150 Jesus, Prophet ofIslam
cepted the Holy Spirit. Both rejected the divinity which had been
attributed to [esus.It is hardly surprising that the hatred which the
Roman Catholic Church had directed at the Unitarian Arians for
centuries was now turned against the Muslims as well.
When viewed from this perspective, the mediaeval Crusades
as indeed is also the case with the more modern Crusades being
waged in the Balkans today - cease to be an isolated phenomenon
of Church history, and become an extension of the massacre of the
Arians and the Donatists by the early Pauline Church.
Itis interesting to note in passing that it was as Islam was spread
ing up from Arabia, up through the Holy Land and into Syria and
Turkey - at about the time when a tribe living in the Caucasus who
were descended from Gog and Magog, the tribe of the Khazars,
embraced [udaism for reasons of political expediency -that the
first major division within theTrinitarian church occurred, between
the Roman Catholic Church and what became known as the Greek
OrthodoxChurch. This split concemed the issue of image worship:
During the early years of the history of Christianity, when the
religion was still not very far removed from its origin and source
Jesus, peace be on him - the use of images for whatever reason had
been avoided by all Christians, by both the true followers of Jesus
and by the followers of Paul, in compliance with the second com
mandment of the OldTestament which clearly forbids making a rep
resentation of any living thing:
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or
any likeness of any thing that is in heavenab ove, orthat
is in the earth below, or that is in the water under the
earth; thou shalt not bow down thyselfto them, nor serve
them: for 1the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and
showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me,
and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20: 4-6).Once the teachings of Paul had taken hold in Europe, however, the
veneration and subsequently the adoration of images and relies
increasingly crept into the practices and rites of the Trinitarian
Church, until by the 7th century AD this practice was firmly estab
lished, especially in the Western Roman Empire.http://www.islamicbulletin.com