For all non-Catholic Germans, i.e., German Protestants, Reformation Day is akin to our 4th of July. The excesses of the Roman Church were confronted by Luther, calling for reform and a return to Christianity’s most sacred and valued roots. He had but this in mind, written into 95 blazing talking-points. He called out the Pope and challenged the brazen authority of Rome in questions weighing in for the authority of the original Message and Teachings. He translated the Bible into the German of his day, so that the already literate or learning no longer had to rely on the priest’s Latin. He brought the Word into the home.
What came of this exceeded Luther’s own intentions, a break with Rome and the birth of a fully new denomination which would establish itself in the Christian world. (A discussion of Protestant-Catholic wars has no more place in this short accolade of mine, than does remembering our American Independence Day from British rule necessarily merit a diatribe over American history with its wars and conflicts since. The operating word here is: Reformation.)
Reformation is the oft and wishfully expressed conception of a future for the much courted ideology calling itself “The-Religion-Of-Peace” (TROP). Wistfully considered of course by moderate Muslim neighbors when you ask them, and by Western academics who will not consult with the Ex-Muslims, nor consider seriously the Hadiths and the Sunna of Muhammad as handed down through history by universally undisputed sources such as Bukhari and Muslim chiefly, and some others. These pundits of today, in the universities, in the media, in politics, in friendship-societies - will not look history in the eye, 14 centuries of it. They should, though.
They will not pay attention to the sheikhs and scholars and Salafi imams making unmistakeably clear for the public in Arabic with subtitles, or in plain English or German, that a Reformation of TROP means one thing only, allowing for no contradiction: to push the limits at all times and anywhere, everywhere, toward world domination by TROP - be it by jihad, be it by infiltration and takeover, be it by riding the population flood into a fatally naive and welcoming Europe (driven by Brussels and led by Germany under Merkel).
For in Qur’an as well as Hadith and Sunna, and throughout history since its inception - the fundamental guidance and practice of TROP is to be understood as directly from God and unalterable, above challenge or criticism or interpretation, and not to be translated from the Arabic ever - notwithstanding that nothing could prevent these from being done or attempted - on pain of being designated for apostasy, stoning, hell-fire and damnation.
Germany today is prepared to loathe itself as a “damned nation” and welcome TROP and its Shari’a into its fold as “one of its own” - the German Protestant Church has entirely taken leave of Luther who is turning in his grave as I write.
Judaism and Christianity understand what reform is, they have grown with the ages. TROP has not and cannot. So long as one means Reformation as we know it.
TROP indeed is going through a Reformation before our eyes however, and it looks like this: Baghdadi. Wahhabbi-Sunni, Da’esh or Islamic State, Caliphate. A Reformation challenging Saudi excesses, challenging its bloody competitors among the Shi’ites, challenging all notions of “moderate-islam” in the Muslim world, promising a return to Caliphate, a return to roots, to the Prophet’s intention, to all that was spelled out in Qur’an, in Sunna, in Hadith.
A Reformation in Christianity means nothing more nor less than just this, as it is all that suffices: Jesus Christ, his sermon on the mount, his guidance to the 12 (okay, minus one) at table before his arrest (John 13-20:all of it).
Yes, yes, I’m afraid there is more at stake on October 31, than just Halloween handouts.
