Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
- First Epistle of S. John, 2: 22
Last month the world witnessed the sad but predictable spectacle of Muslims murdering a Roman Catholic nun and torching Christian churches because the Pope of Rome gave an academic lecture in Germany in which he quoted a few words which the Orthodox Emperor Manuel II Paleologos (reigned 1391-1425) spoke regarding Islam. Here are the wise Emperor's precisely true and applicable words:
'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'"
In other words, whatever good there is in Islam is found in the bits and pieces left from the ancient Christian faith of which Islam is a bizarre distortion. Whatever is evil in Islam is what Mohammed brought in 600 years after Christ, based on revelations from a spirit he claimed was "Allah" (God), which he wrote down in the Koran. But since this spirit explicitly denied the Holy Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ, as well as His Passion and Resurrection, we know who this spirit is - not God but the enemy of God, the devil. Islam's demonic origin and character explain the fanatical fervor of many of its adherents. They have abandoned their own reason and free will, and they are enslaved to evil spirits.
Islam, however, is not the only irrational and demonic thought-system in the world today, only the one that is getting the most headlines, because of its crudity and primitive violence. Islam's supposed enemy, Zionism, for example, is also fanatical and destructive, albeit more sophisticated and 'western.' Our own culture's worship of money and pleasure may be the most demonic and irrational thought system of them all, though it claims to honor reason.
Any thought system based not on the Incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ, but on the invention of man, is to a greater or lesser extent irrational and therefore subject to demonic influence or outright demonic control, because only the Reason of God (that is, the Logos of God) is true Reason.
The Gospel and the teaching of the Holy Fathers never violate man's reason, because The Reason, the Logos, of God, became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and this is the foundation of our entire Faith. Unlike secularism, however, which worships fallen reason and therefore defeats itself, Orthodoxy transcends the realm of the merely rational and rises to the supra-rational, to divine illumination and deification by grace. Unlike religious fanaticism, Orthodoxy recognizes a legitimate role for man's reason, and embraces that which is true in human traditions, because everything true is from God.
By embracing the full revelation of Who Christ is, and by living the life of the Church, we can escape the fanaticism of the mullahs (and "born again" TV evangelists, for that matter) on the one hand, and the worldliness of the secularists on the other hand, and live a life that is truly reasonable (logikos), for it is based on the Logos of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
THE HOLY FORTY-TWO MARTYRS FROM AMMORIA
They were all commanders of the Byzantine Emperor Theophilos. When the Emperor Theophilos lost the battle against the Saracens at the city of Ammoria, the Saracens captured the city, enslaved many Christians and among them these commanders. The remaining Christians were either killed or sold into slavery. The commanders were thrown into prison where they remained for seven years. Many times the Muslim leaders came to them. They counseled and advised the commanders to embrace the Islamic Faith, but the commanders did not want to hear about it. When the Saracens spoke to the commanders, saying, "Mohammed is the true prophet and not Christ," the commanders asked them, "If there were two men debating about a field and the one said, `This field is mine,' and the other, `It is not, it is mine,' and near by, one of them had many witnesses saying it is his field and the other had no witnesses, but only himself, what would you say, `Whose field is it?'" The Saracens answered, "Indeed, to him who had many witnesses!" "You have judged correctly," the commanders answered. That is the way with Christ and Mohammed. Christ has many witnesses: the Prophets of old, from Moses to John the Forerunner, whom you also recognize and who witness to and about Him [Christ], but Mohammed witnesses only to himself that he is a prophet and does not have even one witness.
- Lives of the Saints, March 6th, from the Prologue from Ochrid