by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
City Journal<\/em><\/p>\n O<\/span>n November 18, the\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0ran a full-page ad entitled \u201cA Christian Response to\u00a0A Common Word Between Us and You<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0A Common Word<\/i>\u00a0is an October letter from 138 Muslim scholars and clerics \u201cto leaders of Christian churches, everywhere.\u201d It reads like an invitation to ecumenical tolerance and \u201cpeace and understanding\u201d based on \u201cthe very foundational principles of both faiths\u201d: \u201cThe Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.\u201d Over 300 Christian theologians and church leaders signed the \u201cChristian Response,\u201d including the heads of some of the nation\u2019s most prestigious seminaries and theological schools. But if it accurately represents the thinking of mainstream Christian leadership, then Christianity in America is in deep trouble.<\/p>\n The response opens on a familiar self-loathing note, in the therapeutic style that has convinced jihadists that Christianity in the West is an empty shell, a mere lifestyle choice. Noting that Muslim and Christian \u201crelations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility,\u201d the letter professes \u201cthat in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the \u2018war on terror\u2019) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors,\u201d and so \u201cwe ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n The groveling self-abasement of this language, particularly its begging forgiveness of Allah, is matched only by its remarkable historical ignorance. \u201cOutright hostility\u201d has indeed existed between Muslims and Christians, for the simple reason that for 13 centuries Islam grew and spread by war, plunder, rapine, and enslavement throughout the Christian Middle East. Allah\u2019s armies destroyed regions that were culturally Christian for centuries, variously slaughtering, enslaving, and converting their inhabitants, or allowing them to live as oppressed\u00a0dhimmi<\/i>, their lives and property dependent on a temporary \u201ctruce\u201d that Muslim overlords could abrogate at any time.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s not forget the seven-century-long Islamic occupation of Spain, the centuries of raids into southern Italy and southern France, the near-sack of Rome in 846, the occupation of Sicily and Greece, the four-century-long occupation of the Balkans, the destruction of Constantinople, the two sieges of Vienna, the kidnapping of Christian youths to serve as janissaries from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the continual raiding of the northern Mediterranean littoral for slaves from 1500 to 1800, and the current jihadist terrorist attacks against the West.<\/p>\n These historical crimes dwarf those committed during the few centuries of the Crusades, which, for all of their excesses and mixed motives, were fought to liberate from Muslim hegemony the lands that had been Christian for six and a half centuries before Islam burst forth from the Arabian Peninsula. Many contemporary Christians betray their moral and spiritual incoherence when they demonize the Crusades but excuse, as justified \u201cliberation,\u201d the numerous Arab assaults on Israel\u2019s \u201coccupation\u201d of lands to which the Jews have a 3,000-year-old connection.<\/p>\n For its part,\u00a0A Common Word<\/i>\u00a0makes no apologies for the violence that Islam has perpetrated against Christian people up to the present day. And the \u201cChristian Response\u201d repeats the \u201ccommon ground\u201d mantra, along with the usual calls to \u201cinterfaith dialogue,\u201d and makes flattering references to the Muslim clerics\u2019 \u201cdeep insight and courage\u201d and their \u201cgenerous letter.\u201d This appeasing tone of the traditional\u00a0dhimmi<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 an unreciprocated solicitude typical of the inferior when dealing with his superior \u2013\u2013 suggests once again that the West is spiritually dead, its Christian faith in the hands of those who will not defend it, even in print.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a92007 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christian leaders abase themselves before Islam by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal On November 18, the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0ran a full-page ad entitled \u201cA Christian Response to\u00a0A Common Word Between Us and You.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,752],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1oZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2494,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/oslo-and-the-dangers-of-moral-equivalence\/","url_meta":{"origin":5393,"position":0},"title":"Oslo and the Dangers of Moral Equivalence","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The revelation that the perpetrator of the terrorist attacks in Oslo, Anders Behring Breivik, is a self-described Christian and conservative is sure to provoke an outburst of the moral equivalence favored by apologists for jihadism. Ever since 9\/11, those unwilling to confront the theology\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1226,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jihadists-get-the-veto\/","url_meta":{"origin":5393,"position":1},"title":"Jihadists Get the Veto","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity\u00a0\u2013 Yeats, The Second Coming Florida pastor Terry Jones called off his Koran-burning after President Obama and others in his administration joined the chorus of Americans asking him not to go through with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3066,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fog-of-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":5393,"position":2},"title":"The Fog of Revolution","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society Apart from celebratory statements applauding what looks like to us democratic \u201cpeople\u2019s revolutions\u201d against tyrannous autocrats, the uprisings sweeping across the Muslim Middle East have created great uncertainty for policy-makers as they try to calculate a response. Like war, revolutions take place\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3407,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-secularist-delusion\/","url_meta":{"origin":5393,"position":3},"title":"The Secularist Delusion","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The dubious received wisdom rationalizing our current intervention in Libya was crystallized in Senator John Kerry\u2019s recent\u00a0essay\u00a0for\u00a0The Wall Street Journal. For Kerry, the rebels in Libya are the same as those in Egypt, \u201cpeacefully demanding freedom and dignity.\u201d Long oppressed by tyrants\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1159,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/whitewashing-islam-who-controls-the-past-controls-the-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":5393,"position":4},"title":"Whitewashing Islam: “Who Controls the Past Controls the Future”","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com In\u00a01984\u00a0George Orwell described how the abandonment of belief in objective truth makes possible a politicized history that legitimizes tyrannical power: If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened\u2014that, surely, was more terrifying than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8182,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/more-delusional-apologetics-for-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":5393,"position":5},"title":"More Delusional Apologetics for Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine It\u2019s pretty embarrassing when the on-line comments about an article are more logical and knowledgeable than the article. Such is the case with a Wall Street Journal\u00a0op-ed last week that argued Muslim violence does not reflect traditional Islamic doctrine, but is merely a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Turkey"","block_context":{"text":"Turkey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/turkey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Koran-cover-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5394,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393\/revisions\/5394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}