The nexus of the cultural clash involving the Christian faith and the Scimitar is at the point where exemplars of the two most perfectly follow their respective models; namely, Christ and the Prophet. Nearly all of their fellows will say that the persons who do the best job imitating (fill in the blank) is the most devout, righteous, holy, etc.
So, then, one must look closely at the respective model for the Christian and the Muslim. Others have done so, so I will not in this brief space. The point is, for the Christian and the Muslim anthropological, epistemological, ontological certitude emanates from the being and the words of their respective mediator of what humans were created to be.
The Magisterium of the Catholic Church - the Guardian of Christian truth since the inception of the Church - makes astonishing truth claims about our Founder, Jesus of Nazareth: that he was born of a Virgin who conceived by God's Holy Spirit; that he was wholly God while wholly man; that lived among us, performed mighty signs ("miracles"), instituted both his Church with Sacraments by which we receive God's grace, was put to death on a cross, was raised from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. One need only read the accounts of the Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, John - to see that Jesus made similar truth claims about himself.
C. S. Lewis observed that, logically, he was (a) a liar, (b) mad, or (c) telling the truth.
The followers of the founder of the Scimitar make no such exorbitant claims about their model, only that he wrote the Koran which his Deity dictated to him, word for word. His life, again, can be read about elsewhere.
The question we must ask is, Which model, mediator of God's truth will one choose to believe? Concomitantly, which truth can truly lead humanity away from its bloodthirstiness, its fallenness?
The West may not have a choice much longer.
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