The Archbishop of Canterbury came to Bethlehem where he would “address the issue of Muslim attacks on Mideast Christians and Arab Christian institutions…”
In Bethlehem, you have heard reports of incidents in which Muslims have intimidated, shaken-down, beaten, and even killed Christian Palestinian residents of the city. Some Christians have reported that Muslims issued them death threats if they failed to sign over title to Christian-owned land.
In Iraq, priests have been attacked, some of them murdered.
You are the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is time you spoke out.
In the back of your mind, however, is the Pope’s September speech which, touching on Islam, touched off the murder of a nun in Somalia, and the bombing of churches in the West Bank, Gaza, and Iraq.
Solution: Blame the Christian West. And, while you’re at it, blame the Jews.
And he did… marvelously:
“In an extraordinary attack,” the Times of London summarized the archbishop’s message as stating, “Dr. Williams accuses Tony Blair and the U.S. of endangering the lives and futures of many thousands of Christians in the Middle East, who are regarded by their countrymen as supporters of the ?crusading West.'”
The Times further paraphrased the archbishop as maintaining that “Christians in the Middle East are being put at unprecedented risk by the Government?s ?shortsighted’ and ‘ignorant’ policy in Iraq.”
Bradley Burston responds:
There’s a pattern here, and not just the knee-jerk necessity to pin all blame for the Middle East catastrophe on the Bush-Blair-Israel axis.
There is also the racism of the politically correct. There’s a sense here that Muslims aren’t really responsible for their own actions, any more than they would be if they were mischievous children or animals in the wild.No, it’s us – the West, Tony Blair, George Bush, Israeli Jews – we are responsible. It was our hamhanded arrogance and state terrorism that brought on 9 /11 and the cavalcade of suicide bloodletting that followed. The only role of Muslims was to position the bombs, the box cutters, the Katyushas, the Qassams, the Kalashnikovs. We had already pulled the trigger.
And concludes:
In the end, the Archbishop has taught us all at least one lesson. Muslims must take responsibility for fighting Muslim intolerance toward Christians.
As should be obvious to anyone who read my opinion about the Pope’s speech on Islam and terrorism, I agree whole heartedly with Burston’s column. The Pope was brave enough to speak out against terrorism. He was brave enough to say that terrorism, today, is mostly a Muslim problem. If ‘we’ want to beat terrorism, Muslims around the world have to take responsibility and they have to engage in a fierce internal debate about the ‘true nature’ of Islam. If they believe that the nature, the true essence of Islam, is peaceful, let them publicly reject terrorism, let them publicly condemn those who commit terrorist acts and let them fight terrorism, fundamentalism and hate in their own countries and communities.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.