Philip Jenkins: “Christendom’s Last Holy War? The First World War as a Crusade”

"The Great and Holy War: How World War I Changed Religion for Ever" By Philip Jenkins (2014).

Description of the book (source):

The Great and Holy War offers the first look at how religion created and prolonged the First World War. At the one-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, historian Philip Jenkins reveals the powerful religious dimensions of this modern-day crusade, a period that marked a traumatic crisis for Western civilization, with effects that echoed throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. Thanks to the emergence of modern media, a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was given to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels and apparitions, visions and the supernatural was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the major religions—Christianity, Judaism and Islam—paving the way for modern views of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism.

Connecting numerous remarkable incidents and characters—from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, the Christmas Truce to the Armenian Genocide—Jenkins creates a powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global politics, history, and spiritual crisis as never before and shows how religion informed and motivated circumstances on all sides of the war.

Video Title: Philip Jenkins: “Christendom’s Last Holy War? The First World War as a Crusade.” Source: OU IACH. Date Published: April 8, 2016. Description:

Philip Jenkins, an author and history professor at Baylor University, kicks off the 2016 Teach-In, "Teach-In on the First World War on March 7, 2016.

Islam's War On Women And Why It Can't Be Reformed

An excerpt from, "Islam's War on Women - 8 Miles from the White House" By Patrick Poole, PJ Media, April 12, 2012:

A book by a senior Indian Islamic scholar that recently prompted international outrage for directing Muslim husbands on how to properly beat and control their wives is on sale at the largest Islamic bookstore in the Washington D.C. area, just a twenty minute drive from the White House, all while the Obama campaign proclaims that Republicans are waging a “war on women” by promoting pro-life, pro-family policies, and as DCCC media strategist Hilary Rosen continues to attack Ann Romney for her decision to stay at home and raise her five sons.

The book in question is “A Gift For the Muslim Couple” by Ashraf Ali Thanvi that directs a Muslim husband “it might be necessary to restrain her [wife] with strength or even threaten her,” adding that he may scold his wife, “beat by hand or stick,” withhold money from her or “pull (her) by the ears,” but should “refrain from beating her excessively.”

Thanvi’s book was recently in the news when the Toronto Sun discovered the book being sold at a prominent Islamic bookstore in Toronto, prompting criticism from all corners of Canadian politics and society. The story was picked up elsewhere by the international press.

An excerpt from, "Islam's War on Women's Education" By Dr. Radhasyam Brahmachari, Islam Watch, March 9, 2011:

While Muslim women generally lag behind in education everywhere, they are also violently prevented from undertaking education where Islamists gain power, such as in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As per the Quran, hadith and sira, Taliban are the truest followers of Islam; hence their deeds reflect the purest form of Islam. A press report on March 6, 2011 said: “Taliban militants blew up a state-run girls' school in north-west Pakistan today, though there were no casualties in the attack. The militants blew up the girls' primary school at Kalo Banda Shawa in Swabi district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province with explosives laid around the building, sources said. The Taliban, who are opposed to the education of girls, have destroyed hundreds of schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and the adjoining tribal belt over the past three years.” As Taliban represent the purest form of Islam, one should conclude that the pure Islam is against educating its women.

. . . Schoolgirls in Pakistan face daily threats for attending schools. Pakistan is currently in crisis, because many parts of this nation are out of control, and central forces can do little to stem the tide of Islamic hatred. Given this reality, the Taliban and other radical Muslim organizations have warned young girls from obtaining education. This policy is not related to the government of Pakistan, but the government must be held accountable for not protecting female students and female teachers. Instead this barbaric policy is being introduced by radical Sunni Islamic forces who desire to rule by fear. Attacks which began to increase in 2009 have continued in 2010 and schools have been bombed by pro-Taliban forces.

An excerpt from, "Why calling for an ‘Islamic Reformation’ is lazy and historically illiterate" By Theo Hobson, The Spectator, February 5, 2015:

So the ‘Islam needs its reformation’ line makes this mistake. It supposes that Christianity and Islam are two comparable forms of religion: if Religion A adapted to modernity, Religion B can too. But Religion A didn’t adapt to modernity: it inadvertently made modernity, by trying to be more purely itself.

The game-changing idea that emerged in the wake of the Protestant Reformation can be summed up thus: down with theo-cracy! (Maybe I’m a soppy liberal patriot, but it seems to me that this breakthrough was 90 per cent English.) Let the state no longer enforce religious uniformity, but rather protect people’s freedom to choose how to worship. This revolution in theo-politics was proposed not by atheists but by idealistic Protestants. God wills this new sort of liberty-protecting state, said people like John Milton and John Locke. (Nonbelievers like Spinoza and Voltaire followed in their wake and have received undue credit.)

Why did they think that political liberty was God’s will? They had learned from earlier Protestants like Luther to distrust bossy institutions and religious rules; they now applied this to politics as well as religion. And they pointed to the New Testament, which affirms no theocratic model of politics (unlike the Old Testament, with its holy kings). The whole tradition of coercion in religion is wrong, is at odds with scripture, they said. For example, John Locke, in his ‘Letter Concerning Toleration’, claimed that toleration is ‘the principal mark of the true church’.

The Empire's Sheikh

 

First the Queen, then the fly. 

The Egyptian press calls him the Mufti of terrorism while the BBC calls him religious scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi! He is the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood Imam. pic.twitter.com/CdEXR636nh

— Nev 𓂜𓆑𓇌𓈖 🇪🇬 (@Nev_ertiti) September 26, 2022

An excerpt from, "The Muslim Brotherhood: The Many Faces of Their Majesty's Service" By Ramtanu Maitra, Executive Intelligence Review, August 9, 2013:

Or, take the case of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the MB. He was imprisoned under King Farouq in 1949, then three times during the reign of President Nasser, until he left Egypt for Qatar in 1961. He arrived in London in 2004, according to the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). On Aug. 11, 2004, Anthony Browne, in his column with the Spectator, titled "The Triumph of the East," pointed out that Qaradawi, who was welcomed by the leftist Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone ("Red Ken"), in his broadcast in 1999, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, had said: "Islam will return to Europe. The conquest need not necessarily be by the sword. Perhaps we will conquer these lands without armies. We want an army of preachers and teachers who will present Islam in all languages and in all dialects."

Al-Qaradawi returned to Egypt in 2011 in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution.

Londonistan: Refuge of Islamic Terrorists

Because of the myriad of Islamic terrorist outfits that operate from Britain under the protection of MI6 and the British government, it was the French who began to call the British capital "Londonistan." In the 1990s, the French security services became alarmed and frustrated by the growing presence of Algerian Islamists who used London as a rear base from which to conduct their terrorist campaign against France. They were mostly, but by no means all, members of the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Armée, GIA).

According to French sources, the GIA, which was responsible for the assassination of Algerian President Mohamed Boudiaf on June 29, 1992, has its international headquarters in London. Sheikh Abu Qatabda, who has recently been extradited to Jordan, and Abu Musab communicated military orders to GIA terrorists operating in Algeria and France via the London-based party organ, al-Ansar.

Sheikh Abu Qatabda was granted asylum in Britain in 1992, after he was condemned to death in Algeria for acknowledging responsibility for a bombing at the Algiers Airport. A third London-based GIA leader, Abu Fares, oversees operations against France. He was granted asylum in Britain in 1992, after he was condemned to death in Algeria for acknowledging responsibility for the same operation that killed 9 people and wounded 125 at the Algiers Airport. He was also suspected of bombing three Paris train and subway stations and an open-air market. France sought the extradition of some of the terrorists in connection with the bombings in Paris during the 1980s. The British authorities took the view, however, that they should be granted asylum, provided they had committed no crimes on British soil.

Among the Arab Islamist ideologues who had been granted asylum—and in some cases, the indefinite right to stay, or even British citizenship—was Rashid Gannouchi, who heads the Tunisian Ennahda party. Gannouchi had left Tunisia on completion of a prison sentence for terrorist offenses in 1989. After 22 years in Britain, he returned to Tunisia to take control of the Brotherhood, following the fall of President Zine el Abidin Bin Ali in 2001. In 2012, he was awarded the Royal Institute of International Affairs' prize by Prince Andrew, Duke of York, for "the successful compromises achieved during Tunisia's democratic transition."

Beside the Libyan Fighting Group members, who were sent back to Libya in 2011 to kill Qaddafi, Britain protected and allowed to flourish the Syrian expatriate Omar Bakri Fostock (aka Omar Bakri Mohammed), who, with another Syrian expatriate, Farid Kassim, founded a branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Liberation Party, HT) in 1986. He had arrived in Britain, after being expelled from Saudi Arabia, to where he claims he had fled from Syria after the late President Hafez al-Assad's crackdown on the MB. In Saudi Arabia he claims that he was active in another group with a similar ideology, al-Muhajiroun (The Emigrants). HT has now become an international terrorist outfit with a strong presence in Central Asia, Pakistan, and northern Lebanon.

An excerpt from, "Intervening in the Libyan tragedy" By Marc Lynch, Foreign Policy, February 21, 2011:

There is no avoiding what is happening in Libya. Al-Jazeera Arabic has been covering the Libyan situation heavily for the last couple of days and has powerfully conveyed the gravity of the situation, including broadcasting some truly disturbing images and video of protestors. I’ve been stunned by what Libyans inside the country and outside have been willing to say on the air about the regime — prominent Libyan diplomats declaring Qaddafi to by a tyrant, major tribal leaders calling for his overthrow, Yusuf al-Qaradawi calling on the air for someone to shoot Qaddafi, and more. The Arab world’s attention is focused on Libya now, after several days of a fragmented news agenda divided among Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and more. Voice after voice, Libyans and other Arabs alike, denounce the silence of the international community and call for action. Qaddafi has few friends, and Qatar has called for an urgent Arab League meeting to deal with the crisis. While history doesn’t suggest we can expect all that much from that club, their public support for international action could go a long way towards overcoming any suggestion that this is an imperialist venture.

Alex Jones speaks outside Sandy Hook trial

Source: AP.

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