[An abbreviated version of this article[1] appeared in the Tulsa World on January 22, 2015.]
Liberals and the governments and institutions they represent are having ever increasing difficulty in convincing their constituents that the atrocities of Islamic terrorists do not represent the supposedly peace-loving Islamic religion followed by moderate Muslims. The frequency, shrillness, and fervor with which liberals defend Islam grow proportionally with each announcement of a new Muslim terrorist attack regardless of its magnitude and vicious brutality.
Howard Dean is the former head of the Democratic National Committee and one-time candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. Following the murder of two policemen and ten employees of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that routinely criticized Islam’s Muhammad as well as many other non-Muslim religious and political leaders, Mr. Dean refused to label the perpetrators as Muslim terrorists in spite of the three gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar” during the killing spree. Allahu Akbar translates as “Allah is the Greatest” and is the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer as prescribed by the Prophet Muhammad.
I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else’s life, that’s not what the Koran says. Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.[2]
The Paris murderers shouted the same exaltations of Allah as Army Major and fellow Muslim Nadal Hasan did when he shot and killed fourteen and wounded thirty-two at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. The American government conveniently ignored Hasan’s motives and obvious connections with Islamic jihad while euphemistically mislabeling the murders as workplace violence.
Following an attack on the Canadian Parliament by a thirty-two year old Muslim convert who shot and killed a guard during the attack, liberal leader Justin Trudeau quickly reassured his friends and fellow citizens in the Muslim community that, “…Canadians know acts such as these committed in the name of Islam are an aberration of your faith. Continued mutual cooperation and respect will help prevent the influence of distorted ideological propaganda posing as religion. We will walk forward together, not apart.[3] [emphasis added]
In response to the Paris attack political columnist Michael Gerson wrote that the murders in Paris were, “…the exploitation of religious passions for political ends…It is important to separate this violent political ideology from the faith of Islam.”[4] Although many Muslims do not agree with and reject the violence occurring in the name of Islam, the separation of Islam from the violence prescribed by the Koran is impossible. These so-called moderate Muslims are Muslim in name only and have no standing in defense of the Muslim faith. They may be Muslims by birth, conversion, products of a predominately Muslim culture, and give lip-service to the Koran, but they are not representative of Muslims faithful to the teachings of the Koran. In fact, the Koran labels them infidels for not fully embracing the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran.
They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): but take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks. [Surah 4:89. Quran][5]
The same analogy applies to Christians. True Christians accept Christ as their Savior and follow His teachings. Those that claim to be Christian by birth, upbringing, or culture or do not follow Christ’s teachings are Christian in name only and live without the Christian creed. But unlike the followers of Islam, Christians cannot compel conversion nor punish those who do not convert.
With the explosion of Muslim-inspired violence in the West as well as in Muslim-dominated countries, liberals refuse to acknowledge the elephant in the room—the obvious truth as to the nature of Islam. That truth which is being ignored and not addressed is that violent proponents of the Islamic religion are acting in accordance with the words and directives of the Koran to spread Islam through aggressive individual, military, and political threats, intimidation, and actions in order to achieve world domination.
One wonders why the humanists and their political operatives are so adamant in the defense of Islam, a most authoritarian religion, given the fact that humanism denies the existence of a supreme being and denigrates “…traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs and experience…”[6] Two reasons are apparent for humanists’ defense of Islam. The first is that Christianity has so dominated the history and worldview of Western civilization that Western liberals demand not only equal time for opposing views but give preference to various anti-Christian religions and none more so than Islam. The second reason for humanism’s defense of Islam is adherence to two of its core beliefs—humanistically defined multiculturalism and tolerance.
Multiculturalism is one of the cardinal doctrines of humanism and has its roots in the denial of absolutes which translates into moral relativism. According to humanist dogma, such a values-free approach makes it impossible to judge one period or era in relation to another or to say that one culture’s ethic is superior to another. The end result of this philosophy is that all belief systems are equally valid. But if all belief systems are not equally valid (as demonstrated by the followers of Islam and the Qur’an), then the tenets of humanism including its humanistically defined concepts of equality, diversity, and multiculturalism are false and unsustainable. The liberal defense of Islam occurs not because they care for and respect the tenets of Islam. Rather, to reject Islam based on its history as a scourge to mankind is to admit that their humanistic conceptions of multiculturalism and tolerance are fundamentally flawed with regard to a mankind’s understanding of his nature and transcendent values.
There is a third reason for humanists’ defense of Islam. The words of the Apostle Paul give insight into the mindset of seemingly intelligent people who are so obviously in denial of the Islamic threat to Western civilization.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. [Romans 1:28. KJV] [emphasis added]
Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. [2 Timothy 3:8. KJV] [emphasis added]
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. [Titus 1:16. KJV] [emphasis added]
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. [2 Corinthians 4:4. KJV]
Reprobate is a very old-fashioned, King-James-style word little understood by moderns but well describes the humanist abandonment of rational thought regarding Islam. Although Christ loves the sinner, the Apostle Paul does not mince words as to the spiritual condition of a reprobate by which he means unworthy, corrupt, rejected, and condemned.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Larry G. Johnson, “Liberals won’t acknowledge nature of Islam,” Tulsa World, January 22, 2015, A-13.
[2] Daniel Greenfield, “Howard Dean: Muslim Terrorists are as Muslim as Me,” Frontpage Mag, January 7, 2015. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/howard-dean-muslim- terrorists-are-as-muslim-as-me/ (accessed January 13, 2015).
[3] Erika Tucker, “Soldier killed in what Harper calls ‘terrorist attack’ in Ottawa,” Global News, October 22, 2014. http://globalnews.ca/news/1628313/shots-fired-at-war-memorial-in-ottawa-says-witness/ (accessed January 13, 2015).
[4] Michael Gerson, “The politics of homicide in France,” Tulsa World, January 10, 2015, A-16.
[5] The Meaning of The Illustrious Qur-an, (Dar AHYA Us-Sunnah), p. 49.
[6] Paul Kurtz, Humanist Manifestos I and II, (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), pp.15-16.
