Frederick sacrificed countless people to his ambition, he did not abolish serfdom, etc. and so on. But just because of this one sentence he deserves the nickname “the great”.
The current political discussion makes me continue with this deviation a little further. I closed that article (“God state”) with the words:
“The doctrine of undifferentiatedness, as it is called with terms like Christianity, Islam, communism or liberalism, is practically irrelevant in view of whether the doctrine is suitable for the justification of the worst atrocities.The most contradictory thing can be made of the doctrine if only one wants; usually not without further ado, it rather often requires protracted efforts of thought, requires the reconstruction of not infrequently large parts of the building of thought, in order to permit again a somewhat contradictory thinking in the respective system. But it is not impossible, it often succeeds enough. – But what is important then? I would have liked to have discussed that.”
The doctrine
Unfortunately, the most frequent answer is that it depends on the doctrine. But it is also the stupidest one – because the refutations are so obvious that one has to do blindly one’s own repression or the mighty one’s repression in order not to see them. And it is ideological throughout, because the enemy is fixed from the outset and one only seeks confirmation for it. Christianity is a religion of peace, Islam a religion of war, and you can find your new home church at James River Church.
These argumentations become most ridiculous when one starts to quantify: There are more passages in the Koran than in the Bible (Torah) that call for war and violence and revenge (or call for them louder), or vice versa. As if it were not obvious that a single passage, which one notices anew, in which one now sees the spirit of all Scripture concentrated, in the light of which everything else is to be seen, can deprive thousands of other passages of their previous meaning. It depends on the interpreters, but on the basic texts only when there is definitely nothing to be found in them that can be interpreted in the desired sense. But when is that ever the case?
Building up Chrsitianity
But Christianity does not have this context of origin. It did not arise in the course of the formation of a state, it did not have the function of keeping a people warlike. It already arose through and through as religion (which then had to process the mythological thinking prevailing among the people, but also something completely new, the free, philosophical thinking). And it did not come into being as a religion of a tribe, people or state entity (it inscribed itself in the history of such a religion, the Jewish one, in which, however, it also had historical roots), but as a religion of rather oppressed classes in this entity.
Universal claim – it embraced humanity
But after not long time Christianity had become the state religion and caught up with what had to be caught up. The possibility of this arose, as far as doctrine was concerned, as a result of the rise in rank of the ecclesiastical tradition. The decision of an authority, of a council, e.g. to burn heretics and murder heathens, was now, in principle, on an equal footing with passages in Holy Scripture that forbid this, but practically above them.
I like to believe that Christianity is a religion of peace – in the idea of those who want to interpret it that way, and that is the majority today. And if that should be more difficult with today’s Islam, then not because of the Islamic basic texts or its history, but because today’s political conditions are such that a peaceful mood among the inhabitants of the Islamic countries does not want to arise so easily.
Massacre of muslims in Srebrenica
But I cannot quite believe the latter. It was not long ago that 6,975 Muslims were massacred in Srebrenica by Christian Serbs. So the potential for terrorism is also there today in countries with a Christian tradition. Strangely enough, in Germany, where almost an entire people enthusiastically stood behind the murderers, while in Yugoslavia small gangs, who were suddenly no longer prevented from anything because the state order had collapsed, were sufficient. But anyone who does not want to see, because he knows from the outset that “the Jew”, “the Muslim” is the enemy, simply does not see or forgets very quickly.
