This story has already done the rounds on a couple of websites. But I thought it significant enough to also get a run here.
In short, there is a Catholic Center at New York University. An attendee of a Catholic retreat at the centre was surprised to find that the opening prayer was made not only to Jesus but also to Muhammad.
He was even more disconcerted to find that the Catholic Center hosted in its basement an Islamic Cultural Centre, complete with prayer rugs, pictures of Mecca and Islamic literature.
So here we have the the ecumenical spirit turned up to full blast. And what was the response of the Muslim side to all this? Did they give equally in return?
It seems not. Our man in the mini-mosque picked up a magazine and leafed through it. This is what the magazine had to say about the Muslim invasion of Spain in 711,
“The Muslims could not abandon the people who had been living in a state of strife and oppression. The Christians and Jews welcomed this (the invasion led by Tariq bin Ziad) since, as dhimmis, they were allowed to enter the fields of government, science, medicine and literature and were afforded the protection of the state with the payment of the jizya tax.”
A nice rewriting of history, isn’t it. We Europeans welcomed our Muslim conquerors and our reduction to the status of dhimmis (who, by the way, were forbidden from holding public office, could not build new churches or repair old ones, and had to pay a poll tax).
So the situation is this: one side is yielding its own identity, the other can only conceive the blessings of its own victory.
It’s not hard to figure out who has the advantage under these terms of engagement.
Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Thu, 06 Oct 2005 15:30 | #
In fact under Islamic pressure, crosses have recently been removed out of all public places in Belgium.