To judge the moral equivalency of Christianity with Islam, we must have a general understanding of Islam and what its followers profess to be truth. This understanding comes as we briefly explore the nature of Islam and its concepts, beliefs, and practices that are fundamental to the Muslim faith.

Sources of Islamic belief and law

• Qur’an – The revelations of God (Allah) to his prophet Muhammad over a twenty two year period in the seventh century.
• Sharia law – the Islamic moral code and religious law which deals with the institutions and daily life of the ummah (Muslim community).
• “Hadith” – Other words and deeds attributed to Muhammad but not found in the Qur’an.
• The rulings of the Islamic legal authorities (the “ulema”—its scholars, sheikhs, clerics, and muftis—both past and present).
• Historical texts that document jihad against Christendom over the centuries.[1]

Anti-Christian nature of the Qur’an

Islam’s ultimate authority lies in the words of Muhammad as recorded in the Qur’an,[2] purported to be revelations from Allah. The Quran (Koran) is intrinsically anti-Christian as shown by the following verses:

Christian Trinity – “They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity : for there is no god except One Allah.” [Quran 5:76]

Christ is not God – “In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of man…” [Quran 5:19]

Christians are infidels and enemies of Islam who must be subjugated – “…fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them. And seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)…[Quran 9:5] “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the people of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. [Quran 9:29]

Jews and pagans were considered by Muslims as the most hostile to Islam and least likely to convert. However, Christians are supposed to have a greater affinity for the message of Islam and can be expected to convert. Therefore, defenders of Islam who claim that it is a religion of peace often point to a number of verses in the Quran that seem to be quite friendly to Christianity. [See: Quran 5:82-93]

However, such verses are misleading because of the doctrine of “abrogation” (an instance of repealing). There are many contradictory verses in the Qur’an. To handle the resulting confusion as to what the Qur’an actually meant, early Islamic jurisprudence determined that whenever contradictory verses were found, the verse from later revelations of Muhammad would abrogate or cancel out the verse from his earlier pronouncements. This is confirmed by the Qur’an itself. “None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten but We substitute something better or similar : knowest though not that Allah hath power over all things? [Quran 2:106] Synonyms for abrogate are repeal, revoke, abolish, and nullify.

The Christian friendly verses were voiced by Muhammad early in his career when he had no power. Those verses were replaced by Qur’an 9:29 (see above) and many others verses that are exceedingly hostile and intolerant to Christians and which were voiced later in his career when he had attained power.[3] In accordance with the doctrine of abrogation, the earlier Christian-friendly verses were repealed and caused to be forgotten.

Jihad

One must understand that the ultimate goal of Muslims is to conquer and subject the world to Islamic rule. Jihad is the unending Muslim holy war designed to conquer the world by converting or subjugating infidels and eliminating those that stand in their way. In the Encyclopedia of Islam, jihad is required because the “…spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general…Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam…”[4] If there is any doubt as to the purpose of jihad in Islam, Muslim scholar, philosopher, and historian Ibn Khadum has settled the issue.

In the Muslim community, the holy war [jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force…The other religious groups did not have a universal mission…They are merely required to establish their religion among their own people…But Islam is under obligation to gain power over the nations.[5]

Jizya

In a Muslim dominated society, Jizya is tribute money required to be paid by People of the Book (Christians) “…with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” Again, we refer to Quran 9:29 (see above) to confirm this requirement. There are also many other verses that require infidels to be despised and systematically humiliated. Ibn Kathir further illuminates the heinous meaning of the Quran.

Allah said, “until they pay the jizya,” if they do not choose to embrace Islam, “with willing submission,” that is, in defeat and subservience, “and feel themselves subdued,” that is, disgraced, humiliated, and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the dhimmis or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced, and humiliated.[6]

From the very earliest years following Muhammad’s death, the particulars of how Christians were to be made to feel themselves subdued were spelled out in precise detail in a document called The Conditions of Omar (Omar bin al-Khattab who reigned from 634-644). These conditions and restrictions were intended to humiliate and degrade Christians in every aspect of their lives life under Muslim rule including religion, business, housing, public demeanor, speech, dress, and deference to Muslims.[7]

Caliphate

Under Islamic rule there is no separation of church and state. The Caliphate is a unified government that rules the ummah, which is the entire Muslim community. As Allah is the only lawgiver, there is no legislature, and Muslims consider the caliphate as the highest type of political organization. Where human governments rule in the Muslim world, they only exist to enforce Allah’s law. From the very beginning of Islamic rule by caliphs, each would choose a location in which to base his empire. Prior Sunni caliphates ruled from Damascus, Baghdad, and Istanbul. The Ottoman Empire was the last Sunni caliphate and was ruled for 500 years by Ottoman sultans. The Turkish Grand National Assembly abolished the caliphate in 1924.[8]

Caliph (Imam)

Allah’s vicegerent on earth is the Caliph or supreme leader that governs the Muslim community. He is charged with administering and enforcing Sharia law by rendering “righteous judgement” between men. One of the puzzlements of non-Muslims is the reason for the incessant fighting between Muslims sects. Muhammad died in 632 but did not leave instructions as to selection of his successor. The Sunnis believe that any believer in Allah was eligible to fill the office of Caliph. The Shias believed that the Imams (their word for Caliph) must come from Muhammad’s bloodline. Following Muhammad’s death the first three caliphs were Sunnis but severely criticized as being wealthy tyrants. The fourth caliph was Ali, a cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, considered to be the first caliph eligible to fill the office because he was of the prophet’s bloodline. Ali was murdered and replaced by a Mu-Awiyah, a Sunni caliph who set up his capital in Damascus. This was the beginning of the schism in Islam that is as intense today as it was at its beginning in the seventh century.[9] About ninety percent of the world’s one billion plus Muslims are Sunnis, and the remainder is Shiites[10] who reside mostly in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon.

In Part III we shall examine the growth and subsequent decline of the Muslim empire and Christendom’s response in the Middle Ages. Following that, we shall examine the modern misinterpretation of Muslim history and culture as well as the distortion of Christian history and the Crusades.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again-Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 18.
[2] All quotations from the Quran are from the textless edition of the English translation of the Holy Qur-an: A. Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur-an, Published by: Dar AHYA Us-Sunnah, Al Nabawiya.
[3] Ibrahim, p. 19.
[4] Ibid., p. 21.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., pp. 22-23.
[7] Ibid., pp. 24-25.
[8] Jay Sekulow, “The Rise of ISIS & The New Caliphate,” The City, Volume VII, Number 3, Winter 2015, 22-24.
[9] Sekulow, 22-24.; J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 329, 333.
[10] “Compare Sunni and Shia Muslims,” Religions Facts.
http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/comparison_charts/islamic_sects.htm (accessed March 31, 2015).

During his presidency, Barak Obama has been the chief American apologist for Islam in spite of a worldwide upsurge of terror conducted by its adherents. Open Doors ministry reported that of the fifty countries with the worst persecution, forty-one are Muslim.[1] Both the Vatican and the Center for Study of Global Christianity reported that 100,000 Christians died in 2012 because they were Christian—devout, nominal, or cultural. These statistics include Christians killed for their beliefs or ethnicity, killed while worshiping in a church, murdered because they were children of Christians, or killed because of their Christian witness.[2] Most of the deaths were at the hands of Muslims and committed in the name of Islam as dictated by the Qur’an. Given the substantial increase in Muslim violence against Christian minorities in the Middle East since 2012, the number of Christian deaths at the hands of Muslims most certainly will increase substantially.

The Obama administration refuses to accurately label the world’s battle against terrorism for what it is—a religious war with radical Islamists. He states that, “…I think we do ourselves a disservice in this fight if we are not taking into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject this ideology.”[3] That the “overwhelming majority” of Muslims in the United States reject the fundamental tenets of radical Islam is debatable. But, what is not debatable is that the forty-one governments of the top fifty countries in the world with the worst records of persecution are Muslim and represent an overwhelming majority of all the world’s Muslims. And most of those countries are enforcing a rigid adherence to the commands of the Qur’an. The President’s implied peacefulness of Islam is spurious when one sees the reality of the vast persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. Where statistics of persecution may seem minimal in some Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, it is only because Christianity is so suppressed as to be virtually eradicated and non-existent.

Because the President’s defense of Islam is so obviously groundless, he endeavors to minimize Muslim persecution of Christians by claims of moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam as to their respective historical abuses. A recent example of this was at, of all places, the National Prayer Breakfast where the President attempted to equate certain supposed evils in Christian history to that of modern Islamic terrorism.

But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge–or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon…We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism—terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.

And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.[4]

Those using the moral equivalence argument attempt to equate two distinct and dissimilar things that are not, in fact, equal. In such cases, whether used in a positive or negative sense, the argument is fallacious because the two are dissimilar. In his Prayer Breakfast speech, President Obama used moral equivalence in a negative sense by effectively labeling the supposed crimes committed in the name of Christianity as equivalent to the modern-day atrocities committed in the name of Islam. By doing so, the Apologist-in-Chief for Islam attempted to turn the focus of religious persecution on Christianity instead Islam.

President Obama’s comments at the National Prayer Breakfast were wrong on two counts. First, the President misreads the history of Islam and its conflict with Christianity and Western civilization. Second, the President, his administration, and most of the liberal establishment blatantly distort the true nature of Islam. In this series of articles we shall examine the origins and nature of Islam as compared to Christianity and Christendom’s past response to Muslim aggression.

Origins of Islam

Unlike the Christian Bible that was the product of the revelation of God to a host of writers over a 1600 year period, the Quran was a product of the verbal utterances of Muhammad born about AD 570 of poor parents who were members of a minor clan of an important Bedouin tribe living in the harsh desert conditions of the Arabian peninsula. As a young man he preached a monotheistic God. Most Arabs of the era were polytheistic, but monotheism was not a new message for there were Christian Arabs before there were Muslims. A descendant of Abraham, Muhammad saw himself as a messenger of God who will judge all men. Salvation was to be obtained by following his will in their personal and social behavior as well as religious observances. Over a period of twenty-two years, these revelations were written down by his followers but not collected together as the Quran until after his death. Even though there had been other prophets before him including the last who was Jesus of Nazareth, Muhammad believed all of their revelations had been falsified by Jews and Christians. Now Muslims were to believe that through Mahammad God had spoken his last message to mankind.[5]

Islam was a religion invented and built upon the sword, conquest, and forced conversion. Salvation came through works, and its primary work was war against the infidel by which is meant any who were not followers of Islam. Beginning with the Muslim prophet’s first successful caravan raid followed by twelve centuries of Muslim conquests, Islam was unequivocally linked with worldly success and power. In the first few decades of Islam’s existence, Muslims conquered half of the lands of historic Christianity including Syria and Egypt. According to one medieval Muslim historian, the Mediterranean was quickly turned into a “Muslim lake” in which “the Christians could no longer float a plank…”[6]

Just before his death, Muhammad told his followers, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’” His words are confirmed by his previous instructions recorded in the Qur’an: “…then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them. And seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them…” [Qur’an 9:5] Faithful to the Qur’an and Muhammad’s final words, his followers set out to conquer the world, and that is the goal of faithful followers of Islam in the twenty first century.

Before he died in 632, Muhammad had unified the Bedouin tribes in Arabia. The first conquest by his followers was Syria in 635, then part of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire). Palestine, then a part of Syria, was conquered by 638. At the same time the Arabs attacked western Persia (Mesopotamia known as Iraq today) and it fell to the Muslim invaders. Soon, eastern Persia (known as Iran today) was invaded and conquered. The Muslim invaders turned north and subdued Armenia and then traveled east to occupy the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan) and over the centuries expanded into India. In 641 all of Egypt surrendered to the Muslim invaders. During the last half of the 600s, Muslims conquered the North African coast all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, crossed isthmus separating Africa and Europe, and captured Spain. Eventually the islands of the Mediterranean and southern Italy were defeated and brought into the Muslim empire.[7]

Because of Muslim dominance of the Mediterranean and the lands in between, the Latin West was effectively separated from the Greek East. Muslim conquests of Spain and dominance of the Mediterranean placed the entire European continent under threat of Muslim attack.[8] During the thousand years that followed, some of the conquered nations cast off their Muslim captors. But Muslim conquest and domination of much of the world continued for ten centuries until a shocking defeat in 1798 led to the demise of the Muslim empire for the next 150 years.

In Part II, the nature of Islam and its concepts, beliefs, and practices that are fundamental to the Muslim faith will be examined

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “World Watch List Countries,” Open Doors. http://www.worldwatchlist.us/ (accessed September 15, 2014).
[2] Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, “Counting the Cost (Accurately),” Christianity Today, August 21, 2013. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/september/counting-cost-accurately.html (accessed September 16, 2013).
[3] Jeremy Diamond, “Why President Obama won’t call the fight on terror a war on radical Islam,” CNN, February 1, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/01/politics/obama-radical-islam-terrorism-war/index.html (accessed March 30, 2015).
[4] President Barak Obama, “Remarks of the President at the National Prayer Breakfast,” The White House – Office of the Press Secretary, February 1, 2015. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/05/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast (accessed March 30, 2015).
[5] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2003, pp. 324-327.
[6] Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again-Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 9.
[7] Rodney Stark, God’s Battalions-The Case for the Crusades, (New York: Harper One, 2009), pp. 12, 15-23.
[8] Ibrahim, p. 9.