Radical Christianity vs. Radical Islam

Finally, Bill Maher got something right. Following the Boston bombings, Maher responded to Brian Levy, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino (a great example of needed reforms in public higher education), “[T]here's only one faith, for example, that kills you or wants to kill you if you draw a bad cartoon of the prophet. There’s only one faith that kills you or wants to kill you if you renounce the faith.”

There you have it. Even a flaming atheist can recognize the difference between a religion of peace and one full of bloodlust. The Tsarnaevs are just the most recent example of the tragic bitter fruit produced by radical Islamists. To further Maher’s point, consider and contrast the efforts of radical Islamists with those of radical Christians.

Just what is a “radical Christian”? Some might call them (with apologies to DC Talk) “Jesus Freaks.” Examples are all around us and most are virtually unknown outside of their home towns (mainly because they don’t make the news by killing other people). They plant churches, feed the poor, heal the sick; they open orphanages and pregnancy resource centers; they visit prisoners and deliver the oppressed; in other words, they have sold themselves out to be the hands and feet of the One they worship.

Some popular examples would include men like the late Jim Elliot, who served and evangelized the Quechua Indians, even though it cost him his life. Countless Christians have forsaken the comforts of Western civilization to go and fulfill the call of Christ. In other words, Christianity exports its radicals to bring life and hope, while much of Islam does so to bring death and despair.

Radical Christian and Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller and his wife Linda started an organization “that has helped build or repair more than 600,000 houses and served more than 3 million people around the world.” The organization began in 1968, and the Fullers moved to Mbandaka, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1973 to spread their mission of affordable housing to developing countries.

Meanwhile, Muslims in Pakistan recently burned nearly 200 Christian homes over the alleged blasphemy against Muhammad by a Christian sanitation worker. Coptic Christians continue to suffer under the “reforms” taking place in Egypt. The Coptic minority have been murdered and seen their homes, businesses, and churches looted and burned.

Radical Christians build hospitals. Radical Muslims seek to fill them up. Christians have led the world in caring for the sick and dying among us. As Virginia Health Information notes, “Some of the earliest hospitals existed in ancient Rome in 100 BC as important centers for the emergency care of sick and wounded soldiers. With the spread of Christianity, hospitals grew as part of the church's mission and became part of the community as they tended to health care not only for soldiers but also for all who needed it.”

The first hospital in North America, the Hospital de Jesus Nazareno, was founded by Cortés. The first hospital in the U.S, Pennsylvania Hospital, was founded by a Quaker, Dr. Thomas Bond (with the aid of Benjamin Franklin). The Catholic Church alone operates over 1,100 hospitals and long-term health care facilities in the U.S. What’s more, a 2010 study revealed that Christian hospitals in the U.S. outperform all others.

Radical Christians build schools. The world’s first university, birthed in 1088, was The University of Bologna in Italy. It was founded to teach canon (church) law. The second oldest university, The University of Paris, grew out of the cathedral schools of Notre-Dame and soon became a great center for Christian orthodox studies. Dr. Alvin J. Schmidt, in his book Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, points out that every college established in colonial America, except the University of Pennsylvania, was founded by some denomination of Christianity. He adds that, preceding the Civil War, 92 percent of the 182 colleges and universities in the U.S. were established by some branch of the church.

Radical Muslims attack young girls who merely want an education. In 2012 Taliban forces in Afghanistan were responsible for what was described as “an intentional act to poison schoolgirls.” More than 150 girls in northeastern Afghanistan suffered in the attack. “Every day [in fact, just the other day], you hear that somebody's thrown acid at a girl's face ... or they poison their water,” bemoaned the founder of a girls school outside Kabul.

According to the U.N., there were nearly 200 attacks on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan in 2011. In addition, radical Islamists also attack administrators who don’t conform to their ideas of what constitutes a proper education. According to Reuters, “Radical Muslims burst into a Tunisian school…and assaulted [nearly killing] its chief after he barred entry to a teenage girl wearing a niqab.”

Car bombs detonated by Muslim radicals have killed dozens in Somalia and Nigeria this year alone. Just last month, Muslim suicide bombers in Pakistan and Syria killed well over 100 people. Whether it’s bombing, burning, beheading, hacking, poisoning, or shooting, the list of Muslim violence is long and obscene.

Of course, the proper Christian response to such violence is never revenge. (However, justice is another matter.) As we look to be salt and light to those outside of Christianity—whether they be violent, mocking, or merely apathetic—we must never forget that Christ came, not to destroy lives, but to save them. This is why, when it comes to comparing radical Christians to radical Islamists, there is no comparison.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Islam Deserves Its Scorn

As the renowned and pioneering historian Bernard Lewis noted over 20 years ago in The Roots of Muslim Rage, “the classical Islamic view, to which many Muslims are beginning to return, [is that] the world and all mankind are divided into two: the House of Islam, where the Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, known as the House of Unbelief or the House of War, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam.”

After the events of 9/11, Professor Lewis, in The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, also noted that much of the animosity directed toward the West, particularly the United States, is due to old-fashioned envy—stemming from Western progress and Islamic decline. As one reviewer put it, the crux of Lewis's argument is “the sources of rage among Muslims stem from the deep frustration over the loss of a cultural primacy that was once theirs and has now been lost to the forces of modernity, especially as represented by the United States.”

As Muslim savages rage against the U.S. abroad, it is rather telling to examine “the loss of cultural primacy” within Islam, along with the overall effect Islam is having on nations and individuals the world over. Of the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), as rated by the Economists Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy, none are full democracies, while 36 are authoritarian regimes (dictatorships). Of the Index’s 10 most authoritarian regimes, 6 of them are members of the OIC.

Muslims are over 23 percent of the world population and produce barely eight percent of global GDP. The average GDP rank for the members of the OIC is 102 (out of 211 nations). The total GDP of the 57 member OIC is approximately $4.9 trillion. That is about one-third of the GDP of the U.S. alone ($14.4 trillion).

According to the United Nations’ 2009 Arab Human Development Report, “For nearly two and half decades after 1980, the [Arab] region witnessed hardly any economic growth. World Bank data show that real GDP per capita in the Arab countries grew by a mere 6.4 per cent over the entire 24 year period from 1980 to 2004 (i.e. by less than 0.5 per cent annually).” One in five Arabs lives on less than $2 per day.

Illiteracy plagues the Arab world. About a third of those living in Arab countries cannot read. This includes about half of all women. There are fewer than 18 computers per 1,000 persons in the Arab world, compared to the global average of 78.3; and only 1.6 percent of Arabs use the Internet.

In the 57 nations in the OIC there are a total of about 500 universities. There are over 5,700 in the U.S. In just over 100 years, the Muslim world has produced nine Nobel Laureates while a mere 14 million Jews have produced 166. There are about 400 scientists and engineers per 1 million people in research and development in Arab countries, compared to about 4,000 per million people in North America.

Particularly disturbing, and most telling, as one examines Islam, is the role of women in Islamic society. Islamic law (Shariۥa) prohibits women from looking men in the eye, forbids them from wearing shoes that make noise, and forbids them from becoming educated. As Ergun and Emir Caner note in Unveiling Islam, “women are considered possessions in any orthodox Islamic regime…The wife is considered the husband’s sex object.” Also, one of the most alarming admonitions in the Koran allows the husband to punish his wife physically.

Of the 8 nations that the U.S. has placed on its State Sponsors of Terrorism list, 6 of them are Islamic regimes. Of the 16 nations the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has under its Country of Particular Concern designation, 11 are Islamic regimes (all of the others are differing authoritarian regimes, including North Korea, China, and Vietnam). Nice company, huh?

Religious freedom in Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia is virtually non-existent. Like many other Muslim countries, Saudi law states that Islamic apostasy—denying the faith or converting to another religion—is a crime punishable by death. In 2006, Afghan citizen Abdul Rahman was arrested (after it was discovered that he possessed a Bible) and faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity. Intervention by Afghan president Hamid Karzai resulted in the charges against Rahman being dismissed.

Leading Afghan clerics were highly critical of Karzai, noting that “The Qur'an is very clear and the words of our prophet are very clear. There can only be one outcome: death.” This attitude is very prevalent across the Arab world, validating Professor Lewis’s notion that “many Muslims are beginning to return” to the “classical [violent and repressive] Islamic view.”

In Turkey in 2007, two Turkish converts to Christianity were killed in the Malatya Bible Publishing Firm murders. Also in 2007, Mohammed Hegazy became the first Egyptian Muslim officially to seek to convert to Christianity. An Egyptian judge ruled that, “He can believe whatever he wants in his heart, but on paper he can't convert.” Muslim clerics issued fatwas calling for his death. His wife’s family has sworn to kill her because she married a non-Muslim. They are both currently in hiding.

All of this pales to the slaughter in Sudan. The Institute on Religion and Democracy reports that “since 1983 Sudan has been devastated by a jihad or holy war led by the militant National Islamic Front, the ruling regime in Khartoum, against all in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains who opposed the imposition of Shariۥa, or Islamic law. The government-sponsored terror has resulted in the deaths of at least two million moderate Muslims, animists, and Christians.”

Of course, as the Caners point out, “Any major religion must first be seen through the eyes of its founder…Muhammad commanded in the Qurۥan, ‘Fight and slay the Pagans wherever you find them’ (surah 9:5)…in a world searching for peace, following the life of this warrior brings about bloodshed.” Moments before Abu Mus'ad Al Zarqawi cut off the head of American Nicholas Berg, he said these words in Arabic: “The Prophet, the master of the merciful has ordered to cut off the heads of some of the prisoners of Badr in patience. He is our example and a good role model.”

Zarqawi knew that Muhammad had often used beheading as the means of executing his enemies. Thus, Zarqawi was unmistakably choosing to emulate his “good role model” and spiritual leader.

Clearly, by and large, Islam is an enforced religion with a violent founder, a violent founding, and a very violent past and present. Islam is generally repressive to women and to those of other faiths. Islam is typically financially devastating and technologically backward. Any politician—republican, democrat, and the like—who attempts to paint Islam or Islamic nations in a positive light is at the least not giving the whole picture, and is at the worst, a political coward.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2012, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com