Yahya <> wrote in message . > Unbelievable. The land in our region where Christian settlers have

> systematically stolen, looted and murdered for decades, now possesses a

> criminal gang which calls itself ‘Islamic’. Rowland asks us to pray for

the > transmigrants whose government has dispossessed the native Mindanaoese,

> forming Christian militias to rape, pillage and steal, but not for the

> victims of that oppression.

When I was in Mindanao in 1975 the American missionary briefed me before driving away from the airport: ‘Don’t take photos anywhere which might include _people_. Around here they use you for target practice. Last week a rock came through the windscreen and I have a painful wrist as a result. The local (Moslem) people are beautiful people as individuals, but when they get stirred up by militants they can be very aggressive/cruel.’

Now, that is not to say that the Spanish and other ‘conquerors’ were not guilty of oppression. But any group which (allegedly) rapes and pillages others is, in my view, not Christian at all, even though in the past they might have done such things with the ‘blessing’ of church leaders.

It’s simply to assert that, on balance, _today_, in all countries where Muslims and other religionists have to coexist, it’s Islam that is most aggressive.

Exceptions: some situations in the past (we’ve talked about that on this newsgroup) and some places in India where militant Hindus cause havoc.

(As Richard Kerr and others have pointed out), there are no _organized_ aggressive Christian militaristic groups anywhere in the world today that I know of… The Crusades happened a millennium ago. To repeat in other words: nowhere, to my knowledge, is there anything like a Christian ‘training camp’ for militarism like Bin Laden’s in Afghanistan… In parts of Indonesia and Nigeria where ‘Christians’ kill, they have done so following serious provocation…

—

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

October 2001