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| President Obama advocates for Islam at terror-linked mosque, Feb. 2016. |
Three years ago, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. That same year — 2013 A.D. — marked the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., the historic guarantee of religious liberty to Christians by the Roman Empire.
Prior to the Emperor Constantine’s key role in forming the Edict’s stance of tolerance towards Christians, they had been persecuted for centuries for not honoring the Roman gods.
The Edict was of explicitly universal significance in the Empire, as it was agreed upon by both Constantine (who controlled the West) and Licinius (in the East) upon their meeting in Milan in February, 313A.D. Constantine was already more than favorably disposed towards the Christian Faith; the Edict therefore was a key step in his role as advocate and protector of the Church. Less than seventy years later, in 380 A.D., Christianity had become the official state religion of the Roman Empire under Theodosius I.
(Keep that in mind, you young folk, when by 2050 you start hearing talk of making Islam the state religion of the United States, following after Europe's lead in 2025.)
(Keep that in mind, you young folk, when by 2050 you start hearing talk of making Islam the state religion of the United States, following after Europe's lead in 2025.)
The Edict protected Christians’ rights to worship freely, organize, and to build churches, and it provided for the return of confiscated property to Christians. If the wording of these rights sounds familiar somehow, it may be because we see their explicit reversal under Islam, via the harsh and demeaning terms of the Conditions of Omar and the dhimma contract of ‘protection’, which forbids Christians from publicly displaying signs of their faith or worshipping openly, from building new churches or repairing existing ones, and requires payment of the crippling jizya tax, together with an assortment of other demeaning restrictions designed to sap the will and vibrancy of the Christian populace under Islamic rule.
Islam, beginning with Muhammad and the Koran, and further codified by the caliph Omar, offers three choices to conquered Christians: reject Christ and convert to Islam; if not that, accept second class status under Islamic rule and pay the jizya tax; if they refuse even that then it is death. Per the Koran and key hadiths about Muhammad:
Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth [i.e. Islam] among the people of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Koran 9:29)
Muhammad said, “I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them. And their final reckoning is with Allah.” (Bukhari, 1:2:25, also Sahih Muslim, Book of Faith, 1:10:29-35)
Islam’s demeaning treatment of conquered Christians thus abrogates the Edict of Milan, and specifically reverses and denies the rights conferred by that landmark Roman ruling.
