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March 31, 2007

Libya: Muslim Dictator Redefines Christianity

News from Reuters, also in Middle East Online reports that the dictator Muammar Gaddafi (Qadafi) has decided that he knows better than Christians what Christianity is about.

Yesterday, while attending a prayer meeting in Niger to commemorate the birthday of Mohammed, he said: "There are serious mistakes -- among them the one saying that Jesus came as a messenger for other people other than the sons of Israel. Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion. It is a mistake that another religion exists alongside Islam. There is only one religion which is Islam after Mohammed."

The speech was broadcast live on Libyan TV.

There was a meeting of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia this week, the "Arab Summit" hosted by Saudi officials at the al-Athriyah Village just outside Riyadh. Gaddafi boycotted this event, stating: "Libya has turned its back on the Arabs... Libya is an African nation. As for Arabs, may God keep them happy and far away."

The dictator has recently "come in from the cold" as far as UK and US governments are concerned. On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, traveling from London to New York exploded shortly after takeoff. Making a "great circle" route, it was over Scotland, and bodies and wreckage fell over the small town of Lockerbie. All 259 people on the plane were killed, along with 11 people on the ground. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifah were later charged in the US and Scotland.

Libya refused to surrender the two men for trial, leading to a UN ban on air travel and sales of arms to Libya. The suspects were finally released from Tripoli on April 5, 1999. In January 2001, a court in the Hague found Abdel Baset al-Megrahi guilty of murder. His appeal was later rejected.

Earlier, Libya had shown its cavalier disregard for international law, when on April 17, 1984, gunmen from inside the Libyan Embassy in St James Square, London fired shots at members of a demonstration which was taking place outside. 10 people were injured, and a 25-year old British policewoman, WPC Yvonne Fletcher, was shot in the stomach and fatally wounded. The Embassy refused to surrender the gunmen, claiming diplomatic immunity. A siege situation then took place, which ended 11 days later on April 27.

Gaddafi had responded to support the gun-toting diplomats. In Tripoli, 18 people were held hostage in the UK Embassy, immediately after WPC Fletcher was shot.

In May 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice announced that Libya's cooperation in the "war on terror" merited the country being removed from a list of nations which supported terrorism. The US had broken off diplomatic relations with Libya in 1980. Britain, somewhat typically, had decided to renew their diplomatic relations with Libya in July 1999.

Libya may not support terrorism any more (even though in 1985 Gaddafi offered to send weaponry to Louis Farrakhan's heretical Nation of Islam), but it should still not be trusted.

Friday's ridiculous pronouncements about Christianity should set alarm bells ringing for anyone concerned about peace and stability in Africa. Gaddafi is already sponsoring mosques and other Islamic institutions in the rest of Africa. Already Saudi-funded mosques in the Horn of Africa are being used to stir up conflict between Muslims and Christians. For Libya's dictator to denounce one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity signals that he intends to support a more radical form of Islamic "missionary" (da'wah) activity.

With a hat-tip to Little Green Footballs, details have emerged of the murder of an evangelical Christian in Ethiopia last week. On Monday afternoon (March 26), an evangelist named Tedase was snatched from Merkato street in the town of Jimma in southern Ethiopia. He had been preaching with two women assistants. Christian Newswire reported that the man was taken into a mosque on the street, which is funded by Saudi Arabian Wahhabists. Here, he was beaten to death. Ethiopia is roughly split between Christians and Muslims. Traditionally relations between followers of the two faiths is said to be good, but on October 1 last year, Muslims attacked Orthodox Christians in Dembi, northwest of Jimma. Five people were killed.

In Kaduna in northern Nigeria, thousands of people (mostly Christians) were killed in 2000, after the government introduced sharia law. SInce then hundreds of people have been killed in Muslim-Christian conflict in northern Nigerian states. On March 21 in the northern Nigerian state of Gombe, Muslim school pupils lynched a Christian woman teacher to death in Gandu, claiming that she "desecrated a Koran". On March 23 an evangelist church in the same town, belonging to the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) was set on fire by a Muslim mob. Burning of churches is becoming a frequent event in Nigeria. Several churches were burned in northern Nigeria in February last year, over the cartoons of the "prophet" of Islam which were produced in Denmark and never printed in Nigeria.

The Western nations, particularly those in Europe, no longer support Christian missionaries, preferring to send money in the form of food aid. However, by neglecting the situation of Christians in the continent, when faced with attacks from Muslim fanatics in Sudan and other nations, they will be allowing Islamism to flourish. And where Islamism flourishes, support of terrorism and armed conflict naturally follows.

Gaddafi is not a moral man - he is a dictator who desires no liberty and democracy for his own people. It seems that he also intends to force his own brand of Muslim despotism onto other peoples of Africa.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 31, 2007 9:33 AM

Comments

Posted by: David Wozney at April 1, 2007 7:08 PM

Posted by: Giraldus Cambrensis at April 1, 2007 7:15 PM

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