And sorry for your loss
The article I am highlighting here was written by the not very famous professor Reitsma and it appeared in a newspaper with a not very high circulation. My review is rather harsh. Ruthless actually.
Above his article, which did not start out very stupidly, was the headline: “Arab Spring: test case where the deepest loyalty of Christians lies“.
This professor argued that Christians should not be loyal in the wrong way. Before you know it, you are demonizing perpetrators!
God will take care of the victims, that is not the task of Christians, certainly not of Christians in the West.
Praying suffices.
The newspaper article appeared in 2011. On 8-8-2013 I wrote the following about it. By then the most naive, almost criminally optimistic sounds about it began to die down.
Now it is 2025. The most evil, the most misogynist among the followers of Mohammed recently seized power in Syria.
A special chair
The field of work of this professor turned out to be: ‘The church in the context of Islam‘.
This means that he did NOT delve into the teachings of Mohammed.
The chair is about ‘Christianity, given the domination by the teachings of Mohammed‘.
How little the professor has delved into those teachings themselves is evident from this description by his university (VU) itself:
This mainly concerns the question of what it means that the Christian community is labelled as a ‘minority’ (dhimmis) in important Islamic traditions? What are the theological consequences of this?
Well, well: translating the term ‘dhimmi‘ with the neutral: ‘minority‘.
In fact, that word means nothing more or less than: ‘second-class citizen‘.
In Pakistan, Christians sometimes discuss the question of whether they themselves will argue for this official status as second-class citizen because in practice they have an unofficial status as third-class citizen.
Reitsma did know something about the practice in the countries that are dominated by the teachings of Mohammed; in the newpaper he wrote:
Finally, democracy is also penetrating the Islamic world. But isn’t that project doomed to failure from the start? Do Islam and democracy really go together? Don’t countless incidents already show that the Arab Spring has no future? Christians in particular are wondering whether there is still a future for them in an Arab world without dictators, especially now that conservative Islam seems to be gaining a lot of power in Egypt and Tunisia. (my emphasis, FG)
It is clear that “a future for them” is not a figure of speech: it is about being chased out of their native country or being slaughtered.
Incidentally, for the Christians in Syria, it is partly their own fault. Reitsma did not write it down literally, but his message is clear: If you support a regime that does not shy away from violence, you will quickly become the target of revenge and violence from future new rulers.
How special to read this again at the beginning of 2025 …
In effect just a tiny bit more misogynist
According to Reitsma, Christians must put Western Christian culture into perspective:
Do we recognize multiple forms of democracy or do we – even as Christians – believe that our form of democracy and culture is superior to any other form? The latter has something arrogant about it. It is also questionable whether that is compatible with the foreignness [?] of Christians.
That other form can, for example, be more tribal, or one in which the place of women is ‘different‘. This is how he explains it, shortly before the above paragraph:
Every form of democracy in the Arab world will be built on community forms and hierarchical relationships within those communities. That gives a different perspective on the position of minorities, on the relationship between men and women, the role of the head of a tribe, freedom of speech, etc. But that does not necessarily have to be anti-democratic.
O dear.
John 18:36
In an article in the magazine Soteria, this Reitsma in 2007 wrote that the attitude towards the teachings of Mohammed can be partly based on John 18:36.
In his inaugural speech (!) of 2008, he came up with it again.
Reason for me to look it up in the Bible myself.
John is one of the (four) gospels: versions of the life story of Jesus of Nazareth. So from the New Testament. I read:
Jesus answered: ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought to prevent me from being handed over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from here’ (My emphasis, FG)
This passage is part of the description of the run-up to the murder of Jesus. The carpenter’s son is questioned here by Pilate about whether he is ‘king of the Jews’.
Reitsma apparently believes that every Christian in the Middle East should behave as if he or she is being asked such a question by the followers of Mohammed.
As if everyone – or just Reitsma in his role as ‘shepherd’? – is actually a kind of Jesus himself.
Isn’t that a bit blasphemous?
I didn’t get a good feeling about Reitsma. I even suspected that it was no coincidence that Reitsma referred to a line from the Bible that comes across as anti-Jewish.
Deliberating about the Jewishness of Jesus
My feeling was right. Through his CV I found a text entitled The Jewishness of Jesus. Relevant or essential?
The piece is part of some deliberating about whether the Jewishness of Jesus should not be swept under the table a bit, because that link does not please the enemies of the state of Israel.
Literally, in his article this christian professor refers to Israel as ‘this colonial entity‘.
How unreal to read that again after October 7, 2023.
I am not going to analyze the whole horrible bullshit in detail. I simply conclude this part of my argument with some remarkable passages from it:
How is it then possible that the Jews, God’s chosen people, have not accepted their own Messiah? Should they not have been the first to embrace the Messiah? They were the closest to salvation; to them Jesus was presented first; they had the first chance to follow Him. But amazingly they did not. (…) When transcending does not mean denying, we first of all have to acknowledge the Jewishness of Jesus
For many Christians in Europe this is crucial, for they emphasize that if the Church had realized more, that Jesus was a Jew, it might have at least partially prevented the persistent Christian anti-Semitism in Europe, which culminated in the 20 th century Holocaust. Christians in the Middle East, however, would prefer to ignore the Jewishness of Jesus when possible, because it is such a sensitive issue in the region. Besides that, antiSemitism – as many have pointed out – is a Western problem. The Middle East has not experienced anything close to Auschwitz, and until the establishment of the State of Israel anti-Semitism was relatively unknown in the region.
(…) And does the fact that Jesus was a Jew force us to relate to this colonial entity in order to understand Him
(…) My impression is that modern Judaism differs substantially from first century Judaism. I am convinced, that traditional Arabic culture and beliefs are much closer to first century Judaism than modern – often very Western – Judaism. Many values in the Middle East today resemble biblical principles: for example the importance of the family, the central values of honor and shame and the communal character of faith. So if we want to understand the Jewish Jesus, we might need to immerse ourselves more in the Arabic than in the modern Jewish culture.
(…) Is the Jewishness of Jesus relevant for Jesus’ being or ‘essential’? At the third consultation between the MECC and the Council of Churches in the Netherlands, in 1999 in Amman, the consensus was that the Jewishness of Jesus is not the heart of Christology: “it is relevant, but not essential.” For some delegates from the Middle East even this conclusion was a bridge too far. They could not accept the term ‘relevant’. For some Dutch delegates this conclusion did not even reach far enough.
Disgusting.
Gandhi?
Reitsma’s position is not exactly that of all traditional Christian hatred of Jews. That is why in 2013 I also had to think of the position of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Reitsma’s appeal not to worry too much about Christians being expelled or murdered resembled that of Gandhi to the Jews in 1939 and 1940. He appealed to the Jews not to resist extermination by Hitler, the Shoah would still be to the disadvantage of the Nazis. You know: karma and all that.
In Reitsma’s view, Christians worldwide would benefit more from resilience training, which teaches them to deal with headwind and persecution, than from ‘demonizing Islam’….
Gandhi was also thick as thieves with the zealots for absolute political power for the followers of Mohammed, the caliphatists.
What kind of spring?
The drawing in that strictly Christian newspaper was an illustration, probably unintentionally, of what goes wrong when people ‘analyse’ developments in the Middle East with the main premise: if only we don’t play into the hands of those racist Islamophobes.
In my featured image I have added a loupe.
Think of Keith Stamer’s position in the UK in 2025 and at the time of ‘Rotherham’!
Such a premise makes the ‘analysis’ rather idiotic anyway.
It becomes extremely painful when the terms ‘Arab‘ and ‘Mohammedan‘ are then thoughtlessly interchanged.
Even the title of Reitsma’s newspaper opinion was about an Arab spring. The cartoonist turned it into a Mohammedan spring.
In the second quote from Reitsma himself, these terms are also more or less equated with each other.
As if the Middle East were (completely) Mohammedan…
(Link to (a Dutch) text about that issue).