Saturday, April 23, 2005

Convert European Muslims to Christianity

DANGER: This post is politically incorrect. (Interesting phrase, it can only come from totalitarianism and was introduced by liberals referring to conservative ideas in a college newspaper.)

The Blogfather, Charles Johnson, and many others have reported on the Islamization of Europe. The problem has not gone unnoticed in Europe either, We must show our opposition to Islam, says Danish queen
She said: "We are being challenged by Islam these years - globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy.

"We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance."

"And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction."
But she is understanding, not cold and hateful as the Left™ would have you think;
The queen told her biographer, Annelise Bistrup, apparently referring to Muslim fundamentalists: "There is something impressive about people for whom religion imbues their existence, from dusk to dawn, from cradle to grave."

She said she understood how disaffected young Muslims might find refuge in religion. This tendency should be fought by encouraging Muslims to learn Danish so they could integrate better, she said.

"We should not be content with living next to each other. We should rather live together."
It would be good if the rest of Europe had her good sense, but it doesn't.

On April 19th the Asia Times Online published The crescent and the conclave by Spengler.
Now that everyone is talking about Europe's demographic death, it is time to point out that there exists a way out: convert European Muslims to Christianity. The reported front-runner at the Vatican conclave that began on Monday, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is one of the few Church leaders unafraid to raise the subject. [1] Hedonistic dissipation well may have condemned the existing Europeans to infecundity and extinction, but that does not prevent Europe from getting new ones. It has been done before.

Europe in the 8th century was a depopulated ruin. The loss of half the Roman Empire's population by the 7th century left vast territories open to Islam, which rapidly absorbed the formerly Christian Levant, North Africa and Spain. By converting successive waves of invading pagans - Lombards, Magyars, Vikings, Celts, Saxons, Slavs - Christianity reinvented Europe, and held Islam at bay.
Pope John Paul II is rightly criticized for being too accommodating of Islam, but Pope Benedict XVI may not be.
As the late pope's adviser, Cardinal Ratzinger shares responsibility for past Vatican policies, but his tone has changed during the past six months. He opposed Turkey's entry into the European Union. Last week he published a tract titled Werte in Zeiten des Umbruchs ("Values in Times of Upheaval"), calling for Europe to return to its core Christian values. He denounced Europe's "incomprehensible self-hatred", adding that if Europe wants to survive, "it must consciously seek to rediscover its own soul". He wrote, "Multiculturalism cannot survive without common constants, without taking one's own culture as a point of departure." [emphasis mine - ed.]
In abandoning her religion and culture, Europe commits suicide and is ripe for Islamic picking.
Ratzinger deplored the exclusion of Christianity from the proposed European Constitution. Unlike the United States, where politicians of both parties agree that revelation is the source of virtue, secular Europe insists upon an entirely secular approach to ethics. In this regard I sympathize with Ratzinger, and refer readers to an extensive debate on the subject of Kant's Categorical Imperative in the Asia Times Online Forum. Kant initiated the modern attempt to derive ethics from reason. His approach (oversimplified) is to ask, "What if everybody did?" You are not supposed to do something to which you would object were someone else to do it. This approach has some obvious weaknesses. Bertrand Russell observed in his History of Western Philosophy that a depressive very well might wish for everyone to commit suicide, and thus commit suicide himself with perfect justification. Just that attitude describes the mindset of today's Europeans, who naturally prefer a Kantian approach to a religious one.
The Catholic Church may well step up to the plate, but it is the Orthodox Church that has the knowledge, experience, and understanding that can save Europe, if it will be saved. It is the Orthodox Church that has lived with Islam and suffered under Islam. We understand them and, unlike Europe's Catholics (who are very liberal by global standards) we have not given up on ourselves or committed cultural or religious suicide.

To effectively take up this challenge, and it needs taken up in the United States and Canada as well, we need to change our ways and get the word out. We are great for discussing Orthodox Christianity amongst ourselves, but not so good at discussing it in detail with others. We need to take every opportunity to discuss theology, Christology, doctrine and dogma, and history with people who are not Orthodox Christians. Not necessarily with an eye to conversion (although that will happen too) but simply in conversation.

It is we who will save Europe and North America, not the secular liberals who have given up.

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