His­to­ry

A spe­cial ​“gift” for the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies on occa­sion of Good Fri­day. I wish to show by an analy­sis of Wis­dom Chris­tol­ogy in Matthew’s gospel chap­ter 23, that the evan­ge­list took the dra­mat­ic step of chang­ing Jesus’ meta­phys­i­cal sta­tus from crea­ture to Cre­ator by alter­ing the Q tra­di­tion, and to reflect on the the­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this meta­mor­pho­sis for Chris­tian­i­ty, and where we go from here.

One of the big ques­tions nobody has asked about Mel Gib­son’s The Pas­sion Of The Christ is this : If the cru­ci­fix­ion was a his­toric event and so cen­tral to the Chris­t­ian Gospel, why is it that there is no evi­dence what­ev­er of a man on a cross in Chris­t­ian art and mon­u­ments for almost sev­en cen­turies ? Not until 692 CE, in the reign of Emper­or Jus­tin­ian II, was it decreed that hence­forth instead of a lamb (the zodi­a­cal sign of Aries) fixed on the cross, the fig­ure of Jesus be placed there instead. Anoth­er ques­tion : How is it that the ear­li­est known fig­ure of any man on a cross comes from about 300 BCE and that ​“per­son” is not Jesus but Orpheus, a myth­i­cal Greek sun-god ?

Of all the Mus­lim rulers who ruled vast ter­ri­to­ries of India from 712 to 1857 CE, prob­a­bly no one has received as much con­dem­na­tion from West­ern and Hin­du writ­ers as Aurangzeb. He has been cas­ti­gat­ed as a reli­gious Mus­lim who was anti-Hin­du, who taxed them, who tried to con­vert them, who dis­crim­i­nat­ed against them in award­ing high admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions, and who inter­fered in their reli­gious mat­ters. This view has been heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed in the gov­ern­ment approved text­books in schools and col­leges across post-par­ti­tion India (i.e., after 1947). These are fab­ri­ca­tions against one of the best rulers of India who was pious, schol­ar­ly, saint­ly, unbi­ased, lib­er­al, mag­nan­i­mous, tol­er­ant, com­pe­tent, and far-sighted.

It has always been the mis­sion­ary tra­di­tion to jump from one nefar­i­ous claim to anoth­er in try­ing to ascer­tain the nature of ​“Allah”. We have pre­vi­ous­ly shown some of the more com­mon the­o­ries that they prop­a­gate, rang­ing from Allah (T) being the ​“moon god” to Ar-Rah­man being a term for ​“promeganate”. A recent mis­sion­ary alle­ga­tion has also been hurled against a beatif­ic salu­ta­tion of the Prophet Muham­mad sal­lal­lah ​‘alay­hi wa sal­lam. Now a new pos­tu­la­tion of the mis­sion­ary has been made in their arti­cle, name­ly that ​“Allah” is syn­ony­mous with the god Hubal of the pagan Makkans !

We present as fol­lows a quote from Tony Blair, Prime Min­is­ter of Unit­ed King­dom, which was pub­lished quite recent­ly in For­eign Affairs, January/​February 2007.

Few peo­ple real­ize that the ori­gins of a form of Christ­mas was pagan and cel­e­brat­ed in Europe long before any­one there had heard of Jesus (P). No one knows what day Jesus (P) was born on. From the bib­li­cal descrip­tion, most his­to­ri­ans believe that his birth prob­a­bly occurred in Sep­tem­ber, approx­i­mate­ly six months after Passover. One thing they agree on is that it is very unlike­ly that Jesus was born in Decem­ber, since the Bible records shep­herds tend­ing their sheep in the fields on that night. This is quite unlike­ly to have hap­pened dur­ing a cold Judean win­ter. So why do we cel­e­brate Christ’s birth­day as Christ­mas, on Decem­ber 25th ?

What then is hajj ? In essence, hajj is man’s evo­lu­tion toward Allah ; his return to Him. It is a sym­bol­ic demon­stra­tion of the phi­los­o­phy of cre­ation of Adam (AS : alay­his salam), the first man. To fur­ther illus­trate this, it may be stat­ed that the per­for­mance of hajj is a simul­ta­ne­ous show or exhib­it of many things. It is a show of cre­ation. It is a show of his­to­ry. It is a show of uni­ty. It is a show of Islam­ic ide­ol­o­gy. It is a show of Ummah, the com­mu­ni­ty of Muslims.

This arti­cle was writ­ten to pro­vide a schol­ar­ly analy­sis on the ide­ol­o­gy of Zion­ism, its ori­gins and pur­pose, as well as its past ​“achieve­ments” in hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly dis­plac­ing thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans who sud­den­ly lost their home­land to this group of ter­ror­ists. We seek to con­front and expose the true nature of the ide­ol­o­gy of Zion­ism, often tout­ed as ​“Jew­ish nation­al­ism”. Can Zion­ism be equat­ed with the Jews and Judaism ? Is Zion­ism whol­ly ground­ed on reli­gious grounds as the Zion­ist them­selves try to claim, or just anoth­er name for the sec­u­lar and/​or racist ide­olo­gies that we have seen in the last cen­tu­ry in the likes of Nazism, Fas­cism and Apartheid ? These are the fruits of our research on the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, and we leave it to the read­er to form their own con­clu­sions and decide whether Zion­ism should be right­ful­ly con­front­ed and opposed, or otherwise.

But why did the Mus­lim react in such a man­ner when Pope Bene­dict repeat­ed some­thing that we are already accus­tomed to hear­ing from not so friend­ly west­ern pub­lic fig­ures ? After all flam­boy­ant tel­e­van­ge­lists like Jer­ry Fal­well have said worse things than the Pope –- call­ing the Prophet of Islam a pae­dophile and ter­ror­ist – yet we nev­er asked for an apol­o­gy. In the mod­ern era, not least because of the late Pope John Paul II, Mus­lims have a gen­uine respect for the head of the Catholic church. The Cru­sades, the Recon­quista, the Inqui­si­tions were far behind us. The Catholic Church with its long his­to­ry and tra­di­tion, its large num­ber of faith­ful and the author­i­ty of its lead­er­ship, its unam­bigu­ous moral pre­cepts and its litur­gies and rites rep­re­sent what con­sti­tutes Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy to ordi­nary Mus­lim eyes, as the last bas­tion against the inex­orable march of sec­u­lar­iza­tion of west­ern society.

The Con­fer­ence unfolds to the bal­anced mind. Its soul is the hon­or of the search, the equa­nim­i­ty of judg­ment and the breath of beauty.…

Today, we see Mus­lims being propo­si­tioned by Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cal groups and mis­sion­ar­ies relent­less­ly with a zeal that astounds us. Day by day, they seek out the weak, the poor, the sick, the des­ti­tutes amongst the Mus­lims of Asia and work their way in. Many of these mis­sion­ar­ies work under guise of char­i­ties and relief effort work­ers. By doing a bit of research, what do I find ? Count­less projects by the Chris­t­ian Glob­al Mis­sion­ar­ies out with a purpose…to con­vert the Mus­lims to their creed.

Apos­ta­sy, appar­ent­ly a human rights relat­ed issue, is high­ly sen­si­tive to the mul­ti-racial and mul­ti-reli­gious char­ac­ter of Malaysia. It tends to be prob­lem­at­ic, unten­able to some, espe­cial­ly when it deals with con­ver­sion into and out of Islam. It is true, the whole ques­tion involves cer­tain legal and social impli­ca­tions. At times, its reper­cus­sions appear to rat­tle the social sol­i­dar­i­ty and reli­gious har­mo­ny of our peace­ful nation. All these threat­en­ing con­se­quences are actu­al­ly caused by igno­rance. This writ­ing is not to incite fur­ther dis­sen­sion. Nei­ther is it intend­ed to sound apolo­getic. On the con­trary it calls for all par­ties direct­ly or indi­rect­ly affect­ed by the sub­ject mat­ter, Mus­lims and non-Mus­lims alike, to view it with an open heart guid­ed by wisdom.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of The Dead Sea Scrolls Decep­tion, argue that a paci­fistic Jesus was very unlike­ly. As the authors point out, Qum­ran­ian phras­es flowed from his lips, some­times word for word. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, schol­ars con­cede that at least some Zealots made up Jesus inner cir­cle. The Bible itself reveals him act­ing in a Zealot-like way, dri­ving the mon­ey chang­ers out of the Tem­ple. He states in the gospels : ​“I am come not to bring peace, but a sword”. In the same vein, when a cohort of Roman sol­diers comes for him in Geth­se­mane, Peter rais­es his sword against them, hard­ly the act of a meek Chris­t­ian. As reveal­ing is the num­ber of sol­diers in a Roman cohort, six hun­dred. Why send six hun­dred sol­diers except in antic­i­pa­tion of armed resis­tance ? And cru­ci­fix­ion, remem­ber, was the method of exe­cu­tion for rebels, not rab­bis. These bib­li­cal events, in con­flict with Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion, do not con­flict with the Qum­ran con­text. On the con­trary, they fit.

In the post‑9/​11 era the West­ern media are at the fore­front of a high­ly orches­trat­ed assault against Islam and its peo­ple. So, I am not too sur­prised with the Times Online piece try­ing to raise storm over some 13th cen­tu­ry text that are taught at a Shi’ite reli­gious school in Lon­don. The sub­ject in ques­tion is najasa or impu­ri­ty : what makes some­thing impure accord­ing to Muhaqqiq al-Hilli, a 13th cen­tu­ry Shi’ite schol­ar. The text says, ​“The water left over in the con­tain­er after any type of ani­mal has drunk from it is con­sid­ered clean and pure apart from the left over of a dog, a pig, and a dis­be­liev­er.” So, the Times reporter Sean O’Connell draws the con­clu­sion that Mus­lim stu­dents are ​“being taught to despise unbe­liev­ers as filth”, which becomes the news head­ing, sure to draw much pub­lic­i­ty in UK before the elec­tion in May.

The saga of Abdul Rehman’s con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty may be over but the after­math is far from set­tled. Like a clock­work of hate, the episode has brought upon yet anoth­er wave of crit­i­cisms against Islam and its record for reli­gious tol­er­ance. But what few would realise is that the West has a his­to­ry of reli­gious intol­er­ance and per­se­cu­tions that would put Mus­lim Afghanistan to shame.