The sign of Jonah

It's pretty common, I think, to hate your neighbors more than a distant foe. I have often remarked how denizens of San Francisco will gush forth a volcano of bile for Bush and Palin and the Republicans, etc. but, if they mention the issue at all, merely regret Osama bin Laden and the whole Islamic jihad. Apparently it would be unseemly for liberals to froth about them. Unfortunate as that whole hijacking of Islam movement is, it is certainly misunderstood by Western prejudice against Islam and very likely provoked by Western imperialism and colonialism.

These folks have ancestors.

The city of Damascus was long a part of the Byzantine Empire, the Romans of the East. Six hundred years. The official religion was the Christianity of the council of Chalcedon, held in 325. The Chalcedonian definition was that Christ was one divine Person, the Word of God, in two natures (dyo physeis),  fully human and fully divine. The definition held to by many Christians in Egypt and the near East spoke of Christ as one nature (monos physis). These "monophysites" were subject to penalties from their fellow Christians and there was no love lost.

So when the conquering, invading, foreign, imperialist and colonialist armies of the Religion of Peace showed up at the gates of Damascus and, unprovoked, laid siege in 632, a mere two years after Muhammad's death, it was a monophysite bishop named Jonah --who hated his neighbors more than a distant foe-- who gave the Arabs information about how best to take down the city. Which they did. Unsurprisingly, Jonah converted to Islam.

I believe similar situations eventuated elsewhere, including Egypt, which was heavily Monophysite. And the Copts are still paying the price.

So those folks who want us to "understand" the suicide-bombing beheading jihadis' religion, but simply identify Dick Cheyney with the anti-Christ (isn't it obvious?) have a long tradition of traitorous patron saints they can rely on for help.