0809 Islam Outside of Political Correctness
Tolerance is a wonderful thing until it corrupts reality or gets someone killed. Understanding is good and right until it becomes blindness.
Since 9/11/2001, too many Americans have gone into Islam tolerance overdrive. Granted, in the wake of the attacks, the last thing America needed was a panic against peace-loving Muslim citizens. But after the dust settled, there should have been a reality check and there never was.
Islam’s history of evangelism through conquest and statements in the Koran both provide less moderate Muslims ample excuse for militarism and for using the power of government to support violence. If America does not recognize the power of this fact, she will find herself nurturing enclaves of Islamic law pushing for separate legal status, much like Great Britain and Europe are now experiencing.
The most recent warning surfaced after the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom issued an analysis of textbooks used by the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in northern Virginia. Unlike other private or parochial schools, ISA is owned and operated by the Saudi Arabian government. The textbooks used by the school are Saudi government texts. The commission found blatant references to killing “apostates” and “polytheists” (non-Muslims).
In spite of Saudi intrusion on American soil and almost daily anti-American proclamations by less temperate Islamic governments, too many Americans remain content with religious ignorance and cozy platitudes. It seems they would rather cling to comfortable myths than face harsh realities.
First reality: Muslims and Christians do not worship the same deity. The Bible recognizes Jesus as the “Son of God”– wholly God, wholly man. For a Muslim who is faithful to the plain sense of his scriptures, in spite of Koranic teaching of Jesus as a miraculously born miracle-working prophet, such a suggestion is blasphemy worthy of death.
The God of the Bible loves so deeply that He suffered upon Himself judgment’s wrath against humankind’s evil. He did so in order to establish a love relationship with, and reserve Paradise for, any who would love Him in return. Even in the Old Testament, when He disciplined, it was in response to rebellion against plainly prescribed standards of righteousness. Courts applied the rare severest punishments and only after careful investigation.
Allah, in the Koran and the Hadiths, cares only for submission and the judgment of the balance scales. His favor is applied on the basis of obedience alone and his mercy is arbitrary and predetermined. He awards almost all Muslims the right to punish others, especially in the name of jihad.
Second reality: The Judeo-Christian scriptures (the Bible) and the Islamic scriptures are not simply two sub-classes of generic “holy books”. War, conquest and divine judgments in the Old Testament are about preserving covenantal purity and individual holiness rather than subduing competing religions. They are applied to Israel under one-time historical circumstances.
The Koran commands, and the Hadiths support, conquest in all times for the sake of subduing “unbelievers” and spreading Islam. Because militant Islam sees little distinction between Americans and Christianity, all Americans qualify as objects of jihad.
By contrast, even when the Bible honestly records men’s cries for justice against enemies, it commands grace, mercy and love toward those enemies. In the Koran, enemies have but two choices, limited freedom under Muslim lordship or retribution.
Just as in Christianity, there are many shades of Islam in the world. But it is to our peril nationally that we ignore the growth of less restrained Islam in our midst and its jihad-sanctioned war against us. It is to our spiritual peril that we accept liberal compatibility myths about Islam and Christianity sharing the same God or recognizing the same Christ.