But that’s only a few people who call us Infidels. Every Muslim I’ve met personally has spoken very highly of Christianity and Judaism. Even if they did, shouldn’t we treat them with respect nonetheless? Turn the other cheek, or whatever?
It has nothing to do with implying lack of belief, just pointing out that the term makes more sense than Allahism, or even Islam, as Mohammed is the one they are supposed to emulate in submission to Allah. Christianity teaches God revealed Himself in Christ, and the name implies an emphasis on the divine nature of Christ, as a man alone doesn’t save. There is no hypostatic union concept or understanding in Islam, and this throws them in their understanding of why we are called Christians versus Jesusists. In focusing on the divine, it then serves to address the actual hypostatic union as the Messiah (Christ) HAD to be human as well. So, in this, we recognize that man doesn’t save, but rather the only begotten: best understood in its Latin or Greek rendering. In Latin, a spelling is unigenitum. It literally means the only one of His kind. The only one of His genus. The only one, who is Christ.
The closest thing they have is Mohammed, so, like all heresies/competing ideas against the true Gospel, they were named after their founding member of the doctrine. Their objection is, more modernly, due to the seeking of propaganda pushing in the vein of “Islam means peace, ergo, Islam is peaceful”. These sappy and paralyzingly shallow arguments are intoxicating society. Theirs is a very dualistic method of reconciling competing ideas in harmony, and uncharacteristic of perfection, and dualism is not perfect, but merely tolerates evil, and even embraces it as necessary for the good’s sake.
Actually, the whole reason that they reacted the way they did is because many of them take the “No Graven Images” thing really seriously. To say that Mohammad was anything more than a simple human would be blasphemous to a Muslim. Had that Danish newspaper drawn a picture of the Muslim conception of God, the reaction would’ve been the same. I see what you mean though! Religions are recognized by their messengers.
Well, I’m just saying that I don’t know for sure.
I suppose the term is historically correct in the same sense as calling Mohammad “Mahound”, and people of Middle Eastern Descent as “Saracens”? That is, it’s a term historically used by outsiders who believed Islam placed divinity on Mohammad, or was somehow non-monotheistic. Semantically, sure, it’s not necessarily offensive in itself, but neither is calling an African a “Moor”. What’s important is the social connotation, don’t you think?
Their little ban on graven images is not even a totally Islamic concept. Depending on the sect, there are plenty of graven images, and with no actual authority in Islam, no one way is right. The Protestant logic profile is evident in Islam from its inception. It’s all about who wrangles the most power or retains the most favor, and no one of a chosen descent.
With no set method of transliteration, depending on the accent, one could indeed arrive at Mahomet as many Church documents refer to him. Koran, Qoran, Quran, Quu’ran, Qu’ran, etc. You get the idea. Saracens were a specific group of certain areas, not a belief system which is global. The Moors were specific group in the same style as the Saracens. Both of these terms morphed in history. Saracen was nothing more than a term used in pre-Islam Pagan Rome for Arabians. This morphed into all those in Arabia in Christendom because of the spread of Islam in those areas. So, in this regard it must be, again, understood from a Catholic perspective from which it morphed:
John of Damascus, in a polemical work typical of this attitude described the Saracens in the early 8th century thus:
There is also the people-deceiving cult (threskeia) of the Ishmaelites, the forerunner of the Antichrist, which prevails until now. It derives from Ishmael, who was born to Abraham from Hagar, wherefore they are called Hagarenes and Ishmaelites. And they call them Saracens, inasmuch as they were sent away empty-handed by Sarah; for it was said to the angel by Hagar: “Sarah has sent me away empty-handed” (cf. Book of Genesis xxi. 10, 14).
- Wikipedia, with citation from the titled work.
Funny, but his assessment covers the lands and culture in which Mohammed sprang from. This paints a damning picture for the reality of Islam. It describes Islam perfectly in its use of “threskeia”, and covers the geographical areas perfectly as well. And it would seem that Islamic eschatology is like the bizarro AntiChrist wins version of Christian end times understanding, albeit the historical view of the AntiChrist is he will be of Jewish descent. At any rate, ain’t nothing too great about it when stepping back and removing the protest cries of gullible people and the plaintiff, and just looking at the evidence.
