Islam and Christianity—A Dangerous Encounter

Here are some interesting thoughts and the growing antagonism that is emerging between Christianity and Mohammedanism. Some have called it the Clash of Civilizations. One thing is certain, Islamofascism is forcing an issue of confrontation between the two faiths.

Essentially Christianity is a pacifistic religion while the tenets of Mohammedanism are violent. Christianity has grown over the years by militantly being pacifistic in the face of persecution. This militant pacificism conquered pagan Rome and eventually Europe. Then Rome made Christianity a State Religion, that is when began going south on militant pacificism. Also, that is when cults like militantly violent Mohammedanism began to make inroads on Christian lands. But that is another story.
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Islam and Christianity—A Dangerous Encounter
Theology for Dummies by Thomisticguy Blog

For those of you who are not aware of this, you need to know that there are two states called California. One is a blue state (the Bay Area and Los Angeles) and the other is a red state (the rest of the California). I live in the heart of red state California and we have “attitude.” We are traditionalist, suburban, multi-racial, religious, conservative and highly competitive with the blue state California—particularly in sports. We want to dominate the fancy-pants Southern California and Bay Area mega-sports machines; and, surprisingly we often do. We also have an attitude about our intellectual status which is characterized by the LA Times and SF Chronicle as backwater and bumpkin. One of our rising stars is Victor Davis Hanson out of lowly Selma, California. Dr. Hanson is now a Fellow with the Hoover Institute at Stanford, University, but he was professor of classics at California State University, Fresno for a number of years. Hanson also writes a nationally syndicated column and appears frequently in National Review. C-SPAN recently devoted a full three-hour segment to Dr. Hanson exploring the broad range of his ideas and insights. What I am leading to is the clash between Islam and Christianity. Dr. Hanson writes frequently on this issue.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union a number of books were published postulating reasons for why the West (Western Civilization) had won the titanic struggle of the Cold War. Some of us are old enough to remember that during the Cold War most of the cultural and intellectual elite had predicted the West would crumble and disappear because the winds of time were at the back of the Communist system. What a shock, it turned out to be exactly the opposite. Well, these books can be broadly categorized into three groups. One group promulgates the idea the West won because of environmental reasons (it cannot be because of any superior quality or values in our culture). This, of course, is the favorite of the cultural elite and is spearheaded by the much celebrated Jared Diamond out of UCLA (look for his PBS special). A second category that is extremely unpopular and reviled is a group of authors that contend that genetics are the reason the West won. Michael Levin of City University of New York is a leading proponent of this school. Needless to say he is not invited to speak on many university campuses. The third group are those authors that contend that cultural reasons are at the center of the West’s superiority. In this third group is where we find Dr. Hanson and others like the brilliant black economist Thomas Sowell and Samuel Huntington of Harvard University. It is in this final group that you find those who say that Christianity is formative for both the development and continuation of Western Civilization. It is also this group that can be found sounding the alarm regarding the mighty clash between Islam and Christianity.

Back in the mid-90s Samuel Huntington in his benchmark book “Clash of Civilizations”, drew our attention to how a 1,400 year old clash between the two great proselytizing religions of Islam and Christianity was resurfacing with a vengeance. He also predicted that this clash would not go away and it might provide the side-benefit of reawakening Europe to its Christianity. If you have not read this book, whether you agree with Dr. Huntington or not, it is a “must-read” for anyone who claims to be informed.

As an anecdote, I have relatives in the Netherlands that are very worried about the lack of assimilation of the huge numbers of Muslims that have immigrated to the land of the windmill. Interestingly, my first cousin in the Netherlands who shares my name as gotten much more involved in his church in the last ten years.

What am I saying? I am drawing your attention to the big picture. The biblical God is the God of history (Acts 17:24-28). It has been said that you cannot understand history without God, nor can you understand God without history. God is doing something big in relationship to Islam and Christianity. As Bob Dylan used to sing, the times they are a changin’. Look for Europe to re-embrace Christianity or go the way of the Dodo bird. Look for the cultural elite to carp and complain and roadblock every step of the way into a very dangerous future. Look for Christians in the United States to gradually awaken from their somnambular state of lukewarm belief. Yes, the times they are a changin’.