John Allen Jr. posts on a series of recent anti-Christian violence and murder by Muslims and then writes.
The fact that not one of these incidents has been front-page news in the West is a sad reminder that such experiences have become so routine for Christians in various parts of the world as to be essentially unremarkable.
Well that might be a charitable interpretation, though one I think mistaken. If the same violence was directed towards reporters it would not matter how common the "incidents" were, they would be reported. Daily suicide bomber counts seem to get prominent attention while being all too common place. These acts of violence against Christians were not getting much attention when they were less common place.
He then goes on to talk about forms of "neo-Sufism" which is somewhat growing in the Muslim world and he says "blend the best elements of modernity with fidelity to basic Islamic values." The background of this movement is interesting in that the leaders of the movement are interested in inter-faith dialogue and that it holds a more correct understanding of the relationship between will and intellect. While any form of Islamic belief is still largely erroneous, this at least is preferable to Islamism.
I just hope we don’t get any more junk like the Enneagram picked up the Sufi’s and passed along to most Catholic retreat center.
2 comments
Good article, but there’s a historical error in it: Ataturk had nothing to do with the hiding of Nursi’s body in 1960. Ataturk died in 1938.
And he’s right that the Sufis have been a lot mellower. It was Sufism that started the process of converting most of the remaining Byzantine Anatolians into Muslims. Some forms of it are quasi-Christian, the Bektashi being the greatest example. They have a bread-breaking meal ritual, and confess their sins yearly to a “Father.” The Bektashi are officially suppressed in Turkey, but they still have a big underground following.
I have to confess my impatience with John Allen’s spin on just-about-all-things-Catholic being swallowed hook, line & sinker on other blogs. I appreciate you exposing another case of subtle, but nonetheless, real bias.
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