Islam
The New Nazis and a Lone Prophetic Voice
On September 29, 2014, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the the United Nations General Assembly. His remarks reminded me of Winston Churchill in 1939–a lone prophetic voice of moral clarity in a sea of drivel.
He warned that a new group of “Nazis” threaten the entire world. He deplored the UN’s duplicity of speaking against ISIS while supporting Hamas and caving in to nuclear-bound Iran. His words were sobering yet carried a ring of truth.
I wish he’d gone further. We need to dismantle the corrupt and inept United Nations and call for a new global alignment to take its place.
Let’s call it Free Nations--whose members must be committed to truth, justice, and liberty.
That, and the return of Jesus Christ, are our only hopes of winning World War III.
Listen to the prophet’s words.
This speech is worth reading in its entirety. I have edited it slightly, and have placed some captions and highlights to clarify his main points.
If the reality of Israeli nationhood, the inspiration of its leader, and the truths he shares don’t convince you of God’s reality, then nothing ever will.
May we hear the voice of the prophet and rise to defeat evil in our day.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Ladies and Gentleman,
The people of Israel pray for peace. But our hopes and the world’s hope for peace are in danger. Because everywhere we look, militant Islam is on the march.
Militant Islam
It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam. Typically, its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds – no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying: “All politics is local”? For the militant Islamists, “All politics is global.” Because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world.
Now, that threat might seem exaggerated to some, since it starts out small, like a cancer that attacks a particular part of the body. But left unchecked, the cancer grows, metastasizing over wider and wider areas. To protect the peace and security of the world, we must remove this cancer before it’s too late.
Last week, many of the countries represented here rightly applauded President Obama for leading the effort to confront ISIS. And yet weeks before, some of these same countries, the same countries that now support confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.
ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to impose well beyond the territory under their control.
Listen to ISIS’s self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. This is what he said two months ago: “A day will soon come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as a master… The Muslims will cause the world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism… and destroy the idol of democracy.” Now listen to Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas. He proclaims a similar vision of the future: “We say this to the West… By Allah you will be defeated. Tomorrow our nation will sit on the throne of the world.”
As Hamas’s charter makes clear, Hamas’s immediate goal is to destroy Israel. But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists. That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11. And that’s why its leaders condemned the United States for killing Osama Bin Laden, whom they praised as a holy warrior.
ISIS and Hamas the Same
So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.
And what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common: • Boko Haram in Nigeria; • Ash-Shabab in Somalia; • Hezbollah in Lebanon; • An-Nusrah in Syria; • The Mahdi Army in Iraq; • And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi’ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century. Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century. They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their quest for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance – Where women are treated as chattel, Christians are decimated, and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark choice: convert or die. For them, anyone can be an infidel, including fellow Muslims.
Militant Islam’s ambition to dominate the world seems mad. But so too did the global ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept to power eight decades ago.
The New Nazis
The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith. That’s what they truly disagree about. Therefore, the question before us is whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled ambitions.
There is one place where that could soon happen: The Islamic State of Iran. For 35 years, Iran has relentlessly pursued the global mission which was set forth by its founding ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, in these words: “We will export our revolution to the entire world.”
Listen to its current commander, General Muhammad Ali Ja’afari. And he clearly stated this goal. He said: “Our Imam did not limit the Islamic Revolution to this country… Our duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government…” Iran’s President Rouhani stood here last week, and shed crocodile tears over what he called “the globalization of terrorism.”
Maybe he should spare us those phony tears and have a word instead with the commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. He could ask them to call off Iran’s global terror campaign, which has included attacks in two dozen countries on five continents since 2011 alone. To say that Iran doesn’t practice terrorism is like saying Derek Jeter never played shortstop for the New York Yankees.
This bemoaning of the Iranian president of the spread of terrorism has got to be one of history’s greatest displays of double-talk.
Now, Some still argue that Iran’s global terror campaign, its subversion of countries throughout the Middle East and well beyond the Middle East, some argue that this is the work of the extremists. They say things are changing. They point to last year’s elections in Iran. They claim that Iran’s smooth talking President and Foreign Minister, they’ve changed not only the tone of Iran’s foreign policy but also its substance. They believe Rouhani and Zarif genuinely want to reconcile with the West, that they’ve abandoned the global mission of the Islamic Revolution.
Really? So let’s look at what Foreign Minister Zarif wrote in his book just a few years ago: “We have a fundamental problem with the West, and especially with America. This is because we are heirs to a global mission, which is tied to our raison d’etre… A global mission which is tied to our very reason of being.”
Nuclear Iran
So don’t be fooled by Iran’s manipulative charm offensive. It’s designed for one purpose, and for one purpose only: To lift the sanctions and remove the obstacles to Iran’s path to the bomb. The Islamic Republic is now trying to bamboozle its way to an agreement that will remove the sanctions it still faces, and leave it with the capacity of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. This would effectively cement Iran’s place as a threshold military nuclear power. In the future, at a time of its choosing, Iran, the world’s most dangerous state in the world’s most dangerous region, would obtain the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Allowing that to happen would pose the gravest threat to us all. It’s one thing to confront militant Islamists on pick-up trucks, armed with Kalashnikov rifles. It’s another thing to confront militant Islamists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic State, ISIS, would be if it possessed chemical weapons. Now imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic state of Iran would be if it possessed nuclear weapons. Would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS build a heavy water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop intercontinental ballistic missiles? Of course you wouldn’t.
Then you mustn’t let the Islamic State of Iran do those things either.
Because here’s what will happen: Once Iran produces atomic bombs, all the charm and all the smiles will suddenly disappear. They’ll just vanish. It’s then that the ayatollahs will show their true face and unleash their aggressive fanaticism on the entire world. There is only one responsible course of action to address this threat: Iran’s nuclear military capabilities must be fully dismantled. Make no mistake – ISIS must be defeated. But to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war.
To defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war.
The fight against militant Islam is indivisible. When militant Islam succeeds anywhere, it’s emboldened everywhere. When it suffers a blow in one place, it’s set back in every place. That’s why Israel’s fight against Hamas is not just our fight. It’s your fight. Israel is fighting a fanaticism today that your countries may be forced to fight tomorrow.
The Truth About the Recent Israeli-Palestinian War
For 50 days this past summer, Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, many of them supplied by Iran. I want you to think about what your countries would do if thousands of rockets were fired at your cities. Imagine millions of your citizens having seconds at most to scramble to bomb shelters, day after day. You wouldn’t let terrorists fire rockets at your cities with impunity.
Nor would you let terrorists dig dozens of terror tunnels under your borders to infiltrate your towns in order to murder and kidnap your citizens. Israel justly defended itself against both rocket attacks and terror tunnels. Yet Israel also faced another challenge. We faced a propaganda war. Because, in an attempt to win the world’s sympathy, Hamas cynically used Palestinian civilians as human shields. It used schools, not just schools – UN schools, private homes, mosques, even hospitals to store and fire rockets at Israel.
As Israel surgically struck at the rocket launchers and at the tunnels, Palestinian civilians were tragically but unintentionally killed. There are heartrending images that resulted, and these fueled libelous charges that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians.
We were not. We deeply regret every single civilian casualty. And the truth is this: Israel was doing everything to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. Hamas was doing everything to maximize Israeli civilian casualties and Palestinian civilian casualties. Israel dropped flyers, made phone calls, sent text messages, broadcast warnings in Arabic on Palestinian television, always to enable Palestinian civilians to evacuate targeted areas.
No other country and no other army in history have gone to greater lengths to avoid casualties among the civilian population of their enemies. This concern for Palestinian life was all the more remarkable, given that Israeli civilians were being bombarded by rockets day after day, night after night. As their families were being rocketed by Hamas, Israel’s citizen army – the brave soldiers of the IDF, our young boys and girls – they upheld the highest moral values of any army in the world. Israel’s soldiers deserve not condemnation, but admiration. Admiration from decent people everywhere.
Now here’s what Hamas did: Hamas embedded its missile batteries in residential areas and told Palestinians to ignore Israel’s warnings to leave. And just in case people didn’t get the message, they executed Palestinian civilians in Gaza who dared to protest.
No less reprehensible, Hamas deliberately placed its rockets where Palestinian children live and play.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a war crime. As Israeli children huddled in bomb shelters and Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system knocked Hamas rockets out of the sky, the profound moral difference between Israel and Hamas couldn’t have been clearer: Israel was using its missiles to protect its children. Hamas was using its children to protect its missiles.
By investigating Israel rather than Hamas for war crimes, the UN Human Rights Council has betrayed its noble mission to protect the innocent. In fact, what it’s doing is to turn the laws of war upside-down. Israel, which took unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties, Israel is condemned. Hamas, which both targeted and hid behind civilians – that a double war crime – Hamas is given a pass.
The Human Rights Council is thus sending a clear message to terrorists everywhere: Use civilians as human shields. Use them again and again and again. You know why? Because sadly, it works.
By granting international legitimacy to the use of human shields, the UN’s Human Rights Council has thus become a Terrorist Rights Council, and it will have repercussions. It probably already has, about the use of civilians as human shields.
It’s not just our interest. It’s not just our values that are under attack. It’s your interests and your values.
The New Tyrannies
We live in a world steeped in tyranny and terror, where gays are hanged from cranes in Tehran, political prisoners are executed in Gaza, young girls are abducted en masse in Nigeria and hundreds of thousands are butchered in Syria, Libya and Iraq. Yet nearly half, nearly half of the UN Human Rights Council’s resolutions focusing on a single country have been directed against Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East – Israel. where issues are openly debated in a boisterous parliament, where human rights are protected by independent courts and where women, gays and minorities live in a genuinely free society.
The Human Rights… (that’s an oxymoron, the UN Human Rights Council, but I’ll use it just the same), the Council’s biased treatment of Israel is only one manifestation of the return of the world’s oldest prejudices. We hear mobs today in Europe call for the gassing of Jews. We hear some national leaders compare Israel to the Nazis. This is not a function of Israel’s policies. It’s a function of diseased minds. And that disease has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.
It is now spreading in polite society, where it masquerades as legitimate criticism of Israel. For centuries the Jewish people have been demonized with blood libels and charges of deicide. Today, the Jewish state is demonized with the apartheid libel and charges of genocide. Genocide? In what moral universe does genocide include warning the enemy’s civilian population to get out of harm’s way? Or ensuring that they receive tons, tons of humanitarian aid each day, even as thousands of rockets are being fired at us?
In the past, outrageous lies against the Jews were the precursors to the wholesale slaughter of our people.
But no more.
Today we, the Jewish people, have the power to defend ourselves. We will defend ourselves against our enemies on the battlefield. We will expose their lies against us in the court of public opinion. Israel will continue to stand proud and unbowed.
Despite the enormous challenges facing Israel, I believe we have an historic opportunity.
An Opportunity to Unite Against Evil
After decades of seeing Israel as their enemy, leading states in the Arab world increasingly recognize that together we and they face many of the same dangers: principally this means a nuclear-armed Iran and militant Islamist movements gaining ground in the Sunni world.
Our challenge is to transform these common interests to create a productive partnership. One that would build a more secure, peaceful and prosperous Middle East.
Together we can strengthen regional security. We can advance projects in water, agriculture, in transportation, in health, in energy, in so many fields.
I believe the partnership between us can also help facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Many have long assumed that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can help facilitate a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab World. But these days I think it may work the other way around: Namely that a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world may help facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
And therefore, to achieve that peace, we must look not only to Jerusalem and Ramallah, but also to Cairo, to Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and elsewhere. I believe peace can be realized with the active involvement of Arab countries, those that are willing to provide political, material and other indispensable support. I’m ready to make a historic compromise, not because Israel is occupying a foreign land. The people of Israel are not occupiers in the Land of Israel. History, archeology and common sense all make clear that we have had a singular attachment to this land for over 3,000 years.
The Middle East is in chaos. States are disintegrating. Militant Islamists are filling the void.
Israel cannot have territories from which it withdraws taken over by Islamic militants yet again, as happened in Gaza and Lebanon. That would place the likes of ISIS within mortar range – a few miles – of 80% of our population.
Land for Peace, or Suicide?
Think about that. The distance between the 1967 lines and the suburbs of Tel Aviv is like the distance between the UN building here and Times Square. Israel’s a tiny country. That’s why in any peace agreement, which will obviously necessitate a territorial compromise, I will always insist that Israel be able to defend itself by itself against any threat. Yet despite all that has happened, some still don’t take Israel’s security concerns seriously. But I do, and I always will. Because, as Prime Minister of Israel, I am entrusted with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the future of the Jewish people and the future of the Jewish state.
And no matter what pressure is brought to bear, I will never waver in fulfilling that responsibility.
I believe that with a fresh approach from our neighbors, we can advance peace despite the difficulties we face.
In Israel, we have a record of making the impossible possible. We’ve made a desolate land flourish. And with very few natural resources, we have used the fertile minds of our people to turn Israel into a global center of technology and innovation.
Peace, of course, would enable Israel to realize its full potential and to bring a promising future not only for our people, not only for the Palestinian people, but for many, many others in our region.
But the old template for peace must be updated. It must take into account new realities and new roles and responsibilities for our Arab neighbors. There is a new Middle East. It presents new dangers, but also new opportunities. Israel is prepared to work with Arab partners and the international community to confront those dangers and to seize those opportunities. Together we must recognize the global threat of militant Islam, the primacy of dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons capability and the indispensable role of Arab states in advancing peace with the Palestinians.
All this may fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but it’s the truth. And the truth must always be spoken, especially here, in the United Nations.
The Biblical Prophetic Word
Isaiah, our great prophet of peace, taught us nearly 3,000 years ago in Jerusalem to speak truth to power.
“For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent. For the sake of Jerusalem, I will not be still. Until her justice shines bright, And her salvation glows like a flaming torch.”
Let’s light a torch of truth and justice to safeguard our common future.”
The Radical Difference Between the Biblical and Muslim Gospels
This evening President Obama gave a prime time speech on the importance of degrading and defeating ISIS–the cancerous Islamic State now fomenting in Iraq and Syria.
The president is good with words, but our success against this terror enemy will only be achieved through action–not phrases on a teleprompter.
I had planned to write a column this week called “The New Nazis”–which is an apt description of ISIS. Instead, I’d like to clarify the larger battle that is going on in the world which is a clash of ideas.
That clash really comes down to the radical difference between the Biblical and Muslim gospels.
First of all, I’m glad that The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen went on record stating the clear parallels between ISIS and Hitler’s Nazis. He writes:
“The Nazis are back — differently dressed, speaking a different language and murdering ostensibly for different reasons but actually for the same: intolerance, hatred, excitement and just because they can.”
He concludes his sobering article by declaring, “The decapitation of James Foley and the depredations of the Islamic State are evil returned, evil that can be understood only as beyond understanding. It needs to be eliminated.”
You can read the full text of “The Islamic State is Evil Returned” here.
New Gingrich has also written a good piece called “Ten Questions for Obama on ISIS” which gives a clear-thinking, statesmanlike view of what our president must consider as we face these 21st century Nazis.
But behind the need to militarily confront evil is a gigantic war of civilizations that comes down to the teachings of two books–the Bible–the basis of Western civilization and the global explosion of faith in Jesus that is taking place all over the world (60% of it in the Southern Hemisphere)–and the Koran–the Muslim book that is revered by 1.6 billion Muslims and for some, fuels bloody jihad.
Some comparisons are in order before we look at the “Good News” message of each book.
The Bible
The Bible is the world’s most translated bestseller, read and respected by 2.2 billion people. It is is a literary masterpiece–a library of 66 books written by over forty authors covering a span of some two thousand years.
The Bible contains reliable history, beautiful poetry and story-telling, amazingly accurate prophecy, and eyewitness accounts of the coming of the Savior (Jesus). It purports to be the inspired Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16) and as Youth With A Mission founder Loren Cunningham has written, it is The Book That Transforms Nations: How the Bible Can Change Any Country.
The Bible’s warfare references are all in the Old Testament when ancient cultures lived and died by the sword during primitive and uncivilized times. The New Testament champions the message of love as the highest virtue (1 Corinthians 13:13).
The Koran
The Koran professes to be revelations given to one man–Mohammed–in the 7th century AD. They are said to have been given over a period of either three weeks or 23 years–depending on the source.
The Koran is purportedly inspired only in its Arabic version and is not encouraged to be translated into other languages.
As a book, it contains little history, contains numerous historical errors, no memorable poetry or literature, and basically espouses one man’s rambling view of life and religion through a 7th century lens. It is composed of a series of “recitations” against Christians and Jews and how good Muslims should live their lives.
According to author Don Richardson in The Secrets of the Koran, the Koran contains 109 war verses that are just as relevant for today as they were in the Middle Ages. These verses form the backdrop of modern-day jihad or “holy war.”
Here are two more caveats.
1. Biblical followers are generally peace-loving people. However, at various times in history (notably the Crusades and the Reformation), they have resorted to violence to defend their faith. In doing so, they have gone against the teachings of the New Testament.
2. Many Muslims are peace-loving people. However, radical followers of Islam, throughout their history, have used violence and bloodshed as a primary tactic to advance their faith. Mohammed himself killed hundreds of people, participated in over forty armed battles, and lived as a religious robber baron. When Muslims kill people, they are following the one hundred warfare verses of the Koran.
Both books talk about God and what a person can do to come into a right relationship with Him.
Let’s first look at the Biblical “Gospel” (Good News).
Biblical Good News
The God of the Bible is a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who desire such a relationship and intimacy with man that Jesus came to the earth to die for our sins to reconcile us to the Father (John 3:16). When people put their trust in his salvation, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside them to empower them to live a life of virtue and love (2 Peter 1:2-11).
The Biblical Good News contains four simple elements.
1. The Invitation: Come. Abba Father’s call to all human beings is to come back in repentance and faith into relationship with their Creator. This gracious invitation is found all throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation (some examples are Isaiah 55:1, Matthew 11:28-30, and Revelation 22:17).
2. The Promise: Eternal Life. If we come back to God in repentance and faith, then God’s promises to live in us and with us, both in this life and the one to come. Eternal life is really “knowing Him” (John 17:3). One of my favorite verses in the Bible is John 10:10: “I have come that they might have life, life more abundantly.” God granting us a new chance at “life” is the key concept of both Old and New Testaments (Deuteronomy 30:19, and John 3).
3. The Means: Die to Yourself. The way a person enters into relationship to God and eternal life is brokenness, humility, repentance from sin, and child-like trust in God’s ability to save us through Jesus’ atonement. All these words describe a death to self process that helps us grow the character of God in our lives (Luke 9:23, Mark 8:34, 35 and 1 Corinthians 15:31).
4. The Result: Really Live! When we turn from our sins and give God his rightful place in our hearts, we come into alignment with the Kingdom of God and his righteous rule of truth and love. We become children of God who will be a part of his family forever–both in this life and the next.
Now let’s look at the Koranic “Good News,” or what is required to be pleasing to Allah.
Koranic Good News
1. The Ultimatum: Submit. Islam literally means “submission to God” (Koran 3:19). It is not really an invitation, but a command for a person to do every aspect of the will of Allah.
2. The Promise: Eternal Lust (Men Only). From the very beginning, Mohammed encouraged his fighters to die for the faith, promising them that death by jhad would guarantee them Paradise (jannah) which included exclusive access to seventy virgins (houris) who would satisfy their sexual appetites forever (E.g. Koran 56:22, 78:33 and Hadith 2687).
3. The Means: Death to Infidels. Though Islam encourages death to earthly appetites and passions (such as fasting furing Ramadan), the greatest reward is reserved for those who kill infidels (any non-Muslim) to advance Muslim dominance in the world (umma). Koranic examples: 9:123 – “Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you,” and 47:4 – “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly.”
4. The Result: Many Die. When radical Muslims take the Koran at its word, you get the 9-11 disaster of thousands dying, or the recent beheadings of American journalists by ISIS.
As you can see, the Biblical and Koranic Gospels are extremely different:
- The God of the Bible invites people to come, live, die to sin, and really live.
- The God of the Koran demands that people submit, lust, murder others, and force the world under sharia law.
Which message do you think is really Good News?
I sincerely hope in the coming months that we as individuals and nations understand the radical difference between the Biblical and Muslim gospels.
Only one is true–and is worth believing and living for.
That’s What Marriage is For
Most of us have known for a long time that God’s gift of marriage serves many purposes. It is a beautiful vehicle for intimate friendship, the opportunity to create new life, an advanced course in selflessness and learning to serve others, and a nurturing environment for children and family.
But a recent article on Islam turned on some light bulbs for me. Marriage is all of the above and more. But it is also a vital tool for world peace.
World peace? Isn’t that taking things a bit too far?
I don’t think so. I’ve had my “Aha” moment. World peace and stability.
That’s what marriage is for.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that after Genesis 1, which records the incredible, awesome, magnificent creation of the heavens and the earth, that Genesis 2 immediately records the importance of marriage to the overall creation.
Marriage seems to be the “key” to creation going well.
Of course, God-designed marriage is the joining together of a man and a woman into a relational and physical “oneness” that models the unity of the Trinity. That’s been the God-given definition of marriage for at least six thousand years.
Let’s take a moment to look at the passage that describes its origin: Genesis 2:18-24
“The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.”
“But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”
“The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.’”
“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
That’s God’s equation for marriage.
A couple things leap out here. First, man needed a woman to make him complete. She was designed to complement him, to make him whole. Second, the woman was made from the flesh of the man (the rib). British theologian John Stott believes that the essence of marriage is God re-uniting male and female flesh through sexual intercourse.
On a micro-scale, that makes a lot of sense. The natural draw of men and women is the desire to reunite maleness and femaleness into a newly constituted unity of life and purpose.
However, from a macro point of view– the big picture of things–maybe the institution of marriage was meant to accomplish a far greater purpose.
Social harmony. Stability. Order. Peace.
This lofty thought came after reading an article on the roots of Muslim Jihad. It’s worth sharing in its entirety.
Is Polygamy the Cause of Muslim Violence?
By: William Tucker
“Syria is submerged in civil war. The Sunni and the Shi’ia of Iraq are renewing their 1300-year-old conflict. Libyan rebels have shut down the nation’s oil industry. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has been suppressed and is resorting to terrorism. Pakistan is a cauldron of violence and assassinations. In short, the Muslim world, as usual, is at war with itself.”
“This is not a contemporary phenomenon. Islam has been attacking its neighbors ever since the Prophet Mohammed received the Koran from the Angel Gabriel in the 7th century. Within 50 years of his death, Muslim armies had conquered the known world from Spain to Afghanistan. The Moguls invaded India, setting off a conflict that persists today. The Ottoman Empire besieged Europe for hundreds of years before its collapse in the 20th century. As historian Samuel Huntington has written, Islam has always had ‘bloody borders.’”
“Is there any explanation for this? Is it temperament or history? Is it the inevitable fight over scarce resources? Or, as Muslim cultures would insist, is it because Islam has always been surrounded by hostile neighbors?”
“In my book, Marriage and Civilization, I offer a novel explanation as to why Islam has always been at war with itself and others. It is because Islam it is the only major religious culture that embraces polygamy.”
“Polygamy? What does that have to do with anything? Am I suggesting that because some minor sheik outside Baghdad takes two wives, two young Muslim brothers in Massachusetts feel compelled to blow up the Boston Marathon?”
“Well, yes. In any human society there are approximately the same number of men and women. Under monogamy, which limits each man to one wife, everyone gets a fair chance to marry. When powerful and successful men are allowed to take more than one wife, however, as they are in a polygamous society, this creates a pool of unsuccessful men at the bottom of society who are constantly in conflict with the system.”
“The history of Islam has been one continuous story of rebel groups off in the desert and deciding that the religion being practiced by the authorities and their harems back in the cities is not the ‘true Islam.’ They come crashing back upon the palaces, overthrowing the leaders (no Ottoman Sultan ever died of natural causes) and establishing a new regime that is just like the old one, where powerful are allowed to take multiple wives.”
“The Prophet Muhammad had a novel solution to this problem. Go and conquer neighboring societies and requisition their women. If you die in the process, the reward will be even greater – 72 virgins waiting for you in heaven! ‘Jihad’ has been a clever and effective way of redirecting the hostilities of the ‘bachelor herd’ that polygamy inevitably produces.”
“The fruits of polygamy are visible all over the Middle East. Because women are always in short supply, families can charge a ‘bride price’ to any man who wants to marry their daughter. Because daughters are now worth money, they must be veiled and sequestered so they don’t run off with some callow youth. Older men desperate for wives push down into younger and younger cohorts of the population. Marriages between 35-year-old men and 13-year-old girls become common. (Muhammad’s last wife was age six.)”
“But the main product of polygamy is a population of angry young men who are ripe recruits for terrorism. The Koran supposedly limits a man to four wives but in countries where there are vast disparities of wealth this is routinely violated. Osama bin Laden’s father, a successful Saudi businessman, had 22 wives and 54 children. The unbalance between unmarried men and the available women in Saudi Arabia is the highest in the world. Is it any wonder that 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers were Saudi nationals?”
“Ann Coulter once suggested that we would cure Muslim violence by converting the Islamic world to Christianity. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Christianity’s long enforcement of monogamous marriage has obviously played a critical role in establishing the more peaceful civilization of the West. The same can be said for China and India, where the vast majority adhere to monogamy. None of these cultures is plagued with the endless internal violence and outward aggression of Islam.”
“Converting the Muslim world to Christianity may be out of the question, but persuading it to give up polygamy on the grounds that it creates an inherently unstable society is a task that the rest of the world might be willing to undertake.”
I agree with everything Tucker postulates except the final paragraph. Ann Coulter is right. The key to eliminating Muslim violence in the world is the Good News of Christ which changes the heart and brings a human life into the blessings of God’s ways. One of those blessings is marriage–monogamy–and the peace and stablity it brings to human societies.
The most peaceful societies in the world are biblically based. Look at Europe, the Americas, Pacific Islands, and many other nations where the Good News has created marriages and cultures that create the greatest amount of peace possible in a fallen world.
Why?
Because marriage restrains sin through godly wives who keep men from giving in to their pugnacious natures.
This was a conclusion of Robert Bellah in his 1980s best-selling book Habits of the Heart. In his chapter called “Love and Marriage” Bellah explained that the genius of early America was the centrality of faith, marriage, family, and “superiority of the American women.”
Bellah quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, the French historian, who visited America during the 1930s: “[Christianity] reigns supreme in the souls of the women, and it is women who shape mores. Certainly of all countries in the world, America is the one in which the marriage tie is the most respected and where the highest and truest conception of conjugal happiness has been conceived.”
Bellah concluded what we men know from experience: Women are the superior sex and we desperately need their spiritual sensitivities to restrain our male excesses, guide and teach our children, provide an environment of love and nurture for the family–and in a phrase–keep the peace.
Is there any honest man out there that disagrees? Godly women are the fulcrum of stable families and nations. And it is the institution of marriage that ties us to their apron strings so that we don’t go off half cocked and destroy the planet.
Thirty years ago, in the margins of Bellah’s book, I wrote in my wife’s name–twice. Yes, I desperately need Shirley to bring peace, love, and unity to our home and family!
If we want peace on earth, less wars, and social stability, then godly women anchoring biblical marriages form the time-tested recipe for success.
God is awfully smart.
He knew that’s what marriage is for.