Now let me start by saying, for
any who are here who are not familiar with World Magazine,
it is a magazine produced by people who share our love for
Christ, commitment and fidelity to the Word. They are fundamentally
Reformed in their perspective, that is, they understand the
Christian faith within the framework of the great historic creeds,
and they are seeking to do within that framework what Time Magazine,
U.S. News, and World Report does within
the grid of a totally humanistic approach to life and reality,
political and world events. And we have from time to time
put on something less than an open drive, but a strong urging
that the families of our church subscribe to this magazine It's
helpful in so many ways and not the least of which is when they
produce special issues that address matters that unless someone is
Rip Van Winkle who has not yet awakened or has taken a sojourn
in a far planet, we would be aware of the issues and it's
so helpful when God has raised up those who have both the intellectual
capacity and have the stewardship of the use of their time to look
into matters more deeply and thoroughly than any of us who
are working pastors are able to do, and then they pass on
the fruit of their labors to us. And certainly, you would
have to have been living on another planet not to become aware of
the fact that in recent weeks, All of us have been forced to
think as we have never thought before. What is Islam? These terrorists and those with
whom our forces are even now in conflict in Pakistan and in
the worldwide search to track down the Al-Qaeda network of
terrorism, what is the relationship of their faith to their actions,
if any? What is the perspective that
I as a believer ought to have with respect to all of these
matters? And what I hope to accomplish
in the 50 minutes that remain to me this morning is to whet
your appetite to get a hold of a copy of this special edition
of World. We have a subscription that comes
to the church office. I am going to have a call put
through to see if we can get permission to copy some of the
articles and make them available that way, but then that you not
only as a parent would read and seek to assimilate and seriously
reflect upon the contents of much of this special edition,
but also that you would digest it and work through some of these
editorials especially, and then some of the very helpful aspects
of the extensive a contribution made by Marvin Olasky, the managing
editor of World, with respect to understanding Islam, and that
you would, with your children, in family worship, those who
are out of the toddler stage and into the junior, junior high
school age, so that they might have a grasp upon these things
as well. So as I reflected on what I feel
I'm doing, From a pastoral perspective, I am seeking to help you, the
Lord's people, as these men who have written have helped me,
to fulfill Romans 12 in verse 2. Be not conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. that you may prove
what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. So what
I'm going to do with this in front of me, summarizing certain
parts, quoting others, I hope to work through in terms of prioritizing
the articles that I believe will be most helpful. And so I begin
with the lead editorial by Mr. Joel Bells, B-E-L-Z, who is Chairman
of the Board of Directors. It was fundamentally his vision
passed on to some others that saw this magazine launch. I believe
we're in the 11th year, and it is now the third or fourth. You have Time, Newsweek, U.S. News, and World Report. This
is the fourth largest subscription of that kind of a news magazine,
way behind U.S. News and World Report and behind
Newsweek and Time, but it is number four in our nation, and
in celebrating their 10th anniversary, they did a timeline of how this
thing has just exponentially grown in its subscribers and
what their vision is for the days to come. So that much about
Mr. Joel Bells, and the lead essay
is entitled Tolerance Versus Pluralism. Subtitle, It's the
Difference Between Civility and Mushy headedness, tolerance versus
pluralism. Now what happened, Mr. Bells
wrote an article previous to this in which he called the present
religious pluralism a false deity. And there were certain people
who read his article who took great exception to it and responded
to him. One of them was a woman who responded
and to her he writes, to that friend, whose gentle spirit I
appreciate, I respond the same way I did to James Taranto, or
Taranto, who ably edits, quote, best of the web, end quote, feature
in the Wall Street Journal's opinionjournal.com. So obviously, people that are
in worldly sectors of the publishing business read World Magazine.
And they took exception and responded. And in so doing, they gave their
definition of pluralism. Now it's critical that we understand
how the world uses this terminology. And to make sure that we don't
get caught in the trap of using a term to which they are putting
a significance which we are not. And in this case, not putting
as much significance in the term as we do. So let me quote part
of the response that came to Joel Bells. This is the response. If there is a quintessential
principle that sums up the meaning of America, pluralism is it. Now, this is not Mr. Joel Bells
giving his convictions. This is Mr. Taranto's response. And he is saying, if there is
anything that really makes a full-blooded, robust American, it is pluralism. and religious pluralism in particular. It is pluralism that allows everyone
from evangelical Protestants to Catholics to atheists, from
Mormons to Muslims to Jews to live in the same cities and towns
free of religious wars that divide such places as the Middle East.
Continuing to quote Mr. Taranto, to be against pluralism,
it seems to us is to be against America itself. So you see how
Mr. Taranto defines pluralism. Pluralism is the agreement that
we will live together in one place under one government with
our varying persuasions and not get into religious wars over
those persuasions. so that you will never hear from
this pulpit or in some secret enclave where we gather to pass
on our military plans a call that we go out armed to blow
up the Roman Catholic Church several miles down the road on
horse neck. No, we are in that sense in a
pluralistic society. However, Mr. Taranto calls this
religious pluralism simply the agreement that we will be civil
and decent, living on the same turf under the same government,
holding to our differing religious views. To this, Mr. Bell's response, such a pluralism,
I told Mr. Taranto, I applaud. I also thank
God for it. But such a pluralism is also
very hard to contain and restrain, for it contains within itself
the seeds of a suggestion logically impossible and philosophically
repugnant. Namely, that all those different
religions are equally true and equally valid. Now you see the
point he is making? in the world's concept of pluralism
is not only the understanding that it is right and proper for
us to live on the same turf, under the same government, holding
to our differing religious views and convictions, but the underlying
assumption is that we do so with the persuasion that your religion
is as good as mine. If your truth works for you,
Fine, my truth works for me. But in that context of religious
pluralism, the assumption is that we make no judgments nor
enter into debate or discussion as to which truth claim has validity. And the response of Mr. Bells
to Mr. Taranto is that this is logically
impossible and philosophically repugnant. And this is now, Joe
Bells goes on to explain, Joe Bells, why he is against pluralism. That's why I've always tried
here in this column to make a clear distinction between tolerance
on the one hand and pluralism on the other. Tolerance gives
me room to say, I think you are wrong, but I will defend to the
death your right to be wrong. See the point? On the one hand,
tolerance gives me room to say, I think you're wrong, but I'll
defend your right to be wrong. Pluralism suggests, much more
strongly than most folks admit, that there isn't any such thing
as right and wrong. No such thing as truth and error. As it is practiced more and more
in America, pluralism tends to require that you not only leave
room for your neighbor to believe what he believes, but that you
refrain from disagreeing with it. There's a world of difference
between the two perspectives. Tolerance promotes civility combined
with clear thinking. Pluralism promotes civility combined
with mushy-headedness. That's not just my conclusion.
My desk dictionary includes a definition for pluralism that calls it,
quote, a theory that reality is composed of a multiplicity
of alternate beings, principles, or substances, dualism. That's the formal definition
of pluralism. Reality is not the Christian
faith, or the Muslim faith, or orthodox Jewry. Reality is a
bit and a part of any and all of these things in the myths.
And Mr. Bells is saying he insists that
as Christians we understand that is the underlying drive of contemporary
pluralism so that, if I go on to read, if the phrase multiplicity
of ultimate beings doesn't strike you as suggesting a full shelf
of false gods, then maybe we don't have a lot more to talk
about. The same disjunct is exactly
why it's become so hard to carry on intelligent discussion these
days. I'm planning to be civil to any
of my neighbors who may be heading for the local mosque. Mr. Bell says I have no intention
to stare at them, throw stones at them, let alone go out and
shoot them. But no way will I accept the
charge that to tell them the truth of the gospel of Jesus
is to jeopardize the pluralism that has made America a great
springboard of freedom for so many generations. And no way
either will I concede the right, a right that has now become a
duty, to tell them that the error of their thinking is profound.
I will not do that, that is, refrain from telling a Muslim
the error of what he believes, because I will not do this because
I hate them, but because I love them. When in the service from
our National Cathedral, the Reverend stood up in his clerical robe
and began his prayer with these words, this is a verbatim quote,
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God of Mohammed, God and Father
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's all I heard. It will be
forever printed on my brain. I instinctively yelled out in
the presence of my wife, blasphemy. And I said, I'm going back up
in my study, and if there's anything worth listening to and seeing,
please call me. What was that man doing? He was
embodying pluralism. He was saying, to any Orthodox
Jew who believes Christ was an imposter, that Christ was a blasphemer,
the Apostle Paul a wingnut, and our understanding of God existing
from eternally as the three-in-one and the one-in-three, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit is nonsense. He was trying to persuade everyone
within the sound of his voice that God and the God of Muhammad,
Allah, who is monotheistic, who is creator, who is sovereign,
but in whom there is no redemption. I remember the Muslim cleric
saying in the discussion that someone gave me a tape of Larry
King discussing these matters with John MacArthur and Rabbi
Kushner and some others, that when John MacArthur faithfully
confessed Christ, incarnate God, Redeemer by His death on the
cross. The Muslim cleric almost lost it. He said, in our system
there is no incarnation and no redemption. And yet this man
was praying as though the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
the God of Mohammed, and the God and Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ were all essentially one and the same thing. That's pluralism.
Now that's not an extreme expression. That is naked, down to earth,
nuts and bolts, dime store pluralism. And you and I must understand
those distinctions between tolerance and pluralism so that we can
sit with a Muslim, with a Roman Catholic, respecting them as
those made in the image of God, though the image has been defaced
and twisted and marred And we can say, I believe, based on
the testimony of the Word of God, that you are lost, that
there is but one way of salvation, and that salvation is in the
person and work of incarnate deity, the Lord Jesus Christ. And be prepared And here's the
catch, and we'll come to this in one of the next editorials.
Be prepared to spill my life on a battlefield to preserve
the right of that Muslim or Roman Catholic to go on believing what
they believe. For that's reality. Blood was
shed on battlefields in past decades to preserve in this place
the right of the Muslim to believe what he believes, and to propagate
by persuasion, for the Roman Catholic to believe what he believes,
for the evangelical Christian to believe what he believes,
and to have a climate in which the truth claims can be laid
out on the table to be reflected upon and intelligently considered,
not forced upon someone at the point of a gun. or necessity
of social standing, or economic existence, boycotting the hiring
of certain religions, no. This pluralism, if we use the
slower case P, this tolerance, we say with Mr. Belz, yes, we
embrace that, but the concept that there are no absolute truths,
and one truth claim has as much validity as another, we must
be prepared to shed our blood to resist that kind of pluralism. For Jesus said, whosoever should
be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful
generation of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes
in the glory of his Father. And when Jesus said adulterous
generation, he was not referring to physical adultery. But he
was speaking of spiritual adultery, that great sin of Israel, when
she went a-whoring after other gods. And if we refuse to say,
Jesus Christ claims I am the way, the truth, the life, no
man comes to the Father but by me. If we are not prepared to
stand with the words of our Lord in this adulterous generation,
in which all kinds of spiritual harlotry, the worshipping of
these composite gods, that God who is God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, God of Mohammed, God and Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ, that God only existed in that man's words. He doesn't
exist. And we are prepared to say, by
the grace of God, we will insist that no such God exists. So I hope that article and my
summarizing it and filling in helps you to see that distinction.
Are you for tolerance? Yes. Are you for pluralism? No. But make sure in discussing
this with classmates, you who are in college, neighbors, that
you define your terms. If you mean, do I believe I should
tolerate anyone on my block regardless of what he believes so long as
he's not acting against the law of the land? Yes. But if you
mean, that his truth claims are as valid as mine, no. The teaching
of our Lord and of his apostles is this and this and this, and
that's where, by grace, I stand." So, Mr. Bell's article I highly
commend, and I'm going to have to watch the clock or I won't
even get through the three editorials. Then, right at the back, you
have two very helpful articles, one by Dr. John Piper, of Bethlehem
Baptist Church in Minneapolis, whose ministry in recent years
has exploded into many circles. His writings have had a tremendous
impact upon many and his conference ministry as well. And he has
some very helpful insights. The title of his article is,
Hate and Tolerance. Hate and Tolerance. Mr. Bell's article was, Tolerance
and pluralism, no, what was the actual title? Yes, tolerance
versus pluralism, those were the two key words. And the two
key words of Mr. Piper's are hate and tolerance,
subtitle, obstacles to the eternal life of Muslims. The whole thrust
of Dr. Piper's article is that he, with
all of his heart, wants to see Muslims converted. And he is
willing and calls upon us to be willing if the way we must
validate our witness to Christ is by suffering individually
at the hands of Muslims. We're not talking now about acts
of war. We're talking about acts of persecution
directed to us for our faith in Christ. Mr. Piper's thesis,
which is abundantly supported by scripture, is that the child
of God has no place in his heart for hatred to anyone, even to
those who despitefully use us. We are to love our enemies. We
are to do good to those that despitefully use us. We are to
go the way of the Lamb, 1 Peter 2, who when he suffered, reviled,
committed his cause to him who judges righteously. And his thesis
is that there are two great obstacles to the conversion of Muslims
that are being brought to the surface in this present conflict,
in this present disruption that has come since September 11th
of this year. And he says on the one hand,
hatred toward the Muslim. And he cites an incident in which
his son, one of his older sons was in Chicago and called him
shortly after the September 11 incidents and said that this
young Muslim friend had been beaten on the street, no reason,
he just looked like, quote, one of them. And Mr. Piper goes after
this sinful, irrational, unbiblical hatred. Hatred from Christians
keeps Muslims from seeing the superior worth of Jesus Christ. The spirit of revenge sends the
false signal that Christ is not an all-sufficient, all-satisfying
Savior. We justify our own little personal
jihad and seek our satisfaction by injuring the adversary. Now,
he's not taking a pacifist position with regard to acts of war upon
our nation. In a previous article two weeks
back, he had one of the most helpful articles in bringing
into sharp perspective the difference between the individual ethic
of the Christian and the responsibility of the state to protect its citizenry. And he's not backing off from
any of that. What he is saying is this, that this desire to
have an individual, personal jihad against them because they
are them. And for most of us, I've not
heard any of this among any of you, but if you're honest, you'll
venture to say you feel uneasy when you see men and women who
obviously are from that part of the world. You feel uneasy,
don't you? You be honest. Well, that uneasiness
may be morally neutral, and I'm not addressing that. That's a
whole other subject. But what I am addressing is what
Mr. Piper is addressing is that one of the great hindrances to
the conversion of Muslims is this irrational, this bitterness,
this hatred that is determined in some way to get even. The
crass expression being beating up this man simply because he,
quote, looked like one of them. Now then, he turns to the other
side. He says there is a tolerance
that is a great obstacle to the conversion of Muslims. He writes,
I now quote him, in reaction against indiscriminate hate,
there is now a stampede to pluralism and twisted tolerance. If Muslims
are hated, then let us call ecumenical gatherings. Let us all praise
the virtues of Islam and the wisdom of Allah and the goodness
of Muhammad. But let no one speak the intolerable
and indispensable truth that Jesus is the only way to God. And he opened this article with
a spate of texts that underscore that truth. Hatred and tolerance
are teaming up. to take eternal life from Muslim
people. Jesus said, and we say it with
tears, He who believes on the Son has eternal life, but he
who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of
God abides on him. In other words, nominal Christians,
devoted Muslims, pious Hindus, faithful Buddhists, orthodox
Jews, devout animists, sincere agnostics, secular atheists,
everyone who does not hold fast to Jesus Christ as the supremely
valuable Son of God and Savior will perish and not have eternal
life. Now, do you see how hatred can
obscure that message to Muslims? When we do not reflect the very
heart of the God who gave his Son up to the hands of wicked
men, and who calls us to take up our cross, and in fellowship
with him go the way of rejection and even martyrdom. For whoever
loves his life more than me, he said, is not worthy of me.
And so, as the people of God, we're being called by Mr. Piper
to make sure that none of that carnal hatred that is a barrier
to the conversion of Muslims be allowed to find any root in
our hearts. But he said, on the other hand,
there's another great barrier, and that is the barrier of a
tolerance that says, well, let's find what's good in Islam, and
let's praise it, and thereby prove that we have no blind prejudice
or hatred. Dr. Piper writes, once upon a
time tolerance was the power that kept lovers of competing
faiths from killing each other. It was the principle that put
freedom above forced conversion. It was rooted in the truth that
coerced conviction is no conviction. The conviction you confess with
a gun at your head is no conviction. It's a convenience to save your
life. So the point he's making is that we believe in persuading
and seeing men become Christians by conviction, by persuasion,
not under external pressure. But the very idea that any conversion
may be necessary is what is offensive in our day. It holds the conviction
that no religious conviction should claim superiority over
another. When Muslims are protected from
hate with this kind of tolerance, they're cut off from eternal
life. and what promises deliverance proves to be death. If in the
name of this new tolerance we are forbidden to say of Jesus,
Acts 4.12, there is salvation in none else, for there is no
other name under heaven given among men by which we must be
saved, then eternal life is concealed and we are cruel. Therefore,
let us open the door of life for all Muslim people by renouncing
hate showing love, conquering fear, commending the King of
the universe, Jesus Christ, and suffering willingly if we must. Do you see now the compelling
point that he's making? And as God's people be not conformed
to this world, this present spirit of Americanism on the one hand
has this undercurrent of hatred and suspicion and ill will for
anyone who looks, quote, like them, And on the other hand,
by this wretched, demonic tolerance of pluralism that would say there
is nothing about the Muslim's view of God that has any relationship
to what these fanatical Muslims have done. That's simply not
true. And God does not need lies to
advance the cause of peace and goodwill among his creatures.
And so we are called by Dr. Piper in sort of echoes of one
of the strands of Mr. Bell's article, but helping,
I think, to isolate the issues even more. And then, the final
editorial by Marvin Olasky. I think he's managing editor.
Let's see what he is named in the masthead. Yeah, he's editor. And this is a man who teaches,
has for a number of years at the University of Texas, converted
Jew, he went the route of being a hippie and the rest, the count
of his conversion is fascinating. And there in that secular university,
University of Texas, he teaches at the professorial level and
in the past couple of years has been doing special studies in
Islam. Let me quote what he says to,
in a right sense, to give something of his credentials, and we'll
come to the validity of his doing that when we look at the main
lead article momentarily. Quote, I've been studying Islam
for the past several years while teaching a, quote, journalism
and religion, end quote, course at the University of Texas. I'm
all for people from different religions talking with each other.
I'm for the Bush strategy of building an anti-terror coalition
that includes Muslim countries. Nevertheless, our desire to make
friends should not lead us to obscure the truth, as America
Online's primer about, quote, understanding Islam, end quote,
did recently when it proclaimed, quote, same God. Muslims accept
the teaching of the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospels." Actually,
Muslims accept neither the Bible as written nor the God of the
Bible. And then he has in parentheses,
see our lead article, and cross-references the fruit of this in-depth study
with specific quotations from the Qur'an, from the sayings
of Muhammad, to validate what he is saying. Then he goes on
to show how this mentality of the pluralism and the fact that
we all essentially worship one God is propaganda that is just
oozing out into our society. I didn't see it. I saw it listed
in the TV Guide that PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, ran a program
on the whole matter of Islam. And this is what they said, quote,
one should properly say that Muslims worship God, G-O-D, not
Allah, which is simply the word for God with a capital G in the
Arabic language. Giving a different name to the
one God worshipped by the followers of Muhammad erroneously implies
that their God is different from the one God worshipped by Jews
or Christians. You see the pluralism? If you
believe that, then you can stand with clerical robe in front of
millions by means of the television set and compose a so-called prayer
that addresses the deity as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
the God of Muhammad, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. That's the climate. That's the
air we breathe. That's the propaganda. that is
being foisted upon us. PBS is partly in the error here. Allah is different. Muslims say
their God is all-wise and all-compassionate, but Allah merely displays man's
understanding of what wisdom and compassion are. There are
more things in heaven and earth than Muhammad could imagine,
and one of them is the wisdom and compassion of the cross. Another is the way God can be
our father rather than our master. And then growing out of his in-depth
study of Islam, he focuses on some of these motifs and he shows
the contrast that God in his grace to us in Christ puts us
in the status not only of forgiven, pardoned criminals, but sons
and daughters. The apex of redemptive grace
is sonship. That's why Paul can write in
Galatians 3, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Lord,
having become a curse for us, that upon the Gentiles might
come the blessing of Abraham by faith. And what is that great
blessing? We come to chapter 4, God, in
the fullness of the time, sent forth His Son, made of a woman,
made under the law, that He might redeem those that were under
the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. And because
you are sons, He has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our
hearts, enabling us to cry, Abba, Father. And Mr. Olasky underscores that that
concept is absolutely, utterly foreign to Islam. And you see,
that concept necessitates a Redeemer. If God is the all-wise, all-powerful,
all-holy sovereign before whom sinless creatures called seraphim
and cherubim veil face and feet, how can we who are natively vile
and filthy come into a relationship to that God without a Redeemer?
Impossible. But in the Redeemer, God makes
us what Adam was. Adam is called son of God in
Genesis. We with Adam are all disinherited
sons and daughters, but in Christ we are brought back into the
status of sonship. And He demonstrates that the
God of the Mohammedan, the Muslim's God, is not the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus. Christ, so that when a Muslim
confesses there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet,
anything Mohammed says about God that contradicts what the
Bible says about him, Mohammed takes the place of authority
in the mind and conscience of that devout Muslim. Furthermore,
the whole concept of incarnation is abhorrent to a Muslim, abhorrent
to a Muslim. And then he quotes from the Quran,
about six or seven clear quotes, then goes on to say, the Islamic
concept of heaven, and especially the heaven that is held out to
those who are martyred in the cause of Islam, is sensuous. I quote him now, it is a heaven,
a life of pleasure, complete with meat, bananas, and large-eyed,
beautiful young women. And our friend, Mr. Olasky, goes
on then to contrast this whole different concept of God in a
very telling illustration. And it so moved me as I read
it for myself and read it to my wife. I want to read it for
you. My favorite columnist, Peggy Noonan, recently wrote about
a husband and wife swimming in the ocean when from nowhere came
a shark. The shark went straight for the
woman, opened its jaws. You know what the man did? He
punched the shark in the head. So the shark let go of his wife
and went straight for him, and it killed him. The wife survived
to tell the story of what her husband had done. He had tried
to deck the shark. I said to my friends, that's
what a wonderful man is, a man who will try to deck the shark. The Qur'an has no sense of a
God who would become man and give his life. to deck the shark. The very idea is blasphemous
to Muslims. If God becomes man, doesn't that
lower God to man's level? Perhaps the woman had sinned
and should be eaten by the shark. Or if she was innocent, Allah,
from on high, could zap the shark. The Christian response is that
all of us, because of our sin, should be shark bait. That God
could simply destroy the shark from afar, but that would not
be just. Besides, if God kept his distance,
maybe we could venerate him as Muslims venerate Allah. But would
we love him? As it is, we can say, what a
wonderful God, coming to earth to deck the shark. That's our thought. Well, those
are the three lead articles. Now, in the time that remains,
let me briefly survey the lead article, A Cold War for the 21st
Century by Marvin Olafsky, and all of this material, I've just
got to make myself write a letter and thank this brother and tell
him if he were close enough, I'd fall down and kiss his feet.
I wouldn't worship him, but I would surely thank him for his labors.
The opening paragraph, meeting the challenge of Islam and terrorism
will be a twilight struggle on the order of the battle in the
20th century to contain and ultimately defeat communism. Winning this
new war starts with an understanding of the enemy and his world view
and a commitment to defend ours. This world special report examines
the Islamic heart and mind and our role in the war whose first
shots were fired on September 11, 2001. And he begins his first
page, What's Right with Islam, and seeks, in fairness with a
historical overview, to highlight the good that has come in the
wake of people embracing the Islamic faith. That God, in his
common grace, has brought benefits not just to those who embrace
Islam, but to other parts of the world as well. So he has
five ways in which Islam has brought good. But then the second
major division of his lead article is Islamic worldview and how
it differs from Christianity. And then he highlights five major
differences. So he set out the five benefits
that have come in the wake of Islam, then five distinct areas
in which Islamic authority, namely the Qur'an and the sayings of
Muhammad, radically differ from the holy scriptures, from the
word of God, and from historic confessional Christianity. And
he says, rather than debating over historical errors, And rather
than debating over the fact that when some intelligent Muslim
scholars are pressed about the violent elements in the Qur'an,
they say, well, look, it's your God. He ordered the extermination
of all the Amalekites and the Hittites and the Gentilites.
He told them to go in and kill their women, their babies. What
are you talking to us? Well, you see, we do have a response
to that as believers in knowing the history of redemption. and
that God's judgment was ripening upon those nations for their
idolatry. But he said, don't get enmeshed
in those kinds of discussions with any intelligent Muslim,
but seek to go to the very heart of the issues where the differences
really matter and really count. For example, number one, the
Quran states that in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve both sinned,
then repented and were forgiven with no consequences from their
rebellion. Quote, Adam learned from his
Lord certain words and his Lord forgave him, end quote. Allah
then makes Adam his deputy, his caliph, and the first of the
prophets. So Islam does not acknowledge
original sin. Muslims say they revere the whole
Bible, but when it and the Quran are in conflict, and that's frequent,
They go with the Quran. This means Muslims have an inbuilt
tendency to revere strong leaders who put forth an image of perfection.
Christians, realizing that all have sinned and fall short of
God's glory, tend to be skeptical. We know ourselves. And so he
goes on to develop that heading. Secondly, since Muslims think
we can be sinless if we have strong character and follow all
the rules, they have lots of rules and very specific ones.
Some of them are excellent. Don't boast about how you've
contributed to build a mosque. Don't set up elaborate grave
markers. Don't wear clothes just designed
to attract attention. Some are common sense. Don't
defecate near a place where people draw water. Don't eradicate insects
by burning them, because fire is to be used only on rats, scorpions,
crows, kites, and mad dogs. Do not read the Qur'an in a house
where there's a dog, unless the dog is used for hunting, farming,
or herding livestock. Sound familiar? Remember the
Pharisees? With all of their hedges around
the law of God and their hundreds of rules and regulations, and
the essence of piety was the strict adherence to the jot and
the tittle, of all of the rules and regulations that made a man,
without any blush, stand in the temple, look up into the face
of God and say, I thank you, I'm not like other men. And to
strut and train his feathers in the presence of God, he underscores
that Islam, with its multiplicity of rules, for example, the one
we are most familiar with, its prayer periods during the day
is rule-driven. Each time of prayers made up
of units containing set sequences of standing, bowing, kneeling,
prostrating while reciting verses from the Quran or other prayer
formulas. The sequences are repeated twice
at dawn prayer, three times at sunset prayer, four times at
noon, afternoon, evening prayers. No deviation is allowed. Muslims
do not gain from their religion a sense of liberty. But it looks
so impressive when you see a picture of everyone in perfect military
unison, bowed at the same time in the same place, as though
synchronized bowing can bring the heart to own its wretchedness
and cast itself upon the Savior. Then he goes on to highlight
a number of other areas of fundamental difference, and then the fifth,
within Islam, that unbiblical depiction makes logical sense,
since there's no original sin, there's no need for a Redeemer.
Man is basically good, but mistake-prone. Muslims who sincerely repent
and submit to God return to a state of sinlessness with no help from
Christ needed. Man, using his intelligence and
guided by the Qur'an, can distinguish good from evil. Sincerity and
good works bring salvation. As Surah 7, 8, and 9 states,
quote, for him whose measure of good deeds is heavy, those
are they who shall be successful, end quote. Then after highlighting
the benefits that have come in the wake of Islam, some of the
specific areas of divergence from historic Christianity, then
he turns to demonstrate how this has worked itself out in Islamic
society. And the first subhead of that
is Brutality and Dictatorship, How Islam Affects Society. And again, very compellingly
demonstrates that the very framework of the Islamic faith makes the
situation right for dictatorship, and that again is not some trick
of our own minds. When you say the words Qaddafi
and Saddam Hussein, we're not imagining this, and the rulers
in many places where Islam is the state religion, and then
demonstrating that not only does dictatorship have theological
roots in Islam, but the brutality, and shows the picture of a man
with the stump of one hand here and the hand here, where in an
Islamic society under strict Islamic law, the penalty for
stealing is to cut off the hand. And this is what Mr. Olasky says,
and I believe it's irrefutable. Different understandings lead
to different laws. Here's one of the best known.
Under Islamic law, according to the Qur'an and the Hadith,
that is the sayings of Muhammad, the right hand of a thief is
cut off at the wrist. Even if the thief makes restitution,
pledges never to steal again, his hand is to be cut off. That's
very different from the Bible, which has a thief paying back
what he has stolen and asking forgiveness. What has to be paid
back depends on what he stole, whether he's already disposed
of the item, whether he shows repentance. The amount given
in the Bible is one for two or two for four or five times what
he stole, but never is he marred for life. under the civil law
of God in the time of Moses. No such brutal excess compensation
is mandated. The Muslim penalty not only seems
cruel, but somewhat unusual for a Creator God to decree. Hands are such an incredible
result of God's creativity. They are marvels of engineering
and movement. Why would their Creator ordain
their destruction for the theft of property when alternative
ways of doing justice abound? God in the Bible ordains as a
maximum penalty an eye for an eye, a hand for a hand, but not
a hand for a thing. You see the point? If you cut
another man's hand off, you lose your own. You gouge a man's eye,
you lose your own under strict law. But never did God say a
hand for a sheep, a hand for a pile of grapes, etc. Christianity,
one of his final points, is the religion of second chance. With
Islam, it's often one strike and you're out. Jesus tells the
woman taken in adultery, go and sin no more. And then, since
I'm coming down by last three minutes, he goes on to the question
that We wish we'd like to get right to it directly, but wisely,
Mr. Olasky holds it for well into
his lead article, Islam for Terrorists. And he then focuses upon that
wing of Islam that are called extremists, we would say consistent
Islam, and shows the kind of religious thinking that has molded
and shaped Osama bin Laden and his ilk. And this I found, again,
very helpful, very enlightening. The new terrorists of the Bin
Laden school come largely from the latest violent movement.
They are called Wahhabism, founded by Ibn Abdul Wahhab, 1703 to
1792. The Wahhabists from the start
were willing to kill civilians who opposed them, and then he
documents that. and helps us to get inside the
mindset that would enable someone moments before that plane was
rammed into the towers to say praises to Allah. And then he
comes to the matter of our role in the war on terror, not speaking
of the individual Christian's attitude, but what we do as a
nation, and then lists 30 Muslim leaders worth knowing about,
and then identifies some U.S. Muslim leaders, and then a timeline
of terrorism in general. And I found this to be very overwhelming. We have an incident here, incident
there, and we forget about it going back to 1968 with the Marxist
uprisings and various acts of terrorism, not just Islamic motives.