Comparing Christianity & Islam
PETER KREEFT Peter Kreeft outlines the main theological and practical differences, as well as the important common elements, between Christianity and Islam. Two unsettling facts dominate the relations between Christianity and Islam: In other words, Islam has the world’s lowest rate of being converted and one of the world’s highest rates of converting. What accounts […]
The Pillars of Islamic Faith – What we should know & why
David B. Burrell (This article appeared in the January 31, 1997, issue of Commonweal. It appears here with the permission of the editor of Commonweal.) The watershed for Catholics with regard to other religions is the Vatican II document, Nostra aetate. Celebrated for its breakthrough in acknowledging the status of Jews as God’s people–”the gifts and call of […]
Rape, Murder, Violence and War for Allah Against the Jews: Summer 2000 on Palestinian Television
Itamar Marcus Sept. 11, 2000 IntroductionPalestinian Authority [PA] television broadcasting of violence and hate has reached unprecedented levels this summer and has created an atmosphere of the eve of outbreak of war. Palestinian television is currently broadcasting a systematic campaign that negates the peace process and reconciliation. Included are abundant violence clips, the depiction of […]
Celebrating False Martyrs
FATHER RAYMOND DE SOUZA Public discourse in much of the Arab world is in need of a thorough de-lousing after the capture of Saddam Hussein — if only to maintain the hygiene of Islamic theology. St. Stephenfirst Christian martyr The ignominious capture of Saddam had provoked widespread — but thankfully, not universal — disgust that […]
Can we bring together Islam and democracy?
Wlodzimierz Redzioch interviews Father Professor Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. In his famous book Prof. Huntington foresaw that the 21st century would be the time of the clash between various civilisations of the world, among others the Western civilisation and the Islamic civilisation. The events we are witnessing in the world nowadays seem to confirm this […]
Mary and the Muslims
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Muslimism is the only great post-Christian religion of the world. Because it had its origin in the 7th century under Mohammed, it was possible to unite within it some elements of Christianity and of Judaism, along with particular customs of Arabia . Muslimism takes the doctrine of the unity of God, […]
The Roots of Muslim Rage
BERNARD LEWIS Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified. IN one of his letters Thomas Jefferson remarked that in matters of religion “the maxim of civil government” should be reversed and we should rather say, “Divided we stand, united, we fall.” In this remark Jefferson […]
Vatican Council and Papal Statements on Islam
Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam 107, August 6, 1964“Then [we refer] to the adorers of God according to the conception of monotheism, the Muslim religion especially, deserving of our admiration for all that is true and good in their worship of God.” Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 16, November 21, 1964“But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge […]
The Cross and the Crescent
FRANCIS X. MAIER By looking at the past — our own past and the common history we share with Islam and other religious traditions — and by judging it honestly and rigorously, but without fear or rancor, we serve the truth that makes us free. We “contribute to the path of reconciliation,” however difficult that […]
St. John of Damascus’s Critique of Islam
The following passage is from Saint John’s monumental work, the Fount of Knowledge, part two entitled Heresies in Epitome: How They Began and Whence They Drew Their Origin. It is usually just cited as Heresies. The translator’s introduction points out that Fount of Knowledge is one of the most “important single works produced in the […]