Guest Post By Dr. Mark Christian of Global Faith Institute
President Bashar al-Assad reportedly joked he deserved the Nobel Prize for peace.
According to The Herald Sun,
SYRIA’S President Bashar al-Assad has jokingly said that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a pro-Damascus Lebanese newspaper reported.
The prize, which was given to the global chemical weapons watchdog on Friday, “should have been mine”, Assad said, according to Al-Akhbar newspaper.
Assad made the remark “jokingly”, the daily said, as he commented on the award on Friday of Nobel Peace Prize to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is working in Syria to destroy the Assad regime’s massive chemical arsenal by mid-2014.
It’s a very interesting world we live in. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should receive his Nobel Prize at the same time Mohamed receives one for spreading good will and peace among men. Mind you, this is the same Mohamed who said that the “priesthood” in Islam is represented by Jihad.
I’ve lived a majority of my life as a devout Muslim and had never heard of “peace” in any way relevant to Islam, until Anwar Sadat introduced it to us as an alternative to the conflict with Israel. The concept of peace was very foreign to newspapers, TV shows and school teachers who were all trying hard to explain the concept of peace to an Islamic world that had never heard of such a thing.
When you worship a god who doesn’t forgive you until all of your earthly transgressions are paid and accounted for in Hell (unless, of course, you are to die in Jihad), before you’re even considered to go to heaven, it’s a real stretch to understand peace or forgiveness. Likewise, when you’re living under an Islamic system that is ready to persecute you for anything and everything you do, whether it be through the law, public judgment and/or religious condemnation, it’s difficult to comprehend where peace or forgiveness fit in.
