The Commentary

Back in September, the Pope’s use of a medieval quotation in a speech in Germany concerning violence and Islam, taken out of context, led to ‘outrage’ in the Muslim community. Since then, among other things, the Pope has been warned not to visit Turkey on pain of death. The threat seems to many to prove the point about violence and Islam.

More recently, in October, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s suggestion that community relations in Britain might be helped if Muslim women did not wear full veils was reported as having ‘provoked anger’ among many Muslim spokesmen.

Although I realise that many followers of Islam are peace-loving people who just wish to live in harmony with others and get on with their lives, putting such reactions alongside 9/11 and the insurgency in Iraq (seen as a jihad to drive out Western forces who would be only too happy to leave anyway if there was the rule of law and security) Islam cannot help being perceived as a rather angry and violent religion.

Bigger picture

Indeed, if we take a longer term and more global perspective much evidence points to the same conclusion. The Barnabas Fund has, for some time, been promoting a campaign for freedom of religious choice precisely because to forsake Islam entails a death penalty for many people. Again, there is the vast testimony of persecution of Christians and others in Muslim countries which, with sadness, we often have to report in EN. Then one thinks of the fatwahs issued against those who criticise Islam, like that published against the writer Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses some years ago.

A way to test

Surely if Muslims wish to prove to the world that their religion is valid and that ‘there is no God but Allah’ it would be far better to renounce forever this violent side of their faith (which is only subscribed to by some Muslims anyway).

At present Islam only seems to spread in the world and grab the headlines through politics, money (from Saudi oil) and violence. These are very much human means of forwarding their ideas. But these are the very same methods used, for example, to spread atheistic Communism, during the last century. Wasn’t it Chairman Mao who famously said, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’? However, were Islam to conquer the world purely through peaceful means, it would speak of a faith with a truly supernatural dimension. If, laying aside these usual earthly levers of power, Islam progressed to its goal, then it would be clear that Muslims serve a true and living God who is able to work out his own purposes in the world today. It is by adopting peace that Islam has the opportunity to prove its validity.

I realise that many Muslims see such calamities as the invasion of Iraq as a ‘Christian’ crusade. But actually such things have nothing whatever to do with real Christianity and I doubt if they do anything to advance true Christian faith.

By contrast, we look, for example, at the spread of the church in places like China, with millions upon millions of people turning to Christ in recent years, simply through the sharing of the gospel message and despite ferocious persecution at times from the Communist regime. It grows against all the odds. This is evidence for a God who is alive and who needs no force of arms or great financial backers to bring about his purposes. Isn’t this the challenge Islam needs to take up?

Proving Islam true?

Bigger picture

A way to test

John Benton

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