GIVE US BARABBAS! American Christianity’s Suicidal Embrace Of Islam
This one is going to piss some people off. (Hope so, or I haven’t done my job.) I firmly believe we have reached a tipping point in our nation’s relationship with God. We have reached the place where the attitude of our nation’s leaders toward Islam and our relationship with the God of Israel are in complete conflict. I wish to show how this attitude is not coming only from our government, but also what the consequences of allowing such an attitude to infiltrate Christianity will be.
Before going into specific scriptural references to back up this point, I want to pose a question, and/or offer an example of this conflict. Why does Obama always refer to ISIS as ISIL?
While we know that ISIS refers to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIL is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Historically, the Levant refers to the lands surrounding the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. These include Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, and according to some scholars, Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and Turkey. The word Levant is an old Italian commercial maritime phrase, and didn’t come into common use until the 15th century.
So, when Obama uses the phrase ISIL, he’s doing two things: 1.) His administration has wanted to stay out of the Syrian conflict, so he’s not recognizing the ISIS incursion there; and 2.) he’s purposely not recognizing Israel. Some scholars do not include modern day Israel in the Levant region. Some do. Obama has chosen not to.
Okay, so we have a President of the United States going out of his way to publicly ignore Israel at every opportunity. That in itself is unprecedented.
Anyone who even vaguely studied The Bible knows that Israel has always had to fight for its very existence. That hasn’t changed since Moses lead the twelve tribes out of Egypt.
With the founding of Islam in the 7th century, things got even worse for Israel. The Quran and the Hadith (a collection of the sayings of Muhammad, and reports of his life) together contain 109 verses that talk of killing non-Muslims who refuse to convert. Jews are particularly singled out.
In Tabar 7:97 (from the Hadith) –“Kill any Jew who falls under your power.” (This is in reference to the Jewish poet Ashraf for insulting Islam.)
In Bukhar 52:177 (Hadith) –“Allah’s apostle said, ‘The hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews’, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, ‘O Moslem! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him’.”
A little more generalized is this reference to Jews and Christians: (Quran 9:29) “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and his messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of truth (even if they are People of the Book), until they pay the jizya [tax] with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” (People of the Book is a reference to Jews and Christians.)
This is where “peace through submission” comes from. This verse was one of Muhammad’s final “revelations” and set in motion a military expansion that conquered two thirds of the Christian lands at that time, within the span of 100 years.
To go along with these verses, here’s this bit of blasphemy showing Islam’s true intentions toward Jews and Christians. (Quran 9:30) “And the Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of Allah’; and the Christians say: ‘The Messiah is the son of Allah.’; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away.”
During World War 2, there is an extremely interesting intersection between Islam and Israel. I thought I was pretty well versed on World War 2 history, but this was new to me.
There were SS units made up of Muslim troops that actively fought with the German armed forces. These were organized by the Muslim religious r, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. The best known of these units was the Waffen SS13th Mountain Division, made up mostly of Bosnian Muslims. In all, over 100,000 Bosnian Muslims served in the SS. There were Muslims from the Soviet Union, North Africa, Iran and Kosovo who also served in various SS units.
Nazi Germany’s largest economic trading partner before and during the war was Iran. When Reza Shah Pahlavi came to power in 1925, he developed a form of anti-Semitism similar to the Nazi’s Aryan supremacy belief. By 1933 when Hitler came to power, formal ties between the two nations were established.
Forgive the long history lesson here, but I wanted to establish the foundation for what I want to say in part two of this article next week. Spoiler alert: I’ve reached the point where I believe that any Christian who shows even tacit support of Islam is going against Israel, Jehovah God of the Bible, and probably without knowing it, is in danger of renouncing Christianity.
Think on this: Islam’s “peace through submission” has another name…. surrender.
photo credit: Massive DC Rally And March For Gaza 17 via photopin (license); Steve Melkisethian
Are American Christians supporting Islam over Christ?