Question: Not only Muslim leaders, but American government and church leaders as well contradict you ...

Question: In your October newsletter you denied that Islam is a religion of peace and claimed that terrorism is not only condoned by it but a legitimate means by which it operates. Yet Islamic scholars on radio and TV say that Islam opposes suicide so that these terrorists could not have been Muslims at all; and that the Qur’an condemns taking innocent lives. In fact, the Qur’an clearly states that there is “no compulsion in religion” (Surah 2:256). That statement alone proves the falseness of the charges you have leveled against this peace-loving religion. Not only Muslim leaders, but American government and church leaders as well contradict you. I expect you to retract your October article and to apologize publicly to all Muslims.

Response: I appreciate your concern, but I must disagree and will explain why. I spent some time recently with a Palestinian who told me that all I said was true. He had been trained from childhood to hate Israel and to desire her total annihilation, so much so that even now that he has become a Christian he finds it very difficult to purge all of this past hatred from his heart. I have heard this from more than one similar source. He told me that this hatred was an integral part of Islam, at least as he learned it in East Jerusalem. I have two friends right here in Central Oregon, one from Pakistan and the other from Algeria, both of whom after becoming Christians had to go underground and only with some effort escaped from those countries with their lives.

The fact that Muhammad and the Qur’an call for the death penalty for any Muslim who turns from Islam to another religion seems to deny the verse you cite about there being no compulsion in religion. What is the truth? We certainly know that Islam was forced upon tens of millions with the sword and that Islam maintains itself today in many countries by threatening with death all who would think for themselves and choose what faith to embrace, based upon the evidence. So how could the Qur’an deny “compulsion”?

In fact, Muhammad received contradictory “revelations,” depending upon the circumstances. (The Qur’an contradicts itself many times and on important issues, as we document in A Cup of Trembling: Jerusalem in Bible Prophecy.) The verse you cite was “inspired” when the “prophet’s” new religion was just being launched and Islam was too weak to compel anyone to follow it. But later he received other “revelations” about using not only force but killing in order to bring the whole world into submission to Islam. The sword was the “evangelistic tool” for Islam’s fierce evangelists. Islamic scholars offer two differing explanations for this particular contradiction. Some declare that this verse (and others like it) was “abrogated” by later revelations such as “Whoso desires another religion than Islam, it shall not be accepted of him...” (Surah 3:85); “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5); “O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites and be thou harsh with them” (9:73), etc. Others admit, as I have indicated, that “no compulsion” was a temporary revelation due to conditions, and that it can apply even today in those places, times and circumstances where Islam is not strong enough to use force. Thus in the United States, Islam presents a face of peace, but when it is strong enough it will turn to war. The terrorists are the advance troops.

As for the claim that those who hijacked and crashed the passenger planes could not have been Muslims because Islam condemns suicide, common sense should have immediately unmasked that piece of misinformation to every viewer and listener. To sacrifice one’s own life in the process of striking at Allah’s enemies was nothing new. This kind of “suicide” has long been an honorable Islamic practice.

In the war between the followers of Islam’s two major sects (Iraq’s Sunnis and Iran’s Shi’ites) young schoolboys were sent to walk ahead of troops to clear minefields. In one incident alone, about 5,000 children were torn to bits so the army could move across the cleared path.¹ The Ayatollah Khomeini assured these innocent children that if they were killed in the battlefield they would go directly to Paradise.² It is this teaching of Islam which provides the unusual courage to sacrifice one’s life in the destruction of infidels.

Hundreds of suicide bombers, all of them devout Muslims and none who were not, have died in Israel and elsewhere during the past ten years. All were promised Paradise for killing themselves to murder “infidels” (i.e., those who will not repeat the formula, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet”), and all have been celebrated as heroes. Their families are extremely proud of them and are often handsomely rewarded financially. Never has a word of protest been raised in all of these years by the leading Islamic scholars in Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or other Muslim countries. Yes, suicide is forbidden as self-murder. But to sacrifice one’s life in the process of killing infidels gains a Muslim the highest reward.

Endnotes

1. National & International Religion Report, December 26, 1994, 2.
2. David Reed, “The Unholy War Between Iran and Iraq,” Readers Digest, August 1984, 39.