I’m back after a much-relished, dare I say much-deserved family vacation in the Rockies. The world is indeed charged with the glory of God! In the meantime, the violence, darkness, and fear engendered by “radical” Islam continues to grow apace. As awful as the violence itself, however, is the deep lack of reality surrounding the violence.
First of all, I put “radical” in quotes as applied to Islam because the phrase “radical Islam” obscures the fact that orthodox, mainstream Islam is inherently radical. As noted in Robert Spencer’s chilling review of orthodox Islam, Not Peace, But a Sword, Islam at its very roots is hostile to Christianity and Judaism, not to mention secular non-Muslim culture; and violence, hatred, and unforgiveness – at least toward non-Muslims – are core to it. I took the trouble to read the Koran myself, cover to cover, so disturbed was I by Spencer’s account: could it really be that bad? Yes. Is he exaggerating? Unfortunately, no.
Please understand that I’m not leaping from “Islam is inherently DEEPLY flawed, and if practiced fully, is evil” to “and therefore there are no good Muslims”. It’s similar to atheism: atheism, if practiced fully, is completely amoral and is not geared to producing virtuous, joyful, loving people. Thank God, most atheists don’t fully live out their atheism and can have all of those qualities; the same goes for Muslims. But living out Islam in its fullness? That is a serious problem.
For example, the popular media account is that Islam respects Christians and Jews as fellow “People of the Book”. But the Koran and orthodox Muslim interpretation clearly proclaim that the only good Christian or Jew is, in fact, Muslim. To explain: the Koran asserts that the Old and New Testaments in their present form are highly distorted versions of the “original” Old and New Testaments. In the “original” versions, Noah, Moses, and Jesus himself profess Allah as God and deny that God has a son. Jesus describes himself only as a prophet. Per Islam, then, orthodox Jews and Christians are stubbornly holding on to a distorted version of their respective faiths: the “true” Jewish and Christian faith, remarkably, corresponds with Islam exactly.
Regarding “stubbornly”, orthodox, “mainstream” Islam makes no allowance for exercise of freedom of religious conscience: those who reject Islam do so, not out of a genuine difficulty believing its teachings, or out of a need to think about it further. They do so out of sheer sinfulness and perversity. Christians and Jews are allowed to practice their religion under sharia law, yes: but they must wear special garb (think of Jews and homosexuals under the Nazi regime) and must pay fines for not embracing Islam. They are forbidden to proselytize or any public practice of their religion – including wearing religious symbols. Orthodox Jewish expressions of faith – e.g., that Mohammed is not God’s prophet; or orthodox Christian expressions of faith – e.g., that Jesus is God – in any public forum are treated as blasphemy and punishable by death.
Except for Egypt and Turkey, every country with a Muslim majority has in fact imposed sharia law. And at least in Egypt, persecution of Coptic Christians is rampants, with rapes and enslavement of Christian women, murders of Christians during their worship services, and burning of Christian churches – while the Muslim authorities turn a blind eye. Even before the “Arab Spring”, all Egyptians had to have their religious affiliation on their citizenship I.D. cards: the I.D. cards would be changed to reflect conversion from Christianity to Islam – but not vice versa.
The “radical” difference between the Christian God and Allah is far starker than the popular media depicts. As Hillaire Belloc noted, Allah is pure Will, to the point that saying Allah cannot or will not do evil is seen as a restriction on Allah’s freedom. Allah is a very far cry from “God is love”, a passionately good and loving Father. The supreme emphasis on Allah as pure Will is a rejection of human free will: hence, the acceptability of “convert to Islam or die” (or, if you practice Judaism or Christianity, “convert or pay a fine and become a persecuted, second-class citizen”).
Islam’s vision of humanity is also radically different from Christianity’s: Allah is an Oriental monarch demanding complete submission. He is completely alien from humanity: to say we are made “in the divine image” is pure blasphemy. The Christian teaching that women are fellow heirs of salvation with men and to be loved “as Christ loved the Church” is wholly alien to women’s firmly second-class, property-of-the-husband status in Islam.
The relationship between Christians and non-Christians, according to Christ’s teaching, is best summarized as loving service and compassion: “Whatsoever you do for one of these least ones, you do for Me”. The obligation to love and serve, in Islam, is reserved strictly to other Muslims. For example, Muslims are allowed to deceive non-Muslims: if the former are a minority, they can pretend to be friendly and pleasant to their non-Muslim neighbors. But the mask may be dropped once Muslims gain the majority. And to use non-Muslim women – literally – as sex slaves, when captured in war, is fully accepted Muslim practice.
Why the disconnect between the reality of Islam and its media portrayal? And how are Christians to respond? Stay tuned.
