Christians have often
presented their religion as a
religion of love and peace
while presented Islam as a
religion of war and sword.
In the modern media
Muslims and Islam have
often been covered in a way
which reinforces this old
perception. For Muslims
who have time to think
about such things the
Christian and Western
perceptions appear as a
complete disregard of the
most obvious facts. In what
follows I discuss this issue
from the point of view of
the teachings of the two
religions as well as the
conduct of their adherents
through history.
Christian conduct
For centuries now Christian
nations have been busy
beating up one Muslim
nation or another. In the
Middle Ages they came as
crusaders. Then they
colonized many Muslim
countries and tried to
destroy their cultures and
religion. During their
struggle for independence
some Muslims had to suffer
terrible violence. The French
killed about a million
Muslims in Algeria because
they wanted independence.
In a way this French war
against Islam and Muslims is
still continuing through the
support of the military
dictatorship in Algeria
against the Muslim party
that was set to win
elections and persecutions
in France of Muslim men
with beards and Muslim
women with hijab. The USA
and Britain killed hundreds
of thousands of Iraqis (with
the approval of about 90%
of their people) without
letting the world see the
blood, thus practicing a
lesson learned during the
Vietnam war. Serbs have
killed hundreds of
thousands of Muslims and
raped thousands of women
in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Although in these lands, a
combination of rare
circumstances put the West
(USA and Western Europe)
on the side of the Muslims,
this did no good to them
because the Western
powers did not want to
loose any of their own
soldiers. Had the West left
the Muslim Bosnians and
ethnic Albanians to their
fate without putting an
arms embargo on them,
their suffering would not
have been any greater.
Israel has been for half a
century destroying the
Palestinian people with the
help of arms and financial
and moral support provided
by the USA, the very sort of
crimes that have been
committed by the Serbs
against the people of
Kosovo and which have
been condemned by the
West, even though there
were no cameras to record
the cries of the Palestinians
and photograph the
pictures of the massacred
people and burning homes.
In Lebanon when Christians
were in the majority there
was war, but now that the
Muslims are in the majority
there is peace except in the
south of the country where
Christians have been
helping a foreign enemy
against their own
countrymen. When an
American president needs
to divert his people's
attention away from his sex
scandal the easiest thing he
finds is to bomb Muslim
countries -- Afghanistan,
Sudan and Iraq -- because
he knows that this will be
approved by a vast majority
of his people. And then
there is the media which is
ever busy in maligning the
Muslims while they do not at
this point in time possess
the resources to speak up:
for every word spoken/
written by a Muslim and
heard/read by one person, a
thousand words from a
Christian are received by a
thousand persons in the
world. At the international
level the voices of the
Muslims are all but drowned
by the Christian voices and
those Christian voices are
for the most part
condemnatory. If a
cartoonist was to depict the
situation between the
Western and Muslim
civilizations, he or she will
draw a weaker person not
able or inclined to stand up
or to speak while another
stronger person is standing
over him with a big stick,
now and then beating him,
and all the while shouting to
him in a loud voice: you are
a violent man.
It is important for both
Muslims and Christians to
ask: What will the Christian
be if the tables were turned
and their lands were first
colonized by Muslims and
then bombed or maligned
or ethnically cleansed? If the
past is any guide, the
answer is clear: There will
be a vicious reaction and
given the chance an attempt
at almost total destruction
of the Muslims. For in Spain
Muslims lived for about 850
years as rulers. They lived
with Jews and Christians for
the most part in a spirit of
tolerance and cooperation
in promoting science and
culture to the point that
their work prepared for the
modern scientific revolution
with all its benefits for
mankind. But the moment
Muslims became weaker,
the hate in the Catholic
heart came out with a
vengeance. Muslims were
either killed, converted, or
forced to leave Spain and
their heritage was as fully
destroyed as was humanly
possible. Before Palestine
and Kosovo, there was
Spain.
Above, I have mentioned
only what the Christian
nations have been doing or
are doing to the Muslims.
But when we look at what
they have done to each
other or to other people any
validity in their claim of
being people of love and
peace vanishes, at least as
far as Western Protestant or
Catholic Christians are
concerned. The horrible
treatment of the heretics
and witches in the Middle
Ages probably inspired the
tyrants of later centuries.
The native peoples of the
Americas, Australia, and
New Zealand bear a tragic
witness to what Christian
nations can do to other
nations and with the
blessings and assistance of
Christian churches. In this
century alone the Western
nations have fought two
world wars with tens of
millions dead and untold
misery for the living. For
each victory in these two
wars the church bells rang
in the victorious countries.
The first nation to make a
weapon of mass
destruction and the only
one to use it is a Christian
nation.
Had not the toll of death
mounted too high for the
Americans there can be little
doubt that the fate of North
Vietnam would have been
like that of Iraq: it would
have been bombed to
submission no matter how
many Vietnamese lives
would have been lost. The
lesson learned in North
Vietnam was not that there
should be no more war but
that never again the
American casualties would
be allowed to mount so
high and never again the
cameras would be allowed
to get so near the horrors
of war that a backlash
against the war would be
created in the public. Often
Christian countries have
some hand even in the
violent conflicts in non-
Christian countries in Africa
and Asia. The colonial policy
of divide and rule sowed
seeds of conflicts that later
resulted in violence
between the groups that
the colonial powers turned
against one another.
Palestinian-Jewish conflict
and the Kashmir issue are
among the legacy of
colonialism. After the
colonial period interference
by the Western countries
continued in the internal
affairs of African and Asian
countries. More recently,
Iran-Iraq war was
encouraged by the West so
that the Islamic revolution in
Iran may not spread to the
Arabian peninsula. The
military government in
Algeria which cancelled the
elections that Muslims were
poised to win has the
support of France and this
support is partly responsible
for the violence there,
which, it seems, is mostly
done by the military.
In Rwanda the tribe that
perpetuated a holocaust of
another tribe follows the
Catholic religion. The most
cruel tyrant in history came
from a Christian country and
there has been no shortage
of other somewhat less
ruthless dictators in
Christian countries,
especially in South America
and Africa.
Even in terrorism,
associated in the media
mostly with the Muslims, it is
the Christians that hold the
record when it comes to the
number of children and
other innocent people killed.
The Oklahoma bombing,
carried out by people
professing to be Christians,
claimed more completely
innocent victims than any
other single act of terrorism.
Terrorism in Northern
Ireland which is a direct
result of a sectarian conflict
between Catholics and
Protestants and is often
supported by the religious
leaders, has probably killed
more children and innocent
people than Middle East
terrorism. Moreover, Muslim
terrorism is mostly linked to
the sort of unjust treatment
suffered by the Palestinians
whereas the Oklahoma
bombing and, to a lesser
degree, Irish terrorism is
difficult to link in such a
way.
Now and then there appear
religious sects whose
beliefs lead them to
violence. David Koreish
armed his followers to teeth
and led them to their violent
death. There seem to exist
several Millennium groups
who are planning to engage
in violence around the year
2000. Several doctors have
been murdered by anti-
abortionists and some
Catholic leaders have not
categorically condemned
these killings. In some cases
the violent impulses in
Christian groups turn
against the groups
themselves. Jim Jones led
hundreds of his followers to
commit suicide.
Then there is racial violence,
by no means dissociated
from Christianity. Black
churches have been burned
in America and recently
some Americans tied a black
man with a rope and
dragged him by their truck
until he died. Such acts are
often carried out by
members of groups who
also carry crosses. And in
South Africa the inhuman
system of apartheid was
maintained by the church-
going white community
with the blessing of the
churches and indeed the
apartheid was practiced by
the churches themselves.
At an individual level, too,
most horrible examples of
violence are seen in the
Western Christian nations.
In some American and
British cities a car driver
may take out his gun and
shoot senselessly whoever
happens to be passing by.
There are many cases of
church-going and
Christmas-celebrating serial
killers who are privately
busy sexually attacking
young men or women,
killing them in the most
horrible way, and then
burying them in their
backyards. Also, prior to the
media focus on churches
cases of gross sexual and
other abuse of orphans by
the Catholic priests and
brothers were not
infrequent. And there are
even larger number of
examples of church-going
parents who torture their
children to death or to
destroy them mentally by
incestuous relations. In one
such case, an American
father recently killed his son
by injecting him with the
Aids virus.
One may object that we are
concentrating only on the
negative, not providing any
background analysis, and
are not making necessary
distinctions between
various brands of
Christianity and between
secular and religious
tendencies in the Christian
world. But this is precisely
what the Christians do to
Muslims. They mostly talk
and ask about acts of
violence taking place in the
vast Muslim world without
making any distinctions, or
analyzing them properly, or
balancing them with the
positive.