Ayodhya and Nazareth: A Comparitative Study
By Koenraad Elst
A mosque casts its shadow on a church
In Nazareth, a church (basilica) marks the place where the angel announced to Mary that she was about to give birth to Jesus, God’s only-begotten son, the long-awaited messiah. This church is one of the foci of Christian life in Palestine. However, the Christian community in Palestine and the whole Middle East is dwindling, in percentage if not in absolute figures, due to their observing more modern birth rates than their Muslim countrymen, and due to the emigration of numerous young Christians who see no future for themselves in a Muslim-dominated part of the world. Even in Nazareth the Muslims are now in a majority, and with a Muslim-dominated “Palestinian Authority” now in power, the local Muslim community feels confident enough for a showdown
So, on 22 November 1999, the foundation stone for a mighty and magnificent mosque was laid in a square adjoining the church. The Christian community had planned the construction of a Venice-type plaza there, to accommodate the numerous Christian and other visitors from all over the world. After all, the sacred sites of Christianity are not all that numerous, and those which exist deserve appropriate care. If the Muslims really needed an extra mosque, they could have built it anywhere. A diplomatic Saudi prince had even offered to finance the mosque if it was built elsewhere, but his offer was spurned. By contrast, the place of the Annunciation is not moveable, so Christians could not make any concessions short of allowing the humiliation of their sacred site as but a stand-in-the-way of the mosque. The Muslims would not see reason and went ahead with their confrontational plan.
Most Palestinian Christians find this development gruesome. According to local Franciscan nun Sister Renee, “the Muslims want to trample and humiliate the Christians. The minaret of the mosque will tower over the basilica”. (Quoted by Salomon Bouman, De Standaard, 24-11-1999) The Pope came out in support of the Christians of Nazareth, and ordered all Catholic churches in the Holy Land closed for two days in protest. Yasser Arafat’s PA formally distanced itself from the Islamic ceremony (in order to curry favor with the Christian world so as to strengthen his own diplomatic position vis-à-vis Israel), but did nothing to prevent it. The presiding Muslim leader, Ahmad Abu Nawaf, was not troubled for taking a defiant and confrontational stand, openly exulting in this Islamic “victory”.
The incident must have reminded the Pope of the Muslim plans for building a mosque in Rome dwarfing the Pope’s own Saint Peter’s Basilica. The Italian authorities disallowed this symbolic show of strength but the five-star mosque which came up close to the Vatican is still impressive enough, and contrasts mightily with the absence of any Christian place of worships for hundreds of miles around Mecca. Because Saudi Arabia has declared the whole of its territory to be a mosque, no expressions of non-Islamic devotion are allowed there in any form whatsoever.
In the circumstances, I cannot omit a vote of sympathy for the Palestinian Christians who find themselves besieged by an arrogant Islamic movement. However, I also want to propose to the Christian leadership, including the Pope and Indian Church leaders like Bishop Alan de Lastic, a few points to ponder.
Christians apologizing to Muslims
First of all, Your Eminences, the last couple of years, the Catholic Church and many Protestant Churches and Christian laymen’s groups have been bending over backwards to convince Muslims and others about their own heartfelt repentance over the crimes committed by Christian states and institutions in the past centuries, but it seems this has not moved the heart of the Muslim world.
The Pope himself has said sorry for the Crusades, even though these were but a Christian counteroffensive in a long-drawn-out war which Islam had unilaterally inflicted on Christianity ever since Mohammed’s failed invasion of the East-Roman Empire, not long before his death in 632. Hardly four years later, after suppressing the Arab national revolt against Islam (the Ridda, “return” to the ancestral religion), Islamic armies invaded and occupied the Levantine part of the Byzantine Empire, and reduced Christians to third-class citizens without political rights. During and after this blitz offensive by Caliph Omar in AD 636, many churches were turned into mosques, Christians were sometimes forced to convert, but more often put under structural pressure by the imposition of a toleration tax plus a number of humiliating restraints on their rights.
The next conquest of Christian North Africa effectively destroys Christianity in Tunisia, Saint Augustine’s homeland, and in the Maghreb. This was further followed by the conquest of Christian Spain, invasion of Christian France in AD 731 (mercifully crushed by Charles Martel in Poitiers), the occupation of Christian Sicily, and many other unilateral Islamic acts of aggression, including the capture and sale of millions of Christians as slaves. The invasion of Byzantine Anatolia by Muslim Seljuqs in Manzikert 1071 was one of the direct causes of the Crusades. In spite of regrettable Christian excesses during the re-conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 (easily matched by Sultan Baybars’ atrocities during the Muslim re-conquest of the Crusader states), the Crusades were a legitimate attempt of the Christians to liberate their Holy Land forcibly occupied by the Muslims. Somewhat like the Hindus trying to liberate Ayodhya from Islamic occupation.
Strategically speaking, the Crusades were a forward strike in a war in which Christianity had so far been on the defensive. After the defeat of the Crusaders, the Islamic world resumed the attacks, especially in the Balkans where one Christian nation after another came under the Turkish yoke, and as late as 1689, the Turks laid siege to Vienna. There is no doubt that Christian soldiers have misbehaved during the conquest of Jerusalem and on other occasions, but so have Muslim armies on numerous occasions, starting with Mohammed’s own caravan raids, murders of skeptics and massacres of recalcitrant tribes. For every Muslim gentleman-conqueror (e.g. the Kurdish general Saladin who chased the Crusaders from Jerusalem), there was a Muslim mass-murderer (e.g. the Mamluk sultan Baybars who finished off the last Crusader strongholds).
All the same, an ecumenical Christian group has even conducted a pilgrimage along the Crusader route, a Walk for Reconciliation, everywhere offering apologies for what Christians in the distant past had done to the Muslims. This proved to be an exercise in self-ridicule, e.g. these self-flagellating Christian penitents went to offer their apologies to the mayor of Istanbul for the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, forgetting that the city sacked by the Crusaders was a Greek Orthodox city where a Muslim Turk like the present mayor would be the number one enemy. Constantinople was far more definitively sacked by the Turks in 1453, and the Turkish mayor represented the Turkish occupation force which has, unlike the Crusaders, destroyed the Greek character of the city and nearly annihilated the millennia-old Greek presence in Constantinople and nearby Ionia.
Addressing an apology for the temporary inconvenience, which the Crusaders had inflicted on the Greeks to a mayor representing a conquering nation, which definitively destroyed the Greeks of Asia Minor, only Liberation theologians could be that silly.
So, if apologies have to be tendered, let Muslim dignitaries start the exchange. Let the mayor of Istanbul apologize to his Christian visitors for representing a religion which killed and enslaved millions of Christians. Let the Turks apologize to the Greeks for sacking and occupying their capital, Constantinople. Better still; let them restore Constantinople to the Orthodox Christians. But for now, the position is that the Muslim world is not even willing to refrain from the provocation in Nazareth.
Christian understanding of the Hindu position
Secondly, you’re Eminences; you might reconsider your haughty condemnation of the Hindu position regarding disputed sacred sites. In Ayodhya, a mosque had been imposed right on the site of a destroyed Hindu temple, but you joined the Muslim-Marxist choir in denouncing these petty-minded and fanatical Hindus reclaiming their sacred site. “Why the fuss about a temple when God is everywhere?” you pontificated. Now you are being put to the same test.
In Nazareth, your basilica was not even touched. The Muslims have a place for “the prophet Jesus” in their system, not for the idolatrous demon Rama, so they showed more tolerance in Nazareth than in Ayodhya. And yet, look what a fuss you are making over a mosque neatly juxtaposed to a church, perfectly respecting its existence though not perhaps its breathing-space.
To be sure, I understand that for Christians, sacred sites are a touchy issue. In Islamic and Communist countries, numerous churches have been destroyed or put to non-Christian uses; but on the other hand, so many of those churches had been built in forcible replacement of Pagan places of worship. Thus, the Mezquita, the cathedral of Cordoba, used to be a mosque, which in turn had been built in forcible replacement of a church, but that ancient church had in its turn been built in forcible replacement of a Roman temple. Just recently, the Greco-Scythian city of Chersoness on the Crimea peninsula has witnessed a controversy between the Orthodox Church, which is reclaiming an abbey, stolen and abused by the Communists, and the archaeologists, who first want to find out what exactly is lying underneath the premises, known to have been a Pagan cultic site. The Churches cannot rock the boat of sacred sites controversy too badly, for there are too many skeletons in their own closets.
Muslims challenging Christianity in Europe
Thirdly, Your Eminences, recent developments in Nazareth and many other places ought to make you more receptive to the general Hindu distrust of Islam. In the week before Christmas, some fifty people were killed in Muslim-Christian riots in Indonesia, adding their numbers to the many hundreds killed during the past year in that country alone, not to speak of thousands of Christians killed in East Timor, nor of the handfuls of Christians killed now and then by Islamic guerrillas in the Philippines. Let us not make the picture more complicated by mentioning the hundreds if not thousands of Hindus killed in India’s Northeast by Christian separatists, let’s only consider killings of Christians; we then see a strange pattern emerge. Compared with the fuss you made over the deaths of just two priests, a Keralite Catholic and Australian Protestant, plus the two sons of the latter, killings for which you prematurely blamed the Hindus, your outcry over Islamic atrocities is remarkably subdued.
In the case of Nazareth, Church dignitaries have indeed spoken out. But look, a similarly strange moderation in your anti-Muslim protest strikes the eye of the beholder. The sharpest allegation is reserved not to the Muslims who are encroaching on what you consider to be Christian territory, but to the Israeli authorities. “Israel is trying to drive a wedge between Palestinian Christians and Muslims,” you say. But pray, if Israel meant you any harm, why has it left the Annunciation basilica in peace for decades? You might reasonably accuse Israel of giving in to the party from which it fears the most serious trouble, viz. Muslims rather than Christians. But Israel is not doing more than that: giving in to pressure exerted by another party, viz. the Muslims. If it wasn’t for the Muslims claiming the site, Israel couldn’t have ruled in their favor. So, what keeps you from laying blame at the door where it belongs?
The answer is obvious: fear. If even combative Israel feels it has to throw some crumbs to the Islamic fanatics, such as space for a mosque in Nazareth, what else can we expect of the Church? The fact is the fear of Islam is increasingly gripping our aged Church Fathers by the throat. Ancient strongholds of European resistance to Islam are now home to imposing five-star mosques: Madrid, capital of Reconquista Spain; Paris, whence the Frankish Crusaders once left to liberate the Holy Land; even Rome itself. At the recent Bishops’ Synod in Rome (October 1999), several bishops expressed their worries about Islam’s encroachment on the Christian world.
Consider the warnings by Mgr. Bernardini, bishop of the Ionian city of Smyrna, now better known as Izmir after the Turks killed and expelled the Greeks from there in 1922 (reproduced in the Catholic monthly Nucleus, Bruges, November 1999). To the analysis given by other bishops, he added some recent anecdotes from real life, e.g.: “During an official Christian-Muslim meeting, an important Muslim delegate said calmly and self-assuredly: ‘Thanks to your democratic laws we will conquer you. Thanks to our religious laws, we will dominate you.”
And this one: “A Catholic monastery in Jerusalem had an Arab servant, naturally a Muslim. He was a very courteous, friendly and honest man, greatly valued by the monks. But the converse turned out not to apply. One day he told them with sadness: ‘Our leaders have convened and have decided that all infidels must be killed. But you need not fear: though I too will be ordered to kill you, I will do it without making you suffer.’ We know that a distinction must be made between the fanatics and the more peaceful majority. But even the latter will rise against us as one man when Allah so commands.”
In his concluding remarks, Mgr. Bernardini returned to an issue of disputed places of worship, specifically referring to the practice of selling the empty churches of European cities to Muslims for use as mosques: “To conclude, and speaking from my experience, I would at any rate advise that no Catholic church should ever be handed over to the Muslims for their worship. To them this is merely the most convincing proof of our apostasy.” Exactly, Your Eminences, places of worship are a serious business, and like Mgr. Bernardini, or like the Christians of Nazareth, Hindus in Ayodhya don’t want to abandon their temples to eager Muslims ¾ and rest assured that Hindu temples are not standing empty for lack of worshippers.
Source: Folks Magazine
Posted by U Mahesh Prabhu
on September 9 2010. Filed under Articles.
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To Koenraad Elst;
Stupid article. Waste of time!
[...] Read the original: Ayodhya and Nazareth: A Comparitative Study [...]
islamdevotee says:
Stupid article. Waste of time!
I say:
This is coming from someone who posts nothing but nonsense and has no problem wasting everyone's time.
Can someone block Islamdevotee from this site ? He is not here to learn or understand. Pastes only idiotic messages… & is argumentative and illogical. He is just a waste of white space. Please kick him out.
To Marie;
You say "This is coming from someone who posts nothing but nonsense and has no problem wasting everyone’s time."
At least I don't lie and don't use deception to mislead the people. See below:
You said “Christianity does not encourage slavery and degrades women.”
Oh really? How about this:
1. “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)”
2. “When a slave owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property. (Exod. 21:20-21)”
Marie, you have been proven to be a lair. Also, you have been proven to fabricate facts and use deception to support your arguments. Shame on you!
yh shame on you
anyway in histopry before 1920's women in britain were seen as nothing but people who had to have children and raise them up … when the world war 1 happened women came out of their house and proved that they were EQUAL as men .. women were not allowed to work /vote …….. what do u say????
in this society WOMEN have to work harder than men to prove they are equal and can do the same jobs as men
islam gave women thier freedom and right from the begging and many muslims these days abuse those rights so that doesnt mean islam is BAD its those peoples brains that need sorting
slaveofallah123 says
"when the world war 1 happened women came out of their house and proved that they were EQUAL as men .. women were not allowed to work /vote …….. what do u say????"
I Say: That these females were given the equal rights since Britain does not follow a Sharia /religious law- Unchangeable command from Allah.
Democratic societies are always open for new amendment/ideas which appeals to them Logically/morally/scientifically etc.
Can you say the Same thing about true Sharia ruled countries?
Muslims in sharia ruled countries rape the minor child in the name of Islamic Marriage just to show that they are following the ideal set by Mohammad. In 2007, In Iran one Muslim, University Professor, married a 10 year old child after crossing 50 years of Age just to prove that He is following the ideals set by Mohammad. There are many cases like these in Sharia ruled Islamic countries (Not the invaded countries inhabited by Converted Muslims like your).
I have also noticed that Islamdevotee has nothing to contribute except vehement denials without any further justifications. A lot of emptiness in his posts. You can summarize his posts by one of these things
1. "stupid article" "wrong post" – no explanations as to why
2. Islam and koran is always right and Kafirs are always wrong
3. Occasional cut and paste of islamist propaganda
However, I think he should stay on this board so that everyone can see what systematic brainwashing can do to humanity and intelligence
To simple_soul;
1. You say "Islamdevotee has nothing to contribute except vehement denials without any further justifications."
A lot of justifications has been done. When something is right one has to say it is right. When something is wrong one has to say it is wrong. This web site has a very simple agenda that is to destroy Islam by any means possible including defamation, fabrication, deception and misinformation.
2. You say "A lot of emptiness in his posts"
My posts are deep in substance and proof. Scholars can understand such depth. Educate yourself, become a scholar and you and other Muslim haters will see the depth of such arguments.
3. You say "Occasional cut and paste of islamist propaganda"
Correct. Most of the Muslim haters comments are copied and pasted from articles written by Ali Sina. Also, the so called hadith attributed to the prophet is being copied and pasted from "Center of Jewish-Muslim Engagement". This Jewish organization is known for fabrications, deception and its anti Muslim agenda. Also, this Jewish organization presents its writings on a server host by University of Southern California to give it a legal front.
Islamdevotee does not understand that Christians do not obey the laws of the old testament given to the Jews with regard to slavery. Jesus Christ often counteracted the the laws of the Old Testament.
In the quote from Ephesians St Paul is not trying to overthrow the secular power of Rome so he tells any slaves who become Christians to obey their masters. He also says "There is neither male nor female, slave nor freeman, Jew nor gentile all are one in Jesus Christ." Of course there are always hypocrites in all religions and some Christians have not acted according to what their Bible says.
Heaven help us if all the Muslims start to act how their Koran says or how their prophet acted – lets hope many of them stay hypocrites.
Islam devotee:
“My posts are deep in substance and proof. Scholars can understand such depth. Educate yourself, become a scholar and you and other Muslim haters will see the depth of such arguments.”
So far you proof nothing scholarly, who knows you just one of those people release from mental asylum, you never gave any counter reference to what you said as fabricated hadits, you just talking out of your arse. DO you even realise you talking so much in denial, without ever given any counter reference to your so called unauthentic hadits.
One thing which you never dared to answer, WHAT is the age of aisha when she got married?? And what is your source??
Mooslims talking about women's rights and mooslims saying pisslam gives women rights is like a pedophile talking about rights of children and like a pedophile arguing pedophilia guarantees rights to children.
What needs sorting here is brains of every mooslim who thinks pisslam is NOT absolutely evil…
islamdevotee says:
1. “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)”
2. “When a slave owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property. (Exod. 21:20-21)”
Marie, you have been proven to be a lair. Also, you have been proven to fabricate facts and use deception to support your arguments. Shame on you!
I say:
It was Christians who abolished slavery in the western world. Also 1st century Christians released their slaves seeing them as their brothers and sisters.
By the way you forgot to mention Christ said their will be no slaves in heaven.
Paul did not own slaves and Christ did not own slaves. Muhammed on the other hand had lots of slaves working for him.
whoops, my mistake, Christ did not say there will be no slaves in Heaven. Paul did as people are one in Christ.
One of the best articles on FFI. It is really painful to see Indian Christians siding with Musalmans in the Ayodhya issue. Take the holiest of holy Hindu places in India: Ayodhya, Kashi, Mathura etc. In each of these places a mosque is standing. The fact is that the Muslims did not destroy the worship places to the core. All they did was desecrate the idols, inscribe Qu-rand-ic verses on the interiors and use it as mosques. We read from the medieval islamic sources sentences such as "the temple was razed to the ground, and the same pieces of bricks were used to reconstruct a mosque." But hey why then the new mosque standing over a ruined temple have Hindu-style architecture? Nonplussed? The truth is that the rogue muslim monarchs were ashamed of using a kaffir temple as a mosque. To suppress their ego they concocted these fairy tales. Don't we know that pedophile ba$tard Muhammad occupied the Mecca temple by force?
I wish more Hindus in the west would speak out against Islam. Is it Stockholm Syndrome from centuries of Islamic imperialism?
@islamdevotee
"My posts are deep in substance and proof. Scholars can understand such depth. Educate yourself, become a scholar and you and other Muslim haters will see the depth of such arguments."
Your statements demonstrate your 'depth'. Shallow pronouncements and empty denials like the one above do not qualify as scholarly unless of course you live in the bizzarro world of nonexistent islamic logic.
@sagintoronto:
If you do some google search you will know that HAF (Hindu American Foundation), Indian american Association, Association of Kashmiri Pundits and many such organizations in the west are raising their voice against Islamic intolerance. There are several you tube videos in the internet on "Hindu Americans say "No" to Ground Zero mosque" . Also many Hindus who post their comments here against Islam on FFI, live in the west, which you can guess from their posts.
“The Pope himself has said sorry for the Crusades”
It’s a stupidity and inferior mentality to apologize with people who they themselves never apologize. Do any muslim leaders ever apologize about Islamic invasion? No, never. They don’t even congratulate other religions on their holy days unlike others in Indonesia who always congratulate muslims in Ramadhan or other “holy” days. This is the true form of dhimmitude and anyone who says about freedom of religion and equality in Indonesia is a heavily deluded fool. They even believe that Islamic wars were divine invasions so no need for apologizing. The pope is getting weaker and weaker day by day just like the Vatican now which is nothing more than a small city. What a weak creature does? It’s licking the ass of stronger creature for survival.
“Israel is trying to drive a wedge between Palestinian Christians and Muslims,”
A typical Christian’s comment which has hatred towards the Jews and had been told that they are stiff necked and rejected people in NT. Sadly, many Christians stupidly think the Jews had done worse than muslim. A dhimmi mentality indeed just like in Palestine. The Jewish people through out history never persecuted any Christians or conquering nations but the reverse applied. They only went to war involving their own land just like everyone did.
slaveofallah123,
Your nickname reminds me of the muslimah (SlaveOfAllah) who had not answered my arguments on “beating” and “inheritance” in article “How Muhammad Married Safiya Bint Huyay” since September 4. Your “argument” is also similar to her (using western women in the past and women rights in Islam), so I ask you to continue where she had left. Care to read it or just stay silent? We have a problem of understanding if people are too lazy to even read something and tend to repeating themselves thinking that they have already made a point or something. PS: Don’t imitate a “you-know-who” troll in here, back then we’ve already seen similar troll with similar words called “The Truth”. Reply when you are ready.
Islamdevotee,
You said, “Stupid article. Waste of time!”
Stupid comment, a real waste of time. Try to post this kind of statement in every article and make the readers laugh.
You said, “A lot of justifications has been done. When something is right one has to say it is right. When something is wrong one has to say it is wrong. This web site has a very simple agenda that is to destroy Islam by any means possible including defamation, fabrication, deception and misinformation.”
Typical no brainer’s comment. No justification has been done and when something is right/wrong you have to prove that something, not just by saying it. Talking is cheap. This website calls a spade for a spade and truth does hurt. Saying defamation is easy, proving it is not.
You said, “My posts are deep in substance and proof. Scholars can understand such depth. Educate yourself, become a scholar and you and other Muslim haters will see the depth of such arguments.”
Your post is nothing more than denial lacking of arguments. Your first comment here was not a representative of scholarly brain unless your brain has a different method of mechanism. Your comment shows your superficial intelligence and uneducated brain in religion. There are few people here who have deep substantial and proven posts but yours is certainly not one of them. One thing in life that is proven: never trust an overly self praised person, they have nothing but their mouth.
You said, “Correct. Most of the Muslim haters comments are copied and pasted from articles written by Ali Sina. Also, the so called hadith attributed to the prophet is being copied and pasted from “Center of Jewish-Muslim Engagement”. This Jewish organization is known for fabrications, deception and its anti Muslim agenda. Also, this Jewish organization presents its writings on a server host by University of Southern California to give it a legal front.”
Dead Wrong, I, for example, quote Quran and hadiths from downloaded files in Islamic sites, beside the hadith of Jewish and Muslim Engagement has the same content with other sites although I never use it. Note: no muslims have ever given the true hadiths until this very day so the hadiths mentioned here are correct. They only do 3 things: denying it as unauthentic (in term of the narrators not the J-M Engagement), ignoring it, and rationalizing it. Your lack of reference proved your incapability. On the contrary many muslims only copy paste their works here, example: the ox raef and SlaveOfAllah, not too mention coward muslim like devon who only has theory and never dare to enter reality. None of them has the proof, but hey they are still better than you who have zero argument and self praising technique. I even issued a challenge to the 2 big mouth muslims long ago who have a very high dose of hypocrisy but none could answer it. Care to check their posts? If you are a scholar you should continue their unfinished businesses with me. What kind of scholar are you if you have nothing to explain and prove? Most of non muslims here care less about Jews because they only fight for their survival and ignore the evil in Islam just like any other PCs. So, leave the favorite scapegoat behind and confront the truth, I mean the real truth not “The Truth”.
Quoting other scriptures when the people had abolished it in present days also shows your desperation. Two wrongs don’t make one right especially when the wrong has changed while other hasn’t (Islam). Not you not others, all the same, always repeating this stupidity.