Question: I love The Berean Call—but as a good Berean I also check up on you. One book on Islam ...

Question: I love The Berean Call—but as a good Berean I also check up on you. One book on Islam which you don’t offer is Silent No More, by Paul Findley, a member of congress for 22 years. It gives a different perspective than your newsletter. He presents Islam as peaceful, gives proof in the form of many Muslim leaders in this country who are good citizens supporting democracy, and provides example after example of the severe discrimination Muslims have suffered in America because of stereotyping. Have you read this book?

Answer: Yes, I have read the book with interest. The bits of useful information it con-tains are outweighed many times over by its misinformation. It is blatantly pro-Muslim and anti-Israel. For example, he complains that “Capitol Hill has been devoid of balanced discussion of Middle East policy for nearly fifty years” because of the strength of the Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC). Unmentioned is the fact that “balanced discussion” is impossible in Muslim countries and the attempt could endanger one’s life. No Arab map even shows Israel’s existence, and every Jew must be destroyed before Islam’s “last day judgment” can occur. That’s balanced?

In page after page, Findley expresses great concern for discrimination against Muslims in our country and “the slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo” (p. 109). He overlooks entirely, however, the daily hatred and mis-treatment by Muslims, resulting in the slaughter of at least two million non-Muslims in the last ten years. Focusing on the comparatively mild “discrimination” against Muslims in America, the book remains silent about the brutal oppression and murder of non-Muslims in Muslim countries!

There is much praise (p. 25) for “harmony, compassion, justice, and liberty” as the “main objectives of Islam” and its “commitment to human rights.”This is not true. Muhammad began his career with more than 20 murders and built his power by attacking caravans and villages, slaughtering those who would not submit, killing every Jew in Arabia and banning them (no Jew can enter Saudi Arabia to this day). Many Arabs were killed in Islam’s conquest of Arabia. When Muhammad died in A.D. 632, Arabs tried to abandon Islam. Tens of thousands were killed in the Wars of Apostasy, forcing Arabs back into Islam. From there it spread by the sword to become the largest empire in history.  

Findley completely neglects such basic facts. He claims to have discovered in “the Islamic world...a culture based on honor, dignity and value of every human being, as well as tolerance...deeply ingrained in the Islamic religion.” He met many kind Muslims (kind to him as a congressman) and on that basis he ignores the teachings of the Qur’an and of Muhammad, the violence of Muhammad and his successors and the bloody history of Islam involving the slaughter of literally millions in its conquests. He frets that “widely held stere-o-types grossly distort public perceptions of Muslims” and denies Islam’s relationship to terrorism. He praises organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah as peaceful and humanitarian (yes, Hezbollah does provide social services to thousands of Lebanese Shiites) and claims that “the pro-Israel bias of government leaders” is why “both groups are included in the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations (pp. 82, 83). He even claims that the “military assaults [of Hezbollah] have been almost entirely defensive, confined to Lebanese soil” (pp. 82, 83).

Such misinformation leaves one breathless. Yes, it was on “Lebanese soil” that a Hezbollah truck bomb killed 240 U.S. Marines. But the bombings in Argentina, for example (of the Israeli embassy in 1992, killing 29, and a Jewish community center in 1994, killing 95), were far from Lebanon. They reflect Hezbollah’s goal of the destruction of Israel. Its own website declares, “Hezbollah’s ideological ideals sees [sic] no legitimacy for the existence of ‘Israel’ ” (hizbollah.org/english/frames/index_eg.htm). In 1995 alone there were 344 attacks carried into Israel against Israeli troops and positions: 270 instances of artillery fire, 64 detonations of explosive charges and two frontal assaults on IDF positions, etc.—all defensive, of course, and all on Lebanese soil inside Israel!

He is pleased that “the PLO is rarely used as a code word for terrorism...the American people are better informed about the organization and PLO leader Arafat’s efforts to achieve a just peace through negotiation” (p.82). In fact, the PLO has been responsible for more terrorism than any other organization, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands. “Just peace through negotiation”? Is this a joke? The PLO charter declares Israel’s existence to be illegal. Arafat has publicly declared his intention to destroy Israel and has demonstrated it so many times that Findley’s praise seems surrealistic. Suicide bombers, trained, paid and praised by Arafat and targeting innocent civilians, are an odd form of “negotiation” for peace (see TBC Sep ’00 and Jan ’02).

Gross misinformation abounds on almost every page. Claiming to be a Christian, Findley has no concept of biblical Christianity. He writes that “Islam accepts both Christianity and Judaism as religions based on divine revelation. As Christians become more aware of this relationship, they will begin to speak of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage...a close kinship exists between Christianity and Islam” (p. 35).

In fact, Islam teaches that Jews and Christians corrupted the Old and New Testa-ments, which originally were exactly like the Qur’an. When Muslims had the power, they almost always persecuted (sometimes to the death) Jews and Christians. Islam claims that the “promised land” belongs to the Arabs and not to the Jews. It also claims that Jesus is only a prophet, second to Muhammad, and that rather than Jesus dying in our place, someone died in His place; that He was taken to heaven alive, etc. Such denials of Scripture make any thought of linking Islam with either Christianity or Judaism perverse.

The book is an inexcusable propaganda piece to whitewash Islam of its aggression and destruction of basic human rights—a travesty foisted on readers!