{"id":5438,"date":"2007-09-13T22:44:28","date_gmt":"2007-09-13T22:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=5438"},"modified":"2013-04-09T22:45:45","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T22:45:45","slug":"jesus-and-mohammad-version-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jesus-and-mohammad-version-2-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus and Mohammad, Version 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

In academic revision, Christ is confused, the Prophet humanitarian.<\/h1>\n

by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n

National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n

F<\/span>ew things are more demonstrative of the sad state of affairs of modern academia than the increasingly fictionalized portrayals of the founders of the two largest religions in the world: Jesus and Mohammad. Though the same dubious methods are used for both \u2014 ignore the most historically valid texts and documents, build ponderous theories atop evidence of the most tenuous kind \u2014 the goals are markedly different. In academia today, we find Jesus, far from the Son of God, portrayed at once as a wandering \u201cmagician\u201d and a hippie-like philanderer inclined to homosexuality. Mohammad, whom the most authentic Muslim sources portray as, among other things, a warlord who had entire tribes executed and plundered, their women herded into harems, their children sold into slavery, appears as a peaceful and altruistic ruler whose governance ushered in, among other improvements, a sort of seventh-century \u201cfeminism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering that the early writers who composed the original texts and scriptures of Christianity and Islam were separated by only a few generations from the historic Jesus and Mohammad, as opposed to modern academics who are separated by 20 and 14 centuries, respectively, one would think that the former group would have been in a better position of authority to tell the narrative of Jesus and Mohammad. Yet nowhere is the arrogance of modernity better manifested than in the universities, where the straightforward words of history\u2019s primary sources are increasingly brushed aside. The implicit understanding is that the writers of the New Testament and Islam\u2019s vast compendium of scriptures were na\u00efve and superstitious simpletons who \u2014 unlike their more \u201cobjective\u201d modern day counterparts \u2014 simply could not critically engage their subjects.<\/p>\n

Whenever the primary sources make mention of anything that might annoy or offend modern sensibilities \u2014 from Jesus\u2019 celibacy to Mohammad\u2019s militant jihads \u2014 \u201cprogressive\u201d academics tend to simply dismiss it out of hand, preferring to rely on their own thoughts on the matter.<\/p>\n

When it comes to \u201creconstructing\u201d Jesus, academics invariably make two assumptions: The Gospels are not inspired, and the historical events recorded therein are also untrustworthy. In other words, not only do they reject the miraculous, they suspect the entire narrative, which has long been the primary source for understanding the nature of Jesus, even in a secular sense. Irrespective of what Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John record Jesus saying or doing; irrespective of the antiquity and authority of the Gospels, written just decades after the events they describe; irrespective of the fact that much of the historical events described in the Gospels accord with first-century Roman history; irrespective of all this, several Jesus \u201creconstructionalists\u201d have decided that the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament simply will not do for historical accuracy.<\/p>\n

Instead, they rely on two dubious authorities: any scraps of other religious writings and their own conjectures. Obscure Gnostic documents, which were refuted, discredited, and abandoned nearly 2000 years ago, or were of such little importance that the early church was not even aware of their existence, become foundational. Through these fragmented parchments, academics can read into Jesus whatever they desire. Pope Benedict XVI alludes to this in his book\u00a0Jesus of Nazareth<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n

At the same time, though, the reconstructions of this [modern-day] Jesus (who could only be discovered by going behind the traditions and sources used by the Evangelists) became more and more incompatible with one another: at one end of the spectrum, Jesus was the anti-Roman revolutionary working \u2014 though finally failing \u2014 to overthrow the ruling powers; at the other end, he was the meek moral teacher who approves everything and unaccountably comes to grief. If you read a number of these reconstructions one after another, you see at once that far from uncovering an icon that has become obscured over time, they are much more like photographs of their authors and the ideals they hold.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Consider, for instance, the standards of the \u201cJesus Seminar,\u201d a project of theWestar Institute<\/a>. They have made it a first premise to grant equal or more weight to an arcane document that we know next to nothing about (the fourth-century Coptic \u201cgospel of Thomas\u201d) vis-\u00e0-vis the canonical Gospels. The title of the Seminar\u2019s book,\u00a0The Five Gospels<\/i>, assumes that the \u201cgospel of Thomas,\u201d which was written nearly 300 years after the original Gospels, is enough to demonstrate the utter subjectivity of their supposedly rigorous methodology. Through a capricious \u201cvoting\u201d system, the Jesus Seminar takes it upon itself to decide what Jesus \u201creally\u201d said and did. According to the seminar, Jesus apparently spoke no more than 20 percent of the statements ascribed to him, nor did he make mention of \u201cthe kingdom of heaven,\u201d \u201cthe son of man\/God,\u201d or anything else that would have led to his execution.<\/p>\n

Following the loose standards set by the seminar, and based on another fragmented text known as \u201cPhilip\u2019s gospel,\u201d dating from the third century, books and movies that try to pass themselves off as quasi-documentary (Holy Blood, Holy Grail<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0The Da Vinci Code<\/i>) try to make a case that Jesus was married with children. Then there was the late professor Morton Smith\u2019s \u201cfind\u201d \u2014 a parchment supposedly written by Church father Clement that purportedly contained \u201cmissing\u201d fragments from the Gospel of Mark that portray Jesus spending the night with a \u201clightly-clad\u201d youth, teaching him the mystery of the kingdom of heaven. Based on this, Smith and other \u201ccritical\u201d scholars have either suggested or concluded that Jesus was gay. (Rather tellingly, when Smith was challenged to produce the original document, he could not oblige, and it is currently said to be \u201clost.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Even\u00a0if<\/i>\u00a0the aforementioned texts were authentic, they still do not at all support most of the academics\u2019 sweeping conclusions. For instance, no matter how one manipulates the fragmented text of Philip\u2019s gospel concerning Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the best that can be pieced together is that Jesus kissed her \u2014 we don\u2019t know where, head, cheeks, lips \u2014 and that he \u201cloved her,\u201d a far cry from saying that they were married and had offspring.<\/p>\n

All this simply supports the pope\u2019s notion that supposedly objective scholars are reading in whatever they want about Jesus. Nor do any of these academics note the fact that the Gnostic texts often directly contradict one another (unlike the Gospels, which enjoy a high degree of congruence). Where the gospel of Philip portrays Jesus as loving and kissing Mary, the gospel of Thomas has an extremely misogynistic quote to the effect that women are unworthy of heaven directed at none other than Mary herself. Is it any wonder that the early church deemed the Gnostic texts spurious and heretical?<\/p>\n

In the end, the so-called \u201chistorical\u201d Jesus that sticks in people\u2019s minds based on these academic distortions is little more than a liberal-minded, sexually ambiguous wandering sage, stripped, ironically, of all historical context. But as theologian John Meier points out:<\/p>\n

A tweedy poetaster who spent his time spinning out parables and Japanese koans\u2026or a bland Jesus who simply told people to look at lilies in the fields \u2014 such a Jesus would threaten no one, just as the university professors who create him [the Jesus Seminar and their ilk] threaten no one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While that is true, the pseudo-scholarship hashed out by universities\u2019 religion departments has, in fact, permeated the non-academic world and influenced the popular imagination, where it is often taken as \u201cfact.\u201d One can easily dismiss as risqu\u00e9 fiction movies like the\u00a0Da Vinci Code<\/i>, or its predecessor the\u00a0Last Temptation<\/i>, or the distasteful and amateurish James Cameron \u201cdiscovery\u201d of the tomb of Christ. But the fact remains that these are often based on pseudo-scholarship that the unsuspecting public assumes must be plausible \u2014 for instance, the\u00a0DaVinci Code<\/i>\u00a0quotes from Gnostic texts, including Philip\u2019s.<\/p>\n

A<\/span>\u00a0left-wing academic attempt to discredit Christian faith is not all too surprising given the personal persuasions of modern scholars. But the academic treatment of Islam\u2019s founder, Mohammad, exposes a double standard. The same class of academics uses the same uncritical methods \u2014 but for radically different purposes: to whitewash and romanticize.<\/p>\n

It has been remarked, and for good reason, that there is probably no one person of late antiquity who is better documented than Mohammad. Literally thousands of pages exist consisting of what Muslims believe to be verbatim statements and deeds attributed to their prophet. These are the \u201chadiths\u201d that, after the Koran, are the second most important source for Islamic jurisprudence. There are also historical works such as Ibn Ishaq\u2019s eighth-century\u00a0Life of Mohammad<\/i>, the earliest extensive biography of Islam\u2019s prophet, as well as the voluminous histories of al Tabari, al Baladhuri, and al Waki that recount the life and especially military exploits of Mohammad.<\/p>\n

Indeed, there is much more \u201cprimary\u201d source material on Mohammad than on Jesus. And this is to be expected, since the question of \u201cwhat would Mohammad do?\u201d in any given circumstance is of the utmost importance for Sunni Muslims \u2014 the word \u201cSunni\u201d denotes the need to emulate Mohammad in every possible way. It comes as no surprise, then, that the portrait of Islam\u2019s founder \u2014 his life, deeds, words, character, likes, dislikes \u2014 is very clear; only very few aspects, if any, of Mohammad\u2019s life are open to conjecture.<\/p>\n

Based solely on these sources, which, it bears repeating, Muslims themselves consider to be of great authority, one can spend pages enumerating less-than-impressive deeds attributed to Mohammad: aggressive and unprovoked warfare, mass executions, assassinations, lies, thefts, the enslavement of women and children, and marriage to a nine-year old. These are the sort of calumnies that, if there was just one scrap of parchment hinting that Jesus may have engaged in, the same aforementioned \u201cJesus scholars\u201d would undoubtedly have a field day popularizing and emphasizing. But when it comes to writing about Mohammad, few are the scholars who will even allude to these authoritative sources; they often go to great lengths to cover them up or at least minimize their authority.<\/p>\n

Consider, for instance, the issue of \u201cjihad.\u201d Islam\u2019s earliest theologians unanimously agreed that jihad was simply offensive warfare with the express purpose of spreading Islamic rule \u2014 a path shown by Mohammad himself, and then by his companions, the \u201crightly-guided\u201d caliphs, who conquered much of the Old World in the name of Islam. There is a good reason why all early works of English-language scholarship have always translated \u201cjihad\u201d as \u201choly war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the academic dissembling is well underway. Around the same time scholars of Christianity began perverting the image of Jesus, the professors of Islam began telling us that Mohammad\u2019s concept of \u201cjihad\u201d had nothing at all to do with \u201choly war\u201d (which, so the line of reasoning went, is instead a Christian creation of the Crusades), but that it simply means \u201cto strive\u201d \u2014 as in to strive to be \u201ca better student, a better colleague, a better business partner\u201d per one professor, Bruce Lawrence. This widely held view is based primarily on the oft-quoted hadith where, upon returning from battle, a group of Muslim warriors went to see Mohammad, and he said to them, \u201cYou have returned from the lesser jihad [warfare to spread Islam] to the greater jihad [warfare against one\u2019s own vices].\u201d This one hadith has all but come to define jihad for the academic community.<\/p>\n

Placing so much emphasis on this one hadith, however, is extremely problematic. For starters, not all hadiths are equal. Though there are thousands of hadiths, there are only six canonical collections that Sunnis consider trustworthy. This hadith does not occur in any of those six. On the other hand, the most authentic of the six hadith collections, the ninth-century\u00a0Sahih Bukari<\/i>mentions jihad 199 times,\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0in the context of warfare against non-Muslims in an effort to spread Islam. Further illustrative is the fact that the individual hadiths listed under the \u201cjihad\u201d heading of Sahih Bukhari often do not contain the word jihad at all; the words that predominate are \u201cfighting,\u201d \u201ckilling,\u201d \u201cwarring,\u201d and, the grand end of all three, \u201cmartyrdom.\u201d A typical\u00a0Sahih Bukhari<\/i>\u00a0hadith regarding jihad goes something like this:<\/p>\n

The Prophet said: \u201cHe who wages jihad in the path of Allah \u2014 and Allah knows who it is who wages jihad in his path \u2014 is as commendable as one who continuously fasts and prays. Allah guarantees if he who fights for his cause dies, he [Allah] will usher him into paradise; otherwise, he will return him to his home safely, with rewards or war booty.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Just as academics have downplayed the authority of the New Testament and ascribed much importance to the unauthenticated and dubious Gnostic parchments in their efforts to reconstruct Jesus, so too have they downplayed the authority of Islam\u2019s most authoritative texts in favor of aberrant and unsubstantiated hadiths when reconstructing Mohammad.<\/p>\n

The next strategy consists of playing semantic games. Scholars of Arabic insist that the word \u201cjihad\u201d literally means \u201cto struggle\u201d and thus clearly has nothing to do with \u201choly war.\u201d This line of reasoning totally ignores the historical and textual contexts in which the word jihad predominantly appears \u2014 all which revolve around \u201choly war\u201d \u2014 and is nothing short of disingenuous. As Daniel Pipes put it:<\/p>\n

It is an intellectual scandal that, since September 11, 2001, scholars at American universities have repeatedly and all but unanimously issued public statements that avoid or whitewash the primary meaning of jihad in Islamic law and Muslim history. It is quite as if historians of medieval Europe were to deny that the word “crusade” ever had martial overtones, instead pointing to such terms as “crusade on hunger” or “crusade against drugs” to demonstrate that the term signifies an effort to improve society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, many are the words that, while denoting one thing, are only understood connotatively. Imagine going to Arabic speakers and adamantly explaining to them that the English words \u201cboyfriend\u201d and \u201cgirlfriend\u201d mean nothing more than what they denote: a boy or girl who is simply a \u201cfriend.\u201d Considering that the vast majority of English speakers understand by those two terms something quite more than a friend, would that not be a dishonest explanation to the non-English-speaking Arab? Americans who don\u2019t speak Arabic are being duped in the same way. Just as a \u201cboy\/girl friend\u201d is a very specific\u00a0type<\/i>\u00a0of friend, so too is jihad a very specific\u00a0type<\/i>\u00a0of struggle \u2014 a lasting war in order to establish Islam supreme, \u201cuntil all chaos ceases and all religion belongs to Allah alone,\u201d in the words of the Koran.<\/p>\n

Even in encyclopedias \u2014 traditionally the most unequivocal source of scholarly information \u2014 the postmodern West\u2019s academic disregard for objectivity can be discerned. Compiled some 80 years ago, the voluminousEncyclopedia of Islam<\/i>\u00a0has long been recognized as the most authoritative English-language compendium on Islam. Its entry on jihad is honest and to the point, as demonstrated by its opening sentence: \u201cThe spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general.\u201d There is little talk of the \u201cgreater\/lesser jihad\u201d dichotomy or any other euphemisms, only facts: \u201c[Jihad] must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.\u201d Its closing sentence flatly states, \u201cIslam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contrast this brusque, but refreshingly honest, definition with the entry for jihad found in the 1995\u00a0Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World.<\/i>Although eventually addressing the true aspects of jihad, the all-important opening sentences would lead the reader to think that jihad as warfare on behalf of Islam is all but nonexistent:<\/p>\n

Carrying the basic connotation of an endeavor toward a praiseworthy aim, the word jihad bears many shades of meaning in the Islamic context. It may express a struggle against one\u2019s evil inclinations or an exertion for the sake of Islam and the\u00a0ummah<\/i>, for example, trying to convert unbelievers [how, warfare?] or working for the moral betterment of Islamic society (\u201cjihad of the tongue\u201d and \u201cjihad of the pen\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At one point, jihad is even portrayed as a possible byproduct of Christianity in this same\u00a0Oxford Encyclopedia<\/i>\u00a0entry \u2014 despite the fact that the founder of jihad, Mohammad, had absolutely no contact with Byzantium, aside from issuing an ultimatum to the Christian emperor Heraclius in 630 AD to the effect that if the latter did not embrace Islam, he would have only war (which proved only too true). Says the encyclopedia: \u201cThe doctrine of jihad may have been influenced somewhat by the culture of the Byzantine Empire, where the idea of religious war and related notions were very much alive. It is, however, very difficult to identify these sources.\u201d If identifying these sources is \u201cvery difficult\u201d \u2014 read \u201cimpossible\u201d \u2014 why make the bold assertion? Simply because the encyclopedia, being a product of an academic age that tries to lay the blame on Christianity and the Church, cannot resist the temptation of portraying even jihad, that unique hallmark of Islam, as also being something of a Christian byproduct.<\/p>\n

One can go on and on about the aggressive white-washing campaign underway on behalf of Mohammad and certain doctrinal aspects of the faith he promulgated. Harsh measures and misogynistic statements permeate Islamic scriptures: Men may take four wives and can have sex with their female slaves captured during jihad; a woman\u2019s witness in court is half that of a man; females inherit half of the male\u2019s inheritance; men have \u201cauthority\u201d over women and can beat them whenever they misbehave. All of these can be found in the Koran, which Muslims take as a doctrine of faith to be immutable and just as applicable today as in the seventh century. But academics stress only that Mohammad liberated women, who apparently suffered even worse injustices in the pre-Islamic period. (Mohammad banned the regular pre-Islamic Arab practice of burying unwanted female babies alive). The entry on women and Islam in the\u00a0Oxford Encyclopedia<\/i>, characterized by a markedly feminist tone, assures us that \u201cAlthough certain social and economic regulations in the scripture seemingly favor men, the conditions prevailing at the time of the revelation, which seem to justify such inequality, have lapsed.\u201d Such an opinionated statement totally contradicts the traditional belief of Muslims that the sharia is immutable. In the same vein, Leila Ahmad, author of\u00a0Women and Gender in Islam<\/i>, argues that the oppressive practices inflicted upon women living in Islamic lands are due to the prevalence of \u201cpatriarchal interpretations\u201d of Islam rather than Islam itself.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most troubling about all the above is not that\u00a0some<\/i>\u00a0writers make such dubious claims and arguments, but that supposedly authoritative and well-recognized professors \u2013 the \u201cexperts\u201d of the field \u2014 are the ones pioneering this sort of academic chicanery. It is both alarming and revealing that the professors not only utilize unsound methodologies, but are not even consistent in doing so. By constantly trying to make Jesus appear all too human, and Mohammad (who was\u00a0extremely<\/i>\u00a0human) appear as \u201ca prophet for our time,\u201d per one Karen Armstrong, secular academics will never refer to Jesus as the \u201cChrist.\u201d What the West used to construe as the Son of God and a moral leader is today just some liberal happy-go-lucky sage preaching love and passivity. And Mohammad has, in these circles, taken on the loving reputation of Christ. And herein lies academia\u2019s ultimate aspiration: everything is relative, even the divine.<\/p>\n

Raymond Ibrahim is the editor of the\u00a0Al-Qaeda Reader<\/i>, translations of religious texts and propaganda.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In academic revision, Christ is confused, the Prophet humanitarian. by Raymond Ibrahim National Review Online Few things are more demonstrative of the sad state of affairs of modern academia than the increasingly fictionalized portrayals of the founders of the two largest religions in the world: Jesus and Mohammad.<\/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":[227,754],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1pI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5564,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-would-mohammad-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":5438,"position":0},"title":"What Would Mohammad Do?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Private Papers We\u2019ve all seen them \u2014 those little wristbands Christians sometimes wear, or put on bumper stickers, with the acronym \u201cWWJD?\u201d \u2014 What Would Jesus Do? A reminder for them to ask, in every situation they face, what their Lord would do, and to emulate Jesus\u2019\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1454,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islams-predictability-apostasy-execution-and-lies\/","url_meta":{"origin":5438,"position":1},"title":"Islam’s Predictability: Apostasy, Execution, and Lies","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch As one ponders the fate of Yousef Nadarkhani, the Iranian pastor on death row for refusing to renounce Christianity, it is well to reflect that, for all the talk that Islam is perpetually \"misunderstood,\" it is actually immensely predictable and consistent; not only do its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5493,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-do-muslims-want\/","url_meta":{"origin":5438,"position":2},"title":"What Do Muslims Want?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Priority problems. by Raymond Ibrahim National Review Online All humans generally live according to some set of priorities. A person may make a priority of health, of pleasure, of study, of almost anything, really. But it is practically a law of nature that a person must make a priority of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7282,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/raymond-ibrahim-on-cbn-news-will-egypts-el-sisi-protect-christians\/","url_meta":{"origin":5438,"position":3},"title":"Raymond Ibrahim on CBN News: ‘Will Egypt’s el-Sisi Protect Christians?’","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/ CBN News\u00a0 On April 24, CBN News Senior International Reporter Gary Lane interviewed me about Egypt. Lane\u2019s write-up, \u201cWill Egypt\u2019s el-Sisi Protect Christians?\u201d as well as the three part interview, follow: With only one month to go before Egyptians elect a new president, it looks like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/lklkl-300x223.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/unprecedented-egyptian-government-suppresses-christian-doctrine\/","url_meta":{"origin":5438,"position":4},"title":"Unprecedented: Egyptian Government Suppresses Christian Doctrine","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media It is not enough that the Egyptian government\u00a0facilitates persecution of the Copts, Egypt's indigenous Christian minority. Now the government is interfering directly with the church's autonomy concerning doctrine. According to the\u00a0Assyrian International News Agency: The head of the Coptic Church in Egypt has rejected a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5432,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/peace-to-whoever-follows-guidance\/","url_meta":{"origin":5438,"position":5},"title":"Peace to Whoever Follows Guidance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"More al Qaeda double talk by Raymond Ibrahim National Review Online As with every message directed to the West, Osama bin Laden\u2019s most recent address begins and ends with his hallmark sentence: \u201cPeace to whoever follows guidance.\u201d What exactly are Americans and Europeans to understand by this simple statement? Considering\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5438"}],"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=5438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5439,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5438\/revisions\/5439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}