Archive for the 'Religion' Category

Eschatology, or the study and philosophy of the last things, is key to the proper understanding of counterterrorism warfare, but not usually mentioned in the same breath. Theologians do not usually engage in discussions of military strategy, and infantry officers do not usually read books in religious philosophy. Yet, on a grand scale, the two are intimately connected, and eschatology is the determinative factor in the motivation of the terrorist, even if his view of the end only involves the fulfillment of secular goals such as the will to power.

The Baathists had threatened to retaliate should the “crime” of executing Saddam Hussein be committed, saying that “The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime.” FNC had reported just prior to Saddam’s execution from they U.S. officers in contact with the tribal leaders supportive of anti-coalition efforts that these tribal chiefs were propositioning them to “release Saddam, and he and the U.S. would handle the Iran problem together.”

Even for those who rejected the religious eschatology of victory embraced by al Qaeda and Ansar al Sunnah, they were loyal to the end, and hopeful for a resurgent Sunni rule in Iraq led by Saddam. Those who sided with the terrorists (Saddam’s secret police and the Fedayeen) merely found expediency in objectives: the driving of the coalition forces from Iraq.

So determined are the anti-coalition forces that they are willing to pursue a “scorched earth” policy to achieve their objectives. It was reported on October 23, 2006, that 500 000 Iraqi citizens had fled Iraq (primarily from the Anbar Province) to Syria. As of December 3, 2006, it is reported that 700 000 Iraqi citizens are in Syria and another 700 000 in Jordan, for a total of 1.4 million displaced citizens. One anecdotal piece of evidence is given to us by an otherwise non-remarkable person in the Anbar Province:

The gunman stood at the foot of his bed. “Are you al-Jaboury?” he yelled. It was 2 o’clock on a stifling July morning, and al-Jaboury had been sound asleep next to his wife. After hearing his name, the young Iraqi police officer didn’t hesitate. Grabbing the gun he had been stashing under his pillow every night since he’d joined the police 18 months earlier, he shot the intruder in the throat. The gunman’s accomplices all fled.

But the danger wasn’t over. “I knew the insurgents would come back, and maybe they would blow up the whole house,” al-Jaboury says. “My wife blamed me for joining the police. She said that I am a Sunni and that I know that the insurgents don’t like this, and that I would get killed sooner or later.” The next day, al-Jaboury left his wife, his daughter, and his home in the troubled Diyala province and took off in a neighbor’s pickup truck, loaded with fruit, and headed for Syria. He had $300 in his pocket.

Literally splitting families apart, the insurgents are willing to destroy the population and infrastructure to effect their end. They are willing to do this for the same reason that the 50 million dollar bounty on the head of Bin Laden is meaningless to those with whom he lives. They believe that they will win.

Until they are no longer convinced that victory awaits them, U.S. government largesse means nothing to the insurgents. No amount of so-called “nonkinetic” operations on the part of U.S. forces will “win the hearts and minds of the people” when wives are concerned about their husbands siding with the police for fear of them getting killed by insurgents.

This problem is exacerbated and compounded when religious pre-commitments are involved. Secular eschatology doesn’t compare in strength to religious eschatology. The Baathists need to see tangible results in time and space. When final defeat becomes obvious, although not yet fulfilled, the remnant might be persuaded to stand down, or simply disappear from the scene. Those who have a religious commitment need not see tangible results in time and space, and so nothing can dissuade them from their deadly adventures.

Guerrilla warfare is not the unique development of the twentieth century. Francis Marion fought the forces of Cornwallis to a standstill in the swamps of South Carolina, with an eschatology that was at least in part based on religious commitment. Even in the twentieth century, Vietnam was not the first example of such tactics. In my studies of World War II many years ago, I was fascinated to learn about the existence of “Hitler’s Werewolves.” A brief description of their accomplishments follows.

What did the Werwolf do? They sniped. They mined roads. They poured sand into the gas tanks of jeeps. (Sugar was in short supply, no doubt.) They were especially feared for the “decapitation wires” they strung across roads. They poisoned food stocks and liquor. (The Russians had the biggest problem with this.) They committed arson, though perhaps less than they are credited with: every unexplained fire or explosion associated with a military installation tended to be blamed on the Werwolf. These activities slackened off within a few months of the capitulation on May 7, though incidents were reported as late as 1947.

… Goebbels especially grasped the possibility that guerrilla war could be a political process as well as a military strategy. It was largely through his influence that the Werwolf assumed something of the aspect of a terrorist organization. Where it could, it tried to prevent individuals and communities from surrendering, and it assassinated civil officials who cooperated with the Allies. Few Germans welcomed these activities, but something else that Goebbels grasped was that terror might serve where popularity was absent. By his estimate, only 10% to 15% of the German population were potential supporters for a truly revolutionary movement. His goal was to use the Werwolf to activate that potential. With the help of the radical elite, the occupiers could be provoked into savage reprisals that would win over the mass of the people to Neo-Nazism, a term that came into use in April 1945.

And from an article on Minutemen of the Third Reich.(history of the Nazi Werewolf guerilla movement) The Werewolves specialised in ambushes and sniping, and took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers — perhaps even that of the first Soviet commandant of Berlin, General N.E. Berzarin, who was rumoured to have been waylaid in Charlottenburg during an incident in June 1945. Buildings housing Allied and Soviet staffs were favourite targets for Werewolf bombings; an explosion in the Bremen police headquarters, also in June 1945, killed five Americans and thirty-nine Germans. Techniques for harassing the occupiers were given widespread publicity through Werewolf leaflets and radio propaganda, and long after May 1945 the sabotage methods promoted by the Werewolves were still being used against the occupying powers. Although the Werewolves originally limited themselves to guerrilla warfare with the invading armies, they soon began to undertake scorched-earth measures and vigilante actions against German `collaborators’ or `defeatists’. They damaged Germany’s economic infrastructure, already battered by Allied bombing and ground fighting, and tried to prevent anything of value from falling into enemy hands. Attempts to blow up factories, power plants or waterworks occasionally provoked melees between Werewolves and desperate German workers trying to save the physical basis of their employment, particularly in the Ruhr and Upper Silesia.

In the end, the “Werewolves” were merely Hitler youth, lacked moorings and leadership, and lacked a cogent world view, and within a year or so they were finished. This is instructive. They saw that they had no chance to succeed, and vanished into the landscape in short order, lacking a vision for victory.

In this time of post-Saddam Iraq, we now have the knowledge that we have destroyed the only true enemy of Iran. Does the vision for the GWOT include considerations for the future of U.S. forces in the region to impede Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon? Does victory in Iraq include the notion of the creation of an ally in the GWOT? Does victory in Iraq mean that the Iraqis are able to stand on their own immediately, or is the lesser goal adequate – that of the U.S. providing security now so that some day this might take effect? And if we bring security, how would we do this? The casualty rate in December of 2006 rivals the casualties in the first and second battles for Fallujah.

It has been said to me recently by one serviceman that “since we were battling Saddam’s forces, defeat of the remaining Sunni insurgency in Anbar means victory.” This is true, given a minimalist definition of victory. But when the generals themselves cannot define an eschatology of victory, the servicemen are left to devise their own. With nuances, there will be as many definitions as are there are servicemen.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish my readers a very merry Christmas.  Remember to say a prayer for our troops this season, and also remember that the resurrected and living Christ is the answer to the travails of the world.  But it is His birth, his coming to earth, the incarnation, that we celebrate this Christmas.

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6) … “And she will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21b).

Pray for peace.

By now, John Kerry’s foolish and adolescent insult to U.S. servicemen and women has gone viral.  Michelle Malkin and Dan Riehl are covering this story and I won’t repeat the details.  In summary, Kerry said that if you don’t study hard, you end up “stuck in Iraq.”  Matt Drudge is carrying a humorous picture of what appears to be eight soldiers holding a sign up that says “Halp us Jon Carry – we R stuck (backwards K) hear n Irak.”

It is nice to see that this unit’s morale is high, and that they can find it in themselves to invoke humor in order to respond to Kerry’s insult.  But on a more serious note, Kerry made the statement because of the moral bankruptcy of his world view.  Kerry imagines that schooling, the state, a diploma, luck, chance, or some intangible or perhaps unknowable thing causes a man or woman to take up a job.  More to the point, Kerry imagines that being a warrior is a job.  And thus Kerry insults military men and women.

As opposed to the monastic view of the world in early medieval times, where the only holy and good thing was separation from the world, the reformation taught us something different about God’s calling in our lives:

In this view, Christians were called to be priests to the world, purifying and sanctifying its everyday life from within. Luther stated this point succinctly when commenting on Genesis 13:13: “What seem to be secular works are actually the praise of God and represent an obedience which is well–pleasing to him.” There were no limits to this notion of calling. Luther even extolled the religious value of housework, declaring that although “it has no obvious appearance of holiness, yet these very household chores are more to be valued than all the works of monks and nuns.”

Underlying this new attitude is the notion of the vocation or “calling.” God calls his people, not just to faith, but to express that faith in quite definite areas of life. Whereas monastic spirituality regarded vocation as a calling out of the world into the desert or the monastery, Luther and Calvin regarded vocation as a calling into the everyday world. The idea of a calling or vocation is first and foremost about being called by God, to serve Him within his world. Work was thus seen as an activity by which Christians could deepen their faith, leading it on to new qualities of commitment to God. Activity within the world, motivated, informed, and sanctioned by Christian faith, was the supreme means by which the believer could demonstrate his or her commitment and thankfulness to God. To do anything for God, and to do it well, was the fundamental hallmark of authentic Christian faith. Diligence and dedication in one’s everyday life are, Calvin thought, a proper response to God.

For Calvin, God places individuals where He wants them to be, which explains Calvin’s criticism of human ambition as an unwillingness to accept the sphere of action God has allocated to us. Social status is an irrelevance, a human invention of no spiritual importance; one cannot allow the human evaluation of an occupation’s importance to be placed above the judgment of God who put you there. All human work is capable of “appearing truly respectable and being considered highly important in the sight of God.” No occupation, no calling, is too mean or lowly to be graced by the presence of God.

Sin has created the necessity for police and armies.  War is certainly not the desired state of affairs, but as long as there are evil men on earth, there will be war.  As opposed to the shallow and foolish notion of all war as being evil, we know that there are good wars which serve as protections against evil.

As opposed to empty-headed ideas of warrior as a job, those who fight have been called by God to war in our stead.  It is not a job; it is a vocation.  Totally aside from irrelevant issues about how much education our servicemen and women have, it is God who has put in them the desire to be warriors, it is God who sustains them, it is God who has given them their victories.  It is God who has called them to this vocation.

And thus it is God whom John Kerry has offended.  And that is no joke.

The Department of the Navy provides corpsmen and other medical support to the Marines, and similarly, Chaplains are provided to both the Navy and Marines from the Department of the Navy.  When the Department of the Navy has problems, it can effect two branches of the military.

And the Department of the Navy is having Chaplain problems.  The problems with Chaplains have not been restricted to the Navy.  And to be more specific, the problems are not per se with the Chaplains, but with societal changes (and to some degree political correctness) that have made their way into policy, policy that effects the way Chaplains do business, e.g., the freedom to evangelize, to pray in the name of Christ, to preach sermons publicly that are exclusive (‘this’ is true and ‘that’ is false).  The Air Force recently attempted to regulate such things by issuing the Air Force Interim Guidelines on the Free Exercise of Religion.  The Presbyterian and Reformed Joint Commission on Chaplains and Military Personnel responded with a stinging ‘knock-down’ critique of the guidelines (other parties responded as well).  The Air Force subsequently issued Revised Interim Guidelines.  As a result, further responses ensued, and it appears that the Air Force guidelines have been permanently rescinded.  But this action was taken only after major legal battles were conducted by one Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who literally waged a one-man war to retain previously recognized rights.

But the problems don’t end with the Navy (and Air Force) waging internecine warfare against the religious among them.  There are forty one “evangelicals” who are involved in a class action law suit against the Navy for things related to the oversight, promotion and freedom of Navy Chaplains.  The charges include things such as favoritism of so-called ‘liturgical’ Chaplains over evangelicals, illegal quotas, blackballing, prejudice, etc.  To the best of our knowledge, this law suit has not run its course.

But reminiscent of the keystone cops, the Navy is not finished.  In the next volley, Strategy Page is reporting that Navy Chaplains are being reprogrammed.

October 18, 2006: The U.S. Navy is sending its chaplains back to school. The navy believes that new chaplains, sent to a ship, and serving with that ship for many years, get out of touch with the rest of the Chaplains Corps (over 800 clergy, from dozens of different faiths). To make the training program possible, about fifty chaplains will be withdrawn from serving on  ships. This will leave some smaller ships without a chaplain. And this has caused some chaplains, and sailors, to complain that the training program would mean that chaplains, coming out of the training, would be assigned to a different ship than they had come from. This would break continuity. Chaplains often serve with the same ship for many years, and thus get to know the officers, crew and families very well. Thus it is believed that all the reassignments required to carry out this training program will destroy this continuity. The navy won’t back down, especially since there have been lawsuits of late by groups of chaplains (usually from the same faith), protesting real, or imagined, injustices. The training program is meant to make sure all the chaplains are at least on the same page with what they are supposed to be doing for the navy.

The Navy just keeps blowing it.  The Navy does ships right, and Chaplains poorly.  The Navy might benefit from a common understanding of what the Chaplain is supposed to be doing.  It is not the job of the Chaplain to stay in touch with other faiths, or to do anything, per se, for the Navy.  The service of the Chaplain is directly to the Sailor, whether enlisted or officer.  It is the people whom the Chaplain serves, not the Navy or the U.S. government.  Until the Navy learns this, the internecine warfare will continue, and the real loser will be the Sailor and Marine.

The Department of the Navy provides corpsmen and other medical support to the Marines, and similarly, Chaplains are provided to both the Navy and Marines from the Department of the Navy.  When the Department of the Navy has problems, it can effect two branches of the military.

And the Department of the Navy is having Chaplain problems.  The problems with Chaplains have not been restricted to the Navy.  And to be more specific, the problems are not per se with the Chaplains, but with societal changes (and to some degree political correctness) that have made their way into policy, policy that effects the way Chaplains do business, e.g., the freedom to evangelize, to pray in the name of Christ, to preach sermons publicly that are exclusive (‘this’ is true and ‘that’ is false).  The Air Force recently attempted to regulate such things by issuing the Air Force Interim Guidelines on the Free Exercise of Religion.  The Presbyterian and Reformed Joint Commission on Chaplains and Military Personnel responded with a stinging ‘knock-down’ critique of the guidelines (other parties responded as well).  The Air Force subsequently issued Revised Interim Guidelines.  As a result, further responses ensued, and it appears that the Air Force guidelines have been permanently rescinded.  But this action was taken only after major legal battles were conducted by one Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who literally waged a one-man war to retain previously recognized rights.

But the problems don’t end with the Navy (and Air Force) waging internecine warfare against the religious among them.  There are forty one “evangelicals” who are involved in a class action law suit against the Navy for things related to the oversight, promotion and freedom of Navy Chaplains.  The charges include things such as favoritism of so-called ‘liturgical’ Chaplains over evangelicals, illegal quotas, blackballing, prejudice, etc.  To the best of our knowledge, this law suit has not run its course.

But reminiscent of the keystone cops, the Navy is not finished.  In the next volley, Strategy Page is reporting that Navy Chaplains are being reprogrammed.

October 18, 2006: The U.S. Navy is sending its chaplains back to school. The navy believes that new chaplains, sent to a ship, and serving with that ship for many years, get out of touch with the rest of the Chaplains Corps (over 800 clergy, from dozens of different faiths). To make the training program possible, about fifty chaplains will be withdrawn from serving on  ships. This will leave some smaller ships without a chaplain. And this has caused some chaplains, and sailors, to complain that the training program would mean that chaplains, coming out of the training, would be assigned to a different ship than they had come from. This would break continuity. Chaplains often serve with the same ship for many years, and thus get to know the officers, crew and families very well. Thus it is believed that all the reassignments required to carry out this training program will destroy this continuity. The navy won’t back down, especially since there have been lawsuits of late by groups of chaplains (usually from the same faith), protesting real, or imagined, injustices. The training program is meant to make sure all the chaplains are at least on the same page with what they are supposed to be doing for the navy.

The Navy just keeps blowing it.  The Navy does ships right, and Chaplains poorly.  The Navy might benefit from a common understanding of what the Chaplain is supposed to be doing.  It is not the job of the Chaplain to stay in touch with other faiths, or to do anything, per se, for the Navy.  The service of the Chaplain is directly to the Sailor, whether enlisted or officer.  It is the people whom the Chaplain serves, not the Navy or the U.S. government.  Until the Navy learns this, the internecine warfare will continue, and the real loser will be the Sailor and Marine.

Michelle Malkin is following the story of Steve Cintanni who was captured and then later released after his (and his colleague’s) “conversion” to Islam.  I posted earlier on his conversion at gunpoint.  Michelle is also blogging the issue of Cintanni’s conversion making him a target for future assassination attempts if he repudiates his conversion.  Finally, Michelle links to a great post by La Shawn Barber on the question “What would you do?” in “Gunpoint Conversions and Martyrdom.”  Let’s turn the microscope up a few notches and look at this question of Christian ethics in more detail.

First of all, let’s dispense with this silly and adolescent notion that all lying is immoral.  I know, this strikes you as a rather odd statement to make, whether you are a Christian or not, right?  Well, let’s revisit the story of Rahab.  In the book of Joshua, Rahab takes in the spies.  In Joshua 2 we read:

Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.  The king of Jericho was told, “Look! Some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.”  So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”  But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from.  At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.”  (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.)   So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.  Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof   and said to them, “I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.  We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.  When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.  Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death.”  “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the LORD gives us the land.”

R. J. Rushdoony (in Institutes of Biblical Law) comments:

“Rahab clearly lied, but her lie represented a moral choice as against sending two godly men to death, and for this she became an ancestress of Jesus Christ (Mat 1:5).

Michelle Malkin is following the story of Steve Cintanni who was captured and then later released after his (and his colleague’s) “conversion” to Islam.  I posted earlier on his conversion at gunpoint.  Michelle is also blogging the issue of Cintanni’s conversion making him a target for future assassination attempts if he repudiates his conversion.  Finally, Michelle links to a great post by La Shawn Barber on the question “What would you do?” in “Gunpoint Conversions and Martyrdom.”  Let’s turn the microscope up a few notches and look at this question of Christian ethics in more detail.

First of all, let’s dispense with this silly and adolescent notion that all lying is immoral.  I know, this strikes you as a rather odd statement to make, whether you are a Christian or not, right?  Well, let’s revisit the story of Rahab.  In the book of Joshua, Rahab takes in the spies.  In Joshua 2 we read:

Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.  The king of Jericho was told, “Look! Some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.”  So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”  But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from.  At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.”  (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.)   So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.  Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof   and said to them, “I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.  We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.  When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.  Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death.”  “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the LORD gives us the land.”

R. J. Rushdoony (in Institutes of Biblical Law) comments:

“Rahab clearly lied, but her lie represented a moral choice as against sending two godly men to death, and for this she became an ancestress of Jesus Christ (Mat 1:5).

From My Way News:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Militants freed two Fox News journalists on Sunday, ending a nearly two week hostage drama. One of the former captives said they were sometimes held face down in a dark garage, tied up in painful positions and forced at gunpoint to make videos and say they had converted to Islam.

I would like formally to thank the captors of Centanni for making my point for me better than I could have.  See my post “Does this help explain Jihad a little better?”

Here at the Captain’s Journal, we always appreciate it when others make us look smart at the expense of making themselves look stupid.

From My Way News:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Militants freed two Fox News journalists on Sunday, ending a nearly two week hostage drama. One of the former captives said they were sometimes held face down in a dark garage, tied up in painful positions and forced at gunpoint to make videos and say they had converted to Islam.

I would like formally to thank the captors of Centanni for making my point for me better than I could have.  See my post “Does this help explain Jihad a little better?”

Here at the Captain’s Journal, we always appreciate it when others make us look smart at the expense of making themselves look stupid.

With all of the silly and dangerous definitions of Islamic Jihad out there (e.g., a “peaceful internal striving,” etc.), it is good to see moral clarity and precision.  Michelle Malkin has a great piece today on the case of Lina Joy, in which she converted to Christianity from Islam, and wants to marry a Christian man.  She is now facing death threats (as is her lawyer), and the case has gone to the highest court in Malaysia.  But apparently the civil courts routinely refer cases to the Islamic court, and:

While the Quran states there should be “no compunction” in religion, Islamic authorities world-wide consider apostasy both a sin and a crime. In Malaysia, Islamic courts can sentence apostates to “rehabilitation” in prison-like re-education centers that sometimes use caning as part of their program. 

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?  Rather like the Gulags? 

Continuing, we learn why Islam refuses to allow people to leave the faith:

“If Islam were to grant permission for Muslims to change religion at will, it would imply it has no dignity, no self-esteem,” said Wan Azhar Wan Ahmad, senior fellow at Malaysia’s Institute of Islamic Understanding.

“And people may then question its completeness, truthfulness and perfection.

There you have it.  These are some of the major differences (there are so many to choose from) between Christianity and Islam.  Christianity believes that God changes hearts and minds, not man.  Islam believes that caning can assist in “rehabilitation” in matters of religion.  Christianity welcomes a battle of ideas, confident in the victory of its world view if people will only be logical and if God chooses to change hearts and minds.  Islam tethers its self-worth to what man thinks.

Folks, these are critical differences.  This is why Christianity will not shoot others in the name of God, and why Islam believes that it is acceptable to spread Islam by the power of the “sword.”  It is because in Islam, man is doing the work rather than God.  If you believe that it is by your efforts that man is saved, then why wouldn’t you use all means at your disposal to spread your salvation?

This helps explain Jihad.  It makes perfect sense; it is the seed of violence within Islam.  All attempts to explain it away fail.

[And please, do not send me any moronic e-mails about Eric Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh.  Neither one carried out their actions because of religious motivation.  Rudolph was a white supremicist, while McVeigh didn’t very much like Ruby Ridge or the U.S. government.]