{"id":6484,"date":"2006-08-16T23:08:06","date_gmt":"2006-08-16T23:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/chaput-on-islam.html"},"modified":"2006-08-16T23:08:06","modified_gmt":"2006-08-16T23:08:06","slug":"chaput-on-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/chaput-on-islam.html","title":{"rendered":"Chaput on Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

His most recent newspaper column:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Catholics who do<\/em> know history may remember the following:
Islam has embraced armed military expansion for religious purposes since its earliest decades. In contrast, Christianity struggled in its divided attitudes toward military force and state power for its first 300 years. No \u201ctheology of Crusade\u201d existed in Western Christian thought until the 11th century. In fact, the Christian Byzantine Empire had already been resisting Muslim expansion in the East for 400 years before Pope Urban II called the First Crusade \u2014 as a defensive<\/em> response to generations of armed jihad.<\/p>\n

Much of the modern Middle East was once heavily Christian. Muslim armies changed that by imposing Islamic rule. Surviving Christian communities have endured centuries of marginalization, discrimination, violence, slavery and outright persecution \u2014 not always and not everywhere; but as a constant, recurring and central theme of Muslim domination.<\/p>\n

That same Christian suffering continues down to the present. In the early years of the 20th century, the Muslim Ottoman Empire murdered more than 1 million Armenian Christians for ethnic, economic, but also religious reasons. Many Turks and other Muslims continue to deny that massive crime even today. Coptic Christians in Egypt \u2014 who, even after 13 centuries of Muslim prejudice and harassment, cling to the faith \u2014 continue to experience systematic discrimination and violence at the hands of Islamic militants. <\/p>\n

Harassment and violence against Christians continue in many places throughout the Islamic world, from Bangladesh, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and Iraq, to Nigeria, Indonesia and even Muslim-dominated areas of the heavily Catholic Philippines. In Saudi Arabia, all public expressions of Christian faith are forbidden. The on-going Christian flight from Lebanon has helped to transform it, in just half a century, from a majority Christian Arab nation to a majority Muslim population.<\/p>\n

These are facts. The Muslim-Christian conflict is a very long one, rooted in deep religious differences, and Muslims have their own long list of real and perceived grievances. But especially in an era of religiously inspired terrorism and war in the Middle East, peace is not served by ignoring, subverting or rewriting history, but rather by facing it humbly as it really happened <\/em>and healing its wounds. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

VIa Gerald at Closed Cafeteria<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His most recent newspaper column: Catholics who do know history may remember the following:Islam has embraced armed military expansion for religious purposes since its earliest decades. In contrast, Christianity struggled in its divided attitudes toward military force and state power for its first 300 years. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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