Islam’s Peace
by Dave Hunt
That Islam is “peace and tolerance” is the most popular lie in the world today. Intellectuals in the West who defame Christ parrot the most fatuous praise of Muhammad, in spite of his legacy of murder, pillage and rape. A Sesame Street-type Arabic TV program features children training to be suicide bombers and chanting “Death to Israel”—for peace, of course. Reporter Ann Coulter suggests, “Inasmuch as liberals are demanding that Americans ritualistically proclaim, ‘Islam is a religion of peace,’ Muslims might do their part by not killing people all the time.” 1
That our leaders promote this lie, and that so many believe it without one fact to support it, bodes ill for America and the world. We only ask Muslims for one example of where and when Islam ever brought peace and tolerance—and please don’t threaten us with death (the standard Islamic persuasion) for asking!
Never forget that Muslims slaughtered and conquered “for Allah” from Spain to China. These Arab conquests ( defensive battles, they claim) were “more rapid than the Roman, more lasting than the Mongol...the most amazing feat in military history.” 2
Islam’s founder, Muhammad, began his career attacking rich caravans passing near his base in Medina. The first three assaults failed. The fourth succeeded because the victims were surprised by an ambush during Ramadan. Arab tribes had long refrained from aggression in that “holy month.” Muhammad, however, had received a “revelation” authorizing plunder and murder in Allah’s name during this special time of peace (Surah 2:217). Another absolved the Muslims of killing: “Ye slew them not, but Allah slew them” (Surah 8:17).
Most Muslims don’t realize that in observing Ramadan and the annual pilgrimage ( hajj ) to Mecca, they follow what pagan Arabs practiced for centuries before Muhammad was born (see TBC Feb ’00 ). Had President Bush known the truth instead of the misinformation fed to him by Cleveland State University law professor David F. Forte,3 he might not have hosted a White House dinner honoring “the holy month Ramadan,” nor flattered Muslims saying “all the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements.” Benefit?
Challenged to do miracles like Christ, Muhammad could do none. On March 16, 624, near Badr, he led 300 warriors in a vicious attack against a large Meccan caravan protected by a force of 800. Some 40 Meccans were killed and 60 taken prisoner to a loss of only 14 Muslims. This amazing victory was seen as the attesting miracle Muhammad needed. As a result, the ranks of Muslims swelled with those eager to share in future plunder.
Having proved himself the prophet of Allah with the sword, Muhammad sealed his apostleship with more than twenty murders, beginning with al-Nadr, an old enemy from Mecca. Taken captive in the battle at Badr, he pleaded that the Meccan Qur’aish tribe would never kill captives. Muhammad had him beheaded anyway, justifying the deed with another “revelation”: “It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land” (Surah 8:67).
Much of the growing Muslim wealth came from robbing and killing Jews, causing “the disappearance of these Jewish communities from Arabia proper”4—justified by a further “revelation” (Surah 33:26,27). To this day, by law no Jew may set foot in Saudi Arabia.
A number of poets were murdered at Muhammad’s behest for having mocked him in verse. The first was the poetess Asma bint Marwan, stabbed to death by Umayr while she was nursing her youngest child. The poet Abu Afak (reportedly more than 100 years old) was murdered next. Then came the Jewish poet Ka’b bin al-Ashraf. A timely “revelation” said all poets were inspired of Satan (Surah 26:221-227).
Does it bother today’s Muslims that murder, rape, plunder and slavery of innocent people were the accepted way of life upon which Islam was founded and still operates? Apparently not. Ka’b’s murder (the account slanted with fictitious details) is justified on a popular Muslim web site, revealing Islam’s peculiar meaning of “peace” and “justice”:
Ka’b had become a real danger to the state of peace and mutual trust which the Prophet was struggling to achieve in Madinah....The Prophet was quite exasperated with him....This was all part of the great process ...which helped to make Islam spread and establish it on foundations of justice and piety .5 [Emphasis added]
Christ left Christians “an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not...[but] bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness...” (1 Pt 2:21-24). But the Muslim must follow the example of Muhammad who killed all who dared to disagree with him!
A Christian must “know” God (Jer:9:24But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.; Jn:17:3And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.), “love” God with all his heart (Deut 6:5; Mat:22:37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind., etc.) and “believe” in Christ in his heart (Acts:8:37And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.; Rom:10:9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.). The God of the Bible wants man’s trust and affection without coercion.
In contrast, Allah can be neither known nor loved. Nor does one even have to believe to become a Muslim. Under threat of death, one merely recites aloud, “There is no ila (god) but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” This “conversion without faith” was established when Abu Sufyan, a Qur’aish leader, upon surrendering Mecca in 630 to Muhammad and his superior army, admitted that he doubted the latter’s prophethood. He was warned, “‘Accept Islam and testify that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah before your neck is cut off by the sword.’ Thus [without believing] he professed the faith of Islam and became a Muslim.”6 This pattern is followed today: confess or die!
Upon Muhammad’s death in A.D. 632, many Arabs attempted to abandon Islam. Abu Bakr (the first caliph to succeed Muhammad) and his warriors in the infamous Wars of Apostasy killed tens of thousands of ex-Muslims, forcing Arabia back into Islam. Muhammad had commanded, “Whoever relinquishes his faith, kill him.” Islam is still enforced this way under shari’a (Islamic law) in Saudi Arabia and wherever Muslims are able to do so. This is peace and tolerance ?!
The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights was announced at the International Conference on the Prophet Muhammad and his Message held in London in April 1980. It declares, “Islam gave to mankind an ideal code of human rights fourteen centuries ago...based on the Qur’an and the Sunnah [teachings and practice of Muhammad]....” Human rights? What deceit!
Abu Bakr was succeeded as caliph by Umar Abu Hafsa. His armies took Damascus in 635, Antioch in 636, Jerusalem in 638, Syria in 640, Egypt and Persia in 641. Entire cities were massacred, such as Behnesa, Fayum, Nikiu and Aboit in Egypt, Tripoli in North Africa and Euchaita in Armenia. Carthage was razed to the ground. In 644, Umar was murdered.
Uthman ibn Affan, the third caliph, consolidated and expanded the growing Islamic empire. A son-in-law of Muhammad, he standardized the Qur’an, burning all rival copies over protests of those still alive who remembered different readings and missing verses. Among these was Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha who, by the way, never veiled her face. Uthman, too, was murdered by a rival Muslim faction. Prevented from being buried in a Muslim cemetery, he was buried at night by friends, ironically, in a Jewish cemetery.
Islam divides the world into dar al-Islam (the house of peace) and dar al-Harb (the house of war). To bring “peace,” Allah commands, “I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads! (8:13); Slay the idolaters wherever you find them...(9:5); O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites and be thou harsh with them...(9:73); Believers, make war on the infidels that dwell around you...” (9:123). Perpetual jihad is commanded until all the world is under shari’a . Nor would that bring peace, because Muslims fight among themselves, as history testifies.
The fourth and last of the “rightly guided” caliphs was Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. Accused of complicity in Uthman’s murder, he never fully established his rule. Aisha supported a rebellion against him, resulting in the Battle of the Camel in which 10,000 were killed. Ali won, but was murdered in 661.
Wars of succession pitted Qur’aish against Bedouins, Umayyads against the Hashimite followers of Ali, etc. Most of Ali’s family were killed by rival Muslims in 680. Mecca was besieged by troops of Yezid, an Umayyad; the Ka’aba (later restored) was burned to the ground, its Black Stone split into three pieces. Mecca was taken in 692 by Abd-al-Malik (who in 691 had built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to replace the Ka’aba). He united Muslims once again by force and Islam continued its conquests.
In 712, Muslim raiders under Muhammad Qasun began the invasion of India, demolishing temples and palaces and massacring, as in Constantinople, where the streets ran with blood. “The massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger in sheer numbers than the Holocaust....”7 But Islam is “peace!”
The Umayyad caliphate ruled the Muslim world until 749 when all of the Umayyads were murdered by the rival Abbasids, except one survivor, abd-al-Rahman, who fled to Spain where he established an independent caliphate. Thus began the Abbasid caliphate, which lasted until 1258 in spite of intrigue, assassinations and uprisings—all peaceful, of course.
The double-cross and murder of Muslims at the hands of Muslims continues to this day. Scarcely a Muslim regime is not ruled by a dictator who seized power from other Muslims, as in Syria and Iraq. The ten-year revolution in Algeria has cost 100,000 lives. In Afghanistan, rival Muslim warlords fight one another. “Infidels” have to intervene there as in the Gulf, to enforce peace among “peaceful” Muslims.
Muslims loyal to the murdered Ali and his sons are called Shi’ites (the majority in Iran). The others are called Sunnis and comprise the majority elsewhere. These two factions have long demonstrated that “Islam is peace” by fighting one another, as in the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq when more people were killed than in World War I.
Muslim conquests involving multiple massacres of literally millions continued for more than 1,300 years. Under the Abbasids the Islamic empire reached its zenith of power, prosperity and learning.
In Spain (to which Muslims point as an example of their tolerance) the garrison of Muez was slaughtered in 920; Pamplona was put to the sword in 923; then Cordova, Zaragoza and Mereda, with all adult males killed and women and children enslaved. The Jews of Granada were butchered in 1066, 34 years after 6,000 Jews had been slaughtered in Fez, Morocco. In 1146, Islamic Fez was put to the sword by rival Muslims, the Almohads, who conquered much of North Africa after annihilating the Almoravides (another Muslim faction) with about 100,000 massacred, another 120,000 killed in Marrakesh, and similar slaughters elsewhere—all gestures of “peace.”
The 400-year rule of the Ottoman Turks saw forced kidnappings of young boys into Islam and slavery, causing parents to mutilate children to make them undesirable. Under the Ottomans, being Greek, Armenian, Serb or any other non-Muslim was to live in daily fear of murder, rape, torture, genocide. To this day, Serbs and Bulgarians loathe Turks and Bosnians.
When Sultan Murad III died, his son Muhammad had all nineteen of his brothers murdered and the seven of his father’s concubines who were pregnant sewn into sacks and thrown into the sea. The successor of Murad IV had all 300 women in his harem sewn into sacks and thrown into the Bosphorus. Like so many other Muslim leaders, he was murdered—peacefully.
The persecution of Jews in Roman Catholic Europe was mild compared to what Ottoman Christians endured for four centuries. More than a million Armenians were slaughtered in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth centuries, as well as many thousands of Jews, Greeks, Assyrians, Lebanese, et al. Tragically, the oppression and bloodshed were often condoned by Western powers, particularly England and at times America. In the great 1915 genocide, “women came with butcher knives [to] gain that merit in Allah’s eyes that comes from killing a Christian.”8 The destruction of Smyrna in September 1922 with the deliberate massacre of nearly 300,000 inhabitants is another example of Islamic “peace.” English, American, Italian and French battleships anchored in the harbor repelled fleeing victims who swam out to them for help.9
The popular “explanation” that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are not Muslims, but fanatics, is a rebuke to the Qur’an, to Muhammad, and to Islam itself. As Trifkovic writes (p. 127), “Thirteen centuries of...suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic ‘tolerance’....” The West winks at the blatant denial of basic human rights and support of terrorism by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries—even favors Islamic terrorists in Chechnya, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kashmir, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sudan and East Timor.
Our politically correct delusion is leading to disaster. Tragically, the gospel is kept from Islamic countries by the failure of Western governments to admit and confront the truth about Islam. Please continue to inform yourselves, to protest to our leaders, to pray for God’s intervention, and to be witnesses for Christ to Muslims in our country. TBC
Endnotes
1. www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter.html.
2. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization (Simon and Schuster, 1950), IV: 188.
3. Imprimis (Oct 2002), 2-6; Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet: The Politically Incorrect
Guide to Islam (Regina Orthodox Press, 2002), 83-84.
4. W. N. Arafat, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1976, 100-107.
5. www.islam101.com/people/companions/maslamah.html.
6. Cf. Ibn Hisham, part 4 of his Biography of the Prophet, cited in Trifkovic, Sword, 48.
7. Trifkovic, Sword, 112.
8. Michael J. Arlen, Passage to Ararat (Ruminator Books, 2002), 224.
9. Nicholas Gage, Greek Fire (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), cited in Trifkovic, 125.
Showing posts with label islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label islam. Show all posts
January 27, 2012
July 31, 2011
June 8, 2011
The Commonalities of Catholicism and Islam
Catholicism & Islam: Ties That Bind
McMahon, T.A.
The above title became a source of controversy when I used it for a talk given at a recent prophecy conference. What I found curious about the commotion was that it came from Catholics (and some evangelicals) who had yet to hear my presentation. Furthermore, the title reflects the hope and prayers of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Rome has been tilling this "common ground" with Islam for decades, as evidenced by the 1994 Vatican publication, Recognize the Spiritual Bonds Which Unite Us: 16 Years of Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Why, therefore, would anyone be upset by my simply repeating what the Roman Catholic Church very much desires?
Actually, the real controversy stems from confusion created by the Church of Rome herself. In her zeal to be the spiritual voice of the world's religions, she talks out of both sides of her ecumenical mouth. Regarding her relationship to Islam, not only has she made to those of the Muslim faith some theological overtures which contradict Christian orthodoxy, but even worse, there are ties between the two religions which go a lot deeper than most people realize. Let's first consider some commonalities between the two faiths.
Starting with the number of adherents, Catholicism and Islam each exceed one billion, nearly all of whom enter their respective faiths as infants. More than 16 million babies are baptized into the Roman Catholic Church each year. It's a family thing. My sisters and I were baptized as Catholics because our parents were Catholics, and they and their siblings were baptized into the Church because their parents were Catholics. That's the primary way the faith is propagated.
Practically speaking, although baptism is not part of Islam, all children born into a Muslim family are Muslims. Their official "confirmation" follows as soon as they are able to confess the shahada ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger"). This baby-oriented process for increasing their ranks has been a motivating factor in the Vatican/Saudi-sponsored lobby against UN endeavors to introduce contraception and other methods of population control, especially in third-world countries.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today; Catholicism is the largest religious body among those professing to be Christian. If the number of followers was a good measure for selecting a religion, then Islam and Catholicism would definitely be the way to go. However, the Bible has no such yardstick. Rather, Jesus said, "[W]ide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Mat 7:13-14).
Most people are aware of the veneration and even worship of Mary found among Roman Catholics, but not many know that much the same deference exists among Muslims. A chapter in the Qur'an is named after Mary ("Surah Maryam"). From the outskirts of Cairo to Bombay to Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, hundreds of thousands of the Islamic faith have congregated wherever processions carry her statues and where her apparitions are said to have appeared. She is esteemed above the most revered women of the Muslim faith, including Muhammad's two favorite wives, Khadija and Aisha, and his daughter Fatima. The hadith teaches that Muhammad selected Mary as his first wife upon entrance into Paradise (for more about Mary and Islam see "Mary Who?" in TBC Oct '00 ). One of the most popular Catholic apparitions of Mary is referred to as Our Lady of Fatima.
Catholic and Islamic prayers have many similarities. For the Muslim, praying to Allah five times a day is altogether an act of obedience, and the prayers are always repetitive. As one former Muslim puts it, "It's hardly intimate communication with Allah;...it's done more to escape the punishment due to those who neglect prayer." Most prayers prayed by Catholics are also rote and repetitive, saying the rosary being the best example. Repeating 16 "Our Father's" and 153 "Hail Mary's" is far from personal communication. Furthermore, when a Catholic goes to confession the priest assigns rosaries as severe punishment, or penance, for one's sins.
Prayer beads were a part of Islamic devotion to Allah long before an apparition of the Blessed Lady taught St. Dominic to pray the rosary beads in the thirteenth century. Prayer beads, by the way, are a stock item in ancient and modern paganism. On an ironic note, Catholic Church historians credit the prayers of members of the Confraternity of the Rosary for a major naval victory over the Turks, which "saved Europe from the Mohammedan peril."
Catholics and Muslims regard pilgrimages as a means of obtaining favor from God. The hadj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is a required (one-time) journey to Mecca. For Catholics, pilgrimages historically have been acts of religious purification, often induced by the promise of indulgences. Multi-millions of Catholics travel yearly to hundreds of shrines (nearly all dedicated to Mary) located throughout the world. The Crusades were indulgence-stimulated attempts to regain Jerusalem from the infidel Muslims in order to re-establish Catholic pilgrimages. Incidentally, the Church of Rome offered the crusaders full pardon from purgatory should they die trying to liberate the Holy Land. Similarly, Islam offers rewards in and assurance of Paradise to those who die in religious battles (jihad), including suicide bombings.
Roman Catholicism recognizes Allah as the God of the Bible. In 1985, Pope John Paul II declared to an enraptured audience of thousands of Muslim youths, "Christians and Muslims, we have many things in common as believers and as human beings....We believe in the same God, the one and only God, the living God...."
But how is that possible?
Historically, Allah was a pagan idol, supreme among many idols worshiped by Muhammad's Quraish tribe long before he was born. Will Durant in his classic, The Story of Civilization, writes,
Within the Ka'aba, in pre-Moslem days, were several idols representing gods. One was called Allah; three others were Allah's daughters, al-Uzza, al-Lat, and al-Manat. We may judge the antiquity of this Arab pantheon from the mention of Al-il-Lat (Al-Lat) by Herodotus [fifth century B.C. Greek historian] as a major Arabian deity. The Quraish paved the way for monotheism by worshiping Allah as chief god....
Archaeological evidence uncovered in Arabia is overwhelming in demonstrating that the dominant pre-Islamic religion was the worship of the moon god, Allah. Muhammad simply eliminated the other 300-some deities, including Allah's daughters, making Allah supreme while retaining many of the pagan rituals and symbols associated with him. For example, the crescent moon was the symbol of the moon god from the time of the Sumerians and the Babylonians through the time of Christ and right up until Muhammad's arrival. It's hardly a coincidence that Ramadan, the Muslim time of fasting, begins and ends at the time of the crescent moon. Nearly all of the moon god rituals and other idolatrous practices, including kissing the Black Stone, praying toward Mecca, running around the temple and between the two hills of Safa and Marwa, were pre-Islamic rituals.
Catholicism's zeal to relate to Islam makes one wonder how honest it is about its own perspective on God, based on the "Sacred Scripture." God is referred to as Yahweh or Jehovah about 9,000 times in the Bible. Never is He thus referred to in the Qur'an. He reveals himself in the Scriptures as "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob/Israel." He is the Father of the Jews, "the God of Israel." In the Qur'an, Allah never refers to himself that way. God calls the Jews His "chosen people." He gave them the land of Israel as a heritage "forever": "And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children for ever" (Eze 37:25). God's covenant is with Isaac (Gen 17: 19-21), while Muslims believe Allah's covenant is with Ishmael.
Allah has a completely different attitude toward the Jews than does the God of the Bible. Allah commands his followers to "Take not the Jews...for friends" (Sura 5:51). While the Jews are referred to in the Qur'an as "the people of the book" (i.e., the Bible), if they refuse to convert to Islam they must pay a tribute tax to their overlords and become subservient to them: "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (Sura 9:29). According to the hadith, which most Muslims regard to be nearly as authoritative as the Qur'an, Muhammad is quoted as saying, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them." Again, the hadith says that, related to the Day of Judgment, Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him." Catholicism has its own grievous and well-documented history of slaughtering the Jews.
Further comparisons between Jehovah and Allah demonstrate clearly that they cannot be one and the same. Jehovah has a Son: "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (1 Jn 4:14). Allah has no son: "And say: Praise be to Allah, Who hath not taken unto Himself a son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty..." (Sura 17:111); "Allah hath not chosen any son, nor is there any God along with him" (Sura 23:91). Whereas God the Father declared from heaven concerning Jesus, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Mat 3:17), Allah of the Qur'an condemns such a belief: "...the Christians say: Messiah is the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouths. They imitate the saying of the disbelievers of old. Allah's Curse be on them, how they are deluded away from the truth!" (Sura 9:30 - The Holy Qur'an www.orst.edu/groups/msa/index.phpl).
While there are both clear and critical differences between the biblical God and Allah, nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church accepts them as one and the same God. The following quote is from Vatican II:
The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God's plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own.
Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly evoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting (Nostra Aetate, Vatican II).
Consider carefully the above quote (taken from what the Roman Catholic Church claims is an infallible council) and you will realize what truly binds Catholicism and Islam together: They both have a Jesus who cannot save their souls. The Qur'an teaches that Jesus did not die on the cross: "And because of [the Jews] saying, We slew the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger—They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain" (Sura 4:157). Vatican II may give Muslims credit for "venerating" Jesus, but in fact, it's a bogus Jesus. Sadly, Catholicism also has a false Christ. It teaches that His death on the cross was not sufficient for our salvation. Not only must His sacrifice (which, according to the Scriptures, was offered only once to take away our sins completely [Heb 9:28]) be "re-presented" as a daily sacrifice for sins on altars around the world, but Catholics must expiate their own sins through sufferings here on earth and in purgatory.
Finally, Vatican II spells out clearly what Islam and Catholicism regard as their hope for salvation: "...they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting." This is works salvation. In Islam, a person is accountable for every thought, word, and deed. His or her life is to be lived according to what is pleasing to Allah as found in the Qur'an and the hadith. In addition, there is shari'a, which is the body of rules that attempts to cover the totality of Islamic religious, political, social and domestic life. Breaking such laws involves various forms of temporal punishment. At the Last Judgment Allah will determine one's eternal destiny as He places one's good and evil works on the divine scale: "Then those whose scales are heavy [with good deeds], they are the successful. And those whose scales are light are those who lose their souls, in hell abiding" (Sura 23:102,103). The hadith vividly describes the tortures of hell.
A friend of mine, James McCarthy, produced a video titled Catholicism: Crisis of Faith in which he interviews about a dozen people leaving Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He simply asks them on what basis they expect to get to heaven. Only one made any reference to Jesus. The overwhelming response was that they felt they were pretty good people, and were fairly confident that their good deeds outweighed their bad ones. Although the Catholic Church states that it is only by God's grace that one can enter heaven, it becomes very clear that what is meant is that grace is required to enable one to do the works which qualify one for heaven. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, they "obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ" (par 1821) and they "can merit for [them]selves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life" (par 2027).
Pope John Paul II addressed a Catholic community in Turkey with these words: "I wonder if it is now urgent, precisely today when Christians and Muslims have entered a new period of history, to recognize and develop the spiritual bonds that unite us." No! What is "urgent" is that Catholics and Muslims be set free from the spiritual bondage of attempting to qualify for heaven by their good deeds. Pray that their hearts would be open to receive the gift of eternal life (Rom 6:23). TBC
McMahon, T.A.
The above title became a source of controversy when I used it for a talk given at a recent prophecy conference. What I found curious about the commotion was that it came from Catholics (and some evangelicals) who had yet to hear my presentation. Furthermore, the title reflects the hope and prayers of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Rome has been tilling this "common ground" with Islam for decades, as evidenced by the 1994 Vatican publication, Recognize the Spiritual Bonds Which Unite Us: 16 Years of Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Why, therefore, would anyone be upset by my simply repeating what the Roman Catholic Church very much desires?
Actually, the real controversy stems from confusion created by the Church of Rome herself. In her zeal to be the spiritual voice of the world's religions, she talks out of both sides of her ecumenical mouth. Regarding her relationship to Islam, not only has she made to those of the Muslim faith some theological overtures which contradict Christian orthodoxy, but even worse, there are ties between the two religions which go a lot deeper than most people realize. Let's first consider some commonalities between the two faiths.
Starting with the number of adherents, Catholicism and Islam each exceed one billion, nearly all of whom enter their respective faiths as infants. More than 16 million babies are baptized into the Roman Catholic Church each year. It's a family thing. My sisters and I were baptized as Catholics because our parents were Catholics, and they and their siblings were baptized into the Church because their parents were Catholics. That's the primary way the faith is propagated.
Practically speaking, although baptism is not part of Islam, all children born into a Muslim family are Muslims. Their official "confirmation" follows as soon as they are able to confess the shahada ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger"). This baby-oriented process for increasing their ranks has been a motivating factor in the Vatican/Saudi-sponsored lobby against UN endeavors to introduce contraception and other methods of population control, especially in third-world countries.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today; Catholicism is the largest religious body among those professing to be Christian. If the number of followers was a good measure for selecting a religion, then Islam and Catholicism would definitely be the way to go. However, the Bible has no such yardstick. Rather, Jesus said, "[W]ide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Mat 7:13-14).
Most people are aware of the veneration and even worship of Mary found among Roman Catholics, but not many know that much the same deference exists among Muslims. A chapter in the Qur'an is named after Mary ("Surah Maryam"). From the outskirts of Cairo to Bombay to Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, hundreds of thousands of the Islamic faith have congregated wherever processions carry her statues and where her apparitions are said to have appeared. She is esteemed above the most revered women of the Muslim faith, including Muhammad's two favorite wives, Khadija and Aisha, and his daughter Fatima. The hadith teaches that Muhammad selected Mary as his first wife upon entrance into Paradise (for more about Mary and Islam see "Mary Who?" in TBC Oct '00 ). One of the most popular Catholic apparitions of Mary is referred to as Our Lady of Fatima.
Catholic and Islamic prayers have many similarities. For the Muslim, praying to Allah five times a day is altogether an act of obedience, and the prayers are always repetitive. As one former Muslim puts it, "It's hardly intimate communication with Allah;...it's done more to escape the punishment due to those who neglect prayer." Most prayers prayed by Catholics are also rote and repetitive, saying the rosary being the best example. Repeating 16 "Our Father's" and 153 "Hail Mary's" is far from personal communication. Furthermore, when a Catholic goes to confession the priest assigns rosaries as severe punishment, or penance, for one's sins.
Prayer beads were a part of Islamic devotion to Allah long before an apparition of the Blessed Lady taught St. Dominic to pray the rosary beads in the thirteenth century. Prayer beads, by the way, are a stock item in ancient and modern paganism. On an ironic note, Catholic Church historians credit the prayers of members of the Confraternity of the Rosary for a major naval victory over the Turks, which "saved Europe from the Mohammedan peril."
Catholics and Muslims regard pilgrimages as a means of obtaining favor from God. The hadj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is a required (one-time) journey to Mecca. For Catholics, pilgrimages historically have been acts of religious purification, often induced by the promise of indulgences. Multi-millions of Catholics travel yearly to hundreds of shrines (nearly all dedicated to Mary) located throughout the world. The Crusades were indulgence-stimulated attempts to regain Jerusalem from the infidel Muslims in order to re-establish Catholic pilgrimages. Incidentally, the Church of Rome offered the crusaders full pardon from purgatory should they die trying to liberate the Holy Land. Similarly, Islam offers rewards in and assurance of Paradise to those who die in religious battles (jihad), including suicide bombings.
Roman Catholicism recognizes Allah as the God of the Bible. In 1985, Pope John Paul II declared to an enraptured audience of thousands of Muslim youths, "Christians and Muslims, we have many things in common as believers and as human beings....We believe in the same God, the one and only God, the living God...."
But how is that possible?
Historically, Allah was a pagan idol, supreme among many idols worshiped by Muhammad's Quraish tribe long before he was born. Will Durant in his classic, The Story of Civilization, writes,
Within the Ka'aba, in pre-Moslem days, were several idols representing gods. One was called Allah; three others were Allah's daughters, al-Uzza, al-Lat, and al-Manat. We may judge the antiquity of this Arab pantheon from the mention of Al-il-Lat (Al-Lat) by Herodotus [fifth century B.C. Greek historian] as a major Arabian deity. The Quraish paved the way for monotheism by worshiping Allah as chief god....
Archaeological evidence uncovered in Arabia is overwhelming in demonstrating that the dominant pre-Islamic religion was the worship of the moon god, Allah. Muhammad simply eliminated the other 300-some deities, including Allah's daughters, making Allah supreme while retaining many of the pagan rituals and symbols associated with him. For example, the crescent moon was the symbol of the moon god from the time of the Sumerians and the Babylonians through the time of Christ and right up until Muhammad's arrival. It's hardly a coincidence that Ramadan, the Muslim time of fasting, begins and ends at the time of the crescent moon. Nearly all of the moon god rituals and other idolatrous practices, including kissing the Black Stone, praying toward Mecca, running around the temple and between the two hills of Safa and Marwa, were pre-Islamic rituals.
Catholicism's zeal to relate to Islam makes one wonder how honest it is about its own perspective on God, based on the "Sacred Scripture." God is referred to as Yahweh or Jehovah about 9,000 times in the Bible. Never is He thus referred to in the Qur'an. He reveals himself in the Scriptures as "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob/Israel." He is the Father of the Jews, "the God of Israel." In the Qur'an, Allah never refers to himself that way. God calls the Jews His "chosen people." He gave them the land of Israel as a heritage "forever": "And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children for ever" (Eze 37:25). God's covenant is with Isaac (Gen 17: 19-21), while Muslims believe Allah's covenant is with Ishmael.
Allah has a completely different attitude toward the Jews than does the God of the Bible. Allah commands his followers to "Take not the Jews...for friends" (Sura 5:51). While the Jews are referred to in the Qur'an as "the people of the book" (i.e., the Bible), if they refuse to convert to Islam they must pay a tribute tax to their overlords and become subservient to them: "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (Sura 9:29). According to the hadith, which most Muslims regard to be nearly as authoritative as the Qur'an, Muhammad is quoted as saying, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them." Again, the hadith says that, related to the Day of Judgment, Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him." Catholicism has its own grievous and well-documented history of slaughtering the Jews.
Further comparisons between Jehovah and Allah demonstrate clearly that they cannot be one and the same. Jehovah has a Son: "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (1 Jn 4:14). Allah has no son: "And say: Praise be to Allah, Who hath not taken unto Himself a son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty..." (Sura 17:111); "Allah hath not chosen any son, nor is there any God along with him" (Sura 23:91). Whereas God the Father declared from heaven concerning Jesus, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Mat 3:17), Allah of the Qur'an condemns such a belief: "...the Christians say: Messiah is the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouths. They imitate the saying of the disbelievers of old. Allah's Curse be on them, how they are deluded away from the truth!" (Sura 9:30 - The Holy Qur'an www.orst.edu/groups/msa/index.phpl).
While there are both clear and critical differences between the biblical God and Allah, nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church accepts them as one and the same God. The following quote is from Vatican II:
The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God's plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own.
Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly evoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting (Nostra Aetate, Vatican II).
Consider carefully the above quote (taken from what the Roman Catholic Church claims is an infallible council) and you will realize what truly binds Catholicism and Islam together: They both have a Jesus who cannot save their souls. The Qur'an teaches that Jesus did not die on the cross: "And because of [the Jews] saying, We slew the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger—They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain" (Sura 4:157). Vatican II may give Muslims credit for "venerating" Jesus, but in fact, it's a bogus Jesus. Sadly, Catholicism also has a false Christ. It teaches that His death on the cross was not sufficient for our salvation. Not only must His sacrifice (which, according to the Scriptures, was offered only once to take away our sins completely [Heb 9:28]) be "re-presented" as a daily sacrifice for sins on altars around the world, but Catholics must expiate their own sins through sufferings here on earth and in purgatory.
Finally, Vatican II spells out clearly what Islam and Catholicism regard as their hope for salvation: "...they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting." This is works salvation. In Islam, a person is accountable for every thought, word, and deed. His or her life is to be lived according to what is pleasing to Allah as found in the Qur'an and the hadith. In addition, there is shari'a, which is the body of rules that attempts to cover the totality of Islamic religious, political, social and domestic life. Breaking such laws involves various forms of temporal punishment. At the Last Judgment Allah will determine one's eternal destiny as He places one's good and evil works on the divine scale: "Then those whose scales are heavy [with good deeds], they are the successful. And those whose scales are light are those who lose their souls, in hell abiding" (Sura 23:102,103). The hadith vividly describes the tortures of hell.
A friend of mine, James McCarthy, produced a video titled Catholicism: Crisis of Faith in which he interviews about a dozen people leaving Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He simply asks them on what basis they expect to get to heaven. Only one made any reference to Jesus. The overwhelming response was that they felt they were pretty good people, and were fairly confident that their good deeds outweighed their bad ones. Although the Catholic Church states that it is only by God's grace that one can enter heaven, it becomes very clear that what is meant is that grace is required to enable one to do the works which qualify one for heaven. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, they "obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ" (par 1821) and they "can merit for [them]selves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life" (par 2027).
Pope John Paul II addressed a Catholic community in Turkey with these words: "I wonder if it is now urgent, precisely today when Christians and Muslims have entered a new period of history, to recognize and develop the spiritual bonds that unite us." No! What is "urgent" is that Catholics and Muslims be set free from the spiritual bondage of attempting to qualify for heaven by their good deeds. Pray that their hearts would be open to receive the gift of eternal life (Rom 6:23). TBC
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
