"It is of the nature of the word to reveal itself and to incarnate itself."

Fr. Nectarios of Orthopraxis has been posting links to the words of various imams from recent Muslim Friday services, as translated and published by IMRA. Here he merely posts links "if you must review them". Here, he had posted brief quotations, like this one:

O God, support Islam and Muslims, elevate the word of justice and Islam, and help the believers score victory over the infidels. O God, give safety and prosperity to this country and protect Muslims' countries from disasters and diseases. O God, support your mujahidin servants everywhere. O God, support your mujahidin servants in Palestine. O God, help them score victory over the usurper Zionist Jews. O God, have mercy on the martyrs. O God, destroy the Jews and Americans for they are within your power. O God, show them a black day. O God, shake the ground under their feet, weaken them, hang their flags at half mast, down their planes, and drown their ships.

If we are supposed to try to "understand" what motivates the Arab Muslims, surely we must include "prayers" like this as part of the material to be "understood".

I note Fr. Nectarios' presentation of these Friday sermons and prayers for another reason. I am re-reading Dorothy Sayers' Mind of the Maker, and this passage called to my mind the hate-filled, violence-encouraging words of the imams:

Every word — even every idle word — will be accounted for at the day of judgment, because the word itself has power to bring to judgment. It is of the nature of the word to reveal itself and to incarnate itself — to assume material form. Its judgment is therefore an intellectual, but also a material judgment. The habit, very prevalent today, of dismissing words as "just words" takes no account of their power. But once the Idea has entered into others minds, it will tend to reincarnate itself there with ever-increasing Energy and ever-increasing Power. It may for some time incarnate iself only in more words, more books, more speeches; but the day comes when it incarnates itself in actions, and this is its day of judgment. At the time when these words are being written, we are witnessing a fearful judgment of blood, resulting from the incarnation in deeds of an Idea to which, when it was content with a verbal revelation, we paid singularly little heed. (pp. 111f)

The book was originally published in 1941. Are we going to let history repeat itself? Or has it already begun to do so?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/03/02 12:07:08 PM
Categorized as Classic.