Barnabas Aid - International Headquarters River Street, Pewsey, Wilthire. Phone: +44 1672 565030 Latitude: 51 deg 23 min 18 sec N Longitude: 1 deg 45 min 48 sec W .
Home
News
Archives
Islam : a complex faith - Page 2

Email:

Islam : a complex faith

To

Email address:
Separate multiple addresses with a comma (,). Maximum of 10

From

Your name:
Your email address:
Security test:
Please enter the numbers that appear here in the box below.
 refresh captcha
CAPTCHA Image
Security code:

Details provided here will never be used in any other context

Published: 00:00 GMT Daylight Time - Friday 14 September 2001

Islam : a complex faith - Page 2

Article Index

Islam : a complex faith

Page 2

Page 3

View all

Another verse from the Qur’an which is not often quoted in non-Islamic contexts runs:

“Ye shall be summoned to fight against a people given to vehement war: then shall you fight or they shall submit.” (Surah 48, verse 16). The meaning here is that the Muslims should fight until their opponents embrace Islam.

In the early days of Islam, the faith was indeed spread by the sword. Those who would not embrace Islam were killed. The same thing is happening today in Indonesia, where at least 8,000 Christians have been forcibly converted to Islam by well-armed Islamic extremists. Any who refused were killed.

Furthemore, many Christians are being killed by Muslims without any conditions being offered. Some ten thousand have been killed in Indonesia in the last two years or so, mostly by the well-armed Laskar Jihad group who have declared their intention of eradicating Christianity. In the same time period there have been many violent incidents in Nigeria in which thousands of Christians have been killed, their houses and churches destroyed. In Sudan, the Arab Islamic government has been at war since 1983 with the African peoples of the South, who are mainly Christians or follow traditional African religions, apparently intent on killing them all, civilians and military.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohamed of the British-based organisation, Al-Muhajiroun, published on his organisation’s website on 13th September (two days after the World Trade Centre attack) an interview in which he distinguished between civilian and military targets. He indicated that military and government entities were legitimate targets for Muslims to attack. On 31st August the Kuwaiti paper Al-Watan presented arguments to justify the killing of non-combatants by Muslims. The article was concerned particularly with Jewish non-combatants, but the thrust of the argument would make it applicable to any non-Muslims living in a democracy. Citizens of a democracy have voted for their government and pay taxes to it, ran the argument, therefore they can be attacked as if they were the government or military.

Television news has shown us the grotesque sight of Palestinian Muslims celebrating the World Trade Centre attack. They are not alone. Similar reports are coming in of grass-roots Muslim celebrations in other parts of the world. In London a poster appeared outside Finsbury Park Mosque the day after the attack. It showed the remains of the World Trade Centre and photos of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. The text read: “Death to Bush. Death to Blair. Taliban.” It is hard to continue to argue that only “a few extremists” are hostile to the West and the non-Muslim world when this kind of response is so widespread.

So there are clearly two strands in contemporary Islam: the peaceable and the war-like. Islam is not one or the other; it is both at the same time.

In this it differs from Christianity. While many atrocities have been committed in the name of Christianity, they are not sanctioned by the teachings of the Christian faith, whose founder is called “The Prince of Peace” and whose law is summed up as love for God and others. Atrocities committed in the name of Islam may be deplored by many individual Muslims, but it cannot be denied that they are justified by Islamic teaching.

Help us: Share this article

Email:

To

Email address:
Separate multiple addresses with a comma (,). Maximum of 10

From

Your name:
Your email address:
Security test:
Please enter the numbers that appear here in the box below.
 refresh captcha
CAPTCHA Image
Security code:

Details provided here will never be used in any other context

christian, persecution, charity, church, persecuted, sookhdeo, Islam

Other articles

No related articles found.

Latest Emergency

/_images_files/content/article_files/Pakistan/201306/Building-work-4X3.jpg

Follow Barnabas

or

receive news & appeal emails as they are published

From Twitter

From Twitter_icon

  • Four converts to Christianity jailed, two others given suspended sentence, amid Iranian presidential elections http://ow.ly/m6BPh Mon, Jun 2013 17:04

  • #Christian killed in Egypt church attack; Christian businesses destroyed http://bit.ly/190VjKT Thu, Jun 2013 14:49

  • India: Dad/son beaten in prayer meeting.Indones: President gets relig freedom award. Viet: 8 from unreg church jailed http://bit.ly/15OtRO9 Wed, Jun 2013 11:06

  • "Reign of terror" against #Christians, Central African Republic "raising a Bible Wed, Jun 2013 12:46

Read more...

Daily prayer

Daily prayer_icon

  • In another chilling sign of Egypt’s move towards becoming an Islamic state, it was announced in March that a religious police force had been established to uphold Muslim morals. The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice shares its name with the notorious religious police of Saudi Arabia. For some months previously, vigilante Salafist gangs had been operating as self-appointed enforcers of morals, raiding shops and harassing staff and customers. The Christian community is concerned that it may now be subjected to the demands of sharia law. Pray that this will not happen and that the Islamisation of Egyptian society will be checked and then reversed. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed 13 hours ago

  • Christian girls in Egypt are extremely vulnerable to being kidnapped by Salafists who forcibly convert them to Islam and marry them to Muslim men against their will; over 500 have been victims of this heartless campaign since the revolution of January 2011. The Association of Victims of Abduction and Enforced Disappearance (AVAED), an Egyptian Christian organisation, says that the authorities collude with the Salafists. Give thanks for the safe return of Agape Essam Girgis (13), who was abducted from el-Ameriya on 23 December 2012. Sadly, most cases do not have a happy ending. Pray that the Lord will comfort those families whose daughters are still missing and intervene mightily to deliver the Christian girls from the hands of their captors. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Tue, Jun 2013 00:00

  • Pray for our brothers and sisters in North Africa living in the shadow of militant Islamism. Following the French intervention against Islamist groups who had taken over large parts of Mali, militants attacked a gas facility in Algeria in January and killed 37 people. An Algerian employee who managed to escape said, “We were told that because we were Muslim we would not be killed, and it was only the Christians they were after.” The Islamists associate Christianity with the West, so Christian targets and individuals as well as Western ones are especially vulnerable to attack. Ask that the Lord will protect Christians in the region against violence and the oppressive grip of sharia law. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Mon, Jun 2013 00:00

  • “I had just cooked my last meal, and there was no food in the house, nor money, nor any other way of obtaining grain. Thank the Lord for this aid, which has saved me and my children.” Bâh Kamaté, a Christian widow with six children in Mali, was “completely overwhelmed” when her pastor told her that she was going to receive corn and rice funded by Barnabas. Thousands of Christians fled the north of the country after the Islamist takeover in 2012, and their plight was worsened by food shortages resulting from drought. But praise God that Barnabas has helped to supply food for more than 5,100 Christians, as well as meeting other needs. Pray for His continuing provision for His people as Mali continues to face an uncertain future. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Sun, Jun 2013 00:00

  • Those who become Christians in Laos risk losing everything. A couple from Chumpoy in the Sanamsai district of Attappeu province were thrown out of their village on 23 January for converting to Christianity. Pray for Sakien and his wife Dong, who came to Christ after hearing the testimony of their son and daughter-in-law, Sanien and Pitsamai; they had become Christians after Pitsamai was healed after prayer. Sakien and Dong are currently sheltering in a partially constructed church building in another village; pray that they will either be able to return to their home or find adequate housing elsewhere, and that the Lord will sustain them in their new faith throughout this trial. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Sat, Jun 2013 00:00

Read more...

Quick navigation

© Barnabas Aid 1997 - 2013 All rights reserved.
Barnabas Aid is a registered trade mark