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Tuesday, March 19, 2024 - 03:25 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

A Time for Truth and Courage

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) - Immensely influential Italian priest and Western moral and political philosopher.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) - Immensely influential Italian priest and Western moral and political philosopher.

“The media, academia, and the political and religious world of our decadent Western civilization see modern Islamic terrorism as an aberration, something at odds with true Islam, which they claim is a religion of peace. Their wishful thinking has no justification in the Quran, hadith [sayings of Muhammad], or Islam’s 1,400-year history.”—Luiz Sergio Solimeo, author of Islam and the Suicide of the West, published 2018

According to Solimeo, there are 164 verses in the Quran that advocate Jihad—holy war against all non-Muslims. According to Dr. Bill Warner (politicalislam.com), 31 percent of the content of the sacred writings of Islam including the Quran, the hadith, and approved Islamic histories of Muhammad are about Jihad, and less than two percent of this is not related to violence, deception, or supporting activities to achieve Islamic Supremacy.

There had really never been much controversy over the nature of Islam in the Christian churches until the last 100 years. The words of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) represented the preponderant studied religious and scholarly opinion.

“…Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law. It was therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly.”

Like Pope Urban II in his 1095 call for a Christian Crusade to defend Europe and rescue Christians in the Holy Land from Muslim depredations, Protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) believed the Christian West should take up arms to oppose Muslim aggression in Europe. But Importantly, Luther recognized that beyond the defense of arms, the real battle is a spiritual battle. He believed we must first deal with our own sin. Then we can deal with the enemy that God has allowed to rise up to bring judgment upon us.  In 1543, John Calvin, in a letter to Luther’s co-laborer in Christ, Philip Melanchthon in Germany, wrote: “I hear of the sad condition of your Germany! …The Turk [Islam] again prepares to wage war with a larger force. Who will stand up to oppose his marching throughout the length and breadth of the land, at his mere will and pleasure?”In his commentary on 2nd Thessalonians, Calvin wrote: “Since Muhammad was an apostate, he turned his followers, the Turks [Muslims], from Christ…The sect of Mohammad was like a raging overflow, which in its violence tore away about half of the Church.”  Methodist leader John Wesley warned; “Ever since the religion of Mahamet appeared in the world, the espousers of it, particularly those under the Turkish emperor, have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations; rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth. In an 1829 treatise including “The Fall of the Anti-Christ,” premier American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, aligned Islam with the Antichrist religion. In 2006 at Regensburg University in Bavaria, Pope Benedictine XVI quoted the 14th Century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus:  "Show me just what Muhammad 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.”  This caused worldwide protest from Muslims and many in the West who had come to accept without basis that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance.  

However, Pope Francis replaced Benedictine XVI in 2013, and many of the new Pope’s statements were considerably more lenient on Islam. In a Papal statement on January 20, 2014, Pope Francis said: “…to wring from our hearts the disease that plagues our lives…Let those who are Christians do it with the Bible and those who are Muslims do it with the Quran.” Millions of Catholics and Christians worldwide were concerned that the Pope seemed to indicate that the Quran was a way to salvation. Pope Francis has given other confusing statements that seemed to lean toward modern liberal attitudes and away from long held Catholic Tradition.

The confusion over Islam was of particular concern to Muslim converts to Catholicism, but it was also of general concern in the Catholic Church and many Protestant and Orthodox denominations and institutions as well.  On December 25, 2017, a group of about 200 Muslim converts to Catholicism and their friends made public an Open Letter to Pope Francis, concerned with his liberal attitude toward the Muslim faith. It was a very respectful letter, but it raised questions in general about how Christians should view Islam. To their credit, they made a distinction between Muslims and Islam. They would like to gather their former fellow Muslims into the Christian fold, but they consider Islam a false and extremely dangerous religion and ideology. They reminded the Pope that the Quran (4:89) and the Hadith (traditions of Muhammad) prescribe the death penalty for Muslims who leave Islam.

They also reminded him of   the statement of Bishop Nona Amel, Chaldean-Catholic Bishop of Mosul in exile on August 9, 2014:

“”Our present sufferings are the prelude to those that you, Europeans and Western Christians, will suffer in the near future; I have lost my diocese. The headquarters of my archdiocese and my apostolate have been occupied by radical Islamists who want us to convert or die…You are welcoming into your country an ever increasing number of Muslims. You are in danger as well.  You must make strong and courageous decisions…You think that all men are equal, but Islam does not say that all men are equal…If you do not understand this very quickly, you will become victims of the enemy you have invited into your home.”

They informed Pope Francis of Quran 60:4: “Between us and you there is enmity and hatred forever, until you believe in Allah alone.” They informed him of Quran 9:28 that Christians are only impurity” and 98:6 that Christians are the “worst of Creation” and are “condemned to hell,” and of 9:30 “so Allah must exterminate them.”

They informed the Pope about Islam’s Doctrine of Abrogation in interpreting the Quran—that later verses revealed by Muhammad cancel or overshadow contradictory earlier verses. Hence 124 Quranic verses of peace and tolerance are effectively repealed to wage total war against all non-Muslims. These 124 verses are often used to deceive non-Muslims into thinking Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance.

“We must not be deceived by the Quranic verses deemed tolerant, because they have been repealed by the verse of the Sword,  Quran 9:5.”

“ But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the polytheists wherever you find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem [of war].

Note that according to the Quran and Muhammad, Christians are polytheists and thus unbelievers and infidels because they believe in the divine Trinity of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Allah, the god of the Quran and Muhammad, is not the Trinitarian God of Christian Scripture.  That Jehovah, the Lord God of the Bible, and Allah of the god of the Quran and Muhammad are not the same should be obvious to those who study both the Bible and the Quran.

The writers of this letter also cautioned that Scriptural interpretations should not be left to those who know little of Christian traditions and doctrines, and that statements about treating strangers and guests in the land with generosity are conditional on good behavior and no intention to replace Christianity with Islam or religions and ideologies that essentially undermine Christianity.

“ The meaning of Scripture should not be supplied by the proponents of globalism, but in fidelity to [Catholic] Tradition.  The Good Shepherd hunts the wolf; he does not let them enter into the sheepfold.”

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35) cannot mean “I was an invader and you welcomed me.” But rather “I needed your hospitality for awhile, and you granted it to me.” 

“If anyone comes to you but refuses the Gospel, do not receive him among you nor greet him. Whoever greets him participates in his evil works.”  2 John 1:10-11

“If anyone preaches to you a different Gospel, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8-9

Western and especially Christian accommodation to Islam is the road to civilizational suicide and doom.  Christians especially must know and have the courage to speak the truth.

“My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”—Hosea 4:6

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Mike ScruggsMike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.

He holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.

Click the website below to order books. http://www.universalmediainc.org/books.htm.