In the Beginning ............. (CsH)

Thank you Sejfruddin for this video - " a sarcastic song about being a Bosnian Muslim in Europe surrounded by Christian neighbours".

It was not too long ago - in January 2000 on the Newsnight programme with Jeremy Paxman - when the then Archbishop of York, John Hapgood (now Lord Hapgood) claimed that Islam is "dogmatic." The Koran is "authoritative" while Christianity is "flexible", Islam attracts "a certain type of personality and Muslims are happiest in an Islamic state where religion and secular law coincide". In other words please keep away from our white Christian countries.

Then in September 2007 in his Regensburg Speech, Pope Benedict quoted a criticism of Islam linking Islam and violence.

The well-known British novelist Martin Amis, after the London 7/7 bombing, declared, "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order" and suggested that deportations and strip searches might one day be in order for people of Middle Eastern religion.

These are quite recent statements made by prominent Christian leaders and an acclaimed novelist to boot! You would expect such ignorance and bigotry from the racist British National Party or the yobs from the ghettos of Britain's housing estates.

But such prejudice from the West has a long pedigree. It can be found even before the Christian Era, from the time of the Greeks.

"Once upon a time Hermes was driving all over the world in a cart stuffed with falsehoods, wickedness, and deceit, distributing a little of his load in each country. But when he came to the land of the Arabs, it is said, the cart suddenly broke into pieces, and the inhabitants plundered its contents as if they were valuable merchandise, so that there was nothing left for Hermes to carry elsewhere".

The Moral of the Story : The Arabs are the greatest liars and deceivers on earth. Their tongues know not the truth.

This story comes from the Fables of Aesop, Penguin Classics, 1971, No. 152.

So you can see the Arabs have had a bad press even before or maybe during the same time as the Jews. I wonder, what if ..... the Prophet had been a Serb????


More surprising, check this.Note how at Item 986 the Koran is categorised as pseudo-revelation and 'Mahomet' amongst others is a false prophet. However at 985, only Christian texts are acknowledged as 'true' revelations.

Here, for 'Orthodoxy' or true faith etc. read everything Christian.


For 'Heterodoxy' (item 984) which refers to false and wrong beliefs, Mohammedan, Mussulman, Moslem, Islamite are thrown into the same cauldron with the other non-Christian pariah beliefs.

All these extracts are not taken from an ancient Dictionary of Christianity. I discovered this in my Penguin Roget's Thesaurus, 1953 Edition, reprinted 1964! I am sure Hapgood, Amis, Salman Rushdie, Naipaul, Blair and Bush(?), Wolfowitz, Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Wole Solyinka, Bishop Michael Nazir Ali, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh Primate of Nigeria and countless other eminent Islamophobes must have consulted this secular Bible. As for the Pope, he does not need a Thesaurus. He has his army of librarians and consultants.

Of course all the above versions have been 'adjusted' so to speak when I looked at the Penguin Roget's 1982 and Longman's 1984 Editions. I wondered if the Editors had gone through a Damascene experience.

But the deed is done and the die is cast as we witness today's battlefields and carnage.