Talk:Protestantism and Islam

Dutch
The part about 'the Dutch' is 'strange' in my eyes because it looks like it is generalising all of the Dutch as a country with mainly protestants. In fact there are more Catholics in the Netherlands and even the so called 'Dutch Revolt' was a revolt mainly by Protestant Dutch and not supporterd by many other (mainly Catholic) Dutch.

Great blog you guys have here!
"Theo van Gogh was murdered for his views, re-enforcing the notion that Islam can not tollerate free speech, and is therefore incompatible with democratic values." The spelling mistake was a nice touch. Keep up the great blogging on Islam's incompatibility with democracy. Blog to power, baby! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.249.106.64 (talk) 20:44, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Scholars?
"However, a growing number of scholars have called attention to Islamic Doctrine as being at the core of the problem between Islam and the rest of the world. Robert Spencer (author), Bridgitte Gabriel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the late Theo van Gogh have all come under attack for being outspoken regarding Islamic Extremism. Theo van Gogh was murdered for his views, re-enforcing the notion that Islam cannot tolerate free speech, and is therefore incompatible with democratic values."

Misleading. Van Gogh wasn't a scholar. Neither is Brigitte Gabriel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.142.210.133 (talk) 12:22, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Politics
Protestants and Muslims used each other against their mutual enemies in history. The politics of this relationship needs to be made explicit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.194.63.129 (talk) 17:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Today, vitality is only for Islam
The article writes:"Islam and Protestantism shared a common vitality in the modern world: "The two most dynamic religious movements in the contemporary world are what can loosely be called popular Protestantism and resurgent Islam", although their approach to civil society is different.[84]"

Well, the so called historic or mainline protestantism - lutheranism, calvinism is doomed in Europe.Empty churches are described in sites such as these: [Empty churches] and [Mainline doomed].Yes, pentecostalism is growing in Latin America and some parts of Africa, but these are exceptions, not the rule.Mainline protestantism is falling in any place where it exists.Islam is the fast growing religion in the world, in the last decades.Vitality is only for Islam.Agre22 (talk) 14:57, 9 May 2009 (UTC)agre22

Protestant branches deriving directly from the Protestant Reformation grow at the same pace as the Roman Catholic Church, i.e. slowly. All other Protestant branches grow at the pace comparable to Islam.

Result? Protestantism growing almost as fast as Islam. End of story.Ernio48 (talk) 21:07, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

"Vitality"
This section of the article should be removed. I am not sure why it is here-as no real figures to substantiate such a claim are provided. I suppose this is an attempt to provide some positive closure to the article-if so, that means this section is POV and thus should most certainly be deleted. The Catholic Church grew approximately 40% in past twenty or thirty years (a statistic that can be supported, incidentally)-this is a growth rate that far outstrips either Islam or Protestantism. I feel strongly that, at the very least, this section should be removed for being POV. Further, it does not contribute much to the article's more factual information. Pristuccia (talk) 03:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)Pristuccia


 * LoL: The population of countries in which Catholicism predominates has grown by at least 40% in the past 30 years. Ditto (if not more so) for Islam. The statistic is meaningless.1812ahill (talk) 21:36, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

modern history section.
This section treats the words of the president of the US as if they are in some way representative of protestants. The president may be protestant and there are a lot of protestants in the US, but he's not really a spokesperson for religious matters. The section seems a little like original research. What do others think? Are there good sources on this matter? futurebird (talk) 01:13, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Military collaboration and the Dutch revolt
Is there any place where Turks and any of the European nations fought side by side against the Catholics? Nope, there is not one battle where that ever happend. The whole part of Military collaboration is only wishfull thinking in my opinion.

Also the part of Muslim involvement in the Dutch revolt is doubtfull to say the least... No Turks ever fought in the Netherlands, no official records show that the two nations ever worked together. It's just a whole lot of BS coming from a minor group who are trying to rewrite the history of Europe with a nice Ottomanic sauce topped on it.

The page "liever turks dan paaps" is already in dispute. This page should be in dispute also.

212.178.115.102 (talk) 10:08, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Blatant Inaccuracies about Luther and "Protestantism"
What evidence is there that "protestants" were seen as having more in common with Islam than with Catholicism? That is completely asinine and absurd. You could say that the iconoclastic tendencies within Calvinist Protestantism bear some resemblance to Islam. But then Judaism also prohibits representation of God. On the other hand, the Lutheran Reformation was not iconoclastic at all, but preserved much of the ceremony and decoration of the Roman Church.

This is a completely ludicrous claim. You might as easily point out the religious similarities between Rome and Islam in that they both went to great lengths to kill heretics. Please produce some sources showing that anyone really thought that Islam and Protestantism had more in common than Protestantism and Catholicism at the time of the Reformation other than Rome's polemicists. I can produce a lot of quotes from Lutheran polemicists wherein Rome and Islam are equated, but I don't think that justifies the claim that "Islam and Catholicism were considered to have more in common than either with Protestantism."

Secondly, Luther's "virulent anti-Semitism" is actually supposed to have been less than virulent in his context when compared with the anti-Semitic screeds regularly published by Roman Catholic writers. I'm sure many sources can be found to back up such a claim. However it is again laughable to claim that Luther's opposition to Islam was mild in comparison to his comments about Jews. His opposition to both, like his opposition to the Pope, was not based on some personal grievance, but instead on what he considered to be the blasphemies of Jews, Muslims, and adherents of the Pope against Christ. Luther's manner of speaking about Islam and the Pope would by no means be considered "mild" by today's standards either.

Examples from Luther's writings:

"Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort, und steur des Pabsts und Tuerken Mord, die Jesum Christum, deinen Sohn, wollten stuerzen von deinem Thron."

(Lord, preserve us in Your Word, and restrain the murder of the Pope and Turk, who would pull down from His throne, Jesus Christ, Your Son.)

"...St. Jerome writes that the priests at Alexandria ruled the churches together in common, as the apostles also did....until the pope elevated himself over them all.

This business shows overwhelmingly that he [the Pope] is the true end-times Antichrist, who has raised himself over and set himself against Christ, because the pope will not let Christians be saved without his authority...This is precisely what St. Paul calls 'setting oneself over God and against God [2 Thess. 2:4].' Neither the Turks nor the Tartars, despite being great enemies of the Christians, do any such thing...Finally, that the pope in contradiction to God promotes his lies about Masses, purgatory, monastic life, one's own works, and worship (which are the essence of the papacy) is nothing but the devil through and through. He damns, slays, and plagues all Christians who do not exalt and honor his abominations above all things. Therefore, as little as we can worship the devil himself as our lord or god, so we cannot allow his apostle, the pope or Antichrist, to govern as our head or lord. His papal government is characterized by lying and murder and the eternal ruin of body and soul..."

--Smalcald Articles II:4:9-11, 14

"On the other hand, he [Mohammad] praises and exalts himself highly and boasts that he has talked with God and the angels, and that since Christ’s office of prophet is now complete, it has been commanded to him to bring the world to his faith and if the world is not willing, to compel it or punish it with the sword; and there is much glorification of the sword in it. Therefore, the Turks think their Mohammed much higher and greater than Christ....

From this anyone can easily observe that Mohammed is a destroyer of our Lord Christ and His kingdom, and if anyone denies concerning Christ, that He is God’s Son and has died for us, and still lives and reigns at the right hand of God, what has he left of Christ? Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Baptism, the Sacrament, Gospel, Faith and all Christian doctrine and life are gone, and there is left, instead of Christ, nothing more than Mohammed with his doctrine of works and '''especially of the sword. That is the chief doctrine of the Turkish faith in which all abominations, all errors, all devils are piled up in one heap.'''

... Why should I say much? In the article that Christ is to be beneath Mohammed, and less than he, everything is destroyed. Who would not rather be dead than live under such a government, where he must say nothing about his Christ, and hear and see such blasphemy and abomination against Him? Yet it takes such a powerful hold, when it wins a land, that people even submit to it willingly. Therefore, let everyone pray who can pray that this abomination may not become lord over us and that we may not be punished with this terrible rod of God’s anger.

In the second place, the Turk’s Koran, or creed, teaches him to destroy not only the Christian faith, but also the whole temporal government. His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work.

Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men’s eyes. ...Therefore among the Turks, too, they are held the best who are diligent to increase the Turkish kingdom and who are constantly murdering and robbing round about them.

This second thing must follow out of the first; for Christ says, in John 8:44, that the devil is a liar and murderer. With lies he kills souls, with murder bodies. If he wins with a lie, he does not take a holiday and make delay, but follows it up with murder. Thus when the spirit of lies had taken possession of Mohammed and the devil had murdered men’s souls with his Koran and had destroyed the faith of Christians, he had to go on and take the sword and attempt the murder of their bodies. The Turkish faith, then, has not made its progress by preaching and the working of miracles, but by the sword and by murder, and its success has been due to God’s wrath, which ordered that, since all the world has a desire for the sword and robbery and murder, one should come who would give it enough of murder and robbery.

All fanatics, as a rule, when the spirit of lies has taken possession of them and led them away from the true faith, have been unable to stop there, but have followed the lie with murder and taken up the sword, as a sign that they were children of the father of all lies and murder....

And what shall I say of the most Holy Father, the pope? Is it not true that he and his bishops have become worldly lords, have fallen away from the Gospel, led by the spirit of lies, and embraced their own human doctrine, and thus have practiced murder, down to the present hour? Read the histories of the time and you find that the principal business of popes and bishops has been to set emperors, kings, princes, lands, and people against one another, even themselves to fight and help in the work of murder and bloodshed. Why so? Because the spirit of lies never acts any other way.

After he has made his disciples teachers of lies and deceivers, he has no rest until he makes them murderers, robbers, and blood-dogs. For who has ordered them to bear the sword, to make war, and to urge men on and stir them up to murder and war, when their duty was to attend to preaching and prayer?

They call me and mine seditious, but when have I ever coveted the sword or urged men to take it, and not rather taught and kept peace and obedience, except that I have instructed and exhorted the regular temporal rulers to do their duty and maintain peace and justice? By its fruits one shall know the tree. I and mine keep and teach peace; the pope, with his followers, makes war, murders, robs, and that not only his enemies; but he burns, condemns, and persecutes the innocent, the pious, the orthodox, as a true Antichrist. For he does this, “sitting in the temple of God,” as head of the Church; and that the Turk does not do. '''But as the pope is Antichrist, so the Turk is the very devil. The prayer of Christendom is against both.'''

...Where the spirit of lies is, there is also the spirit of murder...Since, then, Mohammed’s Koran is such a great spirit of lies that it leaves almost nothing of Christian truth remaining, how could it have any other result than that it should become a great and mighty murderer, with both lies and murders under the show of truth and righteousness. As, therefore, lies destroy the spiritual order of faith and truth, so murder destroys all temporal order instituted by God; for where murder and robbery are practiced, it is impossible that there should be a fine, praiseworthy temporal government, since they cannot think more highly of peace than of war and murder...

The third point is that Mohammed’s Koran thinks nothing of marriage, but permits everyone to take wives as he will. Therefore, it is customary among the Turks for one man to have ten or twenty wives and to desert or sell any of them that he will, when he will, so that in Turkey women are held immeasurably cheap and are despised; they are bought and sold like cattle....

...It is said, indeed, that the Turks are, among themselves, faithful and friendly and careful to tell the truth. I believe that, and I think that they probably have more fine virtues in them than that. No man is so bad that there is not something good in him. Now and then a woman of the streets has good qualities that scarcely ten honorable matrons have. So the devil would have a cloak and be a fair angel, an angel of light; therefore he hides behind certain works, that are works of the light. Murderers and robbers are more faithful and friendly to each other than neighbors are, nay, more so than many Christians. For if the devil keeps the three things – lies, murder, and disregard of marriage – as the real foundation of hell, he can easily tolerate, nay, help, that fleshly love and faithfulness shall be built upon it, as precious stones (though they are nothing but hay and straw), though he knows well that nothing of them will remain through the fire. f123 On the other hand, where true faith, true government, true marriage are, he tries earnestly that little love and fidelity may appear and little be shown, so that he can put the foundation to shame and have it despised.

What is more, when the Turks go into battle their war-cry is no other word than “Allah! Allah!” and they shout it till heaven and earth resound....All that is really a device of the devil. For what is it to say, “There is no God but God” without distinguishing one God from another? The devil, too, is a god and they honor him with this word; of that there is no doubt. In just the same way the pope’s soldiers cry “Ecclesia! Ecclesia!” To be sure: the devil’s ecclesia! ... It is part of the Turks’ holiness, also, that they tolerate no images or pictures and are even holier than our destroyers of images. For our destroyers tolerate, and are glad to have, images on gulden, groschen, rings, and ornaments; but the Turk tolerates none of them and stamps nothing but letters on his coins. He is entirely Muenzerian [Anabaptist], too, for he overthrows all rulers and tolerates no gradations of government, such as princes, counts, lords, nobles and other feudatories...He is also a papist; for he believes that he will become holy and be saved by works, and thinks it no sin to overthrow Christ, lay government waste, and destroy marriage. All these things the pope also works at, though in other ways, with hypocrisy, while the Turk uses force and the sword. In a word, as has been said, it is the very dregs of all abominations and errors."

"Just so Mohammed treats the Gospel; he declares that it is indeed true, but has long since served its purpose; also that it is too hard to keep, especially on the points where Christ says that one is to leave all for His sake, love God with the whole heart, and the like.

Therefore God has had to give another new law, one that is not so hard and that the world can keep, and this law is the Koran. But if anyone asks why he does no miracles to confirm this new law, he says that that is unnecessary and of no use...his Koran did not need to be confirmed by wasted miracles, but by the sword, which is more effective than miracles. Thus it has been, and still is the case among the Turks, that everything is done with the sword, instead of with miracles.

On the other hand, the pope is not much more godly than Mohammed and resembles him extraordinarily; for he, too, praises the Gospel with his lips, but holds that many things in it are too hard, and these things are the very ones that Mohammed and the Turks also consider too hard, such as those contained in Matthew 5:20. Therefore he interprets them, and makes of them consilia, i.e., “counsels,” which no one is bound to keep unless he desires to do so, as has been shamelessly taught at Paris, and in other universities, foundations, and monasteries. Therefore, too, he does not rule with the Gospel, or Word of God, but has made a new law and a Koran, viz., his decretals, and enforces them with the ban, as the Turk enforces his Koran with the sword...Nevertheless, he uses the temporal sword also, when he can, or, at least, calls upon it, and urges and stirs up others to use it. And I am confident that if the pope could use the temporal sword as mightily as the Turk, he would perhaps lack the will to do so even less than the Turk and, indeed, they have often tried it.

God visits them with the same plague, too, and smites them with blindness, so that it happens to them as St. Paul says, in Romans 1:28, about the shameful vice of the dumb sins [homosexuality], that God gives them up to a perverse mind because they pervert the Word of God. So blind and senseless are both pope and Turk that both of them commit the dumb sins shamelessly, as an honorable and praiseworthy thing. Since they think lightly of marriage, it serves them right that there are dog-marriages (and would to God they were dog-marriages), nay, “Italian marriages” and “Florentine brides” f131 among them; and they think these things good;

For I hear one horrible thing after another about what an open and glorious Sodom Turkey is, and everybody who has looked around a little in Rome and Italy knows very well how God there revenges and punishes the prohibition of marriage, so that Sodom and Gomorrah, which God overwhelmed in days of old with fire and brimstone, must seem a mere jest compared with these abominations. On this one account, therefore, I would regret the rule of the Turk; nay, it would be intolerable in Germany."

On War Against the Turk

http://www.lutherdansk.dk/On%20war%20against%20Islamic%20reign%20of%20terror/On%20war%20against%20Islamic%20reign%20of%20terror1.htm

So there you have it, Luther's "mild" vitriol against Islam and the Pope. And whereas this Wikipedia article lists 1 correspondence between "Protestantism" and Islam, Luther just listed half a dozen or so between Islam and Catholicism. If I was writing a Wikipedia article on "Catholicism and Islam" that would probably be enough evidence for me to claim that "lots of people thought that Islam and Catholicism had more in common with each other than either with Protestantism."

The moral of this story, once again--don't assume anything you read on Wikipedia is anything other than the opinion of some guy who wanted to create an article to cite in internet theology debates.

76.239.27.3 (talk) 02:16, 24 May 2013 (UTC)Rev. K. Hess

In addition, skimming through the remainder of the article I note that the author cites Luther's "On War Against the Turk" and quotes him as though Luther approved of the iconoclasm that had happened in Germany.

I think even the context indicates Luther's sarcasm. "Our destroyers of images" is sarcastic language in the same way that Luther will often refer to Romanist interlocutors as "my papists."

If the author of this joke of an article wants to criticize "Protestantism," he should first become familiar with the basics of what seminal figures in the Protestant Reformation--like Martin Luther, for instance--actually believed and taught. For someone to write an article called "Protestantism and Islam" and then not even be aware of basic subdivisions within protestant theology draws attention to the unfortunate tendency toward chauvinism and laughable ignorance that seems to continually resurface in the history of the Pope's church--the very tendency that caused the reformation in the first place.

Also, just learn to read. Even if you know nearly nothing about Protestantism and yet have the buffoonery to write an article discussing its similarities to Islam, a simple reading of the paragraphs surrounding the citation would have revealed that Luther was hardly praising iconoclasm, any more than he was really praising the pope a few sentences later when writing that "the Turk" "is also a papist". "...for he believes that he will become holy and be saved by works, and thinks it no sin to overthrow Christ, lay government waste, and destroy marriage. All these things the pope also works at, though in other ways, with hypocrisy, while the Turk uses force and the sword."

Don't believe what you read on Wikipedia without investigating it thoroughly. Whoever wrote this article is an incompetent or a liar or both, and yet it hasn't been revised or taken down in at least three years.

76.239.27.3 (talk) 02:44, 24 May 2013 (UTC)Rev. K. Hess
 * What you have claimed does not explain the military alliances and the accusations by Catholics like Joan of Arch. As well as the research made by Charles Falco — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.108.30.81 (talk) 23:47, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * And exactly what does Joan of Arc have in common with the protestants described in this flawed article? (Lollards and Hussites she may have known of; Martin Luther, certainly not.)1812ahill (talk) 22:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)


 * As well as this article http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/eras/files/2012/07/jerkins-islam.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.108.30.81 (talk) 21:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Name of this article
The name of this article must be Islam and Protestantism because I comes before P in the English alphabet. So can anybody give me some reason that why Protestantism is placed first or has the order of English alphabet changed? I think an encyclopaedia like Wikipedia should be free from any kind of biases no matter how subtle. 45.117.181.44 (talk) 07:17, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This article is mainly about Ottomans and the Protestants. So, I recommend the title "Protestantism and Sunnism". The issues about Protestantism and Shiism can be considered in a new article; by the way, the current article does not represent any major issue between Protestantism and Shiism in current format since creation.Alborztv (talk) 03:22, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "The title is missing a "the" (currently it just sounds funky in English) and it would also probably be better off as "the Muslim world", which makes fewer assumptions about Ottoman piety, giving: "Protestantism and the Muslim world." Iskandar323 (talk) 14:25, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Pictures of Obama and Trump out of place
The pictures of Obama and Trump in the 'Later relations' section make no sense: they are not key figures of Protestantism in today's society. I didn't even know Trump was Presbyterian. I also doubt his religion and Obama's 'Muslim ancestry' influenced their opinion of Islam, what the caption seems to suggest. Pictures of contemporary Protestant theologians or preachers next to eachother with different views on Islam would be more relevant.
 * Agreed and removed it.VR talk 03:32, 25 May 2021 (UTC)