The
version of the Christian faith that has cast the greatest
shadow of misery over humanity is that centred in Rome. The
Roman Patriarchate, the Papacy, is the only version of Christianity
which has modelled itself on the prescriptions of Islam.
In
his book "Byzantium: The bridge from antiquity to
the middle ages" author Michael Angold endeavours
to explain what he alleges to be the "superiority" of
Islamic culture. On p 69 of his book Angold writes:
: "...Islam
had created in almost every respect [a] superior civilization." to
the Byzantines and the Franks...
For this
to be true, it would help to show how this "Islamic civilization" was either
emulated or how its influence extended beyond its immediate geographic borders
.... This poses some difficulty when regarding Byzantium, but none when considering
the impact the Mohammedan faith had on Rome and the Catholic Papacy.
| Angold
attempts to show how the Byzantines "emulated" the
Abbasids. In p 39 however he had written "...
the Carolingian West and the Abbasid Caliphate
sought to emulate and surpass Byzantium..." but
then on p. 90 he writes that the Byzantine emperor
(Theophilus) instead was emulating the Abbasid
court.
However,
the Abbasid Court was an attempt to recreate
in Baghdad the splendour of the demolished
Sassanian Court as it had existed in Ctesiphon
before Arab conquest and subsequent demolition.
The claimed Abbasid-cum-Arab achievement
was instead (largely) Persian: the Abbasids
were helped into power by Persians and this
resulted in preferential treatment of Persians
by their Arab over-lords (Mary Boyce in her "Zoroastrians:
their religious beliefs and practices" pp
150-152; and Delacy O'Leary in his "How Greek
Science passed to the Arabs" pp 147-148 & 155,
both write on this Persian phase for instance). |
THE
TRANSMISSION OF MOHAMMEDAN PRINCIPLES TO THE LATIN
CATHOLIC WEST:
The
Latin Catholic version of Christianity came to adopt
several features and beliefs that characterised Mohammedism:
killing unbelievers leads directly to Paradise; an
Inquisition to make certain that the faith is not
corrupted; and that those outside the faith (non-Christians
in a Christian society/ non-Mohammedans in a Mohammedan
society) be dressed in a way to make them easily
recognisable (Hitler was so impressed with this Mohammedan
idea that he took it up himself).
1/Mohammedans
(Muslims) made landfall in Spain in 711. In 788 Charlemagne
was invited by the Mohammedan governor of Barcelona
Suleiman ibn-al-Arabi to give military assistance
against his enemy Abderrahman. On his return to France
Charlemagne was ambushed by Basques. It is this ambush
of 788 which is remembered in the Song of Roland from
which to quote: "...if you die, you will be holy
martyrs. You will have seats in Paradise the Great." (lines
95-100).
This
idea that martyrdom could be achieved by dying whilst
spilling blood then made its way to Rome and became
part of Urban 2's call for a Crusade 3 centuries
later:
"All who
die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans,
shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power
of
God with
which I am invested." Urban 2 (1088-1099) Speech at Council of Clermont,
1095
This
is a non-Christian idea which comes directly from
the Koran:
Repentance
9:38: "Believers, why is it that when it is said to you: 'March in the cause
of Allah,' you linger slothfully in the land? Are you content with this life
in preference to the life to come? Few indeed are the blessings of this life
compared to those of the life to come. If you do not fight He will punish
you sternly and replace you by other men. Allah has power over all things." ... "Are
you waiting for anything to befall us except victory or martyrdom?" Repentance
9.51
[Note:
Although the ambush in the Song of Roland was by Basques,
not Mohammedans, as claimed in the poem, that in itself is immaterial.
The point is, that Charlemagne's force was fighting on behalf of
a Muslim force. Essentially, this was a Christian leader fighting
on behalf of Allah. As every Muslim knows, killing for god leads
to either "victory or martyrdom". And martyrdom according to this
faith can only be achieved by dying in the process of killing "unbelievers" (or
those who might not be considered pious enough to quite be "believers").
To someone fighting on behalf of the "one true god", any Mohammedan's
promise included the promise of "martyrdom" and immediate entry
to paradise as reward for fighting on the side of Allah.]
| *The
idea of any remission of sins, or martyrdom gained
by killing was never adopted or endorsed in the
Greek Orthodox eastern version of Christianity.
Emperor Nicephorus 2 (reigned 963-969) attempted
gaining concessions from the Patriarch Polyeuctus
at Constantinople that soldiers who died fighting
Muslims be honoured as martyrs. However, the
Patriarch declared that killing in battle was
a sin requiring penance.
(The
Greek eastern Orthodox version of Christianity
included the Serbs, Russians, as well as
the Greeks, Rumanians - and eventually, the
Bulgars.)
Urban's
call to arms against Mohammedans was not
the first such call made by Roman Christians.
Leo 4 (reigned 847-55) predates Urban 2 by
two & a half centuries.
In
846 Rome was attacked by Mohammedans. The
next year Leo was made Pope, and he commenced
on building fortifications for the city.
In 849 another Islamic armada sailed for
Rome, but was destroyed. It is not a matter
of coincidence that faced with a foe determined
to die because they believed they would gain
immediate entry to heaven, that Leo 4 made
a speech which included those very same sentiments
of his attackers. Part of Leo 4's speech
to the Frankish army:
"Now
we hope that none of you will be slain, but
we wish you to know that the kingdom of heaven
will be given as a reward to those who shall
be killed in this war. For the Omnipotent
knows that they lost their lives fighting
for the truth of the faith, for the preservation
of their country, aid the defence of Christians.
And therefore God will give then, the reward
which we have named."
Yet
even Leo 4's call has a history which predates
it and this call has to be put into the historical
context in which it was made:
After
the death of Mohammed, his followers set out to conquer the world.
In 719 Mohammedans attacked Septimania in southern France and
established a base of attack there. In 721 another Mohammedan
wave invaded France from the Pyrenees but was defeated by the Franks.
It was not until 732 in the Battle of Tours that Charles Martel
effectively halted the almost unchecked Mohammedan zealots, defeating
a Muslim force of around 40,000 - 60,000 with his own force of around
1,500. This finally limited the Mohammedans to Spain. In 759 Pippin
captured Narbonne, the last Mohammedan stronghold in France.
In
792 Hisham I, the emir of Cordova,
called for a Jihad against the non-Mohammedans
in Spain and France.
"Tens
of thousands from as far away as Syria heed his call and cross the
Pyrenees to subjugate France. Cities like Narbonne are destroyed, but
the invasion is ultimately halted at Carcassone." http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blchron_xian_crusades01.htm
The
entire basis of the later Crusades of the
western Latin Christian Church were based
on the experience of the perpetual
violence suffered from Mohammedans on "holy
war", Jihad. |
2/The
Abbasids were helped into power by Persians (in the
750s). Persians however were not given a charte blanche
to conduct their civilization. They had to conduct
themselves as Muslims, not Zoroastrians and in Arabic,
not Persian. This was enforced by what was known
as the "ulama" (or "culama") an Islamic Inquisition.
This made certain that their views did not contradict
Islam and their writing in Arabic meant that the
Arabs could inspect Persian ideas for possible heresy. This
idea was adopted by Innocent 3, 5 centuries later & it
formed the basis of the Roman & then, Spanish
inquisitions;
3/In
9th century Baghdad, Caliph Al Motevakel excluded
from government employment and schooling all non-Mohammedans,
who were forced to wear distinct clothing and coloured
ribbons to indicate they were non-Mohammedans. In
1215 the Roman Catholic church held its Fourth Lateran
Council in which cannons 78 & 79 ordered that
Jews and Mohammedans wear clothing so they could
be differentiated from Christians! This idea was
adopted by Adolf Hitler over 700 years later.
If
emulation is an demonstration of a superior culture
being imitated, then in the instance of Roman based
western Latin Christendom that faith adopted and
emulated Mohammedan ideas.
For
the past century (or so) western Latin and ex-Latin Christians ("Protestants")
have peddled a fantasy in the place of history where they celebrate
what they have come to insist is their collective guilt, a collective
cross that the collective conscience of all Christians (they claim)
has to bear, regardless that it was limited to the (then) western
rump of Christendom. Contrary to this view however is the reality
that the Crusades were the scar left on western Christianity in
its first encounters with Islamic ideology which was then adopted
and employed by Christians against those whose ideology it was originally. Contrary
to the mythology peddled by today's propagandists-cum-historians
Islam created the Crusaders and not vice-versa. It is not, as
some would have it, that the violence seen in Islam historically,
and to our own day, was a consequence of the reaction of a peaceful
religion's encounter with militant Christendom!
A
profound ignorance of the Koran and its message,
coupled with an ignorance of history culminates
in the absurd being posited in place of any genuine
history. In a television documentary on
the Crusades by an obscure British comedian,
Terry Jones, purporting an historical evaluation
of the Crusades, presented a 'history' that went
back only as far as Urban 2's speech without
mentioning the Koran or the 400 years worth of
Jihad that led up to the Crusades.
On the
basis of the violence committed by Catholics in pursuit of Urban 2's
edict, Terry Jones then proceeded to write in his book (which accompanied
the television series) about the Mameluks:
"Years
of Christian crusading had finally produced this monstrosity:
a Moslem state run by ex-slaves who had learnt to be the mirror
image of the enemy they fought and whose pleasure in the destruction
and slaughter was the exact image of the delight the Crusaders
themselves had once taken in butchering Moslems." p. 195 Crusades by
Terry Jones & Alan Ereira, published by Penguin Books/BBC
Books
Thus
we have propaganda in place of history, a classic argument by
omission in which the opposite is instead posited to have occurred.
This is about as awful a misrepresentation of history as one
is likely to encounter.
To
email Terry Jones: terryjoneswebsite@yahoo.co.uk
|
The
unfortunate association of Roman Christianity with
the Mohammedan faith continues to this day.
In
1994 the UN convened a conference in Cairo on "Population
and Development":
"For
the Vatican... as well as for certain Islamic factions
abortion and 'family planning' - that is artificial
contraception, were both anathema. In the weeks preceding
the conference, rumour proliferated of a clandestine
alliance being forged between the muslim factions
and Rome...[this was denied until] an Italian newspaper
manage[d] to obtain a three-page document in Arabic,
that testified to a meeting at the Vatican three
months earlier, in June, between Church functionaries
and Muslim representatives. An agreement had be signed
to adopt a joint strategy designed to thwart the
UN's proposed measures for controlling population
growth... the Vatican and its Islamic allies refused
to budge..." p.258 The Inquisition M. Baigent & R.
Leigh [ Amazon-UK
link ] [ Abbeys
bookshop- Aus link ].
What is most alarming is that the Catholic position
was presided over by the then Pope's "doctrinal watchdog",
Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who became Pope in 2005.
Welcome
to the new Inquisition!
| Considering
the historic association of Rome and Islam, it
is not surprising to find that both have a common
goal and cooperate in a symbiotic relationship
with one-another. In the Australian State of
Victoria the state government introduced "impiety
laws", or what are euphemistically referred to
as "religious tolerance laws". Under this new
law a group of Muslims took a group of Christians
to court claiming that they had been vilified
by the Christians because the Christians claimed
that Islam was a religion of violence. This action
was backed by the Latin Roman Catholic Church,
who lent assistance to the Muslims. The Anglicans,
in contrast to the Romans, have insisted that
it should not be the subject of law courts and
have kept their distance.
Catholicism
sees in the legislation of the Australian
state of Victoria a means by which it might
control criticism of religion; a means of
imposing religious law without the constraint
of it being analysed and criticised. This
is the same Roman Church which burnt Giordano
Bruno in 1599... and it seems that if they
could still get away with burning more people
today, they'd be burning a lot more of us.
|
| The
Patriarch of Rome, the Pope, is Christianity's
greatest fraud. His claim to Christian primacy
was founded solely on the so-called "donation
of Constantine", a document which it was claimed
was given to Rome by Constantine and which gave
Rome the right to rule on behalf of all Christians
- even though Constantine himself had moved the
capital of his empire to the city he founded
in his own name, Constantinople. During the Renaissance
this "document" was proven to be a forgery. However,
the church of Rome claims Christian primacy.
The new German Pope, Ratzinger (Benedict 16),
has claimed that he considers all of humanity
as his flock:
"I
have other sheep that are not of this fold.
I must lead them, too, and they will need
my voice. So there shall be one flock, one
shepherd." (Age, 26/4/2005, after Guardian/Reuters)
According
to the above article (by John Hooper) "The
Pope, 78, reached out beyond the 1.1 billion
members of his own flock to other Christian
faiths, Jews and atheists."
The
fraud of the Roman version of Christianity
intends, on behalf of "all of us", to rule
all of us. Even in this instance the Latin
Catholic version of Christianity, by claiming
to represent all of us with the correct version
of all 'faiths' (of which it seems the Pope
considers atheism to be one such 'faith'),
has adopted the Mohammedan position. According
to Mohammed Islam is the true version of
Judaism and Christianity, both of which are
considered corruptions of the true word of
god which was why the angel Gabriel possessed
Mohammed and through him uttered the 'true
word of god' the Koran. |
| This leaves
out the Orthodox East.
Orthodox
East as an independent entity in its own right
effectively "ended" in 1453 when Constantinople
fell to Mohammedan Ottoman Turks.
To
contrast the eastern church with the one in
Rome, Patriarch Photius serves as an example.
Photius was part of the Byzantine phenomenon
that preserved the Greek writings of pre-Christian
antiquity. His associates were people like
Leo the Mathematician and John the Grammarian.
This period saw the refounding of the university
of Byzantium. Virtually the entirety of the
writings Greek antiquity that have come down
to us, like those of Homer, Hesiod, Apollonius,
Apollodorus, Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes,
Euclid, Hero, Diophantus, Aeschylus, Euripides,
Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch,..., the list
goes on, were all preserved during this time.
It is from these texts, that the scientific
texts (eg Archimedes, Euclid, Hero, Diophantus)
found their way to Baghdad... and how the "Arabs" "found" the "lost" ancient
literature. Rather than having disappeared
in the "dark ages", Greek learning was alive
and well in Byzantium: plays of antiquity were
not only preserved, but performed and additionally
the Byzantines wrote their own plays. Of the
Greek literature that Byzantium preserved only
1 out of 4 (or 5) books survived the Catholic
Crusade of 1204 to come down to us. Photius,
though anti-Semitic, and a stickler for dogma
(it was his condemnation of the Latin practice
of using leavened bread when the Bible demanded "unleavened" bread
that "caused" the schism between east & west
in 1054) read and wrote commentaries on Greek
mythology, (like Apollodurus' Library of
Greek Mythology ) something unheard of
in the west. Photius was well versed in philosophy
and Aristotle at a time when the Popes of the
west, guided by authors such as Augustine (unknown
in the Greek east), condemned such philosophy.
Additionally,
philosophers accompanied the Greek Patriarchs
and served the church. Both Gemistos Plethon
and John Argyropoulos attended the Council
of Ferrara-Florence 1438-39. John Argyropoulos
stayed on in Florence and eventually became
the tutor of Lorenzo de' Medici. Leonardo da
Vinci also attended his lectures on Greek science
and philosophy in Florence.
After
1453 the Greek Orthodox version of Christianity
was subsumed by the Islamic world with the
conquest of Constantinople by Turkish Mohammedans.
During this time it became increasingly Islamised.
The "secularism" of the Renaissance was condemned
by successive Patriarchs - even though its
impetus had come about because of Greeks fleeing
to Italy with their manuscripts. [ probably
the best source of information on the Byzantines'
profound influence on the Italian Renaissance
is Deno John Geanakoplos' book Constantinople
and the West [ Amazon
link ]]
"...[after]
200 years of Ottoman rule, the influence of
the West and the ideas emerging out of the
Renaissance were perceived as threats to the
Orthodox church...The Orthodox church was anti-Western
and had rejected vigorously everything the
Renaissance represented. According to L. S.
Stasvrianos, a historian of the Balkans, the
Orthodox church was repelled by the 'exaltation
of reason in place of dogma, the turn to Greek
antiquity... In short, Balkan Orthodoxy opposed
the West not only because it was heretical
but also because it was becoming modern.' ...the
anti-intellectual and antiscience attitude
of Muslim clerics had also permeated the mind-set
of the Orthodox hierarchy in the Ottoman Empire." p.
20 Red Acropolis, Black Terror by Andre
Gerolymatos [ Amazon
link ].
| The
most profound influence on the Eastern
Orthodox Church by Mohammedans was their
attitude to idols. The iconoclast dispute
that arose in Byzantium occurs at the
time that Mohammedans condemned icons
as "idols". This caused a wave of destruction
and much that is irreplaceable was destroyed. |
|
|
