A key tenet of most every religion in the world is to tame and control the worst instincts in all of us.
This is clearly at the heart of the Christian and Jewish faiths that formed the foundations of Western Civilization.
For example, the Bible says human hearts are naturally flawed and easily tempted to do wrong.
Christianity contrasts selfish human desires with the positive traits that God's spirit produces.
Jesus showed us that evil thoughts, anger, and greed start inside a person before turning into actions.
Christians are taught to focus on good, true, and pure thoughts to change their inner desires.
Believers are told to love their neighbors and to actively stop and turn away from anger, greed and lust.
Christians are told to ask the Holy Spirit for daily strength through prayer to resist the temptation of the flesh.
The same is not true with Islam.
Dan Burmawi is the Executive Director of the Ideological Defense Institute and is a theological scholar.
Burmawi was born and raised as a Muslim in Jordan but converted to Christianity and was forced to move to Lebanon.
He has written several books including Islam, Israel and the West, which examines the "theological and ideological foundations of the Arab–Israeli conflict and Western engagement with political Islam. "
I recently came across some comments that Burmawi made about the contrast of the Judeo-Christian foundational principles of Western Civilization compared to Islam.
It was something that I had not considered before but it goes a long way in explaining the clash of cultures that we see playing out every day around the world.
Burmawi warns that what we are dealing with regarding Islam is not about religious or geopolitical differences, the clash is civilizational at the deepest level.
Burmawi's thoughts on the subject.
Islam is the sanctification of man’s most corrupted instincts.
It takes what is base in human nature and give it a divine sanction.
Man’s desire to dominate women? Islam codifies it. Veiling, polygamy, child marriage, testimony worth half a man’s, all justified as God’s will.
The tribal impulse of “my group over yours”? Islam raises it to the level of theology: believers vs. infidels, the ummah against the world.
The lust for supremacy and conquest? Islam calls it jihad and makes it a religious demand.
The primal rage at dissent? Islam turns it into law: apostasy punishable by death.
Man’s lust for unlimited sex? Islam provides it: four wives, temporary marriages, concubines, sex slaves, and the promise of virgins in paradise.
This is why Islam went global. It spread because it indulged what was already animal in humans.
It is like pornography, irresistible to the flesh, destructive to the soul.
It thrives because it removes all discipline from sexuality, power and ego.
It appeals to the raw, the unrefined, the barbaric impulse in man, and calls it holy.
The West, by contrast, was built on the exact opposite impulse. The Judeo-Christian tradition does not legitimize man’s depravity, it restrains it.
Western civilization is not the freedom of instincts but the discipline of them.
It is the recognition that man’s raw impulses lead to tyranny, slavery, and barbarism unless they are checked by higher law.
The clash between Islam and the West is not merely geopolitical. It is civilizational at the deepest level:
Whether human nature should be indulged or disciplined, whether man’s lowest instincts are to be worshipped or restrained.
Seeing Burmawi's thoughts on Islam I could not help but also remember what Winston Churchill wrote in 1899 in his book the River War that he published after serving with the British Army in the Sudan War.
Churchill stated that "no stronger retrograde force exists in the world" than Islam.
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
Yes, this was written over 100 years ago by a young Churchill who clearly moderated his views later in life.
However, if you take Burmawi's views today along with Churchill's from a century ago, it does reinforce the view that we have two very different and competing philosophies on how civilization is supposed to operate.
Can we just ignore it?
Europe seems to think so.
We are seeing how that works out every day and in every way.
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| Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/least-18-die-49000-breach-border-morocco-spanish-territory-rcna590183 |
