THE CLASH OF THE CHURCH WITH ISLAM IS ON TO CEASE OR POINT CONTRASTS LONG WILL UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD?

.

the Crusades, They had nothing to do with the violent methods with which the Muslims imposed their faith, but they served merely to defend the pilgrims of the Holy Land from Muslim aggression. As is known, Crusades ceased in the sixteenth century with the advent of tolerant Ottoman Empire. Ma, as it is well known from the history, the Turks resumed the attempt to militarily invade Europe. If Islam then attempted invasion by the armies, Today the attempts of immigration more, in the hope that their presence will be strengthened so, up to influence the politics of the countries where they are located. Which of course does not mean that we should not accept the needy. But you have to have discernment, because Muslims know very well to pretend.

.

.

.

.

PDF print format article

.

.

"And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth to devour her child when she brought it forth".

Revelation of St. John the Apostle, 12,4

.

.

The fight that has lasted for centuries XIV Islam [1] with the Church is about to cease, or the doctrinal conflicts will last until the end of the world? There are only two: if Islam ceases its hostility and makes peace with the Church, we will have a precorrimento the final resurrection; but if ostinerà until the end, expect the occurrence of the words of the Apocalypse: "They marched across the surface of the earth and besieged the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, that deceived them, He was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet: They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever " [AP 20, 9-10].

.

Fourteen centuries Islam fights the Church and he wants to destroy it and replace it in the lead humanity to salvation. The fundamental reason why the Koran is opposed to Christianity is our faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, Son of God, only Saviour of the world. In this sense the Qur'an is in continuity with the pre-Christian Jewish religion.

.

The Quran, as we know, It is presented as true divine message of salvation for all mankind, as opposed to the Christian, because it believes that it is impossible that God could create a divine son. For the Qur'an is blasphemy and idolatry claim to associate with God, which it is only one, He considered as "Father", another god regarded as the Son, besides the fact that it is blasphemous to think that a man can be God. The Qur'an shows esteem for Jesus "son of the Virgin Mary", considered a great prophet, model of holiness, which will appear in the end times in the line of prophets and biblical patriarchs, beginning with Noah and Abraham, descendant of Adam.

.

Jesus, According to the Qur'an, He recognized the one God, Creator, wise, Provident, Almighty, just and merciful and taught good morals. But it was inconsistent and presumptuous for having made God, deceiving his disciples that they consider. But as if that were not enough, It introduced a third deity, in addition to himself ("Son") and the father", and it is the "Holy Spirit". So Christians, despite their claim to be monotheists, They are actually polytheists, because they worship three gods. But blasphemy is added blasphemy: Christians consider themselves "children of God", sharing the presumption of their master.

.

The Koran thus considers accommodate whatever good there is in the teachings of Jesus, correcting errors, especially the idea of ​​one God in three persons. For the Koran this is nonsense and blasphemy: God is a kind and is a person. Three people would do three gods. Likewise for the Koranic faith it is impossible that a man has two natures: a human and a divine.

Man has a human nature and God's divine nature. Otherwise, for the Muslim, would shuffle the natures in one human person and God would be profaned by lowering it to the level of human. Considered God or "Son of God" is an unbearable arrogance. Believers are "brothers" not because they are all children of God, but brothers in a broad sense in the common condition of believers.

.

As for us Christians, even for Muslims, "Brothers" in the religious sense are only the co. In this way a Christian can not be "brother" of a Muslim, as he does not consider it his brother. But for both religions, given their universalistic, all the men, if they want to save themselves, They are called to be brothers in the acceptance of the one faith, which for us is the Gospel, for Muslims, the Koran.

.

Certainly the distinction between nature and person is thin. It requires intelligence metaphysics that few can reach. Yet the Trinity and the Incarnation faith are the pillars of our faith, and we realize that the children can reach even two thousand years. The risk of tritheism or modalism [2] is real and perhaps many are tritheists without realizing; yet the Christian experience always tells us that God in what illuminates the mind even of the obedient child, open to the truth and trusting in his educators. Allow the little ones to come to Me.

.

However there is no doubt that Islamic monotheism It seems more reasonable than the Christian Trinitarian. This explains the fact that for centuries XIV vast crowds of people have preferred the first to the second. Or to hook or by crook, given the taxation method and almost terror with which Islam has always spread their faith among the masses.

.

The main question is: who communicates to us the Word of God, Christ or Mohammed? This does not mean that the Koranic theology, which is affected by the Bible Old Testament, It does not have its own charm, its rationality and its credibility, that spontaneously attract the interest and admiration of many elected philosophical minds, Religious and mystical during these fourteen centuries until today [3].

We can not forget that, as it is known to historians, Aristotle's entry into 13th century European culture is due to the fact that the study of the Stagirite was cultivated by Muslim sages, who used it to comment on the Koran. The Dominicans Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas we owe the idea of ​​using Aristotle's interpretation of Christian revelation.

.

The opposition of the Qur'an to Christ It is not a total rejection of Christ, on the contrary, being awarded merit and quality; yet it is the main essential element rejection of his mission: that of being the sum and definitive guide mankind to eternal salvation. God revealed to Muhammad in the Qur'an that Muhammad is the eschatological prophet, ie the one who fills the whole work of the earlier prophets, including Christ. to save himself, so, not just the Gospel, indeed it is misleading, as it teaches the Trinity and the Incarnation.

.

Muhammad is presented as sent by God to perform this task, because in the Qur'an God figure to be the One Who instructs Muhammad informing him of everything that needs to communicate to mankind for his salvation. The faithful, so, reading the Koran, It is to learn from God Himself that He turns to Muhammad, all the truth and all the precepts of his faith.

.

From here we see that the mission of Christ, as it results from the Gospel, and that Muhammad, as stated in the Quran, They are incompatible and mutually exclusive. If one is true, the other is false. By whom depends the salvation of man? From the Gospel or the Koran? From here it follows that the Church and Islam are incompatible.

.

It is evident that a divine revelation It must be accepted with respect and "submission" (islam”). It is absolutely certain source and establishes a moral conduct absolutely secure and honest. It's saving Word. It is universal truth, absolute and immutable, wrong either abandoned or changed for any reason. Can be, if necessary, only interpreted, commented and explained. If they can get theoretical and practical conclusions. But it must be transmitted from generation to generation as it is, It should be "repeated" ("Koran" is the noun Kuran, which means "repetition").

.

But one question arises in us spontaneously: as Muhammad made sure that the message received was truly the Word of God? How and based on what or to what evidence or signs became safe? And how did he persuade the disciples of this? Especially as this supposed "revelation" purported to supplant that of Christ, that for six centuries was the cause of Christian civilization. You could say that perhaps Muhammad did not know the Gospel and the Church. However, what I wonder is why his disciples down the centuries, that they have had the leisure to inquire and to compare the Koran with the Gospel, They not have made certain unreliability of the Koran? How was it possible and how it is still possible to take such a party? This is not faith, But fanaticism and fideism. It is a great mystery. To invalidate the Qur'anic revelation would be enough just to compare it to that of Christ, well-highest wisdom and based on well other evidence. But the paradoxical thing today, in the climate of intellectual and moral relativism that is experiencing Europe, is that while many Christians, It would provide an authentic divine revelation, certified by an infinite number of tests, They have a weak faith, cowardly, sterile, uncertain and doubtful, so lower the Gospel to the level of opinion among others; conversely Muslims, that, on the contrary, They would have every reason to doubt, show an arrogant complacency, source of violence and persecution.

.

However, it is something comforting, comforting and important that Christianity and Islam They have shared many truths of natural religion, starting with the divine attributes. This thing has been recognized by the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council for the first time since the birth of Islam in the seventh century. It is a sign of great hope for the conversion of Muslims to Christ and the Islamic expansion relegation.

.

There can be a peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims? We assist in these fourteenth centuries to ups and downs in different situations depending on countries and regimes. Consoling is the co-existence for eight centuries in the Holy Land Franciscans with Muslims. The Holy See and numerous Catholic initiatives, following the Council's determinations, treat the dialogue with Islam at the level of, educational and social structures and cooperation in humanitarian works.

.

We know the difficult life of Christians in Islamic countries. And we know how in the Middle East Islamic arrogance forcing many Christians to flee, as they occur persecution and sometimes even massacres. Nor can we deny that the Western powers seek to oppress and exploit the Islamic world for the conquest and exploitation of energy sources.

.

It is undeniable in these fourteenth centuries the constant effort to spread Islam in the world by cultivating the dream to invade Europe, civilized land from Christianity, where there is Rome, seat of the papacy. subjugate Rome, for Islam, would the victory on Christianity. In recent decades, millions of Muslims have settled in Europe and very few have converted to Christianity. What are their intentions? They hope to conquer Europe in this way? Using democracy? The recent acts of terrorism will probably want to be a warning to Europe of the revolutionary potential of extremist groups, but they do not seem sufficiently condemned by official circles. The European Christian world is weak, weak and skeptical. There are theological trends, as for example that of Schillebeeckx, sua Christology with "eschatological prophet", that seems made to give way to Islamic fundamentalism. It is a body without antibodies and that the Islamists have understood this well. L'Europe, However, not only it has de-Christianized, but it has also become irreligious, so it is hard to imagine Islamization of Europe agnostic, relativist and Enlightenment, unless it is not Islam itself to revive the religious sense, as happened forty years ago with the conversion to Islam of the Marxist philosopher Roger Garaudy or fifty years ago esotericist Rene Guenon. Pantheism eternalista Emanuele Severino there is something of the Islamic fatalism.

.

Europe looks increasingly at the crossroads, If therefore there will be a resumption of Christianity, as already warned Cardinal Giacomo Biffi in 2000 [4], Europe is likely to be Islamized, not as petty forms of customs and religious practices of Islam, but intellectual absolutism that characterizes his fanaticism. The man needs certainty and the European invertebrate or, as he prefers to say Biffi, European nihilistic, You could find a substitute for certainty in Mohammedan arrogance, where is that, instead of the Archangel Gabriel, takes transcendental consciousness. The other part, the Church must be able to return to those territories, that in the past were stolen with the Islamic invasion force. The Muslims, not content with having invaded and de-Christianized by force these immense territories, now they dream, as they have for centuries, to conquer Europe until arriving in Rome, as they did in the fifteenth century, destroying the Christian Empire of the East with the conquest of Constantinople.

.

The real clash is on the question of divine revelation. The Archangel Gabriel revealed to Muhammad that Jesus is not the Son of God, but simply prophet, It may be the same as that revealed to Mary her divine motherhood? Evidently or false gospel revelation or false that Koranic. When it is a question of true or false, you can not invoke the respect of the "different" or the value of religious pluralism. You have to understand and choose which side is the truth.

.

What is now more of a wonder time we Christians It is like the Muslim faithful, after so many centuries of progress of morals and sciences, and in the field of literary criticism and exegesis of sacred texts, fails to distinguish the Koran those parts which undoubtedly express high theological and moral wisdom from other parts evidently marked by time or, worse, Infected by real theological and moral errors, particularly the unreasonable refusal of the Christian dogma of the Trinity and the Incarnation.

.

Muslims must take the courage to four hands and, precisely in the name of God, XIV after centuries of wars and unnecessary controversy, rather, harmful for us and for them, They decide once and for all, in the light of modern exegesis, a sound philosophy and theology, and taking account of the honest morals of modernity, to purge the Koran from its mistakes and its views exceeded. In particular it is necessary to take away the senseless opposition to Christian dogma, just for the respect of those parts of high theological science, religious and moral, which are precisely in line with those same dogma, the valid parts that the same Church of Vatican II acknowledges the Koran.

.

The real challenge and then nell'apologetica. The Church has recognized the values ​​contained in the Qur'an. Now Islam recognizes the value of the Gospel. In any form of proper human relationship must apply the law of reciprocity, as he said Cardinal Giacomo Biffi in his aforementioned speech 2000 precisely on the subject of the Church's relations with Islam. The Christian apologetics and Islam do not stand up to comparison. An objective comparison, free, informed and dispassionate argument and signs of credibility between the two religions, induces any honest soul, lover of truth, of virtue and of God, attentive to the value of the historical evidence, to notice the very credibility of Christianity against Islam.

.

Simply compare the moral and spiritual personality of Muhammad with that of Christ; the history of Christian holiness with Islam; the best philosophical and theological Christian production compared to Islamic; the greater wisdom of Christian morals; the much richer and advanced technical-scientific production of Christian civilization; the greatest respect for the human person (man and woman); the greater wisdom of legal and political institutions; greater wealth and variety of cultural institutions, social, charitable and welfare; the best methods of spreading the religious message, based on the respect of the person and his freedom of choice, without force or temporal punishment threats.

.

As it is especially evident from the teachings of Vatican Council II, Christianity is liberal, understanding and tolerant towards other religions, respectful of freedom of opinion, appreciates their values ​​while not concealing their flaws. However, Islam, as is known, it is authoritarian, oppressive, and discriminating, earning it the title of fundamentalist fundamentalist. It does not reject the method of persuasion, so certainly many, out of Islamic States, They do Islamic freely; ma, where political power, He prefers the imposition, as it evidenced by this statement of the philosopher Al-Gazali eleventh-twelfth century: "Of course it is not good that you apply pressure in religious matters; but we must recognize that the sword or whip are sometimes more useful philosophy or belief. And if the first generation that does not adhere to Islam with his tongue, the second will adhere also with the heart and the third will be considered Muslim forever "[5].

.

The post-conciliar Magisterium of the Church It clarifies that plurality of religions, outside of that Christian, above all the other monotheistic religions, Jewish and Islamic, it is not without importance in the matter of the salvation of mankind.

.

If Christ is the one and supreme Savior [6], and if his religion is the only divine religion, It is founded by a God, and therefore between all excels, it does not mean that non-Christian religions do not give their contribution, albeit partial and even worse in the salvation of mankind.

.

Even if they have not been founded by Christ, but by simple sinners, as large, it does not mean that somehow or measure, as they have good, do not derive from Him and do not tend to Him, that, like God, It is at the origin of every way to God. All those who are saved, whatever religion they belong to, So they save thanks to Christ, even if they do not know and if this happens through the mediation of the founder of the religion to which they belong.

.

The Church has done its part. Now it's up to Islam. The Second Vatican Council rightly emphasized the values ​​common to Christianity and Islam, which can be summarized in monotheism and in a common reference to the Old Testament. But he did not think to point to the Christians how they can lead Muslims to Christ and how they can meet Christ. In addition, the Council has neglected to remember the mistakes and the dangers that come from the Qur'an. The Islamic world then seemed relatively peaceful and had not yet risen Islamic expansionist recovery initiated by Khomeini in Persia in 1979, with its characteristic anti-Christian aggression, that today has become very dangerous for his doggedness, even resorting to terrorism, and bets on Europe, the birthplace of Christianity or, as they say the Muslims, the home of the "Crusaders". It is therefore more necessary than ever not to lose heart and not give in to the temptation to repay evil with evil.

.

Of course it requires an armed defense against armed aggression [7], It must destroy the terrorist centers, We must defend and welcome among us persecuted Christians, but especially, based upon the teachings of the Council, going well in the sense that I said, we need to pray for the conversion of Muslims, and that the Church must (in a new Council?) organize intelligent and effective action for the evangelization of Muslims, Giacchè they too are called to salvation in Christ.

.

If Muslims want to convert to Muhammad, we must answer them gallantly and sincerely want to convert them to Christ. Who is the true Savior? This is the challenge for today's world. The Dominicans and the Franciscans from their first rise conceived the design of converting Muslims. And we now know what we are doing? Tergiversiamo between anger, frustration and a "dialogue" hypocrite?

.

It is therefore necessary to put Mohammed in his place: the lower it will be under Christ its true honor, his true glory, perhaps what unconsciously she desired. So not above Christ, but below. Not after Christ, but the journey towards Christ. Not he has to correct Christ, but Christ corrects him. Mohammed does not have anything to lose, but everything to gain. And while rises in dignity, It is released from the sinner's mistakes. It, too, is saved by Christ. He will not be the one to raise Christ to himself, but on the contrary it is Christ who raises all his faithful and with him, fourteen centuries, because to them, perhaps unconsciously, It has been given to know Christ, because like all men, They are accountable to Christ.

.

In the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, there is a fifteenth-century fresco depicting Muhammad in hell. For a dozen years the church is guarded by the police, because it is feared a reaction of some Muslims angry about the insult to the Prophet. But we know how it will be found Mohammed before Christ? A clash or match?

.

Varazze, 5 August 2016

.

.

________________________________

NOTE

[1] I disagree with Magdi Cristiano Allam in denying the existence of a moderate Islam, so according to him, Islam is an extremist and violent essence [cf The Qur'an explained by Magdi Cristiano Allam, Elledici publishing, Torino-Leumann 2008]. It is a judgment too hasty, that needs clarification, those who tried to take on 'Patmos Island Ariel S. Levi of Gualdo in some of his articles in which he also dealt with the problem of a "violence inherent". In Islam there are moderate and there are extremists. In the same way, It is a hasty judgment and therefore unfair to those who say that it is a "religion of peace. There is an order of peace: the proposal salvation to all, but the means are violent. Apart from the fact that being moderate or immoderate are more moral qualities of the people, that the doctrines, although it is true that there are advocates doctrines of peace and generating violence doctrines. Finally, we take into account the fact that the extremists and the peaceful exist both in Islam as in Christianity. The aspiration to peace is inherent in man, but only the sacrifice of Christ reconciles man with God and men among them. bellicose vision is rather cyclic Gnosticism, which begins with the myth of the goddess Shiva, to reach up to Nietzsche through Hegel.

[2] Heresy of the first centuries, according to which the three persons are three different ways of being of the one God. She reappeared today with Rahner, who argues that the three persons are three different ways of subsistence of the one God. No, the three people three subsistences distinct of the one God.

[3] This flowering of great philosophical Islamic figures can be found primarily in the XI-XIII, with Averroè, Alfarabi, Alkindi, Avicenna, Avempace, Algazzali, etc.. Rimando, for further, to André Guenon studies, by Olivier Lacombe, Louis Gardet and my brothers, Egyptian Georges Anawati and Father Pier Paolo Ruffinengo, I had as a metaphysical teacher way back in 1972.

[4] Speech at the Foundation seminar migrants the 30 September 2000.

[5] Cit. by John Halls, Isis Islam and Eastern Christians, Jaca Book 2016.,p.138.

[6] Cf Declaration Lord Jesus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 6 August 2000.

[7] The rest of the Crusades, at least in the purpose intended by the papacy and the saints of that time, eg San Bernardo, St. Louis IX and St. Catherine of Siena, They had nothing to do with the violent methods with which the Muslims imposed their faith, but they served merely to defend the pilgrims of the Holy Land from Muslim aggression. As is known, Crusades ceased in the sixteenth century with the advent of tolerant Ottoman Empire. Ma, as it is well known from the history, the Turks resumed the attempt to militarily invade Europe. If Islam then attempted invasion by the armies, Today the attempts of immigration more, in the hope that their presence will be strengthened so, up to influence the politics of the countries where they are located. Which of course does not mean that we should not accept the needy. But you have to have discernment, because Muslims know very well to pretend.

.

.

Dear Readers.

We are pleased to inform you that from 1 January of the current year to date, 4 August, The Island of Patmos It exceeded 4.000.000. of visits.

Every so often we also remember that our work and site management of this online magazine is supported by our increasingly, entirely, with your offers.

If you can and if you please remind us and our apostolic work, using the convenient and safe Paypal system that you find on the right of the home-page, or at the bottom of this same page.

Thank you!

.

.

.

.

.