How did this guy get to be an Archbishop? Sure, he’s got a beard and he looks religious but so does Muqtada al-Sadr. He knows how to spell ecumenical and a lot of other words people just as religious as he is and a lot less political don’t give a damn about—people who believe in God and let it go at that. He is Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, and therein is the tale.

Williams writes poetry, nothing on the order of The Wreck of the Hesperus or Casey at the Bat or There was once a lady from Worcester, but he gets published. What he needs is a letter to the Thessalonians. A Common Word for the Common Good won’t do.

Williams has an opinion on everything. He calls teaching creationism in school a ‘category mistake.’ Allowing God to compete with Darwin does not enhance the Doctrine of Creation; it reduces it he says. He prefers the church to be ‘welcoming’ rather than ‘inclusive.’ Is that too subtle? Freemasonry may be incompatible with Christianity. That is interesting but boring. He opposes almost everything the United States has ever done and many things he imagines it may have done and may do in the future. And he is not afraid of Sharia. He is either a very brave man or an inconsequential fool. “Certain provisions of Sharia are already recognized in our society and under our law,” he has said.

With Anglican Bishops from all over the world gathering in the UK to determine the fate of Anglicanism for the next hundred years, Williams sent a conciliatory letter to Islamic leaders calling for an alliance between the two faiths for the common good. The common good—was that a ‘category mistake?’ It’s best not to be too inclusive right off the bat. An angel would have wanted to know what the jizya would be before meeting with these folks. But with the bit in his mouth, Williams could not be restrained. “Christian Doctrine is offensive to Muslims,” he said.

It’s too bad he wasn’t on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Ed McMahon could have asked, “What Christian Doctrine it that, Rowan?”

And Rowan would have said it was the Christian belief in the Trinity—the Father, Son and Holy Ghost that “is difficult, sometimes offensive to Muslims.”

“How offensive is that, Rowan?” McMahon would have chuckled.

Yes, how offensive is that? But Carson is dead and Williams is pursuing the common good to the exclusion of all else. One must go to the Muslim Holy Book for an answer. That would suit Ed.

Qur’an 5:73 “They are surely disbelievers who blaspheme and say: God is one of three in the Trinity for there is no Ilah (God), except One, Allah. If they desist not from saying this (blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall them—the disbelievers will suffer a painful doom.”

Blasphemy! Grievous penalty! It would seem they are greatly offended. It is not nice to greatly offend other people. Hitler was greatly offended by International Jewry; Stalin was greatly offended by the kulaks, Mao by 30 million Chinese; Mohammed by the Banu Quraza. And look at what they did! Painful doom can be exceedingly painful. But we are just as bad says Williams. “Christianity has been promoted at the point of the sword and legally supported by extreme sanctions,” he says.

That darn Richard the Lion-Heart! Won’t they ever forgive him? But Dick has been dead for centuries and his heirs in the thousands years since have saved billions of people from starvation and disease. Haven’t they? No matter, the sins of the father are visited upon future generations. But what of Islam—the other partner in the common good?

Dateline Islamabad: District Judge Mian Muhammad Naeem recently ruled that two Christian sisters, Saba, 13, and Anila, 10, kidnapped last June while visiting friends in Chowk Munda in the province of Punjab, had converted to Islam in a legitimate manner and could not be returned to their family of origin. The judge also ruled their marriages to their kidnappers were legal. It is difficult to see any ‘common good’ in this. Nor is this an isolated incident. Christian children are frequently kidnapped by Muslims and forcibly converted to Islam.

In Arhus, Denmark, Arab and Somali immigrants have finally driven the Greenlanders—people of Inuit extraction—out of their homes in Gjellerup after years of harassment, intimidation, violence and threats of violence. This has been replicated in Kosovo where Muslims have been systematically driving Christians from their homes and destroying their churches.

In Brussels, Belgium, police took seventeen women from a luxury hotel on allegations an Arab Royal Family was using them as slaves. The women were ‘servants’ of the widow of a senior royal figure from the Untied Arab Emirates who was renting an entire floor. Their passports had been taken away from them upon arrival in Belgium and they had not been allowed to leave the hotel. The woman that did Jeff Davis’s laundry had more options.

Slavery has always been a part of Islam. Thousands of Christian and animist children have been sold into servitude by the Muslim government of Sudan, a country that continues to thumb its nose at the United Nations while engaged in a genocidal campaign against its own black Muslim population.

Honor killing and female genital circumcision have become part of Islam. It is not a woman’s world. In European countries with even modest increases in Muslim immigration, rape statistics have been doubled and tripled because of assaults by Muslim youths on Christian girls. Jack the Ripper would not feel alone. Darth Vader would shake his head in wonder and decide to bypass this dark and scary planet.

In the News column at www.thereligionofpeace.com appeared the following snippets: Hindu Child Beaten by Muslim Mob over Qur’an incident; Iran to Hang Woman for Alleged crime at Age 13; Qaddafi’s Son Jailed in Switzerland for Beating Maids. Qaddafi’s Son! It is nurture or Islam?

Muslims have committed 11.468 terrorist acts since 9/11.

In Henrietta, New York, Waheed Allah Mohammad took it upon himself to kill his younger sister, Fauzia, because she had become a “bad Muslim girl.” She was going to clubs, dressing immodestly and was planning to move to New York. So he stabbed her, Fortunately, she survived and Waheed has been charged with attempted murder. The Saints be preserved! Why is it so few Muslim men reach adulthood in their relations with women and non-Muslims?

Williams titled his Opus A Common Word for the Common Good. No doubt, Williams is a well-meaning man—so was Neville Chamberlain. By a faint stretch of the imagination one could have supposed there was a common good between Hitler and International Jewry. Then comes the Holocaust. What is important is not the Common Good in Islam but the Uncommon Bad and as long as the vast majority of 1.3 billion Muslims do little or nothing to eradicate it no Common Good will be attained between them and the dhimmis except surrender on the part of the latter.

So how much jizya do you think will be equitable, Mr. Archbishop?