Ann Widdecombe Quotes
What I do not like is militant secularism, whereby anything is acceptable as long as it's not Christian.
Widdecombe, Ann. Opinion column. Daily Express, Express Newspapers.
Ethnic cleansing was a basic component of early Islam. The contemporary seeming hysteria over American troops in Arab nations, has in addition to the usual problems of soldiers from another land this background. The same is true about the presence of Israel. From some points of view, the presence of Christians and Jew in the Middle East is wrong per se because it undermines the work and intention of the Prophet.
The Soviet state had varied views regarding religion in different times. In the early days of the Russian Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church was a major supporter of the Csar and serfdom. That caused a certain hostility to the Russian Church. That Church meanwhile had previously been extremely hostile to Jews and Roman Catholics and never recognized Protestant Churches. So Russians as a group were already discriminating against all religion except the Russian Orthodox Church before the Communist Revolution took place. When the Russian Communists were well entrenched in power, they saw the Russian Church as an obstacle to modernization and were hostile to any group that had a loyalty to any force or deity that was not the Soviet State.
Toleration is a relative term. The Muslim Moors made Christians (and Jews) pay a special tax. At times they were forced to wear special clothing so that they could be readily identified. And they could not build churches larger or taller than the smallest mosque in the community. At times, their occupations were restricted but at other times Christians and Jews were appointed to the highest positions like Vizier. The Inquisition, in contrast, forced all Muslims (and Jews) to leave the country without any of their property or money or be tortured and killed—usually by burning at the stake unless of course that they converted to Christianity.
Williams was the first theologian who not only advocated religious toleration but argued that Christianity demanded it and the separation of church and state.
In this speech, and in {634756}, he argued against unification to a public that was mostly opposed. The leadership was interested because they were facing the Muslim Ottoman Turks who were getting more powerful each day. The Eastern Emperor, Constantine XI, more of a soldier and politician than a cleric, wanted the military strength of the Franks and other Western European Christian armies to help protect the Eastern Empire and Byzantium and were willing to reunite under the Pope to get it. Gennadios and his faction were not. They prevailed and the next year, the Muslims conquered Byzantium which had little help from the armies of the Western Roman Empire.
The origins of the extreme religious intolerance of Spain occurred centuries before the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. Before the Conference the Visigoths and their king had been converted to Christianity but not all cared for the new religion.
Ann Noreen Widdecombe is a British politician, author and television personality. She served as the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone from 1987 to 1997 and for Maidstone and The Weald from 1997 to 2010. She also served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South West England for the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2020.
