ninme

Daily Mail - Your fawning offends Islam Archbishop… not your Christianity, by Peter Hitchens

This prelate [Rowan "Guess Who?!" Williams] whimpered last week that Christianity was ‘offensive’ to Muslims.

Offensive? I know we have been urged to stop being horrid to this inept, terrifyingly well meaning man - and it really is nothing personal - but he does rather ask for it.

A few months ago he mused on the possibilities of allowing a little light Sharia Law in this country.This is, I suppose, a point of view. I just can’t work out why the leader of a Christian church should hold it.

The same goes for the Lord Chief Injustice, Lord Phillips, whose entire career and substantial salary are based on centuries of Christian-based law.

If it is anyone’s job to suggest Muslim law should get a toehold in Britain, it isn’t his.

In my experience, Muslims aren’t in the least bit ‘offended’ by Christianity.

I’ve argued with them about it, in places as different as Peshawar, on the North-West Frontier, and Whitechapel, in the East End of London. And I had the impression they were relieved to find someone from the West who didn’t fawn all over them.

What really offends them is what also offends many of us - crudity, drunkenness, pornography and licence.

In any case, given that Christianity was founded centuries before Islam, Muslims can’t really claim to be upset by it, any more than I can be ‘offended’ by the existence of Stonehenge or a Hindu temple.

What should worry Dr Williams much more is the printing of millions of doctored versions of the Koran in Saudi Arabia, deliberately edited to encourage angry militancy.

I am grateful to Channel 4 and Antony Thomas for revealing this astonishing fact in their programme on the Koran last week.

What, you might ask, are tanks and missiles doing in a book 13 centuries old?

Well, in the Saudi edition, English translation, Surah 8, verse 60, a passage on unbelievers reads: ‘Make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war (tanks, planes, missiles, artillery) to threaten the enemy of Allah.’

And in a verse that speaks of those who have earned God’s anger and gone astray, someone has inserted - in brackets - ’such as the Jews’ and ’such as the Christians’.

The programme also pointed out that in Surah 5, verse 69, the Koran assures righteous Jews and Christians that ‘no fear should come upon them’.

A footnote in the Saudi version insists that this was cancelled by a later verse which claims that those of any religion other than Islam will never be accepted.

This might be something to get offended about, if you wanted to, Dr Williams.

Well. Who knew?