 4:7) and who is revealed to us in Jesus, the Son of the Father, in his preaching and also in his life, death and Resurrection. The Church of Christ is based on this love; this love is the source of its life.

The exercise of authority in the Church is in the first place a form of service of the community of the disciples of Jesus, following the model of the love which lives in God’s very self. The exercise of this authority consequently demands love for Jesus that is prepared to show itself in costly service (cf. Jesus’ dialogue with Peter at John 21:15-17: ‘Do you love me? . . . . Feed my sheep.’) However, this community of love among Christians should of course never become narcissistic, directed only inwards. It is essentially witness, ‘so that the world may believe’ (John 17:21). It is a duty for every single Christian, as well as for the Christian community as a whole, to be witnesses to love in the world, committed to justice, reconciliation and peace. This is a high ideal, scarcely ever fully realized in practice, but one towards which all Christians must continually aspire, according to the measure of the gifts they have received. In the course of history, unfortunately, Christians in general and the Church in particular have repeatedly failed to be faithful to this ideal; this sad and regrettable reality must be recognized honestly.78 Nevertheless, the good news of Jesus continues to be present and active, today as yesterday. It presses the Church to live by the law of this love and to work for it to be more widely spread in the world, tearing down every barrier – racial, social or religious – that divides human beings, struggling against the root sins of selfishness and hatred. Every Christian is called by Christ to be unconditionally committed to the victory of love.

Excursus: Islam and the Love of God

To maintain that love for God and for neighbour is the central and essential commandment of Christianity does not mean that other religions, and Islam in particular, are simply unaware of this twofold commandment, or that it is only truly Christians who are concerned about love and live lives empowered by love. There is in fact a way of love in Islam, practised by many Muslims, normally without reference to the teaching of Jesus or Christianity.

(i) There are only a few verses in the Qur’an which speak explicitly of the love of God, whether the love of God for human beings (God as al-wadūd – ‘full of loving-kindness’ [11:90; 85:14]; God who ‘casts’ his love [mahabba] on Moses [20:39]) or the love of human beings for God (four references at 2:165; 3:31; 5:54). There is also a verse which speaks of a mutuality in love between God and believers, referring to ‘a people whom he loves and who love him’ (5:54); this is in the context of jihad, here understood as physical struggle against the unbelievers, a ‘holy war’. However, on the basis of these Qur’anic verses we cannot say that the love of God for human beings and of human beings for God is a central theme of Islam. The one and only God, the just and merciful judge, is the centre of the Qur’anic message. Love is, however, a theme in the Qur’an and Hadith and also in the teaching of classical Islam, providing both content and terminology for the spiritual tradition within Islam to draw upon.

(ii) This spiritual tradition is principally that of the Muslim mystics, the Sufis. Starting with the remarkable Rābi’a in the 7th century AD, the Sufis made love for God (rather than the love of God for human beings) into the central axis of their search for God. The great Sufis of the early Islamic centuries absorbed this ‘way of love’ into orthodox Islam, thanks principally to Muhammad al-Ghazāli (d. 1111), who emphasized that only God is worthy to be loved and who regarded this love (mahabba) as the highpoint and goal of his spiritual quest. Later the ideal of love for God was spread through the whole Muslim world by the religious brotherhoods. It became an important theme for meditation and was entirely accepted by official Islam.

This love of human beings for God, as distinct from the love of God for human beings, bears typically Islamic characteristics. For love is seen as a longing for something that is lacking, and the God of Islamic faith is quite free of such dependence. In Muslim understanding, love is a longing for God, a longing to come nearer to him; any idea of loving union between God and human beings is, however, strictly excluded. Finally, this love for God can also demand love for our neighbour, but it is not at all the case that love for created beings can or should be placed on the same level with love for the Creator. Many Muslim mystics, including Rābi‛a and al-Ghazālī, were of the view that to dedicate oneself totally to God it is necessary to distance oneself as far as possible from all created things.

2. Christianity as the Way to Human Fulfilment

(i) For believers, Christian or Muslim, human beings are the creation of ‘God’s hand’, formed after his likeness and destined to return to him. This is the fundamental calling of the individual, of the human race, and indeed of the whole creation, which longs for liberation from every form of oppression, in order finally to enter into God’s glory (Romans 8:19-25; Qur’an 81; 82; 99; 101). This shared calling establishes a basic likeness between all people, transcending differences of race, social standing and religion.

(ii) The position held by the Qur’an within the structure of the Islamic faith corresponds to that held in Christianity by the person of Jesus himself, the Word of God. Christianity thus offers primarily not teaching but a way, the way of discipleship of Jesus. Every person is called to become God’s adoptive son or daughter in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:5). Between the Creator and his creation reciprocal love holds sway. The Creator is Father; human beings are his children. The intimacy of this relationship is far greater than that between servant (‘abd) and Lord (rabb). The Christian is called to love God and all people because all people are brothers and sisters of Jesus and children of the same Father.

Loving God and other people is the only real way to attain human fulfilment. This goes far beyond the natural love between people, for Jesus demands that we should not return evil for evil but rather persist in forgiving and even loving our enemies. Nobody is capable of such love in his or her own strength. Rather, it is a gift from God, whose gift consists in enabling us to love our brothers and sisters as he himself loves them. Jesus himself lived this message out to the point of dying on the cross. To reject faith in this God – whatever the personal explanations for such a rejection might be – is to deprive human beings of their ultimate meaning.

(iii) The kingdom of God was proclaimed by Jesus and is in one sense already a present reality; however, it also remains a destination not yet reached, a promise not yet fulfilled in its entirety. Human fulfilment in this world will never be perfectly realized. Hope for total fulfilment is the great energy that drives the human race forward. Progress, in every sense, always remains a possibility till the end of time and, on the individual level, till death. For many, death is seen as proof of the vanity and meaninglessness of human life, but for the believer the death of Jesus on the cross opens the way to his Resurrection and that of all people. He transforms death into victory over death. The end of human life and the end of the world on the last day open the way to ‘eternal life’, to its final fulfilment. Then every person will see God face to face in the new heaven and the new earth. There humanity and the whole creation will discover their final and perfect consummation (Romans 8:22-23).

(iv) The value of human beings rests on the fact that they have been created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27, quoted in 1 Corinthians 11:7; Colossians 3:10; James 3:9) and in the image of Christ (John 1:3; Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2). The human person should therefore never become a means to an end. His or her rights must be respected by every kind of authority, whether secular, religious, social or political.

But the human person can only find fulfilment within a community of free and independent persons. The family and other forms of human community therefore play indispensable roles at both national and international levels. The rights of the individual and of communities must therefore be balanced in carefully weighted relationships. Human communities, secular and religious, serve the common good to the extent that they value the individual person.

Excursus: Muslim Humanism79

Christianity is not the only religion that claims to offer a comprehensive vision of humanity, its origins and its destiny. Islam makes a similar claim. Muslim and Christian humanism have much in common. However, insofar as Christian humanism has its centre in Christ and Muslim humanism in the Qur’an, there are essential differences of emphasis.

The Qur’an teaches that God created Adam with his hands (38:75), forming him from clay (7:12; cf. 23:12; 32:7); the creation of human beings from the male’s sperm is also often mentioned (22:5; 32:8; 80:19). God also breathed his ‘spirit’ into Adam (15:29; 32:9; 38:72). A famous hadith, reported by Ibn Hanbal, teaches, in terms very similar to Genesis 1:26, that ‘God created Adam in His image (‛alā sūratih).’

The human race was created to worship the one God, to serve him, to obey him, to praise him and to thank him (4:1; 51:56; 3:190-191; 7:172; 30:17-18). He is a mortal creature (bashar) and is often rebellious. Nevertheless, he is charged with bearing witness to the one God (7:172-173).

Those who reject faith in the one God are to be compared to animals (25:44; 8:55). Human beings have a higher status. Only to Adam did God reveal the names of all the animals – something which even the angels did not know (2:31-33). God therefore commanded the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam immediately after his creation. Only Satan (Iblīs) refused to do this (15:31; 18:50; 19:44; 20:116; 38:74). The human race is to rule the created world, which God has made subservient to his command and his use (14:32-33; 16:12-14; 22:65). He is God’s ‘vicegerent on earth’ (2:30), a phrase often cited by modern authors advocating a Muslim humanism.

Religious Pluralism and Freedom of Religion

I. Muslim Questions

* Why are there so many religions if God has endowed all people with the same human nature?
* Every religion, Christianity above all, claims to be universal. How can different religions be ‘universal’? Only one can really be universal. The other religions can thus only be considered as partially or provisionally true.
* Must one not rather assume the idea of a universal religion, a kind of synthesis of all religions?
* These days the Church speaks about religious freedom, but it was not always so. In the past, the Church made use of imperialism and colonialism for its own ends. If it has now become an advocate of religious freedom isn’t this just because it can no longer get its own way?
* Religious freedom is good in principle, but can people be allowed to turn their backs on the true religion and convert to another religion? Doesn’t the principle of religious freedom constitute a danger, threatening the religions themselves?
* How can someone read the Qur’an and not become a Muslim? Such a person must be a hypocrite, like the orientalists.

II. Muslim Perspectives

General

1. Islam is the one true, perfect and enduring religion. It has absorbed into itself everything of any worth in the other religions. The Muslim who thinks in traditional terms is therefore astonished that there are still Jews and Christians today, for with the advent of Islam these religions essentially became irrelevant. Judaism and Christianity are of a provisional nature and at best only partially true. They were intended for limited human communities. Outside Islam religion is of no genuine value because Islam is the only religion that is truly universal.

2. ‘Wars of religion’ are a historical reality. In the past, they took place between the Islamic and the Christian worlds, between Catholics and Protestants. Even today there are still conflicts in the name of religion, in, for example, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Sudan, etc.

3. Many Muslims assume as a certain fact the collaboration between Christianity and imperialism, colonialism and nationalism.

4. There cannot be a right to change religion. A person is born as a member of a given religion and must stay within it as it constitutes an essential element of personal, collective and national identity. Conversion to Islam is of course an exception, because here it is a case of entering a society and a structure which replace all other identities and make them unnecessary.

Detailed

1. The whole Qur’an is pervaded by a longing for all people to be united in one single religious community, the Umma, as was God’s will from the beginning. However, people soon divided themselves into different religions, each one claiming to be the one true religion (10:19; 11:118; 21:92; 43:33).

2. Islam is the final religion and is perfect, exclusive and universal. It was proclaimed by Muhammad, the ‘Seal of the Prophets’, as the only true way to attain salvation (3:19,73,85,110; 5:3; 9:33; 43:28; 61:9).

‘It is he who has sent his messenger with guidance and the religion of truth, to proclaim it over all religion, even though the pagans may detest it.’ (9:33; cf. 61:9)

It is consequently only logical that Islam and its claims apply to the whole of humanity (7:158; 34:28). Other religions are either false (as with idolatry or polytheism) or provisional and only partially true (as with the ‘religions of the book’, Judaism and Christianity). This unique religion must spread everywhere, through proclamation (da‛wà, ‘calling’ or ‘inviting’ to Islam, equivalent to the Christian concept of ‘mission’) and, if necessary, through the sword. From a historical perspective, Islam started with peaceful exhortation and steadfastness in the face of persecution (in Mecca); later it also took up the sword (in Medina). After the Prophet’s death the ‘great conquests’ ‘opened’ the way for Islam into many countries. In the following centuries Muslims fought numerous wars, both in aggression and in self-defence, in the name of Islam. In general, the conversion of populations to Islam took place gradually and peacefully, both in areas already conquered by Islam and also outside the world controlled by Islam. In this process an outstanding role was played by Muslim traders and by the religious brotherhoods. The effect of social pressure on non-Muslims should also not be underestimated, however, especially in the context of Muslim-majority societies. Contemporary Muslim apologists emphasize that Islam was proclaimed in an exclusively peaceful manner, but they fail to mention the wars fought under the banner of Islam (fī sabīl Allāh, literally ‘in the way of God’). According to the apologists, such wars, if it is conceded that they happened at all, were always fought in self-defence.

3. The Qur’an proclaims the principle that everyone is free either to believe or not to believe (10:40-45; 17:84,89,107), together with the other principle so often repeated today: ‘No compulsion in religion’ (lā ikrāha fīl-dīn, 2:256). But the Qur’an also says clearly that polytheists must believe or be put to death (9:5; 48:16). On the other hand, the ‘People of the Book’ (Jews and Christians) are offered the status of protected people (dhimma): they may maintain their religion – even though it is faulty and has been superseded by Islam – along with its hierarchy and its rituals, but they must pay a special tax (jizya) and remain ‘small’ (i.e. inconspicuous and subordinate) (9:29). The Muslim who abandons his religion, either through conversion to another religion or by deeds or words clearly directed against Islam, will be condemned by God (3:85-90; 4:137; 16:108) and must be punished with death (2:217 has consistently been interpreted thus by legal scholars, and this interpretation has been reinforced by numerous hadith).

4. In recent times many Islamic countries, through their representatives on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, have declared their agreement with the principle of religious freedom, as it is formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 18, emphasizing freedom of thought, conscience and religion), but with the restriction that nobody is permitted to turn away from the true religion (i.e. Islam).71

5. Influenced by the contemporary cultural context and ideological pluralism, many Muslims have developed the attitude, widespread in the West today, which holds that all people should be allowed to follow their conscience. Other Muslims say that all religions are of equal value and, furthermore, that Islam and Christianity are very closely related, if not quite identical in terms of content. Although such statements are made, they are generally not to be understood as reflecting syncretism or indifference in religious matters. Rather, they testify to an attitude of brotherliness among those who wish to live on the basis of faith. Some Muslims support the idea of a universal religion, even if in practice this would amount to a form of syncretism. Finally, there are Muslims who believe that the religions – and in the first place Christianity and Islam – should enter into a genuine dialogue, trying to come closer together as brothers and letting God lead us together as far as he will. The overarching aim should be to present a shared witness in our world to faith in God.

III. Christian Perspectives

1. The good news, as proclaimed and lived out by Jesus, consists in the revelation of God as the Father of all people, as all-encompassing, unconditional love, with a particular love for the humiliated, the poor, the sinners, the marginalized and oppressed. It is the will of Jesus to gather together his own people and all peoples in this love of God. All people – and in the first place the ‘poor’ – are called into the ‘kingdom of God’, that is into the dominion of the love of God.

2. In the New Testament, which testifies to the faith of the earliest apostolic Church, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is the highest, final and definitive revelation of God. In Jesus Christ God turns to all people; Christianity is thus in its very essence universal. History shows that from its earliest days the Church has understood its mission to be universal, knowing itself to be a servant of the universal love of God, who reconciles all things to himself (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21; Ephesians 2:11-12).

3. From a historical perspective, Christianity arose and was spread on the basis of the dynamic faith of the apostles and of the first Christian generations. Their witness and proclamation were effective despite, or even because of, persecution. After the Edict of Milan (313), which guaranteed full religious freedom to the Church, thus leading to the Church soon becoming the official religion of the Empire, Christianity became entangled in various violent conflicts, sharing in responsibility for the persecution of heretics and bringing social pressure to bear on them. These conflicts were essentially political in nature, but were presented as Christian causes in order to gain as much support for them as possible.

The Crusades were a quite different case, for here religious motivation (the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre) was clearly the primary motive. The relationship between colonialism and mission should not be understood in terms of one uniform pattern. In some cases missionaries accompanied or followed the colonialists (e.g. the Portuguese and Spanish in the 15th and 16th centuries); in other cases the missionaries arrived first (in Central Africa, China and Japan); in yet other cases missionaries opposed colonialism (e.g. Las Casas in Latin America; French West Africa).

4. The evaluation of non-Christian religions from the perspective of the Christian faith has undergone a long process of development: from Justin (d. 165), who spoke of spiritual seeds waiting in all people for the Word of God in order to bear fruit; to the position of Augustine of Hippo (354-430), who, deploying rhetoric which we might find over subtle, considered even the virtues of the pagans as vices; and on to the theories which concede to unbelievers good faith (bona fides) and hold that they will not be condemned. More recently, some theologians have taught that there are elements in the faith and in the moral values of the nations and cultures of the world which await their fulfilment and clarification in the light of the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. This leads into the predominant views today.

Among the recent attempts to develop an adequate theology of the non-Christian religions, two deserve particular attention; the second of these has had the wider impact.

(i) Emphasis on the distinction between faith and religion: this theory was chiefly expounded by the Protestant theologians Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), and later, with modifications, taken over by Catholic thinkers such as Jean Daniélou (1905-1974). Religion is understood here as a natural movement of the human creature towards God. The religions are the collective manifestation of religion, translating it into rituals, forms of piety and so on. In the view of at least the early Barth the religions are seen as mere human products and are set negatively over against faith in the revealed Word. Daniélou evaluates them more positively: every human group, every civilization, has its own religion, so that one can speak of Celtic, Germanic, Mediterranean, African and Indian religion, and also in the Christian religion one can find characteristics shared with these religions.
On the other hand, faith is the human response to God’s Word, to God, who takes the initiative to encounter his creation and to question it. If religion is the movement of the human soul towards God, then faith is the answer that human beings give to the Word of God that reaches them through revelation. For Daniélou, faith in Jesus Christ must ‘incarnate’ itself in each religion. Since faith is bound up in a contextually relevant manner with the religions and the cultures formed by them, it transforms these and bestows new meaning on their rituals, laws and traditions. Daniélou’s conclusion is that by accepting the Christian faith human beings ‘do not move from one religion to another’, but rather that their own religion is reshaped and transformed.

(ii) Distinction between general and special revelation: this new approach was chiefly developed by Karl Rahner (1904-1984) and then, in its essential aspects, taken over by several other authors. Since the beginning of human life on earth, God has never ceased to communicate with all people. This ‘general’ revelation is attested in the Bible, in the stories of Adam and Noah, the Book of Wisdom and Paul’s Letter to the Romans (1:19ff.). The great non-Christian religions are the higher manifestations of this general revelation. But then the word of God appeared in a ‘special’ way in the history of the people of God, beginning with Abraham, through the patriarchs and prophets, and finally, ‘in these last days’, through Jesus Christ, the Word of God become flesh and the fullness of revelation. In this ‘special’ revelation God’s self-communication, which also takes place in ‘general’ revelation, can be contemplated in history, so to speak; it has a human face: Jesus of Nazareth. ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9). In the light of this revelation the presence of God in all religions is illuminated.
But even the revelation of God in Jesus Christ will only be unveiled in its full significance at the Parousia, or coming of Christ, at the end of time. Christian proclamation and the dialogue of the Church with the other religions look towards this goal. During the intervening period the history of religions, including the existence of the non-Christian religions, contributes to the ‘unveiling of the meaning of revelation’. If understood in this way, the acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as the fullness of revelation, as the revelation of God in a human person, does not at all necessitate that the other religions should be disparaged or that it should be denied that they have some relation to God and that they offer true worship. Rather, it should be understood as an invitation to acknowledge the other religions as varied contributions to the unveiling of the full meaning of revelation. Christians can thus be enriched in dialogue with the religions.

5. Christianity can only be faithful to the Gospel if it is understood as a message of peace and reconciliation. Jesus clearly and decisively refused to be the political Messiah for whom his own people were waiting. He decided to die rather than engage in political revolution; to forgive, rather than to seek power and to retaliate. Later, as a result of the support given to it by the Emperor Constantine the Great (reigned 306-337), the Church entered into so close a relationship to the state that it at times called for wars, blessed them and justified them. Over recent decades, however, the Church and the Popes have endeavoured to use all possible opportunities to promote peace and justice. Certainly the Church recognizes the right to self-defence, both of individuals and of nations, and also the right, on occasions even the duty, to oppose political regimes which are clearly unjust. However, whenever and wherever possible, Christians should prefer nonviolent action (which is very far from being ineffective) and should make their contribution to the overcoming of the narrowness of theocratic, nationalistic and fanatical religious ideologies with their potential for violence.

6. Faith is a free gift from God, to be freely received or rejected by people. History, however, knows of ‘conversions’ which came about through compulsion or duress (e.g. Charlemagne’s coercion of the Saxons) or of cases where conversions came about because of purely human motives and social factors, or were at least strongly influenced by them.

For a long time the predominant view in the Church was that the best system of church-state relations was that in which Christianity is declared the state religion and in which, therefore, ‘error has no rights’. It is true that from its beginnings the Church always demanded the freedom for everyone to be able to accept the Christian faith without being disadvantaged thereby; the Church was of course much more reserved about recognizing the freedom of a Christian to interpret the Christian faith independently, or to give the faith up, or to change over to another religion (cf. the Inquisition). If we are aware of the long and painful development of the idea of religious freedom within Christianity, this can help us achieve a better understanding of certain attitudes, reactions and difficulties on the Muslim side.

Since the 2nd Vatican Council and its Declaration on Religious Freedom, however, the attitude of the Church to this question has been unmistakeably clear, at least at the official level: religious freedom is one of the basic and absolute rights of human beings as such. The way in which mission is carried out must be marked by respect for the worth and the outlook of the other. Mission should be a matter of witness in and through dialogical relationships. Of its very essence, faith can only be presented as an invitation (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:20); faith is always to be proposed not imposed. Every single person remains free and responsible to choose for himself or herself, in the light of conscience and before God.

IV. Christian Responses

1. Religious Pluralism

Religious pluralism is a mystery. It has something to do, on the one hand, with God’s respect for human freedom, and, on the other hand, with the natural conditions of human religious and cultural development. For thousands of years the main human groups lived in isolation from each other, in Europe, in Asia and in America. Today, in contrast, the world is characterized by a diversity of interconnections and by a consciousness of mutual dependence. Of course there are still today various tensions and violent conflicts between human groups. The religions have an important role to play here; they share in responsibility for the achievement of greater justice and harmony in relations between the nations, the economic blocs and the cultural groupings of our world. All conflict between religions – such as polemics and insensitive proselytism – should be avoided, as should syncretism, which destroys the originality and authenticity of religion. Only dialogue, along with the process of mutual learning which it involves, can open the religions up to each other so that people can learn to live together in diversity and get to know and understand each other better. This is not a matter of denying differences but rather of grasping what these differences really amount to. Neither does dialogue in any way exclude witnessing at times to one’s own faith and inviting others to recognize what one has oneself come to know as true and valuable. Believers of different religions should try to identify those issues on which a shared, believing witness is possible, together with a genuine search for unity, in humble submission to God’s will.

2. The Plurality of ‘Universal’ Religions

It is a fact that Islam and Christianity both claim to be universally valid. There is no reason why either should give up this claim. Everything depends on the methods used as the two religions seek to express and live out their universal claims. Today there should be no place for methods which rest chiefly on individual or collective ambition: violence; war; coercion in all its forms and manifestations, whether subtle or otherwise. The only way that is acceptable and worthy before both God and humanity to obtain universal recognition for the values which one holds to be true and valid is through the witness of a living faith and through frank dialogue, along with the necessary respect for the free decision of the human conscience.

3. Religions and Responsibility for War

It must be admitted that in the past religions have been responsible for wars, or have at least shared in responsibility for them, and that we cannot say that this is no longer the case today. The wider picture contains both light and shadows. On more than one occasion in the course of history the religious factor has prevented or moderated violence. One thinks, for example, of ‘the truce of God’ during the Christian Middle Ages, or of the strict conditions which Islamic Law attached to a ‘just war’; or of the care for prisoners of war and innocent victims called for by the religions. Furthermore, the main reason for the so-called wars of religion was not so much hostility between the religions themselves, but much more the pursuit of power on the part of individuals and of human groups (empires, dynasties and nations), in the course of which religion was used in the service of personal or collective ambition. Finally, as regards contemporary conflicts, it is important to examine information critically before alleging simple religious motivation. It would, for example, be simplistic to designate as merely ‘religious’ the conflicts in Lebanon, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Philippines and Afghanistan. The reality is that in most of these cases the religious authorities, far from having incited these conflicts, have on the contrary always been passionately committed to peace and reconciliation.

4. Religious Freedom72

Religious freedom is one of the inalienable rights of every human person. To suppress it, or even just to limit it, is to mock both God and humanity. It is the union between religion and the state (or, even today, the union between nationalism and the state or between practical atheism of a capitalist or socialist kind with the state apparatus) which has been primarily responsible for significant abuses in this area, both in the past and still today. All religions have the right to liberate themselves from such systems and totally to overcome the resistance of these systems to the effective implementation of religious freedom.

All people, whether Christian or Muslim, are committed to living in solidarity with their own religious community or group and to seeking its peace and prosperity, whether this is the Umma, the Church or other groups. At the same time it is important to show full respect for free decisions made in good conscience in regard to faith and religious adherence. The one binding principle in this sphere is to follow the voice of one’s own conscience, that is, the conscience which is genuinely seeking the truth. The testing and setting right of hearts is a matter for God alone. Faith and religion can only be genuine if people are totally free to choose or to reject them. We are thus all challenged to continue to seek God’s will.