Muslims in the West
Love thy enemies
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
The Gospel of Saint Luke 6:27
Satan wants us to hate Muslims.
After the incomprehensible atrocities of September 11, there were spontaneous street parties in towns in the West Bank territories and Lebanon. The followers of Yassir Arafat overflowed with such obvious and overwhelming delight at the death of so many innocents, that even the intimidation apparatus of a gangster state could not prevent images of their revelry escaping to the West.
Yassir Arafat himself, before his death, was someone whose humanity was dead, more a bloodthirsty beast than a man. He was a communist trained by the KGB; a reputed pervert; the individual singly most responsible for the Lebanese Civil War and all its misery and mortality; a known psychopath; and the world’s foremost terrorist, responsible for the deaths of more innocents than Osama Bin Laden himself, including probably hundreds killed by his own hand. And yet this depraved being was held up by Muslim nations as a statesman and a symbol of all they held to be fine. And his sick followers presented to the world, by the Autocrats of the Muslim world and the Leftist elites of the West, as noble victims and fine examples of Mohammedism.
Satan is so skilled. How could anyone short of Christ himself feel love for such a people.
Terrorists next door
Here in Australia, Lebanese Muslim gangs — young men whose uncles, fathers and grandparents might have fought in militias alongside Yassir Arafat’s followers — have for several years subjected our largest city to a terror campaign of mass rape, murder, extortion, intimidation and drug dealing, along with constant violent harassment, disorderly behaviour and street thuggery. Just like terrorists, these criminals have made themselves enemies of Australian society.
Consequently, many Australians are asking themselves whether their Muslim neighbours, even decent law abiding, hardworking Muslim families, can ever be properly integrated here. People wonder whether there is something in the Muslim character that is incompatible with our great culture and its fine British traditions of freedom, responsibility and morality. This apprehension is understandable, but misplaced.
The Hebrews in Egypt
And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
Exodus 2:23-24
All the high immigration nations of the West — Australia, America, Canada, Britain, France — have sizeable Muslim populations. This, combined with the huge number of terrorist atrocities committed by Muslims, and the widespread criminality in some Muslim communities, makes many inhabitants of these countries nervous. Some commentators have even taken to referring to a Muslim invasion, a continuation of the Jihad of the 7th Century. But the Muslims of today are not an invasion force. They are not a hostile army like the Moors, halted on the fields of Poitiers in France in AD.888 by Charles Martel ‘The Hammer’. They are not the swift Saracen hordes or the disciplined Ottoman war machine.
The Muslims living in the West today, are the Hebrews in Egypt. They are a devout, simple, but backward tribe invited by their sophisticated and worldly neighbours to dwell in a rich land in exchange for their labour (or, in Australia during the 1980s and early 1990s, in exchange for voting for Labor, although that act of corrupt political cynicism is hardly the fault of those who were invited). Now they find themselves in a strange land, far from home, invited yet unwelcome — and oppressed by Pharaoh.
A thousand Pharaohs
The Muslims of the West have no Moses, but they have a thousand Pharaohs.
Pharaoh is a product of the West, but he is not ruler in the nations of the West. Pharaoh is not Prime Minister Howard or President Bush.
Pharaoh is the one who keeps the slaves in bondage. Pharaoh is the one who whispers to them that their mainstream neighbours are racists who hate them. Pharaoh is the one who seeks to isolate these communities who have never been exposed to freedom of speech, the better to convert them into Left wing vote blocs. Pharaoh is the one who, unasked on their behalf, attacks the Christian traditions of their mainstream neighbours. This serves two purposes — Pharaoh hates Christianity anyway, but it also angers ordinary citizens, and increases paranoia in the Muslim community. Pharaoh is the one who manipulates the welfare system so as to turn a proud and moral people into a dependant class. Pharaoh is a corrupted news media, that long ago gave up reporting facts, and instead seeks to manipulate society, or simply to stir up trouble for its entertainment value.
Pharaoh is the one who teaches that pornography, prostitution and immorality are the true nature of the Christian West, and that the Muslims’ only defence is to form enclaves. Pharaoh is the one who tempts the vulnerable young men on the economic and social margins into lives of crime, by making sure for that for them crime does pay. Pharaoh makes sure that there will be no meaningful sanction for bad behaviour by these youths until it is far too late. And, as if the general temptation to lawlessness in the West were not enough, Pharaoh makes sure that Muslim youths are treated even more leniently in the courts than the lost youth of society in general, because Pharaoh’s master, Satan, is above all a tempter.
Pharaoh is Osama Bin Laden. Pharaoh is the One Eyed Sheikh, and thousands of other power hungry local religious and civic bosses, most of whom owe their positions to financial support from criminal dictatorships in the Arab world.
Pharaoh is a product of the West, but not of some mythical greed for oil, or of a non-existent desire to exploit the world’s weak and poor. Pharaoh is the Totalitarian philosophies — Communism, Marxism, Fascism, Socialism and National Socialism — that spread their poison to the Arab world just as they did to every other continent, and that underpin the ideologies of Osama Bin Laden, Hamas and the other terrorists (once you scrape off the thin veneer of Islamic symbolism and Koranic verses) and are secretly supported by the autocrats of the Persian Gulf.
Pharaoh’s propaganda skills are so subtle and clever the slaves don’t even see him. And we don’t see Pharaoh either. On the whole, Western Christians have fallen squarely for the propaganda tricks of the Leftist media and political classes. We don’t see that Muslims — as a devout, moral people, who draw their beliefs from God’s covenant with Abraham — instead of being allies of a Godless Pharaoh, could be our greatest allies against his corruption and oppression.
God’s promises last forever
Like the Christian Emperor Constantine, Mohammed was a military man at a time when war was always extremely brutal. Like Constantine or Saul of Tarsus, he had innocent blood on his hands. It doesn’t invalidate Christianity that it was supported and articulated by a brutal military man such as Constantine. Mohammed was a flawed man, and a sinner, but like Constantine he didn’t invent his message, he championed it. And like St Paul amongst the Romans, for all his sins, he brought enlightenment to a people suffering under polytheism and immorality. The tenets of the Islamic religion are extremely ancient. They derive from before Christ and Moses, back to God’s promise and revelation to Abraham, incorporating other elements of Jewish and Christian belief.
As modern Christians we understand that God does not take back a promise once given. For example, most Christians today love the Jews, and after centuries of tragic ignorance on the part of Christians, we now accept that even though the Jews have not accepted the saving Grace of Jesus Christ, they are still followers of the true God. It is similar with Islam. Whether or not you accept Mohammed as the greatest and final prophet of God (and of course Christians do not) the basis of Islamic belief does derive from an authentic source. This was an early promise to an ancient and simple tribal people, but God’s promises last forever.
Muslims as allies
The real enemies of Faith in this world are the ideologies of evil and unbelief — totalitarianism, Communism, Fascism, militant atheism, materialism. Christians ought to seek out Muslims as allies on the moral issues that concern us both — like pornography, prostitution, crime, and abortion. Closer relations like this would benefit Muslims hugely, since many of those who are hostile to the ways of the West are good people simply making bad decisions on the basis of decades of totalitarian propaganda.
This doesn’t mean we should support the elimination of Israel, the abandonment of Iraq, the removal of Christianity from the public sphere, or other fashionable grievances supposedly held by Muslims. Let the Left sympathise with these fraudulent political causes of their own invention.
The propaganda picture of the the extreme and irrational Islamic moral fundamentalist, brutally enslaving his womenfolk is no more true than the equally absurd stereotype of the Christian zealot in a long black coat half crazed with fire and brimstone. Our positions on public and private morality are not identical, but we have a lot in common with our Muslim brothers and sisters. None of us want to raise our children in a society overrun with sleaze, vice and lawlessness. Every citizen in a democratic state has a right to influence the society they live in. But when it comes to public morality, an undeclared alliance of extreme Leftists and extreme libertarians are trying to deny that to us.
The isolation of and insulation of communities is not natural for Muslims. It is largely a reaction to the presence of so much immorality. Christians have been surrounded by it for so long that, like the Pharisee walking past the dying Samaritan, we have just accepted that this is the way things are. We could learn from the moral outrage of the Muslims. Sleaze and vice are not just free choices that people make, they are paths of destruction down which the young are tempted.
By understanding this, we can help our Muslim brothers and sisters to assimilate — in other words to feel at home in their adopted countries — and gain some valuable and loyal allies.
Peace
The Muslims of the Arab world have had a very troubled history since time of the Ottoman Empire (the Ottomans were horrific tyrants, not unlike the depraved Roman Empire), but underneath it all they are very much like us.
They are not natural Fascists and they don’t like to fight. Like Hitler and Mussolini, Nasser of Egypt was a hybrid of Socialism and Nationalism who indoctrinated and militarised his country. He had billions of dollars of advanced Soviet military equipment, and a large professional army. He was beloved and admired by his people and throughout the Arab world, the architypical messianic dictator. But would they fight and die for him? Not willingly. His officers lacked aggressive spirit, and his army was one of the best equipped but most poorly motivated of the 20th Century. When the battle got fierce, they turned around and walked home. If only every dictator had troops with such good sense!
The Muslims are a peace-loving, philosophical people who greet each other with ‘Peace’, and when speaking of future events remind themselves that things will only happen ‘if God wills it’. Like the Protestant world, they have a history of being merchants and traders. The Muslims even love and adore Jesus — they regard him as one of the greatest of their prophets.
Like the Hebrews in Egypt, the Muslims are yoked, but not broken. Too often as Christians, we see their bondage and think it is their nature. We see them as terrorists when the terrorists themselves are a Totalitarian creation. The deceiver is using the same ideological tools and tricks he used to turn the 20th Century in history’s worst horror, and despite a century of bitter experience, God’s gift of multiple victories, and the wisdom that should have brought us, we are acting in the face of our old adversary like we haven’t learnt anything.
Muslims have suffered under dictators for centuries, but in their history and in their consciousness is the fond memory of cosmopolitan and enlightened rule. Look at the wonderful people of Iraq, brave, peaceful, and determined.
That is the Muslim character released from bondage.
These are our fellow citizens, our friends and spiritual cousins.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
A moving and persuasive insight that I have not seen elsewhere.
I’ve excerpted, linked and forwarded to others who might be interested as well.
Thanks for writing it. I always enjoy it when something nudges me a bit to the side of my track.
January 6th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Your writing is excellent. I’ve enjoyed reading it.
With all due respect, on this one I disagree, rather vehemently. My culture and way of life is at risk here; consequently I have absolutely no feelings of respect or pity for any muslim living in a western culture. I don’t need to understand him/her. He/she needs to understand me.
Not today, sorry!
January 8th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Thanks for this essay (and GVDL for bringing it to our attention); it is a valuable contribution for anyone trying to understand what is going on. Living close to one of south Seattle’s biggest mosques I recently had an opportunity to ask myself about our local Muslim community, here:
http://sunbreak.blogspot.com/2005/11/as-i-stepped-out-one-evening.html
More recently it was revealed that a taxpayer-funded community center in north Seattle was holding Muslim swim night for Muslim women along with evening chat classes about Muslim faith.
The left has decided that “Muslim” is a cultural designation; anything that happens under “Muslim” is sacrosanct since “culture” - according to the left - is inviolate. This frees feminists from having to confront Muslim husbands who enjoy taking a whack at the wife or from questioning clitorectomy or arranged child marriage; it permits art galleries to refuse art that might be offensive to Muslims. In short it allows the left to see itself as heroic while punching away at malleable targets like Christianity, Judaism and the common weal.
January 15th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
[…] I agree with most of your comments and don’t disagree with any. I think immigrants are one of the great strengths of US culture, and as I point out to my students, the free cities of Europe that grew up in the 11th and 12th centuries were built up from rural immigrants in large numbers (the death rates were so high, that without constant immigration from the countryside, they would have lost population). Immigrants are intrinsically a self-selecting population of high risk initiative takers. But it takes a particularly creative and dynamic culture to make the most of their immigrants, and Europe is not too creative when it comes to absorbing their Muslim populations. Australia accepted a lot of Vietnamese after the war, which was a worthwhile thing to do, but there was a lot of crime associated with that too. Charity is not without cost. However, just as the crime these people brought with them is not a product of their Vietnamese ethnicity, likewise revolutionary terrorist activity is not a necessary side effect of being Muslim. I explain this in rambling detail here. […]
January 16th, 2006 at 8:22 am
Kip, I agree with the fact that muslims are victims…but to the ideology itself!
I want to point out a few things about some of the things you mention in your article, which I want to say up front I think you wrote with conviction and love in your heart…
“It is similar with Islam. Whether or not you accept Mohammed as the greatest and final prophet of God (and of course Christians do not) the basis of Islamic belief does derive from an authentic source. This was an early promise to an ancient and simple tribal people, but God??????s promises last forever”
Just because the basis of Islamic belief derives from a true source, it doesn’t mean that it was not perverted for political gain. This is a fact overlooked by many, but in actuality, the Quran perverts the truth of the gospels! So….If one distorts the truth then in reality it becomes a lie….because I feel that is how Satan really has always worked…he comes behind the truth and uses bits and pieces of it to create his lies. He is the father of all lies!
You go on to say in your article, “The Muslims even love and adore Jesus ??????? they regard him as one of the greatest of their prophets.”
So many people are decieved in this truth. It is true that muslim regard Jesus of the Quran as a great prophet, HOWEVER; and this is very important, is that the Jesus of the Quran is NOT the Jesus of the Gospels. So to imply that Islam has in common the love of and respect of Jesus of the Gospels is simply not true. Because everything taught about the Jesus of the Quran is in total conflict of the truth of the Gospels. It totally undoes the work that Jesus did here on the cross. In fact, the quran teaches that Jesus WAS NEVER crucified! So, if you want to go back to the way Satan manipulates the truth and is using the teachings of Islam, then one must ask themselves who would come “after” Jesus and try to distort the truth? Who would come “after” Jesus and create a following to undo the gift of sacrifice on the cross? Who would come “after” Jesus and try to use everything possible to get anyone to be decieved into calling truth a lie? Who would create a “false Jesus” to manipulate you from the truth?
Remember, 2 Corinthians 11:4 warns us, For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him
AND also in 2 Corinthians 11…..12And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. 13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
In Galatians 1:6-9, Paul explained to us, 6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
Now Kip, I would ask you or anyone, Isn’t this the very birth of Islam? That the “ANGEL” Gabriel came down and gave the words of the Quran to Mohammed? Is the basis of Islamic belief to be portrayed as you have suggested in your article here, that it comes from an authentic source like it is coming from the True God? My question is that one must understand the truth and ask yourself is it Authentic as in the true God or Authentic in the deception of Satan?
January 16th, 2006 at 11:52 am
We live in times where, I believe, muslims are going to become more and more polarized against the west. If you have ever read the Quran and the venerated Hadiths of Islam, you will find that muslims are in fact by the nature of Islamic teaching, to be isolated and insolated against non-muslims. Islamic law says that non-muslims do not have the rights of a muslim. Muslims are instructed to not take Christians or Jews as their freinds (Quran Sura 5:51). Christians are supposed to have the same love that God has for all peoples everywhere. Muslims are not instructed to do this at all. Christians have a message that God sent His only begotten Son to die on the Cross as the only means by which men can be reconciled to God. Mohammed said that Jesus did not die on the Cross (Quran Sura 4:157). As a Christian I must say that I believe this in and of itself disqualifies Mohammed as having had any revelation or message from God. It flies in direct contradiction to the testimony of the Gospel. There are many heresies that one could claim derives from an authentic source, but they are heresies none-the-less. Islamic Law is nothing like judeo-christian law in the least bit. Islamic law declares that it takes 4 male muslim witnesses to convict a muslim male of any crime, or 8 muslim women (muslim women have half the value and half the testimony of a muslim man). On the other hand, a non-muslim accused of a “crime” by just one muslim is “guilty” of the accusation under Islamic Law. Islam simply cannot be reformed. The only hope for for the world is if muslims don’t really know what Islam teaches, but as time goes on, I believe muslims are going to become more fierce and hostile in western nations. They are commanded by Mohammed to wait until they are strong enough to wage war on non-muslims. As we let them into our nations, this will come to pass more and more. Since they will be following the example set by Mohammed, they will do things to destroy the economy of western nations. A nation whose economy is crippled or destroyed cannot wage war. Mohammed set this example when he ruined the economy of Mecca by robbing the trade caravans going there in his day. This is what we are facing in the west and it cannot be negotiated with. If muslims don’t know what the Quran and Hadith teachs, then they are no threat, but once they take seriously the teachings in those writings, that is when they will do what thier Prophet did.
January 16th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Hi guys,
Thanks for the comments. I appreciate such well thought contributions.
As for the suggestion that Christ is the Saviour and His Gospels are true and unfiltered Word of God. Well, you’ll get no argument from me on that. Only Christ and Holy Spirit can save the world, that’s for sure.
But what will Christ say to us? Will he say, “and what of the least of my children? How did you treat them? Those who prayed so fervently to the Father, and yet
were so far from perfect understanding of his Truth.
“Did you love them. as I instructed, and find something worth loving in them?
“And did you treat them with patience and forbearance, that I might work a transformation in their hearts?”
January 16th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
What is love though? Is it loving to not tell the truth about who Jesus is and what His death on the Cross means? And Christ’s ascension and being seated at the right hand of God the Father? It is written in 1 Corinthians 1:23 “but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness”. This is indeed true even to this day. As I stated before, the Jesus of Islam is not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus of Islam did not die on the cross for your sins or mine. It’s offensive to muslims that Christians believe Jesus is God come in the likeness and weakness of human flesh. I think love is seeking what is in the true best interest of God and others (by His Will). I think God wants people to know the Good News and even though this Good News about who Jesus is and what his finished work on the Cross means, the loving thing to do is tell them the truth. For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, so that whosoever would believe on Him (the real Jesus), would not perish but would have eternal life. (John 3:16) These people will perish without the saving knowledge of who the real Jesus is, the true Love of God inspires me to tell muslims the truth because God does not want them to perish! 2 Peter 3:9 says “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
January 17th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Kip you said, “As for the suggestion that Christ is the Saviour and His Gospels are true and unfiltered Word of God. Well, you??????ll get no argument from me on that. Only Christ and Holy Spirit can save the world, that??????s for sure.”
I never in my post suggested that you implied different on Christ as Saviour Kip…what I suggested and questioned was that you rethink the source of the authenticity which you were implying as truth of the source of Islam. Do you believe that the source of Islam is from the true God because I feel its important for you to search for yourself on this matter, because when you write with such lovely compassion it can definately influence others which might take your convictions as truth and I know it matters to you, because you pose questions about perfect understanding….
—”But what will Christ say to us? Will he say, ??????and what of the least of my children? How did you treat them? Those who prayed so fervently to the Father, and yet
were so far from perfect understanding of his Truth.??????Did you love them. as I instructed, and find something worth loving in them???????And did you treat them with patience and forbearance, that I might work a transformation in their hearts???????
Kip, I don’t wish mistreatment on anyone. Even when I pray I ask God to please not punish anyone for any tresspasses against me because I truly do not want anyone to suffer judgement over anything concerning me. I think prayer for the less fortunate and for our enemies is good and when I do it, I know that it helps clothe my spirit with humble compassion. I think one can love with kindess and bear with those that are in disagreement with them and still not be decieved into their ideology. With great conflicts and dialogues over those differences, it is a great opportunity to love them and to share the truth. But we have to be honest with ourselves about the truth first. Because it is God we must appease and not men. Without Jesus there is no hope. Revelation 5:9 explains to us that Jesus’s blood purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. Did you ever see Jesus compromise the truth?
Why would anyone succumb to any ideology that tries to rob them of their salvation which Islam’s teaching does; when it teaches that Jesus was never crucified? For me as a Christian to entertain that and/or to help in any way to decieve others into that concept of it being from an authentic source of God is to call the Saviour’s sacrifice a lie because even within tolerance and love - one cannot have two masters. Kip, you posed some questions on how we treat the least of His children and seriously, I wouldn’t imply to the least of them or even indirectly mislead them into believing that Islam’s source is from the true God, since basically I know better and I will tell you why I feel this way… If I did as such, it would state that I agree with their concept that the God of the Bible is confused and that after giving His only son to suffer and die on the cross for mankind’s sins, decided to go to mohammed (via Gabriel an Angel) and told him to revamp the whole story and instead teach another gospel that says that it never happened and that it was all a lie and that Jesus was never crucified. See what I mean? I can’t be accountable for distorting the truth about that. That isn’t love. We live in times where good is being called evil and evil is being called good. Many do not listen to sound doctorine anymore. 1 Corinthians 13:6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.