Scholar and writer, Raymond Ibrahim, has written persuasively
about the degradation and slaughter of Christians under Islam:
·
From one end of the Muslim world to another,
Christians are suffering under the return of Sharia…Whenever Muslims are in
power or getting more power, churches are outlawed, burned or bombed, while
Bibles and crucifixes are confiscated and destroyed. Freedom of speech – to speak
positively of Christianity or critically of Islam – is denied, often on pain of
death…Christian women and children are routinely abducted, raped, and forced to
convert to Islam. (Crucified Again,
8)
Why is this happening? Ibrahim writes:
·
Islamic doctrines unequivocally create hostility
toward Christians… Muslims around the world are quite deliberately enforcing
the provisions of Sharia law against Christian worship, Christian evangelism,
freedom of speech, and even freedom of conscience. But Christians also suffer
violence at the hands of Muslims. (157)
Laws regarding apostasy from Islam are one example. Ibrahim
cites Samuel M. Zwemer’s 1916 book Law of
Apostasy in Islam:
·
The law of apostasy… is not a dead letter. It is
known to all Muslims from their youth up, if not in its detail of legal
penalties, yet in its power to producing an attitude bitterly hostile toward
converts to Christianity. What else could such a law produce except a fanatic
attitude toward all who are not Muslims? The more Muhammadan a country or a
community, the more does it despise the Christian. (159)
This hatred has been embodied by Islamic rituals. Ibrahim
cites Travels in Arabian Deserta by
C.M. Doughty, a British writer:
·
Arabia’s Muslims would, circumambulating around
the Ka’ba, supplicate Allah to “curse and destroy” the Jews and Christians.
Ibrahim, citing a present-day chant, argues that this
practice remains unchanged:
·
O Allah vanquish the unjust Christians and the
criminal Jews, the unjust traitors; strike them with your wrath; drape them
with endless despair, unrelenting pain and unremitting ailment; fill their
lives with sorrow and pain and end their lives in humiliation and oppression;
inflict your tortures and punishments upon the unjust Christians and criminal
Jews. This is our supplication, Allah; grant us our request! (159)
It is not surprising that, all around the world, Muslims act
in accordance with these sentiments. Ibrahim quotes Marco Polo (13th
century) to demonstrate that these same sentiments have always been part of Islam, pre-dating colonialism:
·
“The inhabitants [of the Arabian Peninsula] are
all Saracens [Muslims], and utterly detest the Christians.”
These sentiments are also expressed in Islamic education.
Ibrahim cites Arabist E.W. Lane who traveled Egypt in 1820:
·
“Children in Egypt are often taught, at school,
a regular set of curses to denounce upon the persons and property of
Christians, Jews, and all other unbelievers in the religion of Muhammad.” (161)
Ibrahim shows that, even today, these beliefs and practices
are promoted in Islamic textbooks:
·
In October 2012, the Daily Beast reported how
the Saudi education system continues to indoctrinate children with hatred and
incitement, especially against Christians and Jews, despite Saudi promises to
reform their textbooks. For example, a ninth-grade textbook published by the
Ministry of Education states, “The Jews and the Christians are enemies of the
believers, and they cannot approve of Muslims.” An eighth-grade textbook says, “The
Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of
the communion of Jesus, the Christians.”… Islam’s clerics remind authorities
that these are teachings of Islam and that to suppress them is to suppress
Islam – and to be declared apostate rulers. (162)
No wonder Saudis have done nothing about these textbooks. However, the same phenomenon is occurring
in this country among the “moderates.” Ibrahim writes:
·
Fox reported that “one such school outside Washington,
D.C., uses textbooks teaching 11th graders that ‘the day of Judgment
can’t come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts
everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.’ … Americans
generally assume Islamic hate teaching resided ‘out there’ – in Cairo or
Riyadh. (162)
It is therefore no surprise that the level of violence
against Jews is skyrocketing in the West, especially around sizable Islamic
populations. It is also no surprise that even the educated Muslim promotes
terrorism.
Several years ago, mainstream media portrayed local
opposition to the building of a mosque in Tennessee as bigots. The media also
presented hand-picked gentle peace-loving Muslims as representatives of the embattled
Islamic community. However, in April, a very
different side of this mosque was
revealed:
·
Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi, a Memphis Imam based in
Tennessee, preaches openly about what Islam truly is. He makes no bones about
thinking that anyone other than a Muslim doesn’t deserve anything and are less
than Muslims. In fact, part of Yasir Qadhi’s preaching includes rhetoric that
says non-Muslims lives are forfeit and their property is legal for Muslims to
take in jihad, (and this would include women as sex slaves) Recently Yasir
Qadhi said that “Jews and Christians filthy, their lives and property can be
taken in jihad by the Muslims.” Yasir
Qadhi is not only a Memphis Imam, but is also the Dean of Academic Affairs at
the Al-Maghrib Institute. He is a hafiz (has memorized the Qur’an) and he has
an M.A. in the Islamic Creed and a B.A. in Islamic Sciences from Islamic
University of Medina, as well as a master’s and a doctorate in Islamic Studies
from Yale.
According to Ibrahim, this is not an anomaly. Instead, he
argues that the more a Muslim becomes trained in Islamic writings, the more
radicalized they become. Pakistan is a country rich in Madrassas but poor in
tolerance for non-Muslims:
·
A November 2011 report from the U.S. Commission
of International Religious Freedom demonstrates that Pakistani school textbooks
promote intolerance for Christians, Hindus, and all non-Muslims, and that most
school teachers view non-Muslim minorities as “enemies of Islam”: “Religious
minorities are often portrayed as inferior or second-class citizens who have
been granted limited rights and privileges by generous Pakistani Muslims, for
which they should be grateful.” (163)
This second-class status characterizes non-Muslims in the entire Islamic world, even in those
countries that have secular constitutions. Ibrahim presents the case of Turkey:
·
In February 2012 the Turkish Association of
Protestant academics Churchs’ annual Report on Human Rights Violations noted, “Christians
in Turkey continue to suffer attacks from private citizens, discrimination by
lower-level government officials and vilification in both school textbooks and
news media.” … Despite promising to reform its school textbooks, Turkey’s [now
Islamic] Ministry of Education made no changes… “In fact, the negative and
slanderous portrayal of Assyrians [Christian] has increased.” (163)
This is not surprising. Not only are these negative
characterizations endemic to Islam’s holy books, but Islam will tolerate no
criticism or reform. Ibrahim cites the example of the Turkish genocide against
their Armenian Christians, which they still refuse to admit:
·
Most objective historians agree that about 1.5
million Christian Armenians were systematically slaughtered during World War I
in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by the Ottoman government. (164)
If these horrors are merely anomalies in the distant past,
and if Islam has genuinely confessed these as sins and has given evidence that
they have moved beyond this, then there would be little reason to harp on these
atrocities. However, denial reigns even in the West. Ibrahim writes:
·
While negative depictions of non-Muslims
proliferate in Islamic school textbooks, a whitewashed image of Islam
predominates in Western education, particularly in the United States. According
to a 2009 American Textbook Council report citing a number of popular textbooks
used by American junior and senior high school students, “key subjects like jihad,
Islamic law, [and] the status of women are whitewashed” because of political
correctness, or out of fear of Muslim activists. Discussing the strikes of
9/11, one textbook never mentions Islamic ideology, referring to the nineteen
al-Qaeda hijackers simply as “teams of terrorists.”… One seventh-grade American
textbook offers wishful thinking in place of facts: “Jihad represents the human
struggle to overcome difficulties.” (165)
A Western faith in multi-culturalism – that we can all be
friends if we just show respect to other cultures – has supplanted truth and
any pride in or promotion of Western traditions. According to many American
textbooks:
·
Islam ambiguously “spread” or was “brought” to
those [other countries]. This is from the same textbooks that allot whole
chapters to bemoaning the Crusades and portraying Christians as intolerant
fanatics (ignoring the fact that the Crusades were in response to jihadi
conquests of Christian lands and centuries-long persecution of Christians.)
(165)
Islam has a long, proven, and ubiquitous history of violence
and persecution. Ibrahim therefore concludes:
·
There is one urgent reason that the West in its
entirety… should take note of and respond to Muslim persecution of Christians: it is a reflection of what Islam has in
store for them. (245)
.JPG)
