Artikel di bawah ini juga didapat dari milis Binabud. Isinya menurut gue sih bagus, tapi biasalah.. ada yang bakal suka ada yang enggak... silahkan disimak.
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Friday, 04 August 2006
The Debauchery of American Womanhood
By Henry Makow, Ph.D.
On my wall, I have a picture of a Muslim woman shrouded in a burka. Beside it is a picture of an American beauty contestant, wearing nothing but a bikini.
One woman is totally hidden from the public; the other is totally exposed. These two extremes say a great deal about the clash of so-called "civilizations" .
The role of woman is at the heart of any culture. Apart from stealing Arab oil, the impending war in the Middle East is about stripping Arabs of their religion and culture, exchanging the burka for the bikini.
I am not an expert on the condition of Muslim women and I love feminine beauty too much to advocate the burka here. But I am defending some of the values that the burka represents for me.
For me, the burka represents a woman's consecration to her husband and family. Only they see her. It affirms the privacy, exclusivity and importance of the domestic sphere.
The Muslim woman's focus is her home, the "nest" where her children are born and reared. She is the "home" maker, the taproot that sustains the spiritual life of the family, nurturing and training her children, providing refuge and support to her husband.
In contrast, the bikinied American beauty queen struts practically naked in front of millions on TV. A feminist, she belongs to herself. In practice, paradoxically, she is public property. She belongs to no one and everyone. She shops her body to the highest bidder. She is auctioning herself all of the time.
In America, the cultural measure of a woman's value is her sex appeal. (As this asset depreciates quickly, she is neurotically obsessed with appearance and plagued by weight problems.)
As an adolescent, her role model is Britney Spears, a singer whose act approximates strip tease. From Britney, she learns that she will be loved only if she gives sex. Thus, she learns to "hook up" rather than to demand patient courtship or true love. As a result, dozens of males know her before her husband does. She loses her innocence, which is part of her charm. She becomes hardened and calculating. Unable to love, she is unfit to receiver her husband's seed.
The feminine personality is founded on the emotional relationship between mother and baby. It is based on nurturing and self-sacrifice. Masculine nature is founded on the relationship between the hunter and the prey. It is based on aggression and reason. Feminism teaches woman that feminine nature has resulted in "oppression" and that she should convert to male behavior instead.
The result: a confused and aggressive woman with a large chip on her shoulder, unfit to become a wife or mother. This of course, is the goal of the social engineers at the NWO: undermine sexual identity and destroy the family, create social and personal dysfunction, and reduce population. In the "brave new world", women are not supposed to be the "nest" makers, or progenitors of the race. They are meant to be neutered, autonomous creatures that indulge in sex for physical pleasure, not for love or procreation.
At his press conference on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld said that Iranian women and youth were restive under the rule of the Mullahs. He implied that the US would soon liberate them. To Britney Spears? To low-rise "see-my-thong" pants? To the mutual masturbation that passes for sexuality in America?
Parenthood is the pinnacle of human development. It is the stage when we finally graduate from self-indulgence and become God's surrogates: creating and nurturing new life. The New World Order does not want us to reach this level of maturity. Pornography is the substitute for marriage. We are to remain stunted: single, sex-starved and self-obsessed.
We are not meant to have a permanent "private" life. We are to remain lonely and isolated, dependent on consumer products for our identity, in a state of perpetual courtship.
This is especially destructive for woman. Her sexual attraction is a function of her fertility. As fertility declines, so does her sex appeal. If a woman devotes her prime years to becoming "independent" , she is not likely to find a permanent mate. Her long-term personal fulfillment and happiness lies in making marriage and family her first priority.
Feminism is another curel New World Order hoax that has debauched American women and despoiled Western civilization. It has ruined millions of lives and represents a lethal threat to Islam.
I am not advocating the burka but rather some of the values that it represents, specifically a woman's consecration to her future husband and family, and the modesty and dignity this entail.
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Note: hasil survey HSBC tentang demografi dunia, menunjukkan bahwa negara yang mempunyai aging population terbesar adalah Amerika, Jepang dan negara2 Eropa. Menurut mereka ini mengancam produktivitas negara-negara itu dalam beberapa tahun ke depan.
Sementara hasil census Amerika tahun lalu yang dimuat yahoo baru2 ini, menyebut lebih banyak pasangan dalam "keluarga" yang unwed.
Melihat ini, plus hutang America yang mencapai US$ 9000 billion (dalam bentuk T-Bond, dll) dan deficit perdagangan yang semakin besar, rasanya empire ini tidak akan sustain.
Tara's Birthday
Monday, October 30, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
First 3D/4D Experience
Karena disuruh USG 4D sama dokter, kitapun USG 4D di YPK, daftarnya hampir sebulan sebelumnya karena ternyata yang mau USG banyak banget. Apa sih USG 4D? Sebenernya USG 4D adalah USG 3 dimensi (lah iyalah wong manusia aja 3 dimensi doang bentuknya hehe), tapi berhubung bisa real-time, makanyalah dia disebut USG 4 dimensi (3D + real time). Sambil nunggu di YPK, gue pun ngeliat2 foto2 hasil USG 3D punya orang yang dijejerin sama foto asli babynya pas udah lahir. Hihihi... mirip2 loh mukanya, posenya aja sama. Udah excited aja nih pengen liat muka baby ku.
Pas giliran kita masuk, langsung di USG, wahhhh.... baby nya masih keciil.. keliatannya kurus lagi (huhuhu cepet gede ya babyku) si pak dokternya juga bilang masih kecil ini (ya iya pak, kita juga ngitungnya baru 17 minggu dia, dokter wahyunya aja yang kekeuh bilang udah 19 minggu :p ). My cute little baby gerak2 aktif banget, tangannya dadah2 ke ayah bundanya, kepalanya nengok-nengok miring kiri-kanan, kakinya nendang2. Rada worry juga sih, kok kayanya dia gelisah banget, tapi menurutnya dokternya babynya sih aktif normal. Duhh alhamdulillah. Sempet amazed liat dia semangat banget gerak2, soalnya daku belom ngerasain any of those baby kicks sih, emang sih ada rasa2 grubug2 gitu di perut atau berasa ada yang nowel-nowel dari dalem, cuma kan itu ga jelas apaan (bisa juga masuk angin gitu hehe). Selama di USG baby ku maen2in tali pusernya, soalnya kayanya rada ngehalangin mukanya dia, jadi bolak-balik disingkirin gitu sama si baby dari mukanya. Hihihihi lucu banget.
Karena penasaran, langsung nanya ma dokternya, "udah keliatan laki apa perempuan belom dok?". Dokternya diem aja sibuk ndiri, terus gue liat ada yang nonjol2 gitu, dokternya bilang "masih kecil sih jadi belom jelas nih laki/perempuan, tapi ada yang kaya nonjol gitu ya". Kita dilihatin tangan, kaki, tulang belakang si baby, diukur lingkar kepalanya, ditunjukkin plasentanya. Terus pas udah hampir selesai, dokternya bilang lagi, "hmm ada kemungkinan perempuan nih, ini kaya ada belahan". Dia nunjukkin di monitor, ada semacem garis diantara kaki babynya (emang ini artinya babynya cewek ya??). Wah jadi bingung deh hehe..
Kita dapet poto print-an si baby 7 lembar plus cd rekaman gambar si baby selama di usg. Diliat-liat baby ku itu belom jelas mukanya, jadi langsung berniat untuk usg lagi ntar kalo udah 8 bulan-an. Ohya buat yang pengen usg 4D ini, di YPK sama dr. bambang karsono, harganya 570rb, katanya sih lebih murah dari pada sama dr. dario turk.
Jadi makin gak sabar pengen babynya cepet gede, biar bisa digendong2 dan diajak maen :D
Pas giliran kita masuk, langsung di USG, wahhhh.... baby nya masih keciil.. keliatannya kurus lagi (huhuhu cepet gede ya babyku) si pak dokternya juga bilang masih kecil ini (ya iya pak, kita juga ngitungnya baru 17 minggu dia, dokter wahyunya aja yang kekeuh bilang udah 19 minggu :p ). My cute little baby gerak2 aktif banget, tangannya dadah2 ke ayah bundanya, kepalanya nengok-nengok miring kiri-kanan, kakinya nendang2. Rada worry juga sih, kok kayanya dia gelisah banget, tapi menurutnya dokternya babynya sih aktif normal. Duhh alhamdulillah. Sempet amazed liat dia semangat banget gerak2, soalnya daku belom ngerasain any of those baby kicks sih, emang sih ada rasa2 grubug2 gitu di perut atau berasa ada yang nowel-nowel dari dalem, cuma kan itu ga jelas apaan (bisa juga masuk angin gitu hehe). Selama di USG baby ku maen2in tali pusernya, soalnya kayanya rada ngehalangin mukanya dia, jadi bolak-balik disingkirin gitu sama si baby dari mukanya. Hihihihi lucu banget.
Karena penasaran, langsung nanya ma dokternya, "udah keliatan laki apa perempuan belom dok?". Dokternya diem aja sibuk ndiri, terus gue liat ada yang nonjol2 gitu, dokternya bilang "masih kecil sih jadi belom jelas nih laki/perempuan, tapi ada yang kaya nonjol gitu ya". Kita dilihatin tangan, kaki, tulang belakang si baby, diukur lingkar kepalanya, ditunjukkin plasentanya. Terus pas udah hampir selesai, dokternya bilang lagi, "hmm ada kemungkinan perempuan nih, ini kaya ada belahan". Dia nunjukkin di monitor, ada semacem garis diantara kaki babynya (emang ini artinya babynya cewek ya??). Wah jadi bingung deh hehe..
Kita dapet poto print-an si baby 7 lembar plus cd rekaman gambar si baby selama di usg. Diliat-liat baby ku itu belom jelas mukanya, jadi langsung berniat untuk usg lagi ntar kalo udah 8 bulan-an. Ohya buat yang pengen usg 4D ini, di YPK sama dr. bambang karsono, harganya 570rb, katanya sih lebih murah dari pada sama dr. dario turk.
Jadi makin gak sabar pengen babynya cepet gede, biar bisa digendong2 dan diajak maen :D
Monday, October 09, 2006
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Muhammad's Sword Why did Pope Benedict utter these words in public? And why now?
Dapet dari milis Binabud.. silahkan dibaca...
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by Uri Avnery
September 26, 2006
Gush shalom
Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.
Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 - exactly 1700 years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.
The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.
But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations".
IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?
WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.
At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. In 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.
IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith".
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?
There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism" - when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
----------------------------------------------
by Uri Avnery
September 26, 2006
Gush shalom
Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.
Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 - exactly 1700 years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.
The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.
But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations".
IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?
WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.
At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. In 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.
IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith".
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.
Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?
There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism" - when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.
The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
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