At a high-ranking meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on December 9 and 10, 2010 in the Hofburg in Vienna, the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Implementation Meeting on Freedom of Religion or Belief, which addressed the topic of religious freedom within the broader framework of human rights consultations, a hushed up commotion took place.

Since Kazakhstan chaired the OSCE, the first keynote speaker was Ms. Iman Valeriya Porokhova, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a leading Russian Muslim (see http://koran-valeria.narod.ru/). The professionally recognized and personally very congenial lady called for peaceful association between religions (albeit only mentioning Islam, Christianity, and Judaism and not one of the represented minority religions, much less secular world views). She held this is possible because the universal principles of the Koran and the Sharia are supported by the Bible and the Torah. She actually mentioned very little on the topic of human rights or the human right to religious freedom.

The longer she spoke, the more her contribution became a sermon with many quotes from the Koran. According to Porokhova, Europe is moving towards its demise because it is no longer following God’s word as found in the Koran, Bible, and Torah. Rather, it is making its own laws. I believe I would have long been cut off by this point.

The climax was reached when she introduced the elimination of the death penalty as a difference between Islam and Europe. It was against the will of God, as it is set down in the holy books, that Europe abolished the death penalty. If this is not reversed, there can be no blessing upon Europe. It has to do with listening to God’s word or giving room to human rebellion. In the process, the speaker blatantly threatened Europe. Apart from that, she at the same time subordinated all other religions to Islam without qualification.

All of the 200 present (ambassadors, religious representatives, experts) remained nobly silent. Also the Muslims present, which in part represent much more liberal approaches, remained silent. Many of the representatives of the media spoke with me about this after the fact, but none reported on it.

I asked myself: What if the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See from the UN in Geneva, Msgr. Silvano M. Tomasi, who spoke later, had called for a reintroduction of the death penalty with reference to the Bible? And what if he had otherwise threatened Europe with judgment. Or Msgr. Michael Banach as a representative of the Holy See (as a state) with the OSCE? That would have led to great indignation among the media and, after that, there would have been sharp statements from politicians all throughout Europe that followed.

Or better yet: If I had called for something like that as a representative of the World Evangelical Alliance. I would have possibly achieved the notoriety of the religious eccentric Terry Jones, who burned a Koran. (Fortunately there is nothing like the penal law of the Sharia, i.e., a holy Christian penal law, so that no one can call for its implementation.)

For a long time I have advocated peaceful coexistence between all religions and world views, including Islam. I have often officially met with Muslim leaders throughout the world, not to mention many other contacts and confidence-building measures.

However, I often just stand shaking my head about the double standard with which secular Europe measures Islam and Christianity. In the process, it is precisely secularly oriented people who have everything to lose if such an Islamist view were to become the thing, while Christians neither call for nor promote a thing like that. Rather, on the basis of theological grounds, they justify and help to stabilize democracy, human rights, and religious freedom.

(Addendum, June 2011)

Quite some time after the meeting in Vienna, a written version of the talk has become available and can be found on the official OSCE website: http://www.osce.org/odihr/74621 The talk has indeed been shortened and changed, but one can read here nevertheless:

1. that for all practical purposes the ideas of religious freedom and human rights are not to be found,
2. that this was actually if anything an Islamic sermon ending with a collection of verses from the Koran,
3. that Islam is the only religion not invented by mankind (middle of p. 3) and the sole religion which truly has God in the center (middle of p. 4),
4. that the talk ends by saying that the Bible has been falsified (p. 6),
5. that the death penalty must be reintroduced and that adultery, the consumption of alcohol, consumption of pork, and the wearing of modern women’s clothing should be punished throughout all of Europe (p. 5).

An all this in the setting of a major human rights authority and within the context of a symposium on religious freedom!

The displacement of the long-established Christian minority in the Islamic world is also proceeding at a rapid pace. These people have often been longer in the countries than Islam has even existed. The devastating results of George W. Bush’s Iraq war on the Christian community were predictable – as the Islamic terrorists cannot win against the Americans, they are looking for the only attainable goal as a small victory, the peaceful Christian untrained in defense – to that degree the terrorists and the Iraqi government, with the latter doing nothing to oppose the terrorists, continue what has been underway for 100 years.

A similar tragedy is often forgotten in this connection: the displacement of Jews from Islamic countries. All in all their number is smaller than the number of Christians, but their percentage is higher, mostly close to 100%. For centuries Northern Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq all had prospering Jewish populations, which have in the meantime practically disappeared.

In 1948 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq. Today that number is 10!

The justification of suicide attacks in Islamism is a modern development that continues. Indeed there used to be the concept of martyrs as warriors who died in Jihad, which is a concept that has never existed in Christianity (though it has been found in the nationalistic garb of European states or, for instance, in Japan in world wars). But it has always been a war called for by a leader – for instance a caliph or a sultan. One died in battle against unbelievers, and one naturally tried to live as long as possible. This is to say that the individual did not commit suicide. (Exceptions were assassins between the 11th and 13th centuries, for which no line leads to the present.)

Terror attacks during the time of Yassir Arafat were hardly able to be justified religiously and did not consist of an actual suicide attack. The concept of the suicide attack is something that has progressively developed in modern Islamism in increasingly intensive phases, which anyone who has followed the last 25 years of reports in the media can understand.

Phases in the Development of the Theology and Practice of Suicide Attacks in the last 25 Years

1. Jihad no longer has to be called for. Rather, military Jihad is a permanent condition against unbelievers. An individuals can designate himself, or a small group can designate themselves. Whoever dies in the process goes to paradise as a martyr.
2. An individual is allowed to kill himself, if in the process unbelievers are also killed.
3. Male children are also able to be suicide attackers (initially in the Intifada)
4. An individual is allowed to do the same if in the process, as collateral damage, Muslims also die (this occurred initially in Israel, then on September 11, 2001).
5. An individual is allowed to do the same if in the process almost exclusively or exclusively Muslims die but unbelievers are disquieted (initially in Iraq).
6. Women can also be suicide attackers who up till now have only appeared as proud mothers of suicide attackers (a very recent phenomenon).
7. In the most immediate past girls have emerged as suicide attackers. In short: a girl who with an explosive kills other Muslims and, for that reason, is lauded as a martyr used to be unthinkable in Islam. It is, rather, a completely new theological and practical development that has little in common with premodern Islam.

Within three days I found the following randomly chosen reports about Islamists, which were published almost simultaneously in practically all major media in Germany: in the Pakistan capital of Islamabad, an Islamic suicide bomber had killed four UN employees at the local headquarters of the World Food Program when a bomb he was carrying exploded.

• For an entire day Islamists paralyzed the headquarters of the Pakistani Army by placing it under fire and taking hostages. Now 30,000 Pakistani soldiers are attempting to move against the Islamists and compensate for the disgrace.
• A one-hour German language video with an Islamic group tied to Al Qaeda, in which German and German-speaking Islamists threatened Germany, shows background pictures of terror training camps in which numerous blond or European looking children are conspicuous.
• In Yemen the government is fighting a desperate battle against the Islamic Al Qaeda network, which wants to expand Yemen into its new operational headquarters. Although the future of Islamic terrorism could be decided here, Yemen is missing international support.
• In Hamburg a ten-man Islamic terror cell that traveled in March to Hindu Kush was discovered. In Germany there is estimated to be around 80 trained Islamic terrorists at present living in the country.
• In Berlin in one fell swoop 155 officials were searching through apartments in order to move against a group of 15 Islamists who are suspected of planning attacks against Russia and who wanted to defect.
• A book about honor killings that was about to be released was withdrawn at the last minute by the publisher Droste Verlag due to fear of acts of vengeance by Islamists.

That was all just within three days!

And Evangelicals are compared with such Islamists in the sme media? Absurd! Unfounded! Malevolent! Even to compare my peaceful Muslim neighbors with such terrorists would be a disgrace, but peaceful, often pacifistically oriented Evangelicals?

Evangelicals are allowed to pay required fees for German state TV ARD and ZDF television so that with conspiratoranial means they can ‘prove’ and advance what cannot be demonstrated – that Evangelicals are a type of Christian Islamists. The fact is: there are no Evangelical terrorists, no suicide attackers, and no Evangelical network which is planning to conduct something that brings death and violence. Anything else is virtual nonsense and the worst type of slander.

Where is it necessary to search for weapons in Evangelical churches? Where are Evangelical terror camps being maintained, army headquarters attacked, and skirmishes conducted against 30,000 soldiers?

Who is scared of traveling to a particular country for vacation because Evangelicals live there? Where are the Evangelicals who are threatening journalists who hold dissenting ideas or threatening their families? Why do Evangelicals not come under the rubric of constitutional protection, either in Germany or anywhere else in the world?

And in addition to this: in spite of the non-stop horror reports about Islamism, we are – and rightly so – repeatedly reminded and even remind ourselves again and again that we have to distinguish between Islamists and peaceful Muslims. For once just consider the thought that the 1.8 million Evangelicals in Germany would want to limit freedom with violence. And while no one has witnessed anything like that, at the same time several thousand Islamists keep us on edge?

In the case of 400 million Evangelicals, in contrast, it seems as if one does not have to differentiate between Terrorists (wherever they might be) and the millions and millions of peaceful adherents. One negative example is enough to make everyone responsible for their counterparts! Even if there were to be one single Evangelical terrorist or an individual who even dreamed of being a terrorist, one would still have to clearly distinguish between that individual and the millions and millions of peaceful Evangelicals.

One more question to pose to ARD and ZDF television: Is it not also an aspect of religious freedom that one is to be protected from governmental and semi-governmental institutions? Does our state media know that there is no persecution of minorities where the media is not playing a central role? And does our state media know that nowadays it is often the media who more than anyone else decides which minorities are seen as victims and which ones are leprous and themselves held accountable for the situation?

In terms of genocide, he did mention Israel’s actions towards Palestinians as well as China’s actions towards the Uigurs. According to Erdogan, 1,500 people have been killed in Gaza, while the UN accuses Sudan of being responsible for the murder of 300,000 people!

A Muslim leader can by definition not be a criminal, but does this apply even in the case where the evidence is so overwhelming? If Muslims are the victims, is there immediate mention of genocide? It does not appear to be coincidental that China is accused of genocide against the (Muslim) Uigurs but apparently not against the (Buddhist) Tibetans! If that is applied to history, that means that past faults committed by Muslims are denied, while faults committed by non-Muslims are still triumphantly invoked centuries after they were committed. On the one hand, this mentality fits to Christians, who work through their history self-critically and admit many faults (and that should not change). It also fits with historians critical of Christianity, who still preferably only itemize Christian offenses (that, however, should change!).

This is in line with what Islamic states, under the leadership of Pakistan, are presently seeking to implement. In the face of massive resistance from western countries, several votes resulted in a Defamation of Religion Resolution from the United Nations Human Rights Council being successfully passed, which addresses what until now has not yet been binding international law: to view a critique of Islam as a human rights violation. This is due to the fact that in the last resolution, from March 2009, religion in general is mentioned but only Islam is mentioned by name.

Islam is allowed to criticize whomever it wishes however it wishes, but no one is allowed to criticize Islam – no matter how peacefully, friendly, and objectively this is done? Therefore: all rights for us, and no rights for others? No, that cannot be! I wrote my book Islam: A Stereotypical Enemy (Feindbild Islam) protecting Muslims from slander by rightwing Christian groups. because from a Christian point of view the slander of others is always wrong, not only when it has to do with our own religion or when it only affects our own people. What is at issue is ‘all rights for all people.”

Just so that no one misunderstands me or accuses me of blanket condemnation: This year I was in Instanbul with Turkish professors from all over the country and from different fields of study (including Islamic theology!) who stand up for religious freedom and were appalled to report about the Islamification of cities and provinces that are under the leadership of Justice and Development party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) politicians. Without any “academic fluff,” Turkish families who have visited us at home, as well as politicians with Turkish heritage, have told us the same here in Bonn. By far not all Turks think like the Turkish Premier Minister. As far as I am concerned, I have no interest in increasing any tensions. The World Evangelical Alliance has its own taskforcefor peace building, which is strongly engaged in areas heading towards states of crisis and is engagned in moderating peace between Muslim and Christian communities. We also assist people in personally getting to know each other in a way that goes beyond religious boundaries and promotes their working together for peace. In spite of this it still has to be pointed out that internationally the difficulties with Islam are becoming more intense, when simply by definition it is decreed that Muslims are always the victims and never the offenders.