Answering Islam - A Christian-Muslim dialog

Islam: Religion of Life or Religion of Death?

Joshua Newman

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah.

Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid."

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion.1

To the Muslim religionist death is victorious because he believes he will be united with 72 virgins in some ‘Paradise’ after he blows himself up in his misguided attempt to please his god—Allah.  Under this interpretation of the Koranic verse, Islam is a suicide/death cult and Mohammed taught that death is good and glorious.

Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs in return is the garden of Paradise: they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him us truth… (Koran, Sura 9:111)

The Koran and aHadith, reported accounts of what Muhammed did, are filled with his views, which he claimed came from Allah. But who is Allah? He certainly is not the God of the Bible.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

The sentiments expressed by the Muslims above are the exact opposite of what the Lord Jesus Christ expressed.

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35) 

He didn’t say blow up as many as you can. He said,

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

In Western societies, this is the expected norm and is often called the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Hence in Western democracies we hold this as a reasonable expectation—that others will treat us as we treat them.

In Islam such a notion also exists. However, it is nothing like the Golden Rule. In Islam the world is divided into believers, the Dar-al-Islam, and the evil unbelievers or the kafirs, known as the Dar-al-Harb or world of war. While Muslims are prohibited from lying, cheating or stealing from Muslims, no such restrictions are applied when dealing with kafirs. Even murder is acceptable. Killing a Muslim is a serious crime, but the murder of an infidel is justified by the non-Muslim’s non-belief in Allah.2

So Muslims leaders the world over are preaching the doctrine of Death. They love death. They say,

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."[1] [emphasis added]

These poor misguided devotees! They have been deceived by the enemy himself. Just like Eve was deceived in the Garden, Satan deceived Muhammad and the deception is still here today with these poor lost Muslims. This fact is evidenced by death being the result of sin.

For the wages of sin is death, … (Romans 6:23a),

but Jesus Christ Himself died to pay the penalty of our sin. He also rose bodily, He defeated death.

but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23b)

Jesus gives us life and His resurrection gives us the hope in the afterlife of real bodily resurrection—New Life!  Death is the enemy of God—it is not natural nor a part of God’s original plan.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:26) 

One must look back into the Genesis account to understand that. If Adam and Eve had not sinned they would have lived in the Garden forever and never died. That is why after their sin God cast them out of the Garden so they wouldn’t eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life and live forever in their fallen condition. God had promised if they ate of that fruit they would surely die. That is where Satan got in his first lie. The Bible tells us,

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” (Genesis 3:4)

Yet they did die. Death is then the result of evil and cannot be called ‘good.’ It is an enemy not an ally. The devil throughout all time since then has been trying to persuade humans to die. (Since the seventh century Islam has been doing the same.)  He knows if they do before accepting the salvation offered by Christ then he will have their souls in Hell.

So these Muslim suicide terrorists are just doing the devil’s work, when we read how they blow themselves up killing many innocents.

Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent or the righteous, for I will not acquit the guilty. (Exodus 23:7)

Don’t lie and don’t kill the innocent because you will not be acquitted by God. The deception is great—Muslims, it seems, believe the opposite of what the Bible teaches.


In Melbourne Australia a group of Muslim men, led by a self-styled sheikh Nacer Benbrika, are on trial for planning terrorist attacks. The West Australian newspaper reported on February 22nd , 25th and 27th, 2008, excerpted below.

Everyone must be prepared," Benbrika said in a secretly recorded conversation.

"If we want to die for jihad we do maximum damage ... that's what we are waiting for.

"Damage their buildings ... damage their lives."

During the eighth day of his opening address, prosecutor Richard Maidment, SC, said Benbrika also preached that the Koran permitted the killing of Australian women, children and elderly.

In an intercepted conversation following a visit to Benbrika by ASIO, the self-styled Sheikh said his group was entitled to conduct jihad against all Australians.

"If the kuffar are at war with you, they have no rights," he said. "We are at war with them.”
     
Benbrika repeatedly said Islam forbade killing innocents but evaded questions about whether he considered Australians innocent, Mr Maidment said.
     
Mr Maidment said Benbrika was later covertly recorded saying that lying was "an art" and "you need to train yourself, when you lie, to remember. This is, by itself, a knowledge."

There is no mistake he is talking about killing the innocent. This thinking is exactly from the Muslim holy books. It is not aberrant Islam but mainstream. Benbrika is being true to the faith. The problem is the faith is based on a false foundation, i.e. that death is to be celebrated. As we have seen from the Bible the truth is the opposite. It warns against this sort of thing.

They band themselves together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. (Psalm 94:21) 

And shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with the blood. (Psalm 106:38) 

Muslim mothers are doing the same today, offering their own children as sacrifices to their god Allah, just like the pagan Canaanites did by burning their children in the fires of Moloch—the false god.

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son... [but] She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle – even a just battle – has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women – some married with infant children – are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life.[1]

The true Word of God tells us to love life and protect the innocent. We find that Proverbs 1:10-19 gives almost a perfect description of the way the Muslim terrorist believes he can force the world to believe using the sword.

My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood; let us ambush the innocent without reason; like Sheol [Hell] let us swallow them alive, and whole, like those who go down to the pit; we shall find all precious goods, we shall fill our houses with plunder; throw in your lot among us; we will all have one purse”— my son, do not walk in the way with them; hold back your foot from their paths, for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood. For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood; they set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain; it takes away the life of its possessors.

There is only one just God and he (Jesus) said,

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. (John 14:6)

God is Love,

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16)

and He teaches us to love and forgive. But Allah is the god of Death and he teaches his followers to kill and destroy. The Koran says, 

Fight and slay the Pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)… (Sura 9:5)

Only by understanding Genesis as real history can we understand that death is the product of sin. It is an intruder and is evil and not to be celebrated, but overcome.  When the Church rejects Genesis as real history she cannot understand that Islam is as much as a false religion as the Canaanite pagan worship of Moloch—a religion of Death.  Thank God for His Son, Jesus, who paid the ultimate sacrifice and redeems all those who believe in Him. The Bible calls Him the last Adam.

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)

The first Adam must have been a real physical human being otherwise the last Adam (Jesus) would only have been a metaphor also. Because of Jesus physical bodily resurrection—he overcame death—we know He is the one true God. Which other man rose for the dead, bodily? Death could not hold Jesus down. Did Muhammed or any other religious leader do the same?  No, they are all still in the grave.  Not only that, Jesus showed to those who met Him after His resurrection that He had a new body that could pass through walls; even eat and drink. And more than 500 witnesses saw Him manifest in new life. They were eyewitnesses of His new physical form not just some spiritual apparition. This is not some ‘pie in the sky’ promise for the afterlife. This is demonstrated fact. Not some promise from a capricious god of a garden of virgins if one murders as many innocents as one can with one’s death, but a demonstration of eternal physical bodily life ever after from the only one Who could fulfill such a promise and Who demonstrated it Himself.  There is only one way. Which way do you choose—Life or Death?


Footnotes
1 Alan M. Dershowitz, Worshippers of Death, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2008; Page A17

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