Grim,

The article ‘Why The Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant’ in your link is salient in many respects. I guess the fact that very few people were ‘true Nazis’ in Germany is quite significant. The return of national pride was created for many, and a general apathy (or ‘she’ll be right’) in the remaining majority created a vacuum – despite Germany’s deep religious heritage.

Nazism, at its core, had/has nothing redeeming about it – i.e. it was and is inherently ‘evil’ but not recognised as so before WWII through most of Western ‘sensibility’. True enough, Islam has more than its fair share of fanatics and that fanaticism is quite transferable, again, where a vacuum exists – but, I do not find a rotten core beneath its ugly skin.

“The hard quantifiable fact is, that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority” and it is cowed and extraneous… the only group that counts [are] the fanatics who threaten our way of life.” This is more a reflection of our weakness in the West - with many somewhat paralysed in being unable to recognise and act upon any real threat. Per se, it isn’t Islam.

Horus, and to anyone else it may concern :-)

Caught between fire and water, and seeing an Elf-lord revealed in his wrath, they were dismayed, and their horses were stricken with madness. Three were carried away by the first assault of the flood; the others were now hurled into the water by their horses and overwhelmed. [Lord of the Rings, 'Many meetings']

Probably not the end of the Black Riders, but we live in hope.

Relda,
"In the Muslim understanding, the Koran comes directly from God, unmediated. Muhammad simply wrote down God's eternal and immutable words as they were dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel. It cannot be changed, and to make the Koran the subject of critical analysis and reflection is either to assert human authority over divine revelation (a blasphemy), or question its divine character. The Bible, in contrast, is a product of human co-operation with divine inspiration. It arises from the encounter between God and man, an encounter characterised by reciprocity, which in Christianity is underscored by a Trinitarian understanding of God (an understanding Islam interprets as polytheism). This gives Christianity a logic or dynamic which not only favours the development of doctrine within strict limits, but also requires both critical analysis and the application of its principles to changed circumstances. It also requires a teaching authority."

"Do Muslims believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Sharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history and even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran without threats of violence?"

Relda,

"The history of relations between Muslims on the one hand and Christians and Jews on the other does not always offer reasons for optimism in the way that some people easily assume. The claims of Muslim tolerance of Christian and Jewish minorities are largely mythical, as the history of Islamic conquest and domination in the Middle East, the Iberian peninsula and the Balkans makes abundantly clear. In the territory of modern-day Spain and Portugal, which was ruled by Muslims from 716 and not finally cleared of Muslim rule until the surrender of Granada in 1491 (although over half the peninsula had been reclaimed by 1150, and all of the peninsula except the region surrounding Granada by 1300), Christians and Jews were tolerated only as dhimmis[14], subject to punitive taxation, legal discrimination, and a range of minor and major humiliations. If a dhimmi harmed a Muslim, his entire community would forfeit protection and be freely subject to pillage, enslavement and murder. Harsh reprisals, including mutilations, deportations and crucifixions, were imposed on Christians who appealed for help to the Christian kings or who were suspected of having converted to Islam opportunistically. Raiding parties were sent out several times every year against the Spanish kingdoms in the north, and also against France and Italy, for loot and slaves. The caliph in Andalusia maintained an army of tens of thousand of Christian slaves from all over Europe, and also kept a harem of captured Christian women. The Jewish community in the Iberian peninsula suffered similar sorts of discriminations and penalties, including restrictions on how they could dress. A pogrom in Granada in 1066 annihilated the Jewish population there and killed over 5000 people. Over the course of its history Muslim rule in the peninsula was characterised by outbreaks of violence and fanaticism as different factions assumed power, and as the Spanish gradually reclaimed territory."

Islam is not a religion but it is a totalitarian ideology (Mohamad Cult). Muslims or Mohamadists/Mohamedims have no freedom of religion. And you know that, don't you?

Constance,

It is more a matter of metaphysics that pertain to our statements about what “comes directly from God.” Dogmatic statements, however, certainly draw differentiation in ‘belief’. The great 13th century mystic poet Jalal ud-Din Rumi (1207-1273) expressed the metaphysical when he wrote, “The lovers of ritual are one group and those whose hearts and souls are aglow with love of God are another.” i.e. there are only two groups of religionist, and Egyptian-American imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, cites them:

1. Those who have seen the vision of God, and they are one group regardless of their nominal religious affiliation, and
2. Those who are exclusive, militant and hard-line in their religious interpretation; they too are also one group, regardless of their nominal religious affiliation.

Abdul Rauf also said religion is a powerful tool and if correctly used, it has led to a vision of God, “...but when usurped by violent men, religion has proven extremely effective in rousing the masses to violence and aggression.” Do you not agree?

In his book, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-'Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination, William Chittick rightly comments (with some resonance to Benedict’s Regensburg Address): "Somewhere along the line, the Western intellectual tradition took a wrong turn. Arguments arise over when and why this happened. Many important thinkers have concluded that the West never should have abandoned certain teachings about reality which it shared with the East... In putting complete faith in reason, the West forgot that imagination opens up the soul to certain possibilities of perceiving and understanding not available to the rational mind." Dialogue certainly does not begin by kissing either the Koran or our Bible.

Undoubtedly there are Muslims, as there are Christians or Jews, who stand over the carcass of a Western humanism with its deadly attachment and preference for materialism. The West, through gradually stripping herself of spirituality, has forgotten that man is not just composed of flesh and blood, but also, of the Quranic nafs (self) and ruh (spirit). Surely, if reflecting on New Testament theology, you would understand this basic perception?

George,

By an abstract God, I meant something other worldly or super-mundane.Perhaps this term is not fully genuine because to animists the God of the Rock is tangible or, Ra is tangible to an Egyptian worshipper of the Sun. The Greeks and Romans did not see their gods as elusive, e.g., Priam sees* Hermes in The Iliad and to Romans the Idea of a divine emperor was not blasphemy. In the Classical Era, there was a lesser distance between Divinity and Humanity. That said, to the three major monotheist religions, especially Islam, God is something afar and intangible.

I appreciate that mathematics can offer separate realms/dimensions:

In matrix algebra, in general, the values of the determinants of matrices can range between minus-infinity and plus-infinity. Values for the determinant of a correlation matrix, however, range between 0 and 1.00. Perhaps, the theist-in-the-street might see the two-poled infinites in general matrix algebra analogous to god’s realm and a (two-poled) delimited range analogous to Humanity’s limited existence. The analogy is weak.

With much effort we can come to grips with hard mathematics or just trust the numbers.

While, say, Abraham’s faith in god was more akin to a modern day trust in numbers, the realm of the supernatural is transcendental. Abraham’s trust in god might be akin to a Primary School pupil’s trust in her understanding of an electron. One the other hand, Penrose’s or Gell-Mann’s equations defining an electron are complex, yet not transcendental. Likewise, manipulation of imaginery intergers is not transendental.

At a lower-order understanding, maybe, simple understanding of an electron and Abraham’s simple faith match on trust. Faith/Trust comes before understanding (Augustine concept). At the higher-order of understanding, the mathematics of alternative realities remains mundane (Earthly); whereas, the architecture of the transcendental would be super-mundane. Moreover, trust in the numbers** comes after understanding. (Supposed or Substitutionary)understanding of the transcendental comes after faith/trust (Augustine concept). Substitionary, because we cannot understand God from God's frame of reference.

O.

[*There are epiphanies in Christianity. The beholder being startled or not recognizing the divinity/messenger follows Greek themes.

[**One mightnot comprehend what the numbers represent.]