Muslim Worldview

This is the rival worldview with the implicit and explicit vocation, and past attempts to conquer the world, replace Christianity and impose its way of seeing life and the world, that is, its worldview. This vocation to submit the world to their own worldview still exists and is the main goal of today's jihad, terrorism, invasive immigration, and the demographic growth of Muslims in Western countries.

As happened in the Middle Ages, when an inferior, more aggressive, and violent culture imposed itself on a superior one, it was followed by a period of darkness and ignorance, the same could happen in the West. History can repeat itself, and social change is not always accompanied with progress and improvement.

Theological Inconsistencies of the Qur’an Narrative
From a theoretical or theological point of view, Christianity that was born in Western culture has over the centuries been exposed to criticism, refinement, and purification by the Western rational culture. The same is not true of the Muslim narrative which, despite claiming to be historical, remains shrouded in myth and lives by a faith that is barely reasonable, plausible, or humanly credible, such as, for example, that the Qur’an was dictated by God to the Prophet Mohammed who wrote down word for word what God dictated to him. There are still other inconsistencies:

Muhammad, the last prophet, Jesus, the son of God
Islam accepts as valid the Jewish religious tradition described in the Old Testament which they also consider as their own. Mohammed is therefore the last of the prophets that God sent into the world, Jesus being the second last.

If humanity lives another 10,000 or 20,000 years, what sense does it make that the last prophet came in the year 524? The world and the humanity have changed much more since the year 524 than in all the millions of years before; why, then, did the prophets often succeed one another before this date, and after the year 524 they are no longer needed?

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  Hebrews 1:1-2

In the case of Christianity, even if humanity lives to the year 20,000, it still makes sense that the revelation happened in year zero. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews explains, the one sent is not another prophet, but God himself who comes to live among us.

There is a qualitative leap here; prophets bring messages for a specific time, while God's word is eternal for all times and all places because God in his perfection does not need to speak twice. Furthermore, Christ is not just a spoken word, he is a lived incarnated word and he only lived once.

In what sense is he the last prophet? Is it because Islam has a more refined doctrine and, on an ascending path, has already reached the summit? But the top looks more like Christianity, with its love of enemies. while Islam, in its practice and doctrine, resembles more the Old Testament than the New, when we think that even today women are stoned to death under Islam, and Christ was already against this sort of justice in his day.

God is one and triune, He is a community
Islam inherited the simple monotheism from the Hebrews. Therefore, both Jews and Muslims have no theological basis with which to conclude that man is made in the image and likeness of God. If God is love, and love that does not go out of itself is self-centeredness, God is more than one; God is a family, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in this we find the model of the human family: father, mother, and child.

God is one and triune, just as a human family is called to be a unity of three persons where the existence of one is not possible without the existence of the other two; a man is not a father without having a wife and a child; a woman is not a mother without having a child and a husband; and a child does not exist by himself or herself without having a father and a mother.

As Christ is the role model for individual human life, the Holy Trinity is the role model for social human life, a model of peace, harmony, and love. Judaism and Islam lack models, or theological reference points for life in the family and in society, conceiving God as a great loner.

Prophet Isa (Jesus), son of Mary ever virgin
With an entire chapter (sutra) dedicated to her alone, the Virgin Mary is the only woman indicated by her own name in the book of the Qur'an; all other women are spoken of in relation to a man; for example, there are no references to Sarah, but rather to Abraham's wife. Regarding Mary's virginity, the Qur'an clearly states that whoever does not believe in it or calls it into question is in sin.

According to both Christian and Muslim traditions, both Mary and the prophet Mohammed receive a visit from the Archangel Gabriel who blows the Word into both of them. The Word in Mohammed became a book, the Qur’an, and in Mary, a man, Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, some scholars of Islam say, Jesus or the Prophet Isa as he is called in Islam, is the Qur’an in the form of a man and the Qur'an is Jesus in the form of a book.

Faced with these facts, let us look at another inconsistency in the Muslim religion; if for the Muslim faith, as it is for us, Mary, the mother of Jesus is a virgin, then who is the father of Jesus? It obviously cannot be Joseph the carpenter, for if he were, Mary could not have remained a virgin.

And if Joseph is not the father of Jesus and Mary remains a virgin after conceiving, then the conception cannot have been natural and the father cannot have been human; if it is not the work of a human, it can only be the work of God, and if it is God's work, then God has a son, and it is not as Judaism conceives Him, a solitary God, but as Christianity conceives Him and how He was revealed to us by Jesus Christ, a God of love, a divine family or community.

If you owe nothing, you have nothing to fear
We are never more violent than when fighting for self-preservation. While the Christian religion, called into question by the French Revolution, the age of reason, the Enlightenment, and lately, by atheistic philosophies, has survived, the Muslim religion opposes all internal and external critical thinking and threatens with death anyone who does so.

"If you owe nothing, you have nothing to fear", this aggressiveness is nothing more than a way to hide the serious deficiencies from a philosophical, historical, and theological point of view. Fueled by oil and hatred of the West, the Muslim expansion is like a giant with feet of clay: the day these deficiencies come to the light of reason, perhaps not a stone will be left standing.

According to Carl Jung, fanaticism is a way to stifle an inner doubt. This is how Jung explained St. Paul's fanaticism against Christians before his conversion. St. Paul's doubt was between the security given by the law, a false security, and the freedom of grace that St. Stephen offered in his speech.

It is clear, even from the way they treat women as second-class citizens, that the Muslim religion was fine for the Middle Ages, but not for today's world. As today's way of thinking infiltrates by many means, even in Muslim countries, by the TV, by the internet, they feel intimidated and fear losing believers. They are afraid that their religion will not withstand the clash of reason, as Christianity has endured by refashioning itself.

Islam and Violence
There are two concepts that have perhaps been misinterpreted, or interpreted in ways that satisfy, justify, and bless the thirst for power of some. What is certain is that it was this "misinterpretation" of the concepts that wrote history and cause much blood to flow. I refer to the concept of JIHAD, which means effort, struggle, holy war, and the concept of ISLAM, which means to submit to the will of God.

As scholars say, JIHAD refers to the struggle that every human being must wage within himself or herself against evil. The case is that, historically, the inner struggle that should have remained inward, became an outer struggle; in practice, this struggle translated and still translates today into the struggle against those whom Islam considers infidels, declaring a war against them that is justified because it is holy, because it is for a good cause. At this time, they have not yet understood that "the ends do not justify the means."

Christianity also has its own version of holy wars, the Crusades. The first crusade was born in response to the request of the Christian Emperor of the East, Alexis I, to help him recapture the holy city of Jerusalem and free the Eastern Christians from Muslim rule. However, it quickly became a way to halt the advance of the Muslims who threatened to wipe out the Christian world. It started out as a right to self-defense that quickly turned into aggression, conquest, and massacre in the name of Christ.

Islam means to submit to God; the basis of the Muslim religion lies in this submission which is symbolically represented by the posture Muslims adopt when praying. This was the purpose of Jihad, the effort, the struggle to submit the whole personality of each person to God; indeed, this is what it means to worship God, to submit to his will. Christians do it by choice, not out of duty, because their Master tells them “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends…” (John 15:15)

As long as the religion did not go beyond the personal sphere, and remained reflective and intransitive, everything went well and smoothly; but this is not the submission that history prayed for. Submitting to God quickly turned into subjecting others to their version of God. Therefore, just as Judaism calls everyone who is not a Jew a Gentile, Islam calls everyone who is not a Muslim an infidel.

Unlike Christianity, which was born in an adverse world dominated by the Romans and for five centuries was a clandestine and persecuted religion that spread by the examples and preaching of early Christians, Islam was born from a warlike conquest of Mecca and in the submission of Christians and polytheists that were there to the new faith.

Resentment Against the Christian Western World
With the victory of the Christians against the Muslims at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, Christian culture and civilization ended once and for all the constant threat of Islam and grew to be what they are today, while Muslim civilization, whose heyday had been Averroes and Avicenna, stagnated in a medieval mentality.

The Muslim world has yet to recover from the resentment and hatred that this defeat caused; and the success of Western civilization that has overridden the rightness of the world. This hatred motivates the actions of Al Qaeda, Islamic State, and other terrorist organizations, especially against the United States, which represents the Western world.

Currently there is no traditionally Christian country that persecutes Muslims for their faith, while in traditionally Muslim countries Christians are systematically persecuted: Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia...

Muslims in the West are protected by democracy and the right to religious freedom; Christians in the Arab world have no rights; they are at the mercy of fanaticism. Muslims in the West can build their mosques, Christians in the Arab world have no right to build churches or repair those that have existed for centuries, and in Saudi Arabia, they Christians cannot even wear crucifixes around their necks.

Differences in Core Values
As we have already said, the Muslim worldview is fundamentally a re-edition of the Old Testament Judaism for Arabs.

Unity – Or union is a human value for both Muslims and Christians; however, Christians, advocate for unity in diversity, since Jesus chose a group of people so diverse to the point of being once enemies, for Muslims unity is uniformity, oneness, they do not accept or tolerate differences.

Time – Regarding time, Christians are more future oriented, Muslims have remained stagnant in the past. Clinging to their traditions that give them identity and security, they fear the future and change. Change in the West is progress, in the Muslim world it is loss of identity, it is insecurity.

Family – Unlike in the West, the extended family is more important than the core family of father, mother, and children. And there is more solidarity among family members. With the wife's submission to her husband, the divorce rate is low. The West is more individualistic and free, so the nuclear family is the only one that counts.

Peace – It is the greeting of Jews and Muslims, it means not only the absence of conflict as in the West, but also success, prosperity, and happiness.

Honor – It is a very important value in Islam; dishonor is the worst tragedy that can happen to a family. The West values honor equally, but only applies it individually, meaning family members do not pay for the misdeeds of any one of them.

Status – For Muslims, this is assigned or inherited. In the West, it is neither inherited nor attributed, but rather earned on one’s own merit.

Individualism – Muslims do not value independence, freedom, autonomy, but more the interdependence, and social and communal meaning of life. Therefore, they more easily support the dictatorships of their countries. Conformity and obedience are more important values to them.

Secularism – In Muslim countries Caesaro-papism is still accepted. Religion meddles in politics and vice versa. Religion in Western countries is a private matter, it does not come up in public life since Jesus said, "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's", there is a sharp division between the two powers, the Church and the State.

Conclusion: Standing still in time, the Muslim world seems to have become trapped in the past, it looks to the present and the future with anxiety; it resists change and progress for fear that it will be robbed of its inner peace, security, and identity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Christian Worldview

His Divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  2 Peter 1:3

Christianity, as the inheritor of Judaism, assimilated, implemented, and made its own all the good Jews brought to the world. Jesus of Nazareth is fundamentally a Jew who came, not to abolish Judaism and its laws (Matthew 5:17), but to purify it; what is important is not the letter of the law and its formal fulfillment, but the spirit of the law when applied to life.  

Since Jesus presented himself to mankind as the only role model of humanity, reference measure, paradigm, the only way, the only truth, and the only way to live life, (John 14:6), being a Christian and being authentic and genuinely human are one and the same thing. There is no such thing as human morality or ethics side by side with Christian morality because Christ is the only benchmark for measuring and evaluating the extent to which we are human.

In addition to a program of individual salvation, the way, the truth, and the life for the mental, spiritual, moral, and physical health of the human being, according to his or her nature, Christ also presented a program of salvation for society, for the human being as a social being: the Kingdom of God, that is, as Saint Paul says (Romans 14:17), “… is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”.

The Christian worldview is to view the world, to see and understand the world with the eyes of Christ, from his perspective, from his viewpoint. From this outlook, the worldview also has to do with the way we act with the world and in the world, the place we occupy in it. While the materialistic worldview answers with NOTHING the question about our origin, our destiny, and the meaning of our life, then the Christian worldview answers these same questions in the following way:

Where did we come from? – We came from God, creator of the universe, of everything and everyone, of time, of space, and of matter or energy. He made everything good and created everything out of love. As for us humans, he created us in his image and likeness. That is, besides being like everything else, spatial-temporal beings that occupy a space for a period of time, we, unlike other creatures, have in us a seed of eternity, a spiritual aspect that we possess, and it is up to us to make it grow in order to enter eternity with God.

Where are we going? – We are going to God who sustains our life beyond death, so death is not our final destination, but a passage into eternity. As birth was a passage from our mother’s womb to the bosom of the world, death will be our birth to Heaven, that is, our passage from the bosom of this world to the bosom of God, the return to the house of the Father paraphrasing the prodigal son’s parable, or the end of our pilgrimage.

What is the meaning of life? – “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). The meaning or the objective of our life is to give glory to God. Giving glory to God who created us is the best way for us to use the talents we have received and to self-actualize, achieving the happiness that is life in abundance that God wants for us.

We were taken out of nothing to do something with our lives, so that, using our physical body, resources, materials, and talents at our disposal, as scaffolding for the spiritual body, we can make the seed of eternity, that is in us, germinate.

Every material good can be spiritualized in the Still of our life, just as alcohol can be distilled from every fruit or vegetable, or a perfume extracted from flowers that ascends to God. Created from nothing in the image and likeness of God, it is up to us to do something with our life, or go back to nothing, that is eternal death.  

By living like Christ and constantly measuring up to him, as the role model and paradigm of humanity, we acquire divine sonship, we become adopted children of God, and according to Roman law with the same rights as God’s only begotten Son, Christ (Romans 8:14-16).

Humans are both individual and social beings. The value over which stands our individuality and personhood is freedom. Whereas the value over which stands our being social and always part of a family, group or community is equality. Therefore, we fight like Christ for a better world, a more just, peaceful, and fraternal world, as we seek to extend the kingdom of God, a project that Christ brought to Earth.

It is in this struggle that we realize ourselves individually, so there is no individual self-realization without a social dimension. Whoever is not useful to others is useless to himself. Whoever does not live to serve is not fit to live. The one that is not good for something is good for nothing, that is, disposable and useless like garbage.

The Gospel, the Best Human Narrative of All Time
Christianity in the New Testament, especially in the gospels that relate the life, the talents, and the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, has the most fascinating narrative of all time. The worldview, ethics, philosophy of life, human rights, what is truly human, is all laid out in the gospels.

Christianity is a historical religion because the gospels are not mythological accounts, like the holy books of many other religions like Hinduism. The gospels speak of a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, about his life, his behavior in everyday situations, his miracles and healings, his deeds, and his preaching and teachings.

Since they were written by four different authors, they have been the subject of study and research. In fact, no literary work has ever been so thoroughly subjected to literary, historical, hermeneutical, grammatical, meticulously word-for-word criticism.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the shortest and most significant story that mankind has created. It has inspired poets, painters, musicians, and literature, in addition to shaping the universal idea of unconditional forgiveness. It is difficult to talk about forgiveness without mentioning this parable.

The parable of the Good Samaritan has entered the minds and imagination of every man and woman as a synonym for solidarity with those who suffer or those who occasionally need our help. Samaritan today, more than an inhabitant of Samaria, means an empathetic person who weeps with those who weep and suffers with those who suffer.  

The gospel is the magna carta of human life, the standard of reference, the ultimate criterion of humanity that serves as a genuine and authentic reference for every individual. There is no narrative in the world that surpasses the gospels in humanity. The gospels have been the inspirational text of Western civilization, the beacon that illuminates it.

The United Nation human rights charter, which almost every country has signed, is clearly taken from the gospel. Christianity played an important role in stamping out practices such as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide, and polygamy. In general, it affected the status of women, condemning infanticide (female babies were more likely to be killed), divorce, incest, infidelity, birth control, abortion, and defending marriage and the family as the cell of social life.

Christianity is the most practiced religion on the planet, as the mother and mentor of Western civilization, it is the most developed and most extended in the world. Therefore, Christianity has shaped not only the minds of Christians, but also the minds of almost every human being living on this planet, even those who refuse to acknowledge it, such as the Muslim societies.

The feasts of Easter and Christmas are universally marked as holidays; the Gregorian calendar (of Pope Gregory XIII) was adopted internationally as the civil calendar; and time itself is measured by the West from the calculated date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth: the AD (Anno Domini). In the list of the 100 most influential people in human history, 65% are Christian figures from various fields.

Women's liberation
The rights of minorities, the respect of each person’s sexual orientation, the liberation of women, the values proper to Western civilization that place it at the forefront of human rights, cannot be explained without the gospel.

Jesus was the most feminist person the world has ever known; the only founder of a religion who never made a statement against women, who treated them as equal to men, who had female disciples - something never seen before or after him (even today rabbis do not have female disciples). It is true that his disciples followed the patriarchal mentality of the surrounding areas more than their Master’s practices. However, we cannot deny the importance of the gospel in the conversion of minds and hearts for gender equality, which started in the Western civilization and, little by little, is being assumed by the other civilizations, with the Muslim one being the most reticent in the matter.

It is true that even in the West women do not yet enjoy full equality, but it is certainly in the Christian West that women enjoy the most rights. What makes the degree of gender equality vary from country to country, is not wealth or poverty; that is, it is not necessarily in the richest countries that women are treated as equals. Saudi Arabia is wealthy, and yet women there are treated as second-class citizens. The determining factor is culture, not wealth.

Japan and the Philippines are two Asian countries not far from each other; the former is much wealthier than the latter, and yet there is much more gender equality in the Philippines than in Japan. As both are Asian countries, they have cultural elements that are in common. The big difference, however, is that the Philippines has been a Christian country for 500 years, while in Japan, Christianity has never been able to penetrate in such a way as to influence the culture. Like in Japan, restaurants where food is served on the naked body of a female teenager do not exist in the Philippines and it is unthinkable that they could ever exist there.  

Moral Conscience and Conscientious Objection
One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath? And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’

Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so, the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’ Mark 2:23-28

In one of his inflammatory speeches, intended to guide the German people into World War II, Hitler acknowledged that the moral conscience was a Jewish invention. The applied law, without jurisprudence, becomes injustice, so the ancient Romans used to say "sumum jus summa injuria": it is one thing to be just, it is another to overdo justice, that is, a strict application of the law can turn into a great injustice. Moral conscience, like conscientious objection, are creations of Christianity.

Nobody and no institutions are above our moral conscience; it is in our moral conscience that we are free, people with rights and duties, with responsibility and free choices. I may object to taking up arms and going to war to kill my brothers; I can object to participating in an abortion or assisting someone to die. The state cannot force me to do anything that my moral conscience guides me not to do.

Other higher values rise up, as Camões would say. Our moral conscience, well formed and informed by the gospel, doctrine, and tradition of the Church, in a hierarchy of values discerns in every situation with the help of the Holy Spirit what to do or what not to do. If I am on my way to Church on a Sunday to participate in the Eucharist and someone asks me for urgent help, I must leave the value of the Eucharist to assist my brother.

The above text quotes Jesus who says that he is Lord of the Sabbath, we are all lords of the Sabbath, the law, the rule, the norm; therein lies the dignity and freedom of the human person. Jesus cites the exception of David who, apparently, also already used his moral conscience to discern what to do in each moment. To steal is a sin, but to steal to eat is not a sin, says the people.

Sin is in the one who has too much and does not share with the one who does not have. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  The law exists for the sake of human life, self-realization, and happiness, and not the other way around.

Freedom and Equality
As we said above, the human value of the individual dimension of human beings is freedom; the human value of the community dimension of human beings is equality. Freedom and equality are the values on which human life rest and on which the political and economic systems of society rest or should rest.

Capitalism exacerbates freedom, socialism exacerbates equality. The balance or harmony of freedom and equality is as difficult to internalize for the individual as it is for society. The mundane world does not have an ideal formula for harmonizing these two dimensions; but Christianity has: the commandment of love.

The cross, the symbol of Christianity, is where the verticality of love of God above all things and the horizontality of love of neighbor as oneself meet and harmonize. Without freedom there is no human life, without equality there is no social life, without fraternity there is neither.

Welfare State
‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. (…) And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.  Matthew 20:1-2, 6-9

The welfare state was not invented by Karl Marx when he said that the state should demand from each according to his possibilities and give to each according to his needs. The welfare state, like so many things that we assume today to be part of our culture, was created by Jesus, and already put into action by the apostles in the first Christian community in Jerusalem, where they had everything in common and each was given according to his needs (Acts of the Apostles 2:44-47).

As the parable described above says, when the landowner paid those who worked a single hour the same wage as those who worked all day, he did not pay the labourers according to the work done, but according to their needs.

The labourers who had been in the market place all day because no one hired them, had the same needs as those who had worked all day, a wife, and children to support. The landowner, aware of this, paid them the same amount as those who bore the heat and weight of the day. In this Jesus invented the welfare state where from everyone is demanded according to his means and given according to his needs.

Christianity is not a Religious Religion, but a Civil Religion
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”

And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (…) Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.  Matthew 25:37- 40, 45-46

When Jesus appears to Paul, he does not ask him, "Why are you persecuting my disciples?" but rather "Why are you persecuting me?" Jesus, the older brother, the universal brother, is on the side of the reviled against the reviler, on the side of the poor against the rich exploiter, on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor, it is He who makes sure that injustice does not have the last word.

If a teenage girl while returning home alone at night, was approached by a group of delinquents intending on raping her, this violation will surely take place because the girl would have no way to defend herself. However, if one of these potential offenders recognized the girl as the sister of a feared and fearless police officer, the group would think twice before committing the rape and would most likely look for another victim. Christ is our older brother, our feared and fearless brother, with Him by our side we have nothing to fear.

The truly revolutionary thing about Matthew’s text is that Jesus turns religion into a civil matter; he had already done this by saying that the only two commandments that count are the love of God, which guarantees freedom, and the love of neighbor, which guarantees equality. In this last text, there is no religious question, the questions at the Last Judgment are not about what religion you practiced, what church you went to, or even whether or not you were an atheist; every man and woman will be judged by their degree of humanity, and not by their religious practice.

Christ, in fact, came into the world to teach man how to be man; those who, with Christ or without Christ, have shown in their daily lives a high degree of humanity, shall enter eternal life; those who, on the contrary, have lived for themselves cultivating temporal values, have reduced their life to nothingness and to NOTHING they shall return, dying eternally.

Conclusion: Christianity reveals human nature and shows the way it can be lived in order to achieve fullness of life in this world and in the next. To be authentic and genuinely human and to be Christian are one and the same thing.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC