Christianity: The Great Lie

Deciding these issues is a matter of sorting through the facts and it does not necessarily require a ‘superior’ integral theorist to do so. It simply requires someone who is rigorous and independent, and this only has an impact if all sides have given such an arbiter the authority to arbitrate. At the moment there is no such independent arbiter. It will not be any Western power, because according to a combined leftist/Arab conspiracy theory the Western powers have been unduly influenced by ‘the Jewish lobby’. It can’t be the UN because according to a combined rightist/conservative theory the UN is captive to an ‘Arab lobby’. This is where Don Beck has been hopelessly naïve – as soon as any leftist or Arab gets wind of SD’s links to Bush, Rove and the Republicans he will be instantly put into a specific camp and treated with due suspicion.

Despite some preferring to see this conflict as a territorial conflict between competing nationalist ambitions it is fundamentally a religious conflict. I understand that some will want to disagree with me but I’m afraid I can’t separate the deep religious issues from the nationalist issues. The fundamental reason Arabs have tried to frustrate Jewish ambitions is because Islam will not countenance being subservient to either Jews or Christians. It is a central belief for many (but not all) Muslims that Islam must dominate but never be dominated and that they should never surrender Muslim lands. It is therefore impossible to tolerate Muslims living under Jewish or Christian rule, no matter what. The natural order, as Allah decreed, is that Jews and Christians must live under Muslim rule as dhimmi, protected people. Thus, from this perspective, Jewish self-determination was always an insult and an impossibility. To understand this we must look back into the history of Jewish and Christian communities under Islam. Yes, they were allowed the right to worship, but only ever as second-class citizens. They were tolerated, but only if they kept their place. Much has been made of the tolerance of Muslim Spain, but even during the so-called ‘golden’ period Jews and Christians were still subject to special restrictive laws. There was always a system of apartheid. But that was only under more benign rulers. In 1066 there was a pogrom in Granada, where thousands of Jews died. Under the Almohades (1148) Jews were forced to convert or face having their property confiscated and being sold into slavery – all legal under a stricter interpretation of the dhimmi laws. To understand the situation for Christians it is only necessary to look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, even today.