Christian Love and the Refugee Problem

What is Christian love? Answering this question is essential to how we answer the question regarding our response to Islamic refugees. For one thing, according to Jesus, it is essential to forgive as we have been forgiven:

• For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14-15)

Forgiveness is not optional. It is integral to the Gospel itself. Love too isn’t an option:

• Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. (Romans 12:14-19)

Consequently, on a personal level, we must be loving and forgiving even to members of ISIS. We cannot take revenge but must leave matters of justice to God and to the authorities He has ordained. This is how we “leave room for God’s wrath” and how He avenges:

• Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:1-4)

It is God and His officials who punish, not us! Instead, this division of responsibilities frees us up to love, while we respect and uphold the system of justice that He has instituted.

God embodies both justice and love. Therefore, we cannot reject one in favor of the other. Besides, if we are assured that He will bring justice, we need not take the law into our own hands. Consequently, love and justice go together, like the two wings of a plane.

Although we are not the agents of justice, we have to affirm God priorities and uphold justice. Therefore, by approving of bringing jihadists into the country, we demonstrate an unbiblical disdain for justice and an aberrant understanding of love, one that rejects the need for justice, order, and social peace. It would be no different than springing murderers and rapists lose from prison, arguing that this is the duty of Christian love. Instead, this love upholds justice and seeks to protect the innocent against avowed murderers.

What does love look like? If your wife is raped, love does not take personal revenge but refers the matter to God’s authorities. And we must! Would it be right to subject our neighbor to this rapist? Of course not! Love would require that we bring criminal charges to stop the rampage. To not bring charges against the offender would bring disrepute upon Christianity and call into question our wisdom. Likewise, would it be wise to unleash jihadists on the innocent? Of course not!

Meanwhile, pray for the perpetrator and do good as you seek justice through the ordained channels. We support those who bring relief to refugees but not those who would unleash destruction by indiscriminately bringing them into our neighborhoods.

Also, the church should proactively love those Muslims who are already here. Why? Because such love in no way further endangers our neighbor! Instead, it works to bring repentance.

While we always forgive wrongdoing within our hearts, complete forgiveness and restoration can only be achieved through confession and repentance:

• So watch yourselves. "If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him." (Luke 17:3-4)

According to Jesus, complete forgiveness and restoration require repentance. We cannot disdain matters of righteousness and justice for the sake of love. Nor can we disdain love because of an overriding concern for justice. Instead, these are complementary rather than oppositional. Excommunication (judgment) might be required to bring about true restoration and love, as Paul suggested:

• …Some have rejected these [faith and obedience] and so have shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme. (1 Timothy 1:19-20)

Excommunication can be an expression of love. Paul advocated this form of tough love in hope of restoring blasphemers. Love is not a matter of giving everyone what they want but what they need.

What does the Muslim refugee need? How do we best serve them? At the very least, the Muslim refugee should be required to renounce those Koranic passages about jihad, sharia law, wife-beating, and rape. Perhaps the most loving thing to do is to clearly demonstrate that many of the tenants of their religion will not be tolerated.

Meanwhile, those who are left of center are appalled at the suggestion of requiring the refugee to disavow murder and rape. Instead, they enable them to continue in moral and spiritual bondage.

In contrast, Christian love is not just a matter of soft-fuzzies – those things that feel good and buy a temporary peace. This love also requires firmness and discipline. God chastens those He loves:

• Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:7-11) 

Christian love also requires correction, which is often painful. While Jesus reserved His harshest comments for the religious leadership – they required harsher words – He issued far more words of censure than praise for His own disciples:

• Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16:23) 

Because Jesus loved, He also warned about the impact of false teachings:

• "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matthew 7:15-16; Mark 8:15; Rev. 2:14-15; 1 John 4:1)

We too must denounce dangerous false teachings. What did Christian love require during the rise of Hitler? At the least, warning! Had the West powers intervened earlier, they could have stopped the coming Nazi horrors and the destruction of many millions. Had the Church exposed Hitler’s false conception of Christianity, Hitler might have even been stopped earlier.

However, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that those Christians who did oppose Hitler would be labeled as “Communists,” “bigots,” “fundamentalists,” and “haters of the German people.”

I too am called a “hater” and a “bigot” because I oppose Islamic emigration to the West. However, what can we say to a young man who wants to join ISIS and defends his decision by citing verses of the Koran? Wouldn’t we then have to challenge the Koran? Wouldn’t Christian love require that we attempt to rescue the sinner from sin?

At this point, many would call me an “Islamophobe,” saying:

• You cannot criticize an entire religion because of some extremists. Muslims interpret the Koran differently, and you are no Islamic scholar! 

However, if I am to love this young man, I must address his Koranic rationale for wanting to join ISIS, despite the predictable leftist charges of “bigot.” However, Jesus, the epitome of love, was called worse.

What would be the influence of receiving many thousands of additional Islamic refugees? What would Christian love require of us? In the past, refugees to the USA were grateful to their host country and wanted to repay the debt. However, Muslims instead want to replace our government with sharia law, which subjugates all non-Muslims and condemns any criticism of Islam. There is no gratefulness, only demands!

If we have any doubts about this inevitable outcome, we need look no further than Western Europe, where Islam has already created their own “states” – no-go-zones - within their host countries. Meanwhile, rapes of the filthy infidels has exploded. What is our responsibility? To defend the innocent!

Both history and Koran testify that the Muslim rarely adopt our system of justice. In every country where there is a sizable Islamic minority, there is also a demand for Islamic law, often accompanied by violence.

If Christian love would have required the Church to warn against Hitler, it also requires us to warn against Islam. Why? It is Islam’s intention to dominate the world, violently if need be. The Koran reads:

• “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion [Islam] reigns supreme, (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’.” (Surah 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” (Surah 8:12, cp. 8:60).

Well, aren’t there also good Muslims? There are some, but can we identify them? Not without great difficulty! In light of their doctrine of Taqiyya, the Muslim is authorized to deceive the infidel, even with false demonstrations of friendship, in order to promote Islam.

What then does the West do with the many needy Muslim refugees crashing the boarders of Europe? Resist the influx! They are passing through the Islamic nation of Turkey. Why doesn’t Turkey grant them safe haven? Many are offering Turkey assistance. Why not Iran or Saudi Arabia? Why should this fall upon the West, which is held in the highest contempt by the Muslim?

Meanwhile, the West is turning away those most in need of a refuge, those who would be most grateful for one – the Christians! Middle East scholar, Raymond Ibrahim, writes about this horrible irony:

• Why are Christian minorities, who are the most to suffer from the chaos engulfing the Middle East, the least wanted in the United States?

• To the Obama administration, the only "real" refugees are those made so due to the actions of Bashar Assad. As for those who are being raped, slaughtered, and enslaved based on their religious identity by so-called "rebel" forces fighting Assad -- including the Islamic State -- their status as refugees is evidently considered dubious at best.

• The Obama administration never seems to miss an opportunity to display its bias for Muslims against Christians. The State Dept. is in the habit of inviting scores of Muslim representatives but denying visas to solitary Christian representatives. While habitually ignoring the slaughter of Christians at hands of Boko Haram, the administration called for the "human rights" of the jihadi murderers.

• In Islamic usage, the "cause of Allah" is synonymous with jihad to empower and enforce Allah's laws on earth, or Sharia. In this context, immigrating into Western lands is a win-win for Muslims: if they die in the process somehow, paradise is theirs; if they do not, the "locations and abundance" of the West are theirs.

• Muslims all around the U.S. are supporting the Islamic State and Muslim clerics are relying on the refugee influx to conquer Western nations, in the Islamic tradition of Hijrah, or jihad by emigration. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6564/obama-christian-refugees

What does Christian love require? How are we to love our neighbor? By bringing assassins or by bringing in those who will love their neighbor? Love should not enable violence and insurrection. Rather, love should favor the protection of the innocent.

What Muslims Want

We wonder weather the majority of  Muslims will ever adopt Western ways. Well, they haven't and there are good reasons for this. For one thing, they want to restore the Caliphate:

• Polling data released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview surveyof 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007—1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians—reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a “fringe minority”-desired this outcome (i.e., “To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate”), including 49% of “moderate” Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition “To require a strict application of Sharia law in every Islamic country.”

This "strict application of Sharia law" is utterly incompatible with Western liberties and protections. Sharia subjugates everyone else, regardless of religion to Islamic law. Forget about equality or freedom of religion!







And how about the Muslims the USA had liberated from Sadam Hussein and the Taliban? Would they also seek to subjugate their liberators?

•  The Pew Research Forum report, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” released April 30, 2013, confirms the broad appeal of the totalitarian Sharia, across Islamdom. Specifically, 91% of Iraqi Muslims and 99% of Afghan Muslims supported making Sharia the official state law of their respective societies, after both nations were liberated at the expense of much priceless U.S. blood, and great U.S. treasure.

 These findings suggest that we haven't done our homework - that we have failed to understand Islam.

Islam is Proving Western Multiculturalism Wrong

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 (13^th 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 11^th 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)