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Can mighty armies defeat a destructive ideology that falsely claims divine authority, and has more than a billion followers? If they could not, what is the alternative?
Dear Friend,
There is a real threat from a destructive ideology that falsely claims divine authority, has more than a billion followers, and survived for nearly fourteen centuries of time. The ideology is the traditional Islamic ideology, whose destructive goal is to force Islam on the whole world, and enslave the non-Muslims in their native lands. The Islamic ideology, which is practiced by Islamists, is a totalitarian political ideology, akin to communism and Nazism. In fact, the rise of Islamism is the most dangerous threat in the world today.
Western civilization is a humanist vision in which Christianity has integrated Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman law, thereby giving Western culture its distinctive character which emphasizes freedom of speech and of the press, equal justice under the law, the primacy of the individual, separation of religion and state, freedom of religion, property rights, sexual equality, an independent judiciary, and independent educational system, among other values. This is what the Islamic ideology (radical Islam) seeks to destroy. This is why Islamic jihadi terrorists are attacking the Western world and the state of Israel, and why they are attempting to subvert democracy to replace it with the oppressive Islamic law (Sharia).
I. The dangers of the Islamic ideology
The Islamic ideology, which falsely claims divine authority, is oppressive and often violent. The general rule in the many trouble spots in the world is that one of the participants in the conflict is Islamist: Islamists against Jews in Palestine, Islamists against Hindus in Kashmir, Islamists against Christians in Nigeria, Islamists against Buddhists in Thailand, Islamists against Russians in the Caucasus, Islamists against French in the destructive riots of 2006 in France, Islamists against Danes in the destructive riots of 2008 in Denmark protesting the republication of Muhammad’s cartoons, etc. At least 25% of all Muslim youth believe in suicide bombing of American and other interests. Obviously, others did not admit it.
- Do you know that the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam,
commands Muslims to subjugate all other peoples:
“Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given (Christians and Jews) as believe in neither god (the god of Islam) nor the last day, who do not forbid what god and his apostle (Muhammad) have forbidden, and do not embrace the true faith (Islam), until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued. The Jews say Ezra is the Son of God, while the Christians say the Messiah is the Son of God. Such are their assertions, by which they imitate the infidels of old. God confound them! How perverse they are” (Qur’an, Sura al-Tawbah 9: 29-30). “It was not you, but god, who slew them. It was not you who smote them: god smote them so that he might richly reward the faithful. God hears all and knows all” (Qur’an, Sura 8: 17; 2:193, 216, 244; 5: 33; 8: 12-17, 39, 65; 9: 5, 12, 14, 20, 29, 36, 41, 73, 81, 86, 88, 111, 123; 47: 4; 48: 16)?
- Do you know that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was the one who started in the seventh century the trail of blood of Islamic atrocities? He was responsible for the first Islamic massacre in the long bloody history of traditional Islam. It is the massacre of Banu Qurayza, the last Jewish tribe in the Arabian city of Medina, in 627 AD. This tribe refused Islam. All the men of the tribe (700-800 men), who were not armed and not a threat to him, were beheaded in cold blood under his watch. The women and children of the tribe were sold into slavery, and its possessions were looted. You see, Muhammad wanted to do ethnic cleansing in Medina and Arabia. He wanted to cleanse them from Jews, Christians, and pagans by the power of the sword.
- Do you know that the ethnic cleansing process that Muhammad started, and his followers completed in Arabia, is still enforced in Arabia till this day? In fact, till this day, it is illegal to build a church or a synagogue in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the religious police will raid a private house where Christians are gathered to worship, will arrest the leader of the worship service and torture him in prison. They do this in order to implement the wish of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, on his deathbed that Arabia should have only one faith—Islam.
- Do you know about the genocide of the Armenian Christians in World War I? It was an ethnic cleansing of central Turkey by an Islamic jihad wherein Muslim Turks systematically murdered unarmed civilian Christian Armenian males over the age of twelve en masse. Women and children were deported from their centuries-old Armenian villages. Many of them died or were killed in their arduous journey. Others were given out as slaves, or forced to convert to Islam. The Armenian properties were looted. About one and a half million Armenian civilians died in those atrocities. The four elements of the Armenian liquidation in central Turkey—deportation, enslavement, forced conversion, and massacre—reproduced the historic conditions of Islamic jihad carried out from the seventh century on. Successive Turkish governments have consistently refused to acknowledge the historic fact of the Armenian genocide, and to pay compensations to the Armenians.
- Do you know that none of the leading Islamic clerics in the Muslim world condemned the 9/11 atrocities, which resulted in the death of about 3000 innocent civilians? In fact, some praised it?! Misguided Muslim crowds celebrated it in the streets of the Middle East. Muslim governments, who call for tolerance of Muslims in the West, have never apologized for 9/11 atrocities.
- Unlike the repentance of Americans regarding slavery, the Germans regarding the holocaust, and the British regarding the abuses of the colonial era, Islamists have never repented of fourteen centuries of jihad involving murder, atrocities, slavery, abusing women, persecuting non-Muslims, etc.
- Do you know that the median age of Muslims in 2010 was 23 years old, seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims? Millions of those young Muslims are being indoctrinated in the Qur’an. They are being taught to hate and destroy Jews, Christians, and particularly Americans. After all, the Qur’an teaches them saying: “Believers (Muslims), take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number. God does not guide the wrongdoers” (Qur’an, Sura al-Ma’idah 5: 51).
- Do you know that Christianity is becoming extinct in Bethlehem, its birthplace? In the past, Christians constituted about 85% of Bethlehem population. In 2008, due to unrelenting Islamic persecution, they represented only 15% of its population. In 1948, the population of Jerusalem was about 20% Christian. Today, it is only 2%.
- Do you know that more than 6% of the Western European population is Muslim immigrants and their offspring (more than 23 million)? 10% of the French population is Muslim, mostly from North Africa. More than 15% of the Russian population is Muslim. It is projected that a staggering 10% of the Western European population will be Muslim by 2050. Because of the fact that the fertility rate of Muslims in Europe (2.1 child/woman) is much higher than that of Europeans (1.5 child/woman), after a few decades France and Russia may become majority Muslim countries, at which time forced Islamization of the native French and Russian populations may begin. It is predicted that Europe may have a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
- Do you know that in 2011, a report documented the rise of Europe’s “no-go” zones, many of which function as microstates governed by Islamic Sharia law? The report listed 751 sensitive urban zones across France where the French government has completely lost control. “No-go” zones are also present in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands
Some judge Islam by nice Muslims they meet. They wrongly think that Islam and Sharia are the cause of the goodness naturally found in the humanity of Muslims. This goodness exists naturally in any society regardless of religion and culture. Those Muslims project goodness despite the evil teachings of Islam and the Sharia, not because of it.
The Islamic political ideology is the threat to the security of the West and to Western civilization, not Islamist men like Osama bin Laden. He was merely following the teachings and injunctions of historic orthodox Islam. He was not misinterpreting it. He wanted the Islamic state started by Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, in the Arabian city of Medina in the seventh century to dominate the whole world by brute force, if necessary. The problem is not the persons of bin Laden and others like him, but rather the Islamic ideology that planted these ideas in his mind and made him what he was. In fact, he stated that: “battle, animosity, and hatred directed from the Muslim to the infidel (non-Muslim) are the foundation of the Islamic religion.”
Traditional Islam promises the jihadist that if he dies fighting for the god of Muhammad in Islamic jihad, he is guaranteed to go to the Islamic paradise of sexual promiscuity and gluttony (Qur’an, Sura 61: 10-12; 44: 51-56; 52: 17-29; 55: 46-78), and avoid the horrifying torments of the grave and hell. Muhammad promised these fictitious rewards in his Qur’an in order to motivate his fighters. On the other hand, should he live, he gets a share from the spoils of war, which enriches him. It is estimated that about 2% of more than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide are willing to follow the political ideology of historic Islam. This is a large number (30 million) in itself. However, what is most alarming is that this 2% minority controls approximately 90% of the world’s mosques and Islamic institutions. In fact, in the few recent democratic elections in the Islamic lands of the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Tunisia, the Islamists won the majority. Even in Turkey, which is considered a model of democracy in the Islamic world, the ruling party has Islamist tendencies and agenda, and is steering the country in that direction.
Secular tyrannies burn hot at first, but soon die out. Unlike secular tyranny, Islam reproduces itself and multiplies by virtue of its polygamy, sexual predation and false claims of fictitious divine origin? Islam is a slow-growing terminal cancer which, if neglected, metastasizes, takes over, and destroys its host. As long as Islam is alive, it will keep spawning Islamic jihadists similar to bin Laden and ISIS. The jihadists of ISIS are fighting to establish and Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq over the blood pools and the decapitated heads of their victims, following in the footsteps of Muhammad and the Islamic empires that followed him. They fund their operations by looting the territory they conquer. ISIS with its atrocities is animated entirely by the true historic Islam. The manners in which they kill, make war, treat prisoners, etc. are prescribed in the Qur’an, hadith and Sharia. ISIS does nothing that Muhammad did not first do 14 centuries ago. At the 1921 Cairo conference, Winston Churchill commented: “They hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children.”
II. The Islamic demographic advantage
Islamism fights the West with two formidable weapons: The Islamic population bomb, and the Islamic oil money. The global fertility leaders are Islamic countries: Somalia at 6.91 babies per woman, Niger at 6.83, Afghanistan at 6.78, etc. The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 babies per woman, where the USA is at. By contrast, the western indigenous populations are in decline. Canada is at 1.5 babies per woman; Germany and Austria are at 1.3; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; and Spain is at 1.1 babies per woman, or about half the replacement rate. In 1970, the population of the developed world was double that of the Muslim world: 30% and 15% respectively of the global population. By 2000, they were the same: each was about 20% of the global population. By 2050, Italy’s indigenous population will have fallen by 22% and Bulgaria by 36%.
In 2008, the European cities of Marseilles (France), and Malmo (Sweden) are 25% Muslim, Amsterdam 24%, Stockholm and Brussels 20%, Moscow 16%, and London 17%. The Swedish city of Malmo or Stockholm may become the first Western European city with a Muslim majority. The population of Dearborn, Michigan, USA is approaching a Muslim majority in that city.
Europe is in danger. Based on the current and projected demographic trends, it is running out of its indigenous population, which is being gradually replaced by Muslim immigrants. Today, Western Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken during the 1970-2000 period some 20 million Muslim immigrants (officially?), which is the equivalent of the populations of Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, and Estonia combined. It is projected that the number of Muslims worshiping at mosques in England and Wales will exceed the number of Roman Catholics attending Sunday Mass in just over a decade. Clearly, Islamists have a decisive demographic advantage in Europe. In fact, if the Europeans insist on maintaining their welfare system, the European Union will need to import so many workers from Muslim North Africa and the Middle East that it may become majority Muslim by the end of this century.
There are two major demographic factors driving the rapid explosive growth of the Islamic population worldwide: the higher fertility rate of Muslims (3.1 child/Muslim woman, comparted with 2.3 child/non-Muslim woman); and the younger median age of Muslims (23 years old in 2010, seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims). Indeed, if current demographic trends continue, the number of Muslims worldwide is expected to exceed the number of Christians by the end of this century.
III. The dangers of the Islamist petrodollars
Using their vast resources of oil wealth, the Saudis have exported to the heart of the West (Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Manchester, Rome, New York, …) their fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam and the various forms of Islamism it supports. This was an obscure strain of Islam practiced by nomadic Bedouins some 80 years ago. All across the West, radical Muslims are gaining a foothold for extremism and terrorism by building mosques and Islamic centers financed in whole or in part by oil money. In fact, according to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the Saudis are the world’s leading source of money for extremist Islamist organizations, including Sunni terror groups and the Taliban. This presents a clear danger to the Western way of life.
The Saudis are buying compass presence by funding Islamic studies programs and establishing Islamic academic chairs in prestigious academic centers and universities in the West, such as the universities of Georgetown, Harvard, Duke, Berkeley, California, Cambridge, London, Moscow, and Edinburgh. This is creating bastions of non-critical pro-Islamic scholarship within Western academia. In order to retain its Saudi funding, these academic Islamic studies centers are under pressure not to maintain its academic impartiality and integrity of scholarship. That is how the Islamists attempt to control the Western intellect and soul.
Saudi petrodollars provide scholarships for thousands on non-Muslims from the West to study at Islamic universities in Saudi Arabia. The obvious goal is to introduce the Islamic faith to prospective converts.
Islamic finance and banking is called financial jihad. Oil rich Islamic Arab countries are attempting to take control of the Western economies and media through buying real estate and stocks of Western Corporations. For instance, the Saudis now own 15% of Fox corporation. Fox News is now influenced by Muslim Arab interests.
IV. The dangers of Shari’a (Islamic law)
According to a 2004 poll, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shari’a (Islamic law) in the UK. In fact, a beginning of a drift to semi-Shari’a has already started in some European nations. A German judge referred to the Qur’an in a routine divorce case. The British government now recognizes polygamous marriage. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, endorsed applying portions of Islamic law (the Shari’a) in the UK, characterizing it as “unavoidable.” Britain already has an Islamic Shari’a Council which deals mostly with cases involving marriage and divorce. Britain also allows Islamic law to apply in the banking industry, where Muslims can apply for Shari’a-compliant home loans that conform to the Islamic prohibition of charging or paying interest. Seemingly innocent and gracious concessions regarding Shari’a inevitably contribute to building up an Islamization trend which could become unstoppable.
Some U.S. financial institutions and businesses are engaging in Shari’a-compliant financing by accommodating Shari’a law (Islamic law) in order to attract Islamic investments and tap into petrodollars. They structure investments and transactions that comply with Shari’a requirements that prohibit financial transactions involving interest, excessive risk, or certain assets such as alcohol, tobacco, pork, or gambling. Oil rich Arab Islamists are now buying into financially troubled banks, and then demanding that an approved Muslim Imam be installed on their boards of directors to assure that financial products offered to Muslims are “halal”—kosher. Halal finances provide preferential treatment to Muslims, including interest free loans and credit cards.
The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference founded by the Saudis put poor Islamic countries on notice that if they want to benefit from aid from the Saudis’ massive oil revenues, they must apply the Islamic Shari’a in their countries.
Shari’a (Islamic law) ordinances call for the gruesome punishments of stoning, limb amputation, and flogging for adultery and theft, while apostasy (leaving Islam) carries the punishments of disinheritance, loss of access to children, annulment of marriage, and the death sentence. These punitive ordinances are enforced in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and some Muslim states in Nigeria. Shari’a relegates women to an inferior social and legal status. The testimony of a Muslim woman in court carries less weight than that of a Muslim man’s. Her share of inheritance is half the man’s.
An intrinsic conflict exists between traditional Islam and liberty since the beginning of Islam in the seventh century. The oppression of Islam and its suppression of liberties affect all facets of life including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the educational system and the economy, the human rights of women, etc. Islam is antagonistic towards democracy.
V. The reaction of the politically correct West
In the year 2007, the European Union issued a classified handbook that banned the use of the words “jihad, Islamic, and fundamentalists” in reference to Islamist terrorism. The UK government has decided that terrorism by Islamists in the name of Islam is actually unrelated to Islam. Its Home Office issued a counter-terrorism phrasebook instructing its civil servants to only refer to “violent extremism” and “criminal murderers,” not to “Islamist extremism” and “jihadi fundamentalists.” The National Union of Teachers, Britain’s largest teachers union, is calling to teach the Qur’an in public schools across Britain. These trends in Europe will change its face forever, much more than the security threat posed by Islamist violence. If we do not identify the enemy, how can we win the war?
VI. Containing and reversing Islamism
How can the rise of Islamism be contained and reversed worldwide? Western armies well equipped with sophisticated weapons systems are certainly capable of defeating Islamic armies. However, they could not defeat the two formidable weapons of Islamism: the Islamic population explosion, and the Islamic oil wealth. Neither could they defeat the ideology of traditional Islam, which falsely claims divine authority. This is not a war against Muslims, but rather against the Islamic ideology. Afghanistan and Iraq are clear examples on that. Ideological conflicts could not be won in the battlefield. You cannot destroy a demon with a bomb.
The only way to defeat the destructive Islamic ideology and the surge of Islamism is by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, the Prince of Peace, to Muslims both in their homelands and in the West. Christ is the answer. There is no other. That is how the potential foot soldiers and suicide bombers of the Islamists may become the foot soldiers of the Gospel of Christ—the Gospel of love, peace, forgiveness, and equality. We, as Christians, should not fail to take the Gospel of Christ to the Muslim world. Failure is not an acceptable option. Those who ignore history are destined to repeat it. What happened in the Middle East to the Egyptian, Syrian and Armenian indigenous Christians can happen in the West, if we do not counter the deceptive Islamist propaganda in the West by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, our Lord, to the misguided Muslims.
Our mission in St. Mark Evangelistic Association is to proclaim the Gospel of Christ, our Lord, to Muslims of Middle Eastern background living both in the West and in the Middle East, not only in defense of the security of the Christian world, but more importantly, to express the love of Christ to the deceived Muslims.
VII. Importance of Christian evangelism
Christ, our loving Lord, goes out to the mountains to search for the lost sheep (Lk 15: 3-7). Christ waits patiently for His lost son to return home to be with Him after years of estrangement and separation, runs to meet him, kisses him and celebrates his safe return (Lk 15: 11-32). Christ stands at the door of the human heart and knocks for years that the person may open the door of his heart, receive Him and live (Rev 3: 20). Because we are in loving communion with Christ, our hearts are in tune with His heart. We feel His passion for the lost; and His sadness, agony and tears over the long decline of indigenous Christianity in the Middle East under the influence of centuries of persistent Islamic persecutions of native Christians, and material inducements to them. Christianity has declined in the Middle East from the religion of the overwhelming majority on the eve of the Islamic Arab invasion of the seventh century, to the religion of persecuted minorities in the Middle East of today.
Evangelism is very important in the Christian life, because it was the last commandment of our Lord before his ascension to heaven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28: 19); “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1: 8). Evangelism is the ultimate and final expression of our faith and commitment to Christ. It was what Jesus and His disciples and apostles had done on Earth. It is not the activity of a select few of the clergy. It is the responsibility of the totality of the body of Christ on Earth—each in accordance with the gifts the Holy Spirit has blessed him/her with. Let us allow the Holy Spirit of our living almighty God to work through us to help bring Muslims to Christ.
Many Muslims from the Middle East and the West are hungry to know more about Christ, our Lord, and the Gospel of salvation. They want to know about the new beginning and the new life in Christ: “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together” (John 4: 35b-36). Because we are in loving communion with Christ, our hearts are in tune with His. We feel His passion for the lost: “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (Matthew 9: 36).
It is not possible to stand on the corner of the street and hand out Christian tracts in closed Islamic countries. However, in this information age, the Lord has provided an unprecedented opportunity for you and us to bring the good news of the Gospel of Christ to millions of Muslims. Muslims have access to the Internet, Radio, etc. Therefore, we feel that the most effective way to reach large segments of the Islamic populations for Christ is through these media.
VIII. Now is the time to act!
Here is how you can make a difference
The thousand-mile journey has begun to reclaim the lost Muslim peoples back to the love and peace of Christ. God is offering them hope for a new life. By helping Muslims to a saving faith in Christ, you will be raising up new ambassadors for Christ in Islamic lands and communities. Thanks to the Islamists bloody attacks on the West, and the atrocities of ISIS in the Middle East and Africa, the openness of Muslims both in the West and in the Islamic world has increased. In fact, violence in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan has left many Muslims doubting their Islamic clerics. Many Muslims are becoming disillusioned with Islam, and are questioning the validity of their religion. They are eager to listen to the call of Christ. Yes, you can make a significant difference that will pay eternal dividends. You are invited to participate in this effort with Christ, our Lord, and us through:
1. Your continual prayers that the life-giving Spirit of our living God may help open the doors of the hearts and minds of our Muslim brothers and sisters to the Gospel of Christ.
2. Providing a tax-deductible donation to help finance this mission’s work. St. Mark Evangelistic Association is a Section 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Contributions are gratefully accepted, and are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. Your gift expresses your faith in Christ, our Lord, and your involvement and commitment to his work on earth. We need your contribution. Your gift will help this ministry to continue and expand its efforts to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to our beloved Muslim brothers and sisters. It will help us to communicate the healing life-giving love and light of Christ to the hearts and minds of the Muslims who do not know him.
This ministry is based solely on volunteer work. Therefore, 100% of your donation will help fund the expenses of this effort. Let us build everlasting towers in eternity that moth, rust, decay, floods, and fires could not destroy (Mt. 6: 19-21).
Your company may be prepared to increase the impact of every donation you make by matching it, to the dollar (1:1). Some companies will even match donations made by retirees and spouses of eligible employees. This would keep our administrative costs low. The impact of matching donations is powerful, while the process of setting it up is simple. Simply contact your company’s human resources department to get more information and the necessary paperwork, and before you know it, your donation will have doubled.
All that needs to happen for evil to win is for good people to stand by and do nothing. It has been said that the greatest crime in the desert is finding water and keeping silent. Let us share the water of eternal life with those thirsty souls that have been living in darkness for many centuries, because we love the Lord our God, and because we love them (our neighbors) [Mt. 22: 37-39]. Working together with Christ we can achieve it, because “with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1: 37).
We hope you will choose this moment as a personal opportunity for you to act and participate in the work of the Lord. Thank you for your prayerful giving and your partnership in the work of our Lord to help open the gates of the most closed nations on the face of the earth today for Christ. Your contribution will make a difference that will pay eternal dividends.
Pray with us that God will be glorified in this effort, and that, together, we will truly fulfill His purpose and plan. May the Lord bless you and yours.
Together in Christ’s service,
St. Mark Evangelistic Association
P.S. With your prayerful financial support we will be able to expand our evangelistic outreach efforts to Muslims. “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9: 7b). "For all things come from You, and of Your own we have given You" (1 Chr. 29: 14b). Please, help the work of the Lord. Let the bright light of Christ, our Lord, shine upon and within those Muslims who have been living in the darkness of Islam for centuries, that they may share in the power of His resurrection. Let us reach out in compassionate healing Christian love. Let us reach them now while we have the chance.
You may make your tax-deductible donation online to St. Mark Evangelistic Association at:
http://3lotus.com/en/General/Islamic-ideology.htm