As a techie of the ‘60s, I, too, like TWU Professor Todd Martin, am somewhat of a techno-saur these days as my grandchildren have to show me how to access the photos that I take with my mobile phone instead of with my usual tool, a decade old Pentax, one of my many digital cameras that have replaced my massive inventory of film cameras collected since the 1950s.
However, I must also speak to his point about the “Six Mistakes Mankind Keeps Making Century After Century” – that of attempting to compel others to believe and live as ‘we’ do – an error that some factions of the Christian faith have been making for millennia and, most sadly, so much so since the Dark Ages – a period now over 1,000 years ago.
The horrific actions in France and the over-reaction in Brussels and the unfounded fears in the United States are a direct result of the ‘strife’ in the Middle East – a situation created by the Christian-oriented ‘Western’ nations since the 1200s but mainly since the days of the British Empire by more so since the end of World War One and particularly since 1945.
This ‘situation’ has been created by the European and North American Christian-oriented countries seeking economic and ideological dominance or a high level of covert control over nations that have adhered to the Islamic faith and its many factions for over 1,000 years. Some of those nations were – in part – caliphates overtaken by the Turkish Ottoman Empire over 600 years ago.
And now, with a number of dictatorships that have evolved from CIA-backed interference with sovereign Islamic states since 1945, there are some radical Islamic extremists who wish to see a return to the caliphates of yesteryear but cannot use democratic tools in countries run by US-backed dictators at one time or another or by powerful ‘monarchies’ that are, in my opinion, another form of dictatorship, such as in Saudi Arabia, which used to be called Arabia at one time until the Saudi family took it over as their monarchical fiefdom.
As Professor Martin points out, “Religious adherents across the spectrum have resorted to all forms of destructive means to convert the non-believer” – that now being Christians, who are looked upon by many Muslims as the ‘infidel’ or ‘kafir’ (sometimes ‘kaafir’, ‘kufr’ or ‘kuffar’), or by the equivalent Turkish loanword ‘gâvur’, literally the one who ‘covers’ and ‘conceals’, which is usually translated as ‘infidel’ and ‘disbeliever’. Other terms sometimes synonymously used in Islamic literature for ‘infidel’ are ‘shirk’, ‘mushirk’ and ‘mushrikun’. Islamic extremists call Christians ‘non-believers while Christian-oriented Western nations call these extremists ‘terrorists’, a term that many Americans, thanks to idiots like Donald Trump, are calling now all Muslims, even a 12-year-old boy in Texas who was arrested for taking his home-made electronic clock to school.
When we look back in history a thousand years ago, we see that the Christian-led crusades wanted to stop the spread of the Islamic faith that began as an offshoot of Christianity in the sixth century….a battle that is still going one although now the ‘crusade’ is being led by violent, maverick overtly fundamentalistic Islamic groups such as ISIS/ISIL or Al-Queda to compel the Christian ‘infidels’ to believe and live as they do by wanting to show them what a caliphate is and how pure a life ‘believers’ would have living under Sharia law.
I think that Professor Martin has to rethink his extrinsically-motivated drive based on some form of unity with a non-existent entity but I am pleased that he does not feel compelled to convert people to his way of thinking. Conversion of others to Christianity is not driven by the same non-existent entity that he feels is responsible for thousands of years of people being forced from their own righteous ways of thinking to an outlook that adheres to one of the many religious factions during the past two thousand years purporting Christian principles. That action has been driven by men – men who have been driven by greed and several other unscrupulous motivations such as altruism and certainly not by honest and genuine concern for others, it seems, as we witness with the issue of residential schools for First Nations in this country since the 1880s.
Professor Martin may rest assured that I will not ask him about his life as I feel that he is one of the many, many people who really need to review their thoughts about the existence of mankind and promulgate more sound rational thoughts about life and creation.
All of the people on the planet Earth have not been born to end up having to share his perspective by force or psychological head games under the guise of “spreading the Gospel”. All people, regardless of their ‘outlook’, need to be accepted for the way that they think about life and we need to learn to live in harmony with them and tolerate any differences that they may have for we are all of one race – the human race.
And, a Blackberry…..I thought that was a fruit that people like to eat. What is it?
G.E. MacDonell
Abbotsford