|
 Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
|
 |
Posted on Dec. 27, 2002, and Jan. 3, 2003, were my two columns about the social influences of Christ's teaching on the two millennia of Christendom. Having read these columns, Alvin Schmidt, professor of sociology, Illinois College, sent me his e-mail of appreciation and his Òbook of the two millennia,Ó as I called it: ÒUnder the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization,Ó to which I dedicated my two columns, posted on Jan. 17 and 24, 2003.
A couple of weeks ago, I received from Dr. Schmidt his new book, ÒThe Great Divide: The Failure of Islam and the Triumph of the WestÓ (Regina Orthodox Press www.reginaorthodoxpress.com). Another millennial book! I welcomed it! Indeed, I had written a 10-page column about Islam that was posted on Jan. 7, 2002, and entitled ÒIslam and CNN's Superstar Christiane Amanpour.Ó
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, cast unjust aspersions on all Moslems, including those residing in the United States. To protect them from these aspersions, Amanpour (who came to the United States from Iran) could and should have said the following:
ÒAn individual is not responsible for the faith of the civilization in which he lives or grew up. A Christian is not responsible for the expulsion of Jews from Spain, or the Inquisition, or the massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day. Indeed, during the Reformation there originated new Christian denominations. Lev Tolstoy denounced all Christian churches as false and regarded his own Christianity as true. No Moslem could or should be held responsible for the 19 Islamic suicidal terrorists just because they were also Moslems.
ÒOn the other hand, an Arab can well take pride in the Arab culture from the 5th to the 14th century. Recall for instance the contributions of the Arab world to algebra. For example, the cubic equation was a favorite subject of the poet (still read all over the world), mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (1048-1122). Arab algebra was introduced in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries (the word Òal-jabrÓ means ÒreductionÓ in Arabic and was taken from the title of a textbook of algebra of about 825). The numerals we use are called Arabic for they were borrowed by Europe from Arabs. Before its Renaissance, Western Europe was nourished by Arabic culture. Recall Avicenna (980-1037), a Persian by birth, whose encyclopedia of medicine was studied at European universities and medical schools up to the 16th century!
ÒIt is true that in the past half millennium the Islamic world lapsed into savagery. But Europe also lapsed into savageryÑafter the Roman Empire had been conquered, pillaged, and destroyed by barbarian tribes. The Renaissance the Reformation in the Islamic world can be ruled out no more than they could in the West after the conquest and destruction of the Roman Empire.Ó
Yet Amanpour found a different way of protecting Moslems against the unjust aspersions cast on them by Islamic suicidal terrorism. Instantly, she and all Moslem professors of Islam in the United States (and one in Canada) invoked on the TV screens, lied in perfect unison that the very word ÒIslamÓ means Òpeace.Ó Indeed, Islam-Peace is so peaceful that Moslems greet each other with ÒSalaam alaikem!Ó that is, ÒPeace unto you!Ó Now, the words ÒsalaamÓ and ÒIslamÓ have the same root! See?
Actually, the word ÒpeaceÓ in the political sense (as the opposite of war) is ÒsuthÓ in Arabic, while ÒsalaamÓ means mental tranquility. True, ÒsalaamÓ and ÒIslamÓ have the same root. So do in English the words ÒmissionÓ and Òsubmission,Ó but their meanings are different. ÒIslamÓ means ÒsubmissionÓ or Òpacification.Ó A foreign nation is ÒpacifiedÓ by Islamic war until the nation submits and thus gains ÒsalaamÓÑmental tranquility.
Whereupon I proceeded to quote the Koran, which Amanpour and the Moslem professors of Islam at the American universities seemed never to have opened or at least expected that no one would open it and see that Islam means not peace, but wars of conquest and submission, as the meaning of the word itself indicates.
Chapter 1 of Professor Schmidt's book is entitled ÒJesus and Muhammad: Polar Opposites.Ó
I arrived at exactly the same conclusion in my column. Muhammad, who could not read and write, stemmed from militant Arab tribalism in what is Saudi Arabia today. He became a theocrat and a warrior. He and his successors conquered vast territories stretching all across the hemisphere and numbering today from 1.3 to 1.4 billion inhabitants. The Islamic troops were once near Paris. Modern readers of the Koran will be shocked by Muhammad's love of wars of conquest and submission (pacification).
But by the world standards of the 7th century he was an ordinary or even banal tyrant. It was only in the second half of the 19th century that there originated the notion of aggressive (and hence unjust) war vs. defense. Before, any war of conquest was good if won. The barbarian tribes conquering, plundering, and destroying the Roman Empire were often ruthless toward civiliansÑmen, women, and children.
While Muhammad was a banal aggressive theocrat, in love with wars of conquest and submission, Christ was unique, since he preached against what was (and often is) assumed to be human nature: quest for wealth and power, rivalry, war, and the scorn for the weak and the poor.
Christ stemmed from the Jewish Torah scholarship, but instead of becoming a rabbi in a synagogue, he was a homeless vagabond, teaching his homeless disciples to live like fowls of heaven, without knowing how their daily bread will be given to them tomorrow. He was not a rebel against Caesar: ÒGive to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.Ó Finally, the Caesars adopted Christianity: a homeless vagabond from a remote Roman province defeated the world's most powerful and wealthy EmpireÑnot by war of conquest and submission, but by its polar opposite, the nonresistance to evil by violence.
Nor did Christ call to take away the wealth from the rich. But he made it clear that the rich should give away their wealth of their own free will. Westerners, and especially Americans, have not noticed this precept, while calling themselves Christians. But history is not yet over. Possibly the American rich, increasing their wealth via China, will be responsible for the Chinese dictators' annihilation of the West.
Dr. Schmidt analyzes Christ and Muhammad as polar opposites point by point. When self-righteous men were about to stone to death a woman accused of adultery, Jesus said: ÒLet him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.Ó The would-be executioners dispersed. This place from the Gospels (John 8:7) is well known in the Judaeo-Christian civilization. What is virtually unknown is (p. 16 of Dr. Schmidt's study) that Muhammad participated in the execution of a loose woman by throwing the first stone.
Christ taught that everyone should remember: no one is without sin, while Muhammad assumed that only he was without sin and had the divine right to torture or kill anyone.
Coincidentally, I, in my column mentioned above, and Dr. Schmidt in his book (p. 17) cite the same place in the Koran that describes Muhammad's armed robbery of a Meccan caravan when Muhammad was residing in Medina and needed the withal to conquer Mecca and make it submit to his faith. The armed robbery took place during the sacred month of Rahab, but the Koran, the text of which Muhammad dictated, explained that his armed robbery was more sacred than the sacred month.
Dr. Schmidt cites (p. 18) Jesus' admonition: ÒLove thy enemies.Ó What does it mean? Love the Nazis? Well, this is what a great writer in Christendom did. He described the enemies as human beings. If the English-speaking had understood that the Nazis would come to power because the Treaty of Versailles had left Germany defenseless against the Soviet invasion, the Nazis would not have come to power. But since even Winston Churchill had merely hated the Germans as enemies, Hitler came to power in Germany, with horrendous consequences.
Dr. Schmidt devotes a special section (pp. 19-20) to Christ's and Muhammad's Òview of women.Ó
Nothing new about Muhammad. Historically, man was a hunter and a warrior, and woman was defenseless if confronted by man. Hence she was his property or chattel slave. According to a Muslim scholar, Muhammad had 20 wives, apart from concubines. Ayatollah Khoumeini of Iran explained that a man should not make a girl below 9 one of his wives, but should keep her as a concubine. This is at the end of the 20th century!
Christ was not married, and Christianity encouraged celibacy (recall the celibacy of Catholic priests). Why? Christ regarded all children as his children. A married person tends to be egotistic. As for marriage, it was assumed by Christ and his apostles to be monogamous.
Paradise? Dante described the Christian paradise: it is fleshless, unearthly, spiritual. Muhammad's paradise, on the contrary, is the super-earthly concentration of earthly wealth and carnal power. Suras 52:20 and 55:56 speak of the large-eyed beautiful virgins whom a paradise-dweller (a martyr who had killed others and himself in jihad, for example) will keep deflowering as in an infinitely large harem, since the virgins will keep regaining their virginity.
The influence of the teaching of Christ on Christendom is shown in Dr. Schmidt's previous book I have mentioned, and those interested may also refer to my columns.
In one of them (12/23/03) I mentioned Plato, who opined that those who are so sick that they cannot work should die without any medical care. Human nature! ÒMan to man is a wolf,Ó ran a Roman proverb. The struggle for the survival of the fittest, as Darwin proclaimed in the 19th century. Christ preached the polar opposite. Hence Òthe triumph of the West,Ó since the success of a civilizations depends not on ever healthy powerful male warriors, but on men and women of genius like the composer Mozart or the nuclear physicist Marie Curie, winner of TWO Nobel prizes. Mozart, a sickly man, died at the age of 35. Today, he would have lived to a ripe old age, and without medical care in Plato's State he would possibly have died in his early youth.
As for Marie Curie, she, Polish by birth, looks beautiful on the photograph in my ÒBritannica.Ó So Muhammad could well make her one of his 20 wives, and, if she resisted, then one of his concubines. She lived for 67 years of full creative vigor. Well, Muhammad or another rich and powerful Moslem would have needed her only up to the age of 9 or 16.
No wonder the United States obtained nuclear weapons, with the help of ŽmigrŽ European scientists, in 1945, Russia in 1949, and China in 1964. In 2003 Iraq was said to have been trying to obtain them, but the United States considered this alleged intention so evil and globally dangerous that the invasion of Iraq followed.
Dr. Schmidt subtitled his book ÒThe Failure of Islam and the Triumph of the West.Ó To paraphrase Churchill, the West today is the worst civilizationÑexcept all others. Yes, taken without comparison, the West is the worst civilization. What about Christ's censure of wealth? I have not seen more smug, arrogant, and conceited cads than some American billionaires I have known, especially those who have inherited their money. Where is the Mozart of today in the West? What a cultural desert, There is societal mental regression as well Outside science and technology, there is a reign of mental mediocrityÑthe CIA, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media are bunches of Philistines who have not been even noticing the gravest threat to the WestÑthe dictatorship of China, while talking Iraq all round the clock for years. But compared with the West, the Islamic world IS a failure. According to the Freedom House, out of the 47 ÒMuslim majority countries,Ó only 2 (4%) are free. Among the world's 8 unfreest countries, 5 are Islamic: Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan.
Iraq? In the current debates about Iraq, news programs and TV discussions, nobody has noticed in the Iraq Interim Constitution the following sentence: ÒIslam is the official religion of the State and is to be considered a source of legislation.Ó From Saddam Hussein with his reliance on the more secular Sunnis back to the theocracy of the Shia majority even if the guerrilla war is won by the United States.
Afghanistan? The Constitution of Afghanistan of 2003 proclaims:
Another theocracy! As Saudi Arabia in the 7th century or today!
Much is made of recent elections in Afghanistan and contemplated elections in Iraq as proofs of democracy. Stalin and his successors held general elections with universal suffrage and secret ballot from 1936 to the end of Soviet dictatorship in 1991, that is, for more than half a century. What did it prove?
As for culture, the Arabs gave algebra to the West! But in the past five centuries the Islamic world has not, culturally, been seen or heard in the West, and only the suicidal Islamic terrorism of the past decades reminded to the West of its existence.
* * * * *
For more information about Drexler's Foresight Institute and its lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org
To learn more about the Chris Phoenix report, suggesting a Ònano Manhattan Project,Ó go to crnano.org.
For information about the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.
The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.
It is my pleasant duty to express gratitude to the Rev. Alan Freed, a Lutheran pastor by occupation before his retirement and a thinker by vocation, for his help in the writing of this column.
Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.
ÒArticle 1 Ñ Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary, and indivisible state. Article 2 Ñ The religion of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam. Followers of other religions are free to perform their religious rites within the limits of the provision of law. Article 3 Ñ No law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam and the values of this Constitution.Ó