V. Summary: the Purpose Driven Jihad
The grim continuity of Islam’s Purpose Driven Jihad against Christianity has shown itself:
- in the Arab Jihad Wave of the seventh and eighth centuries, with the subsequent subjugation and martyrdom of Christians and the destruction and desecration of churches, shrines and holy sites,
- in the Ottoman Jihad Wave beginning in the eleventh century,
- in the steady parade of Neo-Martyrs under the Ottoman yoke (dating from the fifteenth through to the end of the nineteenth centuries),
- in the Armenian/Orthodox genocide of the early 20th century,
- in the destruction of Smyrna in 1922,
- in the anti-Christian pogrom in Istanbul in 1955,
- in the burgeoning catastrophe facing the Copts in Egypt, the Orthodox and Catholics in Syria and Lebanon, and Christians throughout the Islamic world.
- through the consistent teachings of the Ulema, the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and through acknowledged Islamic authorities such as Al Azhar University in Cairo, and such texts as The Reliance of the Traveller, which all command jihad as warfare against unbelievers in order to spread Islam.
An extremist theology possessed of a relentless thread of belligerent teachings against the Christian Church, coupled with its self-perceived divine, unalterable directive to submit the whole world to its rule, has grave consequences. How to counter such a theology and teaching is one of the most profound and urgent crises facing the Orthodox Christian Church, and indeed all free people, in the 21st century.
To be concluded...
