The Archbishop of Canterbury on Islam

A critical review of Rowan Williams take on Islam.

Dr Williams's belief that Christendom and Islam are one was perhaps most apparent on December 21, 2003, when he condemned the detention of Muslim asylum-seekers who, the authorities believed, were planning atrocities against the Britain on whose mercy they had thrust themselves. "There is theological debate here which is real and deep," Williams said on that occasion of his relationship with Islam, "because we share some history and we can discuss it."

Can we discuss the fact that the Muslims here, all recent immigrants, enjoy rights - for instance to propagate their religion - that are unavailable to the Christians of the Muslim world? This is despite the fact that these Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land, and behave with a humility quite unlike the menacing behaviour we have come to expect from the Muslims who have forced themselves on Christendom, a bullying ingratitude that culminates in a terrorist threat to their unconsulted hosts.

Dr Williams has nothing to say about this: but then, Christian passivity in the face of Muslim narcissism and aggression is nothing new. "The history we share" is that Mohammed enjoined his followers to spread Islam by the sword. After his death in 632, Muslim armies poured out of the Arabian peninsula (the only place to which Muslims are native, though even there Islam was imposed by force) and, unprovoked, attacked its neighbours.

Christian Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Anatolia, Spain, the Balkans, the Maghreb and Sicily, as well as Buddhist central Asia, Zoroastrian Iran and Hindu India, all became "Muslim" by virtue of naked imperialism. The indigenous non-Muslims were either exterminated (the fate of the Christians of North Africa), or reduced to the status of third-class citizens in their own countries, their fate to this day.

Be sure to read the whole thing.
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