A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION OF THE RECEPTION OF REFUGEES

There are numerous admonitions to love the alien, stranger, or foreigner:

·       “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:33-34)

·       “And I [Moses] charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him. You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.’” (Deuteronomy 1:16-17)

·       “He [God] executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19)

These teachings were even reiterated by Jesus (Matthew 25:41-43). However, justice had to be administered justly, according to the Law God gave to Moses:

·       If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” (Exodus 12:48-49; Numbers 9:14)

The “one law” of this nation is based upon the Constitution. Yes, we are to love our neighbor, but what if the refugees insist on living under their own law – the sharia – and then strive to impose it on the rest of the nation, as Islam seeks to do. This is something that would not have been tolerated in ancient Israel. Perhaps, it shouldn’t be here.

Ibn Khaldun, a 15th century Tunisian historian, has spoken for the majority of the Islamic world by writing:

·       In the Muslim community, the holy war 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, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.

This teaching is derived straight from the Holy Koran:

·       “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme, (Koran Surah 8:37)

·       “When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners [like Jesus] to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Koran 4:5)

·       “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Koran 8:12, cp. 8:60).

Do most Muslims believe this way? Evidently! Surveys have demonstrated that the majority of Muslims seek a worldwide Caliphate, which will place everyone under Islamic dominion.

It is clear that true Muslims do not respect our Constitution and the laws it embodies. They believe that they can only live under sharia. Why then do they come here? They might truly be oppressed, but they also believe in the Koran’s teachings about immigration Jihad:

·       Koran Surah 4:100-01: He who forsakes his home in the cause of Allah [Jihad], finds in the earth Many a refuge, wide and spacious: Should he die as a refugee from home for Allah and His Messenger, His reward becomes due and sure with Allah. And Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. When ye travel through the earth, there is no blame on you if ye shorten your prayers, for fear the Unbelievers May attack you: For the Unbelievers are unto you open enemies.

Believing Muslims regard all “unbelievers” as “open enemies.” Therefore, they will not be grateful for the shelter and hospitality that they are now receiving in the West. Instead, they will conjure up all forms of distortions to convince themselves that we are evil.

They also deceptively use “friendship” in order to advance the Islamic agenda. Meanwhile, a believing Muslim is not allowed to truly befriend the non-Muslim:

·       Koran 3:27 Let not the believers take the disbelievers for friends rather than believers. And whoever does this has no connection with Allah unless it is done [deceptively] to guard yourselves against them, guarding carefully.

·       Koran 5:54 O ye who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other.

How do Muslims interpret these verses? This comes from the following fatwa which quotes the Koran in support:

·       “Undoubtedly the Muslim is obliged to hate the enemies of Allaah and to disavow them, because this is the way of the Messengers and their followers. Allaah says:

o   [60:4] “Indeed there has been an excellent example for you in Ibraaheem (Abraham) and those with him, when they said to their people: ‘Verily, we are free from you and whatever you worship besides Allaah, we have rejected you, and there has started between us and you, hostility and hatred for ever until you believe in Allaah Alone’”

·       “Based on this, it is not permissible for a Muslim to feel any love in his heart towards the enemies of Allaah who are in fact his enemies too. Allaah says”:

o   [60:1] “O you who believe! Take not My enemies and your enemies (i.e. disbelievers and polytheists) as friends, showing affection towards them, while they have disbelieved in what has come to you of the truth”

·       “But if a Muslim treats them with kindness and gentleness in the hope that they will become Muslim and will believe, there is nothing wrong with that, because it comes under the heading of opening their hearts to Islam. But if he despairs of them becoming Muslim, then he should treat them accordingly.”

Consequently, in view of Islamic deception, there are no reliable means to vet Muslim immigrants.

What does it mean to treat the non-Muslim “accordingly?” The many Koranic teachings on Jihad tell us:

·       Koran 2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing...but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun(the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)" (Translation is from the Noble Quran)

·       2:216 - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."

·       3:151 - "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions [like Jesus] with Allah, for which He had sent no authority".

·       4:89 - "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."

·       8:12 - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them."

·       9:5 - "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them."

These are not verses about self-defense, but about worldwide conquest. What about the “peaceful” Koranic verses. As any Islamic scholar knows, those verses were uttered before Muhammad had an army. In his earlier years, the only way to win converts was through preaching a message of peace and acceptance. However, these verses have been replaced (the doctrine of “abrogation”) by later verses, according to the Koran:

·       2.106  “If we abrogate any verse or cause it to be forgotten, We will replace it by a better one or one similar.” [also 13.39]

In view of the threat and reality of Islam, are Christians mandated to be concerned? God is concerned. He cares deeply about justice and the protection of the innocent, so much so that He instituted a criminal justice system in the hearts of humanity:

·       Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. (Romans 13:1-5)

What does it mean for us to “be in subjection?” For one thing, we must uphold justice and the protection of the innocent. For this reason, we do not empty the prisons because people argue that “God is love.” This would not be an act of love towards the innocent, but an act of hatred.

Because we “love our neighbor as ourself,” we are required to seek their protection and welfare. We, therefore, do not want to see released criminals hunting them down or turning them into sex-slaves. This would not serve their welfare.

Therefore, to love requires us to judge. (Of course, we must first judge ourselves, as Jesus had taught us – Matthew 7:1-5). It is to make critical decisions about who we incarcerate, who we release, and who we allow into our house and our country.

9/11, PARIS, BRUSSELS….

Amanda Marcotte, a politics writer for Salon, wrote, in the wake of the Brussels attacks:

• But one thing is absolutely certain: It is a good thing that we in the United States have a grown-up in charge. http://www.salon.com/2016/03/22/we_need_adult_leaders_brussels_attack_is_a_sobering_reminder_of_how_important_it_is_to_have_grown_ups_in_office_not_cruz_or_trump/

It seems like Marcotte has forgotten that it was this same “grown-up” who had made it possible for ISIS to secure droves of American weaponry, destabilized Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, making them breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists and has done almost nothing to stop their genocidal attacks on non-Muslims in Africa and the Middle East.

Marcotte’s analysis is also “grown-up”:

• These situations are too complex to be dumbed down to a bunch of bigotry towards Muslims, the vast majority of whom have no relationship to terrorism. This is an election year, and these attacks should serve as important reminder of how critical it is to have a grown-up in the Oval Office.

However, Brussels, Paris, 9/11, and the San Bernadino attacks weren’t carried out by the Amish, the Buddhists, or the New Agers. They have been consistently carried out by the likes of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, ISIS, Boko Haram, Islamic Jihad, and countless other Islamic groups, all screaming “Allah Akbar” and crediting the Koran for their inspiration. Their youthful volunteers are attracted because they understandably see in these groups the true teachings of Muhammad, and they are right. Here are just several of the hundreds of verses on violent Jihad:

• Quran (2:216) - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."

• Quran (3:151) - "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah [like Trinitarians], for which He had sent no authority".

• Quran (4:74) - "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward." 

• Quran (4:89) - "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."

Evidently, Marcotte is not very disturbed by these horrific attacks:

• Brussels is still there and still beautiful. Brussels and Paris survived the frigging Nazis, but Trump would have you believe that these cities will be torn to the ground because of attacks orchestrated by scattered, stateless terrorist organizations.

I’m sure that the families of the deceased do not feel like Marcotte. They are perturbed by those who fail to understand their loss and what the future holds in light of the growing number of Muslims who want to incorporate their nation into a Caliphate. In short, they are not “grown-up.”

Marcotte is convinced that the real Islam has little to do with the hundreds of jihadic Koranic verses:

• What he refuses to do, however, is conflate the beliefs of a relatively small number of terrorists with Islam as a whole, because, unlike Cruz or Trump, Obama is a grown-up.

According to Marcotte, the real Islam is “grown-up” and grownups do not try to take over the world through sex-slavery and violent Jihad. However, if she could point to one sizeable Islamic minority that is not trying to impose sharia or start a violent separatistic movement, she might have a point. If she name one Islamic country where non-Muslims live as equals with Muslims, there might be a morsel of hope for a peaceful resolution. However, Marcotte is such a “grown-up” that she need not bother herself with such trifling issues.

Bobby Jindal and Progressive Put-Downs

 

  The Progressives are in battle-mode over Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s statements about no-go zones in Western Europe:

• “If we’re not careful the same no-go zones you’re seeing now in Europe will come to America,” Jindal said. “What is not acceptable and what you’ve seen in Europe and this is a very serious particular threat, you’ve got those that do want to try to impose a form of sharia law. And sharia law is antithetical, mutually exclusive of freedom, in treating women as first-class citizens, it is antithetical to the values we hold dear. And you see, third, fourth generation immigrants in the U.K., France, in other places in Europe that don’t consider themselves part of those societies and that’s very dangerous.”

If Islamic no-go zones governed by a sharia beachhead aren’t a reality, then the Progressives have a case that Jindal is just stirring up needless panic. However, if a bubonic plague is stalking the West, we want to know about it, even if it does make us uneasy.

Daniel Pipes, a former official in the U.S. departments of State and Defense and teacher at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the U.S. Naval War College, and Pepperdine University.  is the author of 12 books on the Middle East, Islam, and other political topics. For a long time, he had denied the existence of no-zones. However, he has recently modified his views. While he still maintains that there are no absolute no-go zones where the police and military are unable to enter:

• Governments often choose not to impose their will on Muslim-majority areas, allowing them considerable autonomy, including in some cases the Shariah courts that Emerson mentioned. Alcohol and pork are effectively banned in these districts, polygamy and burqas commonplace, police enter only warily and in force, and Muslims get away with offences illegal for the rest of the population. 

• The Rotherham, England, child sex scandal offers a powerful example. An official inquiry found that for 16 years, 1997-2013, a ring of Muslim men sexually exploited — through abduction, rape, gang rape, trafficking, prostitution, torture — at least 1,400 non-Muslim girls as young as 11. The police received voluminous complaints from the girls' parents but did nothing; they could have acted, but chose not to.

• According to the inquiry, "the police gave no priority to CSE [child sexual exploitation], regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime." Even more alarming, in some cases, "Fathers tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being abused, only to be arrested themselves when police were called to the scene."

• Worse, the girls "were arrested for offences such as breach of the peace or being drunk and disorderly, with no action taken against the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault against children."

• Another example, also British, was the so-called Operation Trojan Horse that flourished from 2007 until 2014, in which (again, according to an official inquiry), a group of school functionaries developed "a strategy to take over a number of schools in Birmingham and run them on strict Islamic principles."

This problem is compounded by the jihadic intentions of the Islamic writings, which require world domination. Ibn Khaldun, the 15th century Tunisian historian, states:

• In the Muslim community, the holy war 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, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.

Here’s some of the Koranic basis for this:

• “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme, (Koran 8:37)

• “When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners [like Jesus] to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Koran 4:5)

• “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Koran 8:12, cp. 8:60).

Perhaps Jindal has a good reason for his concerns. Add to this the many confessions of ex-Muslims about a program of internal Jihad to overthrow the West, and we have the beginnings of a real plague.

Perhaps also the Progressives want to believe, against rationality, that if we would just be kind, gentle, and understanding enough, our Islamic populations will gladly reciprocate. While this strategy has proved successful with some, a Hitler will not fall into the group. Neither will a Mohammad!

ISIS, Transcendence, and the Failures of the West and the Church

It might not simply be a taste for blood and sex that draws thousands of Westerners to ISIS. It might also be that ISIS offers them a commodity that has become increasingly  discredited in the West – transcendence and a higher reason for being.

In support of this point, writer Janie B. Cheaney offers these affirmative quotations to explain the attractiveness of ISIS:

• “[A] yearning for a transcendent cause that liberal society can have trouble satisfying,” wrote Ross Douthat in The New York Times.

• “His discontent … is driven by ideas, and by the human needs those ideas seek to satiate,” observed Charlie Cooke at National Review.

• “The Islamic State not only has the romance of revolution and the promise of action and power, but also religious and apocalyptic appeal,” concluded Michael Brendan Dougherty of The Week.

• “Because it gives meaning to life,” Michael Ledeen summed up on his own blog. (World Mag, Oct. 4, 2014, 22) 

According to the videos aired in the West, these jihadists seem to celebrate the fact that they are faithfully serving Allah by doing the “right thing.”

Several years ago, I attended an interfaith conference at a local liberal church, where I was surprised to see a 15 year-old waiting expectantly for the conference to begin. Intrigued, I asked him why he had come:

• I want to hear what the Imam says.

I asked him, “Why the Imam? Why not also the Rabbi and the Pastor?” His answer saddened me:

• I have some Muslims in my family. They take their faith seriously.

What an indictment of the church! What has happened to us that we reflect our Lord so lamely?

However, this is also an indictment of Western society. Cheaney puts it this way:

• The West has spent the last two centuries chasing true belief from the main stage of public life. Pluralism, our highest communal value, requires no one to believe anything that would render anyone else’s beliefs invalid.

It is worse than that! Pluralism – also called “religious pluralism” or “multi-culturalism” – claims that, since everything is relative and there is no religious or cultural truth – we cannot say that one religion or culture is more true than another. In fact, judging one religion better than another is now labelled “arrogant,” “imperialistic” and “chauvinistic,” especially in Western media and the university. No one wants to be labeled a “narrow-minded bigot,” and so Christians have been marginalized, silenced, and made to feel ashamed of their faith.

However, by purging such religious truth claims from educated society, the West has paid a great price. Not only can it not speak convincingly against ISIS, it can no longer hold up a better portrait of transcendence for our hungry and deluded youth. Cheaney therefore writes:

• The poverty of pluralism becomes apparent when rootless young Muslim men find transcendent meaning in slaughtering infidels… It fulfills a need that won’t be satisfied at any bargaining table. It will have to be fought and defeated.

However, how can we fight against this ideology if we do not have one to hold up in place of Jihad. Cheaney therefore observes:

• But faith can only be fought with faith, and Western culture has undercut itself… It picked the juicy low-hanging fruits of Christianity [like love, justice, equality, and forgiveness] while disregarding the Son who shines on them, valued the comforts but discounted the Comforter.

Oddly, this is something that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ex-Muslim, ex-Dutch Parliamentarian, and atheist, seems to understand better than most Western intellectuals and even Christians:

• The Christianity of love and tolerance remains one of the West’s most powerful antidotes to the Islam of hate and intolerance. Ex-Muslims find Jesus Christ to be a more attractive and humane figure than Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

• I have a theory that most Muslims are in search of a redemptive God. They believe that there is a higher power and that this higher power is the provider of morality, giving them a compass to help them distinguish between good and bad.  Many Muslims are seeking a God or a concept of God that in my view meets the description of the Christian God.  Instead they find Allah. They find Allah mainly because many are born in Muslim families where Allah has been the reigning deity for generations… (p. 239)

• The Christian leaders now wasting their time and resources on a futile exercise of interfaith dialogue with the self-appointed leaders of Islam should redirect their efforts to converting as many Muslims as possible to Christianity, introducing them to a God who rejects Holy War and who has sent his son to die for all sinners out of a love for mankind… The Vatican and all the established Protestant churches of northern Europe believed naively that interfaith dialogue would magically bring Islam into the fold of Western civilization. It has not happened, and it will not happen…. To help ground these people in Western society, the West needs the Christian churches to get active again in propagating their faith. It needs Christian schools, Christian volunteers, the Christian message… The churches should do all in their power to win this battle for the souls of humans in search of a compassionate God, who now find that a fierce Allah is closer to hand. (Nomad, pp. 247, 249, 250, 251)

We all need the Transcendent. Since the West marginalizes it, the pilgrim will just go elsewhere, even in the gutter, to find it. Oddly, it is an atheist that sees this more clearly than the rest of us.