My post on Islamophobia and the Bridgeport mosque drew a number of comments and I thought I should amplify my remarks. I find myself in an interesting predicament, since I know my words will be read in a political sense, as well as being “fact-checked” and read for their religious content by other Christians and by some local Muslims. Nevertheless, I should make the attempt.
We live in a unique season. When viewed through the lens of its public statements, Islam has become politically self-confident in the Western world. At the same time, whether deliberately or pathologically, Islam’s public actions and program display extreme sensitivity even to the point of a persecution complex. This has made it nearly impossible for Christians and others of good will to discuss the Islamic political program at all without their remarks being interpreted as bigotry.
Now, this should give us no pause; a Christian must speak the truth of the Word of God regardless of the winds of political or cultural fashion. For example, I hold that no serious believer can possibly be “pro-choice” and maintain a clear Christian conscience on the matter. We are taught by our faith that we can do nothing against the truth. We must declare publicly that abortion is a heinous moral evil in spite of the fact that such a statement is not viewed in our society as a religious statement but as a political statement.
We should be able to express, whether as Christians or simply as civic-minded Americans, our concerns over the growth of radical Islam and the dangers of accommodating Islamic Sharia law. If we are unable to do so, whether because of intimidation or because we are not permitted, then freedom as we have understood it since the Reformation (or even since the Magna Carta) has been completely lost.
Now, about the previous post, I was gently chided by some Christian commenters over my characterization of Operation Save America. It was suggested that I am swallowing the media’s portrayal of the group. I may indeed have been mistaken about their work and their motives. At the very least, I was probably sloppy in my approach to their role in the events and for that I apologize. I am not opposed to evangelizing Muslims nor to seeking to show them the Christ of Christian Scripture.
Having said that, I remain unconvinced that the way to go about this is to go to mosques and create the appearance (if not the reality) of a protest.
I would ask if OSA preaches outside all houses of worship it deems to be in error? Given that I haven’t heard anything about it in the news, I assume that OSA supporters are not in the habit of preaching outside of synagogues or Catholic churches in Connecticut. Yet I presume they hold those theological systems to be erroneous. I think it’s a fair question.
A Muslim gentleman whom I will leave unnamed thinks I am deeply misinformed and that I believe what I believe about Muslims because of what I see about radical Muslims in the news.
This is a red herring. I never said whether I had any opinion about Muslim people per se – and indeed I do not other than to say that there are Muslims who are good citizens and there are Muslims who are not good citizens. However, I do have an opinion about the teachings of Islam. This is an entirely different matter. Radical Muslims act as they do because they are enjoined by Islamic teachings and teachers to do so. They are taking the teachings of the Koran at face value. So, with respect to the gentleman, the only way to allay such concerns is for Muslims to repudiate problematic Koranic teachings such as the one that says that Jews are the sons of apes and pigs.
Again, while not wishing to be unkind in any way to the polite Muslim man who wrote me, we as Christians have no real agreement with Islam. Despite all the platitudes about worshiping the same God, the nature of the God of Islam is not in any way the same as the nature of the God of Christianity. In Islam, such cardinal Christian beliefs as the Incarnation of Christ or the Trinity constitute the sin of shirk, an unforgivable sin to them in which the attributes of Allah are shared or given to others.
In Christianity, Christ is preeminent; indeed, He is God in the flesh. In Islam, Christ is another Muslim prophet, subservient to Muhammad and to the expected Mahdi. In Muslim belief, Christ will abolish Christianity and bring the world under the sway of Islam. So how can we be in agreement?
Muslims who have studied their religion surely know this. They also know that Christians are not afforded equal civil rights in Muslim societies. The reason for this is Islamic law itself. By Sharia law, the Muslim’s place in society is given preference over all others. This has a number of punishing, practical real world effects. It is better to be a dog in America than a Christian in Pakistan. Until such things change, please make me no fair speeches about the tolerance of Islam. All historians and political scientists of East and West know this; it has only been obscured in our time because the Left in the Western world will make common cause with anyone who holds a banner against traditional Christianity.
American democracy, by contrast, gives equal rights to Muslims because of the Christian belief that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Western-type societies can only exist when this Christian consensus informs the culture. Traditionally, there was no opposition to framing the society in those terms, even openly. So, for example, Mormon Utah was admitted to the Union in 1896 on the condition of banning polygamy and writing that ban into its State Constitution. This was done because the institutions of the American Republic were Christian in their foundation and polygamy formed no part of the Christian viewpoint.
The American people are not opposed to Muslims; they are opposed to Sharia. Our ancestors, wiser than we, adopted a Constitution which provides that the Federal Government shall guarantee to each State a republican form of government. Therefore no form of monarchy or theocratic system such as Islamic Sharia law can be considered properly “American.”
The issue then is not whether Muslims, Buddhists, or Christians are peaceful or whether there are Muslims who are not radical. The issue is who shall define what constitutes a peaceable life. American Muslims can go a long way toward helping their own cause by renouncing the application of Sharia law. Their doing so will speak volumes – as will their failure to do so. This is not a matter of culture, but a matter of law, equality and humanity.
