Islam merits in shaping the US

In his article Obama: Islam Has Shaped the U.S.A. Robert Spencer asks what Barack Obama could have meant when he said on Monday to the Turkish Parliament:

We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.

Although Spencer passes through all milestones of the US history he can find no trace.

How can President Obama make such statements?

As to give an answer — which is possible — one must put oneself into the position of someone who confronts and questions the history of the United States and who philosophizes about it’s legal fundaments from a spiritual viewpoint. Apparently this leads farther back than Spencers walk-through of history due to the european heritage of the US.

1. The teaching of Christ on God’s Empire

As to make sure the full story is told, we start with birth of Jesus Christ by Whom God fulfilled all prophecies He sent to Israel and the entire mankind. As it won’t be possible to tell everything about Gods Son, we have to limit ourselfs to the very cornerstomes of His teachings.

Probably every Christian is aware He said: „Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.“ (Mt. 22, 21). Though it is correct that the separation of Church and Statet has emerged from this, but seeing not behind it is undue, as it would lessen Christs teaching on God’s Empire. For example in His prayer to the Father for the apostles He said: „I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.“

Combine these two sentences and you can anticipate the giant dimensions of His Empire!

2. What lessens God’s Empire

St. Paul felt in his heart these dimensions and thus wrote in Col. 2,8: „Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.“

Here it is essential to comprehend that philosopy makes us worldly. That means bringing philosophy into power lessens God’s Empire. This is because it eclipses the truth in Christ and hence dims the light we were entrusted for the way to life (Joh. 14, 6) through God’s mercy in His Word.

What is philosophy?

Philosophy is all worldly wisdom that prevents God be known. For the greeks preaching the crucified Christ was foolishness, because they were seeking for the wisdom of the world. And they were not only seeking it, they also found it — in raw masses! Until today the Greeks are famous for their achievements in philosophy:

• mathematics
• political theories
• astronomy
• medicine
• arts of reasoning

3. What is Islam?

Well, it all began with folks who blended their philosophies with what they had understood about Jesus Christ.

Once upon a time a caravan trader named Muhammad met some of these during a business trip in Jerusalem, where he learned about pieces of this blend. When he came back to Arabia he told his folks about it. To get a clearer picture they started to reason about God. At some point all things were sorted out and Muhammad had become a philosopher.

Past the death of his long-standing wife, he became somehow difficult. He decided to take some days of vacation for recreation and went off for camping at the mountain Hira nearby Mekka. One night he slept immensly bad and after he woke up he believed the archangel Gabriel had visited him and made him a prophet of God. This he told to his folks after he was back home. Yet despite his excellent reputation hardly anyone was willing to believe him, because Muhammad could name no witness for the story about this angel.

To gain more credibility he asked a writer to write down his philosophies into a set of small books on God related things. It took them many days and nights until they were done. During most of this time he was in mild mood, but there were also days where he was fairly angry.

Nevertheless Muhammad was glad with these books and he went back — full of hope — to his folks. With the books in his hands they were much more willing to believe him, but there were still many who insisted on a witness. This put him in rage and since then people who ask for witness are in trouble. Finally Muhammad fighted anyone who refused to acept his books on philosophy as Gods Word and so he closed his life as a highly respected warlord.

4. What about Europe?

It took still some time after the crucification of St. Pauls in Rome under Emperor Nero before persecution of christians the ended thanks to the first christian Emperor St. Constantine.

To elude the attacks of german and other tribes the capital of the empire was moved eastwards to Constantinopel, which led to the split of the roman empire into an eastern and a western empire. While the eastern empire survived until the 15th century, the western empire was quickly overrun by those tribes. A period of frightening disorder began. It were beyond the scope of this article to tell everything, but those who inherited Muhammads rage about the non-recognition of his unwitnessed books played also some role. Luckily Charlemagne and his franconian tribe ancestors invented the feudal order as a tribal philosophy. This feudal philosophy did have some downsides, but it helped the Franconians very much to restore order in western Europe and defend it against Muhammads angry successors.

While the Franconians saw themselfs as pious christians and acepted (more or less) the authoritity of the roman bishop, they blended Christs teachings with traces of their tribal philosophy. At some point they were in a shape to install their noblemens as roman bishops. The struggle about these bishops — they claimed to be „vicars of Christ“ — and other blendings caused the church be split in an eastern and western branch. However due to their stable empire — they called it holy, roman, and german — the inhabitants were fairly happy. They started to build huge cathedrals throughout western Europe and the cathedrals helped them to forget the church split, since they were so wonderful.

At some point a pious monk from Saxony, named Martin Luther, felt something was terribly wrong. He was angry about a doctrine the roman bishop had given to collect money for a cathedral in Rome. Luther was yearning for a dispute, but hardly anybody cared. So started to write challenging papers and spread them everywhere in the german empire. The german emperor was in fear over peace, but he was at loss over the reasoning. Finally he reconciled the dispute with a decree that allowed — for the sake of peace — both to be more or less valid. Nevertheless the reasoning continued and decades later a bloody war raged though the empire and devastated all countries.

There was no winner except the idea on the validity of two contradicting philosophies. To forget the war people started again builing cathedrals. Since the leading craftsmen didn’t care very much for which side the cathedral was built, they internalized this „both-can-be-valid“ idea and grounded it in a philosophy which they called freemasonry. Actual heart of this philosophy was some mathematics that had leaked trough from islamic philosophs as heritage of greek and indian philosophs.

5. Founding of the United States

Relatively soon after it’s discovery by Christopher Columbus ships with the founding fathers landed at the shores of America. In the beginning the colonists saw themselfes as subjects of their kings in Europe. But after some time they felt these kings care not very much for them. They were always busy with matrimonial agreements and waging war.

At some point the colonists had enough, because none of these kings had ever visited them. This made them really sick! So they founded a republic, elected a president and — for the sake of peace — gave themselfs a constitutuion on the ground of the „both-can-be-valid“ philosophy of the freemasons .

Due to this philosophical genesis of the constitution of the United States President Obama can say the islamic faith has shaped his country. Well, actually this was just a blueprint of the reasoning, but I guess most of the readers have got the point.

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