Islam II

Secular Humanism is Wimping Out. Islam Will Consume Itself

It is our view that in the conflict between Islam and secular humanism, Islam will likely prevail. The West is crumbling and will continue to crumble. The reason is not that Islam has technological superiority over the Western secular humanists. The reverse is the case. Rather the reason is that Islam is progressively turning the ideology of the secular West in upon itself and is using it so effectively that secular humanism is just rolling over. It is increasingly becoming evident that Islam is the reverse doppelganger of the West.

While Islam hates the West for its religion of human rights and implicit individualism on which it is based, it is showing itself remarkably clever in exploiting these components of Western idolatry to its own advantage when it needs to. Of course there are many fellow-travellers in the West (to use a good old communist term) who are more than willing to aid and abet the effort--such as human rights organisations and civil liberties groups and left-of-centre political parties.

The West is a self-proclaimed secular empire leading the human race into a higher plane of existence. It views Islam as inferior, archaic, and ignorant. But it cannot be seen to discriminate against the Islamic religion. If it were to discriminate it would be denying itself. Take the matter of immigration, for example. To refuse to allow Islamic people to immigrate would mean that the West would be discriminating against Islamic people on the grounds of their religion. Religious discrimination is regarded as a violation of human rights, according to the tenets of secular humanism. The secular West must maintain a studied indifference toward all religions (apart from its own idolatry) neither favouring the one, nor restricting the other.

If the West were to discriminate against Islamic migrants on the grounds that they were, well, Islamic it would mean that secularism would have to deny itself and blaspheme against itself. This would lead to intensive internal conflict within Western societies.

Over time, the waves of Islamic immigration, coupled with its far higher birth rate, mean that the West is increasingly confronted with self-confident, militant and aggressive Islamic minorities within its own realms, to which it constantly kowtows and capitulates. It does so because its own religion and ideology says that it must. To resist is to be guilty of discrimination which is to be non-Western. If the West is the supine effeminate seductress welcoming Islamic peoples and their culture into its household, Islam is the aggressive alpha male: the West submits, as a good woman should! The West is overcome and ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

However, whereas we believe that in the conflict between Islam and the Western secular humanism, it is Islam that will likely eventually triumph, exerting far greater cultural power, consistency and vigor, Islam also has within it the seeds of its own destruction. It will fail and fall before the Christian faith.

Just as the religion of secular humanism is self-destructive, containing sufficient internal contradictions that it always carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, so Islam cannot sustain itself. The more it succeeds in its conflict with the West, the more globally influential it becomes, the more it will tear itself apart. This is because the world belongs to the Living God and therefore evil (that which is opposed to God) is always internally self-contradictory and destructive. The more evil is “successful” (in the sense of becoming a dominant influence) the more it integrates into the void, turns upon itself, and cannibalises itself.

We can see examples of this taking place not just in the self-immolation of the West, but also in Islam today. For example, classical Islam recognizes two general categories of unbelievers, against which jihad (holy, predominantly military, war) must be waged. The two categories are unbelievers and apostates or renegades. The apostate is by far the worst. Bernard Lewis explains the difference. For Islam:

The unbeliever has not seen the light, and there is always hope that he may eventually see it. In the meantime, provided he meets the necessary conditions, he may be accorded the tolerance of the Muslim state and allowed to continue in the practice of his own religion, even the enforcement of his own religious laws. The renegade is one who has known the true faith, however briefly, and abandoned it. For this offense there is no human forgiveness, and according to the overwhelming majority of the jurists, the renegade must be put to death—that is, if male. For females a lesser penalty of flogging and imprisonment may suffice. God in His mercy may forgive the renegade in the other world, if He so chooses. No human has authority to do so.
Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (London: Phoenix, 2003) pp. 34,35

Modern fundamentalist Islam, which calls Islam back to the purity of original Islam, regards those Islamic nations which do not live strictly according to sharia law, and which have made accommodations to the West in whatever form, as renegade nations. Their leaders and rulers are apostates. Therefore they must be killed.

Lewis again:

Most if not all of the Muslim rulers whom we in the West are pleased to regard as our friends and allies are regarded as traitors and, much worse than that, as apostates by many if not most of their own people.
Ibid, p. 35.

Islam, the more fundamentalist (and seriously consistent it becomes), the more it is likely to tear itself apart, for within its theology is the belief that those who are less than thoroughly committed are worse than unbelievers and must be exterminated. Thus, the other side of fundamentalism's face is a fatwa against all non-fundamentalist Islamic nations and people--an indictment that calls for their death. This is why most of the blood shed in the name of Islam is shed by Muslims against Muslims. While Islamic fundamentalism hates the West, it hates its own more profoundly. To fundamentalist eyes the term "Islamic moderate" is an oxymoron. To wear the label "moderate" is to risk a sentence of death. Islamic fundamentalism has done more than anything in the past twenty years to turn Islamic people into “apostates” and “renegades”. They have become disgusted with their own religion.

Moreover, another self-destructive principle within Islam is emerging at the hands of modern and recent theological developments within Islamic fundamentalism itself. Fundamentalism has not just called for a return to the pure "good old days"; it has also engaged in some theological innovation of its own by developing further and more extremely some traditional and classical Islamic teachings. Islamic states and nations are finding it very difficult to refute and combat these “new” principles.

Firstly, there is the concept of suicide martyrdom. Classically suicide has been viewed in Islam as a mortal sin, resulting in eternal damnation, whereas martyrdom (being killed by enemies in the course of waging holy war against the infidels) has been viewed as an immediate passport to paradise. Fundamentalist theologians have begun to argue that martyrdom through suicide bombings and other self-willed and self-accomplished means of death is legitimate and not sinful. Moreover, fundamentalists have also come to argue that “collateral” damage which results in the death of innocent Islamic people through suicide bombings and other means, makes the dead involuntary martyrs—which is to their ultimate good, since they too pass immediately into paradise.

Finally, whereas sharia law explicitly forbids the killing of women and children when waging jihad, modern Islamic fundamentalists do it all the time, without a second glance. Thus in calling for the imposition of sharia, they ignore key provisions and tenets of the same. In the longer run this will create tensions which work to tear Islam apart from the inside.

Jerusalem fears neither the religion of Western secular humanism, nor the religion of Islam. The conflict between the two will serve to weaken both. In addition, both alike contain within them seeds of internal contradiction which will result in self-cannibalisation: either Islam or the West, if successful and triumphant, will eventually succeed to its own failure. Destruction therefore primarily comes from within, not without. If it were not so, the Living God would not be.

The responsibility of Jerusalem is neither to side with the West in its feeble struggles against Islam, nor with Islam in its railing against the decadence of the West. The duty of Jerusalem is to call all men (in both the West and Islam) away from slavery to their idols in both the West and in Islam unto the Christ Whose burden is easy and Whose yoke is light. Such calls are most likely to be heard when

. . . the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

It is in such calamitous times that often people finally have ears to hear. So it is not surprising that mission groups are reporting a significant increase of interest in the Gospel of Christ amongst Islamic peoples in recent days. The crumbling of Islam's idols at the hands of fundamentalists has led to broken and empty hearts seeking the true and Living God for the first time.