We're more on the same page than you think.

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), May 3, 2010 at 20:52

James:

I am (a) A political conservative (pro-life, religiously observant, gun-rights, reduced entitlements, etc.) and Christian (old-school Reformed). I suppose I was trying to observe that the picture is not all black re the Old World.

And I am all for Christian missions to Muslims--and anyone else (albeit I am a bit concerned that we need to show the Gospel as a door through which they are invited to pass rather than as a club held over their heads--and I am being very fundamentalistically Christian when I say this, no matter how our MSM is trying to tar us as moral equivalents of the Muslims).

One reason I visit this blog is because I believe that Islamicist radicalism is a threat. We all should have gotten that lesson when the Twin Towers went down, When Theo van Gogh was butchered on the streets of Amsterdam, when a would-be bomber was caught crossing our northern border, and when the "yoots" (as some irreverently call them) trashed a few suburbs of Paris. And, I would agree that much of the problem is in the original texts and doctrines of Islam itself--and the violent impulse is clearly muted in the Old and New Testaments where it SHOUTS in the Qu'ran and Hadith. I vehemently deny that there's moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity; and, I will even, to some extent, recognize the civic morality of Rabbinic Judaism and its respect for outsiders (even though I think it a pity that they won't confess M'shiach).

But, this book by Bruckner, the popularity of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands (despite his legal problems), and the resonance such voices are receiving in Europe may be signs that the picture is not completely dark. We may well be heading for a major crisis of the social democrat, culturally and religiously relativist political elites in both Europe and North America. Hence, while I'm just superstitious enough to see the current furor Islamicus as possibly being a divine judgment on an apostate West, I am also hopeful enough to pray for a new dawn for Western civilization, too.

Peace

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