Confronting a one-sided view on unassimilated immigration

Paul Luckraft reviews ‘Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind’ by Tom Holland (Little, Brown, 2019)

But is strongly criticised by brave bishops

Is Muslim violence really comparable with 'Christian' violence?

Pope Francis is renowned for his outstanding concern for the poor and powerless. Long before he came to Rome he earned a reputation in South America as a pastor who cared for people and was constantly seeking to improve the lot of those who were downtrodden.

Could this be the reason why he has spoken recently, comparing the motive of Muslim jihadists with what he sees as Christian violence?

Understandable though this sensitivity might seem, is it not one more contribution to confusion and compromise concerning Islam and the true Christian witness?

The Pope's Contrast of Islamic and 'Christian'

Two things have prompted us to use our editorial this week to continue examining the challenge of the Islamic movement in the West.

First, is the reported comment to a journalist by Pope Francis on the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel. The Pope is reported to have said that "he doesn't like speaking about Islamic violence because there is plenty of Christian violence as well...[He] said that every day when he browses the newspapers, he sees violence in Italy perpetrated by Christians: 'this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law...and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence. And no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there's everything'."¹

Of course, Pope Francis is right in acknowledging that some who call themselves Christians do commit murder. As Protestants we would wish to point out that that all human beings are born sinful and baptising them as infants does not change their human nature - so baptised Catholics are still sinners liable to commit acts of murder. It is being born again through repentance and accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour that changes human nature.

Do the Pope's recent comments just add further confusion and compromise concerning Islam and the true Christian witness?

We would also want to point out the difference between a man who murders his girlfriend in a fit of temper and another who deliberately carries out a cold-blooded act of assassination such as the mass murder of those in the Bataclan concert-hall. If we lump together jihadist attacks with all other kinds of violence, we close down debate and understanding about the very distinctive motivations and agendas behind radical Islam.

Christians and Muslims Praying Together

The second is widespread reference in this week's media to opinions concerning joint Christian and Muslim prayer. There is a growing idea that Christians and Muslims can find ways to pray together - the assumption being that both pray to the same god. Christopher Howse commented on this in the Daily Telegraph, referring to Christian Troll's chapter on this theme in the Bloomsbury Guide to Christian Spirituality.²

Born-again Christians and Muslims do not and cannot pray to the same god! But as these two examples show, there is clearly need for clarification!

These instances are among the growing number in our day that challenge us to be clear on whether Christians worship the same god as Muslims. They are not new questions, but they are questions that are closer to home than in previous times.

The point is that human beings, to avoid confrontation, are likely to compromise. This must not happen in the Christian Church at this crucial time in history!

To avoid confrontation, human beings are likely to compromise. This must not happen in the Church at this time!

Mission to Muslims

In the 1980s, I was led to become involved with the challenge of Islam, in terms of both the ministry of the Gospel and the advance of Islam in the West. In those days it was said that there was one missionary to a million Muslims because of the difficulty of witness in Muslim countries and because of the poor understanding about Islam in the West.

For a period, I had the privilege of leading prayer among serving and former missionaries to the Muslim world. I met men and women who had spent a whole lifetime of service in the Muslim world and had not seen a single convert. Some had begun to doubt that it was possible for a Muslim to become a Christian. This seems hard to believe now. Not only has Islam become centre-stage politically and religiously, but also multitudes of Muslims have been saved by faith in Jesus the Messiah.

At around the time that these things were happening in the 80s, a fresh wave of missionaries was going into Muslim countries. Some found the same difficulty as the previous generation, and a new word became prominent – contextualisation. It is amazing how often we can think of a word that sounds quite reasonable in and of itself, but which masks a major error. Here and there, some Christian missionaries were beguiled to think that a way forward was to put the Christian message into the context of Islamic communities. Hence, some experiments have been made to open mosques with the idea of Christians and Muslims sharing in worship together.

This same idea is still alive, as our second example above illustrates. The bottom line is that it raises the question as to whether or not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the same as the God of Islam.

Christian mission to the Muslim world has raised the same question – do we worship the same god?

Personal Experience

Personal experience helps us to know where to draw the lines. My personal experience of a short spell in a Moroccan jail for our Christian witness took me behind the scenes of the Islamic world. It begged the question as to why God would have sent us to witness to seekers after truth in a Muslim country only to be imprisoned by those who follow the god of Islam. Same God? Surely not. It also gives us the ability to contrast the rigid exclusion of everything Christian in hard-line Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia with the freedom offered to Islam in countries with an ingrained Christian heritage.

Returning to the first quote, what had Pope Francis in mind? Was he thinking of the Crusades when he considered that Christians had as much to answer for as Muslims in their violence? Perhaps he was thinking of the troubles in Northern Ireland or even the world wars that were fought in the last century.

He has a point - but one also senses a disturbing possibility that some Christian leaders are finding ways to unite with Islam in a quest for peace. Of course we must seek and defend peace, but at what cost? Is this another thread of compromise? Again, we are eventually led to the same question as to whether the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the same as the god of the Qur'an.

God is Great!

All Christians would agree that the God of the Bible is Great! We sing it and proclaim it, loud and clear! But when we hear that yet another terrorist has proclaimed 'Allahu Akbar!' prior to a murderous act of violence, and we discover that he has simply repeated (in Arabic) the Muslim proclamation 'God [Allah] is Great!' then we must ask whether this can be the same god.

Some Christian leaders seem to be finding ways to unite with Islam in a quest for peace.

Of course, many say that these terrorists are not true Muslims and are misguided. However, the question still remains. When one investigates what the Qur'an says about the god of Islam one sees clearly that it is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just because we use the same words, it does not mean that we address the same god.

If the god of the Qur'an were the God of the Bible, he would not say that he did not have a son, as is written around the ceiling of the Dome on the Rock on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The foundation of the Christian faith is that Jesus the Messiah is the Son of God. Neither would there be incitement to jihad against Christians and Jews in the Qur'an. On close study, the god of Islam is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.³

We must not compromise on this issue either through guilt trips on violence that true Christians would not have perpetrated anyway, or through seeking some sort of joint expression of worship, as if there were two paths to the same God - one through Islam and one through Christianity.

True Seekers

Among the millions of Muslims in the world, particularly the young, there is a true seeking after the One True God. Jesus, the Saviour of the world, is working to redirect their prayers to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and away from the god of Islam.

It will not help to muddy the waters through compromise, but this does not mean taking up arms to defeat violence with violence.

Now is the time for a clear and true proclamation of the Gospel. It is also time for a winning Christian lifestyle, a witness of the One True God borne out in true Christian discipleship. Our God is Great and far greater than counterfeits. The rise of Islam and the tides of response from the Pope and others challenge us to stand on the clarity of whom our God is.

Now is the time for a clear and true proclamation of the Gospel – and for winning Christian lifestyles.

The foundation of our concern for Muslims and of our witness to them is that there is difference between Islam and New Testament Christianity. The teaching of Jesus stands in stark contrast to that of Muhammad. They cannot both be the final revelation of God to mankind. Compromise, however humanly well-meant, will not help.

This is a matter of life and death, not so much of the physical kind but concerning eternal life in fellowship with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

References

1 Quoted from Ibrahim, R. Pope Francis Equates Muslim and Christian Violence. FrontPage Magazine, 2 August 2016, re-published on the Middle East Forum.

2 2012, ed. Richard Woods and Peter Tyler. Bloomsbury. See also Howse, C. Can Muslims pray with Christians? The Telegraph, Thursday 11 August 2016.

3 For further reading on this subject, see James R White's What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur'an. 2013, Bethany House, Minnesota.

With new terror attacks happening almost daily across Europe, Western leaders still refuse to face the truth about Islam.

The sickening murder of a defenceless elderly priest in Rouen marks a new low point in Islam's relationships with the West. But none of the Western leaders are willing to face up to the reality of what is happening in Europe.

Even the Pope says that this attack is nothing to do with religion!¹ That is the standard politically correct statement that is made every time there is an atrocity carried out by Muslims in the name of their god.

Ever since the end of the Second World War the policy in the West has been to seek appeasement with the oil-rich Arab nations of the Middle East. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 that installed Ayatollah Khomeini as supreme ruler of Iran was a great shock to the West as Iran had been its main supporter under the rule of the de-posed Shar.

From that time Western leaders turned their attention to promoting the Saudis as the leading friend of the West and there has been a continuous effort in the Western media to paint Saudi Arabia in a favourable light despite numerous reports of brutality, persecution of minorities and strict enforcement of the ban on women driving cars or leaving home without a male escort.

Covering Up the Facts

Even the most atrocious acts of terrorism, such as the destruction of the twin towers in New York in 2001 and the bombing of the London Underground 2005, were deliberately downplayed in terms of their links to Islam. They were portrayed as the acts of 'extremists' who were not representative of mainstream Muslims and every effort was made by the media to stress that Islam is a religion of peace. This is still the politically correct policy.

The most atrocious acts of terrorism in recent years have been deliberately downplayed in terms of their links to Islam.

According to Brietbart,² last week the BBC appeared to go to extraordinary lengths to attempt to cover up the Muslim identity of the Munich killer. At 3pm on Saturday 23 July BBC reported the killer as Ali Sonboly, but within one hour this was changed to David Sonboly. In the 6pm news he was again referred to as David Sonboly although in the same bulletin the BBC's correspondent in Germany referred to him as David Ali Sonboly. Did the BBC make a high level decision to hide the reference to 'Ali', although it admitted that the teenager had dual German/Iranian citizenship?

Religion of Peace?Pope Francis, who has denied the religious nature of recent terrorist attacks.

The 'religion of peace' facade has been wearing somewhat thin in face of the recent wave of terrorist activities in Europe, but the latest pronouncement by the Pope shows that Western leaders are still not prepared to discuss the religious beliefs of those who commit atrocities. Whilst attack after attack is being carried out with cries of 'Allahu Akbar' ('god is great'), nobody is willing to ask questions about this god, whose greatness apparently demands or justifies the murder of innocent people.

What Westerners do not realise is that Islam not only condones violence but actually commands it against 'infidels', especially Jews and Christians. The Qur'an says

Let not the unbelievers think that they will ever get away. They have not the power so to do. Muster against them all the men and weaponry at your command, so that you may strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them who are unknown to you but known to Allah. All that you give in the cause of Allah shall be repaid to you. (8:59)

According to thereligionofpeace.com there are 109 verses in the Qur'an that call upon Muslims to wage war against unbelievers. They say "some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding." They also say that "there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to balance out the many that call for non-believers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam or are killed."

Western leaders are still not prepared to discuss the religious beliefs and agendas of those who commit the atrocities.

The Islamic Agenda

In order to understand what is going on today you have to examine the history of Islam and the life of its founder, Muhammad. Islam's supreme purpose is world domination. The propagation of Islam by force has been its policy right from the beginning.

Muhammad personally led many expeditions and wars plundering communities and slaughtering defenceless civilians. He personally set the example of violent conquest and forcible conversion that has been followed down the centuries.

Muhammad's dying wish in 632 AD was to clear the whole of Arabia of Christians and Jews – a policy of aggression that was immediately carried out by Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, who became the first caliph of the Islamic state. Abu Bakr died in 634 and was succeeded by Caliph Omar, who was murdered in 644 and succeeded by Caliph Othman, who was murdered in 656 and succeeded by Caliph Ali, who was assassinated in 661.

All of these early caliphs led battles with the objective of expanding the Islamic state and forcing people to submit to Islam (the word Islam in Arabic means 'submission'), a policy which continued for centuries. Notable dates (some approximate) in the early years of Islam include:

• AD 647 conquest of the island of Cyprus
• AD 659 conquest of Egypt
• AD 700 military campaigns in North Africa
• AD 711 invasion of Gibraltar and conquest of Spain
• AD 716 invasion of Constantinople
• AD 732 Battle of Tours in France
• AD 777 Battle of Saragossa in Spain.

It does seem extraordinary that Western leaders can be so extraordinarily blind to the intentions of Islam. Our European forefathers who succeeded in stopping the advance of the Ottoman army at Vienna in 1683 were certainly under no such illusions. Could it be that this blindness is in fact a deliberate attempt by the secular humanist spirit driving modern Europe to look favourably upon Islam because of its hostility to the centuries of Judeo-Christian heritage that is so blatantly scorned by the European Union?

Is our blindness to the intentions of Islam connected to the secular humanist spirit at work across Europe?

If this indeed is the motive, the secular humanists are virtually committing social suicide because if Islam does become a majority movement in Europe, they will be the first to suffer along with LGBT communities. It is, of course, quite possible that Muslims will become the majority in Europe, given their extraordinary high birth rate and the number of young Muslims of childbearing age who have entered Europe as refugees or migrants.

Maybe Christians should accept responsibility for the confused spiritual state of Europe today. Clearly we have not been faithful to the Great Commission of Jesus to make disciples of all nations. Neither have we clearly demonstrated the love of God in our lives and in our teaching. If we had done, there could be no confusion between the God of the Bible and the Allah of the Qur'an. The greatest need today is to teach the truth of the Gospel. This is the only way to save Europe from catastrophe.

What is Ahead?

What does the future hold? A personal friend of mine whose ministry I value is Bill Wagner, who has lived and worked in Muslim countries for many years. Just before the invasion of Iraq he wrote perceptively:

Islam will continue to grow and will become more brutal in its attempts to conquer the world. There will be a rise of terrorism in all parts of the non-Muslim world since they have discovered how effective this can be. The nations of the world will be subject to suicide bombings. A number of wars such as those against Iraq and Afghanistan will take place but will be ineffective since Islam has learned to fight not from a position of military strength but from the shadowy back alleys of urban societies. Christians especially will be marked for death and persecution, although Islam will never completely take over the world.³

Many Christians believe that we have entered the days which Jesus foresaw when he warned his disciples about being deceived. He said, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom...Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved" (Matt 24:7-12).

It certainly looks as though a time of persecution lies ahead for Christians, but it is during times of persecution in the past that the Church has always grown. Maybe it is God's intention to allow the Church to go through a period of purging in the run-up to the second coming of our Lord.

References

1 E.g. Daley, K. Pope Says Terrorism Is 'Not A Religious War'. The Daily Caller, 28 July 2016.

2 Kassam, R. BBC 'Fixes' Munich Killer Article Following Breitbart Expose Of Muslim Name Cover Up. Breitbart, 23 July 2016.

3 Wagner, W, 2004. How Islam Plans to Change the World. Kregel Publications, Michigan, p216.