Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff | Excerpts
Source & Credit: Ahmadiyya Gazette | April 4th, 2008
This is the historic handshake at the time of Camp David accord. The three great personalities in this picture representing Christianity, Islam and Judaism are President Jimmy Carter of US, President Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, respectively.
The greatest of the three had to wait the longest to get his Nobel Prize for peace. He finally received it in 2002. Making his Nobel speech in Oslo, President Jimmy Carter said, ―The present era is a challenging and disturbing time for those whose lives are shaped by religious faith based on kindness towards each other.
When asked by Christianity Today to explain this statement, he responded:
"There is a remarkable trend toward fundamentalism in all religions — including the different denominations of Christianity as well as Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Increasingly, true believers are inclined to begin a process of deciding: 'Since I am aligned with God, I am superior and my beliefs should prevail, and anyone who disagrees with me is inherently wrong,' and the next step is 'inherently inferior.‘ The ultimate step is 'subhuman,' and then their lives are not significant.
"That tendency has created, throughout the world, intense religious conflicts. Those Christians who resist the inclination toward fundamentalism and who truly follow the nature, actions, and words of Jesus Christ should encompass people who are different from us with our care, generosity, forgiveness, compassion, and unselfish love.
"It is not easy to do this. It is a natural human inclination to encapsulate ourselves in a superior fashion with people who are just like us — and to assume that we are fulfilling the mandate of our lives if we just confine our love to our own family or to people who are similar and compatible. Breaking through this barrier and reaching out to others is what personifies a Christian and what emulates the perfect example that Christ set for us." (Our endangered values: America‘s moral crisis)
The great son of Africa representing Islam, in the picture, who gave his life for his willingness to stand up for peace, is no other than President Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat of Arab Republic of Egypt:
"The U.S. president Jimmy Carter mediated the negotiations between Sadat and Begin that resulted in the Camp David Accords (Sept. 17, 1978), a preliminary peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978; and their continued political negotiations resulted in the signing on March 26, 1979, of a treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel, the first between the latter and any Arab nation.
While Sadat‘s popularity rose in the West, it fell dramatically in Egypt because of internal opposition to the treaty, a worsening economic crisis, and Sadat‘s suppression of the resulting public dissent. He was assassinated by Muslim extremists.
Sadat‘s autobiography was published under the title In Search of Identity.
"Menachem Begin received a law degree from the University of Warsaw in 1935. Active in the Zionist movement throughout the 1930s, he became (1938) the leader of the Polish branch of the Betar youth movement, dedicated to the establishment of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. When the Germans invaded Warsaw in 1939, he escaped to Vilnius; his parents and a brother died in concentration camps. The Soviet authorities deported Begin to Siberia in 1940, but in 1941 he was released and joined the Polish army in exile, with which he went to Palestine in 1942." http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9014121/Menachem-Begin
Download the original article here: Ahmadiyya Gazette | April 4th, 2008
-Ahmadiyya Times staff
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