FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 644 13 August 2015 JIHADI SALLY

LOVING YOUR ENEMY. TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK. EVEN TO MEN OF VIOLENCE. HOW IS IT DONE?
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‘You Christians all need beheading with a nice blunt knife’ tweeted Muslim convert Sally Jones from Raqqa, the rogue Caliphate’s capital.

Is Jihadi Sally a real person or a scaring hologram cunningly created by the British secret services in collusion with Sky TV? God knows. Old Bin Laden gone, the search for a bogeyman/woman to scare little children to bed has continued apace. Be that as it may, Jihadi Sally, real or fake, isn’t the brightest of the Islamist bunch.

Despite well-publicised, truculent and gory episodes, ISIS is NOT out to behead all Christians. Because it is a key tenet of Islamism that Christians are, as the Qur’an attests, people of the Book. Adherents of monotheism. They are dhimmi, protected folks. Not to be killed. Instead, they are invited to embrace Islam. If they refuse, they have to pay the Jizya, a capitation tax, in return for ‘protection’. (Shades of the Mafia?)  An unenviable offer. Still, no wholesale extermination of Christians is envisaged.

What about the abductions, the mass killings of innocent Christians, like Ethiopians and Egyptian Copts? Dozens of captives were shown bound and gruesomely beheaded. Though disgusting, savage and cowardly, such atrocious acts are not part of a general policy to murder all Nazarenes. Because, unlike dumb Sally, ISIS is smart. Its strategy is to provoke Western powers, US, France and Britain especially, into military intervention in the Middle East. To stir up the Arab and Muslim masses into a reaction against the Kuffaar, the hated Infidels. And to trigger off an ‘apocalyptic’ confrontation between East and West.

Smart and yet not too smart. Because the Caliphate head-choppers are deluded if they believe that Cameron, Hollande and Obama give a toss. Western governments care for the plight of Middle Eastern Christians as much as my dog cares for the welfare of stray cats in downtown Brentford. ISIS is blinded by its loony, medievalist ideology. It dreams to replay the Crusades. And so in its fantasies it casts present-day European rulers as Christian heroes like Richard the Lion Heart, Emperor Frederic Barbarossa and St Louis. Nothing could be further from the truth. The godless sods only care for power, oil, gold, that’s about it.

ISIS believes, on the strength of a prophetic hadith, in al-Malhama al-Kubra, a Mega Clash between Christians and Muslims. You can guess who is supposed to win that one. A front page of Dabiq, the Caliphate version of the Daily Mail, shows their black flag set up flying in Rome, opposite St Peter’s. Hhmmm… as plausible as evangelical Christians planting the Cross on Mecca’s Ka’aba. But I wonder…

Actually, dumb Sally is so thick that a Sky News impostor has easily hoodwinked her. The female journo, posing as a would-be recruit, reports that Ms Jones wanted her to carry out bombings for VJ Day. Considering that VJ (Victory over Japan) implies ‘celebrating’ the atomic annihilation of 200.000 innocent Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the pursued British outrage could only have been a piffling comparison. Even if it targeted the Queen. (God bless her, Her Majesty at 89 is bound for Eternity anyway!) However, the point is that poor Sally is so slow-witted that she has not yet twigged the obvious: half of the ‘Jihadis’, on and offline, are likely to be agent provocateurs, infiltrators and spies. Come to think, maybe she is one, too.

Picking on her former religion is what the dumb girl is fanatically keen on. Guess her tiny mind has little notion of what is really unfolding in the Levant. The last stage of an ancient, bitter struggle between two rival branches of Islam, Shia’ and Sunnis. The House of Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, versus the House of Hind, the bloodthirsty wife of Abu Sufyan. A fierce battle now raging in the heart of the Arab world. In countries like Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bahrain. Outcome yet undecided.

Mind you, that internecine feud nowise does exonerate the West. Because the conflict was rekindled and ignited by the illegal and unnecessary American and British invasion of Iraq. Bush and Blair hence are the criminal alchemists, the apprentice sorcerers guilty of opening the gates of the Jihadi hell, gates unlikely to be shut till the demons have had their surfeit of blood and mayhem.

How are good and faithful Christians supposed to respond to ISIS’ threats, violence and killings? Turning the other cheek? But that pertains to personal insult, not to grave physical injury, attempts on life and limb, attacks on the innocent and the defenceless. I may abide by Christ’s counsel when a scoundrel offends me – it does not follow I am obliged to turn a fallen victim’s cheek so that men of violence could have another go.

St Augustine, that great soul and shaper of Western spirituality, put it well. ‘Love your enemy’, the Lord commands. Yes, groan... I must love even ISIS and dumb Sally. However, Augustine qualifies, loving the enemy requires using your God-given reason and intelligence. How do I love my enemy? How do I do him good? By allowing him to go on hurting and murdering? No, that is not love. I love my enemy, I really seek his good, when I stop him from continuing to do grievous harm. Hence I should love ISIS and their ilk with an appropriate ‘benign severity’...

And I will.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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