Word: moslem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There were large areas of the world where there was no revulsion at all (Russians were told vaguely of some "white reaction" in Hungary; China's 602 million were told just about nothing. In most Moslem nations, the report of the Hungarian bloodshed and the emotional response to it were dulled, even drowned, by indignation at the Franco-British-Israeli invasion of Egypt. An exception: Tunisia's Moslem Premier Habib Bourguiba, who indicted Russia for "waging pitiless war against a weak country...
...doctrine of the Trinity and the sonship of Christ. To him Christ seemed a rival of the One God, and that Mohammed could not accept. Accordingly he reduced Christ to the status of one prophet among many and gave him a few brief pages in the Koran. Even today Moslems refuse to consider Christianity a monotheistic faith because of this early misreading of Christ. Nor could Mohammed, for whom it was unthinkable that God would let his prophet suffer ignominy and defeat at the hands of his detractors, accept Christ's immolation: crucifixion was no proper fate...
...recent growth of Christian Biblical criticism has not helped allay misunderstanding. Moslem scholars see in it only proof that the Christian scriptures are unreliable. The accounts of the Evangelists are, in the Moslem mind, confirmation that the New Testament does not share the validity of the Koran, which was revealed to Mohammed alone. "The assumption is immediate," says Author Cragg. "that because there are four, none of them is valid...
Baptism Postponed. Another difficulty is the fact that Islam is not only a religious faith but a communal allegiance and a social order. The Moslem's relation to God is inextricably linked with his relation to society. As a consequence, Moslems frequently upbraid Christianity for not disciplining and controlling Western civilization. Christians must impress on Islam, says Cragg, that "the Christian understanding of how man is put to rights is that it happens personally and through faith. . . . Thus the unit of Christianity [is] not society but persons in society . . . The Gospel of grace does not suppose that...
...Christian approach, Cragg believes, is doomed to failure unless it helps "the Moslem world to conceive of the Christian mission not as depredatory but as constructive." Cragg has little faith in approaches based on oil concessions or treaties of mutual assistance. For lasting understanding between Christians and Moslems, the West must "go deeper than interest, prudence or policy into areas of spiritual communication...