No, I don’t.

Do you have video/audio of the debate Fr. Johannes?

Actually, secularism plays into the hands of Islam. I debated an Islamic “scholar” (that is how he was billed anyway) at a private high school in Naples, FL a few years back. He played to every liberal sympathy in the book (tolerance, victimhood, etc.). The verdict was split 50-50 after the debate. Half the room hated me, the other half loved me.

The “haters” were most offended I think that in my responses, I did not take the putative moral weight of the liberal appeals into account at all. They seemed to believe that my Muslim opponent would respond to those secularized virtues if presumably he understood them. He understood them all right. I think this is how he got previous debaters on the ropes judging how facile he was in delivering them. I think the “haters” were angry I did not show the requisite contriteness when he made his charges.

I appreciate your expounding on islam, etc. etc., but we all need to take a good look at this moon god religion based on a pedophile and murderer (mohammed) and call it for what it is and call “a spade a spade.” Islam is from the pit of hell, is not a religion of peace, and has a history full of subjugation, murder, pedophilia, and destruction. We need to speak this truth in love, though, and not dance around what we think it is. If the United States were following the tenets of the Scriptures thoroughly and were carrying out our business in a purely Christian way, the “religion of peace” would still hate us because we are the infidel. It is my firm conviction and hope that all muslims convert to Christianity, the true religion par excellence, and that we look to fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and fervent church attendance to see this through.

Harry, right again. Islam has always favored the hothead and bigot, placing him in the seat of most influence. Other cultures, times and places, some Christian, have the same bad trait. But so many people, especially women, are already coming out from under the ‘hot shadow of Islam’ by the droves these days. I think of courageous young Egyptians who explore a revolutionary ethos similar to Sorbonne ’68 in the face of Salafist threat, and all the Iranian youth who absolutely abhor the mullahs. Everwhere the young Arabs speak up, it is in secular voices. The Arab spring was pretty well co-opted by islamist turds but not by the consent of the youth who largely fought it for secular goals. And every day thousands quietly convert to Christ, even in that cesspool of intolerance, Saudi Arabia.
I met Coptic youth here who tell me many Egyptian muslims in the US are converting to Coptic Christianity. It’s a tidal wave gaining speed. The older generation is struggling desperately to keep a lid on the demographic preponderance of secular and otherwise de-islamizing youth. The pathetic maundering of the hothead old fart above and that cute but deluded twist of a she-rapper notwithstanding, these idiots are on the way out. We need to tell them very loudly where to get off, that we will not respect their pathetic emotional tantrums as deserving our sacrifice of an open society.

A clarification: I said, “Islam I understand does not teach that God is Love (is not one of the 99 names of Allah) and that we should love as He does – and even be Humble as He is.” To be more accurate what I meant was that Christianity teaches that God IS Love whereas Islam teaches that Allah loves – but is not Love. The 99 names of Allah includes Al-Wadud “The Loving One.” We believe that God expresses His love to us in humility. So we say that God is humble – He is as Humble as He is Almighty. The 99 names of Allah do not include the name, “The most Humble.”

Maybe in less ‘grand cosmic scheme of things’ ‘intellectual God categories and word images’ terms what we see is that by it’s inner nature Islam is much easier to co-opt by the politically ambitious. Christians who can say ‘no’ to God aren’t going to put up with a civil tyrant for too long. But if you can’t say ‘no’ to God and if you leave the religion says to kill you— accept that’s how the world is and your choices are to be on the menu or at the table. Accept that’s how the world is and we look forward to warring tyrants forever.

Is it not the essential characteristic of a cult that to leave means severe reprisals? Leave a Christian church (redundancy for emphasis) for a while and you get letters asking you to consider returning and invitations to bake sales.

The project then is to erase the credible threat of murder for choosing not to live according to the wishes of the Islamic leader and/or his secular tyrant counterpart. Remove extortion from the decision to stay or not stay.

I can’t believe the either men or women will put up with the Islamic enshrined, even required, second class female status for much longer, as education increases. Either Islam will moderate or folk will leave it. The question is will the radical-Islam tyrant types kill thousands or millions before that happens?

Yes. We have to recover what I call the “prophetic dimension” of the Gospel, that unleashing of power that transforms the heart and mind of the hearer because it reveals Him who is Truth when the words of truth are preached. It is the only word that can penetrate the fog of moral relativism and also expose the inversion of values that justifies the destruction of liberty in the name of freedom you touch on above.

I wrote an essay on this a while back: One Word of Truth Outweighs the Whole World.

I think this is what Fr Johannes is getting at. That that concept of tolerance which respects and honors personal freedom – even to reject God – is Christian based and has provided a foundation that our secular society essentially took from us – without accepting all of the rest (Christianity).

Yes. That is the point.

The way we win this war is through the pulpit, by more freedom, not by nation-building and preemptive wars.