Pray and Do Not Curse

Meeting the Mullahs

The BBC story leads off,

The chief causes of the rift are not religion or history, they say, but recent political developments, notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6142308.stm

A recent poll among British Muslims found that 17% believed that Arabs had anything to do with 9/11. That leaves 83% undecided.

While political developments, like the right for Israel to exist, may inflame the sacred heart of Muslim street mobs (we are so careful not to victimize that we refuse to see it in mimetic theory terms), the following statistic is interesting:

A United Nations report of 2002 states that more books are translated into Spanish in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand. And what few were translated? Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.


But going back to the British poll above, when 83% of the fastest-growing demographic in the United Kingdom doesn't accept the same reality as their fellow British subjects, you have a volatile meeting of competing versions of reality -- not a good recipe for social stability. May I suggest one more photo from the BBC? Read carefully the English captions on the placards being carried by the protesters.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/default.stm

How, how are Christians supposed to meet and greet those street protesters? Just leave it to the nation-state forces and local police to handle? What would/will be a faithful attempt of Christian effort to meet them look like? Clubs, guns? Or, standing still, silent as a lamb, praying and watching, watching and praying? The "victim's epistemological privilege" of McKenna looks pretty daunting to me, but if we don't try to confront them soon, they will take our unwillingness for weakness and willingness to succumb.

Oh, and, by the way, how do you think they will take to female priests meeting them?

Mark Steyn says it:

"When the mullahs take over (due to Christian passivity), I'll grow my beard a little fuller, get a couple extra wives, and keep my head down. It's the feminists and gays who'll have a tougher tim