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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (9297)	11/27/2001 5:33:57 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23908

An interesting news: Rome's envoy to Saudi Arabia converts to Islam November 26, 2001 Posted: 5:27 PM EST (2227 GMT) By Luke Baker ROME (Reuters) -- Italy's ambassador to Saudi Arabia has converted to Islam, the second time in seven years that an envoy of Rome to the land of Mecca has adopted its religion. Torquato Cardilli, a career diplomat from overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, revealed his decision to Saudi newspapers Saturday, his 59th birthday. Italian diplomatic sources confirmed the announcement Monday. [snip] cnn.com Actually, I was dumbfounded when I compared the current rise of Islam in Europe to the history of early Christianity.... Just like "proto-Christians" in the Ist and IInd centuries were somewhat clandestine worshippers, gathering in secret dens, today's European Muslims are likewise confined to underground mosques and ghettoes... Perhaps in 2,000 years from now, a scholar will write a book similar to K. Hopkins's --on The Strange Triumph of Early Western Islam <g> A World Full of Gods The Strange Triumph of Christianity By KEITH HOPKINS Free Press This is a tale of passion, illusion, and controversy. It retells the magnificent though troubling story of the growth and triumph of Christianity in the Roman empire during the first three centuries after Jesus' birth. Christianity triumphed, but only after prolonged struggles with the Roman state, with competing religions, and with internal dissidents. So in order to understand the growth of early Christianity - perhaps "Christianities" would reflect its diversity better - we have to set it in its Jewish and pagan contexts, and we have to trace its fierce internal controversies. The real Jesus was a Jew, the leader of a radical revisionist movement within Judaism. It seems improbable that he had any intention of founding a new religion. But after his execution, ordered by a combination of Jewish priests and Roman officials, the Jesus movement rapidly evolved into an independent religion, persecuted and protected by the Roman state. Three centuries later, against all the odds, the Roman emperor Constantine (306-37 CE) converted to Christianity. All his successors (except briefly Julian the Apostate, 361-63) were Christian. By the end of the fourth century, pagan rites had been banned and Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman state. Within four more centuries, the heartlands of early Christianity - Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and north Africa - had all become predominantly Muslim. Religious allegiance followed political power. [...] nytimes.com