Death to Christians
In response to the backlash against Islamic extremism and terrorism, you hear a lot about the world’s second largest faith being described as a religion of peace and tolerance. Then comes the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghani Christian who converted from Islam sixteen years ago, and those claims are cast in a shadow of doubt.
The AP reported that Rahman was released from custody today. Clerics and students in the streets of one city were shouting in protest, “Death to Christians.” They threatened to “incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.”
This morning a friend forwarded a link to an article by Richard Cohen, Unfathomable Zealotry, with the comment, “What’s pretty interesting is that Richard Cohen is a liberal and Jewish and he gets it.” He also writes for the Washington Post, which makes it even more interesting considering the media backlash against any appearance of imputing Islam and Muslims with “extremism” and “terrorists” respectively.
What strikes me about the threat to execute Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who converted to Christianity, is not that Afghanistan remains deeply medieval and not even remotely the democracy that George W. Bush would like it to be, but that with the exception of the (largely) Christian West, the rest of the world has been mostly silent…
…The murder of a person for his religious belief ought to be inconceivable. It is something we in the West stopped accepting hundreds of years ago, and while Americans and others continued to kill on account of race deep into the past century, the right of the government to take a life on account of religion has not even been argued in the longest time. We are way beyond that.
We are way beyond that, but then again we in the West are also enlighted to the point in which we dismiss religion as a crutch–as a sociological tool of man who lives in a closed naturalistic system. When the realm of supernatural is sheer fantasy, it is hard to put oneself in the extremist’s shoes (see my post, Shaking in Your Boots).
But you can say that these horrors are usually being inflicted by a minority. You say it is a few crazed terrorists of Iraq who are doing the killing. It is not most Iraqis. You can say the same about suicide bombers and torturers and rogue governments, like the one Saddam Hussein once headed. You can take solace in numbers. Most people are like us.
If I can fault Cohen for anything, it is for having too much faith in the goodness of man and not enough of an understanding of the doctrine of total depravity. The fact of the matter is that we are all as bad as the terrorists. However, Cohen strikes a cord when he questions whether or not we are justified in criticizing the response toward Rahman (or lack thereof), rather than gloss over it as an acceptable cultural difference.
Then comes the Rahman case and it is not a solitary crazy prosecutor who brings the charge of apostasy but an entire society. It is not a single judge who would condemn the man but a culture. The Taliban are gone at gunpoint, their atrocities supposedly a thing of the past. In our boundless optimism, we consign them to the “too hard” file of horrors we cannot figure out: the Khmer Rouge, the Nazis, the communists of the Stalin period. Now, though, this awful thing returns and it is not just a single country that would kill a man for his beliefs but a huge swath of the world that would not protest. There can be only one conclusion: They were in agreement.
The groupthink of the Muslim world is frightening. I know there are exceptions — many exceptions. But still it seems that a man could be killed for his religious beliefs and no one would say anything in protest. It is also frightening to confront how differently we in the West think about such matters and why the word “culture” is not always a mask for bigotry, but an honest statement of how things are. It is sometimes a bridge too far — the leap that cannot be made. I can embrace an Afghan for his children, his work, even his piety — all he shares with much of humanity. But when he insists that a convert must die, I am stunned into disbelief: Is this my fellow man?
Perhaps that a key reason that Cohen is stunned to the point of disbelief is that political correctness has obfuscated the truth? We try to understand the Muslim mind using our own language and culture, applying our understandings of people and politics, when in fact to figure out Islam we really need to look at the Koran. Everything I have researched so far says that a principle idea behind the Muslim religion is that the whole world is to be subdued under the rule of Islam. Is the Non-Muslim world to be converted–not necessarily? Under authority, humiliated and even persecuted–these are legitimate concerns that cannot continue to be ignored.
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It is also interesting how many in the West think that Allah is just another name for G-d. I had this discussion on Sunday with a friend of ours who was raised in the Church but to my knowledge is not a believer. When he made that comment, I quite bluntly stated that Allah is not Jehovah. Looking surprised, he mentioned that there were quite a few names in the Bible for G-d. I said that Allah was not one of them and that Allah was likely a Satanic agent but certainly not G-d the Father of our Lord. I think this is quite a common Western view of Allah though.
Great post. I like what Debbie had to say as well. Allah is not the God of the Bible and to claim such is to create extreme errors both historically and theologically.
Political correctness in the West only leads to the emboldening of the Muslim world. While religion is certainly a major component, it seems to me that one of the main differences is the mindsets of the two cultures. The Middle East is largely a feudal pre-industrial society. Even in the modern areas of the region, modernization has come so quickly that the culture has yet to catch up. This leads to misunderstanding, miscues and gaffs when it comes to foreign policy.
As for Allah… from Wikipedia:
Although, outside the Arab world, use of the word All?h is most often associated with Islam, it is not exclusive to that faith; Arab Christians and various Arabic-speaking Jews (including the Teimanim, several Mizra?i communities and some Sephardim) also use it to refer to the monotheist deity. Arabic translations of the Bible also employ it, as do Roman Catholics in Malta (who pronounce it as “Alla”), Christians in Indonesia, who say “Allah Bapa” (God the Father) and Christians in the Middle East who use the Aramaic “All?ha”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah
Good point, Steven, with the reference to Wikipedia. There needs to be a distinction between the word “Allah” and the being to which Islam and the Koran refer. The being to which the religion of Islam refers when it uses the word “Allah” does not exist. It is a fictional being just like Shiva and Baal are fictional. The fact that the word “Allah” is used by Christian Arabs or whatever is inconsequential. Allah simply means “God” in another language. But the person “Allah” of the Koran is false.
Great post Scott, and an interesting line of comments that followed.
I studied Islam a great deal when I was looking into Islamic missions back in the early 90’s. Most evangelism that was centered on reaching out to those of the Islamic faith centered on the reintroduction to Allah. Looking at who the Allah of the Bible was and not what the Koran had perverted Him to be. There was little reason to fight the name itself, but rather to place that effort into walking folks through scripture and introducing them to their Creator as told through biblical revelation.
Thanks for the education and clarification, guys. That is all good to know and doesn’t basically change the thought. It is not the word ‘allah’ that is the problem but the supposition that most Westerners have that we all worship the same G-d, Jehovah.
Hey Debbie, the post wasn’t meant as a criticism of your thought, just adding more info for the discussion.
Often in history it is easier for a people group to believe that their enemy really doesn’t mean them any harm - hoping that by treating them with excessive respect and kid gloves that the threat will dissipate.
While I don’t believe that the Muslims people are our enemy, the Islamic faith seems to be pretty adamant about who gets the sword (case in point can be seen in Scott original point) and foolish to pretend that the Islamic faithful would not hesitate to behead any ‘apostate’ within their jurisdiction.
I didn’t take it as a criticism at all. I thought it was a great expansion of the thought I put out there. It would make a great discussion! Fascinating.
This has been an interesting discussion. Great thoughts by all. Thanks for your comments!
Steven: This is getting off subject, but I think that China is another great example of where the culture has not caught up with (or is at odd with) modernization. Confuciousism is still highly prevalent in the culture, which is in opposition to Westernization. So you have a history of letting up and clamping down (e.g., Tiananmen Square).
You guys might be interested in a new book by Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci,THE FORCE OF REASON, in which she speculates (well, she has a lot of evidence)that the huge increase in Muslim immigration in Europe and North America has been the result of a conscious plan to steal the West from its citizens. You can read an article/review at http://www.laweekly.com/books/12921/the-fallaci-code . It’s pretty scary,to say the least.
That is probably true. The Saudi’s have been investing a lot of money in building mosques in the West, especially here as part of their “evangelistic” efforts (and you thought that was our word)……
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