Love
Muslims : Fight Islam
Rev.
David Greentree, August 2019
No, that is not a
paradox. Muslims are people. We share a common humanity, a common
citizenship in this country, and as Christians we believe that all
humanity is created in the image of God, and each person someone we
should love as we love ourselves, and treat as we ourselves would
like to be treated. Islam, on the other hand, is a political ideology
fused to a religion. There is nothing wrong with fighting a dangerous
ideology or a misleading religious dogma.
Some years ago when
I was building houses, I employed two Muslim carpenters. They were
both very decent fellows, and good workers. One was quite devout. He
attended and gave financially to his mosque, and he had a wife and
baby that he was devoted to. He was a good person, and a good
citizen. The other was perhaps more nominal in his religious
observances, and a more typical Aussie young man, again he was a good
person and a good citizen. One time when we were short handed, he
asked if he could bring his best friend along. As we sat around at
lunch that Saturday, I noticed that his friend was wearing a cross,
so I said “How come your best friend is wearing a cross when you're
a Muslim?” He replied that they were both born in Cyprus, he was
Turkish and his friend Greek. They had met on their first day at
kindergarten and been best friends ever since.
So whatever the
“theory”, Christians and Muslims can in practice get along.
Many years before
that, I had, as an 18 year old, travelled by train in Malaysia to
Kuala Lumpur. On the journey I got into conversation with a Malay lad
of my own age. When we got to KL, he invited me to spend the day with
his family who were having a celebration for his father's departure
on the Hajj to Mecca.
One thing that
struck me looking around that family gathered for prayers was that I
could mentally pair many of them with members of my own extended
family. On the religious level, I could see likenesses from the
earnest young man leading the prayers through to those with a much
more relaxed attitude to it all.
In everyone, Muslim
and Christian alike, our human nature modifies how the teachings of
our religion work out in our daily lives. We don't have to go to far
to think of examples of professed Christians who have done very evil
things. Conversely, the vast bulk of Muslims are, and act as decent
people despite some of the teachings of their religion.
I used to think, and
perhaps you do too, that Islam and Christianity worshipped the same
God; that Islam merely had a deficient understanding of God. That is
not the case. To demonstrate this just ask any knowledgeable Muslim
the following questions about Allah:
1) Could Allah have
sat down and eaten a meal with Abraham and discussed his plans with
Abraham? (Genesis 18)
2) Could Allah have
descended, made his glory pass by Moses, and pronounced his divine
name as YHWH? (Genesis 34.5
ff)
3)
Could Allah have spoken to Moses “face
to face, as one speaks to a friend”? (Exodus 33.11)
4)
Could Allah come to earth, take human nature in addition to his
divine nature, be
the God-Man Jesus Christ, die for the sin of the world, and rise
again?
5)
Could Allah live on earth now inside all
believers? (John
14.23, Colossians 1.27)
6)
Could the rewards of paradise primarily
be, not sexual gratification
for men and food and wine for women, but rather,
for men and women equally,
the joy of of a close personal
relationship with the living God? (John 14, Revelation 21)
7)
Could Allah be triune rather than singular.
If
I have been correctly informed, then anyone familiar with the sacred
texts of Islam will respond to the effect, “No! Absolutely not!”
To each and every
question.
On
the basis of this, Allah, and
YHWH - Father, Son and
Holy spirit - cannot be the same entity. So either Allah is false and
YHWH is
the one and only God, or the
other way round. There is no middle course.
In
this spiritual battle there can be no compromise. As Elijah might
say today: “If YHWH
Father-Son-Holy Spirit is God follow him; but if Allah, then follow
him.” As the Church we have confused accepting
Muslim people with having a
detente with Islam. The
first we should do, the second is an oxymoron.
Detente
with Islam is an oxymoron for two reasons. First, as Christians we
worship and serve the only true
God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We
can give no
quarter to a false god. Also
we must repudiate a
teaching that wrongfully
tries to appropriate the true
servants of YHWH to
this false god. Abraham and
the Prophets worshipped and
spoke in the name of YHWH. Islam
appropriates them
and calls
them “prophets of Islam”, it
even has the brazen audacity
to claim Jesus Christ our Saviour, who is true
God and true
Human, as a mere “prophet
of Islam”. This
is something
we should be willing to die
for rather
than
concede!
Second,
it is an oxymoron because Islam has been waging an
aggressive war on
Christianity for fourteen hundred years. Further
according to its sacred texts, all Christians must
be put to “Allah, slavery,
or the sword”, and all idolaters beheaded,
until the whole world acclaims “there is no god but Allah, and
Mohammed is his prophet”. There is no quarter offered by
Islam, and
so no detente is
possible. Indeed
holding out the prospect of
detente is
only a
trick of psychological warfare. If
you doubt this, google the constitution of Iran. You can read for
yourself in the preamble under
the heading “An Ideological Army”, the
stated aim of using
their armed forces to bring the
whole world under Islamic
law. You may recall ISIS
voiced a similar desire.
Saudi
Arabia is spending huge sums exporting worldwide
the Wahhabi
doctrine
that the Salafi,
the first three generations
of leaders, were
the true face of Islam.
What
did Islam do under
those first generations of leaders? They launched
unprovoked war against their
Christian neighbours.
They slaughtered,
raped
and pillaged
their way until they had conquered half
the then Christian lands. They
brutally subdued virtually
every Christian country South
of the Mediterranean, plus
Spain. They forced entire
populations to convert
to Islam or be reduced
to serf status, they took
the most beautiful women for sale as sex slaves, and the boys to turn
into soldiers.
Islam's
armies got to within 250Km of
Paris before they were
stopped by the Frankish king Charles Martel at the battle of Tours in
721.
Later
generations of Caliphs also attacked Christianity. In
1453
Islamic armies sacked
Constantinople itself,
and went
on to the Balkans region.
They
got
to the very gates
of Vienna. The
second siege of
Vienna was broken
by a Christian confederation
in 1688.
Islamic
navies controlled
the Mediterranean, and sent
raiding parties to the
coastal areas of England. The
“Barbary Pirates” were actually an aggressive Islamic empire
which extorted tribute from countries as far away as America. Battles
to free the Mediterranean for
international trade were
fought by the U.S., and
Sweden 1801 to 1805, and by
the U.S., Finland, and
Britain
in 1815, and finally
by France
in 1830.
The
First
World War saw the end of the Caliphate, but during that
period, Islamic forces killed
some 1.5 Million Christians in the Armenian Genocide, then turned on
Greek and Assyrian Christians killing another one million civilians.
It
is noteworthy that the
Christian victors in WWI did not try to entice
let alone force Muslim
populations in the former
Ottoman Empire to convert to
Christianity.
We
are enjoying a relative
peace from attack, only because of the deterrent effect of Western
military might, and the vigilance of our police and security forces.
But even today,
lands that lack such
powerful armed protection,
are being harried by armed
and violent Islamic rebels.
Boko Haram, North Sudanese
insurgents, Islamic
State West Africa Province, and other armed
bands are killing, enslaving
and displacing many thousands
of peaceful Christians each
year.
So
do not believe “Islam
is a religion of peace”. That
is a barefaced lie. Islam is a dogma of war. War on unbelievers until
all the world is under the rule of Islam. We are
only spared a war of bombs
and bullets in the West because of our military might. For now we
are just
facing a
war of words. Wake up Christians, fight back with
argument and persuasion while
it is still only a war of
words!
Jesus
is the Truth.
We must fight Islam with this truth and with prayer.
Remember
that in
Islam, truth telling is only
required among fellow believers. To
tell lies
to unbelievers in
the furtherance of Islam, to speak peace when you mean war, is all
counted as doing a service for Allah. (An
example is the
doctrine of Taqiyya).
So do not believe Islam's
smiling apologists. Do not be
deceived by an
invitation to “interfaith
dialogue”. These are ruses
to turn you and
other well meaning Christians
into what the Communists used to call “useful idiots”,
now
those unwittingly
furthering the cause of Islam.
Muslims
we love, but Islam is the enemy of God and all that is good. We
must fight it to the death.
