The Cross and the Crescent

Lord Carey the former Archbishop of Canterbury, in his speech, "The Cross and the Crescent", posits the following question:

"So allow me to ask an awkward question which I believe was hovering in the background of the Pope’s thesis and which many westerners are asking frequently these days: ‘Why is Islam associated with violence?’"

Had he rephrased his question, 'Why are Christianity and Judaism associated with violence', he would have his answer.

Islam is perceived as violent, when it reacts to Western (principally Christian and Jewish) aggression. Islam is the religion of the invaded, the occupied and the dispossessed; it is the religion of resistance; and the religion of the enemy. So long as Muslims are the victims and adversaries of Christian and Jewish imperialism, then this will remain the case. There is nothing very complicated here.

Lord Carey could look to his own statement:

"It is the firm view of most Muslims that the invasion of Iraq in 2004 is solely about oil. It is important to disabuse them of that notion by a rigid commitment to stand alongside Iraq until its infrastructure is rebuilt and there is a return to something approaching normality in that ancient land."

Thus, Lord Carey, the former spiritual leader of the Anglican Church, is giving succour to a Crusade; for what else is it when Christian nations invade a Muslim country and try and impose their values and doctrine on it? He appears not to have considered that this is Christian violence.

He then addresses the issue of martyrdom in Christianity:

"I find it difficult to understand the argument that a person can be a blessed martyr if, in the cause of his conflict, he knowingly kills innocent people. Christian martyrdom is unlike this. We have no martyrology which honours people who kill innocent people. The martyr, for Christians, is one who does not kill but is killed for her or his faith. She or he suffers for God and his people and does so, not be fighting or killing, but by suffering. A terrorist by definition cannot be a martyr."

The corollary here is startiling, if anyone who kills innocent is a terrorist, then this collectively applies to the British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is interesting since he reveals that at the age of 18 he too served in an occuaption of Egypt and Iraq.