My latest in PJ Media:
The term “Judeo-Christian” has been in common use for decades to refer to the Biblical heritage of America and the West in general, but if one French intellectual gets his way, we will soon be referring instead to our “Islamo-Christian” heritage. When one surveys the world in which jihadis have just taken over Afghanistan and are emboldened everywhere, and an ostentatiously Roman Catholic president’s Justice Department files suit against a state of the United States for daring to restrict abortion, maybe “Islamo-post-Christian” would be more apt. But in any case, the French intellectual Charles Saint-Prot, a professor at the Institute of International, European and Comparative Law in Paris and an expert on Islamic law, is pushing for the “Islamo-Christian” term. Because the Christian and post-Christian West and the Islamic world have so very much in common, you see.
It has long been taken for granted that it was Judaism and Christianity that had so much in common. Back in 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr. denounced racism as a “cancerous disease that prevents us from realizing the sublime principles of our Judeo-Christian tradition.” But now, according to the French-language Riposte Laïque, Charles Saint-Prot wants the West to look to a different shared heritage, the one the West supposedly shares with Islam.
The thesis of Saint-Prot’s work is “Islam is a harmless religion,” and “if there are any lingering hiccups, they shouldn’t be taken too seriously.” He rejects the idea of a “Judeo-Christian culture,” and instead recommends use of the term “Islamo-Christianity,” as the two are, he says, “sister religions with very few differences.” Saint-Prot also claims that “Islam did not harbor any particular hostility against Christianity.” He is not just talking about terminology for its own sake. Saint-Prot “now proposes an economic alliance with the Maghreb countries, particularly Morocco, convinced that France’s future is here.”
While Charles Saint-Prot is hardly a household name, his views on this are shared by all too many on both sides of the Atlantic, and elsewhere. He is by no means the first to suggest a shift in terminology to reflect an embrace of Islam by the West. As far back as 2003, Agha Saeed of the American Muslim Alliance recommended that the U.S. government and media begin speaking of “Judeo-Christian-Islamic values” rather than “Judeo-Christian values,” and should do so “in all venues where we normally talk about Judeo-Christian values, starting with the media, academia, statements by politicians and comments made in churches, synagogues and other places.”
Much more recently, in August 2020, The Atlantic ran a piece complaining that “the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ excluded not only Muslims, Native Americans, and other non-Western religious communities, but also atheists and secularists of all persuasions…The mythical ‘Judeo-Christian tradition,’ then, proved an unstable foundation on which to build a common American identity.” The Atlantic didn’t call for the adoption of the term “Islamo-Christian values,” but clearly it likely wouldn’t have any problem with it, either.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Islam is evil says
Islamo terrorism or Islamo evil would be appropriate terms.
jule says
Islam is anti everything that Christianity teaches. What does that tell us.
mortimer says
To jule: Islam has virtually nothing in common with Christianity, except for the names of the prophets. The biographies of those prophets is completely different in Islam. Islam’s ethical system is substantially different from that of Christianity and Judaism. Islam does not contain a universal version of the Golden Rule. Judaism and Christianity make the Golden Rule the cornerstone of the their ethical systems. Neither Judaism nor Christianity contain a supremacist political ideology. More than half of the Islamic source text is about politics and dominance over kafirs.
It is absurd to claim that Islam and Christianity have much in common. They have very little in common. To say otherwise is a deliberate deception.
jule says
Islam is anti everything that Christianity teaches. what does that tell us
mortimer says
To jule: what this ‘intellectual’ tells us is that he is deliberately misleading people.
Islam is not benign, but aggressively malicious towards the kafirs.
(- “The Muslim should regard the Kuffaar as ENEMIES and HATE them because of their kufr (wrong belief), just as he hates their kufr (disbelief) itself.” – from Umar Sulayman ‘Abd-Allaah al-Ashqar, “Belief in Allah”)
Charles Saint-Prot is whitewashing Islam and I suspect someone is putting him up to it.
He is a propagandist, rather than an ‘intellectual’.
Grace says
Islamo- Christian would be an oxymoron. Islam has vowed to wipe Christians off the face of the earth along with Jews.
tim gallagher says
Spot on, Grace. This crap from this imbecilic, brain dead “intellectual’ has to be just about the dopiest thing i have ever heard. Islam and Christianity are complete opposites, and, as you say, islam hates Christianity and wants to wipe it out. “Islamo-Christian” – the greatest load of bullshit ever.
Walter Sieruk says
To replace the term “Judeo- Christian” with “Islamo-Christian” is totally absurd and complete nonsense.
For since September 11, 2001, if not even before that date ,it’s been a terrible conflict and war of ideas between the Judeo-Christian world and the Islamic world.
Furthermore, on the early morning of September 11, 2001 the 19 jihadists of the Islamic terrorists network, Al Qaeda were about to carry out that jihadist scheme to hijack some jet planes to use them as missiles for mass murder and destruction of jihad attacks.
Those 19 jihadist/Muslims in their Islamic delusion firmly believed that after they died in their jihad attacks for the cause of Islam as “martyrs” in those murderous Islamic terror attacks they would then immediately go to an Islamic paradise with many virgins, houris,. Each large group of houris for his individual use only. With is type of wedding to them in a forever sex- filled marriage to them.
This belief is based on the teachings and doctrine of the Qu’ ran and the Hadith. This belief is not only absurd but it’s also a false teaching based on a false doctrine. This is known because Jesus taught ‘Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven.” Matthew 22:29, 30. [K.J.V.]
Furthermore, the Bible warns against accepting and believing in religious story/ doctrines, no matter how enticing they might be. For the Bible warns against giving “heed to fables….” First Timothy 1:4.
In addition, such a lust –filled fable /doctrine and the deluded men who would believe in it was predicted the Bible. For the Bible informs its reader in Second Timothy 4:3, 4. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
In great contrast to the religious fiction of such a fable /doctrine that has deceived many jihadists into engaging in suicide/homicide attacks, Christians have the reality found in Second Peter 1:16. Which reads “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ…”
mortimer says
Islam’s ethical system is abhorrent to all Christians. Many Christians consider Mohammed the anti-Christ mentioned in the New Testament.
Walter Sieruk says
To replace that appropriate term with an entirely inappropriate term is outright balderdash.
In addition, after the news reach the world about the mass murder and destruction that occurred by that vicious jihadists attacks in America which occurred September 11, 2001. Many Muslim were happy and even celebrated that murderous affront carried out by those jihadists of al Qaeda.
There are some good, decent but naïve Westerners when discovering about who those Muslims were actually glad about those horrendous happenings on 9/11. Some of those Westerners might be shocked and then stop and wonder and ask “How can those people, being so very religious, be so happy and glad about those deadly atrocities of that day ?”
The answer to that question is found in the Bible. For the Bible informs its reader that there are some men who are very callous, cruel, unfeeling and heartless because they have had “their conscience seared with a hot iron.” First Timothy 4:2. [K.J.V.]
In this specific case that “hot iron” is Islam.
Walter Sieruk says
On September 11, 2001 those murderous and destructive and deadly jihad attacks by jihadist/Muslims of al Qaeda were not acting out in a hijacked form of Islam but actual Quran based non-watered down hard core. As the Quran teaches in 9:111, “The believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, they kill and are killed.” Likewise, this “holy book” of Islam also instructs in 47:4 “Whenever you encounter the disbeliever strike off their heads until you make a great slaughter among them…”
The hash reality is using jets planes as missiles as those jihadists did on 9/11 do does ,tragically , make a much greater “slaughter among them” than a sword can. There are the other verses the give instruction for violence and killing for the cause of Islam, as 2:191. 5:33. 8:39.9:5, 38-39.
gravenimage says
Days Before 9/11 Anniversary, Intellectual Proposes Replacing Term ‘Judeo-Christian’ with ‘Islamo-Christian’
……………
Vicious idiocy from Charles Saint-Prot. But he is a long-term apologist for the savagery of Islam.
He was a “democracy and transparency advisor” to Presidents Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein–you seed how that worked out…
He has ludicrously claimed that Islamic terrorism can be countered with the “Islamic traidtion”–as though these were not one and the same.
mortimer says
TRADITIONAL ???
Radical Islam is traditional Islam Fr Henri Boulad SJ
“L’islamisme radical qui se déchaîne en Syrie et en Irak (ISIS) N’EST PAS une déviation ou une perversion du véritable islam, dont l’orientation serait uniquement spirituelle et religieuse, c’est de fait l’islam LE PLUS TRADITIONNEL”, lâche le Père Henri Boulad.
“The radical Islamism that has been loosed in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) IS NOT a deviation or a perversion of an alleged ‘true Islam’, whose orientation is purely spiritual and religious. In fact, it is THE MOST TRADITIONAL FORM of Islam.” – Fr. Henri Boulad SJ.
Isabella van der westhuizen says
I prefer the term Christendom to any other
Ugly Sis says
I want it back.
OLD GUY says
I love how the media calls these terrorist scholars, intellectuals and learned and other accolades to make them sound like they are important leaders. For most they are thugs or totally mislead individuals promoting the islamic dictatorship regimes and world domination plan.
ISLAMO and CHRISTIAN don’t go together, they oppose each other from the standpoint that islam wants to kill or enslave Christians while Christians hope to live in peace with other religions. Judea-Christians have lived together in peace for thousands of years.
JHL says
Islamo-Fascism.
Johnny B says
You can’t make that stuff up. But however ridiculous this may sound today, if you push a narrative long and hard enough more and more will believe in it, it’s inevitable. Add to it more and more powerful leftist regimes here in the West that will more often than not support Muslims narratives, especially when they go against Israel and Christians, who can say what will be the common opinion and what will be deemed offensive to Muslims and maybe even illegal to utter. Just think about how fast social media implemented censorship against especially Conservatives and Christians over the past few years.
Michael Copeland says
“Muslims have a long shared history with Britain,” says an imam in a 2017 video produced by — yes, really — Lincolnshire Police.
The long history is a painful one of slave raids on coastal villages in Cornwall and Ireland, of British and American crews taken captive at sea for slavery in north Africa, and repeated expensive demands for ransom, and extortion funds to buy off future raids. The word “shared” would be more appropriately changed to “inflicted”.
https://gatesofvienna.net/2021/03/jihadis-taking-british-and-american-kafirs-for-profit/
Kepha says
As someone who is not altogether comfortable with “Judaeo-Christian” as opposed to “Jewish and Christian”, I think the idea of “Islamo-Christianity” is utter nonsense.
Talk of a Judaeo-Christian tradition made sense in that both Judaism and Christianity read and use the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible, although their understandings of how these books are to be read differ. Christianity makes no sense at all without the Messianic aspirations of Judaism. But, ultimately, Christianity is about the person and work of Jesus the Messiah.
Islam’s use of Jesus’ name underscores the great gulf between the two traditions. A Christian cannot maintain the historic and biblical faith without confession that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man in one person, that he truly tasted death on the cross to atone for the sins of his people, and that he truly rose from the dead on the Third Day. While Islam believes it honors Christ by speaking of his being caught up, it completely misses his victory over sin and death in his cross-work and resurrection. And, of course, it denies that he is God incarnate.
Yet, somehow, Islam now and then throws up sects like the Druze worshipers of Al-Hakim, the Ali Ilahis, and those Sunnites who honor pirs in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This, perhaps, reveals Islam’s hunger for a mediator, as well as the feebleness of those it does accept when compared to the Jesus Christ of the Bible.
Namer says
Intellectual just means that someone who knows nothing sits around pontificating about how smart they are.
Ugly Sis says
Entire “theology” is preposterous, self-serving nonsense.
“We own the world. God said so. We’re get the actual quote right here.”
That’s their entire evidence.
Ugly Sid says
Android strikes:
We’re get = We’ve.
Ugly Sis says
Entire “theology” is preposterous, self-serving nonsense.
“We own the world. God said so. We’ve the actual quote right here.”
That’s their entire evidence.